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Identity in Christ

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. Understanding greatly increases the odds of hitting the solution target.

This applies to almost anything, but it especially applies to relationships. Communication must be sincere, honest, and accurate if the goal is increasing closeness. The more you can’t see what is going on in a person, the more directionless and powerless you can feel. Furthermore, if you cannot trust God, the odds increase that you will respond to your situation with frustration or even folly.

What is Understanding?

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

Understanding in this sense is a “spoiler”. Once you know the secret to the sauce, it loses some of its mystery. But as we gain insight, we become more like God. We don’t only consume the sauce, we can also replicate the recipe and teach it to others.

What is Lack of Understanding?

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. How can a person become this way?

Lack of Humility

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

This person cannot repent or make real changes. Any attempts to reason with him result only in frustration from a no-win situation.

Do not answer a fool according to his folly,
or you yourself will be just like him.
Answer a fool according to his folly,
or he will be wise in his own eyes.

Proverbs 26:4-5 NIV

Lack of Self-Control

The person who can see the reasons for another’s behavior will generally be more patient with him. 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 avoid unproductive 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 (Proverbs 29:9).

In relationships, don’t be the person who shoots off his mouth without considering the consequences of his words, but neither be the person who causes harm and refuses to be accountable for his actions.

Understanding Provides Clear Options

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

Consider how this plays out in a common marriage conflict: deciding whether to buy a new car.

  • Without Understanding: The conversation stays on the surface. One spouse demands a brand-new car; the other looks at the bank account and panics. The debate becomes an argument over dollars, control, or entitlement. One person feels dismissed; the other feels financially threatened. Both end up angry because neither is addressing what is actually going on.
  • With Understanding: You look past the surface demand to find the underlying need and motivation (often hurt) behind it. You ask with genuine curiosity, “What would it mean to you if we did it your way?”

This simple question invites insight. Suddenly, you aren’t arguing about a vehicle anymore. You hear the heart behind the demand:

I’ve driven unreliable hand-me-downs my whole life. The last three cars I had broke down on the highway, and I felt helpless. I want a new car because I want peace of mind, and I’m willing to keep it for ten years.

Once you understand that the core issue is security and relief from stress—not flashy materialism—the options open up:

  1. Negotiate a Creative Solution: You might not afford a brand-new car, but understanding allows you to solve the real problem together. You might look at a highly rated, low-mileage certified pre-owned car with a warranty that satisfies the need for reliability while protecting the budget.
  2. Set a Calm, Firm Boundary: If the demand remains rigid (unreasonable, unrealistic, or unfair) despite financial reality, understanding still protects you. You recognize that yielding would cause financial harm, but because you understand their perspective, you don’t have to respond with harshness. You can respond with calm empathy:

I hear how much peace of mind a new car would bring you, but our budget simply won’t support that payment right now. Let’s build a dedicated savings plan so we can get there safely.

Buying a car won’t heal a broken heart, but uncovering the root desire changes the dynamic from a power struggle into a joint problem-solving exercise. Ultimately, conflict resolution is most fruitful when emotional needs for worth and security are grounded in the truth of the Gospel rather than material things.

Learn more about healing relationships.

Last updated 20260726

Avoid The Trap Of Preferential Treatment

Avoid The Trap Of Preferential Treatment

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Without cultivating awareness of reasons for decisions, preferential treatment can sneak into relationships with adult children.

The transition from parenting minors to relating to adult children is one of the most profound shifts a parent will ever navigate. When children are young, a parent’s role is central, protective, and instructional. But when children step into adulthood, the relational landscape transforms entirely.

One of the most delicate challenges in this season is learning how to maintain deep, healthy connections with multiple adult children without falling into the painful trap of preferential treatment. Favoritism—whether conscious or subconscious—creates deep undercurrents of division, resentment, and emotional friction within a family system.

To build a legacy of equity, trust, and mutual respect, parents can anchor their relationships in a few core, objective principles.

1. Avoid Preferential Treatment by Recognizing Relational Sovereignty

Adulthood introduces a fundamental truth that both parties need to realize: adults make their own decisions.

The moment a child becomes an adult, the hierarchy of the relationship flattens into a peer-like dynamic built on mutual respect.

  • Parents cannot dictate what should happen in their adult child’s life, career, or home.
  • Children cannot dictate how parents choose to live, invest, or manage their own lives.

Healthy adult relationships are centered on a shared goal: working together to honor independence and responsibility. Respecting boundaries means recognizing that your adult children have a sovereign right to navigate their lives, make their own mistakes, and forge their own paths—even when those paths look different than what you would have chosen for them.

2. Avoid Preferential Treatment by Understanding the Difference Between Equal and Equitable

Every child is uniquely wired by God, possessing distinct gifts, temperaments, abilities, and desires. Because God works differently in the life of each individual, children are valuable simply for who they are, not for what they accomplish or how closely they mirror a parent’s lifestyle.

Because your children are inherently different, the way you contribute to their lives will naturally look different. This requires understanding the distinction between treating children equally and treating them equitably:

  • Equal treatment means giving every child the exact same thing, regardless of context.
  • Equitable treatment means giving each child what they need to thrive based on their unique circumstances.

A parent might naturally spend more time with a child who lives locally or share a deeper conversational rhythm with a child who shares their faith and values. These natural alignments do not mean you love or value the distant or non-believing child any less. The expression of your support varies, but the baseline value placed on each child needs to remain equal.

3. Avoid Preferential Treatment by Conducting an Emotional Audit of Personal Biases

To ensure equity, a parent must develop high self-awareness and monitor the condition of their own heart. It is easy to let personal needs or unexamined frustrations interfere with our relationships with our children.

