How Can I Be a Christian and Still …?

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A common question I hear from people is, “How can I be a Christian, filled with the Holy Spirit, and still do this thing I’m struggling with? What’s wrong with me?” People feel such enormous shame because of where they’re struggling. We feel like we’re the only one. We feel like we’re a bad Christian.

The truth is, nothing’s wrong with you. You’re not a “bad” Christian (whatever that is). There’s just work to be done.

The Body-Soul-Spirit Model

In order to understand what’s happening, we need to understand what makes up a human being. We are 3 part beings – body, soul, and spirit.

When I first heard about this, I was confused because I thought soul and spirit were just synonyms for the same thing. But they aren’t. Your soul and your spirit are different parts of you.

For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. – Hebrews 4:12

The word of God can’t divide soul and spirit if there’s not a difference between soul and spirit.

So although the words “soul” and “spirit” are often used interchangeably, and they are closely related, there is a difference.

What is our Soul?

Our soul is our mind, will, and emotions:

  • The ability to think (mind).
  • The ability to choose (will).
  • The ability to feel (emotions).

By this definition, other mammals have souls. Take a dog, for example. Dogs can problem solve (mind). Dogs can be angry, sad, or happy (emotions).

And dogs can choose (will). Ever spied a dog deciding if stealing the unattended steak on the counter is worth the displeasure of its owner and the resulting punishment?

What is our Spirit?

Our spirit is that part of humans uniquely (compared to the other animals) made in the image of God (Genesis 1:26-27).

God created the world, the plants, and all the other animals just by speaking. But for humans, God got his hands dirty, physically forming Adam from the dirt, and then God breathed into Adam the breath of life (Genesis 2:7). In Hebrew, the words for “breath,” “spirit,” and “wind” are all the same word.

So when God “breathed into Adam the breath of life,” God was imparting a spirit into humans. This is significantly different from how he created the other animals (by just speaking).

The other animals do not have spirits. Think about it. If a dog has a warm house, plenty of food, and a loving family, that dog is totally happy. He needs nothing else from life. Because the greatest need of a soul is Security.

But humans often have all that, and can still be miserable. Because the greatest need of a spirit is Significance. It’s our spirits within us that long to be part of something bigger than ourselves.

The Body-Soul-Spirit Model in Pictures

So here’s a graphic of how humans were designed by God to operate:

  • Our Body gets directions from our Soul.
  • Our Soul gets directions from our Spirit.
  • Our Spirit is connected to & gets direction from Jesus (through the Holy Spirit).

But then sin enters the picture, and our spirit is dead:

Our connection with God is broken. Our soul is searching for direction, the proverbial “lost soul.” Unfortunately for us, there are plenty of other voices happy to provide destructive direction, empowered when we believe their lies:

Then we get saved, our spirit is made alive again, and our connection with God is restored. But we still have these buggers infecting our soul:

So our soul becomes the battleground, our mind, will, and emotions. The process of sanctification is getting those self-destructive influences out of our soul:

 

So what’s a Christian to do?

Back to the original question at the top of this post: “How can I be a Christian, filled with the Holy Spirit, and still do this thing I’m struggling with? What’s wrong with me?”

There’s nothing’s wrong with you. You are experiencing God’s design of your humanity. There’s just work to be done.

The negative influences infecting our soul can be:

  • Traumatic experiences that need healing.
  • Lies we believe (about ourselves, the world, others, and God).
  • Demons.
  • A combination of the above.

God is inviting you to step into the process of your own personal healing. We all need to do our own work. And that’s going to look different for every person. There’s no “one size fits all.”

If you’ve had difficulty finding safe community where you can heal, reach out to Janet and me. We can stand with you and help you find good help, whether it’s with us or someone else. Ministry, therapy, inner healing, deliverance — we believe in all the tools in the toolbox.

We offer Immanuel Approach ministry, a gentle & affirming technique to connect with Jesus, bringing his transformation into our pain. It can be done over zoom, so your location is not a problem. Reach out to us to schedule a free zoom so we can honor your story and assess what form of healing would serve you best.

Your Turn

Does this resonate? Does this explain a lot for you? Tell us in the comments and please share this post if it would bless someone else.

2 Kingdom of God Truths about Pain

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As much as we try to ignore it, we all have pain in our lives. And we all touch the pain, one way or another, for better or worse, in each other’s lives. Yet as universal as pain is, we typically don’t talk about it, for a couple of good reasons.

First and most obvious, we don’t want to. Who wants to talk about their pain? The other person will think there’s something wrong with me. They won’t understand. And that will just compound my shame. But what we don’t realize is that the other person is often thinking the same thing.

Second, often it’s not safe. What I italicized in the previous paragraph might be true. It’s not safe to be honest when the other person can’t handle our honesty. It’s wisdom to carefully select who we share our pain with.

But the truth is, everyone needs to talk about their pain to someone. We were created in the image of God, who, within the Trinity, has community within Himself. We were created to need and to heal in community. That can be scary, because often community caused our pain. But healthy community is the environment needed for pain to heal.

So we all need to share our pain, even if it’s just with one other safe person. And we all need to become safe people who can receive someone else sharing their pain without doing more damage.

When someone finally takes the risk to share their pain, so often we unknowingly just do more damage and we compound their shame because we don’t know how to receive someone’s story well. We’ve never been trained.

A first step in remedying this problem is understanding 2 universal, Kingdom-of-God laws about pain.

Shout-out to Aundi Kolber, whom I first heard express these so eloquently (at a Broken to Beloved Gathering.) Aundi’s books Try Softer and Strong Like Water have been game changers for me, and I recommend them often.

Law #1: All pain deserves to be honored.

That’s counter-intuitive, isn’t it? We typically try to:

  • Stuff our pain. Push it down. What? Pain? Nope, no pain around here. I’m good.
  • Hide our pain from everyone else. Q: How are you? A: I’m so blessed!
  • Medicate our pain. Feeling nothing is better than feeling the pain!
  • Shame our pain. I shouldn’t feel this way!
  • White-knuckle our pain. If I can just try harder…

But honor our pain? What kind of crazy talk is that?

But it’s true. All pain deserves to be honored. Because it’s your story. And you matter. So your story matters.

Although those things listed above may bring temporary relief, none of them brings healing. Honoring our pain brings healing.

To bring healing to others, we need to be a two-fold witness for them:

  1. Witness that their pain is valid.
  2. Witness that what they experienced was wrong.

Being a witness means letting them hear you speak it. Out loud. Their ears need to hear it because their heart needs to hear it.

  • “Wow, that must really hurt.”
  • “He should not have said that.”
  • “It’s wrong that you grew up without a dad.”
  • “It’s wrong that your voice was shut down like that.”

That’s how a wounded heart screaming to be heard begins to heal.

Ok, but where is that in scripture?!?

Right here in Romans 12:15: “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.”

But too often, we act as if that verse says this: “Rejoice with those who rejoice, and tell those who weep why they shouldn’t weep.”

We give advice or platitudes, or even scripture, because we don’t know what to do with someone else’s honest pain:

  • “Just choose joy!”
  • “Have faith, God’s got this.”
  • “It’ll be ok, God won’t give you more than you can handle.”
  • “God works all things together for good.”

This is called spiritual bypassing – when we put a spiritual bandaid on a bleeding artery, in the form of a quippy quick-fix or even scripture, because we don’t know what to do with someone’s pain. Although we don’t intend it to be harmful, it is. It dishonors their pain and their story. It communicates that we don’t understand their pain, and they need to learn to hide it better so they don’t get shamed further for it.

Instead, if we want to bring God’s healing, honor their pain, like this:

  • “Thank you for sharing that with me. That was very brave.”
  • “That sounds really hard.”
  • “You’re not a bad Christian for going through this.”
  • “Tell me more about that.”

Although the red bullets above might be true, that’s not what they need to hear first. First, honor their pain, and then you earn the right to ask if they’d like some ideas from you.

It’s really important we, as the Church of God, Jesus’ hands, feet, mouth, and heart in the world, get this right. Because if we don’t honor their pain, we’re doubling it.

Law #2: Our pain doesn’t give us the right to hurt someone else.

Hurt people hurt people. It helps to understand someone’s painful behavior when you know their story, and the pain that behavior is coming out of. But someone’s pain, ours or anyone else’s, doesn’t give the right to inflict pain on others.

Often people react to their own victimization and abuse by abusing some other victim. If I’m abusing a victim, I must not be one, right? But obviously, this is not a godly response to pain.

The truth is, we all need to do our own work. Trauma that is not transformed is transmitted.

If you’ve had difficulty finding safe community in which to heal, reach out to Janet and me. We can stand with you and help you find good help. Whether ministry or therapy, we believe in all the tools in the toolbox. And we offer Immanuel Approach ministry, which is a gentle & affirming technique to connect with Jesus, bringing his transformation into our pain.

Your Turn

Does this resonate? Has someone dishonored your pain with spiritual bypassing? How did that feel? Or have you (unknowingly) dishonored someone else’s pain, and then wondered why they withdrew? Honest moment – I have. How have you seen these two laws of pain play out in your story? Tell us in the comments and please share this post if it would bless someone else.

We’re Asking a Dead End Question

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The Tree of Discernment

There were two special trees in the Garden of Eden: the Tree of Life, and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. (I’ll abbreviate that last one to The Tree of Good & Evil, for short.) Adam and Eve were allowed to eat from the Tree of Life, but forbidden to eat from the Tree of Good & Evil.

We all know the story in Genesis 3; they ate from the wrong tree and the world has been paying for it ever since. So what does all that have to do with us, on a practical level, today?

A lot.

When discerning whether to do a thing or not, too often we ask a dead end question. We ask whether it’s good or bad, right or wrong. But that’s not a helpful question. That’s a Tree of Good & Evil question.

So here’s the paradigm shift. A better question to ask is: Is this life-giving or not? That’s a Tree of Life question.

And the thing is, every answer from the Tree of Good and Evil yields bad fruit. If the thing is right and good, it fills us with pride. If the thing is wrong or evil, it fills us with shame. Either way, answers from the Tree of Good and Evil, either pride or shame, are bad fruit and not life-giving.

Please don’t hear what I‘m not saying.

I’m not saying good and evil don’t exist. Of course they do.

I’m not saying that good or evil, right or wrong, don’t matter. Of course they matter.

I’m not saying right and wrong is subjective. It’s not. Right and wrong is defined by God’s standard, not by our intellectual reasoning.

But we don’t avoid doing wrong things because they’re wrong. We avoid wrong things because they aren’t life-giving. They don’t serve us well.

We don’t pursue right things because they’re right. We do good things because they are life-giving.

The Kingdom’s filter is not, “Is this right or wrong?” but “Is this life-giving or not?”

There are a lot of good things we could pursue in any given season. When you think about all of our possible actions, there are actually relatively few wrong choices we can make.

So how do we filter what to do? Many good things aren’t life-giving for you in this season. They may be life-giving for someone else. But that’s a different person in a different season. What is life-giving for you? Right now in your season?

Are you being guilted into doing a good thing that’s not life-giving?

Which tree does your question belong to? Are you doing it because it’s right and good? That’s great, we don’t want to do things that are bad and evil. But is it life-giving? For you? In this season? Is it serving you?

A Discernment Litmus Test

A litmus test I use is: “Do I feel pushed or pulled into doing this thing?”

If I feel pushed, if I’d feel guilty for not doing it, then it’s probably not God. If it’s pressure from other people, or pressure from within my performance-driven self, I would do well to say “no.” Because it’s not life-giving.

But if I feel pulled toward it, drawn toward it, if I feel disappointed at the thought of not doing it, then it’s probably God. I would do well to say “yes” to that. Because it’s life-giving.

Discernment may look different for you. But for me, it’s often very helpful to pause a moment to notice whether I’m feeling pushed or pulled into doing a thing. And I hope that proves useful to you as well.

Your Turn

Does this resonate? Is this a paradigm shift for you? Does thinking of it as a Tree of Life or Tree of Good & Evil question reframe the discernment process? Tell us your thoughts in the comments. Janet and I would love to hear from you. And please share this post if it would bless someone else.

