Healing in Christ

The Importance of Self-Care

November 18, 2010 by Matt Pavlik 1 Comment

How do you know when you are lacking in self-care? When you are in a state of Dis-Ease. How can you move from disease to ease?

Consequences of Poor Self-Care

A major effect of poor self-care is losing awareness of what you are feeling, usually before it is too late. When you are tired, hungry, overly stressed out, or in bad physical shape, you may be more emotionally reactive. For example, think about a time when you were feeling overwhelmed with your circumstances. Was harder for you to manage your emotions? Did you snap at people who did not deserve it? Did you start crying for no apparent reason? Were you overly anxious and not sure why?

If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, then you likely were so disconnected from your feelings, that you reacted more strongly to a situation that warranted. This results in feeling confused by your display of emotion. Having poor self-care habits will interfere with responding to a situation in an appropriate manner.

The following is a partial list of symptoms to help you identify if you need better self-care:

Diminished concentration
Confusion
Questioning the meaning of life
Questioning prior convictions
Apathy
Rigidity
Self-doubt
Memory problems
Powerlessness – helplessness
Shutting down – numbness
Hypersensitivity
Sleep disturbances
Appetite changes
Negative coping (alcohol, drug, or other substance misuses)
Increased conflict
Difficulty breathing
Twitches
Chest pain
Headaches

Greater Awareness – The First Step to Better Self-Care

What is the opposite of self-care? Self-injury. We can harm ourselves by either staying in harm’s way (enduring abuse) or staying away from loving care (enduring neglect). Sometimes we don’t have a choice. We must complete a task – or – we are too young or weak to escape. How do we survive when faced with ongoing harm? If we must walk through harm’s way long enough, we will desensitize ourselves. We will ignore or forget about the pain and symptoms.

As adults, we usually have a choice. Why do so many forgo self-care? It is simply a matter of priorities. We can say we are committed to our ideals, but our true priorities are revealed by what we do. There is a tradeoff between speed and efficiency, accomplishment, and longevity. We can accomplish a lot more (in the moment) when we are disconnected from our feelings. But, long-term our bodies will deteriorate and chances are, we will die sooner.

Better self-care starts with a better awareness of our bodies. We’ve all been to the doctor for a check-up. When was the last time you did a self check-in? A check-in is simply sitting quietly to sense what is happening in your body and reconnect what has become disconnected. Ask yourself the following. What am I feeling in my body? Where am I feeling it? Why might I be feeling it this way? Consider these three areas:

Sleep: do I feel exhausted or rested and refreshed?
Food: do I feel weak and lethargic or strong and energetic?
Maintenance: am I in pain and carrying tension (disease) or am I relaxed and at ease?

Many people think of self-care as a luxury when God intended us to always care for ourselves. Chronic denial of self-care is an indication of a deeper issue. At New Reflections Counseling, we provide a safe place for you to “tune-in” and understand what is happening. If you want help with self-care, contact us at New Reflections Counseling. If it is okay to go to the gym or doctor for physical health, then it is okay to go to a counselor for your emotional health.

Reflections

On an airplane, an oxygen mask descends in front of you. What do you do? As we all know, the first rule is to put on your own oxygen mask before you assist anyone else. Only when we first help ourselves can we effectively help others. Caring for yourself is one of the most important—and one of the most often forgotten—things you can do as a caregiver. When your needs are taken care of, the person you care for will benefit, too.

What is your oxygen mask? What will help you breathe easier? What actions do you need to take for better health?

Resources

Luke 10:27
And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”

Read the entire passage on Bible Gateway

Supercharge Your Living With A Prayer Journal

January 17, 2021 by Matt Pavlik Leave a Comment

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.

The Best Way To Receive Love

May 24, 2021 by Matt Pavlik 2 Comments

Love is a two-way street. Both the person offering love and the person receiving love must be willing participants.

What happens if you pour water into a cup with holes and take a drink? You’ll probably end up with more water on the outside of your body than on the inside. If your goal is to cool off, a cup with holes is okay. But if you’re thirsty, such a cup doesn’t work well.

Having a negative self-worth is like having holes in your cup. God can pour all of His love into you, but if you ignore, reject, or lack the ability to hold onto it, you won’t feel love for very long.

Everybody has holes in their cup. That’s a consequence of living in a fallen world. Even with the holes, there is hope.

Jesus said we shouldn’t put new wine into old wineskins. Why did He say this?

Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. Some people came and asked Jesus, “How is it that John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees are fasting, but yours are not?” Jesus answered, “How can the guests of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? They cannot, so long as they have him with them. But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them, and on that day they will fast.
“No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. Otherwise, the new piece will pull away from the old, making the tear worse. And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins.”
Mark 2:18-22 NIV

Jesus is teaching about compatibility. Sometimes old ways of living are not compatible with new ways. The new wine needs to breathe, so it needs a wineskin that can expand. Old wineskins are less flexible than new ones. Your old way of living, your flesh, is not compatible with your new way of living in the Spirit.

But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.
Galatians 5:16-17 ESV

The old ways lead to death, but the new ways lead to life.

Receive Love With A New Heart

God gives a new heart to all believers.

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.
Ezekiel 36:26 NIV

A heart of stone cannot receive God’s love. There’s no way to grow spiritually if you cannot receive His love. So God gives you a new heart that can receive His Spirit. With your new heart, you can enjoy spiritual growth.

Receive Love By Finding Leaks

Your new heart is all you need, but your old heart lives on in this life. If you can understand how your old heart is broken, you can minimize your losses.

The Spirit and flesh are at odds with each other. The lies you believe about yourself drain your self-worth. There’s a battle going on inside of you. Do you trust your old heart or your new heart?

The fleshly heart bears a wound. Nothing much can be done about it. The flesh wants to resist and complain. Everyone who feels miserable and hopeless is going to oppose God.

Fortunately for those of us with new hearts, we can choose to focus on the Spirit. We can experience peace and hope. Shift your focus today to your new heart. It’s as real as your old heart. It’s going to last forever while your flesh is already dying and actually already dead (Galatians 5:24). Hold open your new heart so you can catch God’s love. Allow this connection with God to be more important than the messages you receive from your old heart.

If you struggle with understanding how to do this, seek out a Christian counselor or other trusted person to help you.

Experiencing God

December 18, 2010 by Matt Pavlik 1 Comment

Experiencing God Meeting Your Needs

God made us to have needs. How do you respond when God appears out of reach? It cuts to the core. It’s easy to respond negatively. What’s really going on here?

The Fox and the Grapes

A famished fox saw a cluster of ripe grapes hanging from a trellised vine. She resorted to all her tricks to get at them, but wearied herself in vain, for she could not reach them. At last she turned away, hiding her disappointment and saying: “The Grapes are sour, and not ripe as I thought.”

Wanting Something But Cannot Get It

Has this ever happened to you? You want something, but you cannot get it, and so you despise it? It is easy to despise what you cannot get. Then there is cognitive dissonance – wanting something, but not wanting it. What is cognitive dissonance? It’s a tension. When we are frustrated it is tempting to take an easy way out. It is the place where you reach where you hold seemingly contradictory thoughts at the same time. It is a place of confusion – uncertainty. When you find yourself frozen in your tracks and unable to make a decision, you might be experiencing C.D. Why else would you feel that way? That’s got to be tough – to want something so badly, but realize it’s beyond your grasp. The easy way out is to pretend you never needed in the first place.

More than Grapes

This applies to dating, and a whole lot of other things too. It applies to our hopes and dreams. It applies to our efforts. It applies to our self-worth. How? When we want something, but cannot attain it, it is certainly frustrating! Frustration combined with some unhealthy thinking leads to turning the frustration inward – taking it out on yourself. And wah-la — you are not just despising what you cannot get, you are despising yourself because you cannot get what you want. “I guess I didn’t deserve that anyway” or “I guess God doesn’t want me to have that” or “That must have been a bad thing for me because God isn’t allowing me to have it” “The grapes are sour anyway – I know it”.

Alternatives to Sour Grapes

Are there alternatives? You can get a ladder. Get some help! Are the grapes worth getting or not? Is the land flowing with milk and honey worth it or not? Or “is the land full of giants?” The land is spoiled. Unattainable. God won’t be with us. He doesn’t want the best for us. We are like grasshoppers. We can’t do it. I didn’t want it anyway. I am not worthy of such good grapes. I’ll take the sure bet – what I can achieve on my own.

What else can you do? You can look for lower hanging grapes. The grapes aren’t sour, they are presently out of reach. You can get them eventually. Don’t give up. Be patient. Be persistant. Be determined. Buy time. Don’t take your eye off the prize.

Reflections

Ask yourself – how does the fox feel about himself when he cannot get he grapes? Can he feel very good if he “curses” the grapes? What are the grapes in your life? Would you like some help to reach your grapes? I love helping people reach their grapes through focused determination and insights that help them see themselves as God sees them, and help people see God as he really is – a grape provider. Or, as we are sheep, God is a grass provider.

Resources

Numbers 13:32-33

And they spread among the Israelites a bad report about the land they had explored. They said, “The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size. We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.

Read on Bible Gateway

Psalm 23:1

The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters.

Read on Bible Gateway

Cognitive Dissonance

Cognitive dissonance is an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding conflicting ideas simultaneously. The theory of cognitive dissonance proposes that people have a motivational drive to reduce dissonance. They do this by changing their attitudes, beliefs, and actions. Dissonance is also reduced by justifying, blaming, and denying.

Experience can clash with expectations, as, for example, with buyer’s remorse following the purchase of an expensive item. In a state of dissonance, people may feel surprise, dread, guilt, anger, or embarrassment. People are biased to think of their choices as correct, despite any contrary evidence. This bias gives dissonance theory its predictive power, shedding light on otherwise puzzling irrational and destructive behavior.

Worry Less Trust More

April 25, 2021 by Matt Pavlik 2 Comments

Worry and anxiety are pretty much the same. Spiritually speaking, they both are rooted in fear which is essentially an inability to trust God no matter what.

Life brings many situations that challenge our ability to trust God. What can you do to worry less and trust more?

Worry Less By Focusing On The Present Moment

When you worry, you are looking too far ahead into the future. All of us would like to know the future. But it can interfere with your faith. If you could only have one or the other, God would always prefer you maintain your faith (your trust) in Him instead of knowing anything about the future.

How far into the future is too far to be looking? For some people or in some situations looking 100 years might be too far. But others can stir up anxiety even by looking 100 seconds. Where you focus is more important than how far ahead you look. If you try to find security somewhere out into the future, you will never find it because you will miss that God is with you in the present.

If you want to worry less, then reduce how far you are looking ahead until you reclaim a sense of peace. Jesus tells us not to worry about tomorrow (the future). Each day (the present) has enough to occupy you. If even the events of later in the day concern you, focus on the present moment. At this very second, there’s not a whole lot to be concerned about. Take one day (one moment, one second) at a time.

Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?
Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
Matthew 6:27,34 NIV

If you find yourself saying, “yes, but…” about something that’s going to be happening or needs to happen, then you’ve already shifted your focus away from the present and onto a future moment. If you want to experience peace instead of stress, stop and recenter yourself back to the present.

Worry Less By Surrendering All Outcomes to God

You might be having an awesome day and find it easy to trust God. You might be having a horrible day, month, or year but God would have you trust Him the same. Nothing should come between you and God. Bad luck? Nope. Evil? Nope. Disease? Nope. Your health? Nope. Your very life? Nope. See Romans 8:31-39 for more on this.

It’s easy to value your life more than God. If you suffer a serious illness, your very existence is threatened. Or is it? It really depends upon your perspective. As a believer, you’re going to live forever. Do you allow God to determine how long you will live in this life? Or are you wringing your hands trying to figure out how to squeeze another hour out of it?

It’s easy to care about what happens in this life because it’s all we know. Or is it? As a believer, you have the Holy Spirit. So you have a taste of heaven today. Right now you can sense the goodness of heavenly living.

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 4:6-7 NIV

Do what is reasonable for each day to move your life forward. Leave the rest up to God (by praying and letting it go). If you find yourself panicking because of one thing or another, stop trying to be God: reduce what is on your plate. You weren’t meant to save the world. God sent Jesus for that!

Read more about trusting God.
Photo by Gabby K from Pexels

How To Ensure Your Empathy Is Healthy

November 7, 2020 by Matt Pavlik 4 Comments

Have you ever taken on someone’s pain as if it were your own? How about feeling the same way someone else is feeling? Only one of those is healthy empathy.

The primary difference between healthy and unhealthy empathy depends on how much self-awareness you have.

While listening to someone, the more you lose touch with your opinions, desires, and needs, the more likely you have an undeveloped sense of self. Some people might object by pointing out that good, empathetic listening means the listener forgets about their perspective. That is true. But it must remain a choice to de-emphasis one’s desires in favor of another’s. The unhealthy alternative is to default to what another wants because you have no idea what you want, or worse, you avoid exploring what you want.

The choice to focus on another must be positive. If you focus on another but harbor resentment or build up irritation, your empathy probably isn’t healthy. If you feel empty inside and have never really taken the time to understand your needs, your empathy probably isn’t healthy.

If you focus on another, feel pain, and think it is their pain, you might be deceiving yourself. Without a developed sense of your identity, it’s easy to become confused about whose pain you are feeling. In reality, any pain you feel is your own.

Identity Guides You To Healthy Empathy

Whenever you are relating to another, keep one foot planted firmly in who you are and the other reaching out to the person who needs help. It can be difficult to do this perfectly, so you might temporarily (for a few minutes) lose touch with your identity. When you become confused by taking on other’s pain as if it were yours, ask yourself questions like:

Who am I?
How do I feel about what the other person is going through?
What part of my life reminds me of the other person’s pain? Often, you can be focused on another person’s pain, but are really feeling pain from your own life.
How have the difficult life situations I’ve been through taught me to surrender (or perhaps “forget”) who I am when I’m around other people?
What are my limits when it comes to experiencing someone else’s raw pain?

If you lose yourself while focusing on someone else, then you are already past your limit. When you reach your limit, you should excuse yourself from the conversation until you regain your strength (your sense of self).

When you take on another’s pain, it probably means you are needing self-care or someone to care for you. If you continue to help another person without a sense of who you are, you are leaving yourself in a state of self-abuse, and you won’t be much help to someone like that. It doesn’t work to abandon yourself in order to help someone else.

Ownership and Responsibility Guide You To Healthy Empathy

Women are usually better at empathizing with others, but healthy is healthy. Everyone needs to be fully willing to feel and respond to their own pain.

Consider a wife who is listening to her husband. No matter how much she cares and wants to help him with his pain, she can’t work through his pain for him. It’s his pain. Only he can do something about it. She can help by listening, but his pain is still his responsibility. In this sense, the pain only multiplies. If her husband chooses to deny or disown some of his pain, his wife can’t make the situation better by taking on more pain. The increased pain she might feel doesn’t directly reduce her husband’s pain.

Self-Care Guides You To Healthy Empathy

If after you’ve been listening to someone, you notice that you have lingering pain, realize it’s your pain, not the other’s pain. You have some issues to work through, so it’s time to focus exclusively on yourself. If you lose touch with yourself while trying to be empathetic, you should be able to get back to yourself in minutes, not days or weeks.

To help you connect with yourself, you might try journaling your feelings and answering questions like the ones listed earlier and these:

What do I need to help the pain in my life?
Who do I have to listen to me?

Healthy empathy is knowing what it feels like to walk in someone’s shoes and communicating it to them without judging them. Unhealthy empathy would be wearing someone else’s shoes and thinking that they are your shoes.

God Is The Only Place Of Safety

March 8, 2015 by Matt Pavlik 1 Comment

How do you define safety? What is a safe place for you? A safe place has some element of predictability and consistency.

What do the following have in common?

Trying to squeeze water from a rock
Expecting a promotion but instead getting fired
Laying down to go to sleep only to hear loud music
Taking a drink anticipating water and getting vinegar instead

These all have something to do with expectations. Specifically, misplaced confidence in life situations that can never be fully reliable. But we all desire to find a source that satisfies our deepest longings. This can lead to a lot of frustration. If you are frustrated, this means you are moving in the right direction. Frustrated people are tired of what doesn’t work. They are ready for the true solution.

Our desire for love can drive us to rationalize just about any behavior. If we can’t find love the way we want it, it’s easy to turn to imitations like drugs, achievements, sex, food, or entertainment. As intolerable as being unloved is, if we lose sight of where love comes from, we will ultimately destroy our relationships.

While in the right context, none of those “imitations” are bad, they also can’t come close to the kind of safety that God provides. God made us to experience love. So when we don’t experience it, our suffering is genuine because we know something is deeply wrong. We get frustrated but we shouldn’t give up. We need to keep crying out for love, otherwise, we won’t be ready to receive it.

We can submit and surrender ourselves to anything, treating it as a source. Some sources are life-giving and some are life-stealing. Most of our sources will fail us in one way or another. They may be excellent sources with natural limits, or they may be horrible substitutes for the fullness of life. God is the only true and trustworthy source that will never run out or fail us.

There are no guarantees in life… except… God. All else might fail you, but God won’t ever fail you. This doesn’t mean that you won’t experience disappointment. God might not live up to your expectations, but because God doesn’t change, He is always reliable.

The Lord is my rock, my fortress, and my savior;
my God is my rock, in whom I find protection.
He is my shield, the power that saves me,
and my place of safety.
Psalm 18:2 NLT

God Provides Safety Because He Protects

There might be moments when you don’t feel protected. Bad things happen. But God’s overall plan is to preserve you by saving you out of a position of defeat.

For the Lord your God is going with you! He will fight for you against your enemies, and he will give you victory!
Deuteronomy 20:4 NLT

God’s plan for you is victory.

God Provides Safety Because He is Powerful

There might be moments when you feel weak. Some things are impossible for you. But what is impossible for you is possible for God (if He wants it to happen). If you need saving, or whatever you need, God has the power to do it (Luke 18:27).

God Provides Safety Because He is Merciful

God isn’t waiting for your first mistake so He can unleash His wrath. His wrath is reserved for His enemies. If you are a believer, then you are no longer an enemy but you are a friend of God (Romans 5:10). God is the epitome of safety because He is patient with us.

But you, the Lord God,
are kind and merciful.
You don’t easily get angry,
and your love
can always be trusted.
Psalm 86:15 CEV

If you are feeling unsafe and you can’t trust God, that could be because your expectations are at odds with God. You want to go left and God steers your life to the right. You want to go up and God steers your life down. This process is needed to remove all reliance on everything but God. You will discover that the direction life takes is the right one, when God is with you on the journey. As you increase your reliance on God, you will experience God’s safety.

If you are struggling in your marriage, could you be expecting your partner to be your source instead of God? Are you trying to be self-sufficient instead of abiding in Jesus?

If you feel let down by how your life has played out, could you be desiring fulfillment in this life apart from God? God is the ultimate source of fulfillment.

Look at what has been happening in your life recently. Do you see any indications of God leading you? If the journey has been unpleasant, could this be because God wants you to draw hope from Him instead of His creation?

Read more about security.
Image by Jerzy Górecki from Pixabay
Last updated September 4, 2022

The Secret to Finding Rest Amidst Tragedy

February 7, 2020 by Matt Pavlik 4 Comments

Does it make sense to pursue rest when you are flooded with the trauma of betrayal? Experiencing the disloyalty of another person is painful and disorienting, maybe more than any other life event. Is rest even possible given the chaotic disruption to your sense of peaceful well-being?

Have you ever seen a dog chase its tail? So much energy is spent pursuing a goal that remains unattainable. It’s fun to watch unless you’re the one going in circles.

What is the worst traumatic experience you’ve been through? If you can’t think of anything, you are either very lucky or very disconnected from reality. How easy or hard was it for you to rest in the days and weeks after the trauma occurred?

Or maybe you are in the middle of trying to recover from a horrifying event. It has left you locked into an unending sense of discouragement, distress, or despair. Your thoughts speed around a racetrack, circling ever faster but generating only mental exhaustion.

After being traumatized, it is normal to become disillusioned and want to know why life can be so confusing and difficult. Why did that bad thing happen? Why did you make an unhealthy choice? Why does there seem to be no way forward?

Trust to Find Rest

These questions are all signs of life. You are seeking some deeper answer, meaning, or connection with God. There is good news: answers exist that bring hope instead of despair. But the answers usually come in the context of a growing trust in God, rather than an immediate blessing of good fortune and circumstances.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.
Proverbs 3:5-6 ESV

Don’t try to solve problems that are “beyond your pay grade.” Trusting in God brings instant relief (Isaiah 26:3). Try it. Think of something you are anxious about. Now tell God you trust Him. Even if you have to imagine you are trusting Him, it helps. The burden shifts off your shoulders and onto God’s.

