3 Conversations We as the Church Need to Have

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Church is the place where we come together as a people and celebrate all that God has done for us. Yes, we celebrate our salvation, but the cross was meant to be the beginning of our freedom. God has done miraculous things in all of our lives and continues to do so. Janet and I have received tremendous healing from the Lord, and we know many others who have as well. I bet you have, too. It makes sense to find a lot of happy, joyful people in church. As it should be.

But we shouldn’t only find happy, joyful people in church and, truth be told, none of us are happy and joyful all the time. Janet and I still have significant pain in our lives, and I bet you do, too.

Yes, our joy is rooted in who Jesus is, so it’s deeper than our circumstances. Yes, he imparts supernatural joy in the middle of horrendous circumstances. I’ve experienced his peace in the midst of tremendous pain, in circumstances that should’ve been anything but peaceful. But sometimes he doesn’t bring joy. Not always; not all the time. You can’t box him in or predict what he’s going to do.

What do you do when you pray, when you worship, when you read your Bible, when you’ve done everything right, and you still feel depressed? What if you still have lustful thoughts? Even suicidal thoughts? What if you still feel the pull toward the old addiction?

We shouldn’t feel like we have to pretend we’re happy and joyful when we’re not. We all continue to go through tough stuff. Jesus promised us we’d have trouble as long as we’re in this fallen world (see John 16:33).

What happens all too often is we sit in church thinking, “What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I be full of joy like all these people all around me? Just look at all these happy people entering into God’s presence. Why does God come through for everyone else but not for me?”

Want in on the big secret? Many, many other people in the room are thinking the exact same thing. And we probably all have thought that at some point.

What if you’re grieving a loss in your life? Maybe a loved one? Even if they’re saved, it’s never easy. What about a child? What about a marriage? A job loss? A home?

What if you’re caught in a mess of your own making? What if your addiction is crashing your life? What if you’re in a crisis pregnancy? What if you’re going to go to jail, maybe a DUI, shoplifting, drugs, or domestic abuse?

If you can’t go to church when you’re in crisis, where can you go?

Some churches are not safe places to be when you’re hurting. They question your faith if you show any signs of human frailty.

There are conversations we as the church need to have that we’re not having. Let’s go there.

1) Depression

Why are some chemical imbalances acceptable in the church today while others are not? No one would tell a diabetic not to take their insulin. But do we look down on people who need medication for depression as “unspiritual”? Why do we expect God to heal depression but not diabetes?

Everyone is different. We can’t fit people into formulas. Sometimes depression needs counseling, inner healing, and/or deliverance to address the root causes. But what about the people who do all that and still feel suicidal? More counseling? Maybe, maybe not. What’s God doing in that person? Sometimes the person needs medication to be leveled out enough to receive inner healing or deliverance. Sometimes it’s a legitimate chemical imbalance just like diabetes.

I’m not that person and I can’t tell the difference, so who am I to judge? I think I’ll leave that one up to God, and just be their friend, brother in Christ, and let them know how loved they are.

The sticky wicket comes when our method of choice, be it counseling, inner healing, deliverance, or what have you, doesn’t work. Do we blame the person? You don’t have enough faith! You just need to embrace your healing! How dare you break my perfect formula! That’s an injustice that needs to stop. When things that should work don’t work, it just means God’s not done and wants to do something even better in the person. We need to encourage them, not shame them.

We need to have this conversation. How do we act around people who suffer from depression?

2) Post-Abortive

One in three women has had an abortion. Of those, 70% identify as regular church attenders. Janet and I volunteer at our local crisis pregnancy center here in Fredericksburg, VA. The ones that break our heart the most are the ones who say, “Yes, I’m pro-life, but I have to get an abortion because I can’t tell my church.” The shame is too great. This is an injustice that needs to stop.

And it’s not just a women’s issue. Do the math. One in three men has fathered an aborted child. Abortion cuts to the heart of a man’s identity as protector just like it does the heart of woman’s identity as nurturer.

Is it possible that our judgmental attitude and lack of acceptance of girls in crisis pregnancies, especially our own, is what’s funding Planned Parenthood more than Congress? Are we the ones keeping them in business with our shaming and religiosity?

We need to have this conversation. How do we act around unmarried, pregnant young women? How do we act around post-abortive people? Is it safe for people in your church to admit they’ve had an abortion? How would you react?

3) Sexual Purity

Our girls in our churches are getting pregnant with our boys in our churches because we’re not talking about sex in our churches. Sex is part of life, and we should be talking about it in church regularly, from the pulpit, not just in Youth Group. Our silence is letting the media teach our teens and young adults about sex. They’re getting a very skewed, unhealthy, lying, but very slick, deceptive and appealing, message.

“Silence does not interpret itself.” – Father Frank Pravone, Priests for Life

We need to have this conversation. How do we act around teens and talk about sex?

Are You Willing?

… to have the hard conversation?

… to have the uncomfortable conversation?

… to be friends with that person?

… to let those people in your church?

… to admit that we don’t have our act together all the time?

… to come clean about our own doubts and fears?

… to, in vulnerability, be Jesus to the ones who need him the most?

Who knows, if we as the church are willing to do that, we just might find ourselves changing the world.

Please share this post on social media if you agree with starting this conversation.

How to Live from Your Future, Not Your Past, with Two Simple Lists

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Most of us live from the pain of our past. We try to medicate it with addictions. We try to bury it by being busy doing good things. We try to drown it with a constant buzz of media, entertainment, and self-gratification. But none of it works because God, in his great love and mercy for us, doesn’t let it work. He has a better way for us to live. God’s calling us to live from our future.

How do you think God sees you? What face does he make when he thinks of you? Many of us think of God frowning and disappointed over our mistakes. We think God’s pre-occupied with our shame because we are. But he’s not. He sees us from the perspective of our future destiny.

Here’s why. God doesn’t experience time moment after moment, like we do. God experiences all the moments at once. So when God sees our future, it’s not some cosmic fortune-teller thing. He’s just telling us what he’s experiencing in that other moment.

Think of it like this. You’re in a house with walls but no roof. You’re in one room with a radio to a guy in a helicopter hovering over the house. He’s telling you what’s going on in another room. You wouldn’t think, “Wow, he’s got supernatural powers and can see through walls!” No, you’d just understand that from his perspective, he can see all the rooms at once.

That’s how God experiences time. From his perspective, he experiences all the moments at once, just like the guy in the helicopter sees all the rooms of the house at once.

So God is experiencing our future right now, and he speaks to us from that place, reminding us who, from his perspective, we really are.

When God thinks of you, experiencing your future, he has one of two different emotions.

Regardless of the pain in your life, which God weeps over right along with you, God smiles when he thinks of you. For those who have, or will, accept the love of God, he smiles a lover’s smile. He laughs a lover’s laugh. An intimate smile, an intimate laugh, reserved just for you. He calls to you from your future, that place of mature authority to which he sees your present suffering is bringing you. He tells you just enough now to encourage you and light the way to the destiny he created you for.

Look how God calls Gideon in Judges 6:12. Gideon, the weakest person in Israel’s weakest tribe (see verse 15), was threshing wheat in hiding, living in fear of Israel’s cruel, oppressive, and powerful enemies. But when the angel of the Lord shows up, he greets Gideon with Gideon’s true identity, “Hail, mighty man of valor!”

I’m sure Gideon turned around to see who the angel was talking to. Realizing that, indeed, there was no one else there, I’m sure Gideon was like, “You talking to me?”

God was experiencing Gideon’s future, where Gideon, with just 300 men defeated an army of tens of thousands. He was speaking to Gideon from his future and inviting him into it. It was Gideon’s choice. Gideon had to work through some doubts, which God is totally okay with. But in the end, Gideon chose to follow God into his destiny.

But there are some people who, no matter what God does, will never respond to the love of God. For these people God weeps. By refusing his love, they’ve chosen to be separated from him forever. That’s called hell, the only place in existence where God has chosen to withdraw his presence, which is why it’s so torturous there. We don’t like to think about it, but that’s reality apart from the love of God.

This may sound strange, but the most loving thing God can do for those who absolutely will not accept his love is allow them to go there. Think about it. How would it be love for God to force people to spend an eternity with someone they’ve spent their whole life trying to avoid?

For these people God weeps. But he continues to woo them, romance them, and call them into the glorious potential he has for them, if they will just accept his healing love in the midst of their pain. He brings circumstances into their lives that make it very hard for them to not love him back. Because that’s what love does. It never gives up.

So how do we live from our future? You can start with two simple lists. This is a simple but powerful exercise I learned from Graham Cooke.

This first list goes really fast. Make a list of everything wrong with you, everything you’re ashamed of, all your faults. Give yourself two minutes. Go.

Then make a second list on a second sheet of paper. For every item on the first list, ask the Holy Spirit what the opposite is, and write that on the second list. 

Maybe you wrote anger on the first list. For one person, patience will be the opposite. For someone else, it might be sensitivity. For someone else, maybe gentleness. That’s why you have to ask the Holy Spirit. Write the first thing that pops to your head. God so wants to talk to you about this.

Then throw the first list away. Rip it up into little pieces. Do it right now. Enjoy it! Rip up that thing! That list is not you. It doesn’t exist in Heaven, so it shouldn’t exist on this earth. Don’t we pray, “on earth as it is in Heaven?”

Now take the second list and pray over it. Dwell on it. Keep it with you. Look for opportunities to practice those things in your life. The second list is your game plan for what God wants to do in your life. Not all at once, don’t panic. Pick one or two and focus on those.

When something on the first list pops up in your life, pray a moment and thank God he’s giving you an opportunity to practice the corresponding item on the second list. Focus on the second list. That’s the future God wants you living from.

Say you wrote anger on the first list and patience on the second list. Then you find yourself going into one of your rages. Don’t pray, “Lord, help me not be angry.” If you pray that way, you’ve just spoken over yourself what God says you’re not. You’re focusing on the sin that died on the cross with Jesus.

Instead, pray, “Lord, help me be patient.” Now you’re speaking over yourself who God says you are. You’re partnering with him working patience into your life. You’re focusing on what he wants to do.

Yes, you can do this. This is the empowering grace Jesus bought for us through the cross.

When we live from our future, we practice the habit of becoming. God loves this process. Just like a parent loves watching their child learn to walk, God loves watching us become who he knows we are.

We chose the picture we did for this post because that mom dressed her baby in a powerful identity, and he has no idea what it means. What identity has God dressed you in?

Who are you becoming? What future is God calling you into? What’s on your second list? Tell us in the comments. And please share if this would bless someone else.

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

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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.

What 4 Things to Do when Someone Leaves Your Life

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This post is a follow-on to our previous post, The 2 Littlest Words Causing the 4 Biggest Problems, about setting boundaries. When you decide to set healthy boundaries in your life, it’s usually not all rainbows and unicorns. It can get really messy, because along with moving your life forward in a healthy way, setting boundaries often upsets the unhealthy apple carts of the people around us.

The purpose of living in community, like we were designed by God to do, is twofold: (1) To receive help from our community with our boulders—those burdens and life events too large to carry alone, and (2) to serve the community by carrying our own backpack—the personal responsibility each of us can and should carry on our own.

Our previous post identified & discussed the 4 boundary problems (from the excellent book Boundaries by Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend) that happen when we get our boulders and our backpacks confused.

  • Compliant – Won’t Say “No.” Seeing only boulders, these folks exhaust themselves trying to carry everyone else’s backpack. I was one of these. They get their value from doing good things for others. It’s hard to see because it looks so good. Often they’re trying to earn love.
  • Controller – Won’t hear “No.” Controllers violate other’s boundaries to force or manipulate others into carrying their backpack. Often they are abusers. Or they can be that person who argues with you when they ask you to do something and you say no. “Ok, but can you just…”
  • Non-Responsive – Won’t Say “Yes.” Seeing only backpacks, non-responsive people ignore their responsibility to love others by never helping anyone else with a boulder. They are often not emotionally available and see others as needy.
  • Avoidant – Won’t Hear “Yes.” This is someone who won’t let anyone else help carry their boulder. They will help others, but no one is allowed to help them. The vulnerability is too scary.

Think about a controller in a relationship with a compliant. This could be a marriage, a work relationship, or a family dynamic between siblings. It’s a sweet deal for the controller. The compliant covers for them. The compliant does their work for them. It all falls on the compliant. And the compliant gets to feel good because of all they’re doing, earning the love they desperately crave. Sweet deal.

Or think about a non-responsive in a relationship with an avoidant. The avoidant is never vulnerable, never asking for the help the non-responsive won’t give. Sweet deal for the non-responsive, not having to deal with a “needy” person. Sweet deal for the avoidant, avoiding all that scary vulnerability. Until the avoidant’s internal bitterness grows to the breaking point, and they both wonder where that messy explosion came from.

Such dysfunctional relationships are unhealthy for both parties and, although it might work in the short-term, it will fall apart and not work long-term. It’s a disaster waiting to happen.

Each of these (and many other) dysfunctional relationships have benefits for both sides. The controller gets to control. The compliant gets to earn love. The non-responsive never has to help. The avoidant never has to be vulnerable.

The problem is false advertising. None of these lead to the happiness they promised. They’re dysfunctional, and out of God’s great love for us, he doesn’t let them work for long.

So What Happens When…

… the compliant gets healthy and consistently tells the controller “no”?

… the controller gets healthy and neither needs nor wants the compliant to do everything for them anymore?

… the non-responsive gets healthy and asks the avoidant if they need help with that boulder they’ve been hiding?

… the avoidant gets healthy and consistently asks the non-responsive for help with legitimate boulders?

Yikes!

Here’s the deal.

Sick attracts sick. If our spouse is sick, so are we. If our boss has boundary issues, so do we. Both people are getting a benefit. A sick, dysfunctional, hurtful benefit that ultimately is not good for anybody, but it’s still a benefit. The thing is, when one sick person gets healthy, it upsets the whole apple cart.

The other sick person thinks, “Hey, wait a minute! What happened to our arrangement where we each took advantage of each other’s sickness? I thought we had a deal here!”

When one sick person gets healthy, the other sick person has a choice. Well, maybe not immediately. They can try to bully, manipulate, or punish you out of getting healthy and back into the comfortable, sick, arrangement. But if you stay healthy, they have a choice to make.

They can either get healthy also, or they can leave. Those are the only two possibilities. One of those two will happen. Sick will not live with healthy for long.

We hope and pray they stay and choose to get healthy. But they might leave. What can you do if they leave? You can do these 4, very important, things.

1) Let Them Leave.

You can’t stop them. You can’t control them. You can only control you. This can really hurt. I know. But the alternative is return to the sickness you just got free from. And if you do that, you’ve taught them sickness works. Their only chance for them to get healthy is if you stick to your guns. Call their bluff.

Getting healthy is a high stacks game of chicken. People who benefited from your sickness will not like you healthy. They will try to get you back into that old, sick, false, identity. Stick to your guns. Stay healthy. Set those boundaries you’re learning.

They will either relate to your new, healthy identity, or they will drop out of your life, which can be really painful. But if they choose to go, let them go.

2) Grieve the Loss.

When someone leaves your life, it’s the death of a relationship. It’s especially painful when it’s a spouse, a parent, a child, or some other family member. Allow yourself to grieve the loss. Allow yourself to go through the 5 stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance). They can change every day, come in any order, and repeat often.

Feel the feelings. Run into the pain. Find a healthy outlet for your grief. Maybe long walks, building something, working in your workshop, talking it through with a safe friend—whatever healthy outlet works for you.

You’ll go through all the phases. The trick is to not get stuck in one phase too long. For example, it’s common for people losing a relationship to get stuck in bargaining. If I can just explain it to them one more time; if I can just explain it better this time… Listen to your godly friends and family.

3) Realize the Story’s Not Over.

