What to Do when the Pain Won’t Go Away

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None of us want to admit it, but we all have it. Or have had it at some point. Emotional pain that just won’t go away. Sometimes we think we’ve stuffed it, but then – bam – something seemingly innocent happens and it all comes crashing back.

Daniel was so past his divorce. He’d made his peace with it. Until he went to his nephew’s wedding. Emotions he thought were long gone were really only hiding. They rose up and slammed him out of nowhere. He drank way too much at the reception. And every night after that.

Melanie was over her abortion, or so she thought. No one knew, and she’d moved on. Until her best friend invited her to her baby shower. And it all came crashing back. She went and put on a happy face. No one knew she was dying inside. But she was.

Sometimes we can’t even begin to stuff it, and we just learn to live with it. Or better put, survive with it.

Lisa cannot remember a time when she wasn’t battling depression. She lives in a box, behind a mask, trying desperately to keep the outside world at bay, to stay in control. Where is the joy all the other Christians have? Are they just faking it, too? Or is there something wrong with her? She suspects the latter. She desperately hopes this next relationship will fix it all. Again.

Somehow we learn to cope. Maybe we self-medicate. Maybe we control. Sometimes we put on a face and pretend, hiding the real me. We’ve coped with it for so long we think it’s normal. But it’s not. Although it’s very common, just coping forever is not healthy.

God has something for us so much better than coping. He has a new-normal for us, without the pain. It’s called healing. But how do we embrace it? How do we move into that place?

The short answer is, Be the buffalo not the cow. Dude, what are you even talking about? What do bovines have to do with deep emotional pain? I’m glad you asked.

When there’s a thunderstorm on the plain, buffalo and cattle both panic. Both herds stampede, and you don’t want to be in the way! But there’s a major difference.

Cattle take off running away from the storm as fast as they can. If the storm’s coming from the west, they stampede east. This is the obvious, no-brainer thing to do to avoid the storm. The problem is, they’re running the same direction as the storm’s moving, and the storm always moves faster. So it eventually overtakes them anyway. And since they’re running the direction it’s moving, they actual maximize their time in the storm.

On the other hand, buffalo run straight at the thunderstorm. So if the storm’s coming from the west, they stampede west, right into it. This seems really dumb at first glance, but it’s actually brilliant. Since they’re running the opposite direction the storm is moving, they minimize their time in the storm. And they get rewarded with the yummy, just watered, fresh grass on the other side. Bonus!

Most of us run from our pain, like cattle running from a thunderstorm. But avoidance just maximizes our time in the pain when it catches up with us, and it always does.

John Sanford, founder of Elijah House Ministries said, “We need to embrace the fireball of pain.” Wow. Seriously, dude? Yeah, seriously. We need to go where it hurts, not avoid it.

Ok, you sold me. How do we “embrace the fireball of pain?”

I’m glad you asked. There’s 3 steps to start this process.

1) Start the journey with God.

Be honest. Don’t hide it or pretend it’s not there. Honestly tell God how you feel. It’s ok to hurt. It’s ok to not feel joy. Read the Psalms. Many of them are written from places of extreme pain. They are examples of God meeting people in the middle of extremely painful circumstance, doubt and fear. For a start, look at Psalms 3, 4, 5, 7, 10, 13, 17, 22, 28, 40, 120, and many, many more.

What gets scheduled gets done, so schedule time to pray and meditate each day with God, even if it’s just 10 minutes during a break. Stopping, unplugging, and getting alone with him, even if just for a few minutes, makes a huge difference.

2) Start the journey with someone else.

You don’t need to tell everyone everything. But you need to tell someone everything. So often the pain’s power over us is rooted in shame. Shame protects itself by isolating us. We think we’re the only one. But we’re not. Often, sharing our pain with someone else breaks the shame and that’s 80% of the healing right there.

So often we the church do such a disservice to people by forcing them to either hide their pain or face our rejection. I know someone who, in a vulnerable moment, shared the pain in their life. They were actually told by their Bible study leader at church, “Well, Christians are supposed to be joyful, so if you’re not feeling joy, are you even saved?”

What rubbish! Jesus does not deliver us from pain, he delivers us through it. He never promised we wouldn’t have trouble in this world (in fact just the opposite, see John 16:33). He promised us he’d be there with us in the middle of it. So we should be there for each other.

If your church shames you for having pain in your life, find a different church. There are many churches out there that get this right. Find someone you trust that you can share your journey with, and who is willing to share theirs with you. You’ll find that, no matter how perfect they look, they have pain in their life, too.

3) Recognize the season.

Healing is a season, it doesn’t happen overnight. The season can be weeks, months, years, or even decades.

Sometimes, for whatever reason he alone knows, God doesn’t heal as we expect. I know some very strong Christians, men and women of deep intimacy with the Lord, faith and power, who have battled depression their whole life. It doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with them or their faith. It means God is choosing to use that for his glory in their lives (see John 9:3). He is meeting them right there in the middle of it, just like he did the Apostle Paul, who, by the way, God also didn’t heal (see 2 Corinthians 12:7-9). So if this is you, you’re in good company.

I can’t promise God will eventually heal your situation. Often he totally does. But I can promise God is always good, and will meet you in the middle of it.

Personally, a moment of vulnerability here, I still struggle with self-hatred. But I’m getting stronger and it’s a lot weaker than it used to be. I’m learning how to not agree with it and instead agree with what God says about me. Jesus has been my deliverer in the middle of it. And continues to be.

So what about you? Where do you come down in all this? Tell us your story in the comments or shoot us an email. And please share if you think 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.”

Being Loved to Life—Authentic Christianity

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Sarah was in church smiling, conversing with all her church friends. “If they only knew the mess in my life,” she thought every week, “they wouldn’t have anything to do with me.” So she kept pretending, and she was good at it. They all knew Sarah the Good Girl. No one knew Sarah the Alcoholic. No one could get close enough in a few hours on Sunday morning. If anyone offered to hang out for coffee during the week, she’d gladly accept, and then cancel because “something came up.” Don’t want people too close, they might see the real me. If only she could walk a victorious Christian life like her church friends, Rose, Tanya, and Beth. What is wrong with me?

Sarah thought she was the only one. Sarah didn’t know Rose fought depression and wore the same fake smile Sarah did. Sarah didn’t know Tanya suffered from post-abortive stress and was desperately trying to earn love from a God she believed she could never please. Sarah didn’t know Beth was on the verge of having an affair because of the pain from her abusive marriage.

In fact, Sarah had more in common with her church friends than they knew. The one thought all four had in common was, “If they only really knew me, they’d hate me like I hate me.” Each one of them thought the others had it all together.

Then one day, quite by accident, the dam broke. Eating donuts in the kitchen before the church service started, Rose whipped out a picture of her day-old grandson. Caught unusually off-guard, Tanya burst into tears before she could get control of herself. Today was the due date of her son, 20 years ago, who was never born. They went out in the hall around the corner to comfort Tanya and get some privacy. As Beth hugged Tanya, Beth’s sleeve was pulled back just enough for Sarah to notice a bruise. As Tanya’s tears wet Beth’s cheek, Beth’s make-up ran just enough for Sarah to see another bruise the make-up was covering.

“OMG,” thought Sarah. “I need a drink.” What is happening here?

The truth was, the Holy Spirit was showing up in their friendship, and it wasn’t pretty. But it was good. The four friends starting meeting for coffee to support each other and share their struggles. They were all shocked at each other’s struggles, not with condemnation or rejection, but because they truly had no idea their friends were in such pain. They all thought they were the only one.

Shame is such a liar. It tells us we are uniquely and fatally flawed. Fatally, because there’s no cure for us, we’ll always be this way, so we’d better hide it the best we can and not let anyone see. And uniquely, because we’re the only one who feels this way. What a pack of lies.

Shame’s lying house of cards is built on a foundation of isolation. It came crashing down that day, when these four church friends shared their pain and fears with each other, all expecting to be rejected, but all finding loving acceptance instead. The four friends received that day the best gift from the Holy Spirit, true loving community. They let Authentic Christianity replace their fake religion, and they could never go back. And all it cost them was the risk of being vulnerable.

Their community didn’t change their situations, but it changed them, and it changed their response to their situations. It gave them something they didn’t have before—hope. They did not have to walk through it alone. And there was a fifth person there in all of their get-togethers—Jesus. “For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.” (Matthew 18:20)

We receive healing when we let ourselves be loved to life by others in the Body of Christ. So often letting someone else into our struggle is 90% of the victory. Honestly sharing our sin, our pain, our fears, with a few trusted brothers or sisters in the Body of Christ so often breaks the majority of shame’s power.

Everyone doesn’t need to know your secrets, but someone does. Find that trusted person, a brother or sister in the Lord, and break shame’s isolating hold on you by confiding in them. We all desperately want to be known, and at the same time are terrified of being known. We hide with all our might, desperately longing to be found.

When the masks and methods we’ve used to hide stop working, and things are crashing around us, often it’s the Holy Spirit doing that, because he’s exposing something he desperately wants to heal. God is for us. We don’t have to earn his love, we already have it.

How about you? Does this resonate? Do you have a safe Christian community? We’d love to hear your story. Have you been loved to life? I have. And please share this if you think this would bless someone else.

You Have Value – My Journey through Self-Hatred

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The truth is you have tremendous value. I have struggled actually believing this. Well, truth be told, I have no trouble believing you have tremendous value. I have trouble believing I have tremendous value. Can you relate?

I’ve been asked by people I trust to share more of my story. So in the hope that it will help others, this post is about my struggle in this area, and how I got freedom. Don’t worry, it’s not a downer, despite the subject matter. It’s a story of hope and God’s faithfulness. I pray it gives you hope and some tools for hanging onto that hope.

A Little Background

I’ve been tremendously gifted. I have a master’s degree in Mathematics from UCLA. I’ve done software engineering for 30+ years. My specialties are reverse engineering computer/network protocols and developing digital signal processing applications. I’ve worked hard to get where I am, but God has tremendously blessed me with an ability to do with computers what not everyone can. Not patting myself on the back here. Just the facts.

I’m also a musician. Keyboards are my primary instrument (I’ve been playing since I was 8), but I also can fake playing bass, drums, and congas. My main keyboard influence is Rick Wakeman from Yes. (Remember that band? I’m totally dating myself here!) Nowadays I play keys in the worship band at church. I play Manheim Steamroller and Trans-Siberian Orchestra on my own for fun. I’ve worked hard to develop it, but God’s gifted me with some talent.

I’m smart and I’m talented. So why do I hate myself?

I grew up loving Jesus from a young age in a solid Christian home. My two older brothers treated me well. My parents loved me and were good, solid, godly parents. I’ve lived a moral life and not experienced any trauma. So where does this self-hatred come from?

Judgments and Inner Vows

Somewhere, deep in my heart, before I had language, maybe even in utero before I was born, for whatever reason, I judged myself as unlovable. We call that a bitter-root judgement.

(Aside: Judgements we make before we have language can be really hard to articulate. But you can discover them by asking the Holy Spirit to help you talk to your heart. I wrote a post on learning this skill, and how I made this discovery here.)

Anyway, I have a sense, deep in my heart, that you won’t love me. No matter what I do, you just won’t. We call that a bitter-root expectation. So in my heart I resolved that with an inner vow to always be good. You won’t love me anyway, but I’m not going to give you a reason. So when you don’t love me, which you certainly won’t, that’s on you. It’s a passive-aggressive way to get back, in advance, at the person (namely, everyone else in the world) who doesn’t love me. I make it your fault, not mine. So there.

It’s a crappy way to live. I’ve paid the consequences in my life. It set me up for a failed first marriage. It set me up with a scarcity mindset, biased against success, believing this lie: “Not everyone in the world will be successful, so it’s not fair for me to be.” I remember thinking this as early as 7 or 8 years old.

I Get It

I get the whole self-harm thing. Although I’m learning and healing, I have a very hard time being in the same room with people who are angry. It causes me a lot of emotional pain. Physical pain hurts less, so it’s tempting to inflict it on myself. It distracts from the emotional pain, and it’s easier to deal with.

I have never struggled with depression, although I’ve flirted with it. I know what it is to want to self-medicate the pain away by not getting out of bed and sleeping all day. I know what it is to go to sleep early as an escape. I know what it is to have gray days that have no color in them.

I know what it is to have suicidal thoughts. As a teen, I lived in a canyon-filled area, actually called Canyon Country, in an upper-desert suburb of Los Angeles. While driving those one-lane, windy roads, I’d think, “One quick, flip of the wheel, crash into the mountain side, or down the gorge, and it’s all over. Finally.” Or even as an adult driving on I-95 at 80 mph here on the east coast, “Undo your seat belt and spin the wheel. Do it.” Fortunately, I didn’t listen to those lying demons. Here’s why.

Psalm 139 – How to Love Yourself in a Healthy Way

Personally, I found healing in Psalm 139, the anti-self-hatred psalm. God himself taught me the stuff I’m about to share with you, when I read nothing but Psalm 139 for a year or so.

The first blow against self-hatred is realizing God wants you to love yourself. Jesus himself quotes Leviticus 19:18 when he says, “Love your neighbor as you love yourself” (Matthew 22:39, Mark 12:31). And Jesus agreed when it was quoted at him in Luke 10:27, before he told the parable of the Good Samaritan. The implicit assumption here is that you love yourself. You can’t love your neighbor as yourself if you don’t love yourself.

Ok, but how? It’s a mindset. Let’s go through Psalm 139. There’s revelation in here I never saw before, that helped me establish a mindset of loving myself. And I repeat it, out loud if I have privacy, but to myself if I don’t, whenever self-hatred comes at me. Here we go.

In reading the Bible, you have to think Hebrew. The word translated “know” in Psalm 139 and elsewhere in the Bible, really means “experience.” (Where do you think the phrase, “he knew her in the Biblical sense,” meaning they had sex, came from? It means he experienced her, fully!) In Hebrew, to know something means to experience it.

So whenever you read “know”, substitute “experience.” I read verses 1-4 and verse 23 like this:

O Lord, you have searched me and you’ve experienced me. You experience when I sit and when I rise; you experience my thoughts from afar. You experience my going out and my lying down; you experience all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue, you’ve experienced it, O Lord. … Search me, O God, and experience my heart; test me and experience my anxious thoughts. (Psalm 139:1-4,23)

Wow, that’s intimacy with Jesus, right there! That can be really scary. Some people tragically run and never go there. But I encourage you to go there. Going there saved my life. It’s what kept me from driving my car over a cliff. And it continues to defeat self-hatred in my life and keep me alive. His intimacy with me keeps those thoughts from sticking. That’s the deep level of intimacy Jesus wants with you. That’s what he went to the cross to win—relationship with you.

Keep reading. Verse 5 talks about laying his hand on me. That’s not a smack down! He’s stretching out his hand to bless me and commission me. So you could read verse 5 like this, and I read verse 16 along with it:

You hem me in—behind and before; you have laid your hand of anointing and purpose on me. … All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. (Psalm 139:5,16)

And verse 6:

Such experience is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. (Psalm 139:6)

Translation: Mind blow!

Keep going. I personalize verses 7-12 like this:

Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to Heaven, you’re there; if I make my bed in Sheol (i.e., Hell in Hebrew), you’re there. [That’s extreme!] If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea (or the interstate), even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,” even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you. (Psalm 139:7-12)

If that doesn’t speak to God being with me in the pit of depression and despair, I don’t know what does. In the darkest night, with blackness of soul all around me, I’ve prayed these verses back to him. I’ve prayed, “Lord, it’s dark all around me, and I need you to shine in this darkness right now like you promised.” And in my experience, he always has. I’d press in, warring with this prayer as my weapon, until I either felt his presence or I fell asleep—and woke up victoriously refreshed.

And OMG, the Bible talks about Hell! These verses promise that whatever hell you’re in, there’s no blackness that’s too dark for God. There’s no sin that disqualifies you from his love. No trauma he won’t meet you in the middle of. His love is bigger, stronger, and way more persistent. His love will run you down and find you, even there. No darkness is too dark for him to meet you in and rescue you from.

It’s in this context, God being there in the middle of the blackest blackness, that David writes the most beautiful verses in the whole Bible:

You created my innermost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. (Psalm 139:13-14)

This means, God made me, and he likes who I am. This is true for you too. God made you, and he likes you, he loves who he created you to be, even if you’re not acting like it at the moment.

Look at verses 17 and 18, “How precious are your thoughts to me, O God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand. When I awake, I am still with you.” Gee, that “when I awake I’m still with you” is awfully random.

While it’s true that God has a lot of thoughts and they’re important to me, that’s not what this verse means at all! There’s a footnote in my Bible on the word “to” flagging that it could also be translated as “concerning.” So verse 17 becomes, “How precious are your thoughts concerning me, O God!” That puts a whole different spin on these two verses, and it explains the random bit at the end of verse 18.

Since God taught me this, I read now these two verses like this, and they blow me away. They have become one of my favorite passages in scripture:

How precious are your thoughts about me, O God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand. When I awake, I am still with you, because you’re still here thinking about me. (Psalm 139:17-18)

God thinks about me a lot! And they’re good thoughts! Even while I’m sleeping, he’s thinking about his plans for me, wringing his hands in anticipation. When I wake, he’s there, excited to bring me the next day of my life, one day closer to the destiny and identity he has for me. Take that, self-hatred. In! Your! Face!

The next verses, 19-22, get aggressive and can sound a bit extreme. They start out, “If only you would slay the wicked, O God!…” But to me, in the context of self-hatred, they’re talking about the spiritual forces lying to me and tempting me to hate and harm myself. He’s talking about the demons behind all the negative chatter I hear in my head. I personalize these verses like this:

If only you would slay the wicked, O God! Away from me, you bloodthirsty demons! They speak of you, God, with evil intent; they are your adversaries and they misuse your name. Don’t I hate those liars who hate you, O Lord, and abhor those who rise up against you? I have nothing but hatred for them; I count them my enemies, and I will never compromise with them. (Psalm 139:19-22)

I hate the lies that rise up against God’s truth for my life, and I hate the lying spirits who tell them. That’s hatred placed where it belongs. “I count them my enemies” means we don’t go shopping together. Don’t be friends or compromise with the liars in your life.

Your agreement is everything. The freedom, or the bondage, in your life comes down to what, and who, you agree with.

And then David ends Psalm 139 where he began:

Search me, O God, and experience my heart; test me and experience my anxious thoughts. See if there’s any offensive way in me, and lead me in your way everlasting. (Psalm 139:23-24)

I love that David ends the psalm where he began—with intimacy. It’s intimacy with Jesus that ultimately set me free from self-hatred and protected me from its devastation in my life.

No One Heals in a Vacuum

While God taught me a lot one-on-one in Psalm 139, and it’s been a powerful, healing force in my life, I didn’t come to the degree of freedom I have alone or in a vacuum.

I’ve sought out and received inner healing prayer ministry, to expose the lies I’ve believed and replace them with God’s truth. I’ve received deliverance ministry to overtly break the power and presence of self-hatred in my life. God places us in community because we need each other. I’ve needed others in my life to love me back to life. So do you. That’s why Satan’s number one weapon against us is shame–to isolate us out of community.

I haven’t arrived yet. I still struggle sometimes. But God’s winning. And I am growing so much in the process.

But what if you know all this, done all this, and it’s not enough?

That’s great that Psalm 139 worked for you, Dave, but it’s not doing it for me. What if you’re still depressed or still have suicidal thoughts? It’s ok. You’re ok. There’s nothing wrong with you. It just means there’s some deeper level of healing God wants to bring you. Get help.

Should I talk to my pastor, or get counseling? Yes. Do both. There’s nothing “anti-Christian” about getting counseling from a counselor/therapist with a Christian world-view. Most pastors are not trained to deal with depression. It’s not an either/or. If your pastor doesn’t get it and shames you for getting counseling (pastors are human too and allowed to make mistakes), then find a different church where the pastor will work with your therapist on the same team.

The same goes for medication. There’s nothing “anti-Christian” about taking meds if you need them. If your church shames you for taking depression medication, find a different church. Those same Pharisees go home and take their insulin for their diabetes and their heart/blood-pressure medicine. But somehow the chemical imbalance in your body doesn’t count? Horse-pucky! There are good churches out there who get it. I encourage you to keep looking until you find one.

(Yes, I believe in supernatural, miraculous healing. I’ve prayed for it and seen it happen. God heals by miracles, but he also heals by medicine. It’s his call, and it’s a different mix for every person. No one type of healing is more holy than any other. All healing is from God, however he chooses to do it.)

Resources

While it’s true that receiving deliverance and/or inner healing ministry from unhealthy or immature practitioners can be worse than none, these are solid, godly ministries that have blessed my life. Getting ministry may not be the whole deal for you, but it can be a huge piece if that’s what God’s doing.

For inner healing and prayer ministry: Dominion Counseling and Training Center (Richmond, VA)

For deliverance ministry: The Church Unchained (Stafford, VA)

For inner healing resources: Elijah House Videos

If you suffer from suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255), or text HOME to the Crisis Text Line at 741741. You matter.

