How to be a Coach Not a Rescuer, and How to Tell the Difference

/4 Comments/in , , , , , /by

As Christians, we all want to be helpful. We’ve experienced the blessing of sacrificing for another person. Unlike the world, most Christians I know really aren’t in it for themselves. We genuinely care about the communities we’re a part of, and we’re willing to sacrifice if it will contribute to the greater good.

We long to be like Jesus. That whole cross thing was pretty helpful, saving the world and all. It sure changed my life, as well as the entire trajectory of the world.

So while we all want to be helpful, it turns out there’s a good helpful and a bad helpful. It can be hard to tell the difference sometimes because often they look exactly the same, from the outside at least. But the inner motivation is different, and over time you can see the fruit on the outside also. 

The Bad Helpful — Rescuers

Rescuers have to be helpful. Of course being helpful is good in and of itself, but with rescuers there is something else going on. Rescuers get their value from helping. That’s why they have to. It’s really not about the person they’re helping at all. It’s all about the rescuer and how it makes them feel.

And actually, there’s even something deeper going on — the inner heart motivation. Rescuers are driven by fear. While looking great on the outside, they’re actually terrified of becoming a victim. “If I’m rescuing a victim, I must not be one, right?”

At first, the rescuer and the victim are thrilled to have found each other. The victim feels safe that someone is finally helping them. And we, as the rescuer, feel all good and warm and fuzzy inside; we feel valued. Nothing wrong with that, per se. But it goes off the rails as soon as the rescuer actually expects something of the victim.

The solution to every problem in life requires us, at some level, to tell ourselves “no.”

The victim is unwilling to tell themselves “no,” at least not the “no” that would lead out of the problem. They’re unwilling to give up the lifestyle or the addiction or whatever is causing the problem. They just want the pain to go away. 

So when we, as the rescuer, require something of them, they turn on us. “Hey, I thought you were supposed to be helping me!” We’ve suddenly become the new persecutor, and the poor victim searches for a new rescuer.

Meanwhile, we, playing the misunderstood rescuer, feel frustrated that all our good advice is going to waste. “I only wanted to help!” We feel devalued because we got emotionally attached to the solution. Since we’re getting our value from solving their problem, when our solution gets rejected, so do we.

Acting as rescuers, our worst comes out. We control and manipulate to force our advice and help into being accepted, because our value is on the line. 

This sounds strange, but when we pop into rescuer mode, we’re actually giving away our power over our own life. Because our value is now in the hands of someone else accepting or rejecting our advice. So when our advice is rejected, it’s off to find another victim to validate us by accepting our advice, letting us control their situation and solve their problem. 

The Good Helpful — Coaches

On the other hand, coaches are the good helpful. Unlike rescuers who have to be helpful, coaches are available to be helpful. 

While rescuers look at the landscape and seek poor victims who won’t make it without them, coaches don’t see victims at all. They see creators who have forgotten who they are. 

In the midst of the storm, people can feel pretty powerless, at the mercy of forces they can’t control. And while this world is full of forces one can’t control, in every situation one can still do something. Coaches restore people’s power with one, simple, empowering question: “What are you going to do?”

As a good coach, if the other person is open to it, we can still offer advice. But we always ask first. There’s no point trying to solve a problem the other person says they don’t have. 

But even when offering advice, coaches are not emotionally attached to the solution. When we’re in coach mode, we may feel disappointed our advice or help was rejected, but it doesn’t wreck us. We give the other person the freedom to reject our advice. 

After giving our best advice, we simply ask them again, “What are you going to do?” As a powerful person, it’s their choice. By giving them the freedom to choose without manipulation, we’re pulling them out of victimhood by restoring their power.

As coaches, our value is in who we are before Jesus, not whether our godly wisdom is accepted or not. Since our value isn’t on the line, we give the other person the freedom to reject our advice if they choose. We honor their choice, even if we know it’ll be bad for them in the long run. We accept that the Lord will walk them through learning that themselves, if they’re determined to go down that road.

Everyone has to live their own adventure.

It can really hurt to watch a loved one go down a dark path. But trying to rescue them won’t work, in the long term at least. You can’t force it. They have to live their own adventure. You can coach them, to the degree they choose to accept it. But working harder on their problem than they do is the definition of codependence, and it never ends well.

How to Tell if We Are Rescuing or Coaching 

Like most things in life, the difference between rescuers and coaches isn’t always black ‘n’ white. Often, we both play both roles at different times with different people. So how can we tell when we’re slipping into rescuer mode vs being a healthy coach? Here are 3 simple clues:

1) You’re owning the problem.

When you’re working harder on the other person’s problem than they are, you’re slipping into rescuer mode. It’s their problem, let them own it. That includes allowing them to deny the problem exists and live with the consequences, if they so choose.

This can be harder than it looks. When they’re in pain, people often don’t want to own their problem. They’d much rather give it to you. Then you’re responsible for the negative consequences of their choices. And they get the added entertainment bonus of watching you try to make them follow your advice. Good luck with that.

Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. (Galatians 6:7)

When we take ownership of their problem and rescue people from the logical consequences of their choices, we’re actually interfering with God’s process of sowing of reaping. Don’t do that. 

Yes, we can help. I’m not saying we don’t have compassion and just let people drown in their messes. But we need to stay in a posture of helping them solve their problem, not solving it for them.

2) Where’s your value coming from?

Can you still feel good about yourself if the person doesn’t solve the problem? If you’re emotionally attached to the solution, you’re slipping into rescuer mode. 

I know this can be really hard when a loved one is screwing up their life. But we have to let them live their own adventure. When our value becomes dependent on the success or health of their life, we’ve become a rescuer.

3) Do the potential consequences of this problem scare you?

If the person doesn’t solve the problem, have you failed? If your success as a parent (or spouse or mentor or friend or whatever) hangs in the balance, then you’re in rescuer mode. This is a sign you’re being driven by fear.

Let you be you and them be them. You can still be you and move forward even if they fail at being them. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt, especially if they’re a loved one. There’s plenty of pain and loss to go around. But you’re not going to fix anything in the long run by being their rescuer, by being their savior. They already have one, and they need to deal with him.

Does this resonate?

Have you made the transition from rescuer to coach? Is God bringing up relationships where you’re more rescuing than coaching? Tell us your story and your thoughts in the comments. And please share this on social media if it would bless someone else.

How to Tell When You’re at an Extreme and How to Escape It

/2 Comments/in , /by

None of us want them, but we all have them. Extreme positions, points-of-view, opinions, even behaviors that harm us and everyone around us. Often we grew up with them, so they are all we know. We think they’re normal, and so we don’t even question them. But they aren’t healthy.

The problem is, since we grew up with them, we often can’t even see our own extremes. We implicitly take them for granted. So how can we recognize when we’re at an extreme? Extremes reveal themselves by what we’re offended by.

Now don’t get me wrong here. Some things are worth being offended by. But, if we’re trying to be like Jesus, we don’t get to decide what those things are. He does. We should be offended by what he’s offended by, and nothing else.

What Is God Offended By?

Jesus is offended by unrighteous actions, not by unrighteous people. Many people have suffered terrible trauma. Hurt people hurt people. That doesn’t make it right, but that’s the fallen, unsafe world we live in. While, yes, sin is offensive to God, sinners are not. He loves them.

Jesus loves people but hates unrighteous actions (i.e., sin).

Unfortunately, too often today many churches love sin (by not calling it sin) in the name of loving people. But it’s actually unloving not to call out behavior that’s actually hurting people, like sex outside of marriage or LGBTQ. 

On the other hand, some churches actually hate people in the name of upholding righteousness. It’s not love to treat unrighteous people unrighteously. For example, God does not hate homosexuals. God loves homosexuals. He hates homosexuality, just like he hates adultery and cheating on taxes–the sinful lifestyles. But God loves homosexuals, adulterers, and thieves. There’s an eternity of difference between loving the person and hating the sinful lifestyle.

Jesus loved the people while making no excuses for their sin. One of my favorites stories is when he saved a woman caught in adultery that an angry mob was going to stone. (Where was the guy, BTW?) After he dispersed the crowd, he told her, “Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.” (See John 8:1-11.)

The point is that in a disagreement between our opinion and Jesus, we need to lose every time.

How to Tell if You’re at an Extreme with 2 Questions

Two questions reveal if we’re at an extreme, if we answer them honestly. Remember our own extremes are hard to see. The very nature of deception is you don’t know you’re deceived. This makes it hard to see in yourself. But these 2 questions are a great litmus test.

Question 1: What am I offended by? It’s good to recognize when we’re offended. When we’re angry or hurt over something, ask yourself, Am I offended? It’s a good first question to try and sort out what we’re feeling. If yes, we determine we are offended, move on to question 2.

Question 2: Is God offended by this? This is a dangerous question to answer honestly, because it reveals where we need to change. But that’s ok. Lovers of Jesus ask dangerous questions. If God’s not offended by what we’re offended by, we need to repent and change.

For example, we shouldn’t be offended by someone else’s music styles. If they’re worshipping in spirit and truth, God doesn’t care if it’s an old hymn, 1950s gospel, contemporary worship, or hip-hop. 

Another example: We should be offended by music lyrics, novels, movies, or TV shows that portray sex outside of marriage as a good thing, when actually it breaks the heart of God. We need to stop listening, reading, and watching this stuff.

How to Escape an Extreme in 2 Steps

So once we’ve identified we’re in an extreme, how do we get out? By repentance in 2 simple, but not easy, steps. Repentance means we change and don’t do it anymore. Attitudes are hard to change because they’re often an unconscious habit. Repentance is a process and it’ll take some time to turn around. But if you don’t give up, you win.

1) Confess it. Admit our extreme attitude to God as the sin that it is, without excuses. Sometimes, at the point of confession, if we’re really honest with ourselves, we don’t want to change. It’s ok to wrestle with God and slug it out. He can take it. Even if we don’t want to change, we can want to want to change. That’s ok, God can work with that.

2) Take a baby step toward the other extreme. Often, we’re at our extreme because we absolutely hate the other extreme. For example, maybe neat-freaks hate the disorganization of messiness, while messy people hate the rigidity of the neat-freaks. Both extremes are bad. But we justify our extreme by looking at the other one. 

To get out of an extreme, you have to take a step toward the other extreme. Now I’m not saying go to the other extreme, but if you’re going to find the balance in the middle, you have to move in that direction. 

To continue the above example, our neat-freaks need to learn it’s ok if something minor is left out-of-place and let it go. Meanwhile, the messy people need to put things back when they’re done with them. This is a silly example, but you get the idea.

So take a deep breath and take a step toward the other extreme. The world won’t come to an end. And Jesus will meet you there in the balance.

How about you?

Have you been at an extreme? How did you get out? Did you realize what you hated wasn’t so bad after all? Tell us our story in the comments, and please share if this would bless someone else.

How to Disarm Offense

/0 Comments/in , , , /by

America is in the middle of a cold civil war. It’s not a hot civil war like the 1860s, where we were physically shooting at each other, thank God. But just like the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, it’s equally real. And this cold civil war is fueled, on both sides, by this one thing. Offense.

The spirit of offense is ravaging America right now. It’s deeply infected both political parties and it’s playing us for fools against each other. It’s a demonic strategy. And it’s totally eating our lunch.

Offense is the opposite of love on so many levels. Let’s compare and contrast love and offense, using the definition of love from 1 Corinthians 13:4-7.

Love… Offense…
… is patient. … shoots first and asks questions later.
… is kind. … posts dishonoring memes on FaceBook.
… does not envy. … is never satisfied.
… does not boast. … is self-righteous. Especially if it’s actually right.
… is not proud. … justifies itself. Offense is its own justification.
… does not dishonor others. … dehumanizes others.
… is not self-seeking. … is blinded to the very existence of others, since it doesn’t see them as human anymore.
… keeps no record of wrongs. … keeps a list like Santa Claus, checking it twice, categorizing people into naughty or nice.
… does not delight in evil. … laughs at & “likes” dishonoring memes on FaceBook.
… rejoices with the truth. … looks for the catch. Always suspicious, offense would be rather be cynical than naïve.
… always protects. … always attacks.
… always trusts. … always controls.
… always hopes. … has turned cynicism into an art form.
… always perseveres. … wants its pound of flesh yesterday.