To guard against subconscious preferential treatment, ask yourself these diagnostic questions:

  • Am I feeding my own need to be needed? It is common to favor a more dependent child because rescuing them makes us feel validated or appreciated. But remember: just because a mature, independent child is less vocal about their struggles does not mean they need your presence, love, or validation any less.
  • Have I allowed personal prejudices to take root? In a family dynamic, a prejudice is a personal bias or unexamined frustration against a child’s specific personality or life choices, which can manifest as preferential coldness or distance.
  • Am I shifting the blame? If you connect seamlessly with Child A but struggle to find common ground with Child B, do not frame the emotional distance as Child B’s fault for “being different.” A parent must never become comfortable treating a child unfairly simply because the relationship requires more intentional work. Think of what will be a blessing for each child. Bless them equitably.

4. Avoid Preferential Treatment by Distinguishing Crisis Triage from Chronic Favoritism

There are seasons where a parent can intentionally choose to pour a disproportionate amount of time, money, or emotional energy into one adult child. It is vital to recognize that this is often crisis triage, not favoritism.

If one child is navigating a severe emergency—such as a medical crisis, a messy divorce, addiction recovery, or sudden financial ruin—a parent’s natural instinct is to step in and help. The healthy, independent siblings might perceive this asymmetrical support as preferential treatment.

As a parent, it helps to realize that you cannot control how your other children feel about these decisions. While you have the right to allocate your resources where they are critically needed, independent siblings may still feel sidelined or anxious about the disparity. Give them the grace and space to process those feelings without meting out judgment or becoming defensive.

To see these truths clearly, imagine a family with three adult children: one is a financially stable professional who received parental launch support years ago, another is a current student working through college, and the third is suddenly facing a severe medical crisis. If the parents give an identical financial gift to all three at Christmas, that is equal treatment.

However, if they choose to provide tuition assistance to the student—matching the historical investment they already made to help the oldest get established—that is equitable treatment. They are tailoring support to current life stages and unique needs rather than giving identical amounts at identical times. Furthermore, if those same parents suddenly redirect their current spare time and emergency savings to help the child navigating the hospital crisis, this is crisis triage, not chronic favoritism. They are not elevating one child’s value above the others; they are simply applying a bandage to the child who is actively bleeding, while respecting that the healthy siblings do not require emergency intervention.

5. Avoid Preferential Treatment by Overcoming the Fear of Conflict with Transparency

People are different (is one child working hard when another plays first?). The times can be different (is the economy doing well or poorly?). Events can be different (has one child developed a disability or major health issue?). It’s not possible to keep everything “equal” all the time; it’s also not desired. But you can be sensitive to your actions. Are you aware of the impact of your decisions with how you invest in each child?

Parents can resort to keeping their support of one child a secret because they carry a profound fear of family conflict or sibling jealousy. They lack the tools to communicate asymmetrical decisions, so they choose hiding over hosting a hard conversation.

However, secrecy is the ultimate fuel for division. Keeping major decisions under wraps instantly erodes trust and signals to the rest of the family that something inequitable or unfair is occurring.

If you choose to support one child in an exceptional or different way—such as backing a specific kingdom-advancing ministry or providing crisis relief—transparency is your greatest safeguard. Take the time to communicate openly, discuss your decisions, and answer questions honestly. Open doors and clear explanations prevent the shock of secret discovery and protect the foundational trust of the entire family.

Moving Forward

Cultivating healthy relationships with adult children requires a continuous commitment to self-awareness, humility, and clear boundaries. It means recognizing your children as independent image-bearers, auditing your own heart for hidden biases, and choosing radical transparency over comfortable secrecy.

If you find yourself in conflict, learn more about resolving conflict.

By relinquishing the need to control their choices—and refusing to let your own emotional needs dictate your treatment of them—you pave the way for a family dynamic built on enduring trust, genuine equity, and lifelong mutual respect.

Image created by Matt using Gemini.

Freedom From Performance Identity

Freedom From Performance Identity

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Does what you do define who you are? Discover why human identity is a fixed, stable reality designed by God—and why behavior is just the echo, not the anchor.

Identity Produces Behavior

Identity can’t be defined by what you do. It’s the other way around: what you do flows out of who you are. Identity causes behavior; behavior does not cause identity.

If identity were defined by what we do, we would be doomed to live in a perpetual shifting definition. Today I act with love. I’m a loving person. My identity is love. Tomorrow I act with bitter rage. I’m a hateful person. My identity is hate.

Identity means something is stable and unchanging. It’s how you identify someone. If that changed all the time, it would be impossible to know who anyone is. Without some pattern, some consistency, trust would be foolish. Trust is the foundation of relationship. So we can also say that identity is the foundation of relationship.

God says our Christian identity is based in Him. But everyone has, or has had, a corrupt identity, one based in sin. Without Christ, a person’s identity is a slave to sin. With Christ, believers are slaves to righteousness. Identity is a stated fact, a predetermined definition.

Behavior Helps Reveal Identity

Behavior and identity are correlated. What you do provides clues about who you are. But you are always more than what you do. In the case of a mistake, one moment in life doesn’t have the power to immortalize you. Behavior is one moment in time, a snapshot. Behavior can change. What you do helps you discover your identity, but it doesn’t create or define your identity.

At the moment you came into existence, you had your identity. It serves as a map like your DNA. Life experiences are like sonar waves going out to detect your identity. Your daily actions are the returning echoes—they simply reveal what is already there.

Sometimes those experiences contain distortions which convey the wrong impression of who you are. Your self-image is your best estimate of who you are. Your self-image is a limited, distorted version of your true identity. You limp along in life to the degree you don’t know your true identity. You can’t know yourself completely, at least not in this life.

You can change your self-image to move into alignment with your identity. But your identity is fixed and unchanging for all time. That should be reassuring. You’re not aiming at a moving target. Your life experiences are never wasted. They have helped you to become more aware of who you are.

God As Creator Defines Identity

Your identity is defined by your Creator. If you want to know who you are, you need to ask God. So in this sense, who you are is somewhat of a mystery. Only God knows your complete identity.

