Real Forgiveness Is Grief Work

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

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

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

10 Things Forgiveness Is Not

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

Forgiveness is NOT:

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

Forgiveness and Healing Are Two Different Things

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

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

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

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

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

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

7 Things Forgiveness Is

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

Forgiveness is:

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

Forgiveness Is a Process, Not an Event.

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

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

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

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

Real forgiveness is grieving a loss.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your Turn

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

BTW, This Post Is From…

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

Check it out here.

What Church Can Be

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Another quiet night’s sleep was shattered by the midnight alarm. The claxon went off in the small, New England lighthouse on the rocky Massachusetts coast. Another ship had run aground in the night fog on the rocks. The men and women in the small, dingy lighthouse jumped out of bed, pulled on their gear, and got to work rescuing the survivors. 

They couldn’t save everyone from every shipwreck that happened on their watch, but they saved many. The small under-funded, dingy building housed a team that lived the sea. It was hard, thankless work, but they loved it. They were sold out for the mission of saving lives from boats wrecked on the rocks in the fog.

One day, the people from the nearby towns who had been saved from drowning by this valiant little lighthouse decided to help. They wanted to give back. They started to donate to fix up that dingy old lighthouse. They upgraded all the equipment. They painted the building. They bought carpeting to cover the cold cement floor. And they baked all day preparing a banquet for the rescuers.

It was a beautiful meal with all the fixings. The rescuers had never experienced such gratitude. Everyone was having a wonderful time celebrating life in the newly painted and upgraded lighthouse. There was only one problem. The claxon went off.

The rescuers flew out of the meal, donned their gear and headed for the sea, much to the offense of those who spent all day cooking, and many weeks planning.

The survivors from tonight’s shipwreck dripped water and mud all over the new carpet. Worse, the rescuers had to give a couple victims CPR. As they started breathing again, as is common with drowning victims, they vomited out the sea water. All. Over. The. New. Carpet. The donors were quite upset.

Worse, the team lost a rescuer in the stormy surf that night, so everyone was in a foul mood. Some of the former survivors who’d previously been saved by that team member were very angry at the newcomers, that their shipwreck had cost the life of their hero.

But the donors were very resourceful. They came up with lots of ways to “fix” the “problem.”

  • “We need to have another room where victims can be brought if they’re messy, until they get cleaned up.”
  • “All shipwrecks need to be scheduled during a reasonable time so they don’t interfere with our planned activities.”
  • “We need safety standards so the rescuers don’t sacrifice too much. The lighthouse should be a safe place.”
  • “We need a Board of Directors so our donations aren’t wasted on just any random shipwrecks. We need to pick and choose the strategic shipwrecks.”

The rescuers couldn’t believe their ears. While they appreciated the many expressions of gratitude they’d recently received, they hadn’t realized that they came with strings attached, the strings of expectations. Expectations setup everyone for offense. And offense justifies any bad behavior, including ending relationships.

The rescuers realized the donors just didn’t understand the lighthouse’s life-saving mission. They tried to explain it, over and over. But the donors would have none of it. They’d forgotten that they were once shipwrecked themselves.

Eventually, they had a lighthouse split. The donors built a much bigger and grander lighthouse inland, away from that nasty, stormy shore. It had lights and music and amazing food and shopping and programs. Lots of comfortable programs. It was a place where you could really feel good about yourself. But no life was ever saved within its walls.

The rescuers stayed with the old dingy lighthouse on the shore, where the shipwrecks were. The new paint began to peel, and the carpet became very stained. But lives were continually dragged out of the ocean and saved there. Some went right back out in the water and drowned. Others, once saved, went to the inland lighthouse, because, well, it was just so much better funded and had better programs. But others became rescuers themselves, sharing what they’d been given. There was never a shortage of shipwrecks.

What is church supposed to be?

Is it a lighthouse with a life-saving mission to reach people who have wrecked their lives on the rocks of sin in the fog of deception? Or is it a pristine environment where everyone’s happy all the time, or at least pretends to be?

Should the sermons make me feel good about myself? Or should they challenge me and make me angry?

Is church a place where we welcome grieving people in crises? Or is it a place where we go to feel good about ourselves?

Kris Vallotton had a dream, recorded in one of Darren Wilson’s films, where people were behaving badly in church. They were doing drugs, having sex in the pews, stealing from each other, using profanity freely, beating each other up. Kris remembers yelling in the dream, “If you can’t honor God’s house, then get out!”

And then the Holy Spirit said to him, “Why would you send away the people I’ve brought in.”

Kris said, “Well, what do you want to do about all this mess?”

The Holy Spirit just said, “Teach them.”

Are we willing to allow messy people in our churches to learn to the ways of life? Are we willing to learn the ways of life ourselves? Or do we think, having now been saved, that we know it all?

What has church been for you? A life-saving lighthouse? A safe place? Or just the Sunday morning show? Tell us your story in the comments or shoot us an email. We would love to pray with you for healing from church hurt. And please share this post on social media if you think it would help someone else.

What Every Relationship Pursues and Protects

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Every relationship pursues one of these two goals. Every relationship protects one of these two things. Either connection or distance. That’s it.

Terrified of What We Desperately Long For

The truth is, we all long for connection, for intimacy. We long to be fully known, accepted, and loved. And there’s the rub. We’re terrified that if we’re fully known, we’ll be rejected and condemned instead.

So we do this dance in our relationships of “come close, but stay away.”

Intimacy == Into Me See

The intimacy we so long for, and desperately need, is a place of scary vulnerability. Someone can really hurt us badly there. So we either avoid it, or we try to control it. But both strategies, by their very nature, destroy the intimacy we’re longing for.

So we protect distance in our relationships. This close, and no closer. Especially if there’s already painful water under the bridge. Especially if there’s a history of hurt with this person.

This is common in failing marriages. Each spouse, having been badly hurt by the other in a place of vulnerability, is not going to be vulnerable again. So they start protecting distance instead of connection, and wonder why the marriage is falling apart. But, often unknown to themselves, they’re achieving their goal of protecting their heart through distance from their spouse, instead of connection with their spouse.

2 Steps to Pursuing Connection

So how do we pursue connection? Here’s two steps.

1) Mutually decide that’s what you want. Sit down and talk. Talking on neutral ground, like in a professional counselor’s office, can be very helpful. Realize that you, as a couple, can achieve any goal you mutually pursue. The current state of your relationship is proof of that. You’ve been pursuing distance and you’ve achieved it.

2) Practice communication that’s about you, not about them. Disrespectful communication tells the other person about them. “You always…” or “You never…” That won’t work. They already know all about them. All this communication does is make them defensive and you do not feel heard.

Instead, tell them about you. Tell them how you feel when they do that thing, and tell them how you want to feel. Now don’t go overboard and make them responsible for your feelings. They aren’t. But you’re asking them for help. You’re inviting them into connection.

“When this happens, I feel _____ and I need to feel _____.”

Danny Silk gives a great example of this in his book Keep Your Love On (not an affiliate link). He lives in Northern California, and frequently drives curvy, mountain roads with his wife. She does not appreciate his fast mountain-driving skills.

So one time she told him, “Danny, when you drive this fast on these roads, I feel scared and I need to feel safe.” