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Identity in Christ

Your Identity Solves Even Your Most Difficult Problems

Your Identity Solves Even Your Most Difficult Problems

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In today’s world, even Christians struggle with understanding who they are. We live in an era where a lack of identity has reached epidemic proportions because people search for meaning in every corner of the world while excluding their Christian origins.

The truth is that your identity is God’s greatest gift, but it only becomes a “game-changer” when it is opened and explored. Your identity is the master key—it solves even your most difficult problems because it simplifies every choice you make. When you know who you are, you finally know what you are supposed to do.

The Simplicity of Identity

Identity isn’t a complex puzzle you have to build; it is a design you have to discover. The path to becoming who God made you to be is easier to follow when you realize that identity is not a moving target. It’s a fixed beacon that guides you into finding the unique value you bring to the Kingdom.

God doesn’t make duplicates. He crafts each individual for a specific purpose. When you understand your unique personality and spiritual DNA, the “noise” of the world gets quieter. You stop trying to be a “second-rate version of someone else” and start being a “first-rate version of yourself.”

Solving Your Most Difficult Problems

We often think our “difficult problems” are external. We wonder: Who am I supposed to marry? What should I major in? What should I do with my life? However, these aren’t just logistical questions; they are identity questions.

  • Career Decisions: Choosing a major or a job isn’t about finding the highest salary; it’s about finding the environment where your God-given talents can flourish.
  • Relationship Choices: You can’t find the “right” person until you are the “real” you. Identity allows you to choose a partner who complements your mission rather than someone who just fills a void.

Navigating the Struggle

Even when we pursue our true identities, we will face resistance. You might feel “stuck” or overwhelmed by the pressure of these big decisions. In these moments, it is important to remember that emotions are neutral.

Negative emotions like fear or anxiety are not necessarily signs of failure or sin; they are often indicators. Much like a check-engine light in a car, these feelings tell us that our sense of identity is being challenged. Instead of feeling guilty for being anxious about the future, use those feelings to identify the “real struggle” underneath the surface. Are you afraid because you’ve forgotten whose you are?

Forgetting Who You Aren’t

To move forward, you must learn to “forget who you aren’t.” We often carry around false identities—labels given to us by past failures, old critics, or even our own coping mechanisms.

The best way to separate the “false you” from the “true you” is to look back with purpose. When you remember your past for a healthy present, you aren’t dwelling on old wounds. Instead, you are looking for themes. By noticing what made you exceptionally happy, sad, or angry as a child, you can see the consistency of your personality over time. These themes act as a compass, pointing you toward the specific purpose God has for your life.

Explore, Expand, and Exercise

Your identity is everything (beyond God Himself). If you understand who you are, then you’ll have purpose and you’ll know how to live your life. It is time to stop looking for meaning in the world and start exploring the craftsmanship of the Creator.

To provide a clear guide for Christians to grasp the full significance of their identities, I wrote Confident Identity: Christian Strategies to Forget Who You Aren’t and Discover Who You Really Are.

“Confident Identity is a conversation-starter, a thought-generator, and a game-changer,” says one Licensed Professional Counselor. “Days after reading its final pages, I found myself deliberately and intentionally contemplating my sense of purpose. Combining Scripture, clinical theories, and practical tools, Matt has thoughtfully crafted a beautiful resource filled with an abundance of insightful questions, constructive ideas, easy-to-read charts, and meaningful activities and tests which allow an individual to thoroughly explore, expand, and exercise their identity.”

As a Christian counselor, I have seen how these spiritual truths and unique personality insights enlighten readers to their true design. Stop living as a duplicate and start discovering the specific purpose God has for you.

If you are interested in Confident Identity, you can find publishing and availability details here..

Discover Your Shared Mission in Marriage

Discover Your Shared Mission In Marriage

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The Legacy of a Healed Marriage: Beyond the Two of You

Is your marriage stuck in ‘maintenance mode’? Discover how to move beyond just solving problems to finding a shared mission that creates a lasting legacy.

Most couples spend their early years just trying to keep their heads above water. You’re navigating the “Storming” stage—learning how to resolve conflict, figuring out who does the dishes, and trying to understand why your spouse reacts so strongly to things that seem minor to you. But there comes a point where the soil of your marriage becomes stable. You’ve done the work to heal past wounds, you’ve learned to “breathe” mid-argument, and you finally feel like a cohesive team.

The question then becomes: Now what?

Marriage is God joining together a man and a woman to contribute distinct abilities toward the completion of a fruitful mission greater than either could accomplish alone. If you stay focused only on your own “next meal”—only solving the immediate problems of your household—you may never realize the full potential of why God put you together in the first place.

Moving from Maintenance to Mission

In my book, Marriage from Roots to Fruits, I describe the “Performing” stage of a relationship. This is where the “Us” is no longer just a project to be fixed, but a powerhouse to be used.

Many couples get stuck in “maintenance mode.” They believe that as long as they aren’t fighting and the bills are paid, they are succeeding. But God’s design for growth isn’t just about the absence of conflict; it’s about the presence of fruit. Abundant fruit begins with good soil, but the purpose of that fruit is to provide nourishment to the world around you.

To find your shared mission, you have to look beyond the “Two of Us.” You have to ask: What has God uniquely equipped this specific team to do?

1. Identify Your Combined “Gender Strengths”

God designed men and women with distinct strengths that significantly benefit one another. In a marriage team, specialization is a gift. When you “play your position” well, you aren’t just surviving; you’re becoming efficient.

Take an inventory of your combined talents. Perhaps one of you is exceptionally gifted at hospitality and the other at deep, empathetic listening. Together, your “mission” might be opening your home to those who are grieving. Or maybe one is a visionary and the other is a meticulous planner. Your mission could be launching a local ministry or business that serves a specific need in your community. Your mission always lies at the intersection of your combined strengths.

2. Look at Your Redemptive History

God doesn’t waste anything—not even your past pain. Often, your shared mission is birthed out of the very things God has healed in your marriage.

If you struggled through a season of infertility and found God’s peace, your mission might involve supporting other couples in that same “winter”. If you’ve navigated the complexities of blending a family or overcoming a specific addiction, those healed wounds become a “forest of encouragement” for others to hike through. (For more on how memories are transformed, see my post on the signs of a healthy emotional life). Your history is the “good seed” God has planted; the fruit it produces is meant to be shared.

3. Seek the “Greater Completion”

A mission is “greater than can be accomplished apart”. This means your mission should feel a little bit impossible if you were doing it alone. It should require the “Us” to function as one unit—one in body, soul, and spirit.

When a couple pursues a mission, they encompass both kinds of intimacy: “face-to-face” (focusing only on each other) and “side-by-side” (focusing on a goal). The blending of the two actually protects the marriage. When you are working together toward something meaningful, the small, petty conflicts that used to derail you tend to lose their power. You’re both too busy building something valuable to argue over the “specks” in each other’s eyes.