Some people try to wrest control of their identity from their Creator. “I’ll define myself my own way apart from God. I’ll manipulate my physical appearance, my body, and maybe even my DNA.” But this is only a superficial change compared to the identity God created for you.

You can observe your identity by looking at how you react to life experiences. You can also define it based on the truth found in the Bible. For example:

  • Made in God’s image: You are similar to God but different, like women are similar to men but different (Genesis 1:26–27).
  • An intentional spiritual being: God formed you with absolute purpose (Genesis 2:7).
  • Created for impact: God designed you to accomplish great things (Ephesians 2:10).

And there are many other defining statements in the Bible. Some of the definitions apply to everyone (everyone is made in God’s image), and some apply only to those who have become believers in Jesus Christ (Christians have a renewed spiritual connection with God and experience His love in a more intimate way – see 2 Corinthians 5:17 and Romans 5:5).

Believers are new creations in Christ because He provides us spiritual life and intimate relationship. God is continuing to fashion us into who He wants us to be. God might add what is missing as we mature, but the core architecture of our identity does not change.

The following attributes don’t change by becoming a believer. When you start to notice the patterns in these, you will have a stronger sense of your identity.

  • physical appearance
  • skills, abilities, talents
  • sex (male or female)
  • cognitive and emotional patterns and preferences
  • personality patterns
  • likes and dislikes

You are unique. No one else has the same combination of abilities and perspective on life. You see God in a way that others need to understand. Your voice and contributions are needed – otherwise, God wouldn’t have bothered to create you. You are significant.

As you seek your identity, remember that you aren’t self-sustaining. You can’t keep yourself alive forever. You are defined by your context; God is where you came from, and if you’re a believer, God is where you will return. You have a distorted self-image. You need to look beyond yourself to find your identity.

How are you doing with discovering your true identity? What struggles or obstacles are preventing you from realizing all God made you to be? Learn more about Identity.

I posted this answer on Quora for the question: Is our identity defined by what we do? If not, what is it defined by? If you like my answer, upvote it on Quora.

Image created by Matt using Gemini.
Last Updated 20260607

God's Silence Does Not Alter Faith

God’s Silence Does Not Alter Faith

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Integrity is the Only Path Forward When Facing God’s Silence

God’s silence alters the intensity of our temptation, but it never alters our standing orders. It does not encourage abandoning faithful suffering for the Gospel.

In my years as a counselor and a student of identity, I recognize three resources for navigating the “messes” of this life. Believers need an Archive of Mastery (their past), a Fixed Future (their destination), and most importantly, a Secure Home Base—the internal integrity of their core identity made possible by God’s indwelling.

I recently watched the film Silence, which many praise as a masterpiece of faith. But as a Christian counselor who illuminates the path for others, I found it to be something far more dangerous: a manual for compromise.

The story follows a Jesuit priest, Rodrigues, who is “Squeezed” by a hostile inquisitor. He is told that if he “steps” on an image of Christ—a public act of apostasy—the torture of innocent villagers will stop. He eventually breaks, hearing a “voice” tell him that stepping is the most compassionate thing to do.

To the world, this looks like a “breakthrough.” To a true believer, it is a deceptive attack on faith. The world values compassion above absolute truth. But God never compromises who He is for the sake of avoiding suffering.

3 Lies When Facing God’s Silence

The movie attempts to persuade the viewer into accepting three fundamental lies that mirror the Devil’s tactics in the wilderness:

  1. The Lie of Superior Compassion frames the refusal to betray your faith as “pride.” It suggests that the only way to be truly loving is to abandon your Home Base. This is a trap. If you destroy your internal integrity to “help” someone, you no longer have a solid ground to stand on to help anyone.
  2. The Lie of the “Silent” Signal suggests that because God is silent during the “Squeeze,” we are free to interpret that silence as permission to compromise. But a Fixed Future means the standing orders have already been given. Silence in the present is a test of your map (faith), not an invitation to draw a new one. When the sky goes dark, you don’t throw away the compass; you trust the reading you took while it was light.
  3. The Lie of Incongruity teaches that you can live a life of external betrayal while maintaining internal integrity. But health means integrity and congruity. When your exterior action contradicts your interior reality, you create friction that leads to spiritual and psychological decay.

Jesus Remained Unbroken When Facing God’s Silence

We are told that Rodrigues’s compromise was an act of imitating Christ. This is the ultimate deception.

Consider Jesus in the wilderness. He was in the ultimate Squeeze—starving, isolated, and under high-pressure temptation. The Devil offered Him “bread” (physical relief) and “kingdoms” (the destination without the Cross) if He would only “step” or bow down.

Jesus was tempted, but He did not break.

He didn’t “step” to make things easier for Himself or others. He knew that the only path to restoration was through congruity—staying exactly who He was, in word and deed, all the way to the end.

When we are pressured to break our boundaries or betray our faith for the sake of “peace,” we can also look to the example of Paul in prison. Paul was bound, but his identity was not. He used his Archive of Mastery to advance the Gospel even while in the Squeeze. He never changed course (un-faithed) to stop his suffering.

Paul explains the relationship between temptation and endurance:

No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.

1 Corinthians 10:13 ESV
  • “Common to man”: acts as a grounding reminder that whatever trial, pressure, or moral testing you are facing, it isn’t unique or isolating—others have walked through it.
  • The limit on testing: emphasizes God’s faithfulness as a protective boundary, promising that the intensity of the situation will not exceed your capacity to endure.
  • The “escape” (ekbasis): refers to a mountain pass or an escape route from a defile or trap. Crucially, the verse doesn’t promise that the temptation or trial will magically vanish, but rather that an exit strategy will be present so you can endure it rather than collapse.

Your secure identity is your only real protection. If a path forward requires you to betray the Truth, then it isn’t the path; it’s an ambush.

