Self-Image

Be Authentic And You Will Belong

May 15, 2022 by Matt Pavlik Leave a Comment

Having high expectations is good as long as they don’t come at the cost of being authentic. So, are expectations good or bad?

When you expect too much of yourself, you can never achieve an authentic life. If you are always chasing after some ideal standard, you won’t be able to appreciate who you are in the moment. An inauthentic life is never profoundly satisfying.

However, if you don’t expect enough of yourself, you also won’t be able to achieve an authentic life. You’ll be resigned to your shortcomings. You’ll assume that the way you are today is as good as it gets.

Be Authentic: It’s Okay to Cry

One common way to be inauthentic is to hold back your tears. Big boys or girls don’t cry. But what does it cost you to maintain the appearance that nothing phases you?

Keeping your feelings stuffed inside splits you in two psychologically. The public (or visible) you takes on too high expectations while the private (or hidden) you takes on too low expectations. This puts you in a body that is trying to be two different people at the same time. The more a person insists on living this way, the more likely they will experience a psychological breakdown.

No one should have to pretend to have their life together just to keep a relationship. But it’s all too common for someone to believe I’m too much or I’m too little.

Be Authentic: It’s Okay to Risk

The person you are today isn’t all that God has planned you to be. While being genuine doesn’t mean pretending to be someone greater than you are, it also doesn’t mean embracing a negative self-image. The one is too prideful while the other is too humble.

To seek to be closer to who you really are requires risking exposure. Some people will find out you aren’t who you’ve been leading them to believe. You might also find out that you’re never going to be like someone you idolize. Both of these realizations can produce some sadness.

If you’re going to choose an authentic life, be prepared for some initial disillusionment. But it should resolve quickly. If you work at accepting your God-given identity, you’ll find you’ve only lost what was never true and gained what was always true.

Be Authentic to Maximize Your Belonging

God wants us to embrace exactly who we are: who He made us to be. He gives each of us the faith to see our true selves. Because God planned for you to be your authentic self, you will automatically belong with Him and all your other spiritual brothers and sisters.

You must be willing to understand your identity and act with integrity because others are depending on you to be authentic.

Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect. Because of the privilege and authority God has given me, I give each of you this warning: Don’t think you are better than you really are. Be honest in your evaluation of yourselves, measuring yourselves by the faith God has given us. Just as our bodies have many parts and each part has a special function, so it is with Christ’s body. We are many parts of one body, and we all belong to each other.
Romans 12:2-5 NLT

Don’t compromise who you are (God’s design) for any reason.

Would anyone like to share some ways they struggle to be authentic?

Dig Up Courage To Bury Your Skeletons

March 27, 2022 by Matt Pavlik Leave a Comment

Skeletons belong in the ground, not in the closet. Likewise, sin belongs on the cross, not in the heart. It takes courage to properly clean up the mess in our hearts. Everyone is quick to hide their shame and slow to dispose of it.

Who hasn’t miraculously cleaned up a room by shoving all the clutter into the closet? Your guests can enjoy the illusion of a clean home. And you can enjoy your moment of pure genius, at least until a guest opens the door to hang up their coat or attempt to find the bathroom.

Half-Hearted Cleaning Lacks Courage

Closets are for storing junk out of the way, but hearts aren’t supposed to have hidden rooms. Jesus is against tactics that disguise the true state of the heart. Such efforts are especially insidious when the person attempting the beautification project believes that beauty is only skin deep.

“What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs—beautiful on the outside but filled on the inside with dead people’s bones and all sorts of impurity. Outwardly you look like righteous people, but inwardly your hearts are filled with hypocrisy and lawlessness.”
Matthew 23:27-28 NLT

Cleaning only the outside (being concerned only with appearance) is for non-believers. It’s impossible for a non-believer to clean the inside. That’s Jesus’s point to the Pharisees: they don’t know Him.

God tends to the hearts of those He calls His own (1 Samuel 16:7, Hebrews 12:4-11). God knows about your closet even if you’ve long forgotten about what is inside.

Whole-Hearted Cleaning Requires Courageous Humility

No one has a pure heart, at least not without help. Instead of humbling ourselves by asking for Jesus’s help, we scurry around doing what we can to manage the dirt in our lives. God appreciates our willingness, but I’m sure He must get a chuckle from seeing our attempt. Human cleaning efforts don’t eliminate the dirt; they only rearrange it.

On your own, you lack the power to be perfect. Your best effort can only make the outside look better. But if you are a believer, Jesus can make your heart clean.

To properly bury shame once and for all requires uncovering it. That’s because the antidote to shame is acceptance. All of us desperately need this affirmation of our value because the sins of our hearts only reveal our inadequacies.

To accept anything, you must first see it for what it is. How can anyone overcome shame when they are afraid to look at it? However, even when you can endure the awareness of your shortcomings, more is required than knowing God accepts you if you want to be free of shame.

You will know God’s acceptance has eliminated your shame when you can accept yourself. You can only accept yourself because God accepts you. However, God’s acceptance hasn’t done you any good until you can accept you. If you can’t accept yourself that means you haven’t fully embraced God’s acceptance.

Ask for Courage

If you have courage, pray like this:

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.
Psalm 51:10 ESV

If you lack the courage to face your shame, ask God for strength. Then look to Him for the antidote.

I sought the Lord, and he answered me; he delivered me from all my fears.
Those who look to him are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame.
Psalm 34:4-5 NIV

All that is left now is to believe God accepts you. If you continue to struggle with this, you might benefit from Christian Identity Therapy to help you gain the courage to make God’s acceptance real in your life.

More help for overcoming shame.
Image by Lothar Dieterich from Pixabay

Decision-Making Made Clear and Confident

March 13, 2022 by Matt Pavlik Leave a Comment

Decision-making is challenging to the degree people are reluctant to make use of a worldview. In this context, a worldview is a set of prioritized values (convictions) that you can use to evaluate opportunities.

Making a decision requires discriminating between alternatives. To discriminate means to judge one opportunity as better than another. People who don’t like to be judgmental can therefore struggle to make decisions. For everything elevated as more valuable, there must be something else devalued. People who like to people-please can be reluctant to make a decision when no option will leave everyone happy.

You can become confused when you have too many options and no way to either emphasize the best ones as superior or eliminate the worst ones. You have two alternatives to make this decision-making easier. First, by choosing the best option, you don’t have to declare any option as bad (a more positive approach). Second, by rejecting the worse option, you can completely eliminate it from consideration (a more negative approach). Different personalities might prefer one alternative over the other.

Decision-Making with Spiritual Discernment

You can formulate your worldview with spiritual discernment. God is good. The devil is evil. Worldviews simplify decision-making options into right or wrong. Racism and other unhealthy discrimination result from choosing other categories for evaluation. Instead of good or evil, people choose false dichotomies like black or white, conservative or liberal, male or female, native or foreign. These are false dichotomies because, for example, while a person can only be born male or female, sex doesn’t determine if a person is right.

When a person refuses to believe God is 100% good and all other options are 100% evil, they must choose their own categories for evaluation. The problem with this is that people will then evaluate based on past experience (prejudice) rather than God’s standard of truth (objective right and wrong).

What do you base your worldview on?

Decision-Making with Personality

Almost all decision-making can benefit from spiritual discernment. Even a simple decision about what kind of car to buy can have moral implications. You might have plenty of money, but should you buy the most expensive car you can afford or should you buy the less expensive one and use the difference to help someone?

You might prefer to eat at one restaurant but your friend prefers another. Your preference isn’t right or wrong, but what you end up choosing could be, if your selfishness harms your friend. This situation requires a balance between following what you want and doing no harm to your friend. The more mature a person is, the more they can put aside (temporarily) what they want (or believe) in order to care for another person. Loving others takes precedence over having life go your way all the time.

In a three-legged race, two people are tied together, so they must run at the same speed or else they will come apart or fall down. If one person attempts to run faster than the other, just because they are a better athlete, that person achieves nothing. Members of a team all win or all lose together. Running faster means little if doing so will injure your partner’s leg. Is winning a race worth more than a person’s health?

The context of Romans 14 is eating food that has been sacrificed to idols, but the basic principle applies.

Don’t let your appetite destroy what God has done. All foods are fit to eat, but it is wrong to cause problems for others by what you eat. It is best not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything else that causes problems for other followers of the Lord. What you believe about these things should be kept between you and God. You are fortunate, if your actions don’t make you have doubts. But if you do have doubts about what you eat, you are going against your beliefs. And you know that is wrong, because anything you do against your beliefs is sin.
Romans 14:20-23 CEV

Decision-Making with Freedom

You are free to choose whatever you want, as long as you don’t go against your convictions and you don’t lead someone else to go against their convictions. God says such actions would be wrong because they are destructive.

God wants you to develop your worldview, which includes your preferences, convictions, and spiritual discernment. With a well-defined worldview, decision-making can be a positive, pleasant experience.

