Archives for January 2021

Pain Is A Fierce Enemy And A Pivotal Ally

January 31, 2021 by Matt Pavlik 1 Comment

Reading time: 4 minutes

Pain: We can’t live with it; We can’t live without it. Emotional pain is a strange beast. It’s both annoying and essential. We spend our lives ignoring it or coping with it or finding relief from it. But pain is also our greatest ally even if it is a necessary evil.

Fear of pain keeps us from harm. Pain keeps us on the road instead of driving into a ditch. Or if we do slip into a ditch, it keeps us from driving headlong into a tree. Or, if we hit a tree, it helps us brake or turn to lessen the impact.

Don’t Avoid Pain At All Costs

When pain becomes extreme, it can flip over and push a person toward death. People consider suicide when their anguish becomes unbearable. Whether you are aiming for the tree or avoiding the tree, the goal can be the same: avoid pain. But there is a difference: suicide attempts to end the pain at all costs.

You’ve heard the saying, “Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.” That’s exactly what suicide does. It’s overkill. We need the pain to warn us that something is wrong. But the suicidal person wrongly assumes there is no possible relief.

With God, there is always a path to healing. But the restorative journey isn’t always one that everyone is willing to take. If you’re stubborn enough to choose your way over God’s way, then you are more likely to end up off-road and into a tree.

If you’d like more help with unbearable pain, consider this helpful resource for stories to help you become hopeful.

Coping is helpful as a short-term solution. If you fall and cut your leg, any first-aid is a balm used to promote healing. It won’t help much without the body’s innate ability to fight infection and replace damaged skin.

The same is true spiritually. Whatever you can do to stop your pain doesn’t compare to what Jesus can do. Therefore, it’s important that you endure your discomfort long enough to complete the healing process.

A suicidal person places too high a premium on the short-term outlook. They look at their life through unrealistic expectations. For example, if you want to run a marathon (26.2 miles) in an hour, it’s not going to happen and you’ll stress yourself if you believe you can. If you keep trying and failing, you might drive yourself to suicide if you take the challenge too seriously. Most situations in life are not life-or-death.

How is your life going? Are you stuck in despair? Here are some options to consider:

Bring your expectations down to somewhere realistic.
Increase your resources such as time or energy.
If you want something to happen that isn’t happening, trust God that He knows it’s not the right time yet.
If something is happening that you don’t want, trust God with any loss you’re experiencing.

Don’t Embrace Pain At All Costs

If what you want is out of reach, adjust your goals to something more manageable so you can enjoy life in the present. If you can’t run a marathon at world-record speeds, then try running enough for your health and enjoyment.

Do what you must to reduce your level of emotional distress. You can’t put your life in its proper perspective when you are in excruciating pain. But try to endure it long enough so you can identify what is wrong and find a path forward. When you’re in pain, God is probably trying to teach you something.

If your desire is realistic and God-honoring, then it’s worth pursuing even if you must first fail many times to reach your goal. Sometimes the path to a hopeful, uplifting place means experiencing the bottom of a pit first. Keep in mind:

The pit isn’t bottomless.
If you can change your thinking (stop being so stubborn), you will probably find that path forward.

God doesn’t promise He will answer your prayers how you want them to be answered. Sometimes we must wait on Him for direction. Other times we must keep trying as best as we know how. The secret to reducing your pain is to enjoy the journey: enjoy the pursuit of something great more than requiring a specific result in a fixed time period.

Supercharge Your Living With A Prayer Journal

January 17, 2021 by Matt Pavlik Leave a Comment

Reading time: 3 minutes

A healthy prayer life allows you to connect with God so you can receive the spiritual nutrition you crave. In a world that drains your energy, God’s living water is essential.

“but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
John 4:14 ESV

God’s well never runs dry. But as your imperfect body ages, it wears out. Hearing from God always refreshes your spirit and boosts your energy levels. Even Jesus, being human, relied on prayer.

…the report of [Jesus’s] power spread even faster, and vast crowds came to hear him preach and to be healed of their diseases. But Jesus often withdrew to the wilderness for prayer.
Luke 5:15-16 NLT

Have you heard the saying, “It’s not the years, it’s the mileage?” When you abuse or misuse your body, it’s going to wear out faster. If you take care of your belongings, they usually last longer.

If you have a new car, it becomes used the moment you drive it off the lot. From then on you have to perform regular maintenance to keep it from breaking down prematurely.

Balance Supercharges Your Life

Without maintenance, your car’s tires don’t wear evenly. Your steering becomes misaligned. Small errors become significantly larger if given enough time. The same is true for your spiritual life.

A life out of balance will usually function less efficiently than one in balance. Imagine if you exercised your left leg ten times as much as your right leg. You would probably be better off if you hadn’t exercised at all. That’s fairly easy to see. But the same is true for the broad functional areas of your life as well. If you keep yourself mentally fit but ignore your physical and emotional health, you’re going to suffer.