Don’t be deceived into thinking that “breaking” is “healing.” Health is found in God’s faithful message—the quiet, firm knowledge that your Home Base is secure, no matter how loud temptations become.

Learn more about enduring during pain and silence.
Image created by Matt using Gemini.

Wrestle With God To Discover Your Identity

Wrestle With God To Discover Your Identity

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When life is a struggle, sometimes we wrestle with ourselves, sometimes with our circumstances, and sometimes we wrestle with God. In our search for identity and purpose, the trials of life lead us to Jesus Christ, but Jesus doesn’t prevent trials in a believer’s life.

I wonder what challenge you are facing that is leading you to discover your identity and better understand God and His creation. Whatever the challenge is, I suggest you face it head-on. As you wrestle with it, you’ll learn more about who you are. Jacob wrestled with God and God ended up changing his name.

Wrestle With God for Identity and Reality

And Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched his hip socket, and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, “Let me go, for the day has broken.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” And he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” Then he said, “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed.” Then Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And there he blessed him.

Genesis 32:24-29 ESV

Challenges reveal who we are. They can’t determine who we are. As we go through trials we should keep this in mind. The trial is a tool to draw out who we are.

To say, “I wouldn’t be who I am today without that difficult experience” is not accurate. We experience trials because of a broken, sinful world. But our sin only distorts who we are in Christ. Through God’s creative work, we are already fully defined. Sanctification is about removing the sin, not changing the identity.

Identity is to Self-image as Reality is to Worldview. Identity is who you are; self-image is who you think you are. Reality is the way the world is; worldview is how you think the world works.

To understand your identity, you should also consider your worldview. What is your relationship to everything else besides you? In comparison to God and the rest of creation, how are you unique? To help diagnose where we stand, the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard divides our worldviews into stages.

Wrestle With God for Maturity

Kierkegaard’s stages are: Aesthetic, Ethical, Religious A, and Religious B.

  1. The Aesthetic Life focuses on maximizing pleasure while minimizing pain. While not necessarily sinful, it is shallow living at best.
  2. The Ethical Life focuses on duty and responsibility. While it is a step in the “right” direction, it promotes the idea that self-righteousness can be attained. “I try, therefore, I am good enough.”
  3. The Religious A Life focuses on the realization, “I cannot attain any sufficient righteousness on my own.” This is the necessary posture for exercising faith.
  4. The Religious B Life focuses on the Gospel and living in dependence upon God’s work as a born-again believer. The Spirit-empowered believer is righteous in God’s eyes, secure in their identity, and seeking to become more like Him.

Wrestle with God for Meaning

What makes you different from others? That is the key to a confident identity. Considering your likes and dislikes is good. Comparing yourself to others can also be good. But there’s more. What brings deep satisfaction and meaning to you?

To discover your identity, enter into the following cycle:

  1. Define yourself as best as you can. Who are you?
  2. Define your worldview. What stage of existence matches how you live?
  3. Define your purpose. Why are you here?
  4. Define your goals. What do you want to accomplish next?
  5. Live life. Experiment. Try something new. Focus on what is most meaningful to you for a while. Attempt to fulfill God’s command to love others.
  6. Evaluate your experiences.
  7. Return to step 1 and repeat.

As you practice this discovery process, keep in mind that the past is your archive of lessons learned and your future is fixed in Christ. Learn more about enduring through trials.

Last updated 20260524

Grow Your Ability To Love

Grow Your Ability To Love

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Moving Beyond Motivation to Capacity

Love isn’t a personality trait, a motivation, or even a moral checkbox; it is a capacity. If we view love as a finite resource we have to manufacture from our own reserves, we will eventually run dry. To grow in our ability to love, we have to stop trying to be the generator and start learning to be the receiver.

How can we learn to be more loving? Here are five ideas to help understand how love works:

  1. God is love. God is our example. As we know God and experience His love, we grow in ability to love. Imitation is key. As we imitate God, we are more loving.
  2. Fear is an opposing force. We can’t be afraid and love well at the same time.
  3. Ignorance is a barrier. We can’t be ignorant of people and love them well at the same time. We must begin to see people as God sees them, even as we see them as they are today.
  4. The Spirit is the personalizer. He lives inside of you and makes love real to you as He applies it to you. Regeneration is required. Only those who have God living in them can imitate God’s love.
  5. You must know who you are and know your value before you can love well.

Let’s explore each of these in more detail.

1. The Power Source: We Can’t Manufacture Love

We often treat love like a muscle we need to flex, but the Bible describes it more like a solar panel. A solar panel does not create light; it absorbs it, converts it, and reflects it.

1 John 4:19 tells us the mechanical order of operations for the human heart: “We love because he first loved us.” This isn’t just a warm sentiment; it is a statement of physics. Our ability to love is directly proportional to our ability to receive love. Many people struggle to love others because they have a “reception” problem, not a “motivation” problem. If you feel motivated, but are not loving well, you are like a solar panel in the shade: trying to power a house with a battery that hasn’t been fully charged.

As we know God, we grow in our ability to love because we are finally standing in the light long enough to be changed by it.

2. The Fear Barrier: Self-Protection Kills Compassion

You cannot be afraid and love well at the same time. Fear and Love are opposites in the economy of the soul. Fear is about self-protection; Love is about self-giving.

When we are in “survival mode”—worrying about our reputation, our safety, or our “judgment day”—our focus is naturally inward. We are too busy guarding our own borders to notice the needs of our neighbors. But 1 John 4:18 says that “perfect love expels all fear.” As we trust that our future is fixed and our identity is secure in Christ, the need for self-protection dissipates. As we feel safe enough, we can risk being vulnerable. Growth in love requires the confidence that we are already cared for, which frees us to stop looking in the mirror and start looking out the window.

