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.

How to Talk to Your Heart

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We often have this false idea in the Western world that the battle’s all in the mind, that it’s all about how we think. If that were true, why do people smoke, do drugs, drink excessively, eat excessively, and do all sorts of things they know is bad for them? There must be something else going on.

The problems in our mind often lead to bad fruit, but the root of our problems is often not in our mind at all, but in our heart.

So often in the church we minister to people’s behavior, because that’s the low-hanging, bad fruit. It’s visible. It’s obvious. It’s clearly a problem. But that just leads to sin management, not real transformation. We have to minister to the root.

The root is often at the heart. In Western culture, in our arrogance, we’ve exalted our intellect at the expense of our heart. Yes, our thoughts are important, and we want to develop the skill of taking every thought captive to Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5). There is a battle in the mind for sure. But that’s the effect, not the cause. The foundational battle is in the heart, and often it shapes our behavior and our thinking more than our mind does.

Jesus agrees with me. He says in Matthew 15:19, “For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.”

You catch that? Those are all behavioral problems he just mentioned, and he didn’t say they came from bad theology or wrong thinking. They come from the heart. The bad theology and wrong thinking is just our brain rationalizing what’s already in our heart.

And again, Jesus says in Luke 6:45, “A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.”

Jesus thought the heart was pretty important.

Ever have a mile’s worth of negative reaction over an inch of offense? Ever been like, “Where’d that come from?” And then we’re all embarrassed and ashamed because we reacted so strongly when we know that strong of a reaction wasn’t merited? I’ve done that, been there, got the tee-shirt. That’s a clue there’s a heart issue going on.

Often when we’re hurting, or addressing bad fruit in our lives, the most important conversation we can have is with our heart. We have so played-down our hearts and dishonored our hearts, while they are so wounded. A good way to start healing is to honor our heart by learning to listen to it.

So how do you talk to your heart? It may look different for you, but this is how I do it. I ask these four questions:

  1. Heart, why are you hurting, what wounded you?
  2. Heart, how did that make you feel?
  3. Heart, what did you come to believe? About yourself? Others? God?
  4. Ok, Heart, then what did you vow to protect yourself?

I put my hand over my heart, just because it helps me focus. Then I say (preferably out loud if I’m in a safe space like my car or some other private place), “Heart, why are you afraid?” or “Heart, why are you hurting?” And then I listen.

This is listening, so you have to protect the quiet. My brain, always trying to help, jumps in with all sorts of answers, “because of this,” or “because of that.” I have to tell my brain, “Shut up, I’m not talking to you.” Then I go back to quiet, listening to my heart.

Sometimes answers are immediate, but sometimes I have to wait anywhere between a few minutes or a few days. Sometimes even a few weeks, but I keep asking. It’s not that my heart’s not answering, it’s that I’m hard-of-heart-hearing. Sometimes it’s hard for me to hear my heart. For some of us, this is a completely foreign concept.

To talk to our heart, we have to unlearn a bunch of stuff we’ve learned. Like, “all meaning can be expressed in words.” Not! Our heart learned to talk a long time before our brain did. And when our heart learned to talk, we didn’t have verbal language yet. That’s why 90% of all communication is non-verbal. It’s heart-speak.

So our heart doesn’t always talk in words. Sometimes a memory will pop up. Your heart is telling you the answer is because “this” happened.

Our brain can help if we train it to. For example, I’ve dealt at various times with different levels of self-hatred. I had a very good Christian childhood and my parents loved me. And my siblings, two brothers 10 years older than me, also loved me and were very good to me. I had no trauma growing up. But because of a deep-rooted self-hatred I didn’t even know was there, I made some poor choices in my life because I didn’t think I deserved any better. So I recently was trying to figure out where that came from.

So I asked my heart, “Heart, what’s your wound?” Crickets. I was having trouble hearing my heart. That’s not a question it necessarily wants to answer, and hearing your heart is hard anyway. So I let my brain help, giving my heart a multiple-choice question instead of an essay question.

“I was bullied.” Nothing. Nope that’s not it.

“My parents weren’t proud of me.” Nothing. I know that’s not true, that lie has no power over me.

“I was a mistake.” Sudden strong emotion! Where’d that come from? I had to fight back an audible cry in the car. Bingo! That’s the wound. My two brothers were 10 years older than me, and I thought I was a mistake.

Now I was onto something. So I probed deeper, and now the answers came quickly. “Heart, how did that make you feel?” Unloved.

“Heart, what did you come to believe?” No one will love me.

“Heart, what did you vow to protect yourself?” I will make everyone happy so they love me.

That explains so much! My mom told me as a baby I’d cackle or coo or do whatever made the person holding me smile.

My dad told me, as a 2-year old, they only had to tell me once to not touch the expensive figurines on the coffee table, and I wouldn’t. He said he’d never seen another child like me.

These sound like good things, but they were a child trying to earn love because he believed a foundational lie. It lead to some bad choices later on.