Real Forgiveness Is Grief Work

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We can unknowingly do tremendous damage by guilting ourselves (or other people) into forgiving too soon. What?!? The Bible commands us to forgive! Yes, it does. I completely believe in the power of forgiveness, no argument there. But it has to be real forgiveness, not cheap forgiveness.

Forgiveness is one of the most misunderstood topics today, both by our culture and by the Church. Real forgiveness is not an event. It’s not something we did at 3:07 PM last Tuesday. In fact, it’s not something we do at all. It is a process we walk through.

Cheap forgiveness is worse than none. Because we think we’ve forgiven, but we really haven’t. So we unknowingly live in unforgiveness, with all its negative consequences.

10 Things Forgiveness Is Not

Sometimes it’s easier to understand what something is by understanding what it’s not. Here are ten things forgiveness is not that people often mistake for forgiveness.

Forgiveness is NOT:

  1. Pretending nothing happened.
  2. Covering for the other person.
  3. Trusting someone who should not be trusted.
  4. Giving a perpetrator access so they can do it again.
  5. Lacking healthy boundaries.
  6. Letting a criminal go free.
  7. Avoiding conflict.
  8. Pretending to agree with the other person when you really don’t.
  9. Feeling happy about something bad that happened.
  10. An emotion or a feeling at all.

Forgiveness and Healing Are Two Different Things

Say we go to the gun range together. I’m handling my weapon carelessly, and I accidentally shoot you in the shoulder. You can forgive me instantly, but a gunshot wound takes time to heal.

Suppose I see you the next day after you’re released from the hospital. I slap you on the shoulder, “Hey, how are you doing? Great to see you! Sorry again about yesterday.”

“Ouch!” you respond, because I slapped your shoulder right on the wound. “That hurts!”

“Why are you still hurting? Haven’t you forgiven me?” I ask indignantly. “What’s wrong with you? You’re not a very good Christian! You’re being very unforgiving.”

But forgiveness has nothing to do with it! You forgave me on the way to the hospital, but you still have the wound. There’s nothing wrong with you; it’s normal for you to hurt again if I slap the wound. My refusal to acknowledge the reality of the wound I’ve given you is really a sign of my own spiritual immaturity and lack of repentance.

Forgiveness just means we don’t hold anything against the person;
it doesn’t mean we’re instantly healed from the wounding they caused.

7 Things Forgiveness Is

So how do we walk through real forgiveness? What is real forgiveness anyway?

Forgiveness is:

  1. An act of the will (not an emotion).
  2. A process that takes time.
  3. A decision to begin that process.
  4. Releasing what we hold against the other person.
  5. Canceling the bill they owe us.
  6. Grieving the loss caused by the sin against us.
  7. Coming to the place where the other person is not defined by the evil they did to us.

Forgiveness Is a Process, Not an Event.

The sin against a person is a loss in that person’s life. Forgiveness is the process of grieving that loss. The process of forgiveness parallels the process of grief with its five phases:

  • Denial
  • Anger
  • Bargaining
  • Depression or Sadness
  • Acceptance

These phases aren’t numbered because they don’t necessarily go in order, and they often repeat. They are all healthy and necessary for a season. The trick is not to get stuck in one of them for too long. How long is “too long”? There’s no formula; it subjectively depends on the situation and the person doing the grieving.

Forgiveness works the same way because real forgiveness is grieving a loss. Maybe of innocence. Maybe of dreams. Maybe of trust. Maybe of a relationship that wasn’t what we thought it was. Maybe we came to the painful realization that a relationship will never be the good thing it could be because the other person refuses to do their own work.

Real forgiveness is grieving a loss.

The thing is, to truly forgive, we have to grieve the loss. It’s a process, not an event.

No one walks up to a widow after her husband’s funeral and says, “Well, that was a great service. I’m so glad for you that you’re done grieving now.”

We all understand that grieving is a process, not an event. We all understand that the widow’s grieving process is just beginning, and we’d expect it to take years. We’d expect her to bounce between days like these:

  • “I can’t believe he’s really gone.”
  • “I’m angry that he’s gone. It’s just not fair.”
  • “I’m sad that he’s gone. I miss him so much my heart is breaking.”
  • “Today was a good day.”

Her friends aren’t concerned if she has an angry day or a depressed week, or if they see her in any of the other phases of grief. They become concerned, however, if she is stuck in one of the phases for months or years on end. Going through the phases of grief is not a problem. Getting stuck in one of them is.

Forgiveness is the same way. “I said a prayer of forgiveness for that person who abused me. I’m glad that’s over and done with.” Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. Forgiveness is a process, not an event. Going through the phases of forgiveness is not a problem. Getting stuck in one of them is.

While the widow’s friends would understand her needing more alone time than usual, they’d rightfully worry if she pulled away from them completely.

Wise friends let the widow know they respect her process. They let her know they can be as close or as far as she needs them to be on any given day. They’re ok with giving her space or being with her.

And they don’t try to push her through the other phases of grief before she’s ready. It has to be on her timeline, or she won’t receive the healing her heart needs from the grieving process.

We can walk with wounded people (or ourselves) through the phases of forgiveness the same way.

The best way to help someone forgive is to walk with them through grieving the loss.
Because real forgiveness is grief work.

Your Turn

Does this resonate? Are you struggling with forgiveness? Has someone in the church guilted you into cheap forgiveness? What impacted you in this post? Tell us your story in the comments. And please share if this post would bless someone else.

BTW, This Post Is From…

… excerpts of chapters 6 and 7 my book Stewarding Wounded Hearts.

Check it out here.

How to Get Out of Our Head

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One of the biggest obstacles we’ve seen to people receiving healing is when they are all caught up in their own head. There are entire denominations that have intellectualized the Bible, believing the lie that the battle is all in the mind.

Yes, there certainly is a battle in the mind, in our thoughts. But that battle is just the fruit of another battle which too many Christians completely ignore as irrelevant. The battle for our heart. That’s where the real, foundational battle takes place. Once we win the battle for our heart, that battle over our mind is easy.

If we’re having difficulty winning the battle in our mind, that’s a sign that there’s wounding in our heart God wants to heal. There are lies deep in our heart that need to be replaced with God’s truth.

Our heart decides what we’re going to believe or not. Our mind’s job is to rationalize that decision.