Even though we know it’s not God’s highest and best, honor their right to leave, without trying to manipulate them out of it. What?!? I know. But look, it may just be the catalyst they need to address the sickness in their own life.

Realize also that God moved in your life to bring you to a place where you’re ready to get healthy. They may not be there yet. You’ve upset their apple cart. Yes, it was a dysfunctional cart with poison apples that were hurting you both, and it needed to be upset. But just realize that you getting healthy has put them in a scary place where they are not in control. In fact, it may have been a long time since they felt this much out of control.  Give them some grace and some time to sort it out.

Now please, don’t delay getting healthy because of someone else’s reaction (real or feared). If it’s on your heart, this is God’s timing for you. Do it! Just be prepared for the storms, and to give other people the time, space, and grace to sort out the new you, the changes in your relationship, and what it means for them.

4) Pray, Pray, Pray.

As Christians, prayer is our largest, and probably most underused, weapon. It’s huge. When you commit to pray for someone over the long haul, you don’t even have to tell them you’re praying for them, and you can see positive effects (eventually) in their lives. Not always, but often. And often not quickly, but often eventually.

So take the plunge.

Get healthy. Set those boundaries. Dare to say and hear the words “yes” and “no” in the appropriate measures. Trust God to guard your heart instead of trying to do it yourself. It’s the scariest, but the most worthwhile, adventure you’ll ever take.

How about you?

Does this resonate? 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

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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.

Why You Can’t Forgive until You’ve Gotten Angry

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As we teach and write about Christian identity, we find one of the biggest obstacles to really finding and walking in our true identity is forgiveness. Nothing will derail the calling on your life more than unforgiveness. Yet, we find many Christians don’t really understand forgiveness. There’s a key ingredient to forgiveness that’s counter-intuitive, that you wouldn’t expect. Anger. You can’t forgive until you’ve been angry.

Now, we’re talking about the really bad stuff here. I not talking about somebody cutting you off in traffic or taking your parking space. Hopefully we can forgive petty things without needing to get angry. But to forgive the big stuff – abuse, abandonment, rejection, neglect, manipulation, betrayal, rape, coercion into an abortion – you have to get angry first. For a season.

Forgiveness is a process, not an event. “Oh yeah, I forgave him last Tuesday at 4:00.” It doesn’t work like that. For really bad stuff, it takes months or even years to completely forgive someone who’s done heinous evil to you. And it goes in cycles. You think you’ve forgiven, and then something triggers that old resentment to rise back up. That’s actually the Holy Spirit prompting you to take another journey through the process of forgiveness. If you submit to the process, it’ll go deeper this time, bringing you a greater level of healing and freedom.

The process of forgiveness parallels the process of grief. You may have seen the 5 stages of grief:

  • Denial
  • Anger
  • Bargaining
  • Depression (sadness)
  • Acceptance

These stages aren’t numbered because they don’t necessarily go in order and often repeat. They are all healthy and necessary. For a season. The trick is not to get stuck in one of them.

Forgiveness works the same way because you’re grieving a loss. Maybe of innocence. Maybe of trust. Maybe of a relationship that wasn’t what you thought it was. Maybe of dreams.

The thing is, to truly forgive, you have to be angry first. For a season.

Although as humans we’ve perfected getting it wrong into an art form, anger is actually a good thing. The truth is God made anger. He gave us the potential for that emotion. And used correctly, it’s a good and necessary thing. Anger is the godly response to injustice. Now, what we consider unjust displays our maturity, but we should be angry over true injustice. That’s not wrong. It’s godly.

If someone has committed a serious injustice against you, you should be angry. In fact, you can’t come to a place of forgiveness unless you get angry. It’s part of the forgiveness process. Here’s why.

You can’t forgive something that’s not sin; there’s no reason to. “It wasn’t that bad.” Unless we get angry to the level corresponding to the heinousness of the sin, we’re minimizing the sin against us. If you were raped, abused, lied to, manipulated, coerced, don’t minimize the sin against you. It was really bad. If you’re not angry, you’re forgiving the wrong sin. You’re not forgiving the real sin against you. You’re forgiving some other sin that wasn’t that bad.

It’s important to acknowledge the full extent of the sin against you. And that should make you angry. It’s only from that place that you can bring your anger to the cross and let it all out. Let Jesus have it. It’s only by acknowledging how much the person owes you that can forgive, coming to the place where they don’t owe you anything. It’s only by acknowledging the debt that you can forgive the debt.

We don’t want to get stuck in anger. Some people do and their unforgiveness tears them up. But it’s important to be angry for a season. Unload on God. He can take it. He wants it. When you yell and scream to God and let all that anger out to him, it goes straight to the cross. And it stays there. He gives you healing in its place. And you can then, from that place, forgive. Which sets you free.

So how about it? Have you gotten angry over the sin against you? Or are you minimizing it? What are you learning? Where are you in your journey of forgiveness? Tell us your story in the comments, and please share if it would bless someone else.

How to Emotionally Agree with God

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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.

Why You Don’t Want to Be the Good Guy

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You don’t want to be the good guy in interpersonal relationships. It’s counter-intuitive, but you really don’t. What?!? Are you saying I should be the bad guy? No, of course not. In the world’s scarcity mindset we fall into so easily and often, those are the only two options. But in the Kingdom, there’s another choice.