3. Seeing as God Sees: Moving Past Ignorance

We cannot love people well if we remain ignorant of who they truly are. True love requires “Active Intelligence.” It’s easy to love an abstract idea of humanity, but it is much harder to love the actual person standing in front of you with their “well-intentioned messes” and “clutter.”

To love like God loves, we must imitate His mastery of observation. God doesn’t love us in a general sense; He loves us specifically. He knows our history, our “dead ends,” and the “music” of our unique identity. Becoming more loving means growing in our ability to listen. It means putting down our assumptions and asking God to show us the “signal” in other people that is currently being drowned out by their “noise.”

4. The Will vs. The Feeling: Guardrails and Driving Lessons

This is where it gets challenging. When we hear the command to love, we often recoil. “If I’m doing it because I’m told to, isn’t it fake?” we ask. We don’t want to love only on the “outside”; we want to feel the power of God moving deep within us.

Think of the command to love not as a forced performance, but as guardrails. The command keeps you on the road and prevents you from driving off a cliff of bitterness or isolation. But within those guardrails, there is more than enough room for God to give you driving lessons. The standard of love is high so we need all the help we can get (1 Corinthians 13).

Sometimes we have to turn the steering wheel of our “will” before the “engine” of our emotions catches up. Choosing to treat someone well when you don’t feel like it isn’t being “fake”—it’s being faithful. It’s part of the training. It is an act of trust that says, “God, I am acting on Your character because mine is off target.” Often, the “feeling” of love is the reward for the “act” of love, not the prerequisite for it.

5. The Value of the Sacrifice: Knowing What You Are Giving

Real love is sacrificial. But here is a psychological truth we often overlook: You must know your value before you can sacrifice it.

If you believe you are worthless, then “giving yourself away” isn’t a sacrifice; it’s a clearance sale. It is a form of codependency, not Christ-like love. Jesus was able to lay down His life because He knew exactly who He was and where He was going.

To grow in love, you must first do the hard work of understanding your value as a child of God. When you know you are a package of fixed mastery and fixed hope, your acts of service move from being a search for validation to being a genuine gift. You aren’t giving because you are empty and need a “thank you” to fill the void; you are giving because you are so full that the overflow is inevitable.

The Practical Laboratory

Read the text from 1 John:

All who declare that Jesus is the Son of God have God living in them, and they live in God. We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love. God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them. And as we live in God, our love grows more perfect. So we will not be afraid on the day of judgment, but we can face him with confidence because we live like Jesus here in this world. Such love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love. We love each other because he loved us first. If someone says, “I love God,” but hates a fellow believer, that person is a liar; for if we don’t love people we can see, how can we love God, whom we cannot see? And he has given us this command: Those who love God must also love their fellow believers.

1 John 4:15-21 NLT

If you want to test your progress, look at the person you find most difficult to love. 1 John 4:20 gives us a stinging reality check: “If someone says, ‘I love God,’ but hates a fellow believer, that person is a liar.” The people in our lives are the “gym” where our love for God is exercised. We don’t grow in love by retreating to a mountaintop; we grow in love in the friction of who God has placed into our lives.

Task for Today: Identify one person you have been “ignorant” of. Instead of trying to manufacture love for them, ask God to show you one specific piece of their “mastery” or their struggle. Use the guardrail of kindness to move toward them, and wait for the Spirit to provide the power as you walk.

Perhaps that one person is yourself. If you struggle to know and feel your value, focus on being a solar panel instead of trying to be the sunlight.

Learn more about healthy fear.
Learn more about receiving God’s love.

Understanding: The Struggle To Find Peace

Understanding: The Struggle To Find Peace

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Is Understanding a Blessing or a Curse?

What is normal can often go unnoticed. Like the hum of a refrigerator or the weight of the air, our internal state becomes the background noise of our lives. When you are in a season of hardship, your thoughts often switch to autopilot. You spend your days—and often your nights—investing every ounce of your brain’s computing power into analyzing the confusion and sadness you’re going through.

You’ve dedicated your full computing power to solving the puzzle of your life. But what if all that mental effort is actually unnecessary? What if there is a simpler solution than “figuring it out”? Here is a perspective shift that might feel like cold water on a tired face: your efforts to understand every “why” might actually be the thing keeping you from finding peace in the middle of a struggle.

Stop Leaning on Your Own Understanding

We often believe that if we can just solve the mystery of our circumstances, the anxiety will stop. We think that “Knowledge = Peace.” However, your perspective on your current situation is likely missing critical pieces of data. God has those missing pieces, and He often holds them until the moment they are actually required.

Proverbs 3:5 famously instructs: “Lean not on your own understanding.” Yet, just a few verses later, Proverbs 3:13 encourages: “Get understanding.” At first glance, this feels like a contradiction. Is understanding a virtue or a trap?

The distinction lies in the source. God isn’t telling you to avoid all logic or wisdom; He is saying that your limited perspective can become a cage. You gain His understanding as—or often after—you walk in faith. Real insight is rarely found in the heat of the moment; it is a gift that often arrives in hindsight, once you have moved through the difficulty.

Accepting the Struggle As Is: A Pathway to Peace

Most people are familiar with the Serenity Prayer, but we often treat it like a greeting card sentiment rather than a survival manual. To find peace in the middle of a struggle, we have to look closer at the wisdom Reinhold Niebuhr penned:

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.

This shortened version is about setting firm boundaries for your understanding. It’s about recognizing which parts of your life are already fixed by time or circumstance and which parts are open to your agency. If you are using your energy trying to change a reality that is beyond your control, you are depleting the very resources you need to survive today.

The full version of the prayer takes it deeper:

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.

Peace isn’t found by rearranging the world so it matches your desires; it’s found by accepting the world “as it is” and trusting in a sovereign God who is already at the destination. For more on how to manage the mental clutter that prevents this kind of surrender, you can explore my guide on overcoming identity clutter.

