3 Ways to Not Let Your History Control Your Destiny

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Our destiny is the adventure God created us to live. Yet so many of us are not living it, and our history is why—all the wounding, trauma, pain—and the fear it brings. The good news is our history does not have to control our destiny. Jesus is bigger than your fear, and he wants to heal your pain.

To keep us from that healing, our enemy wants us to live in our pain. Forever. He’s terrified of us living our God-given adventure. If we do that, his kingdom of darkness will take major hits and there’s nothing he can do about it. His only hope is to be pre-emptive. That’s why you feel so much fear and spiritual resistance whenever you start to move in your calling.

Our enemy’s strategy is, “I will wound them with so much trauma that the overwhelming pain and resultant fear keeps them from ever moving into the life God created them to live.” Those are the components of the enemy’s strategy: Trauma, causing pain, causing fear, which keeps us stuck. And that’s his goal—to keep us stuck in the pain, never moving into the adventure God has for us. Because he’s terrified of that.

It’s a diabolically brilliant plan. It works on every one of us, taking us hostage to fear. He’s got just one little problem though: The cross. The empty tomb. The love of a relentless God who just won’t stop meddling with things.

Actually, it’s a big problem. The blood of Jesus demolishes all the structures, lies, and plans of our enemy over our lives. The power of the love of God is stronger than the power of the trauma, pain, and fear in our lives.

But we have a choice. The Holy Spirit won’t just burst his healing into our lives like Satan did with trauma and sin. God loves and trusts us enough to honor our choice. Our healing is a partnership with Jesus. It’s our choice.

So here are 3 ways to partner with God and not let your history control your destiny.

1) Decide to Not Play the Victim

Enough is enough already. I’m sick of the pain and wounding in my life, and I pray you are too. The first step in getting free is deciding we want to be free. It’s acknowledging the pain in our lives and believing God can heal it.

2) Get Healing

Step 2 is to proactively get healing. We need to seek it out, and actively take steps to pursue our healing. Healing comes in many forms. For some of us, it’s counseling. For others, deliverance. And then there’s inner healing, prayer ministry, or medication. For most of us, it’s going to be a unique combination of the above.

Some of us need medication first to level us out enough so we can receive counseling, inner healing, and/or prayer ministry effectively. Some of us need deliverance or prayer ministry first.

It may take several tries until we find the counselor, pastor, prayer minister, and/or doctor that work for us. That’s normal. Keep trying.

Pro Tip: Ask to sign releases so your pastor, counselor, prayer minister, and/or doctor can talk to each other. You want everybody on your team on the same page. That doesn’t just happen by chance. Be proactive. Ask them to call each other and talk about your case.

3) Limit Negative Influences in Your Life

Misery loves company. The only thing worse than being miserable is being miserable alone. Some friends are just toxic, and they need to go. People who identify with you because your wounding matches theirs may not be happy when you get healthy.

I know a young woman who has a very difficult relationship with her godly parents. A few years ago, through interventive counseling and prayer ministry initiated by her parents, she was on the verge of a breakthrough and healing in that important relationship. But she had a friend who has a bad relationship with her own toxic parents. This friend sabotaged the young woman’s healing. Who else would the friend commiserate with if the young woman got healing?

“Bearing your heart to your hurting friends is not helping. Because all they do is accommodate you in your pain and understand it. You call that sensitivity; I call it enablement.” –Dan Mohler

When someone resents or downplays our healing, that’s a sign that friendship is unhealthy. The young woman would have been better off pulling away from that friend. But because her healing was hi-jacked, she’s now into decades of total estrangement from her parents.

But what do you do if you’re married to the negative influence?

I know someone who, every time they get inspired to move forward in their calling, excitedly talks to their spouse about it. This spouse is like a wet blanket. Their response is always, “Ok that’s great, but…” And they point out the difficulties, issues, or obstacles. The result is the person either doesn’t move forward at all, or moves forward in a limited way.

