3 Ways to Not Let Your History Control Your Destiny

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1) Decide to Not Play the Victim

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

2) Get Healing

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

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

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

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

3) Limit Negative Influences in Your Life

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your Turn

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

Why You Don’t Want Clarity but This Instead

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

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

My Favorite Mother Teresa Story

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

She said, “No.”

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

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

Read that again. That’s huge.

Another Word for Faith

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

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

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

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

God Gives Direction, Not Clarity

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

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

Take that first step. Do the next right thing.

Uncharted Waters

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

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

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

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

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

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

Clarity Needs These 3 Things. Especially #3.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your Turn

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

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

2 Practical Ways to Faith Jesus

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On July 15, 1859, daredevil and tight rope walker Charles Bloudin walked across a tightrope 1100 feet long, suspended 160-200 feet in the air, without a net. Over Niagara Falls. Pushing a wheelbarrow. Walking backward. Blindfolded.

When he reached his destination on the other side, the crowd roared with amazement. When he was ready for his return trip, he asked the crowd, “Who believes I can carry a person across in this wheelbarrow?” Everyone raised their hand and shouted an enthusiastic “Yes!”

His next question quieted the crowd. “Who wants to get in the wheelbarrow?” Every hand went down. He had no volunteer from the audience on the return trip.

This story shows us two very practical things about walking out our faith.

1) Faith is a Verb. Practice It.

The crowd believed Charles Bloudin could re-cross Niagara Falls with someone in the wheelbarrow. But none of them had faith that he could.

“To believe” is just intellectual ascent. It’s something we do with our mind. Once a thing is proven to us, it gets filed in our mind under “Things We Believe.” We don’t need to waste energy thinking about it again. So if you’re like me, you free up that memory and forget the proof, just remembering that it’s something you believe. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s an efficient way to manage our finite intellectual capacity. But it’s got nothing to do with our heart.

Faith, on the other hand, is all from the heart. It’s an on-going thing. This is the sense of the Greek word often translated “faith” in the New Testament. The closest we can come in English is “to believe”, which diminishes it to just theoretical intellectual ascent, or “having faith”, which makes it sound like a possession we bought and keep on our shelf with other keepsakes.

But real faith is an active thing. We would understand it better if we treated it like a verb, saying things like, “I faith in Jesus.” Continual. On-going. From the heart.

2) Don’t Be Afraid to Go First.

Everyone watching Charles Bloudin that day believed he could carry someone else across the Niagara Falls tightrope in the wheelbarrow. They all wanted somebody else to go first.

That’s a problem in the Kingdom of God. Because God always calls us to go first. He’s calling us to something unique that no one’s ever done before (at least not like we’re going to do it). He makes all things new, and our calling is no exception.

Moses had this problem of belief without faith. When God called him, Moses saw and heard some amazing things (Exodus 3):

  • A bush burning that didn’t burn up.
  • God standing in the middle of the fire and speaking with him.
  • Getting God’s name, a completely new revelation on the Earth of who God is.
  • His staff turns into a snake and back again.
  • His hand turns leprous and back again.
  • God’s promise to be with him.

Moses’ response? “Please send someone else to do it.” He believed God could do it. But he didn’t have faith that God would actually do it through him. He wasn’t “faithing” God.

In the end, God gave Moses the boost he needed. Moses had the faith to get into God’s wheelbarrow as long as his brother Aaron got in with him.

God’s ok with that. He knows it’s hard for us to actually step out into the impossible realm he’s calling us to, even if we want to. If our hearts remain soft and willing, he will give us the boost we need. By Exodus chapter 8, Moses was talking to Pharaoh directly without needing to speak through Aaron. Moses grew into who God already knew he was.

So will you. So will I. Continue to practice your faith, don’t take it for granted. Faith is not a “one and done.” Treat it like something that needs constant maintenance, like a car or a garden, because it does.

Don’t be afraid to go first. God is calling you to something unique, that the world’s never seen before. Even if it’s something others have done, the world has not seen anyone do it with your unique gifting and style, and the world desperately needs to.