Here is a basic list of areas to keep in balance.

Career
Physical Health
Emotional Health
Finances
Recreation
Spiritual Growth
Romantic Relationship
Family
Friends
Church
Rest
Creative Work
Service to Others
Adventure

The list isn’t comprehensive and isn’t in any particular order, so you can add, remove, or prioritize areas to fit your lifestyle. Focusing on one area at a time can be beneficial. If you identify an area of weakness, you can bring it up to par with the other areas. The categories above are broad, so you can add more detailed areas if you want. For example, for career, you could add specific disciplines that will help make your work healthier.

Prayer Supercharges Your Life

A prayer journal is a written record of your prayer requests and answers. A life balance worksheet helps you evaluate and improve the quality of your living. When you put the two together, you get a comprehensive prayer plan.

What if you rated each of your life balance areas on a regular basis? When I do that, it helps me see where I need to focus. On a scale of 0 to 10, how are you doing in each area? But you don’t have to stop there.

What if for each area you wrote out what is going well and what needs improvement? It’s easier for me to dwell on the negatives, so this helps me be thankful for the positives. But you don’t have to stop there.

What if you wrote a short prayer for each area? Thank God for what is going well and petition Him in areas that need improvement. That’s one way you can perform regular spiritual maintenance.

If you haven’t figured it out already, this is a great tool to use when you feel discouraged, directionless, or disconnected. When you feel a strong negative emotion, chances are, someone area of your life is out of balance.

Addiction Is About Control

January 3, 2021 by Matt Pavlik 4 Comments

Reading time: 4 minutes

What is your definition of addiction? If you are trying to break free from an addiction, it’s easier to focus more on the object of desire such as food, alcohol, or sex than the internal workings of your mind. This denial of what is really going on is another core trait of an addict. In fact, addictions often start because we don’t want to focus on ourselves–specifically the pain we’re going through.

Addiction is over-reliance on creation in an attempt to cope with (or control or manage) anything undesirable. Coping is seen as positive in pop psychology. However, it’s more of a quick fix than a permanent solution. Coping should be what people do until a solution is available and they are ready to pursue it.

Coping without hope is just making someone comfortable. As Christians, we know there is always a reason to hope, so focusing on comfort further hides the solution. If you don’t trust a better future is coming, you have less strength to endure unfortunate events. The best you might be able to do is pretend it doesn’t matter so you can, at least, derive greater pleasure at the moment.

Coping with hope is waiting for a real fix. As Christians, we can face our suffering because we already have the fix. We’re just waiting for it to take full effect (when we pass on to the next life). Our coping and hoping is not in vain.

Addiction Avoids Discomfort

If you’re addicted, ask yourself, “What does my addictive behavior help me avoid?” You are probably trying to avoid seeing your own brokenness. But brokenness can be buried beneath layers of discomfort and bitterness.

It’s one thing to say, “I’m angry because I didn’t get the job I applied for.” But it’s another altogether to admit, “I didn’t get the job because I didn’t work hard enough at my previous job.” Or maybe, “I think God is trying to tell me I have to work on being more responsible before I get the job I want.”

We tend to vastly overestimate our ability to control outcomes. Forming an addition is tempting because it provides the solution we’re looking for (reduced pain). The real problem then is that we aren’t looking for the right solution (character growth).

Addiction Focuses On Pleasure

How does anyone avoid discomfort? It’s beneficial to resolve pain. God gives us pain so that we will make corrections.

The wrong way to manage pain is to simply turn off the registration of the pain. If you step on a nail but don’t feel it, you’ll probably further damage your foot. You want to feel pain that screams, “Address this problem now!” But then, after you register the hurt and are committed to correcting the injury, it’s humane to seek relief.

Feeling pleasant body sensations is only going to help for a short time. It’s possible to be in significant distress but experience an overall sense of peace. Knowing that whatever you’re going through is temporary–that’s the highest degree of comfort.

Seek relief, but only after you’re committed to God’s solution.

Addiction Ignores Identity

All addicts struggle with an identity crisis. They can’t trust who they really are. They can’t trust God. They can’t believe their pain is temporary.

All of us are recovering addicts. We want to control the immediate discomfort. We can become weary of waiting for the eternal solution to become reality.

Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.
Galatians 6:9 NIV

So what is a person to do? First, if you’re struggling with some form of addiction, you can become aware of what you are trying to control. Write it down. Tell someone about it. What pain does your behavior cover-up?

If you’re eating or drinking too much, that’s a superficial problem. Controlling your consumption, all by itself, doesn’t address the core problem. Forcing yourself to diet might help you lose weight. You might even look and feel better.

There could be a missed opportunity if you never explore the underlying reason why you chose dysfunctional eating habits in the first place. The opposite of control is to release or surrender.

What are you trying to control, that is creating addictive behavior, that instead, you could surrender to God?

Read Be Imperfect But Live Strong Anyway for more on brokenness and life balance.
Image by Concord90 from Pixabay