Love covers a multitude of sins (1 Peter 1:8). Offense justifies a multitude of sins. Offense justifies all our bad behavior. Just look on FaceBook. I can post a nasty meme about someone I don’t even know if I don’t like their politics. All my friends will think it’s funny. Anyone who’s politics I find offensive must be a bad person. Really?

We need to respect other peoples’ dignity, even if we disagree with their politics, and even if they don’t respect our dignity. Especially when they don’t respect our dignity. They know, deep inside, their behavior is wicked. But it’s justified in their heart, because they know we’ll be wicked right back at them. And unfortunately, many Christians are. But when we don’t return wickedness for wickedness, mocking for mocking, or offense for offense, it gives their heart pause. And that is what lifts up the name of Jesus, not being right or winning the argument.

Respecting someone doesn’t mean we have to agree with them. The media and the culture have normalized a lot of wickedness we should not practice or condone. Sex outside of marriage. Abortion. Same-sex marriage. Transgenderism. As Christians, we have a responsibility to lovingly speak out against these anti-Biblical and self-destructive practices. But because we have the Holy Spirit, we can respectfully disagree without getting ugly about it. We can love those we disagree with. The world can’t.

Honestly, seeing non-Christians being disrespectful, while it’s reaching shocking new lows, doesn’t really bother me. We shouldn’t be surprised when pagans act like pagans. But seeing Christians, however, being disrespectful is what bothers me. The other side’s sin against us does not justify our sinful response.

So what can we do? Whatever your political persuasion, we, the people of God, can all do these 3 simple things.

1) Stop posting (and sharing and “liking”) disrespectful memes. Whether it’s President Obama, President Trump, Speaker Pelosi, or former Secretary of State Clinton, we have a Biblical mandate to respect the government officials that God put in place. (Romans 13:1-7, 1 Timothy 2:1-2.) However funny they are, and I admit I find some hilarious, disrespectful memes are slander. We need to stop. (Titus 3:1-2.)

2) Remember who the real enemy is. It’s not the other political party. No human being is the devil incarnate. Satan and his demonic forces are our enemy, not our fellow humans, even if they are deceived and ugly toward us.

3) Love the people on the other side. Disagree, yes. For God’s sake, disagree. The church has been bullied into complicit silence for far too long. But disagree lovingly. Don’t attack the other person, but speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15). Have a conversation, not a food fight. They have a right to disagree with you and still be treated civilly, just like you do. Don’t respond with ugliness for ugliness, disrespect for disrespect, evil for evil, but instead let us repay evil with good (Romans 12:17-21).

No one ever argued anyone into the Kingdom. But people get loved into the Kingdom all the time. We can do this.

What about you? Has there been a time when returning good for evil has won you a friend? A time when responding in love won you more than winning the argument? Tell us your story in the comments. And please share this post if it would bless others.

Can You Afford Success?

/6 Comments/in , /by

We all want to be successful. Nothing wrong with that. Nobody wants adversity. We all pray for blessing. But sometimes God answers “yes” by blessing us with adversity. He loves us too much to give us the success we crave the way we crave it.

Look at Asa, King of Judah, in 2 Chronicles 14-16. (At the time, Israel was split into two kingdoms, north and south. The northern kingdom had the name Israel, while the southern kingdom was called Judah with Jerusalem as its capital city.)

“Asa did what was good and right in the eyes of the Lord his God.” (14:2) He removed the foreign altars, smashed the sacred stones, cut down the Asherah poles—all objects of pagan idol worship. He was so zealous for the Lord he even deposed his own grandmother from her royal position as Queen Mother because she made an Asherah pole. Asa repaired the temple of the Lord and had the people rededicate themselves.

When the Cushites attacked with a vast army, Asa cried out to the Lord and won a great and improbable victory. He trusted God in his youth and experienced God’s deliverance first-hand.

But later in life, Asa faced the same situation. King Baasha of Israel and King Ben-Hadad of Aram attacked Judah. Two armies against one—Judah was in trouble. Rather than crying out to Lord like he did before and trusting God, Asa paid-off Ben-Hadad to break his treaty with Israel, with gold from the Lord’s temple. Baasha withdrew and Asa thought he was out of the woods.

But a prophet came to Asa and told him of his mistake. The Lord was planning to give Aram’s army into Asa’s hands. The impossible circumstance Asa faced was actually God’s plan to take down the wicked King of Aram, Ben-Hadad. But Asa short-circuited God’s plan by paying-off Ben-Hadad, with gold from the Lord’s temple no less! Doh!

Ok, we all screw up. So did Asa repent like King David when God exposed his mistake? Nope. Instead, Asa threw the prophet in prison and began to brutally oppress his own people (16:10).

The Lord tried again to woo Asa’s heart. God gave Asa a severe disease in his feet. But 16:12 says, “… even in his illness he did not seek help from the Lord, but only from physicians.” Asa’s success gave him another option.

King Asa was an amazingly faithful and good king, who experienced God’s miraculous deliverance first-hand, and then abandoned God in his later years. What happened?!?

I think Asa’s success was his downfall. Relax, I’m not saying success is bad. We should seek to successfully pursue the call of God on our lives, that thing that makes our heart leap. I write about that a lot on this blog. Success comes from the Lord, and so it’s a good thing. God only gives good gifts.

It wasn’t the success, in and of itself, that was the problem. It was what came with it. Success brings a choice we didn’t have before.

In his youth, the impending doom facing King Asa was well beyond his ability and resources to conquer. He had no choice but to cry out to the Lord. If God didn’t come through, Judah was toast. Seriously. The nation would’ve been wiped off the map.

