Christian Concepts

Bringing your Potential to Light

Identity

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?

Image by 272447 from Pixabay

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
Photo from PxHere

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
Image by Isa KARAKUS from Pixabay

Freedom Can Save A Marriage

Freedom Can Save A Marriage

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Reading time: 4 minutes

Do you believe it’s possible to do the right thing for the wrong reasons? Love without freedom isn’t real love. You might be following the letter of the law but miss the spirit when your heart isn’t in your actions.

God’s standard is freedom. He wants us to want to follow His instructions. But no one is perfect. The law He provides shows us how our hearts fall short of having pure motives. Following orders under strict obligation misses the mark.

The point is this: whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.

2 Corinthians 9:6-7 ESV

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.

Galatians 5:1 NIV

Obligation Results In External Motivation

Performing a task under obligation indicates only a limited amount of self-control. For example, wearing a seat-belt out of obligation will protect you just as well if you agree it is a good idea, provided you buckle it correctly either way.

Compliance works at first, as long as there is accountability. If you don’t agree with a law and there isn’t any enforcement of the law, what is likely to happen?

  • You probably won’t wear your seat-belt every time.
  • You might not buckle it correctly every time.

The motive to wear your seat-belt will come from law enforcement; you will be externally motivated. Sometimes this is the only motivation we have. It is adequate but not ideal. You might only comply with the law when you know someone in authority is watching. Even then, you might not recognize anyone in authority.

Freedom Results In Internal Motivation

Rebellion happens because of our innate desire for freedom and autonomy. In this sense, rebellion is a good thing. Everyone needs to learn how to develop responsibility when they have freedom. It’s possible to have both. When you do, what is likely to happen?

  • You will wear your seat-belt most of the time.
  • You will invest in learning the correct way to wear your seat-belt.

The motive to wear your seat-belt will come from your heart; you will be internally motivated. You will be in agreement with the law, even if you don’t follow it perfectly every time.

Relationships Need Freedom

Relationships need freedom to function properly. Obligation opens up relationships to other sins like control. If I am obligated to serve you, then I might resort to control to attempt to prevent you from taking advantage of me. This intensifies when I believe I must continue to serve you even when it is harmful to me.

Freedom allow genuine love and care to develop in a relationship. With freedom, I can serve with joy in my heart. The value I have for another person motivates me.

Relationships Need Boundaries

Boundaries provide a natural way to escape the vulnerability of obligation. Boundaries promote healthy attitudes in both husband and wife. They are necessary when one person lacks the desire or ability to follow the way of love. When this happens a person could respond with good or bad control.

Unhealthy control attempts to manage another person. Healthy control attempts to manage yourself. If I am obligated to serve you, I believe I must serve you or I suffer guilt, so my only other option is to try to manage your behavior.

A home can be a good analogy for boundaries. Imagine a husband as a home and a wife as a home. What happens if the husband blames his wife that his home isn’t clean and the wife believes she is obligated to serve her husband by cleaning his home? They will probably end up in a dysfunctional pattern because of the unhealthy dynamic of taking advantage of another who feels obligation to serve.

In this example, the wife could attempt unhealthy control by focusing on her husband’s flaws. “You don’t love me.” “Your house is too dirty.” “You only want me in your life because I’ve been cleaning your house.” This sounds like nagging, doesn’t it? She feels trapped and hopes her husband will accept responsibility for his home. But she is the one working hard to convince him to change.

While these attempts could lead to some fruitful discussions, they place too much of the control outside of the wife. She would be better off focusing on what she can control. She only needs to recognize her opinion on the matter. “I don’t feel comfortable cleaning your house.”

She doesn’t have to participate in something that violates her sense of self. She has the freedom to choose to clean or not to clean. She can use discernment to decide whether cleaning is a good idea. This way she maintains a healthy amount of control over her situation.

For more on boundaries.
Image by Anja from Pixabay

Improve Your Communication

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Reading time: 3 minutes

How easily can you put yourself in another’s shoes? How possible is it for you to see life from another person’s perspective?

When communication is poor in a relationship, it usually has little to do with choosing the right words. Most people have a decent vocabulary. Communication problems come from:

  • An (often stubborn) desire to go in a particular direction (that is different than the other’s)
  • An inability to see life beyond your own perspective
  • Assuming other people think and feel the way you do

We see things not as they are, but as we are. Because it is the ‘I’ behind the ‘eye’ that does the seeing.

Anaïs Nin

If you’ve never seen a four-legged animal, you’ll probably have a hard time understanding someone’s love for a dog.

Your ability to understand your world is limited by your experiences and your identity. You can always get new experiences, but you can't get a new identity. However, new experiences will help you understand your identity. Share on X

You’ve heard the expression, “get on the same page,” right? All this means is having an experience of the same thing. Even after this, communication requires work because every person is different. Each person looks at the same dog, but sees, feels, and responds differently.

As much as being on the same page is helpful, it requires a tremendous amount of effort because there are so many experiences that haven’t been formed at the same time. One person might have experienced a dog bite when they were 8 years old. Another person in their twenties might call their dog their best friend. How would these two people get on the same page? As you can see, there’s plenty of room for bias and plenty of reasons why they would struggle to communicate.

Let’s pretend you have an awesome camera that takes super high-resolution pictures and a low-def monitor. What kind of experience will you have looking at the picture?

What if we switch it up? What if you have a super high-resolution monitor, but you take a picture with a low-res camera? Same experience, right? Both pictures will look distorted.

In this example, the picture is the common experience and the monitor represents each person’s identity. The same picture will look different on different monitors.

The monitor can’t change. While you can change, you are limited like the monitor to what you can perceive at any given moment. God hard-wired your identity to see life in a specific way. He doesn’t intend for you to ever see it exactly like anyone else.

This brings us to a plan to communicate better. To improve your communication:

  • Have more experiences; each one changes you and helps you understand
  • Have more shared experiences; each one gets you closer to being on the same page
  • Practice describing what you see to each other, but realize you’ll never get it perfect, only close enough
  • Recognize each person sees the same experiences differently
  • Recognize each person has different motives and desires
  • Recognize each person is unique and will always only see life through the lens of their God-given identity
  • Be patient with the process; the best understanding develops over a long time

When all else seems to fail, there is love and empathy. Love overcomes the frustration from the lack of ability to know what it is like to be someone else. No one else has ever been you, so they can’t know for sure what it’s like. But you can empathize because everyone knows what it is like to feel pain and discomfort and then experience peace.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.

2 Corinthians 1:3-4 NIV

Peace and comfort are universal experiences.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reinhold Niebuhr

That’s the short version. It continues:

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

Reinhold Niebuhr

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