Since I’ve learned what the wound was, what the foundational lie was, it’s been much easier to deal with. Now when I have thoughts of self-hatred, I call out the lie and replace it with God’s truth. “No, I’m not a mistake. I am fearfully and wonderfully made. God’s works are wonderful, I know that full well.” (That’s Psalm 139:14, BTW. If you struggle with self-hatred, internalize Psalm 139. It’s the anti-self-hatred psalm.)

So what about you? Talk to your heart lately? Do you need to? Try this out and let us know how it goes in comments or shoot us email. We’d really love to hear from you. And please share this if you think it would help someone else.

BTW, the concepts in this post come from the Identity and Destiny seminar by Sandra Sellmer-Kersten, from Elijah House Ministries – Australia. If you liked this post, you’ll love this DVD series, available here. FYI, this is *not* an affiliate link; I get no commission if you click or buy. But you will get a tremendous, life transformation, like I did. I cannot recommend this series highly enough.

How We Get Trapped and How We Get Free

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The worst bondages are the ones we don’t realize we have. We’ve been like this so long, it seems normal. But it’s not normal. Bondages keep us from living our best life, and Jesus has healing for us. But to live in his freedom, we need to understand how we get trapped and how we get free.

Here’s the essence of inner healing in a nutshell.

How We Get Trapped

Typically, someone sins against us. That is not our fault. Never. Maybe you were abused, lied to, betrayed, rejected, abandoned, or something worse. No one deserves to be treated like that. Ever.

But what happens next is our fault. We vow to protect our own heart instead of trusting God. It happens like this.

When we are sinned against, we make negative judgements about ourselves, about others, about God, and about the world. Here are some examples:

  • “I’m dirty.”
  • “People hate me.”
  • “God doesn’t love me.”
  • “It’s dangerous to be too happy.”
  • “I don’t have value.”
  • “I’m only loved when I’m being good.”
  • “Emotions aren’t safe.”
  • “No one will ever protect me.”
  • “I shouldn’t be alive.”
  • “I’m the wrong gender.”

Based on that judgment, we form a negative expectation of how we will be treated.

  • “People will always reject me.”
  • “Everyone will betray me.”
  • “I will only be loved if I perform.”
  • “Men only love me as an object.”
  • “A father will always leave me.”
  • “I will always be betrayed.”
  • “I will never receive anything good from life.”
  • “People will never accept me as a man.”

Have you ever met someone, talked innocent small talk with them for 10 seconds, and thought, “I don’t know why, but I just hate this person!” You are actually feeling their expectation.

There are demonic spirits that read that expectation and say, “Ok, Dave expects everyone to reject him. Let me help him with that!” And that expectation goes out like a cloud from that person, tempting everyone they come into contact with to reject them as soon as possible.

Then the person is rejected, which strengthens their expectation, and around the track we go again.

Based on that expectation, we make an inner vow to protect our own heart.

  • “I will never let anyone get close to me so their inevitable rejection won’t hurt.”
  • “I will always be the good boy or good girl so people will love me.”
  • “I will protect myself.”
  • “I will hurt them before they hurt me.”
  • “I will not have emotions.”
  • “I will never be like my parent.”
  • “I want to die.”
  • “I will be the other gender.”

This is our sin. We are protecting our own heart, instead of taking our pain to God and trusting him to protect our heart. It’s the same as in the Garden of Eden. We are being our own god.

Our inner vows are our prison bars.

Living in an isolated prison cell is pretty safe. But it’s a prison cell. It’s not living; it’s just existing. It’s cut off from joy, from love, and from everything else that makes life worth living. We will never live the amazing adventure God has for us in that place. He created us for so much more.

It’s like a boat being chained to the dock. It’ll never risk going out in deep water where so many other boats have sunk. But being chained to the dock is not what that boat was created for, and it’ll never be fulfilled there.

Yes, those inner vows keep us safe, but it’s a miserable safety. It’s a case of the cure being worse than the disease.

Are you chained to the dock by your inner vows? Jesus created us to sail out into deep water. True, it’s not safe out there, but God is good. Jesus will be our safety, whatever happens.

How to Recognize an Inner Vow

Often, we form inner vows very early in life, even before we have language. That makes them very hard to articulate. Or even recognize. We’ve had them virtually our whole life; they seem normal. So how do we recognize when an inner vow is in play when they are hidden from us?

A big clue is when we have a mile of reaction to an inch worth of offense. For example, maybe we fly off the handle in a rage when the other person really didn’t do anything rage-worthy. Ask the Holy Spirit if an inner vow is affecting our behavior. Ask your heart.

Another big clue is when negative behavior is confronted in our lives and we say, “That’s just the way I am.” Perhaps, but that’s a choice we make. That’s not how we were created to be, and Jesus has freedom and healing available, if we want it.

How We Get Free

So how do we get free from inner vows? Here’s a 5 step process. We do this in prayer, and it’s best to go through it with someone else, like your spouse, pastor, Christian counselor, or friend. Someone who understands inner healing and can support and lead you through it. But if you don’t have that safe person, do it just you and Jesus.

  1. Identify the judgement, the expectation, and the inner vow. These questions can help you through this process.
  • What happened to you?
  • Because that happened, what did you decide about the world? Yourself? Others? God? (This is the judgement.)
  • Because you believed that to be true, what did you come to expect?
  • Because of that, how did you vow to protect your heart?
  • Repent for making the inner vow. Break it, declaring out loud that you no longer hold to that vow. Take it to the foot of the cross and leave it there.
  • Renounce the benefit. In some way, that vow was keeping you safe. If you don’t know the benefit, ask the Holy Spirit; he’ll tell you.
  • Replace the judgement and expectation with God’s truth. For example, if the expectation was to be rejected, maybe God’s truth is Hebrew 13:5, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” Replacement happens with practice over time. In this example, when tempted to expect rejection, or when feeling it, say (out loud if possible), “No, God will never leave me nor forsake me.”

We can walk in the freedom God has for us. We can walk in Jesus’ healing. Having gone through this process several times, I can tell you, freedom is so much better than the prison cell. Let the Holy Spirit take you there.

Your Turn

Have you had a mile of reaction to an inch of offense? What inner vows have you identified in your life? What judgements and expectations? What is God’s truth that sets you free? Tell us your story in the comments, and please share this post. Let’s get this message out there.

How to Validate Someone’s Pain

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As Christians, when we see someone hurting, we all want to help. That’s good, we should. The problem is, many of us have never been trained how to really help someone who’s hurting. We don’t know how, or even what to do. Often, unfortunately, well-meaning Christians do more harm than good.

As the church stands on the brink of the Third Great Awakening, our churches are going to be overwhelmed by a flood of hurting people. We need to get comfortable being around people who are hurting, without trying to fix them.

And it’s not just the unsaved coming into our churches who are hurting. There’s a huge number of people in our churches right now who are hurting. But they’re hiding their hurt because:

  1. They think they’re the only one. Look at all these happy people. I’m the only one who’s faking it. No, believe me, you’re really not.
  2. They’re afraid of being judged. Because either they have been in the past, or they’ve seen other people with similar issues be treated as “less than.”

So our lack of understanding is actually preventing people from getting the healing Jesus has for them. And that’s the last thing any of us want.

If you can’t go to the people of God when you’re hurting, where can you go?

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Before trying to solve the problem, or offering them help, there’s something important we need to do first. And it makes all the difference.

The single most important thing you can do to help someone who’s hurting is validate their pain. Before you do anything else, validate their pain. Validate how they feel. This gives them acceptance instead of judgement, and it creates a safe place.

So how do we do this?

Let Them Hurt

That sounds really strange, doesn’t it? Let them hurt?!? That’s not compassionate! Let me explain. I don’t mean ignore them or their pain. I don’t mean being cold or distant or uncompassionate or insensitive.

Here’s the deal. When someone’s going through their valley of the shadow of death, either physically, emotionally, or spiritually, we naturally want to find them an off-ramp. Out of compassion, we want to fix the problem for them. Don’t do that, because you can’t. Only Jesus is the healer.

What am I supposed to do then? I’m glad you asked.

Be Present

There’s a great model in Job 2:11-13.

They sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was. –Job 2:13

Job’s friends normally get a bad rap, and rightfully so. But they got it right for a whole week, when they just sat with him in the ashes of his life, and didn’t say anything. Then they opened their mouths, and it was all downhill from there.

Ok, so practically, how do we do this? Proverbs 18:21 says, “Life and death are in the power of the tongue.” What we say, and don’t say, is important.

What to NOT Say

Too often, we unintentionally discount people’s pain. The following are things well-meaning Christians often say, but are not helpful because they discount the person’s pain.

  • “I understand.”
     No, you really don’t. You haven’t experienced what they’re going through. And even if you have, you haven’t experienced it as them, with their backstory, their fears, and their previous hurts. They are a different person and are experiencing it differently than you would.
  • “I went through something similar…”
     This is not the time to tell your story. Listen to and validate their story. Telling your story, when they are trying to tell you theirs, minimizes their story and discounts their pain. Be a real listener. Don’t be a wait-to-talker.
  • “You’ll get through it.”
     Again, this minimizes their pain. What they are really hearing is, “No one understands me, my pain, what I’m going through, or how sacred I am. And it’s not ok for me to tell them. I better hide it.”
  • “Just have faith.”
     Whether you mean it or not, they hear condemnation: “They think I’m a bad Christian because I’m going through this.”
  • “God’s got this.”
     While very true, this totally discounts their pain. Whether you mean it or not, what they hear is, “You’re wrong to feel bad about this. Why are you so upset? Relax, God will work it all out.” While a great thing to tell yourself when you’re going through painful times, don’t flippantly say it to others.

Ok, so what should we say? What do we say to validate someone’s pain?

What to Say

Here are some great things to say. These things make the other person feel heard, and create a safe space for them to share and seek healing.

  • “Tell me more about that.”
     This is a great default when you don’t know what else to say.
  • “I’ve got no grid for what you’re going through. It must be really hard.”
     This is very validating; it invites them to share their feelings. It assures them you care and you’re listening.
  • “You’re really brave to face this.”
     This can be so validating. Believe me, they feel anything but brave right now.
  • “That must really hurt.”
     Again, an invitation to share their feelings, hurts, and fears.
  • “So do you feel like…”
     and take a guess at how they’re feeling. It doesn’t matter if you’re right or not. Just the fact that someone is trying to understand how they feel is huge.
  • “You’re not a bad Christian for going through this.”
     You may see tears with this one. Because believe me, the enemy, and sadly other Christians, have told them they are.
  • “I don’t know what to do.”
     It’s great to admit you don’t have all the answers. This validates them as a person because then they don’t have to feel condemned for not having all the answers either.

Don’t Try to Be the Professional

Don’t try to be their savior; that’s Jesus’ job. Don’t try to lead them through healing if (1) you haven’t received healing yourself, or (2) you don’t know what you’re doing. Especially if they have been through trauma (emotional or physical abuse, abortion, sexual abuse, etc.). Don’t try to be the professional when you aren’t.

Instead, ask if you can help them find the right help. Asking is very important. Never impose a solution by saying things like:

  • “You should read this book.”
  • “Here’s a counselor that deals with these issues.”

Get permission first. Ask first, like this:

  • “Would you like some resources to help with that?”
  • “Would you like me to help you find a counselor (or pastor) who deals with that?”

If they say yes, then you can ask them if they’ve read that book, or give them your counselor or pastoral recommendation. Now you have their permission and you’re not imposing one more thing on them. Now you’re being truly helpful.

If they say no, then just drop it. No matter how much you think your resource will help them, respect their no. They aren’t ready for it yet. Keep it in your back-pocket for another time when they’re ready.

If we do these things, we can make the church a safe place for hurting people. People won’t let us help them until they know they won’t be harmed by doing so. But if we validate their pain, we create a safe place for them to get healing.

Your Turn

How have you been validated (or not) by the church when you were hurting? What did people do that was helpful (or not)? Are you currently hiding because your church isn’t safe for what you’re struggling with? Tell us your story in the comments; let’s get this conversation going. (If your story is sensitive or private, you’re welcome to send us a private email here.) And please share this post if it would bless others.

The Most Damaging Thing We Do to Each Other without Realizing It

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People are people.

We get saved, and we’re instantly justified before God by the blood of Jesus. But we’re not instantly sanctified. We bring all our godless behavior with us into the church.

Being justified means being forgiven. Cleansed of our sin. No longer cannon-fodder for Hell. We were saved from hellfire and brought back into relationship with our loving God when we gave our lives to Jesus. Check.

But being sanctified means being like Jesus. Living like Jesus. Loving like Jesus. Seeing other people like Jesus does. We all have a long way to go. Being sanctified means agreeing more and more with God, and from that place of intimacy, we learn who we really are and start acting like it.

One of the most insidious ungodly behaviors we bring with us into the church is fear of the unknown. We try to control what we don’t understand. It’s natural and human. It’s also wrong, and it does a lot of damage, both outside and inside the church. 

Often, that fear comes out as this really spiritually immature Thing that we condemn in our children when we see it on the playground. In fact, much of our effort in guiding our school age children revolves around teaching them how to avoid this Thing. But we use this Thing on each other in church all the time. Here are some examples. See if you can guess what this Thing is.

Can You Guess This Thing?

Example 1: Someone else is expressing their Christianity differently in a way we don’t understand.So we punish them. Nasty glares. Avoidance. Gossip. Judgmental thoughts that sneak out on our faces.

In one church setting, this Thing might look like, “How dare they lift their hands during worship!” In another church setting, this Thing might look like, “How dare they not lift their hands during worship!” 

(Aside: And to both the Holy Spirit says, “How dare you look at the other person during worship instead of Jesus!”)

Example 2: A young mother, just saved, admits to her women’s Bible study group that she’s having a tough time. She admits to having an abortion years ago, and since getting saved, is grieving for her lost child. The older women scowl at her and say, “Don’t you know that everything in your past is under the Blood? If you’re not full of the joy of the Lord, are you even saved?” 

(Aside: There’s a mile of difference between being forgiven and being healed. If you’re post-abortive and grieving, that’s a sign this is your season of healing. Here are some resources that provide post-abortive healing: Rachel’s Vineyard and Project Rachel. Or call your local Pregnancy Help Center.) 

Example 3: A pastor works up the emotion during worship. “Come on, church! Let’s worship Jesus, he’s worthy! Sing louder! Sing with me!”

(Aside: Yes, he is worthy, but you can’t force or manipulate worship out of people. You can force & manipulate singing and dancing and carrying on, but worship has to be given freely or it’s not worship.)   

Christian Peer Pressure

So what do all these examples have in common? What is this Thing? Christian peer pressure. Yikes! That’s a thing? Unfortunately, yes, and it’s all too common. We’ve all experienced it, and, if we’re being honest, we’ve all done it.