In the Bible, in God’s economy, there’s no wall between the head and the heart like we have in Western culture. That’s why the Bible says:

  • “For out of the heart come evil thoughts …” – Jesus, Matthew 15:19, Mark 7:21
  • “God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth” – Jesus, John 4:24 (that is, heart and mind together)
  • You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. – Deuteronomy 6:5 (wow, intellect didn’t make the list)
  • Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. – Solomon, the wisest person who ever lived, Proverbs 3:5
  • These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. – Isaiah 29:13

The last two verses above actually place the heart over the mind. God cares a lot more about the state of our heart than he does about our theology. That’s an offensive statement to many Christians today, but it’s true.

That doesn’t mean theology is unimportant, or it’s ok to believe nonsense. But if our heart is wounded and separated from God  by the lies we believe, our perfect theology and Bible knowledge doesn’t matter. Just ask the Pharisees.

So Why Don’t We Go There?

So, if that’s where the main battle is, why don’t we go there? Why is there such a resistance to addressing the things of the heart? Here are 5 reasons why.

  1. It hurts. It’s a lot less painful to stay in our intellect.
  2. Pride. We don’t want to be the needy, hurting, broken person. It’s embarrassing. We’d rather focus on helping others, which keeps our pain safely hidden while we look noble.
  3. Fear, always the flip-side of pride. Pain is scary. It takes a brave person to be willing to go there.
  4. We cope. Many of us would rather just keep coping than be healed. Actually, coping is just socially acceptable denial.
  5. We don’t have to. Yet. But God won’t allow our coping to work forever.

Coping is socially acceptable denial.

Without getting healing ourselves, we minister to others out of our wounding, and that never goes well. We can do more harm than good. We don’t let people go to their pain to receive real healing, because it reminds us of the pain we’ve shoved down. So we shame them:

  • “Just choose joy.” In God’s heart is both joy and weeping. They are not mutually exclusive. How else did “Song of Songs” and “Lamentations” end up in the same Bible?
  • “That’s in the past. It’s under the blood. Let it go.” While, yes, everything in the past is under the blood, there’s a mile of difference between being forgiven and being healed. And if past trauma is still producing current pain, it’s not in the past at all, is it?
  • “If you’re sad, are you even saved? Why aren’t you full of the joy of the Lord? Why don’t you just claim God’s promises?” Joy doesn’t mean life is all happiness, rainbows, and unicorns. In fact, Jesus promised we’d have trouble in this world (John 16:33). He walks through the dark with us; he never told us to pretend it’s not dark.

Fortunately, in his great mercy and love for us, God brings a season where what worked before no longer works for us. That’s a clue there’s something in our heart God wants to heal. It doesn’t feel like mercy at the time, but it’s God’s timing. Go into the pain so he can heal it.

God doesn’t want to re-traumatize us all over again. But we need to get in touch with the pain enough for God to heal it. Like a surgeon saving a gunshot victim, he has to open the wound to remove the bullet and repair the damage.

But when we intellectualize everything and are unwilling to go into our pain, we’re like the patient jumping off the operating table. What’s the doctor supposed to do? All he can do is just wait for the ailment to get bad enough for the patient to return.

How to Get Out of Our Head – Facing the Fear

Has our theology become more important to us than the heart of God?

Intellectualizing everything does have its advantages:

  • Rationalization. Our beliefs don’t have to affect our behavior.
  • Safety. We don’t have to do anything scary or painful.
  • Acceptance. We have the culture’s approval. Bonus!

But that eventually comes to a bad end, because it’s a false safety. If we want to get out of that trap, here are 5 ways to get out of our own way, out of our head, and face our fear.

  1. Repent of intellectual pride. Accept that we may not have it all figured out, and that’s ok.
  2. Ask the Holy Spirit to show you any pain you’ve shoved down that he wants to heal.
  3. Go there. Take a trusted friend, spouse, counselor, parent, pastor, and/or priest along on the journey. Go into the pain. Jump up on God’s operating table.
  4. Get professional help. Most of us need a mix of counseling, inner healing, and deliverance. There’s no shame in getting help when we need it, and it’s foolish not to.
  5. Recognize the layers and seasons. When we have a mile of reaction to an inch of offense, that’s a clue God wants to heal something. When current events trigger stuff we thought was forgiven and healed long ago, that’s a sign God wants to give us another layer of healing and freedom.

Your Turn

Has this post touched or challenged you? How much are you up in the “safety” of your head, versus the painful places of your heart? Tell us your story in the comments and share this post if it would bless others.

Why New Year Is in the Dead of Winter

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It’s fascinating to me that our New Year here in Western culture occurs in the dead of Winter. I know other cultures’ New Year occurs at different times of the year, and that’s great. I’m sure God is speaking to all cultures with the timing of their New Year celebration, but I’m only qualified to write about my own culture. What is God saying to us?

Wouldn’t it make more sense for the New Year to be at the start of Spring, when everything’s budding and coming back to life? Maybe in some cultures it is; what an awesome time that must be. But God worked through our history to make our New Year when all the leaves are off the trees and everything’s dead. Why do you suppose that is?

I’ve heard a pastor say that leaves don’t actually change color in Fall. They reveal the true color they actually are when not getting overridden by all that green chlorophyll. The point he was making is, in the Autumn of your life, your true colors will show.

What are your hidden colors? Do they reflect the grace and healing of God’s empowerment in your life, or do they still reflect your wounding?

There’s nothing wrong, by the way, with being in a place of wounding. Acknowledging where you’re at is the first step to get healing. Run to God in those times, not away from him. The problem comes when we run away from God and to our chlorophyll of choice to hide our wounded colors, in our own strength.

What is your chlorophyll of choice? Control? Addiction? Entitlement? Performance?

Have you ever wondered why we don’t go straight from Fall to Spring? After all, why can’t the new leaves just push out the old? Why do we have to go through a cold, bare-root season first? Why do we have to get stripped down to nothing? Maybe there’s something necessary going on inside the trunk of the tree that’s getting ready for Spring. Maybe Spring couldn’t come without this time of preparation.