But when King Asa was older, richer, more successful and established, he had a choice he didn’t have before.

“Money won’t make you happy… but everybody wants to find out for themselves.” — Zig Ziglar

It’s easy to trust the Lord when there’s no other choice. But what if we have another choice? What if our own strength might actually work? Will we still trust God when we don’t have to?

When I was in college as a math major at UCLA, I was taking some pretty challenging courses. I cancelled my social life, studied really hard, and got “A”s in pretty much everything. I would go through these cycles of feeling really good about myself. Too good, as if I’d done it all myself. I honestly remember thinking more than once, “I’m doing really well, aren’t I?”

Invariably, I’d bomb the next test. As I’d be doing the post-mortem analysis trying to figure out what went wrong, the Holy Spirit would be right there with his gentle whisper, “You thought you were doing this all by yourself.” No condemnation in his voice, just the simple truth.

“Oh, right,” I’d remember. “Success comes from God.” I’d repent and approach the next test differently—with an attitude of humility. I’d still study just as hard, but I’d go into it asking God for help instead of trusting in my own efforts. And I’d get my “A” back. Every. Time.

I remember thinking during those college days, “God, how long can you afford to let me be successful before I get cocky? Do I need constant trials and obstacles in my life to keep me dependent on you?”

God doesn’t bring misfortune to punish us per se. It’s not because he’s mad or mean. It’s to show us our own heart, to give us a choice to respond properly, so he can bless us more.

There are two situations where God brings adversity:

1) When we’ve done wrong. Often, it’s the logical consequences of our own actions—he just pulls back his hand of protection and lets us have our way. But the adversity is to turn us back to him when we may not even have realized we turned away.

I never “turned away” from God in college. I still worshipped him, prayed, went to church, tithed, and did all the things you’re supposed to. But when my heart got proud, he wouldn’t have it. Thank God.

2) When we’ve done right. See the whole book of Job. He’s giving us an opportunity to choose him when we have the resources not to. It thrills his heart when we don’t have to choose him but do, and he blesses us more out of that place. A right response to adversity we didn’t bring on ourselves shows us trustworthy for more.

It’s a strange cycle. We trust the Lord, which brings success. That success brings resources so we no longer have to trust the Lord. God uses this to show us our own heart.

So as you succeed, remember these three things:

1) Remain teachable.

2) Remain grateful.

3) Remain humble.

May my success never rise to the point where I forget my Lover-King Jesus. May yours never either. May we be ever faithful to him through all adversity, and even through all success.

Please share if this would please others, and tell us your story in the comments. We’d love to hear from you.

15 Kingdom Rights

/4 Comments/in , /by

This week we celebrate the birth of our country, grateful for the amazing rights and freedoms in America that people don’t enjoy elsewhere in the world. It gets me thinking about the rights we have as Christians, as citizens in the Kingdom of God. Here are 15 I thought of. I’m sure you can think of more.

#1: In the Kingdom, we have the right to remain silent (Isaiah 53:7, Luke 23:9). FaceBook, Twitter, and social media would be much friendly places if we learned when to exercise this right. Here’s the best definition of spiritual maturity I’ve ever heard: In an argument where the other person’s is being ugly, to have the perfect comeback to just crush their soul, and not say it. That’s spiritual maturity.

#2 & 3: We also have the right to speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15). We have the right to build people up. Not puff them with empty flattery so we can manipulate something out of them, but truly build them up. Telling them the truth, calling out how God sees them, how they may not even see themselves.

This isn’t all rainbows and unicorns and singing kum-ba-yah. Sometimes, ok often, it means confrontation. But we don’t confront the way the world does, with anger and judgement. We confront with mercy, uncompromising truth, and most of all, with God’s heart and with God’s strategy, which is the perfect segue into our next right.

#4: We have the right to intercede. We have the right to ask God for his heart for a certain person or situation, and pray it back to him. We don’t want to pray our agenda. We want to get God’s strategy, God’s heart, and pray his heart back to him. But getting God’s heart for a situation means we have to be willing to drop our own agenda, which leads into our next Kingdom right.

#5 & 6: We have the right to deny ourselves (Luke 9:23). Essentially, this is the right to give up our rights. It’s so not fair. God has stacked the deck in our favor. When we give up our rights in this world, God gives so much more in return.

This is different from the world. People in the world without Jesus can’t help but pursue their addictions and vain pleasures (Philippians 3:19). But we have been given a spirit of self-control (2 Timothy 1:7), and we have the right to use it. Pursuing God’s Kingdom, rather than our own, is much more satisfying anyway. It’s an oxymoron, but the thing in our greatest self-interest is not pursuing our own self-interest.

#7: We have the right to believe in people, even when they don’t believe in themselves. God believed in Moses, Gideon, Elijah, and so many others when they didn’t believe in themselves.

#8: We have the right to change the atmosphere everywhere we go: at work, at school, at the store, at the gas station, everywhere. There’s a story of a missionary in South America going into an unreached village. The witch doctor came up to him and told him his spirits wanted to know how long he was going to stay in their village. He began to explain he was there to tell them good news about Jesus, but witch doctor interrupted him.

“Yes, I know. You serve the God who sits in front of the crystal sea with the emerald rainbow around his throne, and his servants fly around him singing his praise day and night.” The illiterate witch doctor described Revelation 4 perfectly. “I have seen it in my visions, but my spirits tell me he is an enemy and they are not allowed to go there. When you stepped into our village, my spirits had to leave, so they want to know how long you’ll be staying, so they know when they can come back.”

Our presence, and the Holy Spirit we carry within us, changes the atmosphere everywhere we go. How much more if we realize it! I have often prayed for the Lord to send an “angelic sweep” through the building I’m in, removing any spiritual forces not of God. You can too. It makes a difference.

#9 & 10: We have the right to kick down the gates of the enemy (Matthew 16:18), especially within our sphere of influence. We have the right to cancel the enemy’s legal rights over our lives and the lives of our families. We do that by repenting of inner vows and judgements we’ve made, and by choosing to believe God’s truth instead.