We try to force other people to stay within the experience we’re comfortable with. C’mon, be a good Christian, stay in my mold for you! Conform!

When I was growing up in the late 60’s and 70’s, “cool” was the big word. Everybody wanted to be cool. The adults didn’t know what it meant. I remember hearing adults saying, “Why do you want to be ‘cool?’ It doesn’t mean anything!” While they were right to exhort us to not be influenced by that, it totally means something. It means “acceptable.”

And that’s the thing with Christian peer pressure. You’re only acceptable if you fit into the mold. Be comfortable in there, and don’t be peeking out over the edge!

To be sure, there are some non-negotiables in Christianity: 

  • Jesus is the name above every name and the only path to God. 
  • In fact, Jesus is God. 
  • He’s the God who loved us enough to become human and die for us when we hated him. Jesus was the only person ever who was born to die. All to demonstrate his love for us. What kind of over-the-top, crazy, passionate, love does that? Crazy stuff.
  • And there are a few others I won’t go into here for lack of space. But you know them. Sexual integrity. Giving. Respect. Fruit of the Spirit. Etc.

But here’s the deal. God totally is anti-peer pressure. God doesn’t force us or manipulate us into his way of living. He gives us a choice. In fact, he’s so into this that there’s a whole book of the Bible — Deuteronomy — dedicated to nothing but God articulating our choice so we can make an informed decision. 

“I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him.” 

Deuteronomy 30:19b-20a

It’s the same choice today as he gave the children of Israel as they were about to come into the Promised Land. But it’s our choice. If we don’t choose God’s ways, it breaks his heart and he weeps for us, for the pain we’re bringing on ourselves. But God honors our choice by giving us over to the consequences of it. 

The difference between godly exhortation and fleshly peer pressure is honoring the person’s choice.

Sometimes churches mistakenly get into the business of sin management instead of transformation. And often the chief tool of sin management is Christian peer pressure. Conform. Be like us. Be acceptable. 

Now I’m not saying we need to pretend to agree with people’s bad choices. The world is trying to bully us into doing just that — calling us “haters” if we have the audacity to say someone’s sinful choices aren’t healthy. That’s worldly peer pressure, and whole denominations have succumbed to it.

But there’s peer pressure in the church too, and we need to stop it. God is not calling every man in the church to go to the men’s ministry breakfast, although he probably is calling most. He’s not calling everyone to feed the homeless every Saturday morning. 

Your Calling

But God is calling everyone to do something. If you’re just drifting through life with no real purpose, just killing time till retirement so you can play with your toys, you’re missing your calling. 

Sometimes we truly don’t know our calling and have to really pursue the Lord to find it. Sometimes it finds us while we’re pursuing something else. But often, we know our calling. We’re just afraid to chase it. We’ve found something we’re good at that’s comfortable and safe.  

What makes your heart leap but you’re terrified to pursue? Or to ask it another way: What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?

The best way to stand up against and defeat Christian peer pressure is to know your calling. Then, when pressured to do whatever, you can honestly say, “I’m glad you’re doing that; that’s really great, thanks for inviting me. But I’m called to do this.”

We’re learning to say “no” to good things we aren’t called to so we can focus on the good things we are called to. So can you. You don’t have to be controlled or guilted by someone else’s mold. You don’t have to be a prisoner to anyone else’s peer pressure, Christian or otherwise. Actually, that’s a choice we make to duck our own calling. Doh! No more. Your calling is too important to get run over by somebody else’s mold.

How About You?

Have you experienced Christian peer pressure? What happened? Tell us your story in the comments, and please share if this post would bless someone else.

Why Everyone, Including Trauma Survivors, Wrongly Blames Trauma Survivors

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We have a nasty habit of blaming trauma survivors for the trauma they endured. In the church, outside the church, it makes no difference. We wrongly blame trauma survivors for the trauma perpetrated upon them through no fault of their own.

Yes, unwise choices can put you in a situation where trauma is more likely to occur. But no one deserves trauma. Ever. I don’t care what unwise choices someone has made.

How many times have you heard one of these?

“Dressing like that, she’s just asking to be raped.” No. A thousand times no. No woman deserves to be raped. Ever. I swear, if I hear one more of my Christian brothers say this, I’m going to perpetrate some trauma myself and knock their teeth out. After all, talking like that, they’re just asking for it.

“She must not have been very attentive at home,” said when blaming a wife for her husband’s affair. I’ve actually most often heard this said by other women. No. No wife ever deserves to be cheated on. I don’t care what the situation is. A man’s adultery is no one’s fault but his own. Ever. Jesus died to make that so.

“They must not have been good parents,” said when blaming the people down the street for their teen’s suicide. No. Never. No parent ever deserves to bury their children, whether through intentional or accidental tragedy.

And saddest of all, childhood trauma survivors blame themselves. “It’s my fault my father sexually abused me. There’s something wrong with me.” No. Never true. Yet this response is universal.

