Christian Concepts

Bringing your Potential to Light

Matt Pavlik

Empathy Energizes Relationships

Empathy Energizes Relationships

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Reading time: 3 minutes

What is empathy? Empathy can be looked at from several perspectives. Empathy is:

  • Understanding a person’s mental and emotional state.
  • Opening yourself to feel compassion that moves you to care enough that you’d give everything you have (including your life) to help another.
  • A practical fulfillment of love.

Love Makes Empathy Possible

Because God sent His son Jesus Christ to demonstrate real love, we have the power to love, too. Here is a reminder of how God defines love:

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.

1 Corinthians 13:4-8 NIV

Jesus couldn’t have endured the cross so graciously without empathy. God is a natural empathizer because God is love. Jesus modeled empathy while He walked the earth. He encouraged those who needed a boost and He wept with those who grieved.

Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.

Romans 12: 15 ESV

Spiritual Reality Makes Empathy Possible

To be able to empathize you must understand two truths:

  1. No other person is your enemy; only the devil is your true enemy (Ephesians 6:12). The devil will never repent and his destiny is already determined (John 16:8-11). But your friend, your spouse, or another person in your life can come to repentance. Someone who at one point acts like your enemy could one day be your friend. God knows what this is like (Romans 5:8-10).
  2. Other people are broken and needy just like you. Anyone who mistreats you is doing the best they can. They don’t yet know how to love any better. Jesus acknowledged this from the cross: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34 NIV).

Struggle Makes Empathy Possible

Live can be a hard struggle. As we endure difficulty, it builds in us the ability to feel genuine compassion (2 Corinthians 1:4). Real compassion comes from the gut. It’s a longing for another person to receive God’s blessing. If you’ve ever witnessed someone suffering and desired to have the power to end their suffering, you’ve empathized!

Unfortunately, without God, we lack the power to help anyone. We are dependent upon God’s will. To move forward in life we must wait upon God to reveal His will. To see God’s will, we need light to see the truth.

We can be blind to the truth, trying to find our way through the darkness. And, the darkness can be consuming and overwhelming:

“Your eye is like a lamp that provides light for your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is filled with light. But when your eye is unhealthy, your whole body is filled with darkness. And if the light you think you have is actually darkness, how deep that darkness is!

Matthew 6:22-23 NLT

Thank God for His light. But when we’ve become accustomed to the dark, it can take a while to appreciate the light. We can walk in the dark which means we’ll hurt each other sometimes.

One way to combat the darkness is to develop more empathy for those God brings into your life. You can only deeply empathize with another if God’s love is working in you.

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.

1 John 4:7 NIV

If you’re able to empathize with another, you’re seeing them the way God sees them. It’s not possible to harbor bitterness toward someone and empathize with them at the same time. So if you want to have a better relationship, focus on growing your ability to empathize.

Read about how to have empathy without losing yourself in the process.
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7 Principles To Grow Your Marriage

7 Principles To Grow Your Marriage

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Reading time: 3 minutes

Marriage is both the most challenging relationship and the most rewarding relationship. While working on your marriage, allow these principles to guide you.

1 – Two Healthy Individuals Make A Healthy Marriage

God says two people will become one flesh—meaning husband and wife function together, inseparably, like one body. You are on the same team which will grow stronger as each individual grows stronger. Your loyalty to each other should be greater than all other relationships. God gives each sex its own role to contribute to the good of the team. Being one flesh doesn’t mean you lose your individuality. The more you become the person God made you to be, the better off your marriage will be.

Read Genesis 2:15-25 and Mark 10:1-9.

2 – Change The Marriage By Changing Yourself

When you focus on yourself, which you can control with God’s help, you help your marriage in the most efficient way. Life is primarily a place for you to explore how you can grow and secondarily a place where you can expect God to address your partner’s flaws. Focus on your own growth twice as much as your partner’s growth. Increase your awareness of what is happening with you. Ask God for what you need rather than demanding your partner be a certain way.

Read Matthew 7:1-12.

3 – Your Partner Does Not Owe You Anything

Each of us is on our own journey to become more loving, which is clearly God’s goal for every believer. Do not judge your partner (do not condemn); instead use discernment to determine your response. You are accountable to God for your behavior regardless of your partner’s behavior. Making requests is legitimate because marriage is a cooperative effort, but coercing your partner into your desired behaviors won’t work in the long run. If you take advantage of your partner, you are also hurting yourself. If you are depleted, first look to God, the source of everything good.

Read Romans 14:12-13 and Galatians 6:1-4.

4 – Your Relationship With God Outlasts Your Marriage

Marriage ends upon death and it doesn’t exist in heaven. A covenant is unconditional. Your vows and commitment to your partner are first made to God—to serve His plans and grow His kingdom.

Read Matthew 22:30.

5 – Boundaries Are Protective Not Harmful

Relationships thrive on freedom and self-control. Decide for yourself but let your partner decide for himself or herself. You can enforce a boundary for yourself (choose how you want to respond) but boundaries are not placed on others (don’t imagine you can control your partner’s behavior).

Read Galatians 5:1, 5:13-25, and 6:5.

6 – Your Partner Can Manipulate You Only If You Allow It

If your partner attempts to persuade you, your response is your responsibility. Speak for yourself only. If you don’t want to go along with your partner’s request (or aggressive demand), speak up to declare your disagreement. A healthy individual maintains their integrity at all times. Don’t compromise who God made you to be. This is not a license for selfishness.

Read Galatians 5:13-25 (again).

7 – Only God Knows Everything

Learn about your partner but don’t presume to know your partner’s thoughts, feelings, or motives. If you believe you are discerning a particular idea, mood, or attitude, ask for clarification tentatively. Instead of stating, “You are…” ask, “Are you…?” or state “I am…” Overcommunicate with each other to reduce the chances of misunderstanding.

Read 1 John 3:20 and Hebrews 4:13.

These 7 principles aren’t the only ones I use in counseling, but they are a good place to start if you are seeking help for your marriage. As you can hopefully see by now they carry the theme that you should focus on what you can control and leave the rest up to God. You can’t ever go wrong by pursuing a better marriage that way.

Read more about freedom in marriage.
Read more about overcommunicating.
Picture by Matt Pavlik from Marriage From Roots To Fruits.
If you want help working on these principles in your marriage, contact Matt Pavlik.

2 Helpful No-Guilt Negative Emotions

2 Helpful No-Guilt Negative Emotions

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Reading time: 4 minutes

Negative emotions are to be expected in a fallen world. The three most common are some form of anger, depression, and fear. If you suffer a loss would you want to walk around oblivious and happy?

Negative emotions exist as a response to pain. But emotions are not sinful. Only destructive behaviors are sinful. Indulging the flesh leads to destructive behavior. Emotions are neutral. What you do with them matters.

You might be thinking that as a Christian, you are always supposed to be happy. Paul tells us to:

Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.

1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 NIV

God’s will is that you rejoice always. How can this be? This is impossible to accomplish. However, we can rejoice in who God is, in His grace and mercy all the time. But while we are doing that, there’s also room to express sadness over present-day tragedies.

Jesus Experienced Negative Emotions

When Lazarus died, Jesus cried. Then a few short moments later, He gave thanks. Jesus experienced a mixture of negative emotions and a positive attitude.

Jesus wept. So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me.

John 11:35, 41 NIV

Jesus cried more than a few times. He didn’t only let a few tears run down His face, He sobbed too. So it must be okay if you do too.

During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission.

Hebrews 5:7 NIV

Negative Emotions Can Be Healthy

The so-called negative emotions (like sadness) have alternative positive expressions. Grief is healthy but despair is destructive. Can you see the difference? You can feel sad but choose either grief or despair.

Does this also work with anger? Jesus was consumed with zeal for the Father’s house (John 2:13-22). Indignation is healthy but resentment and bitterness are destructive.

How about anxiety? Jesus experience the incredible weight of sin and abandonment just before (Matthew 26:36-39) and during (Matthew 27:46) His crucifixion. Stress and anguish are healthy feelings but fear and worry are destructive.

While Jesus definitely experienced some form of sadness and anger, He never experienced fear. The Bible says to not sin in your anger (Ephesians 4:26) and to mourn with those who mourn (Romans 12:15). But it doesn’t ever say you should fear. In fact, God is frequently reminding us, “do not fear.”

This doesn’t mean we should expect to never fear. But it does mean that worry is a sin. The one who worries is attempting to control something they cannot control. No one can worry and trust God at the same time. Fear and faith cannot co-exist.

There is a healthy expression of negative emotions. Although they are healthy (not sinful) they are only needed when pain is a possibility. In this life, so many things can bring tears. But you can be thankful that in heaven, there won’t be any more pain.