Now, yes, there’s a balance here. When you share an idea or a plan, most people will just say, “Wow, that’s great!” and won’t share any checks they have in their spirit about it. You want someone in your life who will tell you what no one else will.

Spouses are great for this. A healthy spouse is a great sounding board. While they tell you the obstacles they see that maybe you don’t, they are willing to help you work through them. If your spouse is truly supportive, you’ll come away from the conversation feeling encouraged, not discouraged. You’ll feel empowered, not limited. They are excited about you moving forward, not threatened by it.

If, maybe out of their own wounding, they are consistently a wet blanket of negativity, talking to them is not helping you. You are stuck with a significant negative influence in your life. You need to realize this and acknowledge it.

A negative reaction typically comes from fear. Because of their wounding, your vision is scary or intimidating to them. But you are not helpless. You need to find a way to share it that is less scary. And you can.

If you need ideas for dealing with this situation, download our free guide “7 Ways to Deal with a Wet Blanket Spouse.”

Download the Guide
“7 Ways to Deal with a
Wet Blanket Spouse”

Do not accept it like it’ll never change. Don’t let your spouse be your excuse for not walking into your destiny. That’s not fair to either of you.

Your Turn

So how about it? We want to help you walk out of your history and into your destiny. What in your past has kept, or is keeping, you stuck? How did you walk, or are walking, out of it? Tell us in the comments—your story and vulnerability will help others. Or shoot us an email [LINK http://identityinwholeness.com/contact-us/] if it’s too personal. We’d love to hear from you. And please share this post on social media to bless others.

Why You Don’t Want Clarity but This Instead

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We all want clarity before moving forward. But that’s not how God has wired the universe. Clarity is backward facing. It looks at the past events and actions in our lives and says, “Oh, that’s why that didn’t work out, but that’s why this did.” Looking back, we see how God orchestrated them for good in our lives. We see what we’ve learned. We see how far we’ve come. We see what God did.

Clarity looking through your rearview mirror. It does you no good driving forward.

My Favorite Mother Teresa Story

A reporter went to Calcutta to do a story on Mother Teresa. As he was leaving, he asked her, “I’ve got some important decisions coming up in my life that I have to make when I get back. Would you please pray for me for clarity?”

She said, “No.”

“What?!? You’re Mother Teresa! How can you not pray for me?!?” said the surprised reporter.

“I can’t pray for you for clarity because I’ve never had it,” she calmly replied. “But I will pray for you for faith.”

Read that again. That’s huge.

Another Word for Faith

Faith is often an abstract concept to us, and we don’t always know what it means. Another word for faith, on a very practical level, is direction.

Mother Teresa could just as well have said, “But I will pray for you for direction.”

Direction is forward facing. It requires faith because you don’t know if it’s actually going to work or not until you try it.

Sometimes it’s just a single next step. Sometimes it’s a few steps. But it’s almost never the whole journey, mapped out end-to-end, like we would like.

God Gives Direction, Not Clarity

Look at God’s call to the heroes of the Bible. Moses. Gideon. Samson. David. And in the New Testament, Peter, Paul, even Jesus’ mother Mary.

They were all given first steps. None of them were told the end of the story. They were just given direction. They objected because they didn’t have the whole story, quite reasonably, usually telling God why this is a bad idea or that it just outright isn’t going to work. But every time, God just chuckles and says, “Nevertheless, I will be with you.”

Take that first step. Do the next right thing.

Uncharted Waters

God can’t give us the whole plan up front because each step is a direction of its own. A direction assumes a starting point.

If I was giving you directions to New York City and said, “Get on I-95 North,” that only works if you’re roughly in the same geographical location I am. I’m in the Washington, DC, area, so those directions would work if you’re starting south of New York City somewhere along the East coast.

But if you’re starting in Los Angeles, CA, then “get on I-95 North” does you no good at all. You’d better get on I-10 East first.

Directions only make sense if the starting point is known. Suppose God gives you Step 1. But he can’t give you Step 2 until you’ve done step 1, because you wouldn’t understand it. Because it’s from a different starting point than you expect. Because Step 1 is going to take you to a place you didn’t expect.

That’s the way it so often works, isn’t it? We tend to think so binary, either this is going to work or it isn’t. But what happens is often in the middle. It works, but differently than we expected. So the starting point for Step 2 isn’t where we thought we’d be.

So after we actually do Step 1, and get to whatever surprising place God knew it would lead us, now we’re ready for Step 2. Having completed Step 1, we’re finally at the starting point for Step 2. Now it makes sense. But it never would have made any sense before we completed Step 1.

Clarity Needs These 3 Things. Especially #3.

Yes, God does bring us clarity. But it requires these three things.

As we’ve said, clarity is backward facing. After we’ve done the thing, then we get clarity about it, looking back and learning from our experience. So the first thing clarity needs is action. That’s why “analysis paralysis” is a thing. There’s no clarity until you do something.

Second, clarity needs time. You don’t always get clarity the day or week or month after doing something. Sometimes, you’re still too close to it.

Have you ever seen those science pictures where they show you a close-up of something, and you have no idea what it is? Then they zoom out and you can clearly distinguish what the object is? Clarity and time are like that. Sometimes, you need some distance.

Third, and most important of all, clarity needs healing. You can look at events in your life, even from a long time ago, and still not have clarity about what really happened if you haven’t received healing.

Healing’s a two-way street. God is more than willing to give healing, and sometimes it comes over time, which is one reason why time is so important in all of this. In fact, he’s dying (literally) to bring healing into our lives. He really wants to heal.

But we have to be just as willing to receive it. That requires several difficult things on our part:

  • Humility. “Healing?!? I don’t need healing. I’ve got this.”
  • Vulnerability. It’s scary letting someone else, even God, into a place of pain.
  • Spiritual Maturity. The more healed you are, the more you’ll accept more healing.

Your Turn

So cut God a break. Don’t pray for clarity. Pray for direction.

What is your “next right thing” that God is leading you into? Are you hesitating? If so, you’re in good company; everyone in the Bible did. But when you know it’s God, even if it doesn’t make sense, follow his direction and step out. The clarity comes afterward. We’d love to share the journey with you. Reach out to us on the Contact page. And please share this post if it would bless others.

How to Fail with Grace

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Failure is a part of life, and how we handle it reveals our character. I’m not talking about the iterative failures, like practicing a skill and getting gradually better. I’m not even talking about moral failures or sin, although how we handle that also reveals our character.

I’m talking about the “can’t get there from here” failures, where you realize it’s time to cut your losses and move on. I’m talking about when you realize something not only didn’t work, but isn’t going to work.

There is a time to “stay the course,” and not let a failure dissuade you from your goals. But there is also a time to cut your losses and move in a different direction. How to tell the difference is the sticky wicket, but that’s the subject for another post.

Reality checks hurt. But they are also extremely useful. Here are 4 things to do that transform present failures into future successes.

1) Treat Everything Like an Experiment

I recently failed at a major video project I’d put a lot of time and effort into. Called Having Hard Conversations, it was a series of four videos targeting adult Sunday schools and small groups in churches. The goal was to talk about things we aren’t typically talking about in church, but should be, like depression, trauma, suicide, and being post-abortive.

After making two of the four videos (depression and post-abortive), I realized I just was not hitting the video production quality the project required to be successful. Although the actual content was excellent, it was clearly amateur video, not production quality. No pastor would use, let alone buy, these videos for his adult Sunday school or small group. They’re just not sufficient quality.

This can be scary to admit, because “failure” is the worst label anyone can be taunted with. But the truth is, I didn’t fail. The project failed. There’s a huge difference. It was a good idea, and I tried my best. The only way to know it wasn’t going to work was to try it.

Some of us came from families where it wasn’t ok to try and fail. If you didn’t do something perfect the first time, you were shamed. That taught us to never try, to never take risks. This comes from the lie that your value is your success.

But the truth is, you are not what you do. Failing at stuff does not make you a failure. You didn’t fail; the thing you tried failed. The experiment failed.

