Christian Concepts

Bringing your Potential to Light

Healing

Heal Your Memories

Heal Your Memories

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Reading time: 3 minutes

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

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

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

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

This is part 2 of Sean’s healing journey.

Sean’s Memories Need Healing

Sean entered into a negative cycle that seriously picked up steam during his high school years. He continued to act out in high school. Once the victim, he now became the bully. When anyone taunted him, he fought back swiftly. He hunted down those who harmed him, including those that he hadn’t spoken to in years.

One day though, Sean started feeling different. After another fight, a girl from his class spoke kindly to him, “You’re so angry. You must be really hurt inside.” He started feeling a twinge of guilt whenever he saw the hurt on his victim’s face. He remembered how sad he felt before he allowed anger to consume him. Sean didn’t understand why he was changing. God was about to draw him into a much-needed healing process.

Sean began to realize how his behavior was hurtful and pointless. What did it accomplish? No matter how many fights he got into, he still felt miserable. He made a commitment to stop mistreating others and himself. At first, this was difficult and he had mixed results. He stopped picking fights but found it more difficult to stop his binge eating.

When Sean was twenty years old, God led him through some specific memories. Sean revisited his experience of losing his bicycle at 7 years old. He felt the pain of loss like he never had before. This was actually the first time he allowed himself the luxury of grieving his loss.

The Truth Heals Sean

Sean realized for the first time that he didn’t deserve his parents’ harsh response to someone stealing his bicycle. His parents didn’t give him the opportunity to correct his ways after his mistake. His life in the past thirteen years would have been very different if his parents could have restored him gently.

God lead Sean to specific scriptures that demonstrated how He offers mercy and grace along with the truth.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

John 1:14 ESV

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

Psalm 103:8 ESV

Sean became involved in a small group at his church and he told them his bicycle story. God led the members of his group to come around Sean and help him see and experience God’s love. They chipped in and purchased a new (adult) bicycle for Sean. Sean used his new bicycle to get to school and work.

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

Sean’s Story Part 1
Sean’s Story Part 3
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3 Steps To Achieve Healthy Grieving

3 Steps To Achieve Healthy Grieving

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Reading time: 4 minutes

Grieving allows the healthy emotional resolution of a disturbing event–especially when the event seems impossible to accept.

All grieving is temporary. It is time-limited. It has a beginning and an end. Yet, it is possible to become stuck in grief. This happens because we are unable or unwilling to face the reality of a difficult event (or multiple events).

When the event seems to be too much for you, how can you become free again? To be stuck in grief is to be stuck in time. Events happen in time. Memories of those events are reminders of what you’ve been through.

1) The Past Helps You Achieve Healthy Grieving

To move forward in grief, you must first move backward in time. A substantial part of the grieving process involves working with your memories. There is a lot you can do (and perhaps need to do) in order to fully process a memory (see additional posts about this at the end of this post). But if your goal is to become unstuck, the first question to ask is: What did the event cost you?

When you attempt you answer this simple question, you have little choice but to re-enter the memory and recognize the true nature of your loss. What changed? How did the event affect your life?

You might not be willing to relive the event, but maybe you are willing to look at how your life changed for the worse because of it? After a negative event, you are never the same again. What did the event cost you?

2) The Present Helps You Achieve Healthy Grieving

After you have a clear picture of what the event cost you way back in the past somewhere, the next step is to see how the cost carries forward in your life. What is the event still costing you today?

This question helps you see how well you’ve managed the cost over time. How has the cost changed? Is it worse, the same, or improved? It can be a shock to realize how much an event from years ago is still influencing you today.

Have you been ignoring the cost or actively managing it? To complete this second step, you need to know the overall impact of the event on your life. What additional opportunities have you lost since the original event?

3) The Future Helps You Achieve Healthy Grieving

If you’ve completed steps 1 and 2, you’ve accomplished a lot. However, you can still be stuck if you haven’t allowed the event to propel you forward in some new, ground-breaking direction.

In step 1, you recognize you’re in a hole. In step 2, you learn your resistance to getting out. Step 3 pulls everything together: you determine to not only get out of the hole but build and climb a ladder that takes you higher than you have ever been. What do you want to do about the event now?

Your grieving and recovery are not fully done until you look beyond your loss to how you can change for the better. For example, if you lose a job you loved, you probably won’t get the job back, but you can focus on what you love even more which could lead to a different but better job. Or, you might even decide to become a job coach to help others with their job losses.

Another example is the loss of a loved one. You can struggle that you will never see the person again. That’s step 1 and 2. Step 3 is figuring out how your loss is changing you and how you want to make a difference because of who you are.

In step 3, you shift your focus from what you can’t do to what you can do. You can’t bring your loved one back, but, because of your loss, you can more fully realize what is most important to you and to God.

God wants you to make it through your grieving, so you can see what else is possible in your life. Grieving is necessary, but it’s not the end. You can grieve your losses, discover the cost, and find a way forward that brings positive change to yourself and others.