Your Turn

Tell us your story in the comments. What is God calling you to do that’s bigger than you? What have you done in the past that you never thought you could? We’d love to walk this journey with you, and please share this post if it would bless someone else.

Credit where credit is due. I got the excellent concept of faith as a verb from Pastor Jim Bethany at Richland Baptist Church. You can listen to his excellent teachings here. And the story of Charles Bloudin comes from Creative Bible Study.

Entering God’s Rest

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The best analogy I’ve heard about entering God’s rest is from Graham Cooke, one of my favorite teachers. This is my (admittedly poor) paraphrase of his vision/dream.

Orcs were chasing me. I ran up mountains and through forests, and was nearing total exhaustion. They would catch me soon, and my one sword would not be enough. I was running across a grassy plain, about to collapse, when I saw a tent in front of me and ran inside. It was strangely peaceful. There was a fire pit of burning coals in the center, from which I could sense the presence of the Lord. I turned to see my pursuers running full speed, close to the tent. Unable to run any further, I drew my sword.

Gently and softly from the fire behind me, I heard the Lord say, “You won’t need that.”

The orcs ran right past the tent as if they couldn’t see it. In fact, when they moved onto the space the tent occupied, they didn’t come inside but instantly appeared on the other side, as if in their dimension the tent wasn’t even there! They were shouting angrily at each other for losing their prey (me) who was there just a moment ago. In the middle of a grassy open plain, where could he have gone? And they loudly and with much cursing blamed each other.

Meanwhile, I heard the Lord, softly chuckling from the fire. He was laughing at them!

Where was I? Safe, yes, totally, but where was I? I was in the Lord’s rest.

From Graham Cooke’s vision on The Way of the Warrior Series CD series. (You can get your own copy here , and Graham’s general website is here. Very much worth a browse. BTW, these are not affiliate links. I get no commission if you click them or buy from Graham. This is an honest recommendation.)

So what exactly is God’s rest?

God’s Rest, “rest” in Hebrews 3 and 4, doesn’t mean physical rest or sleep. It’s the opposite of being anxious. It’s the opposite of being fearful.

It’s that place of quiet confidence, believing the Lord would do what he said. Believing his presence in my life is enough. A place without striving. A spiritual eye in my very real hurricane of life.

Hebrews 3:19, talking about those Moses rescued from Egypt, says they were not able to enter God’s rest because of their unbelief. Earlier in chapter 3 the writer quotes Psalm 95, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion,” and “So I (God) declared on oath in my anger, ‘They shall never enter my rest’ ”. Then he says in 3:19, “So we see that they were not able to enter, because of their unbelief.”

Entering God’s rest doesn’t change the circumstances around us, but it changes the power those circumstances have over us. Our fear gives them power. When we’re not afraid of them, because we’re in God’s rest, they have no power over us. We can think clearly and act from the wisdom of the Spirit.

Today’s Action Step: When things are crazy around me, I will enter God’s rest by choosing to believe him over the fear my circumstances are trying to inspire.

I’m learning to enter his rest more and more. What are your experiences with God’s rest? How do you personally enter it? Tell us in the comments; we’re looking forward to learning from you. And please share on social media if you think this would benefit someone else.

How to Break the Chains of Approval

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At some point, you yourself have to stand up.

We learn from godly mentors, pastors, teachers, parents, influencers that God brings into our lives. They can point us to the way of faith, the narrow road of following Jesus. But at some point, we need to decide for ourselves.

Check out this story of a king who couldn’t stand up himself. The Old Testament is filled with wild stories that are so practical for us today. Check out this crazy and tragic story of King Joash of Judah. Here’s my abbreviated version. You can read the real one in 2 Chronicles 23:10-24:27.

King Joash

Joash became king of Judah when he was 7. Until then, Joash was hidden in the temple of the Lord, raised by Jehoiada the priest. His wicked grandmother Athaliah had killed off the rest of the royal family, including her own grandchildren, and seized power. (All of her direct children, the royal ones at any rate, had already died as a result of following her wicked, anti-God, influence.)