#11, 12, 13, 14, 15: Finally, We have the right to serve, to the right to forgive, the right to love, the right to sacrifice. In short, we have the right to be like Jesus,

Who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. (Philippians 2:6-7)

So what about you? What has God restored when you surrendered your rights? How has exercising your Kingdom rights changed your sphere of influence? Have you experienced changes in atmosphere? Tell us your story in the comments, and please share if this would bless someone else.

The 2 Littlest Words Causing the 4 Biggest Problems

/4 Comments/in , , , , /by

Most relationship problems, and you could even say most sins in the world, come down to problems with this one thing. Boundaries. And most boundaries problems come down to the refusal to either hear or say one of two little words. “Yes” and “no.”

[The concepts in this post come from the excellent book Boundaries by Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend. These two strong Christians have practiced psychology for decades and have amazing insight we desperately need. I wish I’d read this book 30 years ago.]

Backpacks and Boulders

Before we dive into boundaries, we need to talk briefly about backpacks and boulders. The definitive passage for boundaries is Galatians 6:2-5.

Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. If anyone thinks they are something when they are not, they deceive themselves. Each one should test their own actions. Then they can take pride in themselves alone, without comparing themselves to someone else, for each one should carry their own load. (Galatians 6:2-5)

I’ve bolded the two important phrases we’re going to call-out here.

“Carry each other’s burdens.” The word translated “burden” means “boulder.” It’s something too huge for a single person to move alone. Stuff like that happens in this life. We’re supposed to help each other when we see someone else under the crushing weight of a boulder. There’s no way they can bear that weight themselves.

“Each one should carry his own load.” The word translated “load” means “backpack.” It’s basically a military term for a soldier’s daily pack. It’s the weight each person is both capable of carrying and expected to carry on their own.

We get in trouble with boundary issues when we mix up our boulders and our backpacks. We don’t let anyone help with our boulders, while we try to get others to carry our backpacks.

The 4 Main Boundary Problems

Here are the 4 main boundary problems. People with healthy boundaries say, and hear, the words “no” and “yes” appropriately, in the correct situations. These issues result when we don’t.

  1. Compliant — Won’t say “No”
  2. Controller — Won’t hear “No”
  3. Non-Responsive — Won’t say “Yes”
  4. Avoidant — Won’t hear “Yes”

Let’s go through these 4 boundary problems one by one. See if you recognize yourself. I do.

1) The Compliant – Won’t Say No

A compliant person is happy to help, answering the call to carry everybody else’s backpack. They get burned out and overloaded, and believe they just need to try harder. It’s looks great on the outside. Everyone else praises them because they’re so helpful, but it’s a horrible way to live.

Their life is often controlled by others. In inner healing, we call this Performance Orientation. It’s hard sometimes to see this as a problem because they’re doing so many good things.

But if they’re doing the wrong good things, all these good things are actually stealing the calling on their life. All the time spent doing all the good things leaves no time or energy for the one Great Thing, that unique contribution to the world only they can bring. It’s tragic. The compliant life is tragedy with a bow.

The problem isn’t the things they’re doing. The problem is they’re getting their value from the things they’re doing, not from their relationship with Jesus. It’s a perversion of the Biblical principal of dying to yourself. (See Luke 9:23, one of my favorite verses. Yes, I was a compliant. I can still lean that way if I’m not careful.)

2) The Controller – Won’t Hear No

Controllers don’t accept other people’s boundaries. They don’t carry their own backpack. Controllers spend all their time and energy trying to get someone else to carry their backpack, because in their deception, they perceive it as a boulder. So every backpack God brings into their life to make them strong and help them grow is thrown away.

They take advantage of other people to get their needs met, or at least what they perceive as their needs. Do you know people who don’t accept a “no”? They argue with you. They try to work a deal. They say, “Ok, but just…” They are abusers in the making, if not already there. (There are many forms of abuse: physical, verbal, emotional, and even spiritual.)

Controllers have a scarcity mindset. Intrinsically believing there’s not enough love to go around, they have to control the situation to make sure they get their share.

3) The Non-Responsive – Won’t Say Yes

Non-responsive people set boundaries, but they’re the wrong boundaries. They set boundaries against loving other people. When someone comes to them with a legitimate need, they have no grid for it. “Why don’t they just deal with it?”

To non-responsives, everything’s a backpack. They don’t see boulders. So, for example, when their spouse reaches out to them with a legitimate need (maybe for time spent together, being treated decently, or maybe just being loved), they don’t help or even try to. “I’m carrying my backpack, why can’t you just carry yours? What’s wrong with you?” They brush off their responsibility to love, claiming the other person is just overly needy.

4) The Avoidant – Won’t Hear Yes

Avoidants also set the wrong boundaries. They set a boundary against being loved. That’s called a wall, by the way, and is not a healthy boundary.

They won’t let someone else help with their boulders. “I can do it myself.” Like the non-responsive, they don’t see boulders. Well, actually, they see other people’s boulders, but not their own. They’re happy and willing to help someone else, but they won’t let anyone help them. “My problems pale in comparison to others.”

The 2 Common Combinations

Often we have multiple boundary problems. There are 2 particularly common combinations. (If you put the list of 4 boundary problems above in a table, these would be the diagonals.)

The compliant-avoidant won’t say “no” to helping with other people’s problems, but they won’t say “yes” to allowing anyone to help them with theirs. Desperately trying to earn the love we all crave, they get their value from helping others, literally to a fault, while never being vulnerable enough to allow anyone to help them. This is the post-card picture of Performance Orientation. They help everyone carry their backpack while letting no one help them with their boulder.

The non-responsive-controller, on the other hand, won’t hear “no” and won’t say “yes.” They steamroll over other people, demanding their needs get met while totally ignoring the needs of others. This is the post-card picture of Narcissism. They demand everyone else carry their backpack while never helping anyone with their boulder.