The Legacy of the “Performing Us”

The final stage of a healthy marriage is not just staying together until death; it’s leaving a legacy. This doesn’t just mean your children—though modeling a healthy, mission-minded marriage is the greatest gift you can give them. It means that the world is different because your marriage existed.

You are running a race where the only competition is yourself, and God is the one who empowers the team to succeed. He is the author and perfecter of your faith, and He has a plan to prosper your marriage and give you a future full of hope.

Questions to Discover Your Mission:

  • What shared passion makes us both “feel alive” when we talk about it? What strengths do we have that work well together?
  • What specific pain has God healed in our marriage that we could help others navigate?
  • If we had unlimited time and resources to serve God’s Kingdom together, what is the first thing we would do?

Don’t be content with just “not fighting.” Dare to dream with your partner about all that is possible. When you find your mission, you’ll find that your marriage doesn’t just feel more stable—it feels more significant.

Counseling isn’t just for healing wounds, you can also seek the help of a therapist to find a mission that fits with your abilities. Or maybe you want to improve the synergy of working together?

Looking up through a bamboo forest toward a clear sky, symbolizing finding clarity and perspective in marriage conflict.

Pain Clouds Perspective In Marriage

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Conflict in marriage isn’t always about the facts. Discover how “investments” and past pain cloud your perspective and how to find clarity through validation.

If five people witness a car accident, you will likely get five different eyewitness reports. If three people interpret a Bible verse, they will often have three different opinions of its meaning. In a marriage, a husband and a wife can recall the same event and describe two completely different realities.

Why are there so many different viewpoints? The answer lies in our “investment.” We don’t just see facts; we interpret life through the lens of our convictions, worldviews, and past traumas. To begin understanding perspectives in marriage, we must look at the hidden motivations that drive our reactions.

The Investment: Why We Care So Much

Most of the time, people interpret life based on how life has shaped them. A person who was bitten by a dog as a child might invest significant energy into avoiding dogs. A parent whose child was injured by a faulty car seat might suddenly become obsessed with vehicle safety ratings. However, these situations highlight an unfinished healing process.

In a marriage, these investments often show up as trauma reactions. We care most about what has caused us extreme pain or extreme happiness. One way to find out what someone truly believes is to witness them in a heated argument. The more agitated we become, the more likely we are to bypass our filters and speak our reactionary “raw truth.” The words may be exaggerated, but the underlying motivation is revealed.

Biblical Tensions in Understanding Perspectives in Marriage

When we look to the Bible to resolve these differing viewpoints, we often find verses that seem to pull us in two different directions. How we interpret these verses depends heavily on our perspective.

Interpretation 1: Putting Others First

Many point to Philippians 2:3: “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves.” From this perspective, understanding your spouse means laying down your own viewpoint entirely. You might feel that “loving well” requires you to ignore your own pain to accommodate your spouse.

Interpretation 2: Loving Your Neighbor as Yourself

In contrast, Mark 12:31 tells us to “Love your neighbor as yourself.” This perspective suggests a vital balance. You cannot truly love or validate someone else if you have not first learned how to love and validate yourself.

While humility is essential, I believe the second interpretation is the foundation for healthy communication. If you don’t validate your own perspective first, your “selflessness” will eventually turn into resentment. You must learn to “breathe” before you can help your spouse catch their breath.

Seeing and Validating Your Own Perspective

The key to being able to see and validate another person’s perspective starts with seeing and validating yours. Sometimes the need to be right or to be validated is overwhelming. It can feel as essential as breathing.

When you are triggered by a past trauma, your brain enters survival mode. In this state, you aren’t looking for a solution; you are looking for safety. However, once you acknowledge your own motivation such as—“I am acting this way because I am afraid of being controlled”—you are able to breathe again. Once you can breathe, you gain the emotional capacity to understand your spouse’s motivations without feeling threatened.

Mastering Understanding Perspectives in Marriage

If you are struggling to communicate, the first step is to gain understanding—and that understanding must begin with yourself. Before you can accurately interpret your spouse’s actions, you must interpret your own heart.

Start by focusing on yourself with questions like these:

  • Why does this specific issue cause me so much pain?
  • What part of my past is influencing my current reaction right now?
  • Am I seeking perceptive trust or am I stuck in a defensive posture?

Once you have identified your own “investment” and allowed yourself to breathe, you can then flip those questions toward your spouse. Instead of judging their behavior, try to discern their motivation: What is causing them pain here? How might their past be influencing this moment? Are they just trying to feel safe?

When you understand the investment, you are well on your way to negotiating a solution. Instead of judging the “wrong” perspective, you can use discernment to improve the relationship. This shift moves the conversation from “Who is right?” to “How can we both feel safe and heard?”

By ensuring your empathy is healthy, you can keep one foot planted in your reality while reaching out to understand theirs. This is the path to a marriage that doesn’t just survive conflict but grows through it.

The 5-Minute Perspective Check

A tool for finding your “air” mid-argument.

1. Identify the Physical Sensation: Where am I feeling tension? (Tight chest, clenched jaw?) This is your “dashboard” telling you that you’ve lost your air.
2. Validate the Feeling: Tell yourself, “It makes sense that I feel [scared/angry] right now because I value [security/respect].”
3. Separate History from the Present: Is my reaction 10% about what my spouse just said and 90% about a past wound?
4. Pivot to Curiosity: Once you feel your heart rate slow, ask one curiosity-based question: “Can you help me understand what is making this so important to you right now?“

Matt created image using Gemini
Last updated 20260220

Biblical discernment dashboard showing feelings as information.

Why Your Feelings Are Important

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Learn how to treat your feelings as vital data points and partner them with Biblical truth to make healthier, more discerning life decisions.

Your emotions are part of the complete package God provided. You have a body with five senses, you have thoughts, and you have feelings. None of these exist in a vacuum; they are designed to work together to help you navigate a complex world.

There isn’t anything wrong with your feelings. However, problems arise when we either ignore them entirely or interpret them as absolute commands. To live a discerning life, we must learn to see feelings as Information, not Instruction.

Feelings as Internal Senses

Your feelings provide information just like your physical senses. If something smells bad, you use that information to help you make a decision. If you smell smoke, your “smell data” suggests there might be a fire.

The trouble starts if you bias the information to favor the decision you want to make. If you want to stay in a warm house despite the smoke, you might try to convince yourself the smell isn’t objective. Conversely, if you overly value a single sense, you miss out on the full reality. Some foods smell bad but are actually good for you. Some foods have a strange texture but taste wonderful. If you prioritize texture above all else, your “data” is incomplete.

Our emotions work the same way. They are like a dashboard in a car—the “Check Engine” light isn’t the problem; it’s simply a report on the state of the engine. We must understand that emotions are never sinful, while also realizing they are only one part of the dashboard.

The Brownie Bias: Decoding Your History

When I was a child, I had some bad food experiences with brownies and roasted pumpkin seeds on separate occasions. To this day, I sometimes feel queasy before I eat these foods.