Athaliah was finally killed in the coup that set Joash, the rightful king, on the throne. The Lord’s priest Jehoiada set up the kingdom in righteousness and continued to be Joash’s chief advisor. God plucked Joash out of the wicked royal family and had him raised in the temple of the Lord. You can’t ask for a better upbringing than that. Joash was God’s course correction for that family.

BTW, if you came out of some hurtful family-of-origin circumstances, but now you’ve found the Lord, then you are God’s manifestation of mercy and grace for your family.

Joash did a lot of good, including repairing the Lord’s temple. He made the famous wooden offering box at the entrance to the temple that you may have heard about in Sunday school. Joash was really zealous for the Lord while his adopted dad Jehoiada was alive.

But after Priest Jehoiada died, Joash abandoned the temple of the Lord. He allowed his officials to make Asherah poles and idols. Why? Because they told him he should. They wanted to. Joash was afraid of losing their favor. Peer pressure. All his life he did what someone else told him to do.

God sent him many prophets to woo his heart, but Joash wouldn’t listen. God even sent the prophet Zechariah, the son of the priest Jehoiada who raised Joash. Not only did Joash not listen to him, he ordered Zechariah be stoned to death in the Lord’s own temple (2 Chronicles 24:21).

Within a year, Aram attacked Jerusalem “with only a few men” (2 Chronicles 24:24). The Lord gave Judah over to them because Judah had, under King Joash’s leadership, forsaken the Lord. Joash was severely wounded, and his officials killed him in his bed. They also dishonored him in his burial. They buried him in Jerusalem, but not in the tombs of the kings.

But wait! Joash abandoned the Lord to gain the favor of these guys! Turns out they weren’t as faithful to Joash as the Lord would’ve been. Joash made a poor choice. Duh, that’s the understatement of the year! But do we do the same thing? Do we abandon the Faithful One by bowing to peer pressure from people who will stab us in the back when things turn sour?

Joash, in my childhood Sunday school stories, was always regarded as a good king. My heart weeps for this good king of Judah. He abandoned the Lord when it was his turn to stand. Instead, he ended badly.

What went wrong?

I think Joash was used to doing what he was told. Joash’s identity was in approval from the people around him, not in approval from the Lord. He didn’t have the personal connection with God, like David did. So he didn’t have the inner strength needed to stand up against his advisors after Priest Jehoiada died.

What about us? Will we risk losing our friends? The anti-God peer pressure in Western culture has never been greater, especially at the adult level. The name calling is more intense than ever. No one wants to be disgraced and labeled a “hater.”

The One Thing that Defeats Peer Pressure

There’s only one thing that will keep us out of this peer pressure trap. Are you ready? Here it is:

Intimacy with Jesus. Personal. You and him. Me and him. Do we have that personal time with Jesus? Yes, we need corporate time just as much, time spent with the body of believers before our Lord. But if we don’t have individual, one-on-one time with God ourselves, we’re just playing church.

Out of intimacy with Jesus, when the apostles were beaten for talking about him and ordered to stop, they said this:

Peter and the other apostles replied: “We must obey God rather than people!” – Acts 5:29

They were called much worse than “haters.” They were publicly whipped. Yet their attitude was different than ours:

The apostles left the Sanhedrin, rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name. – Acts 5:41

Others in the New Testament, however, were sadly described by this tragic verse:

Many, even among the leaders, believed in Jesus. But because of the Pharisees they would not openly acknowledge their faith for fear they would be put out of the synagogue; for they loved human praise more than praise from God. – John 12:42-43

So what will we choose? One of those last two scriptures will describe your life. Which will it be?

May the church stand up, no longer bullied into silence. May we rejoice when we suffer disgrace for the Name.

