Christian Concepts

Bringing your Potential to Light

Matt Pavlik

Where will this bridge take you?

Is Emotion an Obstacle or a Bridge?

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Whether emotion is a positive experience for you or a negative one, depends on your perspective, doesn’t it?

Everything has a purpose.

Rough, calloused hands and fingertips are a sign of hard work. Your body forms a protective layer while you get work done.

Notice the strong correlation between physical and emotional sensation.

In an emotionally risky environment, the natural thing to do is develop an emotionally protective layer. Some negative environments you can avoid completely. And you should. But other environments you can’t.

You can’t avoid all risky environments because there’s no heaven on earth.

Naturally everyone is going to have some emotional callous. Adam and Eve became overly defensive after the fall. Over-protection is a tendency we all have to work at overcoming.

You have an automatic defense system that sometimes malfunctions.

Sometimes your defensive system protects you so well that you don’t even know what it’s protecting. I’m lost; I don’t know who I am. At other times, you’re surprisingly vulnerable. Why am I flooded with emotion now?

Is emotion an obstacle or a bridge?

Emotion can always become a bridge to a better place. Sometime though, it’s an obstacle because you’re not ready to find out who you are deep down.

Join me on the journey to becoming alive.

Are You Trying to Solve a Problem You Don’t Need to Solve?

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If you’re afraid, do you know what you’re really afraid of?

What is normal can go unnoticed. Thoughts on autopilot can go unaware. You’ve invested in understanding the confusion and sadness you’re going through, but you might not even realize yet that it isn’t helping.

You’ve dedicated your brain’s full computing power. But, hmmm. What if all your efforts are unnecessary? What if there is a simpler solution?

Life doesn't have to make sense for you to have peace. Your understanding of your life situation is probably missing important pieces. God has those missing pieces. Click To Tweet

Proverbs 3:5 says to “lean not on your own understanding.” But Proverbs 3:13 says to “get understanding.” At first, this might seem like a contradiction. But God is not saying to avoid all understanding. He is saying your understanding is incomplete and you’ll gain His understanding as (or perhaps after) you walk in faith. The understanding often comes in hindsight.

Most people have heard of the serenity prayer. Even if you know it, read it anyway because you might need to apply it again in a new, fresh way.

God, grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.

Reinhold Niebuhr

That’s the short version. It continues:

Living one day at a time,
enjoying one moment at a time;
accepting hardship as a pathway to peace;
taking, as Jesus did,
this sinful world as it is,
not as I would have it;
trusting that You will make all things right
if I surrender to Your will;
so that I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with You forever in the next.
Amen.

Reinhold Niebuhr

There is a lot of wisdom there. Now, back to the beginning. What are you afraid of? What do you most need when you are overwhelmed? Are you trying to solve the right problem?

Why Your Feelings Are Important

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Your feelings are part of the complete package God provided. You have a body with five senses. You have feelings and you have thoughts.

There isn’t anything wrong with your feelings. But you might be interpreting or emphasizing them the wrong way.

Your feelings provide information just like your senses. If something smells bad, you use this information to help you make a decision. Problems can arise if you bias the information to favor the decision you want to make. You’re no longer treating the information as objective.

Some foods smell bad, but are actually good for you. If you overly value smell, you might miss out. Some food have a strange texture, but smell and taste good. If texture is important to you, then you might not eat them.

When I was a child, I had some bad food experiences with brownies and roasted pumpkin seeds (on separate occasions). Sometimes I feel queasy before I eat these foods. But unless all brownies make you sick, I need to work on my bias against them.

God made your feelings. So they must be important. They are meant to work in partnership with your other senses. Then, through your ability to discern fact from fiction, you can correctly interpret and use all the input you’ve gathered to make a godly decision.

Life becomes interesting when strong feelings come into conflict with the truth. Which one is right to prioritize? Is what you think of as the truth, really not true? Or, are your feelings off because of some bad experiences? What is the truth? Where is the deception? Isn’t this what Adam and Eve faced (see Genesis 3).

I’ll continue this discussion over the next several weeks. In the meantime, you could reflect on how much importance you place on your feelings. Have you ever been sure of something, only to find out you were wrong about it? Why was that?

Sean’s New Reality

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Last week, I ended part two of Sean’s story with him receiving a new bicycle from his small group. This experience, led by God, allowed the truth of the scriptures to sink into his heart. Now he could not only say that he knew the truth as a fact, but he knew the truth as a reality.

Sean’s story illustrates the point that our experiences shape the way we view our identity. Our interpretation of our experiences can be accurate or inaccurate. When we go through a negative experience without a positive experience to counter-act it, we’ll see our identity through the eyes of the negative event.

If we’ve gone through a time of discovering the truth, we’ll know the factual truth about our identity. Unfortunately, this isn’t enough. We must go one step further to experience a positive event that can override the negative event. Only then can we know the truth about our identity as God sees it. We’ll see ourselves properly, through God’s eyes.

How we interpret the events affects our long-term feelings about life. If you’re feeling depressed or anxious, it’s probably because of a negative interpretation of a negative experience. Without a positive intervention that allows you to see the truth, you might end up with destructive behavior toward yourself or others.

I’ve included a diagram below which illustrates how a person can move from a hurtful event, to a healing process, and onto a new reality. I regularly use it with my clients to help them see how their lives became dysfunctional and how they can return to healthy living. See if you can trace Sean’s experiences through the diagram, then try an example from your own life.

Sean’s Healing

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Sean continued to act out in high school. Once the victim, he now became the bully. When anyone taunted him, he fought back swiftly. He hunted down those who harmed him, including those that he hadn’t spoken to in years.

One day though, Sean started feeling different. He started feeling a twinge of guilt whenever he saw the hurt on his victim’s face. Sean didn’t understand why he was changing. God was about to draw him into a much-needed healing process.

Sean began to realize how dysfunctional and wrong his behavior was. He made a commitment to stop mistreating others and himself. At first this was difficult and he had mixed results. Some days he ate healthy and other days he returned to binge eating.

When Sean was twenty years old, God led him through some specific memories. Sean revisited his experience with losing his bicycle at 7 years old. He felt the pain of loss like he never had before. This was actually the first time he allowed himself the luxury of grieving his loss.

Sean realized for the first time that he didn’t deserve his parents’ harsh response to someone stealing his bicycle. His parents didn’t give him the opportunity to correct his ways after his mistake. His life in the past thirteen years would have been very different if his parents could have restored him gently.

God lead Sean to specific scriptures that demonstrated how He offers mercy and grace along with the truth.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

John 1:14

The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

Psalm 103:8

Sean became involved in a small group at his church and he told them his bicycle story. God led the members of his group to come around Sean and help him see and experience God’s love. They chipped in and purchased a new (adult) bicycle for Sean. Sean used his new bicycle to get to school and work.

Next week’s post will conclude Sean’s story and explain in more detail how to heal emotional wounds.

Sean’s Bicycle

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Sean loved the bicycle he got for his 7th birthday. It was his favorite color: red.

He rode it everywhere he went in the neighborhood. He especially like to ride his bike to the local store where he could purchase his favorite treat.

One day, upon exiting the store, his bike wasn’t there. He looked around hoping he had simply forgotten where he parked it. But it was clearly not there. His stomach dropped what felt like ten inches and he felt like he wanted to puke.

Of course, Sean was upset about his bike. But that wasn’t the only reason for his distress. He started walking home. The closer he got, the slower he walked. His feet wouldn’t move any faster.

“Someone took my bike.”

His mom, already stressed from the day’s activities, responded in her predictable way, “What? How could you be so irresponsible? How could you… well, you’re not getting another one. Go to your room until your dad gets home.”

Sure enough, his parents punished him for being “lazy.” Not only did he have to cope with losing his bike, but he also had to endure his parent’s hot anger and being grounded for two weeks—a true triple-whammy.

His teen years were filled with more dread. He believed he was “messed up” and carried a heavy anxious feeling with him. He frequently muttered under his breath, “yep, another perfect messup by Sean.”

Sean turned to food to manage his uncomfortable feelings. “I feel better when I eat. Or, at least I don’t feel so bad.” Inevitably this led to weight gain. Unfortunately, this left him open to unkind words from his peers. They snickered and made funny noises behind his back and sometimes even in his face. This quickly became too much for Sean to manage with food alone.

The problems intensified. Sean fought back when picked on. This was only verbal jabs at first, but eventually the depth of his pain produced a physical reaction he didn’t know how to control. The trouble at school only made matter’s worse at home.

Sean entered into a negative cycle that seriously picked up steam during his high school years.

Sean’s story will continue next week as I spend time teaching about healing emotional wounds.