My feelings are giving me “data”: Danger! This made us sick before! But unless all brownies in the world are poisoned, my feeling is biased. It’s a “false positive” based on past pain. If I let that feeling be my only instructor, I miss out on a perfectly good dessert.

We all have “Brownie Biases” in our relationships and spiritual lives. A past hurt might make you feel “queasy” about trusting a new friend or a new church. In those moments, you have to ask a difficult question: Should these feelings be trusted or discounted? Is the feeling a valid warning, or is it just an old memory ringing an alarm bell?

Fact vs. Fiction: The Art of Discernment

God made your feelings, so they must be important. They are meant to work in partnership with your other senses and your intellect. Then, through your ability to discern fact from fiction, you can correctly interpret all the input you’ve gathered to make a godly decision.

Life becomes interesting when strong feelings come into conflict with the truth. This is the exact tension Adam and Eve faced in Genesis 3. Eve felt the fruit was desirable; she saw it was pleasant. Her sensory data was screaming “Yes!” but God’s word had said “No.”

Deception often thrives in the gap between what we feel and what is true. When these two are in conflict, we have to decide which one to prioritize. Sometimes, we must lean on the truth to lead our feelings; other times, a “negative” feeling is actually God’s way of pointing us toward a truth we are trying to ignore. In fact, there are 2 helpful no-guilt negative emotions that are specifically designed to lead us back to a right path.

Reflection and Application

Your emotions aren’t an obstacle to a spiritual life; they can actually be a bridge to a deeper understanding of yourself and God. But to use that bridge, you must be willing to look at them objectively.

As you go through this week, reflect on the “data” your heart is sending you:

  • Check the Bias: Have you ever been absolutely sure of something because of a “gut feeling,” only to find out you were wrong? What was the bias behind that feeling?
  • Consult the Dashboard: Are you treating your feelings as Information (something to be weighed) or Instruction (something that must be obeyed)?
  • Bridge or Obstacle: In your current situation, is your emotion an obstacle or a bridge to the truth?

God wants the “complete package” of who you are—body, mind, and spirit—to be aligned with His truth. Don’t be afraid to consider all the data God has provided.

Last updated 20260215
Image created using Gemini

Important Not Urgent: How Jesus Prioritizes

Important Not Urgent: How Jesus Prioritizes

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In a world where every notification and obligation rings important like a five-alarm fire, stress and burnout come not only from doing too much, but from doing the wrong things. That’s why the Urgent-Important Grid—also known as the Eisenhower Matrix—can be a powerful tool for Christians seeking peace, clarity, and purpose.

This simple four-quadrant system helps sort tasks based on urgency and importance, clarifying what truly needs our attention and what doesn’t. But more than productivity, the grid serves as a guide for spiritual boundaries and stewardship of time, helping us walk more wisely in a world that pulls us in every direction.

Quadrant 1: Urgent and Important – Do It Now

These are the tasks that keep life running—crises, deadlines, and responsibilities we can’t avoid. Work obligations, caring for children, attending to health issues—they’re urgent because delay carries real consequences. And they’re important because they serve foundational roles in our lives.

But living in this quadrant long-term is exhausting. It’s survival mode. When every day feels like triage, it’s a signal that we need to spend more time in Quadrant 2, cultivating the things that prevent emergencies before they arise.

Quadrant 2: Not Urgent and Important – Schedule It

This is the “abundant life” Jesus speaks about—planning, prayer, relationship-building, learning, and investing in long-term goals. Tasks in Q2 rarely demand our attention with urgency, yet they form the deep roots of spiritual, emotional, and relational health.

For believers, this quadrant is where we meditate on Scripture, disciple others, reflect, and grow. It’s the place of calling rather than coping. Spending time here leads to greater peace and clarity, and keeps us from drifting into stress-inducing chaos.

So far, this all sounds like serious work, but what is important but not urgent is also found in all recreation. What reduces stress? What is fun? Playful? Restful? Think of the Sabbath Rest.

Quadrant 3: Urgent and Not Important – Discern: Do or Decline

This is where confusion often creeps in. Tasks in Q3 feel urgent, but they aren’t truly aligned with your purpose. They’re often someone else’s priorities masquerading as emergencies—interruptions, emails, favors, even good things that aren’t your things.

The key here isn’t impulsive delegation but wise discernment. We must ask hard questions: Is this truly mine to handle? Am I responding out of guilt, fear, or a need to please? Will this steal time from something more meaningful?

Sometimes, we may decide to do the task quickly and move on. But often, we’re called to decline respectfully or direct the request elsewhere. This isn’t selfish—it’s stewardship.

Jesus models this beautifully. He didn’t meet every demand or heal every person. He was available but not constantly accessible. He knew when to engage, when to withdraw, and when to say “not now.” God has an intentional plan. He always sticks to His plan. Sometimes this means some potentially good tasks go undone, but only because something more important gets done.

Quadrant 3 is often where boundaries break down and stress multiplies. It’s the testing ground for our spiritual resolve—will we walk wisely or reactively?

That’s why the words of Ephesians 5:15–16 are especially relevant here: “Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.” The apostle Paul calls us to intentional living—not just urgency-driven motion.

Quadrant 4: Not Urgent and Not Important – Eliminate or Limit

Scrolling, bingeing, endlessly clicking. This quadrant isn’t all bad, but it’s rarely fruitful. These are the habits that soothe but don’t satisfy.

For Christians, this is the realm of distraction. It’s not usually sinful rest, but it can become escapism without purpose. Q4 is a warning to reset—to choose solitude, rest, and presence over noise. What will really nourish your spirit? Find something healthier to do that fits in Q2.

Final Thoughts

Time management is not just tactical—it’s theological. Each quadrant reflects our values, boundaries, and convictions. The Urgent-Important Grid helps us live less reactively and more redemptively. In using it well, we step into a rhythm that reflects the life of Christ: focused, free, and deeply present.

Learn more about play and rest.
More details about the Eisenhower Matrix.
Image created by Matt Pavlik using Co-Pilot AI.

Unshakable Hope In Times Of Despair

Unshakable Hope In Times Of Despair

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In a world filled with uncertainty, discouragement can feel overwhelming. But Christian hope isn’t wishful thinking—it’s a confident trust in God’s eternal promises. Here’s how to shift your focus from temporary pain to lasting purpose.

When you feel discouraged, where do you turn? Hoping in worldly riches is empty. Positive thinking won’t last long unless it’s rooted in the reality that comes from God. I want to hope in something real. That’s what truly inspired me when I first became a Christian.

Hope That Transforms Meaninglessness Into Purpose

Before I knew Christ, life felt like a chaotic stream of disconnected events. I couldn’t see any overarching meaning. But when I became a Christian, my whole understanding of life crossed over from emptiness to a meaningful, ordered plan. I realized that God was not only real—He was intentional. He had a purpose for me, and for every moment I live.

Even now, I sometimes lose sight of that order. When bad things happen, life doesn’t make much sense. But this doesn’t change the ultimate truth: God is real, and His eternal plan is still unfolding. Our circumstances may feel random, but God is never random. He is always working, even when we can’t see it.

Hope That Endures When Everything Else Fails

When all seems hopeless, there is still hope for a believer in Jesus Christ. You might have had the worst “luck” or just received devastating news. You might feel like you’ve lost everything. But if you’re breathing—if you’re alive—then God still has a purpose for you being here.

You may be walking through a season where nothing feels meaningful. You may be surrounded by silence, pain, or confusion. But even in that silence, God is speaking. Even in that pain, God is present. Even in that confusion, God is guiding.

Hope doesn’t mean pretending everything is fine. It means trusting that God is still writing your story.

Hope That Shifts Our Eyes to Eternity

The Apostle Paul reminds us:

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

2 Corinthians 4:16-18 NIV

This passage invites us to shift our gaze. Earthly troubles are real, but they are not ultimate. The pain we feel now is temporary. The glory God is preparing for us is eternal. When we fix our eyes on what is unseen—on Christ, on heaven, on the promises of God—we begin to live with a hope that cannot be shaken.

Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe.

Hebrews 12:28 ESV

Hope That Grows Through Pruning

I encourage you to ponder what your life might look like if you hold onto God and move in the direction He is leaving open to you. Are doors closing? That may be God pruning you—not to punish, but to redirect. Pruning is painful, but it’s also purposeful. It clears space for new growth.

God doesn’t want you to give up. He wants you to try something new—something you haven’t tried yet. With God, there are infinite possibilities. Closed doors are not the end; they are invitations to explore new paths.

Hope That Pursues the Dream God Planted in You

What dream is in your heart? What desire has God placed within you that still burns, even when everything else feels cold?

Don’t let discouragement extinguish that flame. Instead, ask God to breathe on it. Ask Him to show you new ways to pursue your calling. Maybe the path you imagined is blocked—but the destination is still possible. God may be leading you through a different route, one that requires deeper trust and greater surrender.

I’d love to hear how God is stirring hope in your heart. Leave a comment or contact me here so I can pray with you and encourage your journey toward eternal purpose.

Learn more about hopeful pruning.
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Last updated 20251026

Obedience Is Impossible Without The Spirit

Obedience Is Impossible Without The Spirit

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Christ in Me: Rescuing Holiness from Despair and Self-Effort

Is Obedience a Weight or a Gift?

Many Christians live under a quiet weight: the sense that God is perpetually disappointed in them. Through obedience, we long to please Him, yet feel perpetually behind. Is obedience a burden we carry alone—or the fruit of God’s indwelling gift? Can we truly please God with our obedience, or are we destined to fall short and suffer His displeasure?

Is Obedience Possible?

In Impossible Christianity, Kevin DeYoung offers a pastoral correction to the burden of “never good enough.” He teaches that pleasing God through obedience is possible. We don’t have to live with a perpetual sense of not doing enough every day. His aim is to lift the fog of guilt and restore confidence in God’s grace and commands.

Obedience Flows From Union, Not Effort

But for those of us who’ve walked through seasons of intense loss, the message can feel incomplete. For me, focusing on obedience, without considering the Spirit and faith, risks sounding like a return to effort-based righteousness. When obedience is framed as “possible,” it can subtly imply that we can meet God’s standard—when in reality, many of us are already exhausted from trying. The ache isn’t from rebellion; it’s from longing to please God and feeling like we never quite do.

It’s not that we reject holiness. It’s that we know—deep in our bones—that holiness is impossible apart from union. Not union as a doctrine, but union as a lived reality:

I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Galatians 2:20, ESV

Obedience is not the engine of holiness—it’s the fruit. The engine is union. Christ in us is not merely the goal of obedience; He is its source.

Faith, Not Performance

DeYoung wants to rescue obedience from despair. This is helpful, but I also want to rescue obedience from self-effort. We must be clear: we can only please God by faith. Faith is complete trust in God and no trust in ourselves for spiritual life. God is the source of life and faith. We cannot think for a moment that we produce any of it—not naturally, not independently, not even partially.

Yet, faith is not passive resignation—it’s active participation in the life of Christ. It’s not effort in our strength, but activity because of His. We definitely need to grow in holiness. But our actions must be powered by Christ, not self. Any obedience that originates in our own strength is not obedience at all—it’s performance.

God empowers us and we apply His work to our lives. The sense of cooperative effort driven by God is highlighted by Paul:

Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

Philippians 2:12–13, ESV

The Spirit is Our Source of Life

The Christian life isn’t about trying harder to be good. It’s about surrendering deeper to the One who is good. Consider Ezekiel 36 which says it plainly:

And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

Ezekiel 36:26–27 ESV

That’s not motivational coaching. That’s divine indwelling. We must come to the realization, the conviction, that we “can’t accomplish anything apart from Christ.” We must simultaneously despair because of our lack of inherent moral goodness, while knowing that God is pleased with us as He empowers us with faith.

Our only hope is not better performance. It’s the Holy Spirit constantly showing us the way to live rightly. Not just convicting us, but empowering us. Not just guiding us, but living through us.

The Mirror of Scripture Reflects Hope

We must never lose sight of the goal: to be holy as God is holy. The standard is perfect, and it is good. Scripture is our mirror—not to shame us, but to show us where we are yet unfinished. We look into that mirror not to despair, but to surrender. It is through the lamenting of our weakness, and the honest naming of our sinfulness, that God’s power rests on us. We go forth not because we’ve measured up, but because His mercy and grace carry us.

But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.

2 Corinthians 4:7, ESV

A Prayer of Surrender

This is not a call to try harder. It’s a call to surrender deeper. Let this prayer be your posture—not of striving, but of abiding.

Lord,
You are holy, and Your standard is good.
We confess that we fall short—not just in action, but in affection, in trust, in surrender.
But You have not left us to strive alone.
You have given us a new heart, and your life-giving Spirit.
Christ in us—the hope of glory.
Teach us to walk not by effort, but by union.
Not by fear, but by grace.
Let Your power rest on our weakness,
and let our obedience be the fruit of Your indwelling life.
Amen.

If you feel weary from striving, take heart: obedience is not a test of your worth—it’s the evidence of His life in you. Rest in Christ. Walk by the Spirit. And let your obedience be worship, not weight.

An Invitation to Rest

If this message resonates with you, consider sharing it with someone who feels weary. Holiness is not a solo pursuit—it’s a Spirit-led journey we walk together.

Learn more about love, control, and obedience.
Image generated by Matt using Copilot AI.

Restoration After Wreckage

Restoration After Wreckage

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God doesn’t discard the broken—He restores them. Discover how grief enables restoration and opens the door to healing, hope, and renewal.

When trauma strikes and you are feeling raw, remember how God works: Restoration After Wreckage. R.A.W. isn’t just a process. It’s a posture of honesty before God, where grief makes room for healing.

