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Box Your Concerns And Give Them To God

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Reading time: 3 minutes

The last few months have been especially stressful because of the various global crises we are all facing. In addition, each of us has our personal struggles. It’s overwhelming.

As Christians, we live between the truth that we will have trouble in this life and the truth that God comforts us during our struggles. Jesus had a lot to say to His disciples in the weeks before His death and resurrection.

A time is coming and in fact has come when you will be scattered, each to your own home. You will leave me all alone. Yet I am not alone, for my Father is with me. I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.

John 16:32-33 NIV

Jesus knew that even His closest followers would be disturbed by his capture and crucifixion. They lost it and deserted Jesus. But, He prepared them well by explaining everything ahead of time. More importantly, He sent the Great Comforter in His place.

What can you do when you feel stressed beyond your limits? If you don’t manage your feelings well, you’ll end up reaping destruction. If stress isn’t addressed in a healthy way, the stress stays on you and in you. Then your body can end up bearing the cost of the stress. Or, you can hurt others out of your anger.

Any extreme response to difficulty doesn’t help much and usually makes the situation worse. The extremes I’m talking about are either:

  1. Denial of the problem which requires complete isolation from the problem. This is over-compartmentalized.
  2. Over-reaction to the problem which inevitably involves retaliation instead of reconciliation. This is under-compartmentalized.

Both options miss the best approach which is to face the problem and embrace the problem at the right time and under the right circumstances. When people reconcile they can’t get everything they want. Most people would choose to erase the harm if that were possible. Since it isn’t, there has to be a way to work through it. The working through it involves both:

  1. Letting go of what has already happened. It can’t be changed. What’s done is done. This usually involves a lot of sadness.
  2. Taking steps forward to make needed changes that are reasonable for all involved. This might involve some anger. But it needs to be anger that motivates positive change.

Are you feeling overwhelmed? When I’m counseling others, I like to assign exercises that help people find the most direct way to grow emotionally and spiritually. Here is an exercise to try:

  1. Think of a concern you have.
  2. Now imagine a box big enough to hold it. Put your concern in the box. Close it up and label it with a description.
  3. Think about what remains. If you’re still concerned about something, go to step 1. If you sense everything is boxed up, move to step 4.
  4. Thank God you made it to step 4. Seriously! If you made it this far, then for the moment your life has some sanity.
  5. Ask yourself what is left. If your concerns are put aside, there’s probably some good things left. Thank God for the good things.
  6. Ask God to take the boxes for safe keeping. He might destroy some boxes. Others He will hand back to you at the right time so you can work through your healing. Then, at other times, God will give you a box of blessings.
  7. Acknowledge that God is in control. Approach the boxes of concern at a pace you can handle.

Hopefully, when you finished boxing up your concerns, you found the truth remaining. You are significant and loved.

How does it feel to have your concerns separated from the truth of who you are? Problems put into perspective aren’t as big as we imagine them to be. That’s because God is bigger than any problem you can imagine. God doesn’t fit in any box, but there’s always a box big enough for your concern.

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Faith Hope and Love

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What is the difference between faith, hope, and love? Why would it matter to you? It matters because you need all three for a healthy spiritual life.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

1 Corinthians 13:13 NIV

So, love is greater, but faith and hope are important too.

Faith and Trust Fit Together

If you have faith, then you must be trusting in Jesus Christ. To trust in Jesus Christ must mean you have a vibrant faith.

But, faith comes before hope:

Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.

Hebrews 11:1 NIV

You could hope for something, but lack the faith (the confidence) that it will come to pass. That kind of hope is essentially worthless (it isn’t biblical hope). You can hope it doesn’t snow tomorrow, but nobody is going to promise you that it won’t snow.

If Jesus never promised us anything, there would be no need for hope. Faith would be enough.

Hope and Future Events Fit Together

Hope is the excitement around an anticipated event. When you have faith in Jesus, you’re able to trust His promises. You’ll have hope that what He says will eventually come true.

For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees?

Romans 8:24 ESV

So, you trust a person and you hope in a promise. Through faith we have hope that carries us along to the finish line. What about love?

Love Makes Faith and Hope Possible

If Jesus wasn’t full of love, He wouldn’t have provided the way for us to trust or hope in Him (Ephesian 2:8-9).

Love is the greatest because it involves action with the greatest effort and risk. Love would sacrifice everything.

Anyone can hope. Many people believe in something. They trust and have faith. Few truly love.

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For A Better Relationship, Breathe

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If you’ve been a Christian for a while and you no longer feel as close to God as you used to feel, someone has probably told you:

  • God doesn’t move, so if you are more distant from God, guess who moved?
  • In your walk with God, you’re either moving toward Him or away from Him.

Have you ever experienced something that stopped changing, but is still considered to be alive? To be alive is to change. When you stop changing, you’re dead.

Since God is everywhere, you can’t actually move away from Him. However, you can close your heart to Him. You can block Him out, tune Him out, or ignore Him. But He’s still there.

Moving away can be positive or negative depending on the context. Moving away is negative when you become closed to the relationship. But moving away can also be understood as becoming more self-defined. You test to see where the boundaries are between you and God. How much of life is your responsibility and how much is God’s? You stop forcing yourself from obligation and return to God knowing you have a clear choice and a willing heart.

Could what I’ve written also apply to horizontal relationships (with people other than God)?

We all need to breathe the air around us to stay alive. In with the good and out with the bad. Similarly, relationships need to breathe. Breathe-in equals spending time together. Breathe-out equals focusing away from the relationship and on other people, jobs, or hobbies. Marriage especially needs to breathe because one other person can’t meet all your needs.

For a better relationship (with God and others) learn how to breathe:

  • Spend time away from a relationship to strengthen both yourself and the relationship. Bring something new from your time away to re-energize your relationship.
  • If you find yourself feeling distant or closed to those you are expecting to be close to, be intentional about moving toward them.

If you’ve been in a heated argument, you feel the tension, and you’ve already tried some distance, what might be next is the hard work of moving towards again. Renegotiate how the relationship will be different and hopefully even better now.

Talk with your significant other about how much time you expect to spend together and how much time apart. Find the balancing point where you feel strong individually and as a couple.

And, in your relationship with God, balance the time being with God, sitting at His feet, and the time you are doing something for yourself, others, or even God.

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Knowing The Truth Will Set You Free

Knowing The Truth Will Set You Free

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Knowing Jesus is different that knowledge about Jesus. If you want to know the truth, you first must ensure your source is reliable. The Bible is the truth, but only the Holy Spirit can correctly interpret it for you. Any other source has the possibility of being tainted.

If you want to know the truth intimately, you must also go to the Holy Spirit (the Spirit of Christ). He is the only one who can provide an accurate experience of God. You need the Spirit’s power to know God.

All knowledge comes from an experience of something. In Ephesians, Paul makes a distinction between knowing Christ’s love (primary knowing) and knowing facts about His love (secondary knowing). The primary is far superior to the secondary.

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Ephesian 3:14-19 ESV

Primary Knowing is Relational

To really know someone you need a direct and intimate experience of them. This is also called heart knowledge. Strong’s concordance defines the word know (#1097 ginóskó) as to come to know, recognize, perceive especially through personal experience (first-hand acquaintance). Because it’s focused on personal experience, it can mean knowing someone intimately, even sexually.

Secondary Knowing is Factual

To know about someone you only need someone to pass along their knowledge to you. This is also called head knowledge. Strong’s concordance defines the word knowledge (#1108 gnósis) as a functional (“working”) knowledge gleaned from first-hand (personal) experience. It’s a derivative knowledge–being only as accurate (reliable) as the relationship it derives from. Therefore, you can think you know the truth about something, but what you know can be incorrect if the person (or experience) is unreliable.

You can also know a fact but not have an experiential belief that it is true. This is how the devil can know that Jesus is God, but not have a saving faith (James 2:19).

Secondary Lies Are Factual

All lies are wrong, but some lies are worse than others. Some people lie to protect themselves. They use words that hide the truth. They hide facts about who they are or what they’ve done. While this blocks intimacy and erodes the relationship, it doesn’t necessarily harm you.

Primary Lies Are Relational

When someone lies to you, about you, and you believe them, you are deceived in the worst way possible. You end up believing something false about yourself. So, as you can imagine, this significantly damages your self-image and self-worth. It also hurts your relationship with God because you trust another’s opinion of you more than God’s opinion (I write more about this in my book To Identity and Beyond).

Can you see how easily any of us can become confused? Much of our lives are based on misleading experiences. We believe the experiences which propagate lies because we generally trust the people in our lives.

To be healthy emotionally, you need to identify the lies you believe and work to correct them. As a Christian counselor, this is my main objective. I want my clients to have life-transforming experiences.

