Archives for February 2022

Fulfillment Is Determined By Your Focus

February 27, 2022 by Matt Pavlik 1 Comment

Reading time: 3 minutes

What would bring you the most fulfillment? If you could pursue it, should you pursue it? The answer depends on what you believe will bring fulfillment.

Think about a time when you purchased something that delivered much less satisfaction than you first imagined it would. Who or what can you blame? Was it the slick salesperson? Was it hyped-up advertising? Or perhaps it was your deep longing for fulfillment that you blindly projected onto the purchased item.

Life Often Lacks Fulfilllment

Put your hope in Christ instead of what happens to you, because:

This earthly life doesn’t have any guarantees… but God’s promise of eternal life does come with guarantees.

You might not deserve God’s love… but you have it and can never lose it.

You might disappoint God… but you are never a disappointment.

You might feel lonely… but you are never alone.

You might feel unwanted… but God made you for a purpose.

You might live with a chronic sense of shame and worthlessness… but God assigned you great value simply by creating you as unique in His image.

You might feel powerless… but the greatest power in all existence lives within you if you believe in Jesus Christ.

You might be down… but you are not out. If you don’t have everything you want in this life exactly the way you want it, that is perfectly alright. You can’t find any real fulfillment in anything this world offers (1 John 2:15-17).

Fulfillment Mostly Comes From the Next Life

For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.
2 Corinthians 4:17 NIV

I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.
Romans 8:18 NIV

And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast.
1 Peter 5:10 NIV

“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
John 16:33 NIV

‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
Revelation 21:4 NIV

Listen, my dear brothers and sisters: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him?
James 2:5 NIV

All of these scriptures point to one significant meaning: don’t put so much emphasis on what happens to you in this life. The more you are willing to give up in this life, for the cause of Jesus Christ, the more your reward will be in heaven (Matthew 19:29). The more you cling to what you can gain in this life, the more empty-handed you will be in the next life (and the emptier you will be in this life).

And he lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.“Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied.“Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh.“Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man!
Luke 6:20-22 ESV

Allow your deepest hunger, your deepest lacking of fulfillment, to drive you to God for the only true fulfillment (John 4:14).

More on Pursuing Fulfillment
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Eliminate Shame By Believing God

February 13, 2022 by Matt Pavlik 1 Comment

Reading time: 4 minutes

Shame is inevitable, but where does it come from? Why do we experience it? How can we overcome it?

When Adam and Eve first chose to disobey God, they believed the enemy’s words over God’s words. After they doubted God, they gained the “knowledge of good and evil” but felt shame for the first time. They gained knowledge but lost their secure connection with God.

Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”“You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
Genesis 3:1-5 NIV

Knowing evil isn’t an advantage. That’s like knowing darkness. That’s like knowing the pains of torture.

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden.
Genesis 3:6-8 NIV

We Knew Shame on Day One

Shame exists because we are born feeling inadequate. Fortunately, God is at work to bring healing to us.

Every day of life is an opportunity to experience a positive reinforcement of your worth. You need to be validated, accepted, wanted, affirmed, and encouraged. This kind of love must come from a source outside of you. Even when others love you, the origin of that love is God.

Unfortunately, because of sin and the curse on this world, every day of life also holds the possibility of negatively reinforcing the feelings of inadequacy. You can make mistakes and even sin. You can fail to accomplish an important task or desired goal. You must find a way to cope with imperfection, defeat, rejection, and isolation.

In a negative environment, the devil’s lies multiply easily. Without faith, developing self-hatred is inevitable.

Shame Drives Us to Regret Being Created

Shame creates an impulse to hide. It’s humiliating to feel less than others. The desire to cover up is way more intense than you’d find in a game of hide-and-seek. The desire to hide is better described as wishing you could totally scrub yourself out of existence.

You can scrub a carrot clean. You can even peel it to remove the outer dirt. But if you believe there is something wrong with it and keep removing parts of it, hoping to find the defect, eventually you’ll have nothing left. The carrot is a carrot through and through. You are who you are supposed to be after God has cleaned you on the outside and inside.

As you can see, I like using analogies. I use them while I am providing counseling to help people understand what is going on with them in a much deeper way. Here is my analogy for shame: ‘Shame’ is to ‘believing God’ as ‘darkness’ is to ‘light.’ Darkness is not a self-sustaining powerful force. It’s better defined as the absence of light. Likewise, shame has no power over you as long as you have the faith to believe what God says about you.

You will only feel bad about yourself to the degree you can’t trust God. To the degree that you trust God, you also gain healthier self-worth. Meditate on this and start your journey to overcome shame today.

Read more about shame: Shame Is A Universal Struggle
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Shame Is A Universal Struggle

February 6, 2022 by Matt Pavlik 6 Comments

Reading time: 4 minutes

Shame is a feeling that everyone has to contend with. It’s universally inescapable. You might think that shame is spread from person to person like a disease. Actually, all of us are born with the inevitability to feel shame.

Shame is there, buried deep within us. It’s buried because we’d rather not feel it. It’d deep because it’s been with us from day one. On our best days, we can keep our heads above the water. At times we don’t feel it, but other times we are completely immersed, terrified of drowning in it. This sense of defectiveness infects a person to their core.

Many people confuse guilt and shame, so let’s look at both so you can work on experiencing more freedom.

Guilt is Feeling a Failure of Doing

If you feel bad because of something you did or didn’t do, then you are feeling guilty. There is also “true” guilt and “false” guilt. If there is nothing wrong with what you did, but you feel guilty anyway, that’s false guilt.

If you have done something wrong, God would have you feel a conviction that drives you to repentance and to seek forgiveness from Him. Conviction is different than guilt. Conviction points to a positive restoration. Guilt points to a negative condemnation.

For the Christian who trusts in Jesus’s sacrifice, guilt is no longer necessary. The law’s purpose is to increase awareness of sin, but the law cannot save you from guilt. Sacrifices were only a temporary measure that could not permanently remove guilt.

Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin.
Romans 3:19-20 NIV

The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming—not the realities themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship. Otherwise, would they not have stopped being offered? For the worshipers would have been cleansed once for all, and would no longer have felt guilty for their sins.
Hebrews 10:1-2 NIV

But Jesus’s sacrifice has the power to remove guilt forever. God intends that you believe the following about yourself:

you have already been made perfect
you are in the process of being made holy
you are forgiven once and for all, so that no further sacrifice is necessary
you are cleansed from a guilty conscience
you can have full assurance of all this by faith

For by one sacrifice [Jesus] has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.

And where [sins] have been forgiven, sacrifice for sin is no longer necessary.

…let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water.
Hebrews 10:14, 18, 22 NIV

Shame is Feeling a Failure of Being

If guilt isn’t enough then there is also shame: that sickening feeling that results simply from existing. Shame results not from what you’ve done, but from how you feel about being you. The context of shame is always other people, how they must view you. Someone feeling shame desperately wants what is impossible: to remove and discard more of who they are.

When Adam and Eve were “naked and felt no shame,” this means they felt no embarrassment for who they were and what they desired (Genesis 2:25). They accepted how God made them without any concern.

Consider who you are and what you feel ashamed of about yourself. That part of you that you believe is defective, dirty, incompetent, unwanted, inadequate, or bad is what God says is good. He made you the way you are on purpose. After your sin is removed (which has already been done) all that remains is everything you are supposed to be.

I pray you are able to rest more and more in this truth that you are loved and accepted.

Steps to Overcoming Shame.
Photo by Mick Haupt on Unsplash