Why Do We Do Blame Trauma Survivors?

Why do we blame trauma survivors? Why do trauma survivors blame themselves?

At a trauma seminar, we recently heard Dr. Gabor Mate, author of In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, give a very logical reason. It’s the safest conclusion.

Which is safer for a victim of childhood trauma to believe?

  • The lie: “There’s something wrong with me. It’s my fault this happened.”
  • The truth: “I am in the care of a monster. There is something seriously wrong with my dad.”

The lie is actually the safer conclusion! “If it’s my fault, then maybe I have some control over it. If I can just be a better daughter, this won’t happen again.”

Believing the truth, “I’m in the care of a monster. I’ve got no control over when this happens again,” makes the world a very scary, unsafe place.

The lie is actually a psychological defense mechanism used by children so they can survive. But once they’re adults and out of that situation, until that lie is replaced by God’s truth, it can cause untold bad fruit in their lives.

Take the woman whose friend’s husband had an affair. Which is safer to believe?

  • The lie: “If she’d just been a better wife, he wouldn’t have cheated on her.”
  • The truth: “His affair was not her fault. He made his own choice.”

Or take the example of parents you know whose teen was lost to suicide. Which is safer to believe?

  • The lie: “They must be bad parents.”
  • The truth: “What a horrible thing to happen to them. No parents deserve to go through that.”

In each case, the lie is a “safer” conclusion to believe. Believing the lie that trauma is the fault of the survivors gives us a feeling of control over our unsafe world.

  • “If I’m a good wife, my husband won’t cheat on me.”
  • “If we’re good parents, our children will be safe.”

The problem is, it’s only a false feeling of control. We really have very little, if any, control over the unsafe, unredeemed world we live in.

Finding True Security

The truth is, in this unsafe world, our safety is out of our control. The only true security we really have is in the goodness of God. Yet even Jesus did not promise us safety; in fact, he promised the opposite:

“In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” – Jesus (John 16:33)

God’s security is not the absence of trauma or tragedy in this life, but Jesus’ promise to be with us through it.

How to Actually Help

As Christians, we should follow Jesus’ example, and be with each other through trauma.

“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” — Psalm 23:4

When people are going through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, don’t try to find them an off-ramp. It’s natural to want to pull someone out of the Valley of the Shadow of Death. We mean well. But we can’t pull them out of it. Jesus is calling us to ride with them through it.

Don’t say, “I understand,” even if you’ve been through something similar. That just discounts their feelings. This is not the time to tell your story. This is the time to shut-up and listen. Validate their pain.

We must stop blaming trauma survivors. The world is not a safe place. We need to accept that, yes, it could happen to us too. But God is good, even if it does.

The church of God has to be a safe place. As Jesus’ hands, feet, mouth, and most importantly, heart, to a lost and dying world, we have to get this right. As we learn to be Jesus to the hurting, we teach them to be Jesus to us. After all, no one gets out of this world unscathed. We can do this.

How About You?

Dear Child of God, please tell us your story in the comments, or shoot us an email. You don’t have to be alone. And please share this post if it would bless others.

Resources

If you have experienced trauma (abuse, sexual assault, rape, abortion, or any other trauma), or someone you know has, please seek healing. Here are some Christ-based ministries that might be helpful. If they are not in your area, they may be able to refer you to help that is.

For sexual trauma: Restoration 1:99

For abortion healing: Rachel’s Vineyard

For suicide prevention resources: Cru.org

If you are contemplating suicide, cutting or harming yourself, know the world is better with you in it. We need you.

Please get help by contacting The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.

Talk to someone right now by chatting online or calling 1-800 273-8255.

The One Question that Reveals Our Heart

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When Jesus encountered a paralytic lying on a mat at the pool of Bethesda in John 5, he asked possibly the stupidest question ever, on the surface at least.

Really, though, this question, more than any other, reveals our heart.

Do you want to get well?

So here’s the deal with this pool. From time to time, an angel would stir up the waters. Then the first one in the pool got healed of whatever disease or ailment they had. The poor paralytic guy was paralyzed, so he couldn’t even roll and fall into the water. He just got to watch as people with lesser problems got healed. Can you relate?

Enter Jesus. The paralytic didn’t know it, but God set up his whole life for this moment. Jesus asks him the One Question. 

Do you want to get well?

I can think of a few humorous responses the paralytic could’ve used:

  • “Thank you, Captain Obvious.”
  • “No, Jesus, I’m just lying here getting a suntan. It’s time to do my back. Can you flip me over?”
  • “No, actually, I was hoping you could help me change the oil in my camel.”

All kidding aside, the paralytic tells Jesus the truth of his situation, that he’s got no one to help him get in the water. Then Jesus, breaker of protocols, did what he seems to do best. He broke the rules on a couple different levels all at once and miraculously healed the man on the spot. But he did it in a way that engaged the man’s faith. Jesus told him, “Get up, pick up your mat and walk.”