I’m not saying your relief will be complete, instantaneous, and permanent. You can experience an overall peace while simultaneously agonizing and grieving.

When God asks you to trust Him, He means at all times–whether your circumstances are pleasant or heart-breaking. You can experience betrayal and still look to God for security.

God wants us to:

believe He is good while experiencing pain
live in the reality of heaven even while experiencing a cursed earth

How you experience life depends on how you prioritize your perspective. Are you focused on your pain or on your God? Are you caught in a loop of trying to escape something you cannot change? Are you caught believing a temporary circumstance is permanent? If so, I have a prayer for you.

Pray to Find Rest

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.

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

This prayer is profound. It shares a lot in common with Proverbs 3. Most people stop with the first sentence. But the second sentence contains the secret to finding rest: acceptance and trust. What are some ways you can adjust your expectations of life, creating some space for you to rest in God’s understanding?

Be patient with yourself as you work through betrayal and learn to trust. You can’t heal in isolation. You need to know someone is hearing your pain.

Read about living free of worry.
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Complete Character, Confidence, and Commitment

June 7, 2020 by Matt Pavlik Leave a Comment

Journeying through life without character is like navigating a boat without a rudder. You are moving but direction and destination will be determined by the current. Character results from the convictions of the truth that you have learned. If you haven’t learned well you will lack wisdom. Wisdom provides the opportunity to steer. Wisdom provides sure footing.

You’ve probably heard the saying, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.” If you’re not aware of your heart motives, you likely feel lost and confused. Life is the journey of making discoveries about who God is and who you are. The more you know who you are, the more responsible you are for your actions.

Priorities Reveal Character

Taking a look at how you spend your time will reveal your commitments. But there is even more you can find if you look deeper. How do you feel about your priorities? Prideful? Fearful? Content? Do they align with your character?

Even more interesting than your feelings is contemplating why. Why are you focused on certain things over others? Your commitment reveals your values but your values reveal your deepest longings, the motivations of your heart.

For your heart will always pursue what you value as your treasure.
Matthew 6:21 TPT

What do you treasure the most based on your priorities? While there may be some changes you will want to make, you might also discover some positives. Your priorities likely align with your personality. God wants you to be able to enjoy life and pursue His priorities.

Building Character is God’s Work in You

God is working to bring you to completion. He created you and He’s working to consummate His work. To do this, He builds your character, which builds your confidence. Understanding who you are is a prerequisite to accomplishing His plan for your life.

God is the one who began this good work in you, and I am certain that he won’t stop before it is complete on the day that Christ Jesus returns.
Philippians 1:6 CEV

The more you know who you are, the more you can commit to accomplishing a great work for God. This means increased efficiency in reaching your destination. There will be fewer distractions and second-guessing.

Sowing Character Reaps Spiritual Progress

When you are locked onto a target and committed to seeing God’s priorities through to the end, that’s when you maximize your potential. Maximum potential leads to maximum results (eventually). Whatever you commit yourself to is the exact area in which you will increase, grow, and achieve.

Don’t be misled—you cannot mock the justice of God. You will always harvest what you plant.
Galatians 6:7 NLT

God sending Jesus in human form to sacrifice Himself for our benefit is the ultimate expression of commitment. God proved He is willing to play by the same rules He’s given us. He didn’t take a “short-cut” path to victory. He proved He can walk the talk. He’s better than any of us and therefore makes the perfect example.

What things in life matter most to you? What are you truly committed to? If you don’t like what you discover, if you aren’t committed to the right things, then as you gain a greater understanding of who you are, rededicate your efforts to what matters most.

How are you feeling right now? If you find feelings of inadequacy or guilt because you aren’t doing enough of the right things for God, that’s the wrong direction. I want you to see the power of commitment. I want you to see the strength and peace when you stay focused on the truth. God means for corrections to your travels to be a hopeful experience.

The scenic route isn’t often the easiest route, but it is the most beautiful and it will be the one that will get you to where God wants you to be. Ask God to build your character, then your confidence, and then be prepared to commit to advancing God’s plans.

Learn more about personality and character.
Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay
Last updated 2024/01/28

Should Feelings Be Trusted Or Discounted?

August 31, 2018 by Matt Pavlik 1 Comment

Feelings are God-given and helpful. They should always be considered and used to make decisions. But the way they are used makes all the difference. Feelings should always be acted upon, but discernment is necessary to know how to act. Do not ignore feelings, but do not consider them to have absolute authority either.

Impulsivity and Feelings Do Not Mix Well

One way to view feelings is as an impulse. An impulse is feedback gained over a very short period. Therefore, it can be highly unreliable. Doing something on impulse means taking action without first reflecting on its consequences. The result will be extremely variable. They could be disastrous, wonderful, or anywhere in between.

Impulse shopping often leads to buyer’s remorse. We’ve all been there. And there is a place and time to act impulsively–within predetermined limits, acting impulsively is how we have fun. It’s the lack of limitation that creates significant problems.

Imagine feeling incredibly sad, not knowing why, and acting in the first way that comes to mind. Our first instinct will be to act according to our conditioned response (habits). Unfortunately, that action is usually destructive rather than constructive. The result might mean feeling good at first but suffering even more later because of it.

Discernment and Feelings Are a Perfect Match

When should you trust your feelings? When should you not? God gave us feelings for a reason. But it’s up to us to learn how to use them for gain rather than loss.

To use a feeling for good, the first step is to identify what the feeling means. What is the feeling communicating about your condition? For example, if you are feeling sad, stop and figure out why before you act. There can be numerous reasons why you feel sad, each one having its optimal response.

Consider the following reasons and how your optimal response might be different for each one:

A loved one recently died.
You are lonely.
You recently went through a divorce.
Your favorite food is no longer being sold.
You are experiencing a hormonal imbalance.
You didn’t get enough sleep.
You lost a game, event, or race you expected to win.

Much better than returning to your dysfunctional coping of over-eating, you can use discernment to determine the root cause of your sadness.

Feelings Help People Make Better Decisions

It’s possible to experience negative feelings and use them to alter your direction in life. Think of your feelings like your ability to taste or smell. You don’t continue eating if the food tastes bad. But you can be glad you can taste spoiled food and stop eating.

Just because you feel like you want to steal something, doesn’t mean you should. But the urge to steal something should help you learn what you need emotionally. Perhaps you need to ask God for what you need more often.

Always consider how there could be a legitimate way to satisfy your feelings. You might feel hungry for junk food, but how about eating healthy food to satisfy your hunger instead?

Or, you might have a goal to lose weight to be healthy. Without a healthy option, the healthiest thing to do might be to not eat. You’ll feel unsatisfied, but you have a higher purpose in mind: enjoying being in shape.

You might feel angry like you want to get revenge. If you follow through with revenge, you’ll likely only create more problems for yourself and harm others. But feeling angry tells you that some changes are needed. You could recall the saying: fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.

Emotions are an excellent catalyst for learning life lessons. Sometimes this means learning the truth, but at other times this means unlearning what is false.

Emotions are indicators that require interpretation. They aren’t a green light to act inappropriately. If you continue to act spontaneously on your feelings, then you’ll eventually find yourself someplace you’d rather not be. Wouldn’t it be helpful if we could taste the regret before we act?

When you have to make a decision that requires discernment (a decision that isn’t clearly right or wrong), your feelings can act more like faith, intuition, or gut instinct. Thank you God for this gift of discernment. Help us all to grow in wisdom by your Spirit.

Learn about loneliness.
Image by Pawel Kozera from Pixabay
Last updated August 4, 2024.

9 Experiences That Drain Hope

April 13, 2025 by Matt Pavlik 2 Comments

Are you feeling drained of all hope? Whether it’s a dramatic upheaval or subtle, persistent struggles, the effects can be deeply discouraging. Some traumas are obvious because they are intense–these are called “Big T” traumas. Other traumas are subtle because they are weak but repetitive–these are called “Little T” traumas. Both kinds can produce lasting disabilities, even though they manifest differently.

#1 The Pain of Losing a Parent or Child

Losing a parent or child is one of life’s most challenging moments. When the loss is premature, whether through miscarriage or death of a young child, it can feel particularly tragic. The dreams, hopes, and plans once anchored around loved ones vanish, leaving an indescribable void. Such disorientation can lead to profound questions, like whether life is still worth living. It is heartbreaking to invest so much emotionally in others, only to find them suddenly and completely absent.

#2 The Scars of Betrayal

Betrayal cuts deep across personal and professional realms. Whether it’s a partner who breaks trust, a friend who abandons you, or a coworker who exploits vulnerabilities, the impact lingers. Betrayal creates emotional scars, shaking confidence and leaving individuals hesitant to trust others again. Repeated betrayals magnify trauma and can drain the hope of finding reliable connections.

The worst kind of betrayal results in shock from the sudden exposure of a completely different reality, such as finding out your spouse is cheating on you. However, betrayal can also happen on a micro scale, like when your spouse uses your vulnerabilities against you in an argument. Sometimes, betrayal stems not from active harm but from the absence of good, such as friends abandoning you without any explanation.

#3 Struggles with Financial Hardship

Navigating financial hardship can be exhausting. Searching tirelessly for employment amidst constant rejections or losing a job despite loyalty and hard work can erode self-esteem. Financial insecurity often causes stress and anxiety, affecting relationships and mental health. The seemingly endless cycle of hope and despair can feel suffocating, draining one’s ability to envision a brighter future.

#4 The Impact of Bullying and Isolation

Bullying and isolation leave individuals feeling misunderstood and undervalued. In school, children may face ridicule for their uniqueness–be it external like body image or clothing, or internal, like processing thoughts or emotions differently than others (now popularly referred to as neurodivergence). For example, a child with ADHD may process thoughts differently, which can make them a target for misunderstanding and exclusion.

In toxic workplaces, adults may encounter criticism or be ignored altogether. The persistent feeling of invisibility and lack of appreciation can drain hope, making it hard to believe that a better environment is possible.

#5 Challenges of Abusive or Neglectful Parents

Parents play a pivotal role in shaping a child’s outlook. Abusive or neglectful parents often blur healthy boundaries, leaving children to fend for themselves emotionally or physically. Abuse can involve excess control, while neglect stems from a failure to provide what is needed to thrive. Some parents are preoccupied with other activities or simply incompetent.

Parentification, where children take on parental roles, robs them of innocence and creates enduring struggles with self-worth and relationships. For example, a nine-year-old shouldn’t be cooking dinner for the family every night. Nor should she be responsible for managing her parents’ emotions.

#6 Struggles with Health Issues

Facing chronic illness or surviving near-death experiences can shatter one’s sense of stability and control. Health issues can make daily life feel like a battle, draining energy and hope for recovery. The psychological toll of adjusting to a “new normal” can feel like an uphill climb, with each step weighed down by doubt and exhaustion.

#7 The Pain of Divorce

Divorce signifies the breakdown of a once-promised lifelong bond. Feelings of rejection and failure intensify when the separation is complicated by sabotage or unfair claims. Divorce can leave emotional scars that affect trust, self-worth, and the hope of finding enduring love.

#8 Trauma from Violent Crime

The aftermath of violent crime, such as rape, assault, or vandalism, often includes emotional trauma that is hard to reconcile. Victims may feel a loss of safety and confidence. The violation of one’s dignity and security can lead to despair and fear that recovery is unattainable.

#9 Devastation from Natural Disasters

Natural disasters strike unexpectedly, disrupting homes and lives. Tornados, hurricanes, mold outbreaks, and infestations can leave families struggling to rebuild their sense of safety. The emotional strain of starting over after such devastation can make hope feel distant, especially when faced with recurring challenges.

Experiences that drain hope are often tied to trauma, but recognizing these moments is the first step toward healing. Feeling drained is likely a normal response given the intensity of your experiences. While trauma may cast shadows over joy and stability, understanding its roots allows for growth and recovery. God’s care and encouragement, even amidst life’s trials, can nurture the flame of hope, guiding individuals to reclaim their lives.

If you need help managing these draining experiences, Matt is available to provide support while illuminating the path to recovery. Here is another post about biblical hope.

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Marriage From Roots To Fruits to be Published April 2015

December 6, 2014 by Matt Pavlik Leave a Comment

Christian Concepts is please to announce that Matt Pavlik’s first book, Marriage From Roots To Fruits, will be published April 2015.

Why There Are So Many Perspectives

October 28, 2018 by Matt Pavlik 2 Comments

If ten people see a car accident, all ten of them will have a different eye-witness report.

If five people interpret a Bible verse, all five of them will have a different opinion of its meaning.

A husband and a wife will have very different ways to recall the same event.

Why are there so many different perspectives?

Most of the time people interpret life based on their investment. By investment, I mean their convictions—their worldview. A person who has been bitten by a dog will make an investment to avoid dogs. Or maybe they will focus on finding a cure for angry dogs. A parent whose child experiences a serious injury because of a malfunctioning car seat will all of a sudden become interested in how car seats need improving. Or perhaps in an extreme case, they will refuse to let their child ride in a car.

One way to find out what someone really believes is to witness them in a heated argument. The more agitated a person becomes, the more likely they will bypass their filter and speak their raw truth. Their words may or may not be accurate, but how the person feels will come across much clearer.

If (or maybe I should say when) you’re struggling to communicate with another person, the first step should be to gain understanding. Why do they not want a dog? Why do they insist on paying extra for premium safety features? When you understand a person’s investment, you’re well on your way to negotiating a solution to your heated argument.

Why Your Feelings Are Important

March 9, 2019 by Matt Pavlik 2 Comments

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?

Transforming Panic into Peace

May 4, 2019 by Matt Pavlik Leave a Comment

Would you rather panic for no reason or face your known, but shameful experiences? If you refuse to face your experiences, you will probably end up with increasing anxiety. But if you choose to face your negative experiences, you can transform them into God moments.

When you push specific emotions out of your awareness, they will eventually resurface as some unnamed but equally uncomfortable emotion. You might experience some relief if you don’t have to name the feeling. But unnamed feelings only increase in intensity until you deal with them. The feelings associated with negative experiences are like an undetected virus that moves freely through your body.

Chances are, when you don’t have the stomach to face the reality of what you have been through, you will avoid naming and claiming your emotions. Who would want to remember being beat up at school, being sexually assaulted, or being yelled at by parents?

Trauma disorganizes and it takes significant effort to restore order. Facing the sickening emotions can drain most of your reserves. But that effort produces healing.

God designed you to respond to the difficulties of life. Whether you like it or not, God made you able to feel the pain of your negative experiences. God declares a law of reaping and sowing (Galatians 6:7-8). You’ll reap what others sow if you are powerless to step out of harm’s way.

You can't control what happened to you, but you can control how you respond. The longer you avoid dealing with emotional unrest, the more time you give it to establish a stronghold of chaos. Share on X

Has the chaos within become normal to you? Have you forgotten or never known what peace feels like?

During the first few years after I became a Christian, I journaled almost every day. Becoming a Christian enabled me to look back at my first twenty years and realize how much I didn’t understand. I processed through my experiences with new insight. As I connected life events, I also connected with emotions that I didn’t know I had.

Becoming a Christian felt like waking up from a bad dream. I was thankful I wasn’t stuck in the former reality. But at the same time, I had to face the reality of all I had experienced.

Today, I don’t need to process the distant past as frequently, but I’m always learning something new and working to have it make sense with my personal history.

This kind of processing is like decompressing after a long day. What would happen if I didn’t take the time to express everything? What do you call energy that is building up in a closed system? A bomb!

Do you realize when you hold in emotions that God intended you to release, you create a ticking time bomb? The pressure starts building and a date with destiny is set. When time runs out and the bomb goes off, there will be personal and collateral damage.

There are only so many ways you can manage uncomfortable emotions. You can Numb Out, Burn Out, or Ride Out.

Numb Out

Numbing out means you shut down your emotions. You cut the power; you trip the circuit breaker. Your brain circuits are overloaded and you are fortunate your automatic shut down is working.

This averts the immediate disaster. You dodge the bullet; you avoid feeling the crushing weight of what happened. You gain some immediate relief, but also more than you bargain for: some long-term problems.

Burn Out

In the midst of re-experiencing an overwhelming event, you are unable to find the automatic off switch. The intensity of your emotions continues to grow. The pain and panic become so unbearable that you must look for a way to force the shut down.

You might start cutting yourself. Or drinking a lot. Or end up in the emergency room because you think you’re having a heart attack.

Ride Out

You endure the waves of painful emotion without going in critical overload. If you’ve been through trauma, this is easier said than done. But it’s possible.

Riding out is a commitment to re-engaging your emotions while learning how to manage them so they don’t create a new trauma. When you can’t manage this without going critical, that’s when you need support.

What happens when a newborn baby cries? The baby is expressing discomfort about a situation that she can’t control. She is hungry, has a messy diaper, or needs sleep.

God didn’t provide newborns with the brain wiring to self-sooth. If no one addresses the problem and no one soothes her, she must eventually choose to Numb Out.

Because of the severity of the trauma you’ve been through, you could be in a situation like the newborn. You don’t have enough practice to calm yourself down, so you need to borrow the support of others. You need a surrogate mom to help you soothe.

With the right amount of support, the energy from the waves of emotion will die down eventually. With the tension gone, you experience peace instead of panic.

Choosing to Ride Out by facing dreaded emotions is an act of bravery. Remember, you reap what you sow. If you confront your past, you can move beyond it.

How much time do you spend in Numb Out, Burn Out, or Ride Out? Why is that?

What questions do you have about facing unpleasant emotions?

Are you ready to gain more peace? Tell God you are ready to face and then embrace your emotional pain. Ask Him for insight into your suffering. Allow Him to guide you on the journey to greater emotional wholeness.

Image by Ryan McGuire from Pixabay

Are You Trying to Solve a Problem You Don’t Need to Solve?

March 16, 2019 by Matt Pavlik Leave a Comment

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?

Negative Experiences Can Create Negative Self-Worth

February 16, 2019 by Matt Pavlik 3 Comments

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

Enjoy A New Reality

March 3, 2019 by Matt Pavlik 1 Comment

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

Amazing Desire To Gain Understanding

May 9, 2021 by Matt Pavlik Leave a Comment

How well do you feel truly understood? On a quest to be understood, you’ll probably first need to pursue understanding yourself. You might find yourself asking a series of progressive questions:

How well do I feel understood?
What has happened to me in the last several months?
Have I talked with anyone about what is going on with me?
How well do I know what is going with me? How well can I explain it to someone else?
Could others not understand because they do not consider understanding me a priority for them?
Does anyone care about me?

You might not be on others’ radar, but you should be on your radar. Others might be consumed with their own thoughts or pursuits. If you want to be understood, seek to understand yourself and learn how to communicate your insight to others.

Getting Understanding Is Half The Battle

Having a clear understanding means you have an accurate assessment of any given situation. Then, with God’s motivation to do what is best, you should be able to choose a positive step forward.

Get wisdom, get understanding;
    do not forget my words or turn away from them.
Do not forsake wisdom, and she will protect you;
    love her, and she will watch over you.
The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom.
    Though it cost all you have, get understanding.
Cherish her, and she will exalt you;
    embrace her, and she will honor you.
She will give you a garland to grace your head
    and present you with a glorious crown.”
Proverbs 4:5-9 NIV

Of course, when God is involved, the best way forward is a step of faith as you trust Him. One of the best wise sayings is to not lean on your own understanding. That’s because only God has complete understanding. When you are able to follow God along your confusing (crooked?) path, then you have wisdom and understanding.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways submit to him,
and he will make your paths straight.
Proverbs 3:5-6 NIV

God doesn’t expect us to understand the course of our life apart from Him.

A person’s steps are directed by the LORD. How then can anyone understand their own way?
Proverbs 20:24 NIV

Getting wisdom doesn’t mean you automatically understand everything, but it does mean you’ll be able to lean into God.

Understanding Yourself Is A Prerequisite

You might not be able to figure out your way, at least not with absolute certainty, but you can better know yourself. Before you can attempt to understand someone else, you need to understand yourself (so you can relate). Before someone else can understand you, you need to understand yourself (so you can share yourself with others).

What happens if you don’t know yourself very well? Others can observe your behaviors and offer their best guess about what is going on with you. God can teach you about yourself through others, but you always have the ability to choose your opinion over other’s opinion.

Sometimes adversity can force you to find yourself. That’s where the saying, “Let’s see what you’re made of” comes from. As you rise to meet challenges, your identity becomes clearer.

Counseling Helps You Gain Understanding

When I am counseling others, one of my main goals is to help my clients become more in touch with who they are. While there are various techniques to achieve this, the simplest might be curiosity. When I am curious about my clients, it helps them to find their voice, opinions, and preferences. Often, if a person doesn’t sense anyone will understand, they don’t bother trying to understand themselves. This means a lot of potential remains untapped.

When God created each one of us, He created a seed of our identity. At conception, we are like a seed. The seed defines our identity, but it needs time to grow into the intended target. Never looking into who you are is like not planting the seed or like receiving a gift but never opening it.

To better understand yourself, experiment by trying a new activity or an old one in a new way. Consider what you learn from it. Then pick something else new and repeat.

If you become lost during your life journey, try explaining yourself to someone else who doesn’t know you very well. Hopefully you’ll figure out that you had the answer within you all along, you just needed some help getting to it. Give yourself this opportunity to discover more of who God made you to be.

Heavenly Healing From The Inside Out

July 12, 2021 by Matt Pavlik 3 Comments

Healing from the inside out will last for an eternity. That’s a comforting thought, isn’t it?

Many movies or TV shows involved characters being locked up in a prison. When a prisoner misbehaves, they can be sent to solitary confinement. They might be left alone with no human contact for days, weeks, or in extreme cases a few months.

Solitary confinement is not only a physically deprived environment, but it’s also an emotionally and mentally deprived one too. God made us to need social interaction. But it’s unlikely you’ll receive love exactly the way you want it and exactly when you want it.

Healing Through Connection

Healthy relationships have significant amounts of closeness and separation. Both extremes end up being obstacles to emotional growth. Too much closeness is just as bad as too little closeness. If you lack boundaries, that sense of who you are, you are vulnerable to taking on other’s emotions as if they were your own. A healthy person develops a sense of identity so they can function independently of others.

However, too much separation is no good either. With thick walls, a person won’t feel hurt by someone else. Unfortunately, the walls can become like a prison that fosters loneliness among other negative consequences.

Imagine you are in a room all alone. There are no windows or doors. It’s completely dark. No one can get in to hurt you, but neither can anyone get in to help. This is actually a good analogy for learning how to receive help.

The people on the outside have little, if any, control over what happens on the inside. All they can see is the wall you’ve put up. No one can “fix” another person without their cooperation.

On the inside, it’s possible to make a door and even open it. Any openings you allow can only be locked from the inside. You can lock others out, but they can’t lock you in. You can unlock the door, but they can’t.

Healing When You’ve Lost The Key

What happens though if you lose the key to your door? That makes healing more complicated. Perhaps your “door” has been locked so long that you don’t remember how to connect with others. Then, fearing the unknown, you are reluctant to bother to look for the key.

People on the outside might sense your struggle, but there’s no way for them to unlock the door. You want out, but you don’t know how to unlock the door. You’re so confused you don’t remember how to open up. Or, perhaps, you don’t even want to open up because your fear and shame are too intense.

When you’re trapped inside–that’s mental illness. That’s hopelessness that leads to even more severe depression and anxiety.

How much do you identify with feeling trapped like this? How long have you suffered from loneliness? It’s so easy to be trapped in a double bind. It doesn’t feel safe to stay locked up, but neither does it feel safe to open up. You desperately need help but help feels too intrusive.

Even in this situation, there is hope. God only needs your permission, then He can get inside without a key or even a door. God can bring order to the chaos inside of you. God can bring clarity. God brings understanding. God can help you open a window.

Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.
Revelation 3:20 NIV

God waits with His healing touch for us to desire to let Him in. Healing can only happen from the inside out. But a window lets light through both ways.

You, LORD, keep my lamp burning; my God turns my darkness into light.
Psalm 18:28 NIV

Ask Jesus to help you open the door of your heart so others’ lights can encourage you and your light can encourage them.

Introducing Marriage from Roots to Fruits

January 23, 2015 by Matt Pavlik Leave a Comment

When Failure is Not an Option!

Do any of these describe your experience with marriage?

Overwhelmed by perpetual unresolved conflict;
Drifting away from your partner;
Experiencing the pain of betrayal;
Confused by the complexity of marriage;
Afraid to walk down the aisle.

Marriage from Roots to Fruits brings much needed hope to couples who are at a point of despair and intense emotional pain. It is filled with practical tools and real life examples to encourage couples along the path of healing and living victoriously. You will learn details of God’s design for a healthy relationship while experiencing how deeply God knows, understands, and cares about the struggle that can come with marriage.

Marriage: Mission Critical

Marriage is God joining together a man and a woman, loyal to each other for life, who each contribute distinct but equally important abilities towards the completion of a fruitful mission greater than can be accomplished apart.

Unfortunately, a marriage license does not mean we are ready or competent enough to marry. If we continue to think and feel like a single person, we will remain single on the inside even though, outwardly, we are married. How many people have plunged ahead into marriage without a clue? What would happen if no one was required to pass a test for a driver’s license before getting behind the wheel?

Whether you are single, engaged, single-again, or married, this book is for your personal growth. This book is especially for you, if you:

Are struggling with how to make your relationship work;
Like to understand how things work—how each part functions in relation to the whole;
Want to learn the details of God’s design for relationships;
Like to reflect in order to gain understanding;
Want a full-brain (left and right) learning experience;
Appreciate visual diagrams to gain understanding;
Want to apply the appropriate principles and ideas to bring about positive change;
Want to make the most of your time in counseling.

God created you with a blueprint which establishes not only your identity (His end-in-mind for you as a work of art) but also your growth journey (the step-by-step plans). However, your experiences with the darkness of this world, sin, and the enemy deface the blueprint and leave you disoriented. A marriage at its best provides an encouraging companion who helps you discover your true identity. But without God, marriage becomes a place of fear and self-doubt.

In Marriage from Roots to Fruits, you will learn:

How to experience spiritual growth and truly know God;
How to live in your true identity and ensure individual growth;
How to enjoy marriage growth and true love for your partner.

This book contains unique counseling insights with strong biblical applications. Pastors and counselors can use it to help couples prepare for marriage as well as heal existing marriages. It is also applicable for married couples who feel okay about the relationship they have, but want to have a stronger and deeper relationship with God and each other.

This book is designed with 52 short lessons which include:

Concept diagrams: learn the principles visually;
For Reflection ideas: think deeper about each lesson;
Experiential exercises: know the truths in your heart;
Next Steps actions: apply what you learn in your marriage.

Brokenness Is Beautiful

February 7, 2021 by Matt Pavlik 1 Comment

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
Image by Gerhard G. from Pixab ay

Complete Your Training To Resist Evil

September 25, 2021 by Matt Pavlik 5 Comments

In Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, Yoda challenges Luke Skywalker, “you must complete the training.” Yoda knew that Luke wasn’t ready yet to face his ultimate trial in a fight against Darth Vader.

How are you doing in your battle against the evil spiritual forces (Ephesians 6:12)? To reach a place of confidence in overcoming life problems, you must complete your training.

God’s school for persevering and winning against evil is called “life.” To complete the transformative journey, you must pass through four steps.

Step 1 Training: Overcome Resistance

Luke works for his Aunt and Uncle but isn’t happy as a farmer. He feels duty-bound to help them so he refuses to leave them. His hope to join the academy remains an unfulfilled dream. He is out of place. He isn’t pursuing his calling.

What is blocking you from attaining your dreams? In what ways are you resisting God’s call to adventure in your life? Step one’s purpose is to increase your level of frustration with your current life so much that you are willing to risk making a change. It is characterized by:

Pride that covers the pain of your life.
Believing lies such as “what others want for me is more important than what I want or what God wants for me.”
Resisting God’s call to spiritual growth.
Attempting to cope to remain self-sufficient.

Too much pride will destroy you.
Proverbs 16:18 CEV

By the time you finish step one, you are ready to seek the help of a counselor.

Step 2 Training: Commit To Recovery

Luke meets his mentor, Obi-Wan, and agrees to go with him to Alderaan. He learns he has other allies (Han, Chewbacca, Princess Leia) as well as enemies (Darth Vader and the empire). But he and his friends face a huge setback when Alderaan is destroyed.

What setbacks have brought further discouragement into your life, just when you decided to get help? Instead of turning back to your old ways, commit to your emotional recovery. Step two’s purpose is to solidify your reason why you want to pursue change. It is characterized by:

Being humbled enough to be willing to seek help.
Being willing to consider how the truth applies to your life.
Accepting God as good–that He has a plan worth following.
Acknowledging your problems and dysfunctional behaviors.

Too much pride can put you to shame.
It’s wiser to be humble.
Proverbs 11:2 CEV

By the time you finish step two, you have uncovered so much pain that you have no choice but to rely on God and other allies.

Step 3 Training: Learn To Trust

Luke fights his way out of the death star with Princess Leia but loses Obi-Wan. He struggles for his freedom only to experience greater suffering with the loss of his mentor.

I see Obi-Wan’s sacrifice and pronouncement that he will become even more powerful as similar to Christ being crucified and becoming more powerful as someone who has defeated death.

What painful memories continue to hold you back from pursuing your dreams? Instead of running from challenges, face them and be transformed by them. Find out what is most important to you. Step three’s purpose is to shift your focus onto how powerful God is and how positive your life is. It is characterized by:

Being vulnerable so you can receive the emotional healing you need.
Confronting the lies you believe with the truth so can freely move forward in life.
Accepting suffering as unavoidable at times and even beneficial.
Realizing that God is worthy of your trust.

The Lord’s people may suffer a lot,
but he will always bring them safely through.
Psalm 34:19 CEV

Even David went through years of training while defending his sheep from bears and other beasts (1 Samuel 17:34-37). By the time you finish step three, your training has prepared you to face the Goliath-sized problems.

Step 4 Training: Walk By Faith

Luke joins the rebels, trusts his mentor’s guidance, and destroys the death star. He is no longer self-sufficient. He is trusting in a power greater than himself. He becomes a hero that can inspire others.

What Goliath-sized problem is looming large over your life? How has God proven Himself faithful to you? Look for the opportunities to prove your training has accomplished its purpose. Step four’s purpose is to test your faith as you fulfill your God-planned destiny. It is characterized by:

Confidence in your ability to face problems with God’s help.
Embracing the truth to overcome doubts and other spiritual attacks.
Resisting evil by not giving it any room to thrive.
Faithful dependence on God for strength.

God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear.
Psalm 46:1-2 NIV

By the time you finish step four, your journey is complete. You are ready to help others if they want help with their struggles. You can also identify new problems and start the journey again for yourself. Or, maybe you are like Luke and didn’t finish your training the first time around. That’s okay. With God, it’s never too late to start on a journey of transformation. Future posts will cover each of the four steps in greater detail.

Sometimes a mentor can be a person like a counselor. But a mentor can also be a process like the ones in any of my books. Try either of those if you feel unhappy with where you are in life and want some help to complete your training so you can overcome the big problem in your life.