When a tree is struck by lightning, it doesn’t heal overnight. When a wound festers, it needs cleansing before it can close. When something breaks, we face a choice: Can it be restored? Is there hope? Or is it time to let go?

If nothing will ever change, then hope becomes impossible. And when hope disappears, suffering becomes perpetual. Without the possibility of renewal, we begin to believe that pain is permanent and healing is out of reach.

Restoration is not Repurposing

We can let go of an old appliance, sending it to be recycled—ground down into its basic elements. It may become something new, but it will never be what it was. Human bodies are like appliances. They return to the earth. But the human spirit is different. It cannot be recycled. God does not reduce it to parts to make something unrelated. That would destroy His masterpiece.

To revive a person, God doesn’t just repurpose her—He restores her. He upgrades her into a new creation, not by grinding her down, but by breathing life into what was broken.

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 perpetual. You can change. You don’t have to remain stuck. God is not just patching you up—He’s rehabilitating you. He wants you to feel hopeful again. He wants you to know that your story isn’t over, and your pain isn’t wasted.

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

2 Corinthians 5:17 CEV

Restoration Honors the Past

The more you can leave behind your past, the better you will be. But “Leave behind” is often misunderstood. The past is your history—it’s part of you now. Erasing it is impossible and ignoring it is foolish. It must be redeemed.

Redemption requires significantly more emotional work than avoidance. It’s sacred work. It’s not about forgetting—it’s about releasing what didn’t go as you hoped and embracing what God is teaching you through it.

To move forward, you must first honor what’s behind. This can feel like two steps backward before three steps forward. It may feel counterintuitive, but healing often begins by revisiting the places we’ve tried to avoid. God meets us there—not to shame us, but to restore us.

Gardening is tough to do well. If you are like me, it’s easy to neglect controlling the weeds, diseases, and bugs. But this means some good plants die prematurely. When they die, they must be removed, so there is room to try again. Clearing space is painful, but it’s also hopeful. It means you’re preparing for something new to grow.

Grieving Enables Restoration

Grieving is the work of making space for new life. It’s not a detour—it’s the path forward.

You don’t dispose of the lessons. You learn from them.
You don’t forget what happened. You disinfect the shame and the fear.
You don’t condemn yourself. You embrace the grace.
You don’t live in despair. You live with hope everlasting.
You don’t stay stuck. You step into freedom.

Grieving allows you to carry wisdom without carrying weight. You can let go of what you lost because God is making you new. He has set you free by His mercy and grace. And once you’re free, you’re open to all that God has for you.

After grieving, you can forget the past—not by erasing it, but by releasing its power over you.

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

Isaiah 43:18 CEV

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

What events has God brought you through?

What wisdom did you gain from what you’ve been through?

What weight can you now let go, so you can move on?

Learn more about healthy grieving.
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Last updated 20251012

Why Two Identities Struggle to Resolve Conflict

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In my previous post, How Two Identities Become One, I compared relationships to roads. Roads are helpful but they require significant effort to build and maintain. Potholes and dead ends threaten to prevent you from arriving at your destination: connection and closeness.

On the road, potholes represent the fear of intimacy. Destructive conflict is a result of the inability to tolerate intimacy. And what is intimacy, really? Intimacy is nothing else but reality: the way things really are — flaws and all.

How much do you want to know the way things really are? God knows you perfectly. Do you want to know others and yourself perfectly? Reality is scary sometimes. Being authentic requires dropping your guard. Are connection and closeness worth the risk?

If the risk is too great, you can opt for denial and attempt to maintain the status quo (avoid conflict). If you want true intimacy, you can accept the condition of the road and plan a road construction project (embrace conflict).

Denial Makes for a Long, Bumpy Ride

Denial is like driving without your lights on at night. You can’t see the road. But sometimes you don’t want to see.

If you came face-to-face with the brokenness of your fiance and you realized your mate-to-be can’t meet your deepest longings, would you still want to get married? What if I told you the purpose of marriage isn’t to meet your deepest longings? God is merciful here in that de-emphasizing some of your potential mate’s faults allows you to appreciate their positive qualities and pursue marriage.

However, a flat-out denial of your or your mate’s immaturity will weaken your marriage in the long run. You can use denial to obscure a painful reality. Denial helps you cope with the disappointment of discovering flaws only by keeping alive a false hope.

Conflict will come, however, when you realize your mate isn’t capable of what you hope for the most. If you feel entitled, as in your mate owes you, then you’ll probably pick a fight. Fighting allows you to keep the hope alive that your mate can meet your needs. Else, why bother to fight if the situation is hopeless?

When you can’t accept reality one option is to blame your partner for the condition of the road. Conflict becomes a perpetual attempt to avoid facing the death of hope. You reason:

If I try again a different way, even if I create bad conflict, I keep hope alive. They could meet my need if they wanted.

You remain in denial that the other person can’t or won’t fix their road.

Acceptance Allows Detours of Opportunity

In this context, a fear of intimacy is a fear of unfulfillment.

I’ve been hoping all my life to finally make a connection and experience that I’m loved, needed, and wanted. I can’t handle not experiencing this with my mate.

Sometimes there is no fix. Or, at least, no immediate fix. The best solution, healthy grief, allows for the acceptance of true intimacy.

What I want isn’t going to happen. That really sucks! But I’ll be okay.

Putting aside your denial and moving toward acceptance is a tough, but mature, move. It puts a roadblock in the path of your hopes.

Yet, the blocking of one path allows you to see other paths you couldn’t see until now. That “I’ll be okay” can transform future conflict from bad to good. You’re no longer an unreasonable negotiator. You’re emotionally able to consider alternative solutions.

Wait. You mean there’s more than one way for me to experience peace and fulfillment?

Now you’re ready to see your partner in a more realistic light. A mature person wants to see reality more than they want instant fulfillment. Ironically, once this happens, a deeper fulfillment is possible. You’re no longer held hostage because you’re believing there’s only one solution to your pain problem.

Intimacy which results in seeing the limits of the relationship doesn’t have to lead down a path to a dead end. You can see the potential and put up a road construction sign and begin work to fill the potholes and expand the road in the direction God provides:

  • You can start pursuing self-intimacy (knowing yourself), instead of focusing so much on changing your partner.
  • You can feel good about yourself, even if your relationship is limited.
  • You can accept yourself and the needs you have, even if they aren’t currently being met how you want.
  • You have more reason to negotiate because you have more acceptable outcomes.
  • You move beyond destructive conflict because you accept true intimacy.
  • Acceptance allows you to appreciate your mate for who they are, not who you want them to be.

After you’re able to manage your fear of intimacy, you’re ready to resolve conflict. Next week, I’ll discuss cleaving together by defining a set of team values and negotiating decisions.

The Best Way To Receive Love

The Best Way To Receive Love

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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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Experiencing God

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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.

Read more on wikipedia

Worry Less Trust More

Worry Less Trust More

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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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Master Conflict Resolution With 5 Concepts

Master Conflict Resolution With 5 Concepts

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Conflict resolution is the ability to be satisfied with what is within your control. That sounds simple enough, but it’s not necessarily easy. It implies that finding a solution requires knowing what you can control and what you can’t.