The problem with being the good guy is there has to be a bad guy. When I was about 10, I remember overhearing my dad talking to one of his sisters about their mom. My aunt was upset because my grandmother was seemingly irrationally angry with her. My dad reassured her, “Don’t worry, it’s not you. You know how it is with Mom. Somebody’s always the villain. This week it’s you, next week it’ll be somebody else.” He was one of 8 children on a poor cotton farm in Oklahoma. It was a hard life. There were plenty of potential villains.

Life is hard. There are plenty of potential villains to blame. And plenty of real ones. People often do mean and hurtful things. Sometimes unknowingly, but sometimes on purpose. Bad guys abound. But don’t be the good guy.

The thing that trips us up isn’t the evil done to us. It’s our evil response to it. Yes, the evil done to us is horrible. I’m not minimizing that. But it has no power over us, only over our circumstances. What has power over us is our own response.

Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor who went on to become one of the 20th century’s most famous neurologists, said this:

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” – Viktor Frankl

The problem with sitting in the good guy chair is it forces someone else into the bad guy chair. There can’t be a good guy without a bad guy.

But they are the bad guy! Just look at what they did! Look at what they’re doing! Our American society has perfected this into an art form. We categorize everyone into good guys we agree with and bad guys we’re offended by. And our offense justifies all of our wicked, shameful, ungodly memes and treatment of those people we disagree with. We’ve matured as a prejudiced society. We’re not as prejudiced against skin color or ethnicity as much as we’re prejudiced against ideas. Hell couldn’t be more proud.

Do you see it? Do you see the error? Do you see the worldly thinking? They’re doing something bad, so they’re the bad guy! No. We are not what we do. God doesn’t see us like that. He sees us through the lens of who he created us to be, not through the lens of our behavior. Jesus died to make that possible.

God did not see Moses as a hot-tempered murderer, but as an iconic deliverer (see Exodus 2:11-12 and Exodus 3-4).

God did not see Gideon as a hiding coward, but as a mighty man of valor (see Judges 6:11-16).

God did not see Paul as the chief of sinners, a persecutor of the church, but as His personally chosen instrument to bring the gospel to the Gentiles (see Acts 8:1-3, Acts 9:1-15, and 1 Timothy 1:15-16).

God does not see the wicked people in our life through the lens of the wickedness they do. If we believe this Christian life is truly learning to be more and more like Jesus, then we need to learn to see people like he does. And we do that by letting them out of the bad guy chair.

The problem with putting people who hurt us in the bad guy chair is it puts us in the good guy chair. And we really do look good, sitting pretty in that good guy chair. It feels so justified. But there’s a problem. There’s a catch. The good guy chair has another name. A secret, hidden name. The victim chair. And you don’t want to sit there.

So here’s the deal. The only way out of the victim chair is by letting the other person out of the bad guy chair. And there’s only one way to do that. Forgiveness. I wrote a whole post on forgiveness here with two great lists – what it is and what it isn’t.

But suffice it to say here that forgiveness does not mean a lack of accountability, healthy boundaries, or consequences. If someone’s committed a crime against you, unless the Holy Spirit tells you differently, you have a spiritual responsibility to press charges in order to prevent future victims. And bringing that accountability also invites the person to deal with their own actions, and hopefully get healing for the root wounding that’s causing them.

God does not give us a bye on behavior. For example, although God saw Paul as his chosen instrument to bring the gospel to the Gentiles, when he appeared to Paul (then Saul), he said, “Why do you persecute me?” Jesus is like, “I want relationship with you. Here’s the awesomeness I’ve created you to be. But this stuff, your current behavior, acting out of the lies you believe, is in the way. Let’s deal with it together. Let me replace those foundational lies with my truth.” Jesus dealt with Paul’s stuff.

We are totally supposed to judge behavior as good or bad (see James 2:11, 1 Corinthians 5). But we are not supposed to judge people as good or bad (Matthew 7:1-2). That’s up to God alone. He doesn’t even trust the angels with that one (see Matthew 13:24-30).

So how do you forgive someone who’s done horrible wrong to you and is unrepentant? I had someone do something that was devastating to my family. We still are living in the fallout, and probably will for many years, if not permanently. This person is, as far as I know, unrepentant. I’ve never received an apology, let alone any attempt at restitution, and probably never will. My (fortunately few) dealings with them often display the same issues in this person’s life.

I had real trouble forgiving this person. Yes, I tried, I prayed the prayers and said the words. I wanted to forgive. But my heart was angry at the injustice of it all. So I got help. I got some inner healing prayer ministry. While the prayer minister was praying for me, I had a vivid vision of Jesus hanging on the cross. He asked me, “Have I hung here long enough to pay you back for the evil this person did to you? Or do you want me to hang here a little longer?” No condemnation in his voice, just an honest question.

I was undone. The dam burst and the tears could not be contained. I wept openly, letting all that pain of all that injustice go to Him on that cross. I’d always understood Jesus died for my sins against others and against him. But I’d never thought that he suffered and died for others sins against me. I answered him in my thoughts, “No Jesus, you don’t have to hang there any longer. It’s enough. What you’ve already done is enough.” And in that moment, really for the first time, I was able to forgive that person. I was able to release that person from what they owed me. The pain in my life they caused. The pain in my family’s life. The lack of even a simple apology. I don’t need it anymore. Jesus paid it all.

This whole good buy/bad guy thing really goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden. This was the original choice we were given then and are still given every single day in every single situation and circumstance. The choice between the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life. The choice to categorize people into good guys and bad guys, or to offer Jesus’ life to everyone, EVERYONE, independent of their actions.