What happens when circumstances and struggles reveal our wounding and our chlorophyll of choice stops working? What happens when all the leaves are off the trees of our lives? Maybe when we’re stripped down to the bare trunk, maybe that’s when we hear God best. Maybe because then we have to and we don’t have any other choice. Maybe out of his great love and mercy for us, he’s stripped away everything that distracted us from his voice.

I think God considers that place the beginning. That’s where his New Year starts. Because when all the outside is stripped away, there’s nothing left but to work on the heart. And that’s what he’s always wanted, to heal our wounding and give us a new heart.

“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” (Ezekiel 36:26)

I’m up for that. My hidden colors were worthlessness and rejection. The lie I believed was, “I am unlovable.” My chlorophyll of choice was being nice, being a servant to all. Dying to myself, literally, to a fault. My bitter root expectation was, “You’re going to reject me. So I’m not going to give you a reason. I’m going to be as lovable as possible, so that when (not if) you reject me, it’s on you.” In inner healing lingo, we call this a bitter root expectation.

God had to take me through a bare-root, cold Winter season. He had to strip away all the false leaves and false colors I used to protect my heart, in order to take that structure of lies and inner vows and bitter root expectations down.

Ironically, it’s when I started coming out of those lies that all disaster broke loose. My family fell apart and disintegrated. It hurt. But it was a season. It was only a season (a long season, several years), and I’m coming through it now. Sometimes the enemy’s greatest deception is to trick us into believing the painful season we’re in is forever, which brings desperation and despair. It’s not forever. It’s only a season. Trusting God brings hope through the pain.

He’s still working on me, but I’ve come a long way. He’s brought me into a fresh, bright Spring the last few years. He’s restored relationships I thought would never be restored, while others I still wait for. And he’s using his chlorophyll to work his colors into me.

How about you? What season are you in, here at the turn of the New Year? Tell us in the comments. If you’re in a cold, Winter, bare-root season, we’d love to pray with you. If you’ve come through such a season, please share your story; it will encourage others. And please share on social media if you think this post would bless others.

Photo by Adegboye Habeeb: https://www.pexels.com/photo/close-up-photo-of-a-woman-covering-her-mouth-with-a-yellow-fabric-9238599/

The 4 Masks of Wounding and An Invitation to Healing

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So often the thing that’s causing the pain in our lives isn’t what we think. It isn’t the blatantly obvious bad fruit like self-destructive addictions or jacked-up relationships. It isn’t the less obvious bad fruit like workaholism or perfectionism. The thing that’s causing the pain in our lives is wounding.

But too often we don’t recognize our wounding for what it is because it hides from us. And often times, we let it because we don’t want to face it. But that’s where the healing is. It’s time to unmask our wounding so we can pursue the healing Jesus has for us.

Here are 4 ways wounding masks itself in our lives.

1) Shame Hides Our Wounding

Godly guilt, conviction over our sin, says, “I made a mistake.” But shame says, “I am a mistake.” Godly guilt says, “Oh, no, look what I did!” But shame says, “Oh, no, look what I am.”

The thing is, shame is a learned behavior. Authority figures, parents, teachers, government, the media, and even the church, often use shame to control behavior.

And some of us have had shame modeled in our family of origin. We lived in shame. We grew up in shame. For some of us, the shame has become so familiar we hardly notice it anymore. It’s become our normal way of life.

Shame is the belief that I am uniquely and fatally flawed.

  • Uniquely – No one is as bad as me.
  • Fatally – There’s no fixing me.

So I better hide it and fake it. I certainly won’t let anyone get close enough to see it.

The good news is, Jesus delivers us from shame. (I wrote specifically about How to Have Victory over Shame here.)

Too often church people shame us for our shame. Doh! That won’t work. We can’t help people get free from shame by dumping more shame on them.

Instead, we need to be a safe place. We do that by, counter-intuitively, not having all the answers. By letting people be in process. And supporting them in their process even if it’s different from ours.

2) Offense Distracts Us from Wounding

Offense is rabid in our society today. If I’m offended at you, it justifies all of my bad behavior toward you.

Being offended gives me a place to channel my anger, when my shame lies & tells me I deserved the sin against me. But it never gets to what’s underneath the anger.

Anger is a secondary emotion. There’s another emotion underneath it, often caused by wounding that was not our fault.

But offense keeps us spinning with such intensity that we never get a moment to breathe, take one giant step backward, and get curious about what’s underneath all that anger. (I wrote about How to Disarm Offense here.)

What’s your story underneath the distraction of all the offense? Have you ever had someone listen (non-judgmentally!) to your story? Made in the image of God, you deserve the dignity of having your story heard and honored.

3) Fear Appeases Our Wounding

Nothing inflates fear more than being wounded, wrongly, by someone else’s sin. It puts us into the unresolvable contradiction/tension of desperately craving intimacy, but being in terror of it. Our message to the world is “Come close, stay away,” both in the same breath.

Our fear destroys our identity by trapping us in one of 4 trauma responses:

  1. Fight
  2. Flight
  3. Freeze
  4. Fawn

And the thing we fear the most is going into the pain.

But that’s where the healing is. Think about it. To heal a gunshot wound, the surgeon has to open it up. Not to rewound you, but just enough to remove the toxic lead. And it’s done under very safe and controlled conditions, by someone who’s been trained and knows what they’re doing.

And you’re not just left to fend for yourself afterwards. Everyone understands a recovery period after surgery. So why don’t we understand (and have grace for!) an emotional and spiritual recovery period after inner healing of a heart wound?

4) Pride Ignores Our Wounding

This is surprising, but pride can often be a cover for wounding. In fact, fear and pride are opposite sides of the same coin. Where you find one, you will typically find the other. The most proud, arrogant people are really the most fearful. And they’re doing everything they can to hide it.

Which is a great litmus test for our own hearts. If I feel pride rising up within me, feeling better than someone else, I need to ask myself the question, “What am I afraid of?” Because, behind my pride, fear is hiding back there somewhere. (I wrote about How to Get Out of Our Head here.)

If I can get you to look at all my accomplishments, my over-the-top spirituality, the brilliance of my staggering wisdom, maybe you won’t see my wounding. Wounding?!? Nope, no wounding in here. Hey, don’t look over there! Look over here! Shiny!

The problem is, if we’re all caught up in pride, we’re shining so brightly people can’t see Jesus. They just see us. And, eventually, that’s not going to end well, for them or for us. Because, at the end of the day, we’re not Jesus. But we need him badly.

So What’s a Wounded Christian to Do?

Here are 3 steps for addressing your wounding:

  1. Recognize there’s wounding. Does one of the masks above fit?
  2. Get curious about it. Instead of judging and shaming yourself, ask questions. Where is this shame, offense, fear, or pride coming from?
  3. Pursue your healing. Go on a healing journey. Find someone to walk with you who knows what they’re doing, or at minimum honors your process.

You don’t have to share your story or your journey with everyone. But share it with someone safe. God created us for community, and often having the support of a healthy community is a major factor in healing. Therapists tell us the biggest factor in whether someone makes progress or not is the health of their support system.

Please feel free to reach out to Janet and me here.

Your Turn

Does this resonate? What shape of wounding matches your own? Where are you on your healing journey? Share your story in the comments, or reach out to us privately. And please share this post if it will bless others.

Why You Feel Unworthy

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As I work with people to help them partner with God for the calling on their lives, I see a common obstacle that holds many people back. Some people know their calling, but this holds them back from stepping into it. Other people can’t even approach God to have the conversation and investigate their calling, because of this one thing. Well, what is it already? I’m glad you asked.

It’s a deep-seated, underlying feeling of unworthiness, and the shame that comes along with it.

In my experience, feeling unworthy is one of the hardest obstacles to overcome, because most of us don’t correctly understand why we feel unworthy. And if we don’t even understand why we feel that way, it becomes really hard to address the root of the problem.

But before we unpack that, a caveat first.

Please Don’t Hear What I’m Not Saying

This is when all the Biblical scholars and theologians out there quote me all the Bible verses about our sinful nature, our unworthiness before a holy God, and how we can’t save ourselves. Yeah, I know all that. And I agree.

I’m taking for granted in this post that we all understand that, yes, of course we are all unworthy (Romans 3:10-11). None of us deserve the grace we’ve been given. None of us deserve relationship with God. None of us deserve his favor. This is not a post to encourage entitlement.

But wasn’t that the whole point of the cross? Jesus took all our unworthiness and nailed it to the cross, so when God looks at us, he sees Jesus’ worthiness (2 Corinthians 5:21).

That’s not license to presume on God’s grace and live however sinfully we want (Romans 6:1-2, Philippians 2:14-16). It’s recognition of the fact that, to restore relationship with God, Jesus took worthiness off the table at the cross.

So let’s talk about why we really feel unworthy. We can’t move past the unworthiness that Jesus died for if we don’t even understand why we feel it in the first place.

Why You Think You Feel Unworthy

You think you feel unworthy because “I’m so _____.” Fill in the blank with the negative adjective for you. Fat? Weak? Stupid? Vulgar? Dirty? (Feeling dirty is common for people who have been abused.) Sinful? Angry? Broken? Not good enough? Flawed? Defective?

What do your thoughts constantly accuse you of? What do you, in your heart, deep down, accuse yourself of?

The truth is, that’s a lie we believe. Sorting out lies is tricky. The nature of being deceived is we don’t know we’re deceived. It’s hard to identify lies we believe so deeply we just take them for granted.

But even if those things were true, which they aren’t, it still wouldn’t matter. Those things are irrelevant because that’s not how God sees us. (I have others posts on this subject here, How Your Negative Past is the Key to Your Awesome Future, and here, Why You Are Not Defined by Your Actions.)

So here’s the paradigm shift: Why you think you’re unworthy is not really why you feel unworthy.

Why You Really Feel Unworthy

The truth is, Jesus nailed all that negative stuff, both from our past and what we’re struggling with now, to the cross. And, honestly, none of that is why you feel unworthy.

You feel unworthy because you’re wounded. That’s what wounding does. It makes you feel unworthy.

Feeling unworthy is a sign that we have wounded, broken places in our heart that God wants to heal.

Remember that blank you filled in up above with your “negative adjective”? Inner healing is the process of replacing those lies with God’s truth, replacing how we see ourselves with how God sees us.

The Language of the Heart

So something bad happens in our lives. We call that Type “B” Trauma, Bad Thing Happened. Or something good fails to happen. We call that Type “A” Trauma, the Absence of the Necessary Good Thing.

This is our wound. Both types of woundings can be just as damaging. And neither is our fault.

But our response to it is. Because of what happened, or what failed to happen that should’ve, what judgements did we make about ourselves? About God? About other people? About how we would be treated? In inner healing lingo, we call these bitter root judgements and bitter root expectations.

Therefore, because we’ve judged ourselves, God, and the world this way, how did we vow to protect our heart? We call this an inner vow.

Inner vows are ways we’ve internally sworn to protect our heart ourselves, instead of trusting God.

An Example

Here’s an example of Type “A” Trauma, the Absence of the Necessary Good Thing.

So suppose a parent was physically present but emotionally absent. If it’s your mother, maybe you were never emotionally nurtured. You never learned you could be loved just for yourself.

If it’s your father, maybe you were never affirmed and approved, never called into who God created you to be, never given permission to be your true self. You only were acceptable if you performed properly.

Either way, what might you have judged about yourself, God, the world? Maybe one of these:

  • “I’m not worthy of love in and of myself.”
  • “I’m only loved if I perform.”
  • “No one will love me for me.”
  • “If I don’t give people a reason to love them, they won’t.”
  • ”People will only love me if there’s something in it for them.”

So then, because of that, what might you vow to protect your heart? Maybe one of these:

  • “I will always be the good person to earn love.”
  • “I will never disappoint anyone.”
  • “I will never let anyone come close enough to see the real me.”
  • “I will reject others before they can reject me.”

Can you see how these deep, inner beliefs we take for granted wreak havoc in our lives?

Inner healing isn’t about digging stuff up from the past or blaming our parents. But if past woundings are causing bad fruit in our life today, they aren’t in the past at all, are they? They are very much here with us in the present causing damage that God wants to heal.

Are You Willing to Pursue Healing and Wholeness?

Jesus took worthiness off the table at the cross. God isn’t looking for worthiness. He’s looking for willingness.