How about you? Have you suffered, or do you suffer, from self-hatred? Tell us your story in the comments or shoot us an email on the Contact Us page. We’d love to hear from you. And please share this post if it would help others. God really does love you. You have value.

Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up?

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As our regular readers know, this blog is all about our true identity in Jesus—the identity God created us to become. But let’s take one giant step backward. How can we understand who we really are in God if we’re confused about who God really is?

In order to understand who we really are, we have to understand who God really is. Sometimes the best way to understand someone is to understand who they’re not. So here’s 10 popular wrong pictures of God, broken down into 3 categories. Do you (or did you) identify with any of these?

False Pictures of an Irrelevant God

The first few false pictures of God let us think God is irrelevant for our lives today. The true motivation for them really goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden. We want to decide what’s right and what’s wrong, without some God hanging around having opinions about our behavior. We are still choosing the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil over the Tree of Life.

1) A Myth. So much of our culture believes this, and our children are taught this under the guise of “science.” The truth is, evolution is a myth. Evolution is really bad science. There have been whole books written on this subject, and I don’t have space to go into it here. But evolution violates physics, geology, biology, engineering, statistics – just to name a few sciences that, contrary to what we’ve all been taught, actually contradict evolution. It really takes a lot more faith to believe in evolution than it does to believe in God. We did not make ourselves.

2) The Absent Creator. He wound up the world like a top, and now he’s just letting it spin down and couldn’t care less. If I have to admit there must be a God because evolution is such a house-of-cards, at least he doesn’t care about me. I can still be god over my own life. But God created my life and my body. They are ours to steward, not to own. God cares about every aspect of your life. Not as a control freak, but as someone who is rooting for you because he loves you.

3) My Kindly Grandfather. My kind-hearted, but naïve, old grandfather, sitting in his rocking chair on the porch reading his Bible. He’s really nice, but he really doesn’t get life today. The truth is, God gets life today more than we do. And he has the answers. We are so easily deceived by the spirit of the age into thinking truth somehow changed. And in patting ourselves on the back for being so smart, we take our answers, our worldview, and our morality from the media. See Romans 1:22 and 1 Corinthians 1:27-29.

Download the List of
10 False Views of God
on One Page Here.

False Pictures of a God of Performance

These next false pictures of God are all too common. Though we may not realize it on the surface, deep down many of us believe we have to perform, to “straighten up and fly right,” to earn God’s approval, love, and blessing. Often these can be really hard to address because the things we’re doing look so good. They’re good things, but the motivation is to earn love, instead of coming from a place of being loved.

4) Zeus. An angry God, he’s ready to throw lightning bolts as soon as I step out-of-line. In fact, he can’t wait. Sometimes he hurls them just for fun. People blame God for the pain in their lives. They don’t realize he’s crying with them, right there in the middle of it.

People don’t understand God’s judgements come from love, not disappointment or hatred, like a loving parent disciplines a disobedient child. Actually, the opposite of love isn’t hatred—it’s indifference. God has opinions about our behavior because he loves us and wants what’s best for us. He hates our self-destructive behavior the same way the parent of an addict hates the drugs that are destroying their child.

5) A Demanding Parent. No matter how hard I try, I’m never good enough. When God thinks of me, he frowns his disappointment. I have to earn God’s love. He could bless me, but he doesn’t want to. If I can just be good enough, maybe I’ll earn a crumb.

This false picture of God often leads to a scarcity mindset. And it’s so not true. When God thinks of you, he smiles. He rubs his hands together with anticipation and excitement of who he’s created you to be, the same way parents put Christmas presents under the tree before their children wake up on Christmas morning.

6) Santa Claus. He brings me presents if I’m good. He’s making a list. He’s checking it twice. He’s going to find out who’s naughty or nice. Santa-Claus-god doesn’t care about me, just what I do. But that’s so not true. God cares about the real you inside. We are not what we do.

7) Commander-in-Chief. God’s my general and my chain-of-command. I follow the rules to the letter. With. No. Emotional. Attachment. The problem is, God wants an emotional attachment, so desperately that he does reckless things like dying on a cross.

The play/movie Les Misérables is a poignant example of this legalist, false picture of God. The police captain Javert is all about the rules. All his life, he never broke a rule. Rulebreakers will always be rulebreakers and they need the rule enforcers to keep them in line and give them what’s coming to them. The problem is, the convict Jean Valjean is a rulebreaker but spreads mercy and goodness everywhere he goes. That’s not supposed to happen! People can’t really change! But Javert is forced to recognize Jean Valjean’s goodness is better than his own legalism when Jean Valjean spares his life. The story is an amazing contrast between the Kingdom of Religion and the Kingdom of God. Sadly, Javert couldn’t live in a world where mercy triumphs over judgement. (James 2:13)

False Pictures of a God of Entitlement

These false pictures of God are pervasive in our first-world culture where we have more than we could ever want.

8) My ATM. Just like an ATM, I go to him when I need something, and forget about him the rest of the time. After all, isn’t God there, and the church also, to meet my needs? Boy, do we have a surprise coming. That’s totally backward! We exist to meet his needs for worship and fellowship, not the other way around.

9) My Insurance Salesman. Thanks for salvation, Jesus, see you in Heaven. Got my fire insurance. As long as I keep up the premiums by going to church periodically, I’m covered. The problem here is that Jesus didn’t die on a cross to bring us into the Kingdom of God in the sweet bye-and-bye. He died to bring his Kingdom into our lives now. Right here, right now.

10) My Savior but not My Lord. Jesus forgives all my sins so I can live however I want and still go to heaven. Such a deal! He’s my Savior, I said the sinner’s prayer, once, sometime a long time ago in a galaxy far, far, away. But he really doesn’t expect me to live in holiness and purity, does he? Yes, actually he does. And his heart breaks when we harm ourselves by living like the world. We nail him to that cross all over again. Jesus is not really our Savior if he’s not also our Lord. He comes as a package deal.

All of these false pictures grieve the heart of God. He wants his children to know the real Jesus.

The True Picture of the Living God—My Lover-King

This is who Jesus died on the cross to be. This is what his resurrection made possible. My Lover-King, the essence of my universe, the number one person in my life. He’s just crazy about me, and I wish I could do more to please him. His smile makes my spirit soar, and when we’re together, he smiles all the time. We are so in love. His love crashed in and changed my life. Like Lucy with Aslan, in the picture above.

Think about that for a minute. What would it be like to live in the ecstasy of that kind of lover-close, intimate relationship with God? Lover-close with God? Crazy, huh? Do you think it might change how we live?

So what’s your picture of God? Tell us in the comments. And please share this post if it would help someone else.

Download the List of
10 False Views of God
on One Page Here.

Performance Orientation

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I’ve lived my whole life, since I was a young boy, to hear Jesus say, on that Day, “Well done good and faithful servant.” (See Matthew 25:21 & 23.) Those six blessed words.

While I was reflecting on how much I want to hear him say that, I heard the Lord tell me, in the loving way he always does, “Dave, you’re not going to hear me say that on that Day.”

Shocked. I was totally shocked in my spirit. I’ve been longing for that my whole life. Dumbfounded, I could only ask, “Why not, Lord?”