There is a destructive expression of negative emotions. Resentment, bitterness, despair, hopelessness, worry, panic always have disastrous consequences on the body and mind. While it might not seem like it, you always have a choice whether you want to hold onto these emotions. That’s because they are really behaviors. Do everything you can to prevent them.

Worry and despair are choices. Instead, what you really need is some healthy grieving or yearning for justice. Sadness and sorrow are responses.

Although sorrow isn’t a happy emotion, it can motivate a person to pursue a positive direction in life. Sorrow has some hope mixed in. Indignation has some hope mixed in. God will make all things right someday. You can endure stress when you also have hope.

Grieving is the best you can do when life serves a helping of pain on your plate. You can eat with dignity and might even be able to rejoice, pray, and give thanks at the same time.

Read more about Paul’s 3 Impossible Commands.
Read more about Jesus Feeling Angry
Read more on emotions and pain.
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Discernment Is Better Than Judgment

Discernment Is Better Than Judgment

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Reading time: 3 minutes

When you use discernment instead of judgment, you give others and yourself a second chance.

Judgment can be condemning and therefore it can limit the opportunity to develop healthy relationships. Passing judgment has an uncomfortable finality to it–it’s a dead-end. Discernment is forgiving and graceful and, therefore, more like a two-way street. Using discernment allows you to filter out what is harmful, but stay in touch with what is good in others.

In Matthew 7, Jesus first speaks against judgment and then recommends using discernment:

“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

“Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.

Matthew 7:1-6 NIV

What do you consider to be some of the most difficult things to do? Would any of these make your list?

  • Public speaking
  • Saying “I’m sorry.” or “I was wrong.”
  • Skydiving
  • Running a marathon
  • Being rejected
  • Confronting a bully

Discernment Increases Your Self-Awareness

Looking in a mirror (both literally and figuratively) can be challenging. Most people try to avoid seeing themselves as they really are. No one likes bad news. Who wants to look in a mirror and notice a long list of defects? So, I say looking for the log in your eye is the hardest thing you’ll ever do.

Fortunately, it’s also the most rewarding. What would you rather do:

  1. Get up, go to church, come home.
  2. Get up, go to church, come home, look in the mirror, and make any adjustments.
  3. Get up, look in the mirror, make any adjustments, go to church, come home.

I think you’ll agree that #1 requires the least amount of effort (unless you plan to sleep in and skip church altogether). #2 and #3 are about the same amount of effort, but #3 is likely to produce the best results (if you don’t want to be laughed at because your hair is a mess).

Exploring what’s going on inside of you is called introspection. Too much of it and you can become caught in “analysis paralysis.” But with too little, you can be like a bull in a china shop.

Discernment Improves Your Relationships

If you can learn how you work, you’ll have a much better chance to know how to help someone else. Introspection is hard work, but it can prevent you from judging others.

So much conflict could be avoided if people could be humble enough to engage in frequent introspection. Luke has a good example of this:

“Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’

Luke 18:10-13 ESV

The first guy is focused only on his strengths and the other guy’s weaknesses. The second guy is focused on himself–he is trusting God will make him righteous. When you are feeling vulnerable or weak, which person would you rather have as a friend?

Read more about the meaning of Matthew 7.
Read more about using feelings to help you discern.
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Know Your Priorities To Increase Life Satisfaction

Know Your Priorities To Increase Life Satisfaction

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Reading time: 4 minutes

What good are priorities? They:

  • Prevent aimless wandering through life.
  • Provide a focus for the energy God gives you.
  • Enable a meaningful way to resolve conflict.

If you don’t know what you want, life becomes an exercise in trial-and-error. That’s not necessarily bad the younger you are. But over the years, you should develop a greater sense of what life is about.

If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.

Lewis Carroll

When you finally know what you value, you can aim your life in a specific direction. Then, the bonus side-effect of having priorities is an unshakable hope. Before you can experience the fullness of hope, you have to learn how to prioritize.

Priorities Reduce Painful Mistakes

Have you ever walked through a room at night without the lights on? If so, you know what it feels like when your toe connects with an object you thought wasn’t there. Figuratively speaking, it’s also possible to be walking through life without the light.

Priorities are like a window that exposes the desires of your heart. You can see what is going on inside your soul. When your priorities are right you are walking in the light. That’s what Jesus is saying in Matthew 6:

“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!

Matthew 6:19-23 ESV

Priorities are values which naturally lead to specific goals. For example, if you value time with family, you might set a goal to increase your time together each week. If your values are really yours (not someone else’s imposed on you), you will be more likely to reach the goal you’ve set.

