Reading time: <1 minutes
Matt’s third book is now available for purchase. If you struggle to know the importance of your God-given identity, To Identity and Beyond is a must read.
Boundaries
Be Powerful Without Being Self-absorbed
Reading time: 4 minutes
The quickest way to be powerful is to develop healthy doses of humility and confidence. If you lean too far in one direction then life becomes unbalanced and can lead to a world of hurt and trouble. But, healthy humility and confidence result in joy.
How does joy related to power? To answer this, I first want you to consider the following four possible combinations of humility and confidence:
- Self-loathing: a false humility without much if any confidence means harmfully low self-worth. This person actively rejects the truth about who God is and who He made them to be.
- Self-deprecating: a helpful amount of humility without enough confidence leads to questionable self-worth. This person is healthy when they have a lighthearted ability to laugh at their mistakes. However, their negative self-expression can also come from a poisoned self-image.
- Self-confident: a helpful dose of humility and confidence means self-care without arrogance. This person lets God be God while also feeling good about who they are.
- Self-absorbed: too little humility with too much confidence results in an inflated sense of importance. This person becomes overcompensates for their low self-worth by focusing too much on trying to feel powerful. Increasing focus on self becomes a dead-end at self-loathing. An unhealthy preoccupation with self misses out on what God has to offer.
People become self-absorbed when they look only within themselves to heal their brokenness. In futility, people try to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. But, the power that originates anywhere except from God promises only the illusion of confidence.
For example, if self becomes everything and God is minimized, then God isn’t in His rightful position in our lives. We’re not really going to succeed – maybe we’ll succeed with financially or something – but overall for God’s kingdom and his purposes we won’t be succeeding.
Be Humble So You Can Be Powerful
The world says you must be strong and independent to be powerful. But an “I can do it all by myself” attitude fails to activate God’s power.
Do you want to be full of your own power or full of God's power? You can be humble, confident, and full of God's power. Why settle for only what you can muster without God? Share on XGod says to be powerful, you must be weak enough to accept His help. A healthy weakness is a vulnerable dependence. Depending upon God activates His power.
Each time he said, “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.” So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me.
2 Corinthians 12:9 NLT
Be Confident So You Can Be Powerful
If you focus too much on God, if that’s possible, and minimize yourself then you can develop self-loathing where you don’t feel like you’re much of anything. Self-loathing is simply another form of arrogance that blocks God out of your life.
God’s power isn’t going to shine through you then. You need to have a right view of yourself so that God’s power will rest on you and work through you.
Be Joyful So You Can Be Powerful
The joy of the Lord is your strength (Nehemiah 8:10). How can you experience joy if you carry the heavy load of bitterness toward your own spirit?
Passively waiting for God to make you powerful doesn’t work. To be full of power, you must actively allow God to fill you, which also means keeping yourself empty of substitute fillings. Being filled with the Spirit means having great joy in God.
So be very careful how you live, not being like those with no understanding, but live honorably with true wisdom, for we are living in evil times. Take full advantage of every day as you spend your life for his purposes. And don’t live foolishly for then you will have discernment to fully understand God’s will. And don’t get drunk with wine, which is rebellion; instead be filled with the fullness of the Holy Spirit.
Ephesians 5:15-18 TPT
How Can We Be Powerful And Not Self-absorbed? How Can We Be Confident While Also Humble?
If we want to be powerful, we must be joyful. If we want to be joyful, we can’t live rebelliously independent from God. We must stop living with the habits of self-deprecation and self-absorption. The antidote for poisoning shame is to look to God for help.
Those who look to him for help will be radiant with joy; no shadow of shame will darken their faces.
Psalm 34:5 NLT
So we should go for everything. We should do all that we can – shoot from the moon so to speak – but also keep that in check by accepting whatever God provides or doesn’t provide in our lives.
He may have a different plan than the one on our minds, and it may take some time to figure out what that is, but it doesn’t mean we should just be sidelined and sitting back and waiting for something to happen either.
We should take the truths in the Bible that God has given us and run with them as best as we can. But ultimately it is up to God to author our success.
The inspiration for this post came from a conversation I had with Kidron Tirey.
Image by İbarihim Halil Uyğur from Pixabay
Why Two Identities Struggle to Resolve Conflict
Reading time: 4 minutes
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.
Introducing Marriage from Roots to Fruits
Reading time: 3 minutes
When Failure is Not an Option!
Do any of these describe your experience with marriage?
- Overwhelmed by perpetual unresolved conflict;
- Drifting away from your partner;
- Experiencing the pain of betrayal;
- Confused by the complexity of marriage;
- Afraid to walk down the aisle.
Marriage from Roots to Fruits brings much needed hope to couples who are at a point of despair and intense emotional pain. It is filled with practical tools and real life examples to encourage couples along the path of healing and living victoriously. You will learn details of God’s design for a healthy relationship while experiencing how deeply God knows, understands, and cares about the struggle that can come with marriage.