The really sad thing is – these two diagonals often marry each other! For a non-responsive-controller, who better to manipulate into carrying their backpack, while doing nothing in return, than a compliant-avoidant? And who better to make a compliant-avoidant feel needed than a non-responsive-controller?

So What Really Makes These Tick?

The inner motivation for all of these is… wait for it….  Fear. Pure and simple fear. We use these mechanisms to guard our own heart instead of trusting God. We’re afraid, and we don’t trust him to protect us or value us, at least to some extent, so we have to do it ourselves.

It comes down to this. We don’t believe we’re loved for ourselves. By whatever means we got that message, how we were raised, trauma in our life, etc., it stuck. And so now we have to either earn love or control the situation to get it. The problem is, it never works for long. God loves us too much to let us be satisfied living like that.

The Way Out

Fortunately, Jesus is stronger than our boundary problems. But he’s also a gentleman. He won’t force our boundary issues from us. But he’ll bring infinite opportunities throughout our life to give them to him, to start trusting him with our hearts instead of our own devices.

Sometimes recognizing we have a problem is 90% of the solution. Naming that problem is also powerful, because we have power over what we can name. That’s why AA meetings famously start by saying, “I’m John, and I’m an alcoholic.” That’s why anger management counselors teach people words to label their emotions. “I’m not angry, I’m frustrated (or scared or lonely or tired or sad or shocked, etc)”.

The choice is ours.

Compliants – Start saying “no” to good things that deplete you. Your own self-care is just as worthy of your time.

Controllers – Begin to listen for “no.” Honor the other person’s right to say “no,” whether you think it’s silly in this circumstance or not. No means no. Trust God to bring you what you need. Face the fear.

Non-Responsives – Other people have boulders. Intentionally look for them. What’s one thing you can help your spouse/friend/co-worker with? Help them with something that seems like a boulder to them, even if it looks like a backpack to you.

Avoidants – Start saying “yes.” Let people in. Let people help you. We were designed to live in community, and avoidants totally get that as far as helping other people. But community works both ways. You’re not really living in community if you don’t let people help you. (Not control you, just help you.)

Now, an important note here. We justify our extremes by the other extreme. Compliants look at non-responsives and say, “I don’t want to be insensitive like them!”. And vice-versa. Non-responsives look at compliants and say, “I don’t want to be a doormat like them!” Same for controllers and avoidants.

Relax. No one’s trying to turn you into the other extreme. But we have to move in that direction if we’re going to move out of the unhealthy extreme we’re stuck in. Non-responsives need to be more sensitive to the needs around them. Compliants need to be less sensitive to, and controlled by, the needs around them. Etc.

If any of this is you, pray for grace to acknowledge it and repent. Pray for the grace to learn and be teachable, recognizing the opportunities God brings into your life to grow, to say and hear “yes” or “no” where you haven’t before.

So how about you?

Did you recognize yourself in these descriptions? Have you lived with these? How are your boundaries? Tell us your story in the comments, and please share if this would bless someone else.

How to Emotionally Agree with God

/8 Comments/in , , /by

I recently did a post on how to come into agreement with other people; your spouse, your boss, your friends, whoever. This post presented the 3 parts of agreement, which I’ll summarize here.

1) Logical Agreement. Is this what you THINK we should do?

2) Emotional Agreement. Is this what you WANT to do?

3) Spiritual Agreement. Do you have a PEACE in your spirit that this is what God wants you to do?

Often, we charge off after some decision when we have logical agreement with our spouse or the other party, but there’s no emotional agreement. They never wanted to do that thing in the first place. Their heart’s not in it. They feel bullied or coerced into it. And when it ends in disaster, we’re shocked because we went out of our way to make sure everybody was on board.

My point in that post was, if you’re not in agreement in all 3 areas, you’re not in agreement. You need to go back and pray more, both individually and together, asking the Lord to give you agreement.

I had a revelation that this applies to our agreement with God also. So often in the church, we make this mistake. Well, here’s the Bible verse! Let me just quote it for you. There you go! Problem solved! Not necessarily. There are exceptions, but in general, we can’t argue people into the Kingdom of God by hitting them over the head with Bible verses.

Even with people in the church, we can’t solve deep problems with quippy Christian answers and flippantly quoted Bible verses.

Now, just cool your jets. I’m not knocking the Bible. It’s God’s word. It’s living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword. It’s got everything we need for life and godliness. God often speaks to us through his word. It’s powerful.

But it’s powerful because it hits something more than our logic, more than our intellect. It’s powerful when it hits our heart. It’s powerful when it hits our emotions.

So often we in the church aim to bring the culture into intellectual, logical, agreement with the Gospel. We try to win by reasoning with them. It’ll never work. Yes, it’s important to be able to rationally answer their questions and have a good rationale for our positions. But winning in logic is not going to change anybody’s mind. Only the Holy Spirit can do that. And he works in the heart as well as the head.

The Holy Spirit works in the heart because that’s where the pain is. We’ll never bring the culture into emotional agreement with the Gospel unless we address their pain.

Take smoking for example. Everyone knows smoking will kill you. It gives you cancer. The Surgeon General has had a warning label on cigarettes for decades. Yet, according to the CDC, 45 million Americans still smoke, 8 million are living with diseases caused by smoking, and over 400,000 die prematurely every year from smoking.

Everyone knows smoking is bad for you. We all have intellectual, logical agreement on this one. So why do millions of people still smoke? Because they don’t emotional agree that it’s bad for you. Smoking did something for them that medicated their pain. Often, it made them feel accepted. Medicating the pain in their heart right now is worth more to them then the high risk of cancer later. So quitting is not what they want to do. No emotional agreement.

Are there truths about yourself where you’re not in emotional agreement with God? Yeah, I know the Bible says God loves me, but that’s because he loves people in general. He doesn’t really love me. Maybe you’re in intellectual, logical agreement with God’s love for you, but you’re not in emotional agreement.

The Christian journey of being sanctified is the process of coming into emotional agreement with God’s love. It’s coming into emotional agreement that, no what the circumstance, God is good.