Do you know what you are entitled to? To be entitled is to be empowered to accomplish or obtain something. If you are entitled, you are authorized and you are in control. Unfortunately, for too many people, this creates the idea that they can demand certain activities from their spouses as if marriage comes with enforceable guarantees.

However, just because something is supposed to happen in marriage, doesn’t entitle anyone to demand that it happens. You could make demands, but if you can’t control your spouse (and you can’t or at least you shouldn’t be able to), what does this accomplish? Making a demand is prideful while making a request is humble and doesn’t rule out exercising your boundaries (controlling what you can control).

Here are 5 concepts to help you resolve conflict without overstepping your bounds:

Conflict Resolution Concept #1: Be Responsible for your Happiness

Each person is 100% responsible for their own emotions/happiness. If you aren’t happy, don’t blame your spouse. God expects us to find a way to be content even when other people are not cooperating.

If you are feeling anxious, angry, or sad, those are your emotions. They say something about you. You are empowered to take action to manage your feelings. If you make your happiness dependent on someone else’s behavior, you might never be happy again.

Conflict Resolution Concept #2: Clean Up Past Hurts

It’s an essential skill to be able to bring up hurts from the past, or whatever is bothering you, so you can discuss it and resolve it as a couple. When you solve a puzzle, it is finished. You can put it behind you and move on to the next challenge. If you don’t find a solution, you’ll be stuck or limited to what happened in the past.

Cleaning up the past is different than blame-shifting today’s problems onto your spouse. Resolving present-day conflict often requires looking into the past to see the larger scope of the problem. It’s like making sure you have all the pieces of a puzzle before you start working on it.

Conflict Resolution Concept #3: Find Balance with Multiple Options

Find an appropriate balance between the urgency to work through your concerns and the acceptance of your spouse. Everyone needs grace for their spiritual journey.

You should spend a percentage (for example 50%) of your time working on conflict resolution and the rest on having fun together. You should spend a percentage (for example 70%) of your time together and the rest on individual pursuits.

Conflict Resolution Concept #4: Be Clear About What You Want

Speak clearly (directly if necessary) about what is going on with you and what you want. Don’t expect your spouse to know what you need or want (read your mind).

Communication is hard work. It’s okay if it takes time to put into words what you are experiencing. See if you can say what is on your heart in a way you’ve never done before. Use different words to explain how you are doing. You might learn something about yourself in the process.

Conflict Resolution Concept #5: Keep at Least One Listener in your Conversation

Watch out for the trap of two people needing to be heard at the same time with no listeners present. This will mean taking turns speaking and listening without defensiveness (turning the focus back to you). Listening doesn’t count if you spend your time speaking about your perspective. Your spouse isn’t usually interested in your perspective when they are trying to share theirs. They want to know if you understand their perspective.

Anything less than one listener results in wasted effort at best and complete chaos (fuel for conflict) at worst.

I hope these concepts help you with your conflict resolution. What struggles are you having that seem unsolvable? Let me know. Remember to make sure you have all the pieces of the puzzle before you become too discouraged or frustrated. If you need someone to help you find all the pieces and where they go, there’s marriage counseling for that.

Other ideas about improving your marriage.
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Blame And Defensiveness Exposed

Blame And Defensiveness Exposed

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Who do you blame for life’s problems? How easy is it to identify the source of a problem? What do you blame? When? Why? How often? You might accuse others or you might condemn yourself of some wrongdoing.

Blaming shifts the focus of responsibility. While this tactic might be used for good purposes, I am writing about blame when it is activated for purely selfish purposes.

Blame is Possible Because of a Standard of Behavior

In order to accuse someone of wrongdoing, there must first be some standard in mind, otherwise, the complaint makes no sense. But a blaming statement is meant to carry the weight of authority behind it.

  1. You cut me off in traffic.
  2. You punched me in the face.
  3. You called me names to denounce my worth.
  4. You took the last cookie.
  5. You went to bed without saying goodnight.
  6. You spend too much time with your friends, your computer, your work, your family.
  7. You don’t want to understand me.

What do all of these have in common? They speak of an expectation for behavior, for someone else’s behavior. They could be statements of fact, but they could also be spoken with an edge of condemnation.

We desire to be treated in a way that meets our emotional needs. We also desire to be capable of treating others well. But others fall short and so do we. How well do you love? How badly do you want to love well? What does it mean to you when others love you well?

Blame can be an attack and so blame-shifting is a natural counter-attack. Consider these responses to the above accusations:

  1. You drive too slowly.
  2. You provoked me by continuing to nag.
  3. You don’t understand what I’ve been through.
  4. You never claimed it for your own.
  5. I was too tired to think.
  6. You’re trying to control me.
  7. You’re impossible to understand.

As you can see, the argument is not over whether a standard even exists. It is over the extenuating circumstances, the technicalities of its fulfillment. No one is eager to admit failing to meet the standard. No one wants to feel inadequate to meet the standard.

Blame is Possible Because We Have a Choice

God has standards or laws for many aspects of His creation. Gravity is a law or standard of expected behavior. When a ball is dropped, it falls to the ground. The ball doesn’t have a choice. Gravity would act upon the ball even if the ball could desire to remain suspended in the air.

What about the standards that God has for us? The Bible speaks of the law.

Why, then, was the law given? It was given alongside the promise to show people their sins.

Let me put it another way. The law was our guardian until Christ came; it protected us until we could be made right with God through faith. And now that the way of faith has come, we no longer need the law as our guardian.

Galatians 3:19a,24,25

We no longer need the law as a guardian because we have God Himself as our example of love and our teacher of love. The standard causes us to depend on God to meet the standard. We have the option to sin. We can act against God’s Spirit. We can deviate from His law of behavior.

Unlike the law of gravity that acts upon us involuntarily, God does not forcefully ensure that we love when we don’t want to, or can’t. The law acts upon us from the outside, but God acts from the inside with our cooperation.

When we are faced with our inadequacy to fulfill the law, the natural, sinful response is to minimize the law. My inability to meet your expectations is not my fault. Your standards are too high. You sabotaged my ability to meet them. It’s your fault. You are to blame. The defensive response can seem involuntary because it can come so quickly.

Because we cannot escape from God’s standard, we have only these options to manage God’s standard:

  1. Ignore it (pretend it doesn’t exist).
  2. Downplay it (it exists, but can’t possibly be taken seriously).
  3. Admit falling short but stubbornly hold to independence, living with condemnation (refusing God’s help through Jesus).
  4. Admit falling short but fully depend on God’s help to meet the standard.

The first three will illicit some form of blaming. But when we depend upon God, we no longer have a need for blaming or defensiveness.