His answer caught me off guard. “I’ve been saying it to you for over 50 years and you haven’t heard it. What makes you think you’ll hear me when I say it then?”

Wow. He continued. “Dave, I want you to hear me say it now. So that’s finally settled in your heart. I don’t want longing to hear that to be the focus of your life. I want loving me and living the life I have for you to be the focus of your life.”

God is so good. He doesn’t leave us where we are. He’s always drawing us closer to himself.

He didn’t want me to waste my energy trying desperately to hear something he’s already told me.

I had a Performance Orientation. God wanted to heal it in that season. I repented of it. It’s sin.

Performance Orientation is the belief (often held unconsciously) that we have to earn love, to earn the right to be loved. The implicit lie is that we’re not worth loving unless we earn it by doing something.

I honestly think the majority of us in the church have Performance Orientation to some degree. God wants to heal it. We can’t earn his love. Performance Orientation leaves us in the impossible situation of trying to earn by hard work what we already have by inheritance.

Performance Orientation is becoming the good __________ at the expense of ourselves, our true self. What fills in the blank for you? Christian? Leader? Wife? Husband? Student? Good person? Good boy? Good girl?

Fear is the fuel for Performance Orientation. “I won’t have enough if I don’t perform.”

On the other hand, the cure for Performance Orientation is Intimacy (= Into Me See), accepting love based on who we are, not what we’ve done. We fear intimacy because we’re afraid if someone’s close they’ll see it’s all a sham. They’ll see who we really are.

My heart was stuck trying to earn love. God wants me to have that settled, so he and I can move on, and do what hearts that are loved do. Soar! Do the impossible without paralyzing fear. I can’t take the risks of living fearlessly while I’m still afraid of not being loved. I can’t both live a life of faith and of fear of not being loved. Neither can you.

Your Turn

He’s calling me to live a life of faith. How about you? Do you struggle with this? Or have you already been set free from it? Either way, tell us in the comments. And please share on social media if this would help someone else.

4 Ways to Get the Healing We Need

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All of us have wounding. We live in a fallen world with a powerful spiritual enemy who wants to destroy us, or at least keep us from living the adventure God created us for. Our enemy does this by wounding us. The good news is, Jesus heals wounding.

But how? How do we go about getting our wounding healed? It doesn’t happen on its own. Here are 4 ways we can pursue our healing with both hands. Most of us need some unique combination of these. Everyone’s healing path is different; there is no universal formula or timetable. Ask the Holy Spirit what’s right for you.

1) Counseling

Professional counselors are brilliant at providing the tools for living we should’ve learned growing up but didn’t. Honestly, all of us can use a healthy dose of good counseling.

Don’t be afraid to try different counselors before you find the one that works for you. This process can take a year or two or more, but keep at it. The right counselor is out there. It could be a professional counselor, a pastor, or a life coach, or a combination thereof.

There’s wisdom in using more than one professional at the same time. Often, they deal with different areas. For example, professional counselors typically can deal with different things than pastors, and pastors will deal with things counselors often won’t touch.

For example, we’ve had people say they got more healing in a 10-week abortion healing Bible study then they got in 25 years of counseling. That doesn’t mean there was anything wrong with their counseling; it just means it wasn’t dealing with the critical issue.

BTW, if you have had sexual abuse, an abortion, or other types of trauma, you need healing from people who deal with that specific thing.

Pro Tip: If there’s anything in your life where you say, “I’ll talk about anything but this,” that’s probably the thing you need to get specific healing for. It could be your relationship with a parent, an abortion, sexual abuse, or another form of trauma. But if there’s pain you don’t want to go to, going to that pain is probably where your healing lies.

You can find wise and well-trained practitioners in our free 1-page resource list at the bottom of this post.

2) Deliverance

Deliverance is the process of removing demonic influences (or, in some cases, control) from your life. Now don’t flip out. This is not what you see in Hollywood or anything creepy or scary. For a Christian, this is just a spiritual reality.

While Christians cannot be overtly possessed, we can certainly be oppressed, and we often are. All of us need some degree of deliverance.

“You cannot counsel a demon. You have to drive that sucker out with power and authority.” –John Fichtner

Demons have power in our lives when we believe their lies. So even as Christians, we can give demons a foothold in our lives. If the foothold stays there long enough, it gets reinforced as a structure. If the structure stays there long enough, it gets built into a stronghold.

A stronghold has a strong hold on us, because it’s built on a foundation of lies we take for granted as truth.

Deliverance is the process of tearing down those lies, forgiving whoever tempted us to believe them (often by sin against us), repenting of believing them, and replacing them with God’s truth. Once the lie is repented of and no longer believed, the demons attached to it have no more legal right to be in your life and can be commanded out.

In the early days of the church learning about deliverance, there was a lot of rolling around on the floor, snotting and vomiting, shouting, and other crazy stuff. Demons love to make a show and embarrass the person. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Not at all.

Deliverance is one of those things where a little bit of knowledge can do a whole lot of damage. There are a lot of poor practitioners out there who really don’t know what they’re doing.

If you’ve had a negative experience with deliverance, don’t give up. A trained practitioner who knows what they’re doing won’t let the demons put on a show. In fact, they take authority right from the beginning to make a safe space to explore with you the truth God wants to bring.

You can find wise and well-trained practitioners in our free 1-page resource list at the bottom of this post.

3) Inner Healing

When we are wounded, we often respond in a sinful way. While the original sin or trauma against us is not in any way our fault, our sinful response to it is. We often make inner vows to protect ourselves, rejecting God as our protector.

  • “I’ll never let anyone close to me again. I’ll reject them before they reject me.”
  • “I’ll never be angry like my dad (or mom).”
  • “I’ll never rely on anyone. I’ll take care of myself.”

Those inner vows lead to bitter root expectations of how we will be treated. If we expect abandonment, we gravitate to relationships with people likely to abandon us. If we feel unworthy of love, we gravitate to relationships with abusive people who don’t treat us lovingly.

Inner healing is the process of identifying those inner vows, repenting of making them, renouncing them, and replacing them with God’s truth. You can read about the principles of inner healing in Dave’s FREE fun and engaging story here, The Runt: A Fable of Giant Inner Healing. In fact, periodically we do a 12-week zoom group going through the ebook. That link takes you to the waiting list page, but you can also download the ebook from there.

Inner healing is similar to deliverance in that a little knowledge can do a lot of damage. There are a lot of poor practitioners out there. You can find good ones in our resource list at the bottom of this post.

4) Medication

There’s nothing unspiritual about medication. Some people need medication first to level them out enough to receive inner healing, deliverance, or counseling. Other people need some deliverance or inner healing first before the medication can work, and then some good counseling. There’s no universal formula.

Your healing journey will be unique to you. Don’t let shame, or the unfortunate ignorance of other Christians, keep you from getting medication if you need it. Talk to your doctor. Talk to your pastor. Sign releases and ask them to talk to each other. Get everyone on your team on the same page.

What They All Have in Common

What do all things have in common? Two main things.

(1) Someone else is helping you. You can’t do it alone. Remember, shame is the major tool of our enemy to keep you living in wounding. Shame gets its power from secrecy and isolation. So in just reaching out for help, you’ve broken 90% of shame’s power right there. That’s why initially asking for help in the first place can be the hardest part.

