Christian Concepts

Bringing your Potential to Light

Matt Pavlik

Why Your Feelings Are Important

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Reading time: 2 minutes

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?

Enjoy A New Reality

Enjoy A New Reality

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Reading time: 4 minutes

Have you ever failed to keep a new year’s resolution? Have you ever reached your goal weight only to gain back those pounds?

In these situations, without the possibility of a new reality, you’re going to feel hopeless. Something needs to change if you want to continue to feel hopeful. But it’s even more than that. You’re only going to be as hopeful as your changes are permanent.

This is part 3 of Sean’s healing journey.

Sean’s New Reality

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.

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.

1 John 3:16-18 NIV

Pursue Your New Reality

Sean’s story illustrates that your experiences shape the way you view your identity. Your interpretation of your experiences can be accurate or inaccurate. When you go through a negative experience without a positive experience to counter-act it, the negative experience will dominate your understanding of who you are.

If you’ve gone through a time of discovering the truth, you’ll know the factual truth about your identity. Unfortunately, this isn’t enough. You must go one step further to experience a positive event that can override the negative event. Only then can you know the truth about your identity. You’ll see yourself properly, through God’s eyes.

How you interpret the events affects your 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 pursue destructive behavior toward yourself or others.

Review the 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.

How To Experience The New Reality of Emotional Healing

A New Reality Is Possible

Personal transformation occurs on multiple levels. To illustrate this, consider what happens when you change your appearance by putting on a different set of clothes. You could change from wearing plain, worn clothes to stylish, brilliant clothes.

Is that enough to change how you feel about yourself? It might help some, but chances are, any improvement will be short-lived. Changing your clothes doesn’t really change who you are, even though others will certainly see you differently.

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Romans 12:2 NIV

The process of renewing your mind found in Romans 12:2 involves a real change in brain structure. New positive experiences rewire your brain. As a result, you might be motivated to change how you dress or pursue other outward manifestations of your inner healing.

Sometimes, you can help this process by changing on the outside first, which is also called fake-it-until-you-make-it. It’s better than nothing. But God’s Spirit working inside you is much more powerfully transformative.

Have you ever experienced this deep renewing? This true healing makes old thinking obsolete. Experiencing this transformation enables you to believe it can happen again. That’s one way to define true, biblical hope.

Once you understand how change happens, you can begin to make leaps forward. Instead of baby-steps, which often maintain too much of the old environment, you can leap forward to new ways of thinking that you didn’t know existed.

Are you excited about the possibilities of a new reality?

Read Part 1
Read Part 2
Photo from PxHere

Heal Your Memories

Heal Your Memories

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Reading time: 3 minutes

Wouldn’t it be nice to heal without having to relive painful memories? Unfortunately, to heal a memory, it’s necessary to face it directly. You can’t change a memory, but you can change how you see it. How you interpret life events that can create serious emotional problems. Healing a memory involves changing its meaning from negative to positive.

Your brain stores your significant memories along with how positively or negatively you interpret those personal events. That sounds great for positive memories but why would you want to store negative memories? You need to access negative memories if you want to heal.

Part of healing is learning from what happened. The re-interpreting is the learning. Therefore, remembering is essential to healing. So, it’s not a good idea to zap yourself or hit your head until you forget an awful memory.

To change a memory’s interpretation you must appeal to a higher authority than you looked to when you created the memory. Even the determination of which authority is higher is subjective. Some people look to harmful or even evil people as their authority. As Christians, we know God is the ultimate authority, but we also know our sin within can deceive us.

This is part 2 of Sean’s healing journey.

Sean’s Memories Need Healing

Sean entered into a negative cycle that seriously picked up steam during his high school years. He 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. After another fight, a girl from his class spoke kindly to him, “You’re so angry. You must be really hurt inside.” He started feeling a twinge of guilt whenever he saw the hurt on his victim’s face. He remembered how sad he felt before he allowed anger to consume him. 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 his behavior was hurtful and pointless. What did it accomplish? No matter how many fights he got into, he still felt miserable. He made a commitment to stop mistreating others and himself. At first, this was difficult and he had mixed results. He stopped picking fights but found it more difficult to stop his binge eating.

When Sean was twenty years old, God led him through some specific memories. Sean revisited his experience of 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.

The Truth Heals Sean

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 ESV

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

Psalm 103:8 ESV

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.

Part 3 of Sean’s Story explains in more detail how to heal emotional wounds.

Sean’s Story Part 1
Sean’s Story Part 3
Image by Isa KARAKUS from Pixabay

Negative Experiences CanCreate Negative Self-Worth

Negative Experiences Can Create Negative Self-Worth

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Reading time: 3 minutes

This is the first of three posts that feature a story about Sean’s healing journey from negative experiences to positive experiences to a new reality. You’ll learn how to pursue life-changing emotional healing.

Negative experiences don’t always result in feeling less worth. But a person must have enough positive experiences stored up to combat the negative. A young child, if they are experiencing significant harmful events, typically doesn’t have enough positives to fend off the negatives.

Parents are the deciding factor at a young age. If the parents are the primary influence and they’re negative, the child is often in a hopeless situation. If the negative experiences come from outside the family, then at least the parents can boost the child’s self-worth through support and encouragement.

Sean’s Negative Experiences

Sean loved the red bicycle he got for his 7th birthday. Red is his favorite color. His bike wasn’t the only gift he received from his parents, but it was the only significant one that shaped his life.

He rode his bike everywhere he went in the neighborhood. He especially liked to ride it to the local store where he could purchase his favorite snack and see his friends.

One day, upon exiting the store, his bike wasn’t there. He looked around hoping he had simply forgotten where he left it or someone had moved it. But it definitely wasn’t there. His knees felt weak, his stomach dropped, and he felt like he was going to puke.

Unfortunately, Sean had more to be upset about than his bike. He started walking home. The closer he got, the slower he walked. His feet wouldn’t move any faster. When he arrived home, he played outside for at least an hour, but as it got dark, he had to go in.

“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 a month—a true triple-whammy. And that doesn’t include the spanking he received.

Sean Develops Low Self-Worth

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 mess up by Sean.” His internal thoughts were the worst. “Irresponsible. Failure. Stupid.”

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. By the time he was 9, he had gained quite a lot of weight.

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. Unfortunately, even most of his closest friends turned against him. They stopped playing with him.

The additional pain quickly became too much for Sean to manage with food alone. 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. He started pushing the kids who called him names. Once after school, he fought with one of the weaker ones he knew he could at least get in a few hits.

The trouble at school only made matter’s worse at home. His parents responded with more disappointment and restrictions. But the worst part for Sean was having no one to talk to about how rejected he felt.

Can you see how Sean’s negative experiences led to even more negative experiences? A downward spiral is common. But an upward spiral is also possible. In part 2 of Sean’s story, I spend time teaching about healing emotional wounds.

Sean’s Story Part 2
Image by Isa KARAKUS from Pixabay

Is Grace Cheap or Costly?

Is Grace Cheap or Costly?

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Reading time: 4 minutes

As Christians, are we under the law, or are we under grace? If we are under the law, we are obligated to obey the whole law to achieve righteousness (see Galatians 5:3-4). If we are under grace, we have no obligation to obey the law (to achieve righteousness).

The whole purpose of Christ’s sacrifice was to move us out from under the requirements of the law and into grace. But without obligation, some people might take advantage of this. Does this make grace cheap?

God is Graceful (not dumb)

If someone thinks they can outsmart God, then they are already deceived and hopeless. Salvation isn’t a tradeable commodity. If you find a free movie pass, you can use it to get into a movie theater even if the pass wasn’t intended for you. But a “salvation pass” doesn’t work that way.

God issues a salvation pass to a specific person. The pass is bound to that person’s heart by faith. No one else can use it. You might be able to sneak into a movie theatre, but not heaven.

If a person tells God he believes in Him so he can acquire a pass, and his heart isn’t in it, he is only deceiving himself. His heart isn’t in it, so it won’t work. He isn’t a new creation. He doesn’t have a new heart. No one can trick God into giving out a salvation pass.

Grace is Deep (not superficial)

I used the following image in my book, Confident Identity, to show the contrast between someone who only changes on the outside (conforming) versus someone who is changing from the inside (transforming).

God is about internal change, not shortcuts or appearances. For those of us who have put our faith in Jesus Christ, we have a new heart. We are under grace. We don’t need to meet the demands of the law because Jesus already did that for us (Romans 8:1-4).

Amazingly, God made the offer of grace while we were still enemies of God.

For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.

Romans 5:10 ESV

If we received grace as enemies, certainly we will continue to receive it after we have been reconciled and are now friends with God. With such extravagant love, how can we not be secure in our salvation?

Grace and Accountability are Compatible (not conflicting)

Can a Christian take advantage of God’s extravagant grace? A genuine Christian can’t. In the short-term day-to-day perspective, we depend upon God to forgive our sinful choices. We must have His unmerited favor. In the long-term perspective, we have a new heart and we won’t keep on willfully and carelessly sinning (1 John 3:6). This is because you have been set free from the law of sin and death (Romans 8:2).

Paul makes this clear in Romans 6:

For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means!