May we speak the truth in our water cooler conversations, when it comes up, about the wrong and injustice of racism, abortion, infanticide, physician assisted suicide, euthanasia, forced sterilization, same-sex marriage, transgenderism, sexual promiscuity, and pornography.

And may we always offer love and forgiveness to those trapped in those lifestyles and offer a loving path to freedom. When we don’t stand up for the wrongs of these things, we slam the door of Jesus’ healing in people’s faces.

May we speak the uncompromising truth of God this culture doesn’t know they’re desperate for. But may we do it out of intimacy with Jesus. Not by shouting the loudest. But by serving the most. By loving the longest.

How About You?

Where are you on this journey? Have you tried to spend time with Jesus, but it just falls flat? There could be reasons for that having nothing to do with you, but something in your family line. Email us if that’s you and let’s begin a conversation.

Has your intimacy with Jesus helped you stand your ground, stand up to peer pressure? Or, like Joash, have you been stabbed in the back by your “friends” after compromising for their approval? Tell us your story in the comments. And please share this post if it would bless someone else.

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.

You Need these 3 Things to Move Forward

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

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

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

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

1) You Need A Voice

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

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

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

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

You have a voice. Use it.

2) You Need A Community

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

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

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

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

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

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

3) You Need Momentum

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Do something.

So What About You?

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

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.

2 Steps out of Self-Condemnation and into Believing in Yourself like God Does

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Too often we listen to self-condemning lies because we don’t understand how God sees us. We put ourselves under pressure to be perfect. But God never designed us to bear such pressure.

We can understand how God really sees us by looking at how we, as good parents, interact with our children. Let’s look at a couple examples:

First Steps

It’s that magical time. Your baby is about to take his first steps. He can stand and balance (mostly). You can tell he wants to walk, but he’s not sure about this balance-while-moving thing. It’s a lot to balance just standing still!

But you don’t want to miss those precious first steps. So you plop Mr. Wobbly down a few feet away and hold out your arms. “C’mon! Come to mommy!”

He smiles, wanting to come to you. He wobbles a bit, trying to figure out how to lift a foot and still balance. Then he drops to his knees and crawls to you.

“What’s the matter with you? How could you make such a mistake! You never do anything right!” Said no mom ever.

No. What do you do? You laugh, pick him up, give him a big smoochie kiss, and plop him right back down in the same spot again. “C’mon! Come to mommy!”

Do you care how often he drops to his knees and crawls to you? No, not at all, you’re not even counting! You’re just loving the process of watching him learn to walk, doing something he’s never done before. You love participating in it with him.

First Hit

How about this. Your toddler’s ready to start hitting a whiffle ball. You’ve watched baseball games with him and tossed a ball back ‘n’ forth. Now you got him a plastic bat and you’re pitching to him. You toss him his first pitch in the living room, much to your wife’s chagrin. It’s only a plastic ball. What could happen?

It’s the first pitch he’s ever been thrown, and he misses it.

“What’s the matter with you? How could you make such a mistake! You never do anything right!” Said no dad ever.

No. What do you do? You toss him another one. You don’t even have to retrieve the first ball because you bought a bucket of them. You knew he’d miss most of them. “Great cut! Keep swinging like that and you’ll be in the Majors! Keep your eye on the ball; here’s another one!”

Eventually he hits one. It tinks on the carpet a foot in front of him. “Run! Run!” you shout as you make a big show of diving for the ball. He runs around the living room and, as you barely “miss” tagging him, he scores his first home run! You swing him around the room to celebrate singing “Take Me out to the Ballgame”. Then you get ready to pitch some more.

Eventually he connects and smacks a line drive that breaks the lamp. Who would have seen that coming? But you realize your wife was right and take Slugger outside so he can really hit.

God Celebrates Our Learning

We celebrate our children’s learning. We understand their mistakes and failures are part of the learning process. And we celebrate those mistakes and failures along with their successes. We get that their mistakes, even their failures, are not sin. They didn’t do anything wrong. They’re just learning. It’s all part of the precious process of helping our children learn. We get that and we love to be in the process with them.