Learn more about freedom as you experience positive change.
Image by Jeff Jacobs from Pixabay

Push through fear like you would cross a scary bridge.

Push Through Fear and Find Hope

June 29, 2019 by Matt Pavlik 2 Comments

A string of devastating disappointments can weaken you to the point you live in constant fear of the next disaster. Don’t give up. You can push through fear and find hope.

Job experienced multiple traumas. He suffered from the loss of his children, his finances, and his health. Though he was greatly distressed, he held on until God brought him relief.

In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing.
Job 1:22 NIV

Just like Job, your mental attitude makes a difference. Do all you can to guard your heart against bitterness toward God. A healthy fear of God is good.

At any moment, you have the ability to choose a different path. With each decision you make, something changes. As long as something is changing, hope is alive.

If it seems like you are up against a wall with no way out, perhaps you are afraid of something. The enemy uses fear to distract you. When you are afraid, everything looks worse than it really is.

Here are two possible ways you can become immobilized by fear:

You expect a change for the worse: You fear a change that will result in you being worse off than you are currently. You anticipate you will make a bigger mess of an already bad situation.
You expect no positive change: You fear you’ll never be better off. You believe your dreams are unobtainable, your effort is futile, and change is impossible.

If nothing about you could ever change, fear would multiple quickly. You would become consumed with hopelessness. The more you feel trapped, the more you would panic. The more you panic, the more trapped you would feel.

Anxiety blocks creativity. The more anxious I am, the less I have access to the part of me that can find solutions. I can’t make a good decision when I am anxious. When my ability to change my thinking becomes inaccessible, I become confused, paralyzed, and unable to move forward.

Don’t give up. Push through fear like you would cross a scary bridge. You can use these 3 strategies to bridge your way to hope:

Use the Gospel to Push Through Fear

You were once dead in your sin, but now you are a new creation. You are forgiven and capable of becoming more like Christ. You can change because God is empowering you. This is the ultimate hope all believers have.

The kind of change I’m talking about is the kind that matters most. The priceless kind. Would you rather have an easy life or the strength and peace to endure a hard life?

The hope of the Gospel is more than enough to calm my fears.

Use Your Identity to Push Through Fear

All positive, significant change is a decision to embrace more of who God made you to be. Circumstances can change for better or worse. But your identity is fixed. And this is good because it’s easier to hit a fixed target than one that moves all the time.

As you accept and move toward your true identity, you’ll gain the power to also accept your circumstances.

If you’re believing lies about yourself, you are opening yourself to evil. Walk away from abusive situations. I don’t mean give up on loving others. Instead, I mean improve your self-worth by actively refuting lies with the truth.

Use Momentum to Push Through Fear

The smallest change can result in unstoppable momentum. There’s always hope when there’s something you can change. If you can make a change in what you’re doing or saying, then something must be different inside of you.

God takes no pleasure in seeing you beat yourself up or put yourself down. When something terrible happens, it has nothing to do with who you are. Remember Job? He lost so much, but that didn’t change who he was to God.

Can you decide to take better care of yourself? Relax and allow yourself to find the greater separation between who your circumstance says you are and who God says you are.

Always hold on to hope because you can make a change. If the change you want seems too big, then start smaller. Even a small change can lead to big hope. Do something different. Take a walk instead of sitting inside all day. Veg out instead of doing laundry all day. Do something to enjoy the moment you have right now.

To push through fear and choose peace despite your circumstances, you will need to pray.

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.
Philippians 4:6-8 NIV

To explore this idea further see Ephesians 2:1-5, Proverbs 13:12, and see my post on Quora.
Image by Bishnu Sarangi from Pixabay

Journaling Keeps Your Heart Healthy

May 18, 2019 by Matt Pavlik 5 Comments

Journaling can help set you free from the evil that seeks to poison your heart. A heart that strains to pump blood isn’t healthy. Likewise, failure to express the emotions that weigh on your heart also weakens your heart.

Have you ever been so confined that you felt like you were suffocating? If you stuff your feelings, that’s a panic attack waiting to happen. What can help you breathe again? Writing can help you to restore your mental and emotional health.

When I was a young child, maybe 4 years old, my parents had a nightstand with sliding front doors. I liked crawling inside this fortress and enjoying the safety of the enclosed space.

On one particular day, after I had grown some more, I wanted to visit this fort again. I remembered it being fun, but there wasn’t much room left for me to fit inside. I squeezed in anyway.

Once inside, every part of my body pressed against the outer walls, the floor, the ceiling, and even the door. I could barely slide the last door shut. And as soon as I did, I started to panic. I felt so cramped I believed I wasn’t going to be able to get out. I started to breathe faster and all I could feel was my hot breath. As much as I wanted to enjoy the experience, I was desperate to get out.

That must be what claustrophobia feels like. Or what a baby about to be born experiences.

The doors didn’t shut tight, but I had to work to pull back from one of them so I could slide it open. After I inched the door open enough, I banged around to force myself into the opening. Fresh cool air entered my lungs.

I was once small enough to fit inside comfortably. But after that experience, I never went inside again. I went in voluntarily, but sometimes life can have a way of forcing you back into too small a place – a place you don’t fit or belong.

People Can Restrict Your Heart

Sometimes your own choices restrict your heart. Sometimes other people confine your heart. Either way injures your heart.

Goliath, an enemy of God’s people, blocked God’s desire for His people. No one in King Saul’s army wanted to fight him. David was willing but without any battle armor. Saul offered his armor, but it severely restricted David’s movement. David didn’t need Saul’s armor to fight Goliath. Instead, he fought Goliath in the name of the living God (1 Samuel 17:38-40).

Well-intentioned people can box you in. They’re trying to help, but they don’t recognize who you are. They want to help, but their help only weighs you down even more.

Other people aren’t so well-intentioned. They have a destructive agenda for your life. They use and abuse you (sometimes literally) if you give them the opportunity. They take what they want for their own gain. The more you let them take, the more they will take.

Your enemy the devil shows mercy to no one. He wants nothing more than to restrict all people from knowing Jesus and living a fulfilled life.

Journaling Helps Free Your Heart From Emotional Restrictions

You can use writing to throw off restrictions that aren’t a part of who God made you to be. Writing in your journal can lead you to freedom. You can be free of the unnatural confines of your encounters with evil.

Evil wants to bind you up, twist and contort you until you look nothing like yourself. Evil wants to confine you to a box smaller than you are. You can effectively forget who you are. Or, the restrictive environment prevents you from knowing who you really are.

Journaling can help you find who you are. But if you want it to work, you have to go about it a certain way. Hold on a second. I’m not trying to box you in.

The best way to journal is your way. Your best behaviors will derive from who God says you are. Your heart contains the riches of your God-given identity. That’s why God says to guard your heart.

Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.
Proverbs 4:23

But a stopped-up well isn’t healthy. To heal, try expressing who you are on your journal pages. You can’t become well using someone else’s words. It’s worth the effort to find your voice.

Sure, you can experiment with other’s styles. You can start by imitating others, but eventually, you must put your story into your words in the way only you can express them. Maybe you won’t even have words at first. Maybe some scribbles, doodles, or diagrams will help you unlock who you really are.

When you stare at a blank page and you’re not sure what to write, that could be because you’re trying to write right instead of write true. What you put on the page at first might not best represent you, but it’s a start. That desire to be authentic counts. It counts a lot.

If you’re ready, take a moment to pray. Tell God you want to make contact with the real you. God help me unbox my life. Help me unplug the wellspring of my heart.

A boxed-up life can be painful to open up. A stopped-up heart needs to release some poison before the pure water starts flowing. The pain you’re experiencing points to the real you hidden beneath the hurtful experiences. In other words, you hurt because there’s a real person in there somewhere. You can write to find that person.

The pain isn’t the problem. Pain is part of the solution to help you find your way out of the darkness and out of the lies you believe about yourself.

What’s in your heart? Take time now to look inside and write about what comes up from the deep. Unbox your heart for the glory of God.

Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

Supercharge Growth With 5 Therapy Goals

October 9, 2022 by Matt Pavlik Leave a Comment

People choose counseling to improve their lives. To grow requires completing the transition from childhood to adulthood. Children lack the ability or initiative to choose for themselves. True adults initiate decisions and learn from the consequences of their choices.

In all the years I’ve provided counseling to others, I’ve observed five core concepts that advance this growth process into adulthood.

Grow by Defining What is Meaningful

Whatever you are doing must be meaningful in some way. Another word for meaningful is worthwhile. So, here is a good question to explore: What makes your life worth living?

If you are unhappy with life, maybe it’s because you aren’t paying attention to what you find meaningful. Life is short; you might as well spend it in the most meaningful way possible.

Whatever problems you are facing, try taking a step back from them, then refocus on what would make life worth living.

Grow by Learning to be Self-Directed

One way to measure maturity is to look at how internally motivated you are. But before you can be self-directed, you first need to be self-aware.

To be internally motivated means to have as your end goal becoming true to who God made you to be. For this, you need to know what you were created for. Then, you can direct your activity in the most efficient way possible to reach your goals.

External motivation is the opposite; it has the potential to create internal or external conflict. That’s because the motivation to act comes from someone else who doesn’t know what it is like to be you.

An extreme example of this might be the now infamous If you don’t stop crying, I’ll give you something to cry about. People don’t like to be told what to do, at least not without having the opportunity to evaluate the options for themselves.

Children aren’t mature enough to be internally motivated. They don’t know themselves, so they can’t be the best decisions for themselves. Instead, they must rely on their parents. Unfortunately, parents don’t always know what is best either. Responsible people grow in their ability to make their own decisions.

Grow by Learning Your Abilities

Self-awareness grows with age when people invest the time to learn how God made them. You have strengths that God intends for you to use for the good of His kingdom. To grow in your identity, you must be able to see what you already have–your abilities–and strengthen them.

Grow by Learning Your Wounds

Another area for self-awareness is to understand how you have been hurt. To grow in your identity, you must also be able to see what is missing–your wounds–and approach God to allow Him to make up for what you have lost. You can heal if you can replace or replenish what you never received in the first place.

Grow by Purifying Your Desires

Desires are one way that people are different from any other aspect of creation, whether we consider other living creatures like animals or inanimate objects like computers or robots.

What you desire becomes your motivation. Desires can be life-giving, corrupt, or somewhere in between. They can lead you down a productive path or a destructive path. Therefore, it’s important to be self-aware of your longings.

