Matt Pavlik

Be Authentic And You Will Belong

May 15, 2022 by Matt Pavlik Leave a Comment

Having high expectations is good as long as they don’t come at the cost of being authentic. So, are expectations good or bad?

When you expect too much of yourself, you can never achieve an authentic life. If you are always chasing after some ideal standard, you won’t be able to appreciate who you are in the moment. An inauthentic life is never profoundly satisfying.

However, if you don’t expect enough of yourself, you also won’t be able to achieve an authentic life. You’ll be resigned to your shortcomings. You’ll assume that the way you are today is as good as it gets.

Be Authentic: It’s Okay to Cry

One common way to be inauthentic is to hold back your tears. Big boys or girls don’t cry. But what does it cost you to maintain the appearance that nothing phases you?

Keeping your feelings stuffed inside splits you in two psychologically. The public (or visible) you takes on too high expectations while the private (or hidden) you takes on too low expectations. This puts you in a body that is trying to be two different people at the same time. The more a person insists on living this way, the more likely they will experience a psychological breakdown.

No one should have to pretend to have their life together just to keep a relationship. But it’s all too common for someone to believe I’m too much or I’m too little.

Be Authentic: It’s Okay to Risk

The person you are today isn’t all that God has planned you to be. While being genuine doesn’t mean pretending to be someone greater than you are, it also doesn’t mean embracing a negative self-image. The one is too prideful while the other is too humble.

To seek to be closer to who you really are requires risking exposure. Some people will find out you aren’t who you’ve been leading them to believe. You might also find out that you’re never going to be like someone you idolize. Both of these realizations can produce some sadness.

If you’re going to choose an authentic life, be prepared for some initial disillusionment. But it should resolve quickly. If you work at accepting your God-given identity, you’ll find you’ve only lost what was never true and gained what was always true.

Be Authentic to Maximize Your Belonging

God wants us to embrace exactly who we are: who He made us to be. He gives each of us the faith to see our true selves. Because God planned for you to be your authentic self, you will automatically belong with Him and all your other spiritual brothers and sisters.

You must be willing to understand your identity and act with integrity because others are depending on you to be authentic.

Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect. Because of the privilege and authority God has given me, I give each of you this warning: Don’t think you are better than you really are. Be honest in your evaluation of yourselves, measuring yourselves by the faith God has given us. Just as our bodies have many parts and each part has a special function, so it is with Christ’s body. We are many parts of one body, and we all belong to each other.
Romans 12:2-5 NLT

Don’t compromise who you are (God’s design) for any reason.

Would anyone like to share some ways they struggle to be authentic?

Unbelief Is The Only Unforgivable Sin

May 8, 2022 by Matt Pavlik Leave a Comment

Persistent unbelief is the only evidence of unforgivable sin. Have you ever read a seemingly scary passage in the Bible and wondered if you were going to make it into heaven? If so, I have good news. Because you care about your salvation, then you are open the to Gospel message. You are either a believer or you have the potential to become one.

Here are the two verses from Matthew that create some spiritual confusion about the “unforgivable sin.”

Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven people, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. And whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.
Matthew 12:31-32 ESV

The Person Who Believes Has The Holy Spirit Forever

To be capable of speaking against the Holy Spirit, a person cannot already have the Holy Spirit.

Therefore I want you to know that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, “Jesus be cursed,” and no one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit.
1 Corinthians 12:13 NIV

If you consider the context of Jesus’s statement that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is unforgivable, you will see that the bottom-line meaning of blasphemy is persistent, absolute unbelief.

If you die while still not believing in the power of the Holy Spirit to raise you from the dead, this is unforgivable; You won’t be in heaven. But, for example, if you became a born-again believer ten years ago, you lied to someone yesterday, and you died today, you would still be in heaven. That’s because by being born-again you have the saving power of the Spirit living within you. Committing further sin does not evict the Holy Spirit. Your sin will grieve the Holy Spirit, but God will never abandon you.

This also means if you at one time in your life claimed, “The Holy Spirit isn’t real,” or “The Holy Spirit has no power to save,” but today you believe, then you will still be in heaven when you die. You couldn’t have committed the unpardonable sin. Peter, a believer, denied Christ three times, but Jesus didn’t consider Peter a lost cause.

The sin of unbelief only becomes unforgivable after you die. Before you die, all sin is forgivable. Even the thief on the cross with Jesus became a believer only hours before his death.

Unbelief in The Power of The Holy Spirit Is Unforgivable

The role of the Holy Spirit is to convict the believer of sin. If a person denies the power of the Holy Spirit, then there is no power that can bring a person to repentance.

Jesus makes a powerful logical argument for why the Pharisees are spiritually blind.

Then a demon-oppressed man who was blind and mute was brought to him, and he healed him, so that the man spoke and saw. And all the people were amazed, and said, “Can this be the Son of David?” But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, “It is only by Beelzebul, the prince of demons, that this man casts out demons.” Knowing their thoughts, he said to them, “Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and no city or house divided against itself will stand. And if Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then will his kingdom stand? And if I cast out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your sons cast them out? Therefore they will be your judges. But if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. Or how can someone enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man? Then indeed he may plunder his house. Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.
Matthew 12:22-30 ESV

In context, Jesus is saying that only a person aligned with Satan would deny that the Holy Spirit has power. Meaning: only someone with unbelief toward God and who attributes miracles to the power of Satan. A person can’t reject the work of the Holy Spirit in their life and be saved.

But, anyone who accepts the work of the Holy Spirit will be saved. As long as you have the Holy Spirit, you have access to repentance and “forgiveness for every sin and blasphemy.”

Jesus’s explanation in verses 22 to 30 is a logical proof. There are two powers: one of evil and one of good. Evil does not work against evil. Good does not work against good. Only an evil spirit can work against a good Spirit (also see Matthew 12:33-37). Only a good Spirit can work against an evil spirit. If a person attributes the work of the Holy Spirit to the work of Satan, that person must be blind to the truth (unsaved). They stand in judgment and condemnation.

A person who is still concerned about their sin still has a conscience which means the Holy Spirit is still working in the person’s life. After a person commits the unforgivable sin, the Holy Spirit cannot indwell the person.

If you care about your salvation and can repent, there’s still hope for you. But for the person who doesn’t care, this person doesn’t believe in heaven or hell, and therefore this person won’t feel any concern about their disbelief. They are ignorant of the truth.

A person who cannot believe the truth does not have access to the power of the Holy Spirit and therefore cannot believe the Holy Spirit is real, and therefore can only conclude that Satan works against Satan, as absurd as that is. The person who so deliberately aligns themselves with absolute darkness and against the light stands eternally condemned. The Holy Spirit cannot grant them repentance.

How about you, are you aware of or ignorant of the truth? It is only by the power of the Holy Spirit that a person becomes aware of the truth.

Read about the full assurance of hope that is yours.
Read about forgiving others.
Image by Marlon Sommer from Pixabay
More about blasphemy of the Holy Spirit:
Eternal Sin. Note: I don’t agree with everything said.
Beyond Forgiveness. Note: I don’t agree with everything said.

Recover From Crushing Betrayal

May 1, 2022 by Matt Pavlik Leave a Comment

A husband’s betrayal causes his wife significant pain. While both are out driving, he loses lost control of his car and smashes into her car. He had been drinking. How can she recover from this betrayal?

Both are thrown from their cars and somehow land next to each other. The husband touches his head and discovers a sizeable bump. The wife can’t move her leg; it’s broken.

The husband keeps mumbling that he is sorry. But his wife doesn’t believe him.

How could you do this to me? I’ll never be able to forgive you. You could have killed me. You need help. You need to fix this so I’ll be able to walk again.

When the ambulance arrives, the wife can’t stop talking about her husband.