So try new stuff. Treat everything like an experiment. It’s ok if it fails. It’s no reflection on you.

2) Lick Your Wounds

Even so, it still hurts to fail, especially coming to the realization that what you worked so hard at just isn’t going to work.

Be honest with yourself. Allow yourself to grieve the loss of that idea. Grieving gives your heart closure, and opens the door for the next thing. You don’t want the next idea to be saddled with baggage from the previous one.

So lick your wounds, and admit it hurts. Then pick yourself up, dust yourself off, re-evaluate, and move forward.

3) Learn Something

Do a “lessons learned” session. What went right? What went wrong? Write these lessons down so you don’t repeat what didn’t work, but can leverage what did.

It’s healthy (and important!) to learn what you’re good at, and what you’re not good at.

One of the biggest failures in the Bible was the Apostle Paul’s trip to Athens, Greece. You can read the story in Acts 17:16-18:1.

The upshot is that Paul was greatly distressed to find Athens so full of idols. There was even an idol to an unknown god, in case they missed one. Paul knew the Greeks were into logic. So when he got to speak to the city’s thought leaders, he made a very logical argument. He cleverly used the “unknown god” idol as an entry point. He referenced their own poets and literature. It was actually a brilliant speech to lead someone from idol worship to Jesus.

It was also a dismal failure. They laughed and sneered at him. Then they pocket-vetoed him. As they dismissed him, they told him “we want to hear you again on this subject.” Yeah, right. They never called him; it was just an easy way to show him the door.

Paul had very little success in Athens. But he learned something. He made a resolution within himself. His next stop was Corinth, and, based on his failure in Athens, his message in Corinth was very different. He wrote about it later:

I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power. – Paul, 1 Corinthians 2:2-5

This is a very different approach than he used in Athens. No more wise and persuasive words, he resolved to know only Jesus crucified, and use only the argument of the Spirit’s power.

Paul learned from his failure. So can we.

4) Increased Clarity Is a Win

From his failure in Athens, the Apostle Paul got great clarity about what his message should be moving forward, and it shaped the rest of his ministry.

Before starting my video project, my well-thought out plan looked like a winner. It should’ve worked, but it didn’t. Now I know why. I learned a ton along the way. My faulty assumptions were revealed. Professional quality video is a lot harder than I originally thought.

I still think Having Hard Conversations is an important message, and I’m not giving up on it. If our churches are going to host the Third Great Awakening, our churches have to become a safe place for people to grieve and heal. I’m still passionate about seeing that happen.

Having failed at producing adult Sunday school quality, full-length, professional video, I have better clarity now. I can’t bring about the change I want to see through that means, at least not with my present resources or abilities.

But I have a ton of great soundbites from experts, as well as my own soundbites, that would make a lot of great, short (< 5 min) videos on YouTube. Maybe we launch a YouTube channel on this subject. A two to five-minute video on YouTube requires a lot less quality, and can be just, if not more, impactful to the culture at large.

The seeds of your future success are your failures today.

So try stuff. You can’t move on to what works until you’ve discovered what doesn’t. And you only discover what doesn’t work by trying stuff.

What About You?

What have you failed at, where you realized you had to cut your losses? How did you do that? Your story will help others; please tell us in the comments. What are you struggling with now? Can the community help you? And please share this post if it will bless others.

3 Great Ways to Hack Your Fear

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The most dangerous contagion in our society right now isn’t covid-19. It’s fear. It’s actually more contagious and can be more deadly. Here are 3 great ways to hack your fear and keep it from spinning into overdrive and irrationally controlling you.

First, though, remember fear does have its rightful place. It’s a God-given emotion. Our previous post talks about how to use your fear along with your faith to your advantage.

But when fear gets in control, it warps our thinking and paralyzes our whole being. The fear center in our brain, the amygdala, can actually take our cerebral cortex offline, so we’re temporarily incapable of rational thought while the fear is in control.

Here’s a 90-second video to explain how this works:

The Hand-Brain Model

Here are 3 great ways to hack your fear, so you can use what it’s telling you, but not be controlled by it.

