Christian Concepts

Bringing your Potential to Light

Matt Pavlik

Break Free From Suffering Needlessly

Break Free From Suffering Needlessly

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Reading time: 3 minutes

Everybody suffers. Some suffering is necessary while other suffering is needless. If I told you I am suffering needlessly, what adjectives would you use to describe me? Perhaps you’d think I was foolish or masochistic?

Jesus suffered, but not needlessly. There is a time to stay the course and suffer and there is a time to choose an alternate plan. Here is one way to define a balanced, healthy love:

Love does not suffer needlessly but neither does it run from suffering when running would be a denial of love. A loving person walks away from harm when possible and stays and faces harm when that is the only way to be loving.

Emilie Calabrese

Take a moment and reflect on your current suffering. Can you separate out which suffering is necessary and which is needless?

Needless Suffering is Self-Inflicted

Some suffering is avoidable. We suffer because of evil, its destructive deeds, and sin. Others can cause some of these deeds, but other destructive behaviors are self-inflicted.

Self-inflicted pain can be anything from actually cutting your body to agreeing with psychological put-downs such as, “I’m not enough” or “I’m disgusting.”

It’s easy to want to give up all hope when evil must co-exist with good (our present reality). God made us to desire complete beauty, not distorted beauty. But beauty remains even when part of it is missing. A puzzle with a hopeful message, even though it has some missing pieces, can still inspire hope. Beauty, even with some blemishes, fully retains its identity as God’s inspirational instrument.

Necessary suffering is God-ordained while needless suffering is self-inflicted. Share on X

Our world is not without good even though it has some evil mixed in. Despair is needless suffering because it focuses on the bad news as if it were stronger than the good news. Suffering will always be a part of this life, but you don’t need to give it more power than it has on its own.

Needless Suffering is a Form of Learned Helplessness

A mid-life crisis can involve coming face-to-face with the need to grow up. Instead of pressing forward, you decide to run away, refusing the opportunity for growth. Of course, then, the only way to go is backward so your behavior starts to look like it did when you were a child. Except now, if you have more power or money, you can create an even bigger mess.

Self-inflicted pain is really self-rejection, a form of learned helplessness. Share on Twitter

Learned helplessness is a cycle of defeat with no apparent escape. When people need to escape, but no escape is allowed, they can learn to accept feeling hopeless. Without hope, a genuine exit will feel no different than an impassible wall.

A bird in a cage learns what is possible and what is impossible. If the bird truly believes, “there is no escape,” then even when the cage door opens, the bird will not leave. The cage may be too comfortable or the outside too foreign.

Likewise, you can feel so negative for so long that you become numb. Then you can reach the point where it is normal to feel numb.

In this way, you can learn to turn off your emotions because they don’t seem to be of any help. But emotions are not the bad guy. Even the circumstances are not a catastrophe. The learned sense of hopelessness is the worst of it all.

Working through difficult experiences and emotions becomes the bridge of escape. But the bridge can appear to be too scary to cross. Instead of crossing the emotional bridge, you remain “land-locked.” The bridge forward is visible but might as well be invisible because the thought of making it across seems unbelieveable.

Needless suffering results from refusing to cross the bridge. Crossing the bridge might also be painful, but it leads to a better place.

Read more about emotions as a bridge to health.
Image by Martin Redlin from Pixabay
Last updated October 2, 2022

Is Emotion an Obstacle or a Bridge?

Is Emotion an Obstacle or a Bridge?

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Does emotion hinder or does it help? To many people, emotion is a pointless burden. It seems to linger purposelessly forever like a plastic bottle in a landfill.

Obstacles impede progress. You must expend more effort to move beyond the obstacles in your path. Some obstacles cannot be removed by your effort alone.

Bridges on the other hand smooth the journey. Someone already cleared the path which makes your end goal possible and maybe easier. Although, some bridges are challenging to cross. The journey is strenuous, not because of the path, but because of what must be left behind.

Whether the emotion is a positive experience for you or a negative one, depends on your perspective. Rocks in your pack can be considered an affliction, but they could also be a blessing in disguise–they can help you grow stronger so you can move obstacles out of your way. What seems like an obstacle one day, might eventually come to be seen as a benefit.

Emotion is Like an Obstacle

Emotion is never bad; it’s only the messenger. We’re not supposed to shoot the messenger. But what is a person to do when the message is overwhelmingly negative? When emotion is immobilizing, it acts like an obstacle to progress. But it really is only a pivot point loaded with potential.

A person can lean into the negative message and become all the more discouraged. A person can also block out the message. Rough, calloused hands and fingertips are a sign of hard work. Your body forms a protective layer while you get work done.

In an emotionally risky environment, it’s natural to develop an insulative layer to protect your heart. Some negative environments you can avoid completely. And you should. But in other environments, you can’t.

Everyone is going to have some emotional callousness. 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?

Emotion is Like a Bridge

Because God exists, hope exists. No circumstance can determine the final outcome of your life. Because of God, emotion, even discouragement, can be productive.

Everything has a purpose–even negative feelings. You can’t avoid all risky environments because there’s no heaven on earth. So the best anyone can do is commit to crossing the emotional bridge.

Emotion can always become a bridge to a better place. That bridge can look like an obstacle, at first glance. Maybe you aren’t ready to leave behind what is comfortable, whether that be numbness or negativity. Maybe you aren’t ready to find out who you are deep down.

Crossing the bridge means embarking on a journey to becoming alive.

The obstacle to a better future is refusing to leave behind the past. You can only escape past and present pain by crossing the bridge of emotion. As you feel what you’ve experienced, it will carry you forward.

God didn’t make us to journey alone. We need traveling companions to help ease the pain of seeking true living that God has planned for us. Avoiding future pain is wise… unless that pain is needed to make you into a better person. Or perhaps the better way to put that is becoming a better person always involved confronting your pain.

If you’d like to better understand how difficult emotions can be blessings, try the book Hind’s Feet on High Places by Hannah Hurnard.

Read about choosing healing instead of coping.
Image by Larisa Koshkina from Pixabay
Last Updated 2022/10/16

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. Share on X

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?

Enjoy A New Reality

Enjoy A New Reality

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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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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