So why, we when we make an honest mistake, do we tell ourselves, “What’s the matter with you? How could you make such a mistake! You never do anything right!” God, our good parent, doesn’t say that! He just wants to hug us and love us and plop us right back down to try it again.

We put pressure on ourselves that God never does, that no good parent would. He just wants to toss us another ball. He’s not counting how many we miss; he’s actually expecting us to miss a bunch while we’re learning. If we bomb a situation, don’t worry, he’s got plenty more lined up.

It takes a lot of practice to learn to walk—to balance with one foot in the air while moving forward. To hit a thrown ball with a stick. To live a healthy, godly life in an unhealthy dangerous world. You know your child needs practice. God knows we need practice.

You’re not Failing, You’re Practicing.

Honest mistakes, even honest flat-out failures, are not sin. There’s nothing wrong with making an honest mistake. We’re just learning. Why can’t we give ourselves the same grace that God does? The same grace that we give our children?

Rebellion

Yes, there are mistakes and failures that are sin. If your toddler throws the bat at you or whacks the coffee table with it (after having been told not to), that’s different. That’s rebellion. That’s sin. You wouldn’t handle that by tossing him another pitch. You’ve got to re-orient him to the pillow you’re using as a make-shift home plate, and get him, as a hitter, back in right stance, in the right orientation, or relationship, to you as the pitcher, waiting to hit your pitch and not trying to hit anything else.

And yes, as humans we’ve perfected rebellion to an art form. Our society has normalized rebellion, and even celebrates certain forms of it, transgender being the hot one right now. If I decide I’m going to be someone other than who God’s made me to be, that’s spiritual rebellion. The truth is there is tremendous wounding in that person that God wants to heal, but that’s a subject for another post.

Sometimes we try to pitch so God can hit, and we’re shocked when he doesn’t swing. God deals with rebellion by bringing circumstances into our life to remind us who’s pitching and who’s hitting here. He invites us to get reoriented, back into right relationship, with him as the pitcher, and us as the batter, waiting to hit his next pitch.

2 Ways out of Self-Condemnation

If you’re truly chasing, longing, after what God has for you, if you’re partnering with him for your life, honest mistakes are just learning. Be gentle with yourself.

The truth is, all that negative self-talk, all that condemnation, is really from the enemy. We often don’t recognize it as such though, because the sneaky bugger talks to us in our own voice. He disguises his hellish lies as our own thoughts.

But if we’re alert to it, we can recognize that condemnation for the lie it is. Often, that’s enough. But sometimes, even when our head knows it’s hogwash, it’s lodged in our heart somewhere. And when we believe it, it has power over us. Here are 2 ways out of self-condemnation:

1) Ask Somebody to Pray with You. Please talk to someone. That’s what God put them in your life for, so they can help you in these times, and likewise. Don’t suffer alone. Tell someone how you’re feeling, if you just can’t shake it, and ask them to pray with you. Not for you. With you. Right then and there.

There is no shame in counseling. Counselors teach you the life-tools your parents should’ve, but (out of their wounding) didn’t.

There are a lot of options here. A phone call with a friend. Counseling. A talk with your pastor. Regular coffee with a mentor. Inner healing. Deliverance. (Inner healing and deliverance need to be from trained individuals who know what they’re doing.) Give yourself all the tools in the toolbox you need; everyone needs a different mix of these. Here are some resources. If they are not in your geographical area, call them anyway and ask if they can recommend resources that are. (None of these are affiliate links.)

Counseling:

Spotswood Biblical Counseling Center (Fredericksburg, VA)

Dominion Counseling and Training Center (Richmond, VA)

Inner Healing:

Elijah House Ministries (HQ in Coeur d’Alene, ID, with trained resources across the US and around the world)

Restoring the Foundations (HQ in Mount Juliet, TN, with trained resources across the US and around the world)

Deliverance:

The Church Unchained (Stafford, VA)

Christian Healing Ministries (Francis & Judith MacNutt, Jacksonville, FL)

2) Replace the Lie with the Truth. Ask the Holy Spirit for the opposite of the lie. Speak God’s promise over yourself out loud.