Inner healing, like a life-saving surgery, hurts. And there’s a recovery period. Like physical therapy after a surgery, you may need spiritual and/or emotional therapy for a while even after receiving inner healing. It’s not a “one and done.”

But getting your life back is worth it. It takes a willingness to go to the scary places that may have been buried a long time. Not to relive the trauma. But so that God can heal it.

Are you willing?

Your Turn

Does this resonate? Tell us your story in the comments. Do you feel unworthy? Are you willing to pursue healing? Please reach out to Janet & me here.

And please share this post if it would bless others.

How to Cut Unrighteous Soul Ties in 5 Steps

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Have your head and your heart ever disagreed? Especially about whether a relationship is over or not? In your head, you’re totally over it. But your heart keeps weeping, and try as you might, you can’t stuff it down. And, even in other relationships, it keeps flooding back into your mind? You might be suffering the effects of a soul tie.

All sins are the same in the eyes of God (James 2:10-11). But sexual immorality has worse consequences for us, because it’s a sin inside our own body (1 Corinthians 6:18).

CS Lewis wrote:

The truth is that whenever a man lies with a woman, there, whether they like it or not, a transcendental relationship is set up between them which must be eternally enjoyed or eternally endured. – The Screwtape Letters, Letter XVIII

Sex does a heart exchange. A piece of your heart goes to the other person, and a piece of their heart comes to you. Forever. It’s permanent. God designed this to be a blessing in marriage. It’s a beautiful thing to exchange hearts with someone we are committed to for life.

The problem is, when it’s not in marriage, such an eternal relationship is tortuous. And then, when we meet the one we want to spend the rest of our life with, we want to give them our whole heart. But we can’t. Because we no longer have a whole heart to give. It’s been scattered to the wind. Forever.

And that’s just the reality. That’s the truth of it, without God. The good news is, our God can heal Forever. He can even put permanently ruptured things back together. He can restore your heart.

That permanent heart exchange is called a soul-tie. It’s a permanent connection between you and the other person. Unless God steps in and heals it.

A Prerequisite …

I’m taking for granted, if you’re wanting to break unrighteous sexual soul ties, that you’re repentant. That you’re no longer living that life-style. That you are no longer having sex with someone you aren’t married to. And you’re committed to staying pure, from this point forward, until marriage.

If you’re not in that place, no condemnation. Just don’t waste your time with this. You’ve got bigger business to do with God if you’re still living a sinful lifestyle.

… And a Caveat

Sometimes we are not a willing partner in the sexual sin against us. I’m talking about the hard stuff, rape, incest, abuse, etc. If you were not a willing partner, it was not your sin. They sinned against you, and you are not at fault in any way.

But even if you were not a willing partner, the abuser established a soul-tie with you. The good news is, God wants to heal it, and restore the piece of your heart that was stolen.

5 Steps to Cut a Soul Tie

So here are 5 steps to breaking, removing, and healing an unrighteous sexual soul-tie. It is often best to walk through this with a safe, non-judgmental person, preferably someone trained in inner healing. But you could do this by yourself if you need to.

Step 1) Name the Name and the Thing

Our words have power. You need to do all these steps out loud.

So out loud, say the person’s name, and “the thing”; i.e., the sin they committed against you. If you were a willing partner, you equally sinned against them. Lay it out there.

In cutting soul-ties, we are performing a legal transaction in the spiritual realm. In this step, you are listing the charges. Sometimes it helps to write them down.

Step 2) Tell God How You Feel

Making it your own, use this as a template prayer: “Lord, looking back on it now, I feel …” And tell God how you feel about it. Angry? Sad? Disrespected? Used? Devalued? There are no wrong answers.

Cuss if you need to. In this step, you’re doing real business with God. You’re being honest about something you might never have admitted before.

Step 3) Forgive the Person

Forgiveness is one of the most misunderstood topics in the church. Forgiveness is not pretending it was ok, or letting the person off the hook. Forgiveness does not mean restored relationship with the person. (If this is hard, check out what forgiveness is and is not here.)

Forgiveness does not mean you feel good or even charitable toward the person at all. This is a legal transaction. You are canceling the debt they owe you.

Step 4) Cut the Soul Tie

Use this template prayer as a guideline:

“Lord, I cut the soul tie with _____.” (Say the name.) “I release the portion of their heart that’s with me back to them, and I ask you to return the portion of my heart that resides with them back to me. Please restore my heart to the wholeness you have for me.”

Swing your arm, or make a cutting motion, when you say “cut.” Do something physical to symbolize cutting the soul tie. There are two reasons for this.

First, CS Lewis made the point that, as hybrid physical and spiritual creatures, what we do with our body affects our spirit. And second, trauma lodges in the body. Doing something physical helps you get to in a way you can’t with your intellect and words alone.

Step 5) Bless the Person

Finally, the last step is praying blessing over the other person. This can be really hard. (You can learn more about finishing forgiveness with blessing here, Finishing Forgiveness, and here, Forgiveness Litmus Test.)

And, again, this is a legal transaction. You don’t have to feel good toward them to do this. And this can be really, really, hard if they are an abuser, or if they are continuing in their sin. A prayer like this is enough:

“Lord, I pray blessing over _____.” (Say the name.) “I pray that they would know you and live out the fullness of the calling you have on their life, in intimacy with you.”

A Personal Story

I was having a lot of trouble forgiving my narcissistic ex-wife who left me. Her behavior had not changed, and it was wreaking havoc in my kids. She was totally unrepentant. I owned my part of the mess, but I was having a lot of trouble forgiving her.

So I was getting prayer ministry with a wise counselor. While she was praying for me, I saw, in my mind’s eye very clearly, Jesus hanging on the cross. He asked me, “Have I hung here long enough to pay you back for the evil she did to you? Or do you want me to hang here a little longer?”

I was undone. “No, Jesus, we’re good, you can come down, that’s long enough.” I was a pool of tears.

I always knew he hung on that cross for my sins, but, until that moment, I never understood that he hung on that cross for other people’s sins against me. That was a game changer. I could then forgive my ex-wife, prayer blessing over her, and cut the soul tie.

How About You?