Understanding The Problem

When you are overwhelmed, your brain asks: “How do I fix this?” But that might be the wrong question. If you are afraid, do you know what you’re really afraid of?

Often, we aren’t afraid of the problem itself; we are afraid of the uncertainty that comes with it. We are afraid that if we don’t understand the plan, then there is no plan. We treat our lives like a high-stakes gamble that could go wrong at any moment. But for the traveler who belongs to God, the end of the story is already written, and it is good.

To find peace in the middle of a struggle, you must stop trying to engineer the outcome and start listening for the quiet prompts of the Spirit in the present. Are you treating your history as a list of failures, or as a library of lessons? When you realize that your past has equipped you and your future is secure, the pressure of the present moment begins to lift.

Finding Peace Beyond Understanding

You don’t need life to make sense to have peace. You just need to be quiet enough to recognize the next step. God’s map for your life is already drawn, and the light is already hitting the path. You don’t have to create the light; you just have to stop closing your eyes to it by obsessing over your own limited understanding.

If you feel like you’re losing your way, remember that you are never truly adrift. You are simply in a high-pressure middle ground where your true self—the one that exists apart from your mistakes or your fears—is being revealed. Take a breath. Stop the autopilot thoughts. Surrender the need to know “Why,” and ask God for the “What now?”

The path forward isn’t a secret code you have to crack; it is the natural result of standing on the solid ground of your faith while keeping your eyes on the promise of restoration.

Task for Today: Identify one thing today that you have been trying to “analyze” to death. Practice accepting what you cannot change and ask God for the peace that surpasses your current ability to understand.

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Last updated: 20260412

Never Lost With the North Star

Never Lost

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Finding Home By Navigating Between the Past and the Future

Are you afraid you are lost? For many, life feels like a chaotic river—an unpredictable series of events where the past is a source of regret and the future is a cloud of anxiety. But when we step back to “Illuminate the Path,” we discover a more robust reality. We aren’t drifting; we are traveling between two immovable mountain ranges. To find the “Obvious Path Forward,” we must view our lives not as a series of random accidents, but as a single package consisting of three distinct temporal zones.

1. The Fixed Past: The Archive of Mastery

Do you view your past as a series of failures that define who you are? While it’s true the past is fixed, it does not have to limit your present or future. The older you are, the more data you have to understand your who you are.

Past’s Role

Your past is your database of supply. It contains every lesson, every mistake, and every survival tactic you have ever mastered.

Past’s Reality

Your past often contains dead ends—influences or people who served as your early map but no longer speak the language of where you are going.

What To Do

Stop regretting the past. Instead, harvest it. Use the lessons you’ve learned to inform your decisions. Embrace dead ends: In order to become the person God made you to be, you need to outgrow the dead ends to reach your ultimate destination.

2. The Fixed Future: The Anchor of Heaven

We often treat the future as fluid—a high-stakes gamble that could go wrong at any moment. But for the traveler who belongs to a sovereign God, the future is fixed.

Future’s Role

Your future is the fixed landmark on the horizon—your restoration, your new name, and your promise of Heaven.

Future’s Reality

Because the destination is certain, the Squeeze of the present loses its power. If the end of the story is already written and good, you are freed from the paralysis of “What if?”

What To Do

Stop trying to control (worry about) your future. Instead, align with it. Let the certainty of the destination increase your trust, allowing you to take calculated risks today. Embrace retroactive meaning: A fixed and good Future acts as a lens that re-colors the Past. When you know the end is restoration, the failures of your history stop being dead weights and start being the necessary training for the person you are becoming.

3. The Fluid Present: The Only Frontier

If the Past and Future are fixed, the Present is the only place where true play and wonder occur. It is the middle where we are often Squeezed by the weight of what was and the gravity of what will be.

Present’s Role

The present is the fluid river. It is the only zone where your agency exists, your working and doing pays off, and your options become reality.

Present’s Reality

The present is where we face the awkward balance—the struggle to grow up, to be independent, and to recognize which connections are noise (clutter, distractions) and which are signals (truth, direction).

What To Do

Wait and scout… and wait for the music—that distinct prompting from God or your identity that cuts through the noise. In the silence of the frontier, the signal isn’t a loud shout; it’s a melody you have to be quiet enough to hear. Do not act out of boredom or anxiety. Embrace the Squeeze: It’s not a sign that you are stuck; it is the pressure required to separate the noise from the signal. In this high-pressure middle your true Identity—the one that exists apart from your parents or your past mistakes—is finally revealed.

The Sky Map: Integrating the Single Package

When we view these three as one package, the impossibility of our current circumstances begins to dissolve.

ZoneStatusFunctionInternal DialogueMastery Result
PastFixedResources & Lessons“I have the tools and data I need.”Insight (No longer Regret)
FutureFixedDestination & Hope“The path leads Home; the end is good.”Peace (No longer Anxiety)
PresentFluidWonder & Prompting“What does the Music mean in this moment?”Presence (No longer Drifting)

When you accept that the Past and Future are fixed, you stop wasting energy trying to engineer what is already set. This creates the insight and peace necessary to truly inhabit the Present. You move from a state of reaction (responding to the clutter) to a state of presence (listening for the prompt). Your internal dialogue shifts from “Why did this happen?” or “What if I fail?” to a precise focus: “What is the obvious path forward right now?”

The North Star

Most people live in a state of temporal friction—trying to change the Fixed Past or control the Fixed Future, which leaves them exhausted and drifting in the Fluid Present. By looking to the North Star, you stop the friction. You are never lost.

The obvious path isn’t a secret code you have to crack; it is the natural result of standing on the solid ground of your healed past while keeping your eyes on the fixed landmark of your future. You use the Past as a library, trust the Future as an anchor, and finally find the presence to hear the prompts that reveal the obvious path forward.

When you clear away the clutter of other people’s well-intentioned messes and the dead ends of outdated maps, you find that you aren’t lost at all. You are simply ranging the only frontier that matters: the here and now.

It’s worth it to work through the clutter and find the path. The light is already hitting the path; you just have to be quiet enough to see it.

The Road to San Antonio: A Study in the Fixed Journey

In the film News of the World, we meet two travelers who are both Squeezed by circumstances they cannot change. Captain Kidd is a man of the Past—a veteran who carries the weight of a war that is over and a life that has been dismantled. Johanna is a girl of the Future—a child whose destination is already decided by a lineage that continually abandons her.

Their journey through the Texas wild is the middle. It is fluid, dangerous, and full of clutter. Here is how they navigate the frontier:

1. The Weight of the Fixed History

Captain Kidd doesn’t spend his days trying to undo the war or ignore the grief of his lost Home. He treats his past as a fixed resource. He uses the skills he mastered—his literacy, his ability to command a room, and his knowledge of the terrain—to survive the present.

When we stop fighting our history and start harvesting it, we stop being victims of our mistakes. Like Kidd, we realize that while the past is unchangeable, it has provided us with a specific set of tools that are perfectly suited for the miles ahead.

2. The Gravity of the Fixed Destination

Johanna is being returned to an aunt and uncle she doesn’t remember. For much of the journey, she is waiting for the music—waiting for a sign of where she truly belongs. She has no sense of belonging because of the multiple traumatic family losses she’s endured.

The best for her seems to be to return to the only people who are family. But where ever she has been, she either doesn’t belong, or those who she belongs to are removed from her life. She has a default destination in the eyes of the world. Everyone has an opinion on where she belongs, but her heart contains a different map.

Johanna’s heartache in the middle comes from a conflict of belonging. She is a girl with a fixed heritage and a fixed destination, yet in the fluid present, she is a ghost between cultures. Her healing begins when she stops being a problem to be solved by others and starts being a traveler with a purposeful guide.

3. Navigating the Clutter of the Frontier

Throughout the film, the pair is constantly hindered by the messes of others—from lawless settlers who want to claim Johanna for their own purposes, to her hard-working relatives who see her as a liability. But for her, these are the dead ends of the earth.

The impossibility of the trail doesn’t stop their journey. The river crossings and the mountain shootouts are merely terrain difficulties, not dead ends. When you know where the road really ends, the obstacles in the middle lose their power to paralyze you.

Kidd’s mastery of the present is found in his ability to filter the noise. He ignores the clutter of the townspeople’s demands and focuses on the signal: the safety of the girl and the integrity of the mission. He stays fixed on the destination, even when the world around him is in chaos.

4. The Obvious Path in the Silence

There is a moment in the desert where the wagon is gone, and they are walking through the dust. It looks like the end. But because they have the tools of the past (Kidd’s resilience) and the promise of the future (the destination), the path forward remains obvious. They don’t need a thousand options; they just need the next step.

Like these two travelers, you may feel Squeezed between the life you left behind and the life you are heading toward. You may feel the loneliness of being misunderstood by those at the dead ends.

But if you look closely at the space between your history and your hope, you will see that the path isn’t missing. It is simply waiting for you to be quiet enough to hear the music and walk the obvious path forward.

5. The Home Found in the Middle

While the destination of San Antonio was the Fixed Future in the eyes of the world, the true restoration happened in the Fluid Present of the trail. As Kidd and Johanna labored through the clutter and the impossibility of the wilderness, the shared struggle stripped away the noise of their separate histories. They found that Home isn’t just a fixed coordinate at the end of the road; it is the identity you discover with another person when you are both waiting for the music in the silence. By the time they reached the dead end of their pseudo destination, they realized the extra path had already opened: they had a Home with each other. The middle didn’t just test them; it bonded them into a new family that surpassed the broken ones they left behind.

Your First Task of the Frontier

Look at your life today. Identify one dead end you have been trying to turn into a path, and one fixed truth about your future that you’ve been afraid to trust. Once you name them, the Squeeze become your path to true freedom. You are never lost when you have a sovereign God. You are Always Home.

Image created by Matt using Gemini.

Gullible No More Break Free From Cult Seduction

Gullible No More: Break Free From Cult Seduction

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The Vulnerability of an Unformed Identity

Allison Mack, a former Smallville actress, has been in the news for her participation in a sex cult. She led other women to participate in physical mutilation, starvation, and sex acts. How could someone end up convinced this is okay? It is easy to look at such extreme behavior and think, “That could never be me.” But the reality is that cults don’t recruit people by showing them the end of the road; they recruit them by promising a solution to a deep, internal void.

What is a Cult?

A cult is different from a Christian church in one very important way. A cult has an underlying, intentional mission to exploit its membership for its own selfish gain. The leadership might be the only ones who benefit and the only ones aware of the full extent of the cult’s destructive agenda.

A healthy church, while never perfect, has an explicit mission to help, nurture, and strengthen its membership. God wants us to be committed to Him and His church, but He never coerces us against our will. A cult, however, usually has three defining characteristics:

  1. Members are required to maintain an unquestioning commitment to the leadership.
  2. Members tolerate exploitative manipulation (whether they see it as such or not)
  3. Members harm other members and anyone outside the cult they can influence.

See Character of Cults for more details.

Why We Fall for Cults

To be attracted to a cult, a person must have a deep unmet need. Since this describes most—if not all—people, the person must also lack an absolute worldview and suffer from low self-worth. By absolute worldview, I mean a solid understanding of what life is all about, based on fact, not fiction.

Notice that the factors leading to vulnerability describe “normal” people:

  • Having a strong need to belong
  • A desire for meaning and to make a difference
  • Lacking boundaries – an inability to define oneself
  • Lacking confidence – an inability to discern and confront questionable behavior
  • Lacking independence – an inability to think for oneself and make one’s own decisions
  • Acting with blind trust – a willingness to give up one’s identity and follow another’s
  • Dissatisfaction with how life is going

An empty person will be drawn to a cult because a cult has “answers.” A naive or desperate person will not catch that the answers are evil; instead, they will see only superficial good intentions.