So that’s my challenge to us today. Certainly don’t be the bad guy, but don’t be the good guy either. Be the Life Guy. Offer life to a sick, dying and hurting world, as you shine like stars in the heavens (see Philippians 2:15).

How about you? Have you let someone out of the bad guy chair? What difference did it make in your life? Has someone let you out of the bad guy chair? How did that change the relationship? Tell us in the comments. Your story will help others. And please share on social media (convenience buttons below) if you think this would help someone else.

I learned the concepts in this post, especially the good guy and bad guy chairs, from Rev. Jean Trainer of Dominion Counseling and Training Center, in Richmond, VA. Well worth a visit if you’re in the area. You’ll be glad you went.

How to Get Unstuck in 3 Questions and 2 Steps

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Judith MacNutt, wife of Francis MacNutt, tells a great story about a circus elephant she saw back-stage. The massive animal stayed in its circle, held by a chain around its foot staked at the center of the circle. The huge creature easily could have ripped that chain right out of the ground and taken off. But it didn’t. It obeyed the chain’s restriction on its mobility.

Fascinated, Judith MacNutt asked the handler how they trained such a massive animal to obey such a relatively small chain. “We first put the chain on when the animal’s small,” explained the handler, “The baby elephant learns it can’t pull the chain out of the ground. Then as it grows, it remembers that lesson and never challenges what it ‘knows’ to be true. So it’s not the chain that keeps an adult elephant bound, it’s the memory of the chain.”

Wow. How many of us are still bound by the memory of chains of trauma from childhood that we could easily break now as adults?

Trauma teaches us the world’s not safe. True lesson. The world’s not safe. What was done to us was absolutely wrong, sinful, and unjust. It was not fair, and it was not our fault. The problem is what we do with that lesson.

Often, rather than trusting God to protect us in an unsafe world, we vow to protect ourselves:

  • “I will never be angry like my dad.”
  • “I will not have emotions. Emotions hurt people.”
  • “I will not make a mistake. Mistakes can kill you.”
  • “I will never let anyone close enough to hurt me again.”
  • “I will take care of myself. No one else will.”
  • “I will be the good boy/girl so people love me.”

While the initial trauma is neither our sin nor our fault, our sinful response is our responsibility. We often vow to protect ourselves. Instead of trusting God, we become our own god. Our ability to control the situation (and the people) to protect ourselves becomes our very own personal idol.

The problem is, we make these inner vows based on their deceptive marketing. They don’t deliver. Either they don’t work at all, or they work in reverse, or they have an extremely high hidden cost the commercial didn’t tell us about. When they work at all, the cure is worse than the disease.

When They Don’t Work

If we vow to not have emotions, that won’t work. God made us with emotions, and we can’t undo what God has made no matter how hard we try. What happens instead is we don’t show emotions. But they’re there. Under the surface, simmering, like ripe magma getting ready for a volcanic eruption. There’s no such thing as an unexpressed emotion. It may come out 20 years later, and it may come out sideways, but it’s coming out.

“Out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.” (Luke 6:45) Not the overflow of our understanding. Not the overflow of our good intentions. The overflow of our heart—all those things we needed to express but never did. Like a volcano, the longer the pressure builds up, the bigger the eruption.

When They Work in Reverse

When we judge our parents or others in our lives, “I’ll never be like them,” we set ourselves up to be exactly like them. God promises us, “You who judge do exactly the same things.” (Romans 2:1) How often have we heard our parents’ exact same words coming out of our own mouth? The judgements we make set us up to do exactly the same things, cause the same hurt, and repeat the cycle all over again.

When They Have a High Hidden Cost

Sometimes inner vows actually do work as intended, but they have a high hidden cost we didn’t intend to sign up for. Often we make inner vows as children, a self-defense against the trauma, so we can survive. We don’t know they’re even there because they go back further than our memory. They can be hard to articulate when we made them in our heart before we had words.

For example, look at an inner vow to “never be vulnerable and let anyone close enough to hurt me.” Maybe a child made this vow at 2 years old while being molested. Even if the memory is completely suppressed, the vow is still in play, “protecting” our heart, like we told it to, like we decreed.

Decades later, we get married to a wonderful spouse. We want to fully give ourselves to that person. But we just can’t. We get frigid or impotent. Or we’re emotionally distant. No matter how hard we try, we just can’t be vulnerable with our spouse. The vow is in the way.

Or consider an inner vow to “never hope again.” How’s that work when we want to enter into worship and express our faith in God? Hebrews says, “Faith is the substance of things hoped for” (Hebrew 11:1). So if we’ve vowed to never hope, that inner vow gets in the way of our faith.

Salvation Doesn’t Remove Inner Vows

The good news is, yes, inner vows can be removed. There’s 3 steps to removing inner vows we’ll cover in a minute.

But I’m assuming first that you’re a Christian, having accepted Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior. You’ve made the decision to follow him with your life. If not, don’t bother trying to remove an inner vow. Don’t waste your time. Only the power of the blood of Jesus on the cross removes inner vows. If you’re not under the blood, it won’t work.

Having said that, getting saved and putting your faith in Jesus does not automatically remove inner vows! We so often assume once we get saved, everything’ll be just peachy. Often, the opposite happens. The effects of the inner vow get worse. This is a blessing from God in disguise. God is intentionally overloading the inner vow because he wants to expose it, so he can remove it from blocking the identity he created us for.

