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Amazing Desire To Gain Understanding

Amazing Desire To Gain Understanding

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Reading time: 4 minutes

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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Empathy Energizes Relationships

Empathy Energizes Relationships

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Reading time: 3 minutes

What is empathy? Empathy can be looked at from several perspectives. Empathy is:

  • Understanding a person’s mental and emotional state.
  • Opening yourself to feel compassion that moves you to care enough that you’d give everything you have (including your life) to help another.
  • A practical fulfillment of love.

Love Makes Empathy Possible

Because God sent His son Jesus Christ to demonstrate real love, we have the power to love, too. Here is a reminder of how God defines love:

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.

1 Corinthians 13:4-8 NIV

Jesus couldn’t have endured the cross so graciously without empathy. God is a natural empathizer because God is love. Jesus modeled empathy while He walked the earth. He encouraged those who needed a boost and He wept with those who grieved.

Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.

Romans 12: 15 ESV

Spiritual Reality Makes Empathy Possible

To be able to empathize you must understand two truths:

  1. No other person is your enemy; only the devil is your true enemy (Ephesians 6:12). The devil will never repent and his destiny is already determined (John 16:8-11). But your friend, your spouse, or another person in your life can come to repentance. Someone who at one point acts like your enemy could one day be your friend. God knows what this is like (Romans 5:8-10).
  2. Other people are broken and needy just like you. Anyone who mistreats you is doing the best they can. They don’t yet know how to love any better. Jesus acknowledged this from the cross: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34 NIV).

Struggle Makes Empathy Possible

Live can be a hard struggle. As we endure difficulty, it builds in us the ability to feel genuine compassion (2 Corinthians 1:4). Real compassion comes from the gut. It’s a longing for another person to receive God’s blessing. If you’ve ever witnessed someone suffering and desired to have the power to end their suffering, you’ve empathized!

Unfortunately, without God, we lack the power to help anyone. We are dependent upon God’s will. To move forward in life we must wait upon God to reveal His will. To see God’s will, we need light to see the truth.

We can be blind to the truth, trying to find our way through the darkness. And, the darkness can be consuming and overwhelming:

“Your eye is like a lamp that provides light for your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is filled with light. But when your eye is unhealthy, your whole body is filled with darkness. And if the light you think you have is actually darkness, how deep that darkness is!

Matthew 6:22-23 NLT

Thank God for His light. But when we’ve become accustomed to the dark, it can take a while to appreciate the light. We can walk in the dark which means we’ll hurt each other sometimes.

One way to combat the darkness is to develop more empathy for those God brings into your life. You can only deeply empathize with another if God’s love is working in you.

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.

1 John 4:7 NIV

If you’re able to empathize with another, you’re seeing them the way God sees them. It’s not possible to harbor bitterness toward someone and empathize with them at the same time. So if you want to have a better relationship, focus on growing your ability to empathize.

Read about how to have empathy without losing yourself in the process.
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2 Helpful No-Guilt Negative Emotions

2 Helpful No-Guilt Negative Emotions

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Reading time: 4 minutes

Negative emotions are to be expected in a fallen world. The three most common are some form of anger, depression, and fear. If you suffer a loss would you want to walk around oblivious and happy?

Negative emotions exist as a response to pain. But emotions are not sinful. Only destructive behaviors are sinful. Indulging the flesh leads to destructive behavior. Emotions are neutral. What you do with them matters.

You might be thinking that as a Christian, you are always supposed to be happy. Paul tells us to:

Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.

1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 NIV

God’s will is that you rejoice always. How can this be? This is impossible to accomplish. However, we can rejoice in who God is, in His grace and mercy all the time. But while we are doing that, there’s also room to express sadness over present-day tragedies.

Jesus Experienced Negative Emotions

When Lazarus died, Jesus cried. Then a few short moments later, He gave thanks. Jesus experienced a mixture of negative emotions and a positive attitude.

Jesus wept. So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me.

John 11:35, 41 NIV

Jesus cried more than a few times. He didn’t only let a few tears run down His face, He sobbed too. So it must be okay if you do too.

During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission.

Hebrews 5:7 NIV

Negative Emotions Can Be Healthy

The so-called negative emotions (like sadness) have alternative positive expressions. Grief is healthy but despair is destructive. Can you see the difference? You can feel sad but choose either grief or despair.

Does this also work with anger? Jesus was consumed with zeal for the Father’s house (John 2:13-22). Indignation is healthy but resentment and bitterness are destructive.

How about anxiety? Jesus experience the incredible weight of sin and abandonment just before (Matthew 26:36-39) and during (Matthew 27:46) His crucifixion. Stress and anguish are healthy feelings but fear and worry are destructive.

While Jesus definitely experienced some form of sadness and anger, He never experienced fear. The Bible says to not sin in your anger (Ephesians 4:26) and to mourn with those who mourn (Romans 12:15). But it doesn’t ever say you should fear. In fact, God is frequently reminding us, “do not fear.”