A person who lacks independence—an inability to think for oneself—is often looking for a shortcut to meaning. Without a clear understanding of your priorities, it is easy to let a charismatic leader set them for you.

We are all vulnerable to deception when we are empty. Having an answer to the meaning of life is a core need. Without meaning and a worldview, you’re extremely vulnerable to signing up for some bizarre movement. Gullible people aren’t necessarily looking for “evil”; they are looking for the significance they haven’t been able to find within their current communities.

How to Defend Against Cults

The primary reason a person seeks a rigidly defined group is a lack of a Confident Identity. If you don’t know who you are, someone else will be happy to define you.

One of the most dangerous things a cult does is force you to give up your identity. As I’ve discussed in “Is Control Healthy or Unhealthy?”, healthy people understand that God wants them to develop their own convictions. In a cult, the leadership seeks to take control of your “internal” world—your thoughts, your schedule, and your self-worth. They encourage an unhealthy “handing over” of the self.

Furthermore, cults often teach members to suppress their natural responses to pain or red flags. Therefore, we must remember that emotions can lead us to health. If you feel a “check-engine light” of anxiety or fear regarding a group’s behavior, trust your gut and talk to more people. This is your signal that a boundary is being violated. A cult will tell you those feelings are “sinful” or “weak,” but a healthy worldview recognizes them as vital tools for discernment.

If you won’t stand for something good, you might end up following something evil. Invest your best effort to develop a confident identity which includes an absolute worldview. Knowing your worldview and identity keeps you safe. A worldview can’t be what you hope is true; it must contain what is actually true.

Life is demanding. To meet the demand, you must come to a greater knowledge of who you are. In particular, you must understand who God made you to be. You were created as a first-rate version of yourself, not a second-rate duplicate of a cult leader’s agenda.

Don’t fall into the same trap as Allison Mack. Popularity, fame, and the false “belonging” of an exploitative group are poor substitutes for genuine meaning. You can’t have meaning without knowing your identity. If you are ready to build a defense against deception, I invite you to Learn how to develop a Confident Identity through my books and resources. Knowing who you are in God’s eyes is the only way to ensure you never have to give up your soul to find a place to belong.

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Last updated 20260329

Defiant Peace Staying Grounded When Life Is At Odds

Defiant Peace: Staying Grounded When Life is at Odds

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Are you at odds with how your life is going? If you are feeling more disappointment than energy for life, you could benefit from pausing to examine your direction. It is one thing to face negative circumstances, but when those circumstances cause you to doubt who you are and who God is, your life can quickly accelerate into despair.

You can make peace with your life even when you are experiencing frequent discouragement. Disappointment shows up in many ways: the loss of a loved one or a job, the inability to get on the same page with your spouse, consistent setbacks despite your best efforts, or a painful lack of connection with others.

All of these can impact your sense of identity. Loss, stress, and rejection are serious enough to cause anyone to enter into self-doubt. When you start doubting your identity, you open yourself up to all kinds of trouble.

The Anatomy of Disappointment

Disappointment itself is a natural response to a fallen world. However, the danger starts when the disappointment stops being about what happened and starts being about who you are. If you lose a job, it is a professional setback; if you decide that the loss means you are “unemployable” or “worthless,” you have allowed a circumstance to rewrite your identity.

When we don’t have a firm grip on our identity, we are likely to find the wrong answer to the “Why?” behind our pain. Often, we fill that void with self-doubt or, worse, doubt about God’s character. This creates a crisis of the soul. You aren’t just fighting a problem; you are fighting against your own soul.

Defiant Peace: Identity as the Shock Absorber

My life work as a professional counselor has included the effort to study, write about, and teach the significance of knowing your identity. I focus so much on this because knowing who I really am provides the reassurance I need. Without that reassurance, life’s disappointments would overwhelm me.

Identity acts as a shock absorber. When you know you are a unique creation crafted for a specific purpose, a setback like a job loss becomes a change in assignment rather than a change in value. You can experience the “neutral” pain of a situation without letting it destroy your peace. In fact, your perspective is the only thing you can truly control when circumstances are chaotic. Choosing to anchor your perspective in your God-given identity allows you to stay upright when the ground shifts.

Defiant Peace: Finding the Positive in the Negative

How are you doing? Maybe you are finally prepared to make a course-correction. Making peace with your life requires a shift in how you process the “negatives.” We often spend so much energy trying to fix the circumstance that we forget to tend to the person experiencing it.

If you want to find peace, you must learn to look for the positive even when the negative seems all-consuming. This isn’t “toxic positivity” or pretending the pain isn’t there. It is a deliberate choice to search for the “good seed” God has planted as your design, even in the middle of a difficult season. When you find that positive core—your true identity—the external disappointments lose their power to drive you toward despair.

Defiant Peace: The Path to Course-Correction

Are you ready to assess your current place in life? Start by separating the event from your identity. Practice saying, “This is what I am going through, but this is not who I am.”

Next, look for the themes. How has God used your unique personality to navigate past storms? When you understand your design, you can trust the Designer even when the current chapter of your life is hard to read.

If you would like some help with this assessment, start with the guest post I wrote on Lori Schumacher’s blog.. Then, if you have any questions, comment below so we can discuss how to find the positive and make peace with your life.

For those who want even more help with discovering and exercising their identity, consider my books Confident Identity and To Identity and Beyond. These resources are designed to help you move from self-doubt to the reassurance that only a clear sense of identity can provide. Stop being at odds with your life and start walking in the peace of who you were created to be.

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Last Updated: 20260322

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
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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.
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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.
Image generated by Matt using AI Copilot.
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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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

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.

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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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