Most of the time, what you want isn’t bad in itself. Usually, the problem is with what you’d be willing to sacrifice to gain what you want. The story of Cain and Able is a simple, but extreme, example.

“Why are you so angry?” the Lord asked Cain. “Why do you look so dejected? You will be accepted if you do what is right. But if you refuse to do what is right, then watch out! Sin is crouching at the door, eager to control you. But you must subdue it and be its master.”
Genesis 4:6-7 NLT

Cain wanted acceptance. Instead of the right path of seeking God, he chose the destructive path of killing his brother. Corrupt desires lead to destruction. But purified desires make a person unstoppable in pursuing God’s will.

The ability to discern what type of desire you are dealing with takes time to develop. First, you must desire to know about your desires. Then you must sort through your valid longings and sinful longings to know the difference. Valid longings are those you can express but they also require the patience to let them be met as God sees fit. Sinful longings are destructive when they become a demand that must be met immediately.

People might want to eat a sandwich, but can they wait in line until it is their turn? There’s nothing wrong with wanting to eat, but what about the person who is willing to push people aside, or even kill them, to get to the front of the line?

Most people wouldn’t go to such an extreme. Yet many people will go to the opposite extreme. They might leave the line altogether, believing they are unworthy of good things, and so starve themselves of the very things that God wants them to have.

Seek to understand your longings and have God purify your desires. If you need help with any of this, consider a Christian counselor.

Learn more about desires.
Image by Joe from Pixabay

3 Steps To Overcoming Shame

April 7, 2019 by Matt Pavlik 4 Comments

Shame is the inability to tolerate being known. There is no end to being known. Every day is new. Every day brings more ways you can know and be known. This can be threatening to the person who feels shame intensely.

Shame results from becoming confused about the truth after lies are introduced into your mind. The lies provide an alternative to the truth and therefore an alternative to trusting God.

People who feel shame will instinctively hide: from themselves, from others, and from God. This is exactly what Adam and Eve did after they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They acquired a sense of their inadequacy because they could no longer believe God.

“You won’t die!” the serpent replied to the woman. “God knows that your eyes will be opened as soon as you eat it, and you will be like God, knowing both good and evil.”

The woman was convinced. She saw that the tree was beautiful and its fruit looked delicious, and she wanted the wisdom it would give her. So she took some of the fruit and ate it. Then she gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it, too. At that moment their eyes were opened, and they suddenly felt shame at their nakedness. So they sewed fig leaves together to cover themselves. When the cool evening breezes were blowing, the man and his wife heard the LORD God walking about in the garden. So they hid from the LORD God among the trees.
Genesis 3:4-8 NLT

The opposite of hiding in shame is being authentic. Here are three practical ways to reverse the effects of shame.

Know Yourself to Overcome Shame

Before you can share yourself with others, you must first be willing to know yourself.

Being willing to be known is a discipline. Sometimes the cost of being known isn’t worth the reward. Hiding seems better than facing the humiliation of being known. There are times when you won’t be ready for the exposure. That’s okay for the moment.

However, the more you hide, the more you remain hidden even from yourself. It’s not that you’ve forgotten who you are, but more like you’ve never given yourself a chance to understand who you are.

But hiding in shame isn’t really an option for the Christian. God won’t let you hide forever. You are salt and light (Matthew 5:13-16). He calls each of us out of hiding and into a relationship with Him, others, and ourselves.

The more you know the truth about yourself, the more you’ll know how you can contribute to others. You don’t always have to receive; eventually, you’ll know what you can give.

Study and Journal to Overcome Shame

If you struggle to tolerate being known, keeping a private journal is the least risky way to begin. Make time to write consistently. As you journal and reread your writing, you begin to see yourself from an outside perspective.

What should you write about? Read the Bible and other helpful materials that teach you who you are. Then write about what the truths stir up in your heart.

Share Yourself with Others to Overcome Shame

Choose a trusted person and begin to share verbally. Practice putting into words what you’re feeling inside, entrusting your private life to another. Receive their acceptance and care.

Remember that God is a person too. Pay attention to how He speaks to you whether directly or indirectly through others.

Share publically, but discriminantly. Share more with everyone you know. This doesn’t mean being an open book to everyone. Healthy people discriminate how much they share with each person. However, as you heal, you should be able to share more freely with more people.

Share Yourself with God to Overcome Shame

Some parts of ourselves only God knows. Can you completely put your inner feelings of shame into clear words for others to understand? Maybe. Can you receive the truth of who you are completely through words alone? Unlikely.

As you grow in being genuine with others, you grow in readiness to receive healing from God. His acceptance is the only true antidote to shame. He can address your shame at the core through a deeply spiritual, relational transaction. Essentially, God reveals who He is to you in order to cure your shame.

Shame is difficult to overcome. It’s easy to fear the unknown. And it’s ten times harder when that unknown is you.

Where are you on your journey to overcoming shame?

Reframe Your Life From Ugly To Beautiful

June 21, 2020 by Matt Pavlik 1 Comment

An ugly frame can detract from an otherwise beautiful picture. If so, it makes sense to reframe the picture.

Why do pictures have frames? A good frame enhances the picture by making sure it’s presented in the best possible way. The best frame will help a viewer see the picture at its fullest potential.

What frames your life? What do you use to make sense of it? An erroneous belief system can cancel out a person’s otherwise healthy life. If you don’t have anything in particular to guide you in life, there’s a better chance than not that drift away from God’s intentions.

Jesus is the master reframer of life.

When to Reframe the Present with the Future

How do Christians benefit from knowing God? Are there benefits in the short-term and long-term, only one, or neither? As Christians, we might know the fact of eternal life (a long-term benefit) but struggle to realize the present-day benefits. Short-term benefits are unpredictable. God acts to accomplish His purposes, which might or might not include what will make your life easier.

Let’s look at the story of Lazarus as an example.

Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. Yet even now I know that God will do anything you ask.” Jesus told her, “Your brother will live again!” Martha answered, “I know that he will be raised to life on the last day, when all the dead are raised.”

Jesus then said, “I am the one who raises the dead to life! Everyone who has faith in me will live, even if they die. And everyone who lives because of faith in me will never really die. Do you believe this?”“Yes, Lord!” she replied. “I believe that you are Christ, the Son of God. You are the one we hoped would come into the world.”
John 11:21-27 CEV

Martha knew enough about Jesus to know He can do great things and God will answer all He asks. But she assumed that Jesus was being positive only about the future, not the present. She understood death to be irreversible. If Jesus had decided to not resurrect Lazarus, the lesson would be that when God does not correct a wrong or a loss, the future hope we have is a beautiful reframe for the present.

When to Reframe the Future with the Present

Jesus could see more than Martha. He used His understanding to gently reframe the situation for Martha. That’s the way it is for all of us. God sees more. He’ll always see more than we do. That’s why it’s good for us to believe Him and trust Him.

When Jesus saw that Mary and the people with her were crying, he was terribly upset and asked, “Where have you put his body?” They replied, “Lord, come and you will see.”Jesus started crying, and the people said, “See how much he loved Lazarus.”
John 11:33-35 CEV

Isn’t it amazing how much Jesus connects with the people in His life? He knows what God wants. He knows He’s going to resurrect Lazarus. And, He’s so fully in tune with how Mary and Martha feel about their brother that He weeps with them. This time God’s will leads to a better present for the friends of Lazarus. God is glorified.

Jesus looked up toward heaven and prayed, “Father, I thank you for answering my prayer. I know that you always answer my prayers. But I said this, so that the people here would believe that you sent me.”When Jesus had finished praying, he shouted, “Lazarus, come out!” The man who had been dead came out.
John 11:41-44 CEV

Jesus chooses to perform a miracle to demonstrate the truth that He transcends death because He is life. When God chooses to intervene in your life it’s also to help you see the truth. It’s okay to receive His encouragement. You can allow a positive experience to increase your faith that God is good and eternal life is real.

What do you have in your life that would benefit from being reframed? Share it with Jesus; tell Him your concerns. Tell Him how much faith you have in Him. Then, look for Jesus to frame your life in a way that goes beyond your expectations.

Give your life situation over to God. Ask Him to reframe you with Him and His truth. Be ready for a positive interpretation that exceeds your best interpretation. God loves you more than you realize.

Learn more about life perspectives.
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Last updated June 11, 2023

Labels Like Gaslighting Harm More Than Help

March 28, 2021 by Matt Pavlik Leave a Comment

Labels can promote better communication. But, they can also sow seeds of dissension. How and when should you use the power of labels?

How Labels Help

Labels are shortcuts. I could ask you for a dark red fruit that grows on trees. Because there is more than one type, I’d need to be more specific. I’d like the kind that is more tart than sweet. Instead of having to describe all the details, I could have said I would like some cherries.

Without labels, communication would be cumbersome at best. But, labels only help when we can agree on what the label is referring to. Maybe there are several varieties of cherries. But a cherry is a cherry, not an apple.

Shortcuts are most effective when all involved parties have a shared experience. What if we drove to a cherry farm and picked and ate cherries from the same tree? We’d probably have the same idea in mind when we use the word cherries.

What happens if there is no shared experience or the experience is so complicated that it frequently generates a unique experience? If, at the fruit farm, we ate two different species of cherries, one of which ripens faster than the other, we’d probably be thinking different things when we use the word cherries.

How Labels Harm

Labels such as gaslighting or narcissism have become quite popular recently. They definitely describe a complicated experience that can be easily misunderstood. In this case, I suggest you avoid the words and stick to the descriptions.

Gaslighting is a form of verbal abuse. Here is a definition from Wikipedia:

Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation in which a person or a group covertly sows seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or group, making them question their own memory, perception, or judgment. It may evoke changes in them such as cognitive dissonance or low self-esteem, rendering the victim additionally dependent on the gaslighter for emotional support and validation. Using denial, misdirection, contradiction and disinformation, gaslighting involves attempts to destabilize the victim and delegitimize the victim’s beliefs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting

Not only does gaslighting sound complicated, it also sounds evil–like a tactic the devil uses to cause believers to doubt their faith in Jesus Christ. When used intentionally as a weapon, it is abusive. Note also the phrase “covertly sows.” This means the gaslighter tries to be sneaky. They don’t want others to catch on to what they are doing. It’s premeditated.

My problem with using terms like gaslighting is that they are sometimes thrown around too casually by people engaging in black-and-white thinking. Some things are all-or-nothing and some have gradations. A woman is either pregnant or she’s not. However, a communication technique might only look like gaslighting and not qualify as abuse.

