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.
Bringing your Potential to Light
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.
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:
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.
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
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.
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
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
Reading time: 2 minutes
No one can claim they are the humblest person in the world with much credibility. But those of us who struggle with self-worth know that confidence is equally elusive.
Somehow though, confidence and humility are the same thing. If you are confident (but not arrogant), you’ll also be humble. And if you’re humble (but not engaging in false humility), you’ll also be confident.
Doesn’t that seem strange that appropriate confidence, the kind God wants us to have, is also a way to express humility? I mean strange in the sense that confident probably isn’t the first word that comes to mind when you think of humility. But how could it be any other way?
God who is all powerful clothed Himself with humanity. If there is a paradox, Jesus represents it perfectly.
To be strong doesn’t mean to be closed or unreachable. God’s strength is approachable. Jesus’s birth offers us the greatest hope possible.
We are creatures of habit. Once we know how to do something, we go on autopilot.
If you’ve ever experienced a negative, false belief about yourself, you know firsthand the intense struggle that is required to put off the false and put on the truth.
You can’t have confidence and humility without also having peace and joy.
Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.”
Matthew 11:28-30 NLT
In your quest to become more confident and humble, remember that it feels like peace, joy, and rest. I bless you now with rest for your soul. Amen.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Reading time: 3 minutes
Are you on the fringe? Fringe means “to be on the outskirts.” That can be good or bad depending upon what it at the center.
Last week I wrote about feeling on the outskirts of God and what He is doing in the world. But what if we flip that around and define fringe as being on the outskirts of what the world is doing? Then being on the fringe would be a good thing.
Jesus lived on the fringe while He was on earth. The leaders at the time expected Him to join them in their agenda. But Jesus certainly lived as if not engrossed in the world:
What I mean, brothers and sisters, is that the time is short. From now on those who have wives should live as if they do not; those who mourn, as if they did not; those who are happy, as if they were not; those who buy something, as if it were not theirs to keep; those who use the things of the world, as if not engrossed in them. For this world in its present form is passing away.
1 Corinthians 7:29-31 NIV
If you find yourself depressed and anxious about what is happening in the world, maybe you are too deeply engrossed? What is too engrossed? This means living as if this life is all there is. If it were all there is, you’d have to put your full hope in it. You’d have no other choice.
If you are holding too tightly to this world, you’re going to feel discouraged. You’re going to be worried because this world in its present form is passing away. But, there is another option besides hoping in this world.
If you are in Christ, you are a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17). God has separated you out from this world. He’s brought you to the fringe. He’s sent you into the world to help it, not to be engrossed in it (1).
Don’t love the world or anything that belongs to the world. If you love the world, you cannot love the Father. Our foolish pride comes from this world, and so do our selfish desires and our desire to have everything we see. None of this comes from the Father. The world and the desires it causes are disappearing. But if we obey God, we will live forever.
1 John 2:15-17 CEV
Jesus had no place to lay His head (Luke 9:58). Of course, this doesn’t mean that He never slept lying down. It means He didn’t ever settle down as if this was His permanent home.
Sure – it’s okay to own a home and live in it. More important that where you live is how attached you are to your life in this world. It’s impossible to be completely satisfied with this world. If you try to find your life somewhere in the world, you will feel empty and disappointed.
But if you join Jesus at the fringe, you will find your life and you’ll be in good company. You can be on the fringe and not feel lonely.
If you’ve been engrossed in the world, it takes time to detach from it. At some point you have to let go of the world.
Have you ever lost something and become focused on finding it? What if you can’t find it? Eventually you have to move on. If you spend your life consumed with what you’ve lost, your life will be compromised. It won’t be all it could be.
Imagine what it feels like to let go of what you’ve lost and move on. That’s what you need to do with the world. The world isn’t as great as you thought it was. That’s good or bad depending upon how you look at it. If you can give up on finding your ultimate happiness in it, you’ll end up content and peaceful.
(1) https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/lets-revise-the-popular-phrase-in-but-not-of
Image by Paul Brennan from Pixabay
Reading time: 2 minutes
I recently came across a cross. Or what someone told me was a cross.
As far as I know, the artwork was done with the right heart. The inscription said something like, “God told me to leave the cross open.”
What does this picture of an “open cross” mean to you? On a positive side, it could mean that the cross is open to all. And if that means all who want to develop a relationship with God can repent and accept Jesus’s death and resurrection, I’m all for it. God’s invitation is open to all.
Being a mostly organized person I appreciate order. Most of the time my desires aren’t pathological like Monk (the Obsessive Compulsive Detective). I like symmetry. I also like abstract and symbolic art.
But for some reason, I find this depiction of the cross to be… disturbing. It feels like an attempt to be modern gone bad. It crosses over into something new age. It waters down the truth. It makes the work of Jesus look incomplete and… cheap.
In fact, the more I looked at it, the more I felt uneasy. I see a swastika, not a cross. But apparently, the swastika is a cross of sorts — a hooked cross. To some cultures, it has a positive connotation but to others, it is associated with terror (according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika).
So, maybe this is a psychological test — a Rorschach of sorts.
What does my interpretation say about me? I’m more of a purist when it comes to truth. I look for the simple truth and become uneasy with trying to dress it up too much.
I like that God made men and women different with distinct preferences. I see consistency and meaning in gender. The physical appearance of our bodies is representative of the underlying spirit and personality God gives us. For more on gender see https://christianconcepts.com/why-gender-is-binary.
Here’s my attempt at an open cross.
I’m not saying this discussion is a matter of right or wrong. But for my own sense of peace and order, the first cross just… crosses a line for me.
What do you see and how do you feel about the first cross?
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:
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 XYou’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:
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.
Image by Ryan McGuire from Pixabay