Even as Christians, the vow is in place until we remove it. God is a gentleman and will not violate what we’ve decreed over our own lives. We were created in God’s image, with his creative authority. He gave us the tool of authority so we could bless. How we use that tool is up to us. Like a hammer, authority can bring incredible blessing or incredible damage, depending on how it’s used. We can curse and bind ourselves, as inner vows do, if we choose to.

How to Identify an Inner Vow with 3 Questions to Your Heart

Like we’ve said, this can be tricky because inner vows are often older than our memory and were made in our heart before we had words. But if you’re stuck, without any other reason to be, there’s possibly an inner vow in play. If you’re wanting to do something good, like have faith, enter into worship, fully give yourself to your spouse, join in a certain (wholesome!) activity, but you just can’t for some unknown reason – well, there could be an inner vow getting in the way.

Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal it. “Holy Spirit, have I made an inner vow that’s blocking this?” Then hush and listen.

Inner vows were our way to protect ourselves from something we’re afraid of. So if you feel an irrational fear coming up, pray “Holy Spirit, help me hear my heart.” Then ask your heart, “Heart, why are you afraid?” (I’ve a whole post about how to talk to your heart.)

Sometimes I have to overtly tell my mind to hush so I can listen to my heart. Sometimes it takes a couple days or weeks. But in my quiet times, or when I’m alone in the car, I keep asking. “Heart, why are you afraid?”

Since often inner vows were made before we had language, our heart often answers with a memory. It’s your heart’s way of saying, “Because this happened.” Ok, now we’re onto something.

Ask your heart again, “Heart, because that happened, what judgement did you make about the world, about God, about other people, or about yourself?” And then the question to reveal the inner vow, “Ok Heart, therefore, what did you vow to protect yourself?” Bingo.

For example:

Q1: “Holy Spirit, help me hear my heart. Heart, why are you afraid?” A memory floods back of being abused as a toddler.

Q2: “Heart, because I was abused, what judgements did you make?” My parents won’t protect me. No one will protect me.

Q3: “Heart, therefore, what did you vow to protect yourself?” No one will protect me, therefore, I will protect myself. It’s all on me. I will take care of myself!

Bingo! There it is. This person will have a very hard time trusting in God’s provision, even if as an adult, mature, Christian, they really want to. Now they know where that irrational fear is coming from.

So out of that fear, they try to overly control the situation. “Thanks for the ride, but when are you leaving to pick me up? It’s a 20-minute drive from your office with traffic, so you need to leave by at least 9:10.” They really don’t want to be a control freak, but out of their fear, they just can’t help it. Now it all makes sense. The vow is trying to protect them and destroying their relationships in the process.

How to Remove Inner Vows in 2 Steps

So how do we get rid of an inner vow? 2 steps. Here we go.

Step 1: Confess & Repent. The sin that tempted us to make the vow was someone else’s sin against us. It wasn’t our sin, nor our fault. But our sinful response to it is on us. We confess our sin in making the vow, in trying to protect ourselves instead of trusting God. Keeping with our example above:

“Jesus, I judged you as never going to protect me. I believed a lie that no one would. So I made a vow to protect myself. I repent of making this vow and ask your forgiveness.”

Step 2: Renounce & Replace. Renounce the inner vow, and replace the lying judgement it was based on with God’s truth. Ask the Lord, “Jesus, what’s your truth you want me to cling to instead of that vow?” Sometimes the Lord answers with a Bible verse or two.

In our example, suppose the Lord gave Proverbs 18:10, “The name of the Lord is a strong tower, the righteous run to it and are safe”, and Jeremiah 29:11, “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

So now we simply pray and renounce the vow and replace it with God’s truth. And when you pray the verses, personalize them. Make them yours.

“Lord Jesus, by the authority of your blood over me I renounce that inner vow to always protect myself and not trust anybody else, not even you. I ask you to remove it far from me in your loving forgiveness. Lord, I choose now to instead believe your truth, that you are my strong tower, and I’m safe when I run to you. Your plans are to prosper me and not harm me. You give me hope and a future. I choose to trust you.”

In the future, when that fear rises in our heart and tempts us to run back to all those old ways of responding, instead we go back to those verses. And we personalize them and say them out loud (if the location allows).

How about you?

Has this been helpful? What inner vows have you identified and replaced? With what truth? What differences are you seeing in your life? Tell us your story in the comments or shoot us an email. And please share if you think this post would help someone else.

How to Say “Yes” to God’s Promises when Life’s Pain Says “No”

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Has the pain, abuse, and unfairness of your life erased God’s promises to you? You believed, but where are they? Instead of your Promised Land, all you see for miles around is desert. This post is for you. Caleb, through no fault of his own, finds himself in exactly the same situation. Check this out.

The Israelites had been miraculously delivered from Egypt. They’d seen God’s wonders and his glory over and over again in the desert. They tasted the sweetness of his faithfulness, and also the sting of his discipline at their rebellion (more than once).

But now, all that is just about to pay off. They’re at the borders of the Promised Land and just about to enter their inheritance. And that’s when it gets insane. All chaos breaks loose. The insanity in your life means God wants to break in and do something.