So how do we come into emotional agreement with God’s truth? Here are 3 ways to emotionally agree with God about that promise in his word that you just don’t believe is true for you. You know the one.

1) Engage your will.

Be an actor playing a role. “If I actually believed this promise of God, what would I do?” And then do that thing. You’re not faking it till you make it. You’re helping yourself believe until you become it.

2) Say it out loud.

Our words have tremendous power over our lives. God built this into the fabric of the universe so we could bless those within our sphere of influence (including ourselves). But the reverse is also true. We can curse others and ourselves if we choose. That’s why people who say they can and people who say they can’t are both right.

When you’re fighting to believe God’s truth, repeat God’s promise out loud.

3) Tell people you trust.

Again, along the lines of saying God’s truth out loud, telling other people “this is what I believe” is hugely powerful. And the beauty of this is, they can say it back to you when you need to hear it. Bonus! It’s not just you. You’re not alone. Others you trust are agreeing with you about this promise of God over your life. That’s uber-powerful in the spirit!

So how about you? What is that thing you believe intellectually and logically, but struggle to believe emotionally, in your heart? You can practice #3 above by telling us in the comments, and we’ll agree with you. Or maybe you’ve come through a season of learning to emotionally agree with God about something. Tell us your story in the comments; it will help others. And please share this post on social media if you think it would bless someone else.

How to Agree in 3 Questions

/3 Comments/in , , /by

We know agreement is a key to any kind of successful partnership, whether it’s in business, a marriage, or a creative partnership. Unity is a powerful thing that can weather any storm. When troubles destroy a relationship, be it a marriage or a business or what have you, it’s not the troubles that actually destroyed it. It was the lack of agreement. The circumstances just exposed the area of disunity.

Here’s a radical statement, but it’s true. Human agreement is even strong enough to thwart the plans of God. Now just give me a minute here, and I’ll prove it. It’s one of in the craziest stories in the Bible. It’s in Genesis 11, the Tower of Babel.

The backstory is God, when he created people, gave us the charge to, “Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the whole earth and subdue it.” (Genesis 1:28) God’s plan was for humanity to scatter itself over the whole face of the earth.

But we had a better idea in Genesis 11:4: “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower reaching to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the earth.” They had agreement. They had unity. Done deal.

Now this is the crazy part. In Genesis 11:6, even God admits their human agreement was stronger than his plan: “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing will be impossible for them.” Translation: “I’d better do something here.”

And he did. God intervened. Basically, he cheated. Those of us who know God chuckle at this, because we know he so does this, all the time. He came down and confused the languages. No communication, no agreement, problem solved. Look at Genesis 11:8: “So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth.” God’s plan wins after all.

Now this is a negative example of the power of agreement and unity. Just imagine how strong agreement is when it’s actually for something God is doing. Imagine how powerful agreement can be if, along with agreeing with each other, we’re also in agreement with God! Obstacles, get out of the way, you’re about to be road-kill!

So why is agreement so hard? How often has this conversation happened:

Husband (or business partner or wife): “Don’t you see the logic of this decision? A implies B implies C, botta bing, botta boom, and there you go!”

Wife (or other business partner or husband): “Well, I guess it does make sense…”

Husband (or first business partner or wife): “Great! We’re in agreement! Off we go!”

And it results in disaster. The wife (or business partner #2) was never in agreement with the decision to begin with. They feel bullied and steam-rolled over. Meanwhile, the husband (or business partner #1) is flabbergasted and shocked, because he was sure they were in agreement. He went out of his way to talk about it with the other person before implementing the decision!

The problem is, while they were in logical agreement, they were not in agreement. The thing many people don’t realize is this: There are 3 parts to agreement.

(1) Logical Agreement.

“Do you THINK this is the right thing to do?”

In other words, you both agree on the logic. Unfortunately, many people stop right there thinking they’re in agreement with the other person, but they aren’t yet. Yes, you do need to have logical agreement, but if that’s all you’re going on, it’s a lose-lose and you’re headed for a crash. One gets steam-rolled and the other is shocked to find himself (or herself) in the middle of a huge disagreement over something he (or she) thought they both agreed on.

(2) Emotional Agreement.

“Is this what you WANT to do?”

Even if the other person sees your logic, if it’s not what they want to do, you’re not in agreement yet. If it’s not what both of you want, then maybe there’s some piece of logic you missed. We can twist logic to arrive at almost any foregone conclusion. God often speaks through that nagging feeling that we just don’t want to do a thing, but we can’t put our finger on why.

(3) Spiritual Agreement.

“Do you have a PEACE in your spirit that this is what God wants you to do?”

You both truly have a sense that this really is God. Yes, you know this is what God wants you to do. It passes the peace test. “Do you have a peace about this decision?” Both people need to have an uncoerced “yes” to be in agreement.

If you both answer “yes” to all of these 3 questions, then you’re in agreement and you can move forward. If not, time to go back and pray more, separately and together, over the decision, asking the Lord for agreement. God often gives each spouse (or partner in a business) a piece. So often, working out the decision together with the other person leads to a better solution than either would’ve come up with on their own.

Now this assumes both parties are healthy, seeking connection in their marriage or partnership, rather than seeking a safe-distance. Sometimes fear and wounding prevents agreement, and you’ve got to go the way God’s leading you anyway. But I wouldn’t recommend that without specifically hearing from the Lord. Pursue agreement for a God-defined season first.

So what do you think? Does this ring true? Have you been in agreement with someone that really wasn’t agreement? How’d that go? Or, do you have a successful strategy in pursuing agreement? Tell us in the comments; someone may benefit from your story. And please share on social media if this would bless someone else.

Why We Really Don’t Want Fairness but This Instead

/2 Comments/in , /by

“It’s not fair!” said every person everywhere, at some point in their lives. Some of us live in that unhappy place of constantly striving for fairness and never seeing it. Some of us sink there when bad things happen. We see it all over our political system—the constant cry for fairness, for everyone to be treated the same. The truth is, that’s not what we really want.