Romans 6:14-15 ESV

Therefore, you can both:

  1. Be saved and possess God’s full grace and righteousness, including eternal life (Romans 5:21), and,
  2. Be accountable to grow spiritually and make the choice to stop sinning (see all of Romans 6 for the complete context).

In fact, the only way you can conquer sin is to be genuinely saved and continue to depend on God’s grace. You don’t have to worry about being lazy because you’re relying on God too much. There’s plenty of work to go around as you resist sin and choose righteous living.

Consider how you relate to God. Is your attitude still one of the old code (the law)? You do wrong. God removes His grace. You suffer. You must clean up your act before you can be assured God accepts you as a member of His family.

I hope your attitude is of the new code (grace). You do wrong. You feel bad for your behavior. You cry out to God as your Father. He works with you, His child, to correct the problem. There’s always a way forward in this scenario. There’s always loving security.

For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!”

Romans 8:14-15 ESV

The grace you have removes the need for fear. It didn’t cost you, but it did cost Jesus. That cost allows you to have a pass with your name on it. The pass is yours to keep forever.

This post is part of a series on eternal security. You can read the introductory post: eternal security means full assurance of salvation.
IImage by Lu Lettering from Pixabay

Comprehend Your Salvation With Humility

Comprehend Your Salvation With Humility

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Reading time: 4 minutes

You can’t be a little bit pregnant. You’re either pregnant or you’re not. The same can be said for salvation. You can’t be a little bit saved. You’re either saved or you’re not. But once you are saved, can you return to an unsaved state?

At first reading, Philippians 2:12 seems to indicate that you can lose your salvation.

Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling,

Philippians 2:12 ESV

People with a law-based mindset might interpret”fear and trembling” in its most negative connotation. This might be done to maintain leverage and control. If a wife fears her husband’s sin, she might be tempted to manipulate him by telling him that if he doesn’t stop sinning, he will lose his salvation.

But this only sets up a state of constant anxiety. Can Paul be writing to Christians with such a positive message in Philippians, but then throw in such a negative statement? Other scriptures beyond verse 12 reveal an interpretation consistent with once-saved, always saved.

Salvation is Peaceful (not stressful)

The Bible uses the phrase “fear not” (or “be not afraid”) over 100 times. 1 John 4:18 shows that God does not want us to live in fearful anxiety. God, through His love, is working the fear out of us.

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.

1 John 4:18 ESV

Fear has two different meanings or contexts. You can “fear” when something terrible is likely to happen. This kind of fear occurs as you rely on yourself. You can also “fear” when you are dependent upon someone else. You can fear being abandoned. You can either trust God or fear that He will abandon you.

Salvation, when understood correctly, will result in less worry. Instead of focusing on avoiding negatives like, “Don’t go near the cliff, you might fall,” you can trust God and spend your time climbing mountains for God.

The non-Christian who climbs up the face of the cliff under their own power should fear falling. But not the Christian. Salvation grants “anti-gravity boots” that protect from a catastrophic loss. There can still be consequences for sin, but never a loss of salvation.

Salvation is Serious (not trivial)

Paul’s use of “fear and trembling” means to pay attention, be alert, take a personal interest in, or take it seriously. You can only do this if you are humbly dependent upon God. A prideful attitude would be fearless, careless, and boastful. But eternal life and its accompanying faith are a free gift so that no one can boast (Ephesians 2:8-9).

Reading further in Philippians confirms this:

for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

Philippians 2:13 ESV

Working out your salvation with fear and trembling means you should take your spiritual growth seriously. The more you comprehend salvation, the more you will show deep respect for God’s work in you. The CEV uses different wording that helps this come across:

My dear friends, you always obeyed when I was with you. Now that I am away, you should obey even more. So work with fear and trembling to discover what it really means to be saved. God is working in you to make you willing and able to obey him.

Philippians 2:12-13 CEV

Salvation is God-Powered (not self-powered)

Someone who isn’t a Christian might get the wrong idea: I can take my eternal security and abandon God. But eternal security and God are inseparable. You can’t have one without the other. If you have God, you have eternal security; if you have eternal security, you have God.

What should your response be to God’s work to enable you to obey Him? How about humbly working out your salvation, as you see it unfold before your eyes? God is the one who is enabling you to accomplish His great purposes.

Don’t take credit for your salvation. Recognize you are dependent upon God. Even though you have eternal security, you aren’t self-sufficient. Your eternal security is possible only because of God’s love and power. Your fear and respect for God should help you desire to move closer to God and to know and receive His love.

This post is part of a series on eternal security. You can read the introductory post: eternal security means full assurance of salvation.
Image from PxHere.