The so-called gaslighter might have no intentions to manipulate or abuse. What if they are only attempting to describe their own perspective? During communication, both people have a need to be heard. The person who labels others (as a gaslighter, narcissist, or other popular terms) might be the one participating in verbal abuse. It can become a way to avoid responsibility. It can be easy to label someone, thereby casting blame on them and correspondingly away from self.

Instead of using these labels which can be judgmental (calling someone guilty when you are not an unbiased judge), I suggest returning to the basics of communication. Instead of saying “You are gaslighting me,” focus on revealing your experience with something like, “I feel discouraged when you talk to me that way. I believe I am correct but I’m open to being convinced otherwise.” Leave some room that everyone involved can contribute to the problem.

I am not trying to explain away real abuse. One-sided communication does happen. What I’ve been suggesting only works when both people approach conflict resolution in good faith. The challenge is discerning between a plain ignorant person (someone having a bad day or someone who lacks understanding) and an evil person (someone who is being intentionally destructive).

The good news is a little bit of discernment goes a long way if you have good boundaries. Being confident and knowing who God made you to be will protect you from both the naive person and the evil fool. Keep in mind though that sometimes these two qualities, along with some of the best qualities, can all show up in the same person.

You cannot fool God, so don’t make a fool of yourself! You will harvest what you plant. If you follow your selfish desires, you will harvest destruction, but if you follow the Spirit, you will harvest eternal life.
Galatians 6:7-8 CEV

When Joy Feels Elusive And Faith Feels Thin

July 18, 2020 by Matt Pavlik Leave a Comment

Joy can be elusive, especially when you look in the wrong place.

If you’re hungry for strawberries, where do you get them? Strawberries don’t grow on apple trees. So, there’s little point in looking up a tree.

Where does joy come from? It’s a fruit of the Spirit.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
Galatians 5:22-23 NIV

The Gospel is the only true source of joy. Nothing inspires deeper joy than the Spirit revealing the sacrificial work of Jesus Christ in the hearts of the believer.

Joy is otherworldly. It’s spiritual. It can be difficult to grasp. It doesn’t always make sense when viewed from an isolated moment. It becomes elusive when you search for it in the narrow circumstances of your life, without the context of the Gospel.

But joy becomes logical when you look beyond the present moment. It flows from a truth greater than any fact of your current situation. Real joy is rooted in the reality of salvation. That’s the only way you can suffer and still be joyful at the same time.

Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.
James 1:2-3 NIV

Faith Makes Joy Possible

Faith sees beyond the physical to the spiritual reality. Joy is a fruit of the Spirit. And where the Spirit is, there is true freedom. Without the Spirit, joy would be impossible.

Joy results from trials because trials reveal the “too good to be true, even though it is true” reality of God’s kingdom. It is always possible because it’s based on the unchanging truth of God’s promises.

And he said to him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”
Luke 23:43 ESV

No matter what is happening to you today, if you are in Christ, then God has prepared a place for you in heaven. But He does not want you to rush there. He has you alive and present for a reason.

While you’re still here, God has a purpose for you. It’s okay to borrow joy from your heavenly future. In fact, that’s the only way to do it. The Spirit makes the heavenly reality known to you today.

Joy in the Middle of the Story

Joy isn’t just for the end of the story—it’s for the middle, too.

We often think joy will come after the resolution: when the diagnosis is reversed, the relationship is restored, the job is secured. But joy, as a fruit of the Spirit, grows in the soil of the present moment—even when that soil feels dry and cracked.

Joy doesn’t require the absence of sorrow. It coexists with it. It’s not a denial of pain but a defiant hope in the midst of it. That’s why Paul could write from prison about rejoicing always (Philippians 4:4). He wasn’t waiting for release to rejoice—he was already free in Christ.

Joy is not the reward for enduring the trial. It’s the companion that walks with you through it.

Enjoy!

Joy is not a reward for good behavior or a prize for spiritual maturity. It’s a gift of the Spirit, available to you now. You don’t have to manufacture it. You don’t have to fake it. You just have to receive it—by contemplating the wonderful Gospel message: Jesus saves people, not by their work, but by His work alone.

So go ahead—enjoy.
Not because life is easy, but because God is good.
Not because everything makes sense, but because His promises are true.
Not because you feel joyful, but because joy is yours in Christ.

Learn more about finding joy.
Photo by Stridsberg Carl form PxHere
Last updated 2025/07/06

Reforging Shattered Lives: God’s Unstoppable Miracle Of Restoration

April 21, 2019 by Matt Pavlik 2 Comments

God is reforging your life; you are no longer shattered.

You know that gut-wrenching moment in Spider-Man 3 (2007) when Flint Marko’s heartbreak literally shatters his body into grains of sand? You see a man undone—first by the weight of loss, then by a freak accident that turns him into brittle fragments. Yet amid the drifting dunes of his life, something stirs: a flicker of purpose, a reason to live. That cinematic rebirth mirrors how God approaches our own brokenness, gathering each grain with patient strength.

Reforging Hope Amid Shattered Fragments

Life has a way of pulling us apart.

One moment we feel secure in who we are; the next, a vital piece seems missing.
A sudden loss, a betrayal, a diagnosis—hardship fractures our self-image like a mirror dropped on tile.
We can become convinced that we’ve hit rock bottom, only to discover a deeper chasm beneath.

Even when you feel like scattered dust, God’s presence surrounds you. Your true identity in Christ remains intact, even if your self-perception is built on a fun-house mirror. There is always a path forward that leads to who you are in Him.

Reforging Miracles: God’s Unseen Power at Work

Several passages promise divine repair for broken hearts and lives.

Psalm 147:3—He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.
Isaiah 58:12—Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations.
2 Corinthians 5:17—If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come.

These verses serve as anchors when life feels irreparable. They remind us that a divine blacksmith is at the forge, reforging our shattered fragments.

Ephesians 1:19-20 speaks of “the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead…”

Sandman’s form reassembles itself by an unseen force greater than his own.
When you’re broken beyond repair, God has already organized your scattered fragments.
You’re not required to pull yourself together; you’re invited to trust Him as He mends your life.

In moments of weakness, the Holy Spirit holds every shard and then fuses them together with truth. Like a master blacksmith at the forge, He recreates us into a unified, resilient whole:

He straightens and welds our broken frames with His correction,
He heats our broken pieces in the fire of His love,
and He arranges them into His masterpiece.

Reforging Hearts: First Steps Toward Wholeness

Take inventory of your brokenness.
• What areas of your life feel like loose grains of sand or broken shards?
• Where have you tried to reassemble yourself and fallen short?
Name the fragments.
• Sit with your pain—loss, guilt, fear—and speak it aloud or journal it.
• Sketch the scattered lines on paper, giving each shard a label.
Invite God’s re-creation.
• Close your eyes and imagine an unseen hand gathering each particle.
• What new pattern forms? A tower of faith, a living stone of identity in Christ?
Engage your community.
• Share your story with a trusted friend or small group.
• Listen as they remind you of truths you cannot see in your own reflection.

Each step draws you into a rhythm of honest reflection and surrender, where grace reshapes every fragment.

Reforging Faith: Reflection on Embracing the Miracle

In what ways is your life in pieces right now?
How have you tried to hold the grains together on your own?
What might change if you yielded every fragment to God today?
How could your story of reassembly inspire someone else’s hope?

God isn’t waiting for you to be “fixed” before He loves you. His presence makes you whole even in the rawest brokenness. As Romans 6:5 declares, “If we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” Your shattered heart is not the end but the beginning of a masterpiece He’s already weaving.

Want to explore this further?

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Grab a copy of Secure in Christ for more on moving from sand to stone.

Christ is at work in you—watch Him make you whole.

Learn more about God healing brokenness.
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Last updated 20250831.

How To Make Trusting God Easier

May 31, 2020 by Matt Pavlik 6 Comments

Are you trusting God more or less than you were yesterday? If you are trusting Him less than you used to, perhaps something has happened to cause you to give up on God. God promises you are not wasting your time when you seek Him, trust Him, and make your requests known to Him.

Trusting God throughout your day can be challenging because of distractions. Some distractions are positive and some are negative. Either way, consider how much you have increased your trust in God today. The best thing you can accomplish each day is to end it by trusting God a little more.

Strengthening your faith requires an intentional effort to cleanse negative memories with God’s truth. If you want to trust God more, you must apply biblical truth to infected memories. Infected memories cause you to doubt God’s character.

Trust God Because He Knows Everything

In Isaiah 46, God says much about who He is and what He likes to do. God promises He will act. He isn’t a worthless idol. God doesn’t forget about you. He knows your future, so of course, He knows your past. He’s been attending to you since even before you were born.

I have cared for you since you were born. Yes, I carried you before you were born.
Isaiah 46:3 NLT

Trust God Because He Keeps You Safe

But that’s not all. God proclaims that He will care for you and carry you throughout your future.

I will be your God throughout your lifetime—until your hair is white with age. I made you, and I will care for you. I will carry you along and save you.
Isaiah 46:4 NLT

If you put your trust in something other than God, you will be disappointed. But God cares about you enough to rescue you from trouble.

[An idol] can’t even move! And when someone prays to it, there is no answer. It can’t rescue anyone from trouble.
Isaiah 46:7 NLT

God has already rescued you and is more than capable of keeping you safe.

Trust God Because He is in Control

God is in complete control of the past, present, and future. Only God can make such bold statements as these:

Remember the things I have done in the past. For I alone am God! I am God, and there is none like me.Only I can tell you the future before it even happens. Everything I plan will come to pass, for I do whatever I wish.
Isaiah 46:9-10 NLT

God can and will do whatever He wants. For those who are friends of God, this should provide increased comfort and trust. For those who are yet enemies of God, this is likely scary and irritating. I remember the emptiness I felt when I was unable to understand who God is.

Memories Can Help You Trust God

If you are a believer, then you must have some positive memories. At the very least, God has done a work in your life to cause you to cross over from death to life. Can you remember what that felt like? I remember how uplifting and hopeful I felt when I first believed.

Remembering what God has done in your life is a source of spiritual strength. When you recall the ways God has touched your life, it helps you trust Him with current life challenges. When God breaks into your life, that’s God building trust with you. Use it for all it’s worth to make your faith solid.

As you focus on the positive, be equally willing to revisit the negative memories. These significant life events desperately need to be considered in light of the truth you now know. Learn details of how to cleanse hurtful memories so you can trust God more.

God is real. Let’s pray with anticipation of the good things He will do. No matter what is happening around us, God is still good and in control.

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Last Updated 2024/09/22