Christian Concepts

Bringing your Potential to Light

Matt Pavlik

Your Identity Solves Even Your Most Difficult Problems

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In today’s world even Christians struggle with understanding who they are. Matt Pavlik wrote Confident Identity: Christian Strategies to Forget Who You Aren’t and Discover Who You Really Are to provide a clear guide for Christians to grasp the full significance of their identities. A Christian’s identity is God’s greatest gift only when it is opened and explored.

“Confident Identity is a conversation-starter, a thought-generator, and a game-changer,” says Licensed Professional Counselor, Jessica Buczek. “Days after reading its final pages, I found myself deliberately and intentionally contemplating my sense of purpose. Combining Scripture, clinical theories, and practical tools, Matt has thoughtfully crafted a beautiful resource filled with an abundance of insightful questions, constructive ideas, easy-to-read charts, and meaningful activities and tests which allow an individual to thoroughly explore, expand, and exercise their identity.”

Your identity is everything. If you understand who you are, then you’ll have purpose and you’ll know how to live your life. A lack of identity is at true epidemic proportions today because people search for meaning to the exclusion of their Christian origins. In Confident Identity, Pavlik enlightens Christian readers to their spiritual identities as well as their unique personalities. God doesn’t make duplicates. He crafts each individual for a specific purpose.

Confident Identity: Christian Strategies to Forget Who You Aren’t and Discover Who You Really Are (paperback, 230 pages, ISBN 978-0986383151) is available on Amazon (amazon.com/author/mattpavlik) for $21.95. More information is available at ConfidentIdentity.com.

About the Author:
Matt Pavlik, Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor, published his first book, Marriage From Roots To Fruits, in 2015. He has counseled individuals and couples at his Christian counseling practice, New Reflections Counseling, since 2003. He completed his Master of Arts in Clinical Pastoral Counseling from Ashland Theological Seminary and his Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the University of Illinois. Matt and his wife Georgette have been married over 15 years and have four children.

About the Publisher:
Christian Concepts (an imprint of New Reflections Counseling, Inc. located in Dayton, Ohio) publishes books that help Christians reach their potential.

Who Is Your Source?

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Our desire for love can drive us to rationalize just about any behavior. God made us to experience love. So when we don’t experience it, we know something is deeply wrong. Something is deeply wrong — our suffering is genuine. We do need to keep crying out for love, otherwise we will won’t be able to receive it. As intolerable as being unloved is, if we lose sight of where love comes from, we will ultimately destroy our relationships.

We can submit and surrender ourselves to anything, treating it as a source. Some sources are life-giving and some are life-stealing. Most of our sources will fail us in one way or another. They may be excellent sources with natural limits, or they may be horrible substitutes for fullness of life. God is the only true and trustworthy source that will never run out or fail us.

If you are struggling in your marriage, could you be expecting your partner to be your source instead of God? Are you trying to be sufficient apart from abiding in Jesus?

The Reality of Death

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Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden.
Genesis 3:7-8 ESV

I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life.
Genesis 3:16-17 ESV
Ch02_TimelineGod told Adam, “You will die when you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” (Genesis 2:17). Then God created Eve. God or Adam must have told Eve because she knew at least a distorted version of God’s command (Genesis 3:3). Adam and Eve lost paradise when they chose to trust in themselves over dependence upon God. When they disobeyed Him, they died spiritually and lost their secure connection with Him. Encountering fear and shame for the first time must have been brutal. Preoccupied with grief, they were unaware of the depth of the problem. Little did they realize they were powerless to undo the mess they had gotten into.

The 4 Steps to Growing a Fruitful Marriage

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You are probably thinking, “Awesome! Only four steps! I can be done next week.” But God made marriage to last a lifetime for a reason. The steps I am about to show you are real steps that we all go through at one time or another. But first, read Matthew 13:3-9.

Jesus uses the Parable of the Sower to speak about our receptivity to God’s words. Let’s consider how the parable also applies to marriage. The four types of soil in the parable match up with four types of relationships. From least to most desirable, these are Path, Rocks, Thorns, and Good Soil. The typical inexperienced couple begins as either Conflicted or Careless. Along the way, every couple experiences being Conflicted, Careless, and Choking before making it to Cooperating.

Ch01_Fruitful

The Conflicted Couple needs to learn how to experience a basic positive connection. The Careless Couple needs to experience and resolve conflict to build endurance. The Choking Couple needs to find a deeper enjoyment amidst the busyness of life. The Cooperating Couple needs to refine and maintain what they’ve accomplished so far.

As no person is perfect, no marriage is perfect. No matter which soil condition most closely describes your relationship, you can decide to grow a godly marriage by cultivating the path, clearing out the rocks, pulling out the thorns, and planting in the good soil. When you do this, you will be well on your way to yielding fruit one hundred times what was sown.