I have two points of clarification before I finish. Personal boundaries can possibly be in tension with the consideration of others. I’m not going to go into detail here, but Paul has written plenty about following what is right and confronting what is wrong. So, in Romans 14, when Paul suggests we should deny ourselves what we want it is for the sake of preserving the conscience of a fellow believer who is genuinely distressed about the practice of their faith. Otherwise, this would be abusive to the person who lacked faith. He is not saying anyone should submit their God-given ability to make healthy personal choices to a bully. This would be allowing someone to abuse you.

Consider too that emotional immaturity is similar to a lack of faith. Those who are more mature must bear with those who can’t yet help themselves. Again, this doesn’t mean you give in to their every desire, but that you treat them with patience and understanding to minimize creating unnecessary distress for them.

As an exercise, make a list of areas where you need extra understanding because you are insecure and another list where you are confident. How does it feel to be in each position?

Read about boundaries and being assertive.
Image by Gerhard G. from Pixabay

Eliminate Shame By Believing God

February 13, 2022 by Matt Pavlik 1 Comment

Shame is inevitable, but where does it come from? Why do we experience it? How can we overcome it?

When Adam and Eve first chose to disobey God, they believed the enemy’s words over God’s words. After they doubted God, they gained the “knowledge of good and evil” but felt shame for the first time. They gained knowledge but lost their secure connection with God.

Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”“You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
Genesis 3:1-5 NIV

Knowing evil isn’t an advantage. That’s like knowing darkness. That’s like knowing the pains of torture.

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden.
Genesis 3:6-8 NIV

We Knew Shame on Day One

Shame exists because we are born feeling inadequate. Fortunately, God is at work to bring healing to us.

Every day of life is an opportunity to experience a positive reinforcement of your worth. You need to be validated, accepted, wanted, affirmed, and encouraged. This kind of love must come from a source outside of you. Even when others love you, the origin of that love is God.

Unfortunately, because of sin and the curse on this world, every day of life also holds the possibility of negatively reinforcing the feelings of inadequacy. You can make mistakes and even sin. You can fail to accomplish an important task or desired goal. You must find a way to cope with imperfection, defeat, rejection, and isolation.

In a negative environment, the devil’s lies multiply easily. Without faith, developing self-hatred is inevitable.

Shame Drives Us to Regret Being Created

Shame creates an impulse to hide. It’s humiliating to feel less than others. The desire to cover up is way more intense than you’d find in a game of hide-and-seek. The desire to hide is better described as wishing you could totally scrub yourself out of existence.

You can scrub a carrot clean. You can even peel it to remove the outer dirt. But if you believe there is something wrong with it and keep removing parts of it, hoping to find the defect, eventually you’ll have nothing left. The carrot is a carrot through and through. You are who you are supposed to be after God has cleaned you on the outside and inside.

As you can see, I like using analogies. I use them while I am providing counseling to help people understand what is going on with them in a much deeper way. Here is my analogy for shame: ‘Shame’ is to ‘believing God’ as ‘darkness’ is to ‘light.’ Darkness is not a self-sustaining powerful force. It’s better defined as the absence of light. Likewise, shame has no power over you as long as you have the faith to believe what God says about you.

You will only feel bad about yourself to the degree you can’t trust God. To the degree that you trust God, you also gain healthier self-worth. Meditate on this and start your journey to overcome shame today.

Read more about shame: Shame Is A Universal Struggle
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Shame Is A Universal Struggle

February 6, 2022 by Matt Pavlik 3 Comments

Shame is a feeling that everyone has to contend with. It’s universally inescapable. You might think that shame is spread from person to person like a disease. Actually, all of us are born with the inevitability to feel shame.

Shame is there, buried deep within us. It’s buried because we’d rather not feel it. It’d deep because it’s been with us from day one. On our best days, we can keep our heads above the water. At times we don’t feel it, but other times we are completely immersed, terrified of drowning in it. This sense of defectiveness infects a person to their core.

Many people confuse guilt and shame, so let’s look at both so you can work on experiencing more freedom.

Guilt is Feeling a Failure of Doing

If you feel bad because of something you did or didn’t do, then you are feeling guilty. There is also “true” guilt and “false” guilt. If there is nothing wrong with what you did, but you feel guilty anyway, that’s false guilt.

If you have done something wrong, God would have you feel a conviction that drives you to repentance and to seek forgiveness from Him. Conviction is different than guilt. Conviction points to a positive restoration. Guilt points to a negative condemnation.

For the Christian who trusts in Jesus’s sacrifice, guilt is no longer necessary. The law’s purpose is to increase awareness of sin, but the law cannot save you from guilt. Sacrifices were only a temporary measure that could not permanently remove guilt.

Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin.
Romans 3:19-20 NIV

The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming—not the realities themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship. Otherwise, would they not have stopped being offered? For the worshipers would have been cleansed once for all, and would no longer have felt guilty for their sins.
Hebrews 10:1-2 NIV

But Jesus’s sacrifice has the power to remove guilt forever. God intends that you believe the following about yourself:

you have already been made perfect
you are in the process of being made holy
you are forgiven once and for all, so that no further sacrifice is necessary
you are cleansed from a guilty conscience
you can have full assurance of all this by faith

For by one sacrifice [Jesus] has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.

And where [sins] have been forgiven, sacrifice for sin is no longer necessary.

…let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water.
Hebrews 10:14, 18, 22 NIV

Shame is Feeling a Failure of Being

If guilt isn’t enough then there is also shame: that sickening feeling that results simply from existing. Shame results not from what you’ve done, but from how you feel about being you. The context of shame is always other people, how they must view you. Someone feeling shame desperately wants what is impossible: to remove and discard more of who they are.

When Adam and Eve were “naked and felt no shame,” this means they felt no embarrassment for who they were and what they desired (Genesis 2:25). They accepted how God made them without any concern.

Consider who you are and what you feel ashamed of about yourself. That part of you that you believe is defective, dirty, incompetent, unwanted, inadequate, or bad is what God says is good. He made you the way you are on purpose. After your sin is removed (which has already been done) all that remains is everything you are supposed to be.

I pray you are able to rest more and more in this truth that you are loved and accepted.

Steps to Overcoming Shame.
Photo by Mick Haupt on Unsplash

Rejection Is Like A Painful Death

January 9, 2022 by Matt Pavlik Leave a Comment

What has been your experience with rejection? I see it as the most painful experience. But God has overcome it with the power of His acceptance.

I recently watched the movie, Saving Private Ryan, again. In one scene a German and American soldier are wrestling for survival. The American pulls out a knife, but the German manages to use the knife against him. The American pushes against the German’s arm to prevent the knife from cutting into his chest, but slowly the knife moves deeper until the American dies.

In managing pain, it’s usually easier to face and get it over with quickly. A slow and painful death is bad enough. To face the humiliation of defeat and also endure excruciating torment is the worst. But isn’t this is exactly what Jesus faced on the cross? He was without personal guilt, but in carrying the weight of sin, He must have experienced the shame of our guilt.

“He himself bore our sins” in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; “by his wounds you have been healed.”
1 Peter 2:24 NIV

To die at the hands of another person is a physical rejection. To wither away because of another person’s critical words is an emotional rejection.

Rejection Is a Lie From the Devil

The devil wants you to feel cut off from God. He doesn’t have the ability to sever your connection with God. The best he can do is deceive you into believing God has rejected you.

When you experience emotional rejection, there is nothing true about it. It’s not valid. If you struggle with self-doubt, you become susceptible to believing the lie is valid. You might feel horrible as if it were true. This happens when you focus on the negatives rather than on God. It often leads to God-doubt such as, “God doesn’t love me” or “I’m too defective for God to love me.”

Jesus’s sacrifice saves you from destruction. He rescued you from the darkness–including its lies and shame.

For he has rescued us from the kingdom of darkness and transferred us into the Kingdom of his dear Son, who purchased our freedom and forgave our sins.
Colossians 1:13-14 NLT

Because of this, no matter what you’ve done, you do not have to endure any shameful rejection. Don’t do that to yourself. You can graciously accept God’s discipline but you can reject the devil’s rejection.

God Accepts You as a Friend

Do you realize that God is for you? Because of Jesus’s death, you are blameless and without a single fault.

This includes you who were once far away from God. You were his enemies, separated from him by your evil thoughts and actions. Yet now he has reconciled you to himself through the death of Christ in his physical body. As a result, he has brought you into his own presence, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before him without a single fault. But you must continue to believe this truth and stand firmly in it. Don’t drift away from the assurance you received when you heard the Good News.
Colossians 1:21-23 NLT

Because God has removed your sin and guilt, you have His complete acceptance. Others may reject you, but God will not reject you any longer. God wants you to cling to this truth. You are a member of His family. You are God’s friend.

No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.
John 15:15 ESV

To fully heal from rejection, you must not avoid it. Only by feeling it can you realize how false it is. The process involves staring down the lie until it is no more. Facing the lie with the truth weakens it. Even though it can be absurdly painful, the lie will die, leaving you with freedom because of Christ.

Take some time to remember when you have felt most rejected. Allow the truth of God’s acceptance to wash away the lie.