Does this resonate? This is a delicate subject, so while you’re always welcome to leave a comment (your story blesses others), you’re also welcome to email us. We would love to talk to you and minister freedom to you in this area. And please share this post if it would bless others.

How to Tell if You’re Motivated by Wounding or Calling

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Everything we do in life is driven by one of these two things. At the end of the day, these are the only two motivations in the human experience. Everything we do is driven by either our wounding or our calling. Here’s an example.

Bob and Ted both help their church one Saturday morning a month serving breakfast at the local homeless shelter. They both get up at 5:00 AM, so they can be at the shelter by 6:00 to have breakfast ready for the residents at 7:00. They’re both happy to do whatever’s needed—scrambling dozens of eggs, cooking bacon, toasting slices and slices of toast, washing dishes, talking to and praying with the residents. Both are faithful. Both feel great afterwards, having been blessed with the opportunity to serve. But while they both look exactly the same from the outside, there’s a big difference inside.

Driving home, Bob is jazzed. He feels so good. For a few brief, shining moments, he feels good about himself, having done something good. Maybe that compensates for all his failures. Maybe, for a few hours, that’ll drown out the shame that just won’t let him go. Bob is serving out of his wounding.

Meanwhile, Ted is driving home, and he’s also jazzed. He feels so good. When he’s eating and talking with the shelter residents, he identifies with them. He doesn’t see a dirty homeless man. He sees a broken heart. He sees potential. He sees God’s hand of anointing and purpose on these precious people who have been so deceived and beaten up by the world. And Ted feels privileged to be with them, to tell them the truth of who they really are, how much they’re loved by God, and to pray with them. Ted’s high will last for days. Ted is serving out of his calling.

Do you see the difference? Both are doing the same actions. Both look exactly the same on the outside. Both get good feelings out of it (which is the outworking of a Kingdom principle, BTW. You can control your emotions by serving.) [https://identityinwholeness.com/how-to-control-your-emotions/]

But their motivations are totally different. Bob is serving for the benefit to himself. He’s medicating pain. He may or may not feel guilted into it, but either way, his wounding pushes him to serve. Ted, on the other hand, is serving for the benefit of the people he’s serving. He feels drawn to them. His calling pulls him into serving. He can’t not serve.

Let’s look at another example.

Bob and Ted both get home after the homeless shelter feeding and get their daughters ready for swim practice at the local pool. Their kids are both on the same swim team, and both Bob and Ted are very involved in helping the coach with the team.

Bob was a swimmer in his youth and a strong contender for the Olympics, until the injury. That ended that. But his daughter has an opportunity to succeed where Bob failed. So he pushes her to swim harder, faster, better. And he doesn’t understand why she seems to resent all he’s sacrificing so she can have this opportunity. Going to swim meets all over the country isn’t cheap. He’s living vicariously through his daughter. His wounding is pushing him and his daughter. This movie doesn’t end well. Maybe you’ve seen it. Maybe you’ve lived it.

Ted, on the other hand, can think of a thousand other things he’d rather be doing than spending Saturday at the pool. Mowing the lawn, mending that fence, trimming the roses. He loves being outside, and doesn’t look forward to spending another Saturday indoors at the pool smelling chlorine all day.

But from birth, his daughter was as comfortable in the water as she was on land. No one had to teach her how to blow bubbles in the bathtub, or to put her face under the water. She just did it naturally. She was almost swimming before she could walk. Ted realized something about his child: God hard-wired her to swim. So he silently sacrifices his Saturdays because he knows that as her father it’s his calling to gently guide her into who God created her to be.

Do you see the difference? Again, Bob and Ted look exactly the same from the outside. They both go to all their daughter’s swim practices and swim meets. They both help out the coach with the team however they can. But their inner motivations are totally different. Pushed by his wounding, Bob is doing it for himself, in a fruitless attempt to ease the pain. But Ted is pulled by his calling. He can’t not be there for his daughter, for her sake—not for his.

Both are driven. But while Bob is pushed by his wounding, Ted is pulled by his calling. And that’s how you can tell whether you’re being motivated by your wounding or by your calling. Wounding pushes you—guilt, shame, medicating pain. But calling pulls you—drawing you forward, wooing you, to the point that once you start thinking “what if…” you can’t not pursue it.

So what if I discover I’m being driven by my wounding? Do these 4 simple steps.

1) Admit it. Stop pretending otherwise.

2) Name the wounding. You have power over what you can put a label on.

3) Get help. There’s no shame wearing a cast on a broken leg. There’s no shame getting counseling for broken emotions. Everyone needs help at some point. Talk to your pastor, a professional counselor, a mature and godly parent, or a trusted friend. Or all of them. You need all the tools in the toolbox. But, please, talk to somebody.

4) Embrace this season of healing. You can get free. Healing is out there. Pursue it. Don’t give up. God wants to bring you freedom, so you can set others free. You have authority over what you’ve been set free from.

Once you’re walking in freedom rather wounding, you may realize your calling is totally different from what you thought. Whole new worlds may open up to you.

Or, you may have been pursuing your calling all along, but your wounding is like dragging an iron ball chained to your leg—so you can’t run very fast. Once you get some healing, maybe you’ll feel a new freedom and ease to chase the calling you never believed was possible.

Caveat: Healing comes in waves. This may not be your last season of healing. Healing hurts, so out of his mercy God gives us as much as we can handle at any one time. So don’t be surprised if, after years of living motivated by your calling, you suddenly discover there’s still some wounding there. Don’t be discouraged—God’s getting ready to upgrade you again! Bonus!

How about you? Are you operating out of your wounding, or out of your calling? Have you ever realized, after getting some healing, your calling was totally different from what you thought it was? Have you gone through seasons of healing? How did each give you another level of freedom? We’d love to hear your story in the comments or in an email. And please share if this would bless someone else.

Free Resources:

Do you know God wants to talk directly to you? Do you have trouble hearing him? Find out how to hear God with Dave’s free ebook “Hearing God and What’s Next: 12 Ways to Hear God, 3 Things to Do about It, and 6 Ways to Know You’re Not Crazy.”

Does your heart need healing? Learn the steps to inner healing with Jesus through a fun and engaging fictional story. Download Dave’s free ebook “The Runt: A Fable of Giant Inner Healing.”