It’s my idiot husband who broke my leg. Make sure he gets help for his alcohol problem.

When the paramedic asks if she wanted treatment for her leg, she declines.

This is my husband’s fault. I don’t need help because I didn’t do anything wrong. He is the one who needs to figure out why this happened and how he can make this right. If I get my leg fixed, then he will think this is no big deal and he’ll never stop drinking.

A Physical Accident Should Not Be Different Than an Emotional Betrayal

A physical accident will probably never play out like that. No one in their right mind would refuse to have their broken leg treated. However, I’ve seen an emotional accident create this kind of response in the person who was betrayed. The logic goes something like this:

Why should I be inconvenienced with counseling when it’s my husband who has the problem? It’s his fault. He’s the one who should face the consequences. I don’t need counseling. He does.

This assumes that receiving medical care for a broken leg is somehow different than receiving emotional care for a broken heart. Medical care seems to be deserved but counseling is a punishment. As someone who works as a counselor, this saddens me.

Why are these two healing procedures treated so differently? I think it is because the medical model requires very little of its patients. The doctor does all the work. The patient is usually given pain killers to numb the pain. It’s obvious that a whole leg is better than a broken one. It’s obvious that the broken leg was the husband’s fault.

A person with a broken heart can nurse bitterness for a long time without feeling obligated to do anything about it. Some people might even encourage unforgiveness as a consequence: Forgiveness is a sign of weakness. It can feel like the only leverage a person has against a repeat offense.

A well-known saying applies here. Unforgiveness is like drinking poison to make the perpetrator suffer. But this doesn’t work emotionally either because the victim ends up giving up too much control over their own life just to make a point. Why would anyone want to suffer more? Maybe they are desperate to know if their suffering matters to the perpetrator.

Others have the power to hurt you but they don’t have the power to make you well.

This is an unfortunate fact of life. This is why forgiveness is necessary. Only Jesus has the power to make you well. We appeal to Him through prayer so that we might be healthy again.

Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.
James 5:16 ESV

We forgive others so that our hearts are open to receiving God’s forgiveness.

And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.
Mark 11:25 ESV

Forgiveness doesn’t prevent God from working in the perpetrator’s life, but unforgiveness might prevent God from working in yours. Counseling is supposed to be an emotional healing process, not a burden. If you’ve suffered an emotional injury, why not seek all the help you can get?

When you are in a state of unforgiveness, you are spiritually weak. But having forgiven, you are strong. Unforgiveness is about trying to maintain control over something you can’t control. Forgive today so you will be healed.

More about relational health.
Image by Queven from Pixabay

The Danger Of Trusting Too Much

April 24, 2022 by Matt Pavlik Leave a Comment

Trust is essential for healthy relationships. So much so that you might wonder if trusting too much is even possible. Wouldn’t more always be better?

To say trusting too much is dangerous is like saying that too much love or too much chocolate will kill you. How can you go wrong with something so good that is often in short supply?

Trusting Too Much

Yes, it’s possible to trust too much. It’s called blind trust. Although, no one will probably fault you for it. That’s because your trust benefits others. It will benefit you too, but only up to a point.

Trust has a natural limit or capacity much like a cup. If you fill a cup beyond its capacity, you will make a mess and waste your refreshing drink. Trust has a limit like your body has a limit. You can give certain parts away like a kidney and still live, but most other parts you can’t live without.

Trusting too much is like giving away an essential body part and expecting the recipient will be able to keep you alive. It’s depending on someone for something they can’t possibly give you. You were never meant to function that way.

If you trust others too much, you are open to being taken advantage of. Others might benefit, but only at your expense. When that happens you are going to get hurt. The more you hurt, the more you are likely to decrease your level of trust. In this case, that wouldn’t be bad except if you become determined to overprotect yourself. Then you might trust too little.

Trusting Too Little

If trusting benefits you and others, it must be possible to trust too little. It’s called mistrust. What if the person you are in a relationship with is trustworthy but you aren’t capable of trusting? That’s going to slow down your relationship, maybe to the point of breaking it.

How would a teenager feel about a mom who walks him to school and sits with him in class? Assuming the teenager normally makes it to school on his own and participates in class, this extreme hovering would degrade the relationship. The teen would probably either begin to rebel (which would be healthy) or suffer from low confidence (which would be unhealthy).

In an extreme case, trusting too little is called paranoia. A mom might have skipped school when she was a teenager. Perhaps she suffered from low self-esteem because her classmates teased her. She could over-emphasize her past hurts and then project them onto her son. It’s possible she feels too vulnerable even when her surrounding environment is safe.

Trusting Just Right

What is a person to do? If you trust too much, you can be hurt. If you trust too little, you hinder your relationships. The right amount of trust is called perceptive trust. The person engaged in perceptive trust is open to trusting others to the degree that they show themselves trustworthy. That’s smart.

Trust is evidence of a healthy relationship. But the cautions about trusting too much still apply. The amount of trust you place in an imperfect human should still be limited. Trusting too much will break your relationships with other humans. Others can’t live up to an exaggerated amount of trust. With too high expectations of a person, the relationship is doomed to fail from the start.

Trusting too much puts people on a pedestal. It can become idolatry.

It is better to trust the Lord for protection than to trust anyone else, including strong leaders.
Psalm 118:8-9 CEV

No matter how trustworthy another person is, there will always be some risk to trusting him. Nobody is perfect. Anyone at any time can let you down. So why should you trust anyone, including God who allows others to hurt you?

You can never trust God too much. He is completely trustworthy. You can’t blame Him for others’ mistakes. The more you trust God, without limit, the better off you will be.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart;
do not depend on your own understanding.
Proverbs 3:5 NLT

Trusting God with all you’ve got provides you with an insurance policy. If anyone lets you down, God will always be there to take care of you. That might not always make sense, but it doesn’t have to when you place your trust in God.

Read about repairing broken trust.
Image by Christian Calhoun from Pixabay

Grieving Frees You From A Trapped Life

April 17, 2022 by Matt Pavlik Leave a Comment

Have you ever felt stuck in life? I have many times. Grieving is the only way to become unstuck. It’s a process of coming to accept what seems unacceptable. It changes you for the good, but it leaves you different.

You can only experience something for the first time once in your life. Once you experience it, you are changed. Those second and following experiences aren’t the same.

Life is like a series of gates you go through. The gates are one-way doors. After you go through them, you can’t go back. All you can do is view the past from a distance.

Grieving Helps You Let Go of Regrets

How many times have you wished you could have a do-over? You realize too late that you could have handled a situation much better.

Sometimes life can feel like a rushing river is escorting you through the gates faster than you want to go. Along the way, you hit some rocks and don’t have time to catch your breath. You can feel trapped because the gate behind you is permanently shut. You don’t want to go forward; you want to go back so you can erase your mistakes.

Godly grief allows you to move forward into a new way of living that embraces God’s salvation. Worldly grief keeps you stubborn and unwilling to accept God’s help.

For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.
2 Corinthians 7:10 ESV

Grieving Helps You Wait For God

Sometimes life can feel like a riverbed that dried up so long ago you can remember when. The gate in front of you seems to be permanently shut. You think you are ready to move on, but God has other plans. He wants you to linger where you are for a while. You feel trapped because you can’t move forward into the future, the past seems irrelevant, and the present is boring or painful.

But you can make use of the time you have by learning that God is sufficient for all your needs.

Deep in my heart I say, “The Lord is all I need; I can depend on him!
The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him.
It is good to wait patiently for the Lord to save us.
Lamentations 3:24 (CEV) 25 (ESV) 26 (CEV)

The way forward won’t be closed forever. If it is closed, there’s more to do in this chapter of your life before you move to the next. Once you move on, you can’t return, so it is wise to be sure you are done with the current season of life.

While you are waiting, you can seek God by asking Him to accomplish His plans in your life so you can eventually open the door.

Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.
Matthew 7:7-8 NIV

Grieving Helps You Step Through the Open Door

Sometimes life can feel like you are on a calm lake but you are approaching a waterfall. You fear for your survival. The way forward is too open for your comfort. You’d rather enjoy the serenity of the lake.

Say not, “Why were the former days better than these?” For it is not from wisdom that you ask this.
Ecclesiastes 7:10 ESV

With each passing gate, a melancholy nostalgia can build. The older you are, the more there is that will never be again. But this also means God is doing something new right now and He will do even more tomorrow.

For I am about to do something new.
See, I have already begun! Do you not see it?
I will make a pathway through the wilderness.
I will create rivers in the dry wasteland.
Isaiah 43:19 NLT

What body of water best describes your current season of life? Remember that God is a masterful gatekeeper. Allow Him to guide you through the wilderness with all He provides. Seek wisdom from God (see Ecclesiastes 7:8-14 for more insight into grieving).

Read more about 3 Steps to Achieve Healthy Grieving
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Guard Your Heart Or You Will Become Lost

April 10, 2022 by Matt Pavlik Leave a Comment

Does God want you to be more trusting or less trusting? Should you always open your heart to people? The answers to these questions depend on whether you are among friends or enemies.

However, sometimes your friends can act like enemies, and sometimes enemies can act like friends. An enemy, or a friend acting like an enemy, can harm your heart. The wound can take a long time to recover from. Many times, the wound won’t completely heal until the next life begins in heaven.

Wounds are costly. So what can you do? Read further to understand your heart and how you can protect it.

What is Your Heart?

Your heart is the core of your identity. Without it, you wouldn’t be able to know who you are. In many ways, it’s like a mysterious black box. Perhaps we can know some of what is in our hearts, and understand some about how it got there, but we probably have no clue how God makes it all work.

We know that Jesus is significantly concerned about our hearts (Matthew 15:18-19; Matthew 23:27-28). What a person says or does has its origins in the core of that person. The condition of a heart is an accurate representation of the whole person (Proverbs 27:19).

I suspect all of us could benefit from admitting that both of the following are true:

The heart contains more corrupt motives than any of us realize because we haven’t fully experienced the depths of its sickness (Jeremiah 17:9).
God has designed our hearts to contain amazingly beautiful features that we haven’t been able to appreciate because no one has recognized them yet (Proverbs 20:5).

Why Is Your Heart Important?

Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life.
Proverbs 4:23 NLT

Most believers want to know God’s will for their lives. We want to know if our existence is significant. We want to know how to succeed in life.

Proverbs 4:23 provides the answer. Your heart will determine how your life turns out. It’s like a compass for your life. It will decide the direction you take. Without a well-functioning center, you will be lost.

Fortunately for us, God doesn’t leave us helpless. He gives believers a new heart that can respond to His correction and love (Ezekiel 36:26).

Guard Your Heart: Discern Your Enemies

While you can be courageous because God is with you (Joshua 1:9), God also commands you to protect your most valuable possession.

The enemy, and sometimes the people influenced by him, can cause great harm to your heart. God expects you to protect it from evil.

Stay alert! Watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.
1 Peter 5:8 NLT

“Don’t waste what is holy on people who are unholy. Don’t throw your pearls to pigs! They will trample the pearls, then turn and attack you.”
Matthew 7:6 NLT

At the same time, to understand who you are, you must expose your heart to yourself, to God, and to others. As you allow God to search your heart, He will find sick parts that need Healing but also treasures that need to be put on display (Psalm 139:23-24).

The more you trust others, the more you are letting your guard down. You allow yourself to be known. Most of the time this will produce favorable results, but it can also end in rejection.

What level of risk is worth taking, given the possible rewards? As you become better at guarding your heart, your risk goes down. Guarding your heart means protecting it, but it also means nurturing it so it can thrive. What does your heart tell you today about the course of your life?