Oscillations

"A person who doubts himself is like a man who would enlist in the ranks of his enemies and bear arms against himself." - Alexander Dumas

As I do a short mental inventory (as evidenced by this blog over time), I find that I swing between two extremes: complete confidence in my abilities and a readiness to start at things versus the sense of being completely unable to do anything. I'm sure if I looked a bit closer I could detect a rhythm involved, but regardless there is is.

Why is this? What causes me to oscillate between these two extremes, sometimes to the point where I feel unable to take any action?

Part of it (based on a poem from yesterday's sermon) is that I sometimes confuse what my part is and what God's part is.

The poem (I'll have to see if I can find it) had the lines "I asked God to give me happiness; He replied that He gave blessings and that happiness was my job. I asked God to take away my bad habits; He replied that he had given me the power, but I needed to get rid of them myself."

Sometimes I can get so wrapped up in the omnipotence of God that I forget that He is doing works in all His children but like any good father, He expects His children to do their part themselves. One does not learn to walk by always being picked up and lifted across the floor; one stand up, fall down, and repeat to learn the concept of walking.

All the things I want (or need) to do at this point in my life require some effort; they will not just fall into my lap. I have the desire, but desire without commitment equals frustration and depression. The inability to do these things then leads to doubting that one can ever do them, which leads to greater levels of depression and frustration.

How do I begin to combat this? I think I have to start on the (rather silly) level that nothing is ever really easy, but easy is not an indicator of God's pleasure or displeasure. As I posted earlier, if one starts with the concept that the purpose of our lives is To Advance The Kingdom of God, then things start to take their place not by their level of difficulty but by the question of if they advance God's Kingdom; if they do, difficulty is no excuse, if not, ease is no guarantee of lasting success.

If I used this as a metric, how would this control my oscillations?