My lie was, “I don’t deserve better.” For me, the opposite is Psalm 139. On bad days I read it out loud. There is power in the words you say. They define the atmosphere around your life. And while you’re at it, tell that lying spirit of self-condemnation to go soak its head in a bucket of ice water. You’re not listening to it anymore.

So How about It?

Are you ready to step out of self-condemnation and into the adventure God has for you? Tell us about it in the comments or shoot us an email. We’d love to hear from you. And please share if this post would bless someone else.

Your Worst Enemy Is Also Your Best Ally

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Does that title seem strange? That’s because so often we really don’t know who our real enemy is. Let’s discover that first.

Not Other People

We often confuse people who hurt us with the enemy. But they are not our real enemy, even if they think they are. When people hurt us, they are acting out of their own wounding. Hurt people hurt people.

In fact, out of his great love for us, God often uses other people’s sin to refine us. That’s why Proverbs 27:17 says, “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.”

Have you ever said, “That guy, he just pushes my buttons!” Those buttons are actually sin in us that God is using the other person to highlight. God wants us to give him our buttons.

“But you don’t know what they did!” God will deal with them; that’s not your problem. Let God deal with you.

Not the Devil or Demons

Now, don’t get me wrong here. Satan and demons are very real. They want to, at minimum, derail the calling on our lives, and at most, kill us outright. That qualifies as an enemy. They certainly are. In Christian literature, when we speak of “the enemy,” that’s who we’re talking about. I’ve done it lots on this blog, and there’s nothing wrong with that language. It’s accurate. But they aren’t our worst enemy.

We don’t want to take them lightly or ignore them, but as Christians we don’t have to be afraid of them either. I love Graham Cooke’s attitude toward the devil and his minions: “If you don’t fight me, you’re going to lose. If you do fight me, you are so going to lose. Sucks to be you.”

Our Worst Enemy

Demons have no power over us that we don’t give them by our agreement. We empower what we believe.

We’re not our own worst enemy, but the negativity we believe is. When we speak negatively over our own lives or agree with the negativity others have spoken over us, we empower that reality. But the reverse is also true.

We are made in the image of the Creator God. As such, we have the power to create our own reality around ourselves and others within our sphere of influence. God created us with this power so we could bless ourselves and each other. But as is common with most tools, our beliefs can either give us unstoppable momentum forward or be an incredibly destructive weapon.

Our Best Ally

Yes, our belief is a tool. What we believe is either our worst enemy or our best ally. No force on the planet, for good or ill, can overcome the power of your beliefs about yourself, either positive or negative.

Although he is totally sovereign, not even God will override our beliefs. Instead, he engineers situations in our lives that overload our elaborate structure of lies. He wants to bring those negative, limiting, prison walls we’ve built around ourselves, to keep us safe by our own power, crashing down. And he is, in each situation, constantly giving us the choice of what we will believe: His uncharted goodness, or our comfortable lies?

Our lies keep us safe, as safe as a ship chained to the dock. Always yearning for, but never actually, riding the waves it was designed for. How sad. How tragic. What a wasted life.

On the other hand, God’s goodness wants us to sail out into the uncharted waters of our destiny. God has something unique that he’s created you to do in this world. And if you don’t do it, no one will.

Yes, it’s bigger than you. In fact, it’s impossible. God’s calling, the destiny on your life, is always impossible without him. He’s built divine partnership into the fabric of the universe. You follow your heart’s cry, and he’ll handle the impossibilities.

What makes your heart sing? Are you afraid to listen to that song? Are you afraid to go there? The only thing stopping you is what you believe. Once you believe what God believes about you and your calling and your destiny, there will be no stopping you.

So how about it?

What does God say about you that makes your heart sing? Tell us in the comments. What’s your calling? Are you pursuing it? Please share this post if it would inspire others.