(2) Going into the pain. In each case, you’re going to where the pain is. This is why so many people medicate their pain instead of getting healing for it. Getting healing hurts! Healing lies on the other side of the pain, and you have to go through the pain to get there. But you can get there.

So How about It?

Are you willing to go through a painful season of healing in your life, in order to live the adventure God created you for? An adventure beyond your wildest dreams? We would love to walk that journey with you. Reach out to us with an email.

Also, if you’re looking for healing, you can download our free 1-page resource list here. We have either personally benefitted from or personally know each of these ministries and we vouch for them. They know what they’re doing. (We do not have any affiliate relationship with any of these ministries.)

Have you been through healing and come out the other side? Leave a comment; your story will help others.

And please share this post to bless more people.

6 Ways the Enemy Keeps Us in Pain

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Our enemy is terrified of who God created you to be. And for good reason. When one Christian actually steps into the adventure God created him to live, the enemy’s kingdom suffers tremendous losses. Structures of lies that took decades to build come crumbling down in a moment. Whole people groups are set free. The atmosphere of an entire city changes.

The influence of one person living out her calling is felt for generations into the future, destroying the false works of a thousand ungodly pagans or compromised Christians. Seriously. One puts a thousand to flight.

“One of you routs a thousand, because the Lord your God fights for you, just as he promised.” –Joshua 23:10

So the enemy fights with everything he has to keep us from living the adventure God created us for. His primary strategy is trauma or sin against us which is not our fault. (Of course if he can deceive us to sin and inflict trauma on ourselves, that’s a bonus.) Wounding in our lives causes tremendous pain. Pain produces fear, and fear keeps us from living the adventure God created us for. Goal achieved.

He’s an expert at getting us to live in fear because he lives in fear. He’s read the Bible; he knows what’s coming. He’s terrified of his future, and he’s terrified of ours.

He provides false ways to deal with the pain in our lives. They all alleviate the pain (temporarily) without dealing with the underlying wounding. Hence, they all are doomed to fail in the long run.

See if you recognize any of these 6 demonic strategies operating in your own life. Some of them have certainly operated in mine. Often, they operate in combination.

1) Denial

Pain? No, there’s no pain here. Nothing to see, go back to your lives, citizens. It’s amazing how obvious it is when some else is denying an issue in their life, and equally amazing how blinded we can be to our own.

We see this in the church all the time. That thing in my past, no problem there. It’s all under the Blood! Yes, our entire past is covered under the redeeming Blood of Jesus. But being forgiven and being healed are two entirely different things.

We don’t go looking for things in our past, or new hip things to blame our parents for. But consistent bad fruit in our lives comes from somewhere. Too much of American church life is sin management, where we just deal with the obvious bad fruit without getting the root causes.

We too often deal with the symptoms, not the disease. All that does is teach us to get really good at hiding the symptoms while the disease goes merrily on, secretly wreaking havoc in our lives until it explodes.

If our past planted roots in our life that bear bad fruit in the present, then it’s not a past problem at all, is it? It’s a present problem, and we might have to go into the past to heal it.

2) Addictions

Medicating the pain. This is a bonus for the enemy, since many addictions, even when legal, lead to their own nasty consequences. Smoking leads to cancer. Drug and alcohol abuse lead to lying, theft, violence and/or jail time.

Sex addictions lead to broken relationships, exploiting other people as objects, epidemic fatherless in our society, and a deep-rooted self-hatred.

Yet in the moment, the addiction numbs the pain. So we learn to live for the moment, regardless of future consequences. We find ourselves in the bondage of just living for the next hit of our drug of choice.

3) Busy, Busy, Busy!

Fill your days with busyness, doing all the good, safe things. Never take a moment to hear the passionate cry of our heart.

In inner healing we call this Performance Orientation. It’s another form of addiction. It’s hard to identify because it looks so good on the outside. But it’s just a socially acceptable way of medicating pain.

4) Constant Media

Barrage your thoughts with a constant stream of noise, drowning out the whisper of God’s calling. The goal is to avoid any quiet moment when the Holy Spirit might speak to us.

The practice of silence is a lost art in our society. But it’s desperately needed. Please take some time each day to unplug. Even if it’s just 10 minutes.

This practice probably saved my life. When I went through my rebellious time in high school, I filled my days with noise. The Holy Spirit spoke to me in the quiet moments when I’d be getting ready for bed. Fortunately for me, we didn’t have earbuds back then that could keep the distractions flowing dawn to dusk. I heard him in those quiet moments and repented, turning back to him. Otherwise, I probably would not have survived the more difficult times in my adolescence that were to follow.

5) Cause Pain in Others

If I’m creating victims, I must not be one, right? Hurt people hurt people. The enemy gets exponential mileage out of this one. The perpetrator medicates his own pain by inflicting trauma on others.

I am in no way excusing any sin against you. And the perpetrator should go to jail if it was a crime. You deserve justice. But it can help in your healing to reprofile that person, realizing that they were acting out of their own wounding. Forgiveness is not pretending they didn’t do evil to you or letting them off the hook, but coming to the place where they are not the evil they did to you.

6) Control

Often, as a result of trauma or pain in our lives, we make inner vows to control so we won’t get hurt again. The problem is, that never works. But that doesn’t mean we stop trying. We’re deceived into thinking it’s safer that facing the pain. It certainly hurts less.

All of These Strategies Reinforce Shame

Shame is the #1 reason people don’t get healing. Shame makes us feel like we are something wrong. And since we are the thing that’s wrong, we can never be healed. The truth is, we have something wrong, but Jesus can totally heal it. It doesn’t have to be this way forever.

But God

Eventually, because of the pursuit of God’s relentless love, these things stop working. When what used to work in our lives no longer works, that’s a sign God wants to heal something. Although it doesn’t feel graceful because some aspect of our life is falling apart, it’s actually God’s grace to bring us into a season of healing.

So How about You?

Can you relate? Have you experienced these strategies in your life? Tell us in the comments; your story will help others. Or are you experiencing them now and want freedom? Shoot us an email; we’d love to share your journey with you. And please share this post to reach more people.

How to Know When You’re Decorating the Walls of Your Prison

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We all do the best we can to make our lives beautiful. But sometimes we get comfortable with behaviors, either our own or others, that aren’t healthy. We’ve been subject to them for so long they feel normal. Maybe they’re even common. But they aren’t healthy. So instead of living in the mansion of freedom Jesus has for us, we end up decorating the walls of our prison cell.

We make that prison cell look really nice too. It’s a comfortable place. But it’s a prison and it’s keeping us bound. It’s keeping us from the freedom that Jesus has for us.

The sticky wicket is, we often don’t know it. Here are 3 red flags that can clue you into the truth that you might be decorating your prison cell walls, instead of your room in the mansion of freedom that Jesus has for you.

1) There’s Something in the Past that’s Not Been Healed

We hear this one all the time in Christian circles. “It’s in the past; it’s under the blood.” That’s true. But if it’s causing present day bad fruit in your life—addictions, unworthiness, self-hatred, etc.—then it’s not in the past at all, is it?