This doesn’t mean we should expect to never fear. But it does mean that worry is a sin. The one who worries is attempting to control something they cannot control. No one can worry and trust God at the same time. Fear and faith cannot co-exist.

There is a healthy expression of negative emotions. Although they are healthy (not sinful) they are only needed when pain is a possibility. In this life, so many things can bring tears. But you can be thankful that in heaven, there won’t be any more pain.

There is a destructive expression of negative emotions. Resentment, bitterness, despair, hopelessness, worry, panic always have disastrous consequences on the body and mind. While it might not seem like it, you always have a choice whether you want to hold onto these emotions. That’s because they are really behaviors. Do everything you can to prevent them.

Worry and despair are choices. Instead, what you really need is some healthy grieving or yearning for justice. Sadness and sorrow are responses.

Although sorrow isn’t a happy emotion, it can motivate a person to pursue a positive direction in life. Sorrow has some hope mixed in. Indignation has some hope mixed in. God will make all things right someday. You can endure stress when you also have hope.

Grieving is the best you can do when life serves a helping of pain on your plate. You can eat with dignity and might even be able to rejoice, pray, and give thanks at the same time.

Read more about Paul’s 3 Impossible Commands.
Read more about Jesus Feeling Angry
Read more on emotions and pain.
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Be Imperfect But Live Strong Anyway

Be Imperfect But Live Strong Anyway

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Reading time: 3 minutes

You can be less than perfect but still unmistakably valuable. You might hear “Nobody is perfect” after someone makes a mistake. But that phrase might also mean no one can be everything to everybody. You can be flawed and perfect at the same time.

To be imperfect and a Christian simply means that you aren’t living up to your ideal self. You need to mature into who God made you to be. The only way to be perfect is to trust God will fulfill His promise to completely sanctify you. God has the power to fully disinfect you from all sin.

You Are Imperfect

How positive are you about yourself? Can you look at yourself, see your brokenness, or even your sinful behaviors, and still know you are completely loved by God? Can you be limited in your abilities, flawed, and valuable? As you find the answers to these questions you will be able to live with strength and confidence.

Our hearts long for the end of all that is wrong, but in this life only God is perfect. We must live with less than ideal circumstances whether we like it or not.

One way to cope with imperfection is by employing all-or-nothing thinking. It’s useful when you can’t stand to look at your flaws. Like all coping, it stops the pain but a lack of felt discomfort doesn’t mean you are thriving.

If any imperfection means you are worthless, then you must believe you can’t make mistakes if you want to be valuable. The only way to achieve this is through denial of reality. Therefore, all-or-nothing thinking increases the likelihood of impulsive decisions and obsessive behaviors. Fear motivates the all-or-nothing thinker to attempt the impossible. Because it is impossible, more fear is generated. This never-ending cycle is like an addiction.

You Are Perfect

If someone or something isn’t perfect, what good is it? Does God only love you because He’s got no one better to love? No! God made you in His image, so you already have the highest value possible.

There’s no need to strive for perfection because you already have it. The only real flaw you have is the sin living within you. But Jesus has already crucified your sin.

So you also should consider yourselves to be dead to the power of sin and alive to God through Christ Jesus.

Romans 6:11 NLT

To be all-in for God is healthy, but all-or-nothing thinking is unhealthy. God has no flaws, so there is no harm in fully trusting Him. Yet, it’s normal to struggle to trust Him when you are suffering.

Since you aren’t perfect (yet) you will only harm yourself if you can’t accept yourself with your flaws. It’s okay if you aren’t your ideal self yet. God’s design of you is perfect. He has set you free from your flaws and He isn’t finished with you yet.

Healthy thinking results in self-control, peace, and compassion. You can slow down and realize that you have everything you need in the present moment.

By his divine power, God has given us everything we need for living a godly life. We have received all of this by coming to know him, the one who called us to himself by means of his marvelous glory and excellence.

2 Peter 1:3 NLT

Responding in fear (worrying) doesn’t help. Worrying is like driving your car in neutral or rocking in a chair. Both expend energy, but neither get you anywhere real.

Extreme behavior is often wasteful. The best approach stops at good enough. Instead of wasting your energy, why not channel it into activities that benefit others or you?

Has your life become extreme and therefore imbalanced in any way? The opposite of worry is trust. If you want to be imperfect live strong anyway, consider God’s words to Israel:

The holy Lord God of Israel
    had told all of you,
“I will keep you safe
if you turn back to me
    and calm down.
I will make you strong
    if you quietly trust me.”

Isaiah 30:15 CEV

What steps can you take to regain balance (give up worrying and self-reliance) and therefore increase your peace and efficiency?

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Enjoy A New Reality

Enjoy A New Reality

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Reading time: 4 minutes

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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Negative Experiences CanCreate Negative Self-Worth

Negative Experiences Can Create Negative Self-Worth

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Reading time: 3 minutes

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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