What?!? Why would I not want fairness? You really don’t. Let me prove it to you. Have you ever, when you saw someone getting a speeding ticket, pulled over and said to the officer, “Please write me a speeding ticket also. It’s not fair for only that guy to get a ticket when I was speeding too. In fact, better make it reckless driving. I was going 15 mph over the limit.” Said no one ever. We only want fairness when it’s in our favor. Think about that. It isn’t really fairness then, is it?

God has opinions about fairness. This is very counter-intuitive, but, believe it or not, fairness is actually prohibited in the Bible. In fact, God feels so strongly about this, it made the 10 Commandments. God put it this way:

“You shall not envy your neighbor’s house. You shall not envy your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or his donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.” Exodus 20:17

Envy. Often our cry of “it’s not fair!” is just a mask for envy. Someone else has something we want.

Fairness means everyone’s treated exactly the same. Although it sounds great on paper, it’s not really a good thing. Everyone’s different, so treating everyone the same is actually an injustice. We all have different backgrounds, different skills, different strengths, different weaknesses. Imposing artificial fairness would drown out our diversity. Diversity is the colorful beauty of life. Why would we want to drown it out with gray fairness? The Soviets tried that for 70 years. It was a dismal failure.

Fairness does not exist in the Kingdom of God. And that’s a good thing. Out of his goodness, God has something much better. It’s called justice. Often, when we cry out for fairness, we’re really crying out for justice. Justice totally exists in the kingdom of God, and it’s way better than fairness.

I know this is a pretty out-there post, so here’s an example to show how justice is better than fairness. When I was in high school, my parents built and owned a preschool and my mom was the director. The worst thing a child can do in a preschool is harm another child. But with 3 and 4-year-olds, it occasionally happens.

One day, one child bit another. This particular biter hated vegetables, especially carrots. So my mom went to the kitchen and got a big carrot. “If you want to bite something, bite this,” she said as the biter got his time-out in the corner. The biter was really wishing he’d chosen different behavior and did not bite again. Having to eat a carrot did the trick.

Meanwhile, across the room, another kid who loved carrots came to the false conclusion, “If I bite someone, I get a carrot!” So he turned and bit the kid next to him. My mom brought this second pair of children into the kitchen, the biter and the crying kid who got bit. The biter was smiling and eagerly awaiting his carrot. My mom took out a big carrot, and right in front of the biter, gave it to his crying victim. The child stopped crying, thrilled to be given something special. Meanwhile the biter had time to figure out what went wrong during his time-out in the corner. He also never bit another child.

My mom did not treat these children fairly. But in her wisdom, understanding the needs and hearts of each child, she treated them justly. My mom’s preschool justice was in the best interest of all the children, where strict fairness would not have been.

God is like that. As his people, we need to be like that, too. As the people of God, we should work for justice in the face of injustice. Righteous anger, and the action it inspires, is the correct response to injustice. That’s what anger is for.

But let’s not misuse our God-given anger crying out for fairness because we didn’t get what we wanted. That’s just a cry of envy from an entitled people.

Did this post resonate? How has God brought about justice in your life? What have you learned from it? Or are you still waiting for it? And please share if this would bless someone else.

How to Succeed by Deciding to Fail

/4 Comments/in , , , /by

At a recent writer’s conference (Jeff Goins’ Tribe conference), I heard a speaker, Joseph Michael, author of the online course Learn Scrivener Fast, say he was thankful for his failures. I’d always known intellectually that failures are good for you. As long as you learn something, failures are learning experiences. They’re a necessary part of moving forward in life.

I’m not talking about moral failures here. We call those sin, and that’s never good for you, although our gracious Father in Heaven often works good out of them when we repent. But that’s a whole other topic. I’m talking here about mistakes. Or maybe it wasn’t even a mistake—stuff we tried that just didn’t work, for whatever reason. The house plant died. The stock price didn’t rise; it fell. The book didn’t sell.

It wasn’t even Joseph Michael’s main point. He just said it in passing. But when he said he was thankful for his failures, in that moment something leaped the long twelve inches from my head to my heart. I felt the Holy Spirit’s conviction that I need to fail more. I set a goal to fail at 4 major things in 2019.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not setting out to fail. I’m going to try my best. But if my goal is to succeed, I won’t even try unless success is assured from the outset. “Well, c’mon,” my brain says, “with anything important or worthwhile, success is never guaranteed.” But my heart’s not going near that risky goal. The cost of personal failure is too great; it hurts too much. So I sabotage myself and never lean into my calling. Can you relate?

Some people could phrase this goal as trying 4 new/risky things in 2019. Probably most people don’t have to use the f-word, FAIL, in their goal. But I do. God is healing me from severe Performance Orientation, where I get my sense of value from what I do. If I internally said try in my goal, and it didn’t succeed, I’d tell myself the story that I didn’t try hard enough, and the heart-crushing failure would set in.

Avoiding failure avoids risk, which avoids success. My avoidance of failure keeps me safe from risk, but also from the wild success that is only possible through trying risky things.

But if internally my goal is to fail, then my heart feels free to take that risk, because I know I can meet that goal. Just the way my brain, or maybe my heart, is wired. Anybody else, or is it just me?

For some people, setting a goal to fail would mean they’d not do the work, or do it substandard, setting themselves up for failure. Those people are wired differently from me and that’s fine. For me though, I don’t have that problem. If I try something, I’ll do everything I can, the best I can, to achieve success. That’s just who I am.

For me, setting the goal of failing is the permission my heart needs to try something risky. Then if it fails and the self-condemnation loop starts, I can say “hey, I met my goal” and stop it. And if the thing actually succeeds, then, wow, Bonus! I exceeded my goal.

So get ready, 2019, it’s going to be a fun year. I’m going to actually try things I wouldn’t previously even vocalize. How about you? Are you up an adventure? Do you dare give substance to that dream in your heart? What’s the first baby step? Take it.

And who knows? Maybe failing at 4 things in 2019 will be a really hard goal to meet because everything actually works! Wouldn’t that be a great problem to have? Please share this post if you think it would inspire someone else.