1) Play the Game

My daughter had a very bad experience with horses at a camp where the leaders really didn’t know how to introduce kids to horses. So years later, when she started taking riding lessons, she was severely held back by this fear. Until I taught her to play the game.

Her fear of falling off the horse was keeping her from riding (posting) properly. I asked her, “What would you do if you weren’t afraid? How would you ride?”

“Well, I’d ride confidently like this and this and this,” she answered.

“Then do that. This is your chance to be an actress. Play the role of someone who’s not afraid, and ride like they would. Do that.”

That helped her tame her fearful heart enough for her head to take over and ride well. Pretty soon her heart caught up and realized it didn’t have to be afraid, and that fear was over.

Don’t let fear paralyze you. Play the game. What would you do if you weren’t afraid? Do that.

2) Don’t React before It Happens

When I was young and my dad took me to the dentist, I began to cry in the waiting room, afraid of the imminent, painful, experience. My dad gently stopped me, and said, “David, has he hurt you yet?”

“No,” I answered.

“Then don’t cry yet. There’s nothing wrong with crying when you’re hurt. But don’t cry before you’re hurt.”

That made a lot of sense to me then, and it still does today. I know people whose family members have checked themselves into hospitals because watching coronavirus news reports whipped them into a frenzy of fear where they could not function. For these people, the coronavirus itself didn’t disrupt their lives as much as the fear of it did, the fear of something that hadn’t happened yet.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m in no way disparaging social distancing, shutdowns, etc. Yes, be careful so you don’t get shot in the foot. But don’t shoot yourself in the foot. Don’t cry before you’re hurt.

The saddest covid-19 story I’ve heard is a man who took his own life because he had covid-19, to protect his family. There are two really tragic points about this.

One, covid-19 has a 97% recovery rate (according to WebMD). Yes, it’s the worst flu you’ve ever had, and you feel like you’re going to die for three weeks instead of three days, but 97% of patients recover. Three bad weeks are not worth the rest of your life, or depriving your family from their husband/father for the rest of their lives.

Two, he didn’t actually have it! He had some symptoms, but, post-mortem, tested negative! What a tragedy!

This man actually died of the fear contagion, not the coronavirus one.

3) Realize You Are Being Played

We rely on the news media in order to stay informed and aware of what’s going on. Unfortunately, keeping you informed is not the news media’s mission.

We need to realize the media is playing to a business model—selling fear and outage. That influences (1) which stories they bring you, and (2) how they spin those stories. This is not a liberal vs. conservative thing. Fox News is just as guilty as CNN. Both sides have devolved into (1) selling you what they think you want to hear, and (2) spreading FUD—Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. They do this for one, simple reason: It works. Unfortunately. But we can change that.

When they spin the news to stroke your bias and emotionally charge you up so you watch the next segment or click the headline link, they make money. It’s really that simple.

Now here’s the rub. We have to listen to or read the news to find out what’s going on. But realize neither side is giving you an objective presentation of the facts. If you feel outrage or fear rising up, especially fear, realize you’re being played. They have designed what you’re consuming to manipulate that fear you’re feeling right now.

So why consume news at all if they’re manipulating me? For the same good reasons that armies question enemy prisoners. Yes, you know they’re going to lie to you. You know they’re going to try to manipulate you. But knowing that, you can still glean useful information if you filter it properly.

Do that with the news media. If you feel your fear or outrage rising, it’s time to turn it off. Practice social distancing with the news media.

Realize you’re being played. Assimilate the information, but reject the manipulated emotion.

How about You?

Does this help? What fear are you dealing with? You have a whole community here to help you; this is a safe place. Sometimes just talking about it and expressing it helps tremendously. Or how have you overcome fear? Tell us in the comments; your story will help someone else. And please share this post if it would bless others.

You Need these 3 Things to Move Forward

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Are you stuck in your life? Is there something you just can’t seem to get past? So often we get swept up into the whirlwind of life that we forget ourselves. Braving the grueling commute. Playing kid-taxi all over town. Spending our energy in a job we don’t like but pays the bills. Coming home exhausted but still putting the needs of family members first. Is there anything left over for me?