Read more about resolving conflict.
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Avoid Taking Actions Personally

Avoid Taking Actions Personally

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Taking actions personally means placing too much emphasis on another’s words or behaviors. The hurt you experience makes it easier to become offended. Taking actions personally means that you are allowing another’s behavior to get to you. Their words become harmful to you. Taking actions personally means you feel invalidated. To be invalid means to be wrong or weak.

It’s possible to be wrong in a factual way. I thought it was too hot outside, but you are right, it’s actually pleasant. Even though being wrong in this way can be hard for some people, it doesn’t usually result in becoming offended. It’s also possible to feel wrong in a personal way. I failed to recognize my daughter is sad; I am defective. That feeling of being defective is shame. It cuts to the core. It is a state of not feeling accepted or wanted for who you are.

Taking Actions Personally Creates Rejection

Rejection isn’t fun. It can be quite disorienting and debilitating. It can cause self-doubt to fester. Without the internal strength to discount negative, painful messages, people can become defensive. Being defensive means attempting to manage the pain through some form of counter-attack or deflection. I don’t know how to defend against this, so I will go on the offensive to shift the focus away from me. While you can see that defensiveness has a purpose (to protect), it, unfortunately, often ends up inflaming an already tense situation.

Taking Actions Personally Increases Conflict

How can someone else’s struggle give life to (trigger) your personal struggle? It happens when you allow another’s words to become an offense. To work through conflict, it’s important to see clearly how this happens. The focus shifts from another’s problem to your problem. Instead of one wounded person, there are now two. Two upset people dramatically increase the likelihood of an unhealthy argument.

A wounded person feels threatened. There is danger. The greater the threat, the more resilience is needed to prevent a deeper wound. The less confidence people feel in dealing with an attack, the greater their sense of desperation. People in great distress will more likely act impulsively. They might subconsciously hold to it’s better to be safe than sorry.

Taking Actions Personally Reveals Vulnerability

It can be a tactic to expose people and use what is learned against them. This can quickly become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more offensive a message, the more energy is needed to resist it. The more defensive energy put into resisting, the more the energy is directed back to the other.

A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger. The tongue of the wise adorns knowledge, but the mouth of the fool gushes folly. The soothing tongue is a tree of life, but a perverse tongue crushes the spirit.

Proverbs 15:1,2,4 NIV

Hatred stirs up quarrels, but love makes up for all offenses.

Proverbs 10:12 NLT

The opposite of offended is validated. Instead of giving others what they don’t need (destructive words), try giving others what they do need. Instead of returning rejection with more rejection, offer acceptance. This doesn’t mean letting someone walk all over you or take advantage of you. You should maintain healthy boundaries at all times. However, it’s possible to have boundaries and offer words that bring healing instead of harm.

Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.

The words of the reckless pierce like swords, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.

Proverbs 4:23, 12:18 NIV

When tempted to take actions personally, consider your need for validation. God is the richest source of validation. What He says about you matters more than anyone else. When you are triggered, seek Him with all your heart so you can experience true security. God’s love for you is immovable, constant, permanent.

Learn more about conflict resolution.
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Seek Understanding Before Solution

Seek Understanding Before Solution

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If you understand what is happening, you have found an optimized path to an improved situation. In contrast, a lack of understanding only multiplies uncertainty. When aiming at a target, the greater the error in the sighting, the greater the chance of missing the bullseye.

This applies to almost any task, but it is just as valid to relationships. Communication must be accurate if the goal is increasing closeness. The more you can’t see what is going on in a person, the more hopeless and powerless you can feel. Then, if you cannot trust God, the odds increase that you will respond to your situation with frustration or even folly.

Understanding, wisdom, and insight are essentially the same thing. They all mean seeing reality as it is, without distortions or denial. Insight means “see inside.” When you can see behind the scenes, you will know intimately how the product is produced.

The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom, and whatever you get, get insight.

Proverbs 4:7 ESV

A fool doesn’t want more knowledge, doesn’t care about how life works, and rejects absolute truth, favoring his subjective reality instead. He is filled with denial and wishful thinking. Why would someone do this? Learning the truth requires the humility to accept correction. The humble person can say, “Yes, I got that wrong. I can see more clearly now.”

A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion.

Proverbs 18:2 ESV

So, it makes sense that the person who can see the reasons for another’s behavior will generally be more patient with them. A fool doesn’t want understanding, so he is limited to exploding in anger.

Whoever is slow to anger has great understanding, but he who has a hasty temper exalts folly.

Proverbs 14:29 ESV

The person with self-control can hold off on expressing anger. It’s possible because of his insight. He can see that uncontrolled anger is destructive and it does nothing to help another struggling person.

Ignorance Will Lead to Repeated Pain

A lack of discernment can lead a person to make regrettable decisions. Wise people can learn from their mistakes, but foolish people will only dig in deeper. In this sense, regret can be a sign of wisdom.

Like an archer who wounds everyone
    is one who hires a passing fool or drunkard.
Like a dog that returns to his vomit
    is a fool who repeats his folly.

Proverbs 26:10-11 ESV

The archer does not discriminate between friend and foe; he shoots without a clear target. The fool enjoys the chaos he creates; he has no room for remorse.

In relationships, don’t be the person who shoots off his mouth without considering the consequences of his words.

Understanding Provides Clear Options

Understanding maps out how to set boundaries and make decisions. Conflict can be simplified into options. Options can be negotiated to find an optimal solution. No one likes the frustration of feeling stuck; understanding can lead to a way forward.

Two people in conflict can consider which one has a greater need for healing. Consider asking, “What will it mean to you if we do it your way?” This might allow you to move past the ugly presentation of anger to the hurt behind it. You might get an answer like, “I’ve always had hand-me-downs. The last three cars I’ve had were used. They break down all the time. I want to get a new car. I am willing to keep it for over ten years.”

Of course, some people only want their way all the time. Their demands are often unreasonable, unrealistic, or unfair. In this situation, understanding can lead to confidently setting firm boundaries. Consider responding, “I understand you want to buy a new car now, but we don’t have the budget for that. We can save up for one though.”

Buying a new car won’t fix anyone’s brokenness, but it could be meaningful in the right context. Material goods will be used better after people are convinced of their worth in Christ. Conflict resolution will be most fruitful when emotional needs for self-worth are grounded in the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Learn more about healing relationships.
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Worship God With Genuine Joy

Worship God With Genuine Joy

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Does God seem distant to you? Does worship feel like an obligation? Maybe you are missing a genuine experience of God.

Are you struggling to believe God cares? Do you like yourself? Wait. What does liking yourself have to do with God? God assumes that you will care for yourself. But He commands that you love others (Him and your neighbor).

Jesus replied, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.”

Matthew 22:37-40 NLT

How to Worship God Authentically

Loving God with everything you have is the same as worship. Authentic worship will only happen as we understand and experience God.

God is at His fullest potential. He can’t get any better than He already is. Instead of this meaning He is frequently bored, He lives with maximum enjoyment. That’s right. Part of what it means to be God is that He lives with a constant euphoria (a feeling or state of intense excitement and happiness). Because we are made in God’s image, God intends us to reach our full potential and experience euphoria. Enthusiasm is similar to euphoria; it means to be full of God.