Values can be superficial, or meaningful and deeply fulfilling. For example, if you value money (prioritizing it above other things), that can be superficial if you store it up and never accomplish anything meaningful from it. But your value of money can also be fulfilling and lead to savings which can be used for good in a time of need.

Priorities Provide A Path To Contentment

After you know what you want, the next step is to learn how to be okay with not getting what you want.

As you mature emotionally and spiritually, your ability to manage life’s difficulties become easier. For example, if you believe you need to go on a vacation at a specific time and place in order to feel happy, and circumstances prevent it, you’ll have a hard time not feeling depressed or angry.

Fortunately, you can “trade up” your values. You can learn to value more than just what will provide an immediate reward. Like Paul, you can learn to be content in all circumstances.

I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength.

Philippians 4:11-13 NIV

Isn’t it amazing how Paul can essentially be indifferent about whether he has little or an abundance?

It’s good to learn this skill. You can’t fully learn contentment without developing a greater trust in God. How much do you believe that what He provides for you is sufficient under all circumstances? Ask Him to bless you with this ability.

Life satisfaction is really about joy. When you are joyful, you can be indifferent about your circumstances. The truth that God is real and He rewards those who pursue Him is enough to keep the joy flowing in your heart. Ask God to give you a supernatural understanding of how real He is.

Read more on resolving conflict.
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Brokenness Is Beautiful

Brokenness Is Beautiful

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Reading time: 3 minutes

When you can see your brokenness, you see yourself as you really are. It’s a wonderful moment of freedom from pretense. Seeing brokenness is simply another way to perceive what you are lacking.

The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.

Psalm 34:18 NIV

Since God is the ultimate source of all we lack, we should welcome becoming aware of our brokenness. Why is it often so terrifying then? Believe it or not, it’s possible to fear something good. We crave consistency. After we start depending on something or someone, we don’t want it to go away.

If we lack something good we can fear both:

  • that we’ll never receive what we need.
  • that what we receive will inevitably be taken away.

Both fears are realistic, yet, painful. Both are ultimately rooted in doubting God is who He says He is. God gives good things to those who believe and ask.

And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.

If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!

Hebrews 11:6; Matthew 7:11 NIV

Fear Makes Brokenness Ugly

So you can see how when fear is present, needs and desires can become completely overwhelming. If you’ve lived with deprivation for a long time, you know what I mean.

If your needs go unmet, you lose touch with what it’s like to have them met. Often this means living with an awareness that you don’t know what it is like to have them met. The longer this continues, the more difficult it is to trust it will ever be different. And, if it does happen, it will be doubly painful to lose it.

Anyone who experiences the trauma of abuse or neglect usually lives with a sense of deprivation. Abuse and neglect break trust which is essential if you want to risk the vulnerability required to have your needs met. Deprivation can be so painful that it is often more intense than the original trauma.

Coping Forever Prevents Healing

Depriving yourself for any length of time usually requires numbing your desires. If you can’t feel your hunger (emotional needs), it’s nearly impossible to over-eat (be self-centered). Unfortunately though, it is possible to under-eat (be deprived).

Cutting off your cravings for love and acceptance is a coping mechanism called dissociation. I believe dissociation to be a necessary coping to manage intense trauma. However, all coping is meant to be temporary until genuine healing and transformation are available and the person is ready.

How much a person relies on coping depends on at least two factors:

  • The intensity of the pain experienced from trauma.
  • The availability of a safe-enough relationship that promotes healing.

The intensity of the pain is mostly subjective. Some people can tolerate more pain than others. But the more the event is severe enough and prolonged enough, and if the person doesn’t have access to a caring person, the more extreme coping is needed.

One of the most intense efforts to cope with trauma is dissociation. When it becomes a mental health disorder it’s called dissociative-identity-disorder (DID).

For a person with DID, their self-awareness becomes divided into multiple parts in order to survive trauma. Therapy involves integrating the parts so that all parts receive needed healing. The end result is a person with a sense of being one integrated person (no longer needing “multiple parts”).

Another word for dissociated is broken. Everyone is broken. On this side of heaven, the opposite of being broken is being in denial. Meaning: if I can’t see my brokenness, I must be denying it.

Embrace your brokenness because it is what will drive you to God. He can help you become free from the trauma and deprivation you’ve been through.

Push Through Fear And Find Hope
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