Often we medicate the pain from lost and broken dreams. Hours in front of the mindless TV. Just one more drink. Staying busy with anything but our calling, especially something we’re good at that others praise us for.

“The biggest enemy of your Zone of Genius, that unique calling God created you to bring to the world, is your Zone of Excellence, what you’re really good at that’s comfortable and safe.” –Gay Hendricks in The Big Leap (my paraphrase).

You can move forward into your calling, in the midst of all your other responsibilities. It doesn’t happen by accident. You have to fight for it. But it can be done, and it’s not all that difficult. But you need these 3 things.

1) You Need A Voice

The truth is, you have a voice. You need to use it. God has put something unique in you. It’s a calling, that thing that makes your heart leap, or would if you allowed yourself to think about it. Speak your calling. Speak your value.

Callings aren’t always safe. They can be scary. They can upset the whole apple cart of an otherwise perfectly safe but boring life. The good news is, you never pursue a calling alone. God created you for this journey and he’s with you on it.

The first step toward moving forward is to speak your calling out loud. Even if it’s just to yourself. Every morning, get alone and say out loud what your calling is. This sets up your day to move in that direction. As you say it, you’re setting the direction for your brain, which will begin to figure out how to get you there.

Our words create the atmosphere around us. God created us in his image with this superpower, so we could bless everyone in our sphere of influence, including ourselves. We draw to ourselves what we dwell on. So as we speak our calling, we’re creating circumstances around our life that will enable it to happen.

You have a voice. Use it.

2) You Need A Community

Not just any community. Actually, you need two communities.

First, you need a community of believers. Most often, this takes the form of a church. But this can’t just be a check-the-box-on-Sunday church. This can’t be put-on-a-face-while-I’m-dying-inside church. It needs to be people you do life with. People that are safe to share the good, the bad, and the ugly with. People you can be vulnerable with, and who are vulnerable with you. Vulnerability is a two-way street. Never trust a leader who’s asking a level of vulnerability from you they aren’t willing to give themselves.

Second, you need a community of people doing the same thing you are. People who get it. If you’re an author, you need to hang around other authors. If you’re a musician, you need to hang around other musicians. You get the idea. People who understand what you’re trying to do and can help you when you get stuck. Fortunately, the Internet has made connecting with like-minded people with similar goals easier than any other time in the history of the world.

“Every story of success is the story of community.” – Jeff Goins in Real Artists Don’t Starve

God intentionally made us to need each other, because we were made in his image. There is perfect community with the Godhead—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They totally get each other. Every story of success is the story of the people we met along the way. It’s the story of people who believed in us more than we did. Those people are in a community waiting for you.

Your community is out there. Find it and join it.

3) You Need Momentum

Isaac Newton said it best. Not to bring back bad memories, but maybe you remember from physics Newton’s First Law of Motion:

“Objects at rest stay at rest, while objects in motion stay in motion.” – Isaac Newton

If you are not moving forward in your calling, you will tend to continue to not move forward. That’s why baby steps are so important. Do something every week, just one little step, even if it’s infinitesimal. At the end of the year, you’ll have taken 52 steps forward. 52 little steps equate to big progress looking back over the year.

How do you find the first baby step? Simple. Ask yourself, “What would I do to pursue this calling if I weren’t afraid?” Then do that.

Another great life hack is to speak your calling just before you go to sleep. Your subconscious mind will work on the problem while you’re sleeping.

“Never go to sleep without a request to your subconscious.” – Thomas Edison

Once you take that first baby step, you’ll be amazed how easy the second one is. And the third one. Because now you’ve got momentum. Your forward motion keeps you moving forward.

You need momentum more than you need the exactly perfect first step.

Do something.

So What About You?

Where are you stuck? Do you want to move forward? What’s your calling? Practice using your voice in the comments. Have you found a community? What are you going to do? Tell us in the comments. And please share if this would bless someone else.