When we are full of God, we can’t help but worship Him. We worship because He is worthy. However, there is more to worship than how awesome God is. Consider the scene in heaven from Revelation 4:

Whenever the living beings give glory and honor and thanks to the one sitting on the throne (the one who lives forever and ever), the twenty-four elders fall down and worship the one sitting on the throne (the one who lives forever and ever). And they lay their crowns before the throne and say, “You are worthy, O Lord our God, to receive glory and honor and power. For you created all things, and they exist because you created what you pleased.”

Revelation 4:9-11 NLT

Revelation 5 continues with Jesus being the only one worthy to open the scroll and the elders falling down in worship. If we only consider this scene superficially, we might observe that worship seems robotic. Who wants to fall down and worship every few minutes, repeating this for eternity? Wouldn’t that get old? It might if we ignore how we can experience God.

On earth today there are many distractions and distortions which prevent us from seeing God clearly. In heaven, these barriers will be gone. We will see and experience God as He is, at least to the limit of our capacity. God made us to appreciate who He is. Encountering God produces an intense, joyful response. The worship is spontaneous, genuine, never forced. The difference might be compared to seeing electricity power a light bulb and feeling electricity surge through your body.

How to Love Yourself When You Don’t Feel Worthy

God expects that people will care for themselves. Despite this being a simple truth, most people struggle to genuinely feel good about who they are. This is a problem because when you’re negative on what God made, how can you be positive about God? When you can’t see God as positive, you can’t believe He’s got your best interest in mind.

If you want to feel close to God, you must feel positive about yourself. If you don’t like yourself, then the you you don’t like is probably not the real you God has in mind. Your identity is who God says you are, while your self-image is who you think you are. When you get the two mixed up, you can’t like yourself.

Not liking yourself is ultimately the inability to see yourself as God sees you. Putting this all together, if you want to be closer to God, you need to see what He sees. Who does God see when He looks at you? Spend time thanking God for how He made you. Ask Him to help you see yourself through His eyes. Then you will know the joy of genuine worship.

Learn more about identity and self-worth.
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Last updated 2024/11/17

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

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If you’re afraid, do you know what you’re really afraid of?

What is normal can go unnoticed. Thoughts on autopilot can go unaware. You’ve invested in understanding the confusion and sadness you’re going through, but you might not even realize yet that it isn’t helping.

You’ve dedicated your brain’s full computing power. But, hmmm. What if all your efforts are unnecessary? What if there is a simpler solution?

Life doesn't have to make sense for you to have peace. Your understanding of your life situation is probably missing important pieces. God has those missing pieces. Share on X

Proverbs 3:5 says to “lean not on your own understanding.” But Proverbs 3:13 says to “get understanding.” At first, this might seem like a contradiction. But God is not saying to avoid all understanding. He is saying your understanding is incomplete and you’ll gain His understanding as (or perhaps after) you walk in faith. The understanding often comes in hindsight.

Most people have heard of the serenity prayer. Even if you know it, read it anyway because you might need to apply it again in a new, fresh way.

God, grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.

Reinhold Niebuhr

That’s the short version. It continues:

Living one day at a time,
enjoying one moment at a time;
accepting hardship as a pathway to peace;
taking, as Jesus did,
this sinful world as it is,
not as I would have it;
trusting that You will make all things right
if I surrender to Your will;
so that I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with You forever in the next.
Amen.

Reinhold Niebuhr

There is a lot of wisdom there. Now, back to the beginning. What are you afraid of? What do you most need when you are overwhelmed? Are you trying to solve the right problem?

Negative Experiences CanCreate Negative Self-Worth

Negative Experiences Can Create Negative Self-Worth

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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
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Enjoy A New Reality

Enjoy A New Reality

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

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

This is part 3 of Sean’s healing journey.

Sean’s New Reality

I ended part two of Sean’s story with him receiving a new bicycle from his small group. This experience, led by God, allowed the truth of the scriptures to sink into his heart. Now he could not only say that he knew the truth as a fact, but he knew the truth as a reality.

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

1 John 3:16-18 NIV

Pursue Your New Reality

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

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

How you interpret the events affects your long-term feelings about life. If you’re feeling depressed or anxious, it’s probably because of a negative interpretation of a negative experience. Without a positive intervention that allows you to see the truth, you might pursue destructive behavior toward yourself or others.

Review the diagram below which illustrates how a person can move from a hurtful event, to a healing process, and onto a new reality. I regularly use it with my clients to help them see how their lives became dysfunctional and how they can return to healthy living. See if you can trace Sean’s experiences through the diagram, then try an example from your own life.

How To Experience The New Reality of Emotional Healing

A New Reality Is Possible

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

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

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

Romans 12:2 NIV

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

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

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

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

Are you excited about the possibilities of a new reality?

Read Part 1
Read Part 2
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Amazing Desire To Gain Understanding

Amazing Desire To Gain Understanding

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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.

Read more about knowing yourself.
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Heavenly Healing From The Inside Out

Heavenly Healing From The Inside Out

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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.

Read more about healing.
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Introducing Marriage from Roots to Fruits

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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.

S_ChokingTree72S_FruitfulTree72

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

Brokenness Is Beautiful

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

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

Psalm 34:18 NIV

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

If we lack something good we can fear both:

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

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

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

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

Hebrews 11:6; Matthew 7:11 NIV

Fear Makes Brokenness Ugly

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

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

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

Coping Forever Prevents Healing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Push Through Fear And Find Hope
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Complete Your Training To Resist Evil

Complete Your Training To Resist Evil

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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.
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Push through fear like you would cross a scary bridge.

Push Through Fear and Find Hope

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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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
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Supercharge Growth With 5 Therapy Goals

Supercharge Growth With 5 Therapy Goals

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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.
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3 Steps To Overcoming Shame

3 Steps To Overcoming Shame

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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?

Read more about Journaling
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Reframe Your Life From Ugly To Beautiful

Reframe Your Life From Ugly To Beautiful

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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

Labels Like Gaslighting Harm More Than Help

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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

Read more about recovery from abuse.
Read more about how psychological buzzwords can be misused.
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Last updated 2023/09/06

When Joy Feels Elusive And Faith Feels Thin

When Joy Feels Elusive And Faith Feels Thin

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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.
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Last updated 2025/07/06

Reforging Shattered Lives: God’s Unstoppable Miracle of Restoration

Reforging Shattered Lives: God’s Unstoppable Miracle Of Restoration

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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

  1. 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?
  2. 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.
  3. 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?
  4. 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?

  • Subscribe to Christian Concepts for access to the Launchpad for Life in Christ Discord community.
  • 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.
The Birth of Sandman Scene – Spider-Man 3 (2007) Movie CLIP HD (YouTube).
Catch a clip showing the birth of Sandman if it is still available.
Image created by Matt using Adobe tools.
Last updated 20250831.

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