When we become a Christian, we have that moment at the cross where we surrender and make Jesus the Lord of our life. Our past is instantly forgiven by the power of his blood. But that doesn’t mean it’s healed. Often it’s not.

Think of it this way. Have you ever changed the oil in your car and put the old oil in a milk carton? You mean to throw it away the next day, but life happens and you forget. Stuff gets piled up in the garage in front of that milk carton and you forget it’s back there.

Oil can last a long time in a milk carton. But eventually, that bugger’s going to leak. And it’s going to seep into every other cardboard box around it.

So, come December, you get the box of Christmas ornaments. But what’s that stain on the box? Weird. You clean it up and wipe off any ornaments affected. But then another box gets stained, and the books you stored inside are ruined. What’s up with that? Where’s this goop coming from?

You don’t realize that old oil is slowly seeping out of that milk carton, way in the back, into everything around it. And it’s going to keep happening, seeping into every different box in your life, until you deal with it.

“But I changed that oil years ago! It’s in the past!” Yeah, but if it’s seeping into boxes today and ruining things, it’s a present-day problem.

2) You’re Not Willing to Go There – “Anything but This”

Ok, maybe you know what that thing is, but you’re not willing to go there.

Doing post-abortive healing work, we’ve seen people with various different traumas in their life. Sometimes people say, “Anything but that. I’ll deal with my sexual abuse as a child, my abusive marriage, my addictions, my depression. But we’re not going to talk about my abortion.” But if that’s the milk carton the oil is leaking from, God wants to go there so he can heal it.

3) You Give but You Won’t Receive

So many Christians, especially leaders, medicate their pain by serving. If you’re happy to give to others but won’t receive yourself, you’re likely decorating the walls of your prison cell.

For example, if you’re on the Sunday morning prayer team, but won’t get prayer when you’re hurting, you might be decorating the walls of your prison cell.

If you’re a pastor, who do you get ministry from? You need a support network too. It’s ok if it needs to be someone outside your church. But it needs to be someone. If you don’t go to anyone for ministry or counseling yourself, are you medicating your own pain through ministry? Are you decorating the walls of your prison cell? Jesus has freedom for you.

What to Do When You See It

So what do you do when you realize, “On snap! I’ve been decorating the walls of my prison all these years?”

Get healing for that thing. Yes, that one, way back there. Counseling is a great place to start, either pastoral or professional. Preferably get both, and sign releases so they can talk to each other. You want everybody on the same page.

BTW, if either poo-poos the other, that is, if your pastor poo-poos professional counselor or your counselor poo-poos pastoral counseling, that’s a red flag. Find a different one. You don’t want counseling from either a pastor or a professional with a messiah “all you need is me” complex. They’re probably medicating their own pain by fixing you. Not healthy. Find someone who’s humble and willing to work as a team.

Your Turn

Does this resonate? Share your story in the comments; it will help others. And please share if this post will bless others.

How to Do a Powerful Spiritual Reset in 2 Steps

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Starting in late February 2020, during Lent, our church embarked on a sermon series called “Reset: Next Generation.” We sought God through congregational fasting about if and how the Holy Spirit wants our church to change. We found out later that many prophetic voices across Christendom in that same time period received similar words. Reset.

Then covid-19 hit. Talk about a reset! It is pretty much resetting the whole world, which is not necessarily a bad thing, although it’s certainly painful.

I am in no way playing down the seriousness of covid-19, or the tragedy that has played out all around the world, from China to South Korea to Iran to Italy to Spain to France to New York. Nor am I downplaying the longer-term danger of this hour, where dark forces in our government are testing using this opportunity to steer America toward socialism. If history is any teacher, surrendering “rights” for “security” is a good way to lose both.

But, except for our indirect voice in voting, those decisions are way above our paygrade for most of us. So while, yes, all of that is in play, I think God is doing something else on a grass roots level, where each of us lives as individuals. God is offering every church, and more importantly each of us individually, own personal “reset” during this season.

If we, the people of God, correctly discern this season and reset accordingly to the opportunity God is affording us now, then everything else will fall into place. Because all those “bigger” things are just made up of people. So if people will reset, the churches will reset in intimacy. The government will reset in righteousness. Corporations will reset in integrity. Society will reset in godliness. Resets in all the “big” things above our paygrade start with resets in us.

If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and heal their land. – 2 Chronicles 7:14

The best thing about 2 Chronicles 7:14 is it doesn’t matter what the pagans do. It matters what God’s people do. If we take this opportunity to hear the Holy Spirit and reset our lives, God will take care of the rest and heal our land. I think God is inviting us to partner with him in ushering in the Third Great Awakening.

So how do we reset? We perform resets on our devices every day. I think we can learn a lot for this season by the way computers reset. In particular, here are two ways we can perform a godly reset during this golden opportunity.

1) What Memory Do You Need to Power Off?

We’ve all had the experience of working on a computer when either the power goes out or our laptop battery dies. Doh! I just lost all that work I didn’t save! In the computer industry, we have a saying: “There are two types of computer users: Those who have lost critical data, and those who are about to. Save often.”

When the power bounces and a computer resets, the first thing that happens is volatile memory is lost. Everything on the hard drive is still there, but whatever was actually inside the working memory of the computer is gone.

When God performed resets in the Bible, there is often something that needs to be forgotten. Not “forgotten” in the sense of “not remembered anymore”—it’s important to remember where we’ve come from and what God’s done for us so far. But “forgotten” in the sense of “not lived out anymore.”

For example, look at some of God’s resets in the Bible:

  • Israel’s Deliverance from Egypt through Moses. The people of Israel needed to forget how to live under oppression as slaves. Their inability to forget that lifestyle caused a lot of problems.
  • The Captivity in Babylon. God’s people needed to forget their godless, pagan practices and lifestyles.
  • The Cross. The greatest reset in human history so far, we could now forget legalism.
  • Jesus’ Return. Still to come, we will be able to forget injustice as he sets everything right.

What do you need to forget in your life? What godless lifestyle and/or practice do you need to leave behind? Going deeper, what pain is that thing medicating? What sin against you by someone else, what oppression, what injustice, does God want to heal?

2) Reset Your BIOS

When a computer boots up, the first program to execute is the BIOS, the Basic Input/Output System. Most computers display a splash screen while this is happening. A computer’s BIOS sets up the basic stuff it needs to operate—all the input/output devices, like the hard drive, the keyboard, the monitor, the mouse, the USB ports. A computer can’t do much without input or output. Neither can you.

In fact, all of a computer’s output, everything it does, is a function of the input it’s given. That’s why we say in the computer industry “GIGO: Garbage In, Garbage Out.” As humans, we work the same way.

Use this period of God’s reset to refresh your BIOS. What inputs are you allowing into your spirit? What media do you watch? What media do you listen to? The input you consume directly affects the output of your life, even if you don’t see it.

Often, tragically, we hold ourselves back from the fullness God has for us by the media we consume. Because we don’t experience that closeness to God, we don’t know what we’re missing. We think we’re fine but in reality we’re only living a shadow of what we could be.

Use this opportunity to re-evaluate all the media you consume, from video games to TV to movies to music. Don’t take anything for granted, but ask the Holy Spirit what that media looks like through God’s eyes.

One real simple litmus test for godly media: Does it contain or promote sex outside of marriage (between one man and one woman)?

If your favorite TV show has people sleeping together who aren’t married—or homosexual or transsexual characters where that lifestyle is portrayed as acceptable—watching that show is harming you. It doesn’t matter if the rest of the world is watching it. It’s moving you further away from God.

Does the music you’re listening to degrade women by reducing them to sex objects? Modern rap is notorious for this; although, there’s good rap out there too. Every generation has its unredeemed music. There’s a reason you’ve probably never heard the words to Glenn Miller’s 1940s hit “In the Mood.” You’ve probably only heard big bands play the instrumental version. Although the music is awesome, the words are straight lust.

Now I’m a musician, and I love secular music. There’s a lot of good stuff out there. So no legalism here, just fact. I’m just saying as the people of God, we need to be discerning about the media we allow ourselves to consume. Not to win brownie points on some legalistic checklist, but because it’s taking us further away from our lover-God.

The Question before Us

I believe, in this season of God’s reset upon the earth, he is wanting to launch the Third Great Awakening by drawing us back to himself. Will you turn off the TV, put down the headphones, silence your phone, and spend time with the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, the God who loves you? Will you unplug for a moment and reset your life centered on Jesus? What an exciting time to be alive!

Letting Go of What We Love That’s Killing Us

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Sometimes we hang onto things that hold us back from our God-given destiny. They hold us back from the very thing we were created for and would be happiest doing. But we love those things and can’t let go.

These things have a name in scripture, but it’s a name our modern world doesn’t like. It’s an extremely offensive name, by today’s sensibilities. It’s certainly not politically correct. Many churches have even stopped using this name for things, to the great harm of their congregants. That name is this: Sin.

Sometimes we hang onto our sin like our lives depended on it, when in fact the opposite is true. In reality, our lives depend on letting it go.

Usually we know what it is, but sometimes it’s hidden. Here’s a clue. If there’s something in your life where you say, “Lord, you can have anything but this one thing! Can’t I just have this one thing?” You’ve probably found it. It’s possible it’s not even a bad thing, in and of itself; for example, watching sports.

But if it’s an idol in our lives, then it’s sin for us. If we sacrifice serving others for it, then to us it’s sin. If we sacrifice intimacy with Jesus for it, then it’s sin in our lives, and it’s silently destroying us.

Or not so silently. Often, we think we’re hiding it pretty well, when the only one we’re fooling is ourselves. Everyone else knows. We might as well admit it.

How to Get Rid of It

Remember at the beginning of Lord of the Rings (specifically The Fellowship of the Ring) when Bilbo the hobbit is about to leave the Shire? He’s leaving his fancy hobbit-hole and all his possessions to his nephew Frodo. Although he also intends to leave his magic ring behind, he has great difficulty doing so.

In this scene, you and I are Bilbo, and the ring represents sin in our lives that we want to let go off. But it’s hard. Gandalf represents Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and God the Father.

Friendly Reminders

Bilbo’s got his backpack on and is ready to leave the Shire for good. Gandalf asks him if he’s leaving everything to Frodo, even the ring. “Yes, of course,” answers Bilbo. “The ring’s in an envelope on the mantle for Frodo. Oh wait, it’s here in my pocket.”

Even though Bilbo intended to leave the ring for Frodo, he still had it in his pocket. While we often desire to let go of our sin, our good intentions mean nothing by themselves. Our actions are what change our lives for the better, or the worse.

Gandalf asked Bilbo where the ring is. It’s only then that Bilbo realizes he still has it in his pocket. The Holy Spirit starts by giving us gentle, friendly reminders.

Self-Justification and Rationalization

Then, confronted with the fact that he’s not following through on his commitment to leave the ring behind, Bilbo starts to justify himself. “Why shouldn’t it be in my pocket? It’s mine. It came to me after all. Why shouldn’t I keep it? It’s precious to me.”

This is very unlike Bilbo. He is beginning to display the character of the ring, rather than himself. When we refuse to let go of the sin God is pointing out in our lives, it will infect our character. The character of the sin will be on display in our lives, hi-jacking who God created us to be.

Gandalf is very concerned, because this is not like Bilbo. He knows the ring is not good for Bilbo. And while he certainly has the power to take it from Bilbo, he also knows Bilbo has to choose to give it up himself. Otherwise, it would continue to have power over Bilbo like it does over Gollum. Forced from him, it would continue to pull Bilbo toward it. This is why religion can’t free you from sin. Only your repentance, freely given and not guilted out of you, can do that.

Far too many of our churches operate under law. But that just drives our sin underground. We get sneakier about hiding it. We pretend we’re working on it. But we never actually let it go.

Anger and Accusation

Gandalf does not like the way things are going and has to say something. “I think you’ve had that ring quite long enough.”

No condemnation, just simple truth. The Holy Spirit will do that. Because presenting truth presents a choice.

Bilbo chooses to get angry. “What business is it of yours what I do with my own things? You just want it for yourself!” Do we do that? Do we accuse God to distract from the truth about us?

Gandalf changes. The room gets dark and he grows big. “Bilbo Baggins! I am not trying to rob you!” This shocks Bilbo out of his self-deceptive spell. Sometimes God has to do this. Sometimes God allows difficult circumstances in our lives to shock us out of our self-justification and denial.

Gandalf shrinks again and the room lightens up. “I am trying to save you,” says Gandalf as compassionately as he can. “Trust me as you once did.”

Bilbo tears up and hugs Gandalf. “I’m sorry, Gandalf! You are right, of course. The ring will go to Frodo.”

The Final Letting Go

“Well, that’s a relief!” says Bilbo. “All right then, I’m off. Goodbye Gandalf!” Bilbo starts to walk out the door.

“Bilbo,” reminds Gandalf, “the ring is still in your pocket.” The choice is still Bilbo’s. But Gandalf won’t let him “accidentally” walk off with the ring. The Holy Spirit will do this, giving us as many reminders as we need. God’s not going to let us “accidentally” keep our sin. If we decide to keep it, he’s going to make sure we know it’s a conscious choice.

Bilbo takes the ring out of his pocket. While slightly different than the book, director Peter Jackson did such a phenomenal portrayal of this in the movie. Bilbo puts the ring on the flat palm of his hand. Begrudgingly, slowly, he turns his hand so the ring can fall to the floor.

But the ring clings to Bilbo’s hand far past the point when natural gravity would have taken it. The ring doesn’t want to leave Bilbo, and it’s hanging on for all it’s worth. Sin does that with us. It doesn’t want to leave. It makes itself very heavy and hard to let go of.

Finally, gravity does take over and the ring falls from Bilbo’s hand to the floor. Bilbo is free! And you can tell in his countenance that he feels 100 pounds lighter.

That’s what repentance does for us. That’s when freedom comes. And we feel a million pounds lighter, wondering why we fought so hard to hang onto our sin. Although the Holy Spirit helps us, at the end of the day, the choice is ours.

Your Turn

Have you experienced these different stages? Are you still fighting through one or more of them? Tell us your story in the comments or shoot us an email. And please share this post if it would bless others.