Image by kirillslov from Pixabay
Read more about healing memories.
Read more about growing through change as God makes all things new

Worry Less Trust More

Worry Less Trust More

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Reading time: 3 minutes

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.
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All Things New

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Reading time: 2 minutes

A traumatic event is not easily forgotten. As you begin this new year, what is one thing you’d like to forget?

If you’re in a car accident, your car doesn’t fix itself. If your tooth develops a cavity, the decay needs to be removed. When something breaks, you must decide what to do with it. Can it be restored? Is there hope, or are you better off cutting your losses?

If nothing will ever change, then hope will be impossible. Then all that remains is suffering.

God introduces the needed change.

I am creating something new. There it is! Do you see it?

I have put roads in deserts, streams in thirsty lands.

Isaiah 43:19 CEV

Because God is making us anew, hope is inevitable. You can change. You don’t have to remain stuck and hopeless. God is rehabilitating you. God wants you to feel hopeful.

Anyone who belongs to Christ is a new person. The past is forgotten, and everything is new.

2 Corinthians 5:17 CEV

Forget what happened long ago! Don’t think about the past.

Isaiah 43:18 CEV

The more you can leave behind your past, the better you will be. “Leave behind” is a loaded phrase. It takes significant emotional work to leave behind difficult experiences (memories).

Therefore, to move forward, you first need to move backward. If your carpet is dirty and worn, you need to rip it out before you can install new carpet.

Grieving is the work of leaving behind. Once that raggedy carpet is gone, you can forget about it. But you don’t want to completely forget about it, otherwise, you’ll be more likely to repeat an accident (like spilling grape juice).

Grieving allows you to remember the lesson, but forget about the discomfort and shame. Forget about it. Don’t worry about it. You are free. Once you are free, you are open to all that God has for you.

What is one new thing you want God to do in your life this year?

How To Know When To Say No

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Reading time: 3 minutes

You might be more of a people pleaser than you realize. When you are presented with a decision, how often do you discount your opinion with something like, “I can go either way” or “It doesn’t matter to me; you pick”? Or, maybe you disregard your opinion with a “Yes” without considering what you want.

Certainly, there will be times when you are indifferent. Even during these times, it’s nearly always a good idea to know what you want, even if you give up what you want for someone else.

A quick response of indifference might involve the least amount of effort, but it can cost you significantly more later on. Instead, what if you invested the time to know what you want?

The less you know yourself, the harder it is to give a clear, direct answer to even a simple question. When you know yourself well, your answer will be second nature.

You might be wondering, “How do I get to know myself?” There are two main approaches to strengthening your self-image. You can remain reactive or go proactive.

  1. In reactive mode, you stumble through life and only give consideration to your ways when it becomes absolutely required of you (if ever).
  2. In proactive mode, you consider your ways every chance you get. You explore your past and use what you learn to better your future. You take advantage of the fact that God gives you truth about life, including details about who you are.

A step in-between the two modes is trial and error. You essentially try something blindly. Then perhaps as an afterthought, you evaluate the outcome. It’s not completely reactive or proactive.

The superior approach is having an awareness of who you are. Then during any given moment, you can proactively choose how to act based on what you know about yourself. God wants you to live a self-examined life (see Haggai 1).

Essential to every approach is what you do with your experiences. God gives you a process to discover your identity (who you are as defined by God). The goal is to increase the awareness of your identity so that decisions become easier over time.

If you have trouble people-pleasing or making good decisions, that’s usually because you don’t know yourself well enough. Learning who you are can occur “on accident,” but knowing yourself will take much longer that way.

Instead, take the time to evaluate your experiences and weed out the lies that are growing in the garden of your self-image. With the clutter of lies cleared away, you’ll know more clearly whether you want to say yes or no.

For example: if you don’t know who you are very well, then you might end up with an over-booked schedule. You’ll wonder why you are tired and irritable. If you continue to ignore your God-given identity, you’ll assume you are doing what God wants you to be doing because you are serving others.

In contrast, with healthy boundaries that come from a healthy identity, you’ll be confident about where to draw the line. You can say yes to some activities and no to others without feeling guilty or overwhelmed.

Some things God requires of you. You should feel motivated to do right and not wrong. But actually, most things are up to you. God loves a cheerful giver (2 Corinthians 9:7). You can decide to go for a walk or stay home. You can decide to visit a friend or be by yourself. For these decisions, you must trust that God gives you enough intelligence to choose.

You can know what to choose by determining what level of self-care you need at any given moment. Then weigh that against the needs of others around you.

You might be surprised at your preferences when you discover them, but they are never a surprise to God. God knows what you will choose before you choose it. Trust that God gave you a built-in preference system–that’s your identity.

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The Best Way To Receive Love

The Best Way To Receive Love

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Reading time: 4 minutes

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.

Read more about God’s love for you.
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