First, there’s internal attack. Miriam and Aaron, Moses’ co-leaders, more than that, his siblings, his own family, start bad-mouthing him (Numbers 12). It’s the struggle of religion vs God’s heart, the very same struggle that nailed Jesus to the cross. Miriam and Aaron don’t think Moses is following the rules properly. Actually he is, but not according to their understanding. In fact, their case against Moses is really thinly veiled jealously. The Lord has none of it and comes to Moses’ defense. God settles it quickly by turning Miriam leprous for a week.

Do you struggle with internal chaos, internal condemnation no matter what you do? God is on the verge of breakthrough in your life.

Then there’s external attack. Moses sends twelve spies to explore the Promised Land (Numbers 13). They all come back with the same report. The land is awesome, it’s flowing with milk and honey just like the Lord said. They bring back some of the fruit, huge grapes and other goodies. Oh, and by the way, the land’s filled with giants who are much stronger than we are. We looked like grasshoppers to them. The external obstacles are insurmountable.

Although they all agree on the state of the land, it’s inhabitants, and what they found, the twelve spies have two opposing recommended courses of action. Ten of the spies are terrified and say there’s no way we can do this. We’ll get slaughtered.

But the other two, Joshua and Caleb, are all for taking the land. They have a promise from God that he’ll be with them and they can do it. So I imagine it goes down something like this:

Ten Spies: “The people in the land are huge giants, infinitely bigger and stronger and more powerful than us!”

Joshua and Caleb: “I know, right! It’s going to be exhilarating beating those guys! I can’t wait, let’s go! This is going to be so epic! They’ll sing songs about us for centuries! We have a promise from God, we can’t lose! Stinks to be them. Let’s go do this!”

But the other ten convince the people not to trust God and rebel. They talk about stoning Moses, Joshua, and Caleb, heading back to Egypt, and just forgetting the whole thing. Quitting. This is not what we thought it would be. It’s just too hard. Time to cut and run.

Are you going to quit on the promise of God in your life? When life gets impossible, God’s promise is on the verge of fulfillment. Just like with the Israelites, the hardest struggles, both internally and externally, are on the borders of our Promised Land.

And you know the scariest part about this? God honors your choice. The people rejected God’s promise and chose to believe in their fear instead. And you could say they benefitted from it. They lived out their lives in safety, not having to take the risks that God’s promises required. But it was a hard, meaningless, bland life in the desert, on the border of God’s rejected promises. Nothing horrifically bad happened. But nothing amazingly good happened either. Like a ship chained to the dock, or a Lamborghini that never sees the light of day outside the garage, they all died in the desert of complacency. How sad. Don’t let this be your tragedy.

I think the saddest part is, Joshua and Caleb also waited 40 years. That’s the part that seems really unfair to me. Even though they had nothing to do with it, they were caught in the consequences of their unbelieving community. They were ready to grab God’s promises with both hands, but they had to wait 40 years too.

But it was worth it! They did eventually see the fulfillment of God’s promises in their lives. And this is the most amazing part of the story—how Caleb finally entered the Promised Land. Think about this.

It would have been easy for his passion to grow cold through the pain of life. He could’ve turned bitter over the unfairness of it all. 40 years in the desert? Are you kidding me?!? Many of us turn bitter in the desert. Do you know someone who has? Have you?

But Caleb didn’t. He just became more and more determined to seize God’s promises when he finally got the chance. Listen to him talk to Joshua, who had seceded Moses as leader, when the people are finally ready, 40 years later, to enter the Promised Land, really this time.

Keep in mind reading this that in war, you want the high ground. So the “hill country” Caleb’s talking about here is where the enemies have the high ground. It’s the hardest land to take by far. There are only two types of people who would even attempt it. Soon to be dead fools who don’t have a lick of common sense, or soon to be victorious recipients of a promise from God.

Caleb to Joshua: “You know what the Lord said to Moses the man of God at Kadesh Barnea about you and me. I was 40 years old when Moses the servant of the Lord sent me from Kadesh Barnea to explore the land. And I brought him back a report according to my convictions, but my fellow Israelites who went up with me made the hearts of the people melt in fear. I, however, followed the Lord my God wholeheartedly. So on that day Moses swore to me, ‘The land on which your feet have walked will be your inheritance and that of your children forever, because you have followed the Lord my God wholeheartedly.’

“Now then, just as the Lord promised, he has kept me alive for 45 years since the time he said this to Moses, while Israel moved about in the wilderness. So here I am today, 85 years old! I am still as strong today as the day Moses sent me out; I’m just as vigorous to go out to battle now as I was then. Now give me this hill country that the Lord promised me that day. You yourself heard then that the Anakites [the giants] were there and their cities were large and fortified, but, the Lord helping me, I will drive them out just as he said.” (Joshua 14:6b-12)

The guy was 85 and wanting to go take the hardest part of the land! And this time, he would not be put off. He had yet another promise from God he was believing. I could see people saying, “But dude, you’re 85! How about you plan the battle, but we’ll go do the heavy lifting on this one.”

Caleb: “Don’t you ‘but dude’ me! I’ve waiting 45 years for this, and I’m going giant-whomping!”

And you know what? The “unfair” delay really wasn’t. It made Caleb’s character shine all the more brightly and made his victory all the more spectacular. The promises of God triumph over the pain and unfairness of life.

God didn’t forget about Caleb. And he hasn’t forgotten you. What promises have you seen fulfilled in your life that you thought were gone? What promises are you still waiting for? Tell us in the comments, and please share if this post would bless and encourage someone else.