Marriage: Mission Critical
Marriage is God joining together a man and a woman, loyal to each other for life, who each contribute distinct but equally important abilities towards the completion of a fruitful mission greater than can be accomplished apart.
Unfortunately, a marriage license does not mean we are ready or competent enough to marry. If we continue to think and feel like a single person, we will remain single on the inside even though, outwardly, we are married. How many people have plunged ahead into marriage without a clue? What would happen if no one was required to pass a test for a driver’s license before getting behind the wheel?
Whether you are single, engaged, single-again, or married, this book is for your personal growth. This book is especially for you, if you:
- Are struggling with how to make your relationship work;
- Like to understand how things work—how each part functions in relation to the whole;
- Want to learn the details of God’s design for relationships;
- Like to reflect in order to gain understanding;
- Want a full-brain (left and right) learning experience;
- Appreciate visual diagrams to gain understanding;
- Want to apply the appropriate principles and ideas to bring about positive change;
- Want to make the most of your time in counseling.
God created you with a blueprint which establishes not only your identity (His end-in-mind for you as a work of art) but also your growth journey (the step-by-step plans). However, your experiences with the darkness of this world, sin, and the enemy deface the blueprint and leave you disoriented. A marriage at its best provides an encouraging companion who helps you discover your true identity. But without God, marriage becomes a place of fear and self-doubt.
In Marriage from Roots to Fruits, you will learn:
- How to experience spiritual growth and truly know God;
- How to live in your true identity and ensure individual growth;
- How to enjoy marriage growth and true love for your partner.
This book contains unique counseling insights with strong biblical applications. Pastors and counselors can use it to help couples prepare for marriage as well as heal existing marriages. It is also applicable for married couples who feel okay about the relationship they have, but want to have a stronger and deeper relationship with God and each other.
This book is designed with 52 short lessons which include:
- Concept diagrams: learn the principles visually;
- For Reflection ideas: think deeper about each lesson;
- Experiential exercises: know the truths in your heart;
- Next Steps actions: apply what you learn in your marriage.
The 4 Steps to Growing a Fruitful Marriage
Reading time: 1 minutes
You are probably thinking, “Awesome! Only four steps! I can be done next week.” But God made marriage to last a lifetime for a reason. The steps I am about to show you are real steps that we all go through at one time or another. But first, read Matthew 13:3-9.
Jesus uses the Parable of the Sower to speak about our receptivity to God’s words. Let’s consider how the parable also applies to marriage. The four types of soil in the parable match up with four types of relationships. From least to most desirable, these are Path, Rocks, Thorns, and Good Soil. The typical inexperienced couple begins as either Conflicted or Careless. Along the way, every couple experiences being Conflicted, Careless, and Choking before making it to Cooperating.
The Conflicted Couple needs to learn how to experience a basic positive connection. The Careless Couple needs to experience and resolve conflict to build endurance. The Choking Couple needs to find a deeper enjoyment amidst the busyness of life. The Cooperating Couple needs to refine and maintain what they’ve accomplished so far.
As no person is perfect, no marriage is perfect. No matter which soil condition most closely describes your relationship, you can decide to grow a godly marriage by cultivating the path, clearing out the rocks, pulling out the thorns, and planting in the good soil. When you do this, you will be well on your way to yielding fruit one hundred times what was sown.
Is Your Identity Defined By What You Do?
Reading time: 3 minutes
Identity can’t be defined by what you do. It’s the other way around: what you do flows out of who you are.
The two are correlated though. What you do provides clues about who you are. But you are always more than what you do. And, in the case of a mistake, one moment in life doesn’t have the power to immortalize you.
What do you helps you discover your identity, but it doesn’t create or define your identity.
At the moment you came into existence, you have your identity. It serves as a map like your DNA. Life experiences are like sonar waves going out to detect your identity. Even what you do can be like identifying waves. Sometimes those waves contain distortions and you might get 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 some degree because you don’t know what it’s like to be completely free from the distortions. You can’t know, 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 for at a moving target. You can become more aware of who you are.
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 identity completely.
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:
- You are made in God’s image (similar to God but different, like how women are similar to men but different). See Genesis 1:26–27
- You are a spiritual being that God made with intention. See Genesis 2:7
- You are created to accomplish great things. See 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).
Then there are the specifics that only apply to each individual. 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 hear. Your voice and contributions are needed – otherwise, God wouldn’t have bothered to create you. You are significant.
To define the specifics, you can look at your:
- physical appearance and athletic ability
- sex (male or female)
- cognitive and emotional patterns and preferences
- personality patterns
- spiritual gifting
- work preferences
When you start to notice the patterns in all of these, you will have a stronger sense of your identity.
As you seek your identity, remember that you aren’t self-sustaining. You can’t keep yourself alive forever. You have a distorted self-image. You need to look beyond yourself to find your identity. You are defined by your context; God is where you came from, and if you’re a believer, God is where you will return.
How are you doing with discovering your true identity? What struggles or obstacles are preventing you from realizing all God made you to be?
I posted this answer on Quora for the questions: 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 by Arek Socha from Pixabay