To completely eradicate a lie, you need to know the truth at all levels. Factual truth is important. It allows you to speak, teach, and testify about the truth. But your communications will be mostly hollow until you gain the intimate, experiential truth. The truth must come to you direct from the source. Jesus is the truth (John 14:6). When you know the truth this way, you will be truly free (John 8:32).

Learn more about how to eradicate lies with life-transforming experiences.
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Nothing Is Impossible

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Soon maybe an asteroid will collide with Earth. Soon maybe people will walk on Mars. These would be historical, once in a lifetime events.

I don’t believe in chance. You can’t witness a once in a lifetime event by dumb luck. What you experience, when you experience it, has a purpose. God has your life planned out, but your every step counts (Proverbs 16:9, 19:21, 20:24; Psalm 37:23; 139:16; Jeremiah 10:23)!

When you forget your way and all else fails, the Gospel never fails. You can completely lose at life, but be the supreme winner (Matthew 10:39).

Nothing is impossible… for God (Luke 1:37). An angel of God said this speaking of the virgin birth. When life seems hopeless… when only a miracle will do… God is more than capable.

When you’re guilty, wrong, suffering… when you’re at your worst… when you’ve reached bottom… you’ve reached the bedrock of the Gospel. You need not sink any further.

Where the Gospel is concerned, nothing is impossible. You can return to the event of Jesus’s sacrifice and receive cleansing and forgiveness. You can always start over refreshed. Every day can be new.

Don’t Give Up

You need to understand your past, so you can learn from it and find healing, but you need not let your past hold you back from God’s best for you today.

If you give up, you might miss what God is doing. Now is the time to stay alert (1 Peter 5:8). Wait expectantly. Your waiting and watching is not in vain. All that God promises will be fulfilled. Be prepared for once in a lifetime moments.

Consider the parable of the ten virgins (Matthew 25:1-13). Five were wise and five were foolish. Five were prepared and five were lazy. God can change your circumstances at any moment. Are you ready?

If you live expectantly everyday, you can start to see everyday as a once in a lifetime moment.

Future posts will expand on the idea that with God, nothing is impossible.

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Worry Less Trust More

Worry Less Trust More

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Worry and anxiety are pretty much the same. Spiritually speaking, they both are rooted in fear which is essentially an inability to trust God no matter what.

Life brings many situations that challenge our ability to trust God. What can you do to worry less and trust more?

Worry Less By Focusing On The Present Moment

When you worry, you are looking too far ahead into the future. All of us would like to know the future. But it can interfere with your faith. If you could only have one or the other, God would always prefer you maintain your faith (your trust) in Him instead of knowing anything about the future.

How far into the future is too far to be looking? For some people or in some situations looking 100 years might be too far. But others can stir up anxiety even by looking 100 seconds. Where you focus is more important than how far ahead you look. If you try to find security somewhere out into the future, you will never find it because you will miss that God is with you in the present.

If you want to worry less, then reduce how far you are looking ahead until you reclaim a sense of peace. Jesus tells us not to worry about tomorrow (the future). Each day (the present) has enough to occupy you. If even the events of later in the day concern you, focus on the present moment. At this very second, there’s not a whole lot to be concerned about. Take one day (one moment, one second) at a time.

Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?
Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Matthew 6:27,34 NIV

If you find yourself saying, “yes, but…” about something that’s going to be happening or needs to happen, then you’ve already shifted your focus away from the present and onto a future moment. If you want to experience peace instead of stress, stop and recenter yourself back to the present.

Worry Less By Surrendering All Outcomes to God

You might be having an awesome day and find it easy to trust God. You might be having a horrible day, month, or year but God would have you trust Him the same. Nothing should come between you and God. Bad luck? Nope. Evil? Nope. Disease? Nope. Your health? Nope. Your very life? Nope. See Romans 8:31-39 for more on this.

It’s easy to value your life more than God. If you suffer a serious illness, your very existence is threatened. Or is it? It really depends upon your perspective. As a believer, you’re going to live forever. Do you allow God to determine how long you will live in this life? Or are you wringing your hands trying to figure out how to squeeze another hour out of it?

It’s easy to care about what happens in this life because it’s all we know. Or is it? As a believer, you have the Holy Spirit. So you have a taste of heaven today. Right now you can sense the goodness of heavenly living.

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Philippians 4:6-7 NIV

Do what is reasonable for each day to move your life forward. Leave the rest up to God (by praying and letting it go). If you find yourself panicking because of one thing or another, stop trying to be God: reduce what is on your plate. You weren’t meant to save the world. God sent Jesus for that!

Read more about trusting God.
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