Now even with my limited knowledge of medical science, “get up” isn’t something you normally say to a paralytic. In the natural, it kind of reflects that Jesus didn’t quite understand the situation here. Or did he?

The paralytic could have responded, “Um, I’m paralyzed here. I can’t.” But instead, he took Jesus at his word (as crazy as it was), and tried. Maybe he felt in his body that he was healed. Maybe he wasn’t healed until he tried. But the point is, he accepted Jesus’ healing, did the impossible, and walked into a whole new life. Will you?

Do you want to get well?

Jesus could’ve said, “Ok, I’ll help you get in the pool first the next time the water’s stirred.” He had twelve disciples. Jesus could have had them block everybody else while he was getting the paralytic in the water. But he broke the local protocol.

He also broke the national protocol by having the guy carry his mat on the Sabbath, getting himself in trouble with the Jewish authorities. Again. What does a healed guy need with a mat anyway? Why didn’t Jesus have him leave it at the pool for some other sick guy? What was with that whole “pick up your mat” thing anyway? It’s almost like Jesus went out of his way to shatter people’s rules and expectations.

Do you want to get well?

I know a pastor who had someone ask for prayer after church. They had a disability hearing coming up that week. The person wanted to pray for a favorable outcome, so they would continue receiving their disability payments. This was important — it was their livelihood. The pastor asked them, “How about if we pray for healing? Then you won’t need the disability hearing.”

The person didn’t want healing. They wouldn’t let him pray for that. That would disrupt their entire life, which was built around protecting their entitlement. The person had a legitimate disability, and it’s good that our society provides a safety net. I’m not knocking disability payments or making any political point here. 

But if God broke the protocol and healed this person, it would change their life. Their livelihood would have to change. They’d have to get a job. That’s scary when you’ve lost your skills and your confidence over years of disability. 

The paralytic’s livelihood had to change. He could no longer beg, and maybe that’s all he knew. What was he supposed to do now? Thanks a lot, Jesus. Are we so comfortable with our wounding that we turn down Jesus’ healing?

Or do we believe in God’s goodness more than the safety of our wounding and victimhood? He’s got something better than begging, entitlements, and woundedness for us. Is God allowed to shatter our protocols and our expectations? Who does our heart really trust for our provision?

Do you want to get well?

John Sandford founded Elijah House as a ministry mostly for pastors caught in repetitive, often sexual, sin. Some pastors experienced tremendous freedom, never looked back, and their ministries took off. Other pastors appeared to get free, but kept falling back into the same sin-cycle over and over again.

John asked the Lord what made the difference. The Lord showed John some people wanted healing and freedom because they understood their pain, wounding, and sin interfered with serving Jesus to the fullest. These were the people who got free and stayed free — those who wanted freedom so they could serve the Lord the best they possibly could. 

But others recognized their pain only as an obstacle to living the good life. Those who only wanted freedom so they could live the good life were the ones who kept falling back into habitual sins. They were the ones who never got healed of their wounding.

Do you want to get well?

We see it all the time in the volunteer work we do at our local crisis pregnancy center in post-abortive ministry. People come to us for help because they want to be free from the pain in their lives. But some aren’t willing to leave the lifestyle that caused the pain. Some people aren’t willing to do the hard work of working through their denial, anger, unforgiveness, and right to victimhood. So they stay stuck living their lives as emotional, spiritual, and moral paralytics, looking for someone to blame for not helping them into the water.

But we’ve seen other people, sometimes with much greater wounding, do the hard work. They’ve confronted the anger, forgiving those who don’t deserve it and so released themselves from prison. They’ve worked through the denial, repenting and receiving God’s forgiveness, sometimes for the first time in their lives. They experience God’s restoration and true freedom. They never look back.

Are we willing to die to ourselves, laying down our right to be a victim? Are we willing to “pick up our mat” of scary freedom, trusting someone else, God, with our future, maybe even our livelihood? Or do we need to be in control?

Do you want to get well?

That’s the question Jesus has for all of us. Prison is a known quantity, with lots of comfortable certainty and predictability. But there’s a downside. It’s prison. 

Are you willing to let Jesus heal you? Are you willing to die to yourself and let go of the upsides of prison? Are you ready for scary, but exhilarating, freedom? Are you ready to live, instead of just existing? Do you want to get well?

Does this resonate? Please share this post if it would bless others. And tell us your story in comments. We’d love to hear from you.

How to Address the Biggest Problem You Don’t Know You Have

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Often the biggest problems in our lives aren’t the ones we know about. They aren’t the problems we’re dealing with. In fact, often what we think are the problems in our lives are really just symptoms. So often the real problem is something we’ve become so comfortable with that we think it’s normal.

Janet and I have a dear friend who had a laser eye procedure this week. She told us the doctor used a laser to burn away the membrane behind her eye that was causing her cloudy vision. Kudos to technology!

When I asked her if the procedure was successful, she sent me this email:

Very successful! I had no idea how much I was missing when I looked at things. My vision is so clear that on the way home I told my son if he would stop the car I could count the leaves on a tree. Colors are so bright. I was like a kid in a toy store telling my son all the things I was seeing as he drove home. All glory to God! Thank You Jesus!

That got me thinking. She had grown accustomed to cloudy vision. Yes, she knew her vision needed some help, but it wasn’t until after being healed that she realized how bad her vision had gotten, how much she’d been missing.

Are we like that? Have we become so comfortable with our wounding that we take the dysfunction it produces for granted? Yeah, we know we need some help in some areas, but it’s not that bad. We’ll get around to it. Some day.

Often, it has to do with how we were raised, stuff that’s been in our fundamental assumptions about the world for a long time. In inner healing lingo, we call these foundational lies. They are things we’ve believed are true for so long that now we don’t even realize we’re making that assumption. We take the lie for granted, and, like looking through a filter, it distorts how we see the rest of the world.

For a long time, I believed I was a mistake. My two brothers are ten and eleven years older than me. Before I could talk, I probably heard well-meaning, good people, talk to my parents about their “little accident.”

I believed my preferences weren’t important. I had a great dad, and growing up, he’d often play games with me if he wasn’t busy. But if he was doing work on his adding machine and I wanted some of his time, I’d ask him to play cribbage. He loved cribbage and couldn’t resist a game. He’d stop whatever he was doing, however important, and play cribbage with me. But he’d never interrupt his work for some other game that I wanted to play.

I adopted another foundational lie in high school. As a freshman, I lettered JV on the tennis team. I wasn’t that good, but I was persistent. With six singles and two doubles on each varsity and JV team, that’s 20 players total. I was #22 on the roster. On any given match day, there was a high probability two of those 20 teens would be absent. Then everyone moves up on the roster, and I’d get to play on the bottom JV doubles team. I played enough matches to letter.

After coming home from the awards banquet, I was giddy. I was never that athletic and had never had an honor like that before. I was so euphorically happy, it was like I was drunk. I was being crazy silly and laughing at my own jokes hysterically. My parents put up with it for a while, but then said, “That’s enough!” I calmed down immediately. Enter another foundational lie: “It’s wrong to be too happy.”

Now I grew up knowing I was loved. None of the lies I believed were my parent’s fault, per se. I jumped to wrong conclusions about myself and the world all on my own. But these lies, “I’m a mistake,” reinforced by “My preferences aren’t important,” and then “You don’t want to be too happy” set me up for a first marriage that was a disaster. My picker was off.

I didn’t realize I believed these lies. I certainly couldn’t articulate them. I didn’t know why I believed them. The Lord has just recently shown me these incidents in my past that tempted me to believe these lies.

Now I’ve gotten healing, and my second marriage to Janet is wonderful. It’s only having received healing that I see how wrong I was and the devastating impact these lies had on me.

So what can we do? How can we fight lies we don’t know we’re believing? Do these 3 things.

1) Ask the Holy Spirit. Regularly.

Make it a regular practice, during your daily time with the Lord, to ask him what you’ve gotten used to. Ask him to show you your blind spots. This is what David was asking God in Psalm 139:

Search me, O God, and experience my heart. Test me and experience my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. –Psalm 139:

2) Investigate Your Bad Behaviors. Connect the Dots.

If you’ve got behaviors in your life that you know are dysfunctional that you can’t seem to find your way out of, that’s a clue that somewhere, in the fiber of your being, you’re believing a foundational lie.

For example, addictions are usually never the problem. They’re a symptom. What pain are you medicating? If you don’t know, think back in your life. When did the addiction start? What happened in your life about then?

We’re constantly amazed by how many people we see at our crisis pregnancy center that don’t connect the dots between their depression and their abortion. Now relax, I’m not saying all depression is a result of abortion. It’s obviously not. But it is an extremely common result of abortion, as are addictions, relationship issues, and a host of other dysfunctions. But because the abortion was something they “chose” (although most women are actually coerced), and society lies that this was something that was good for them, they don’t connect the dots.

We see it with post-abortive men too. If your self-medicating started after a particular breakup, you could have fathered an aborted child and not even known it. But your spirit knows. Many men are left with an overwhelming sense of failure where their self-confidence used to be, and they don’t know where it came from. They don’t connect the dots.

3) Ask Your Heart.

I’ve a longer post on this subject here. Talking to your heart is a skill you can learn.

Ask your heart questions: “Heart, why are you afraid?” “Heart, why did it hurt when that person said that seemingly innocent thing?” Then shut your brain up, be still, and listen to your heart. Often, your heart answers with memories or pictures rather than words.

Once we know what the lies are, we can replace them with God’s truth. Ask the Holy Spirit what’s the opposite of that lie for you, and tape it to your bathroom mirror, computer, steering wheel, or someplace you’ll see it every day. Over time, we can choose to believe the truth God says about us instead of the lies the world (and ourselves) say about us.

How about you?

What foundational lies have you believed? How did you discover them? What truth did you replace them with? We’d love to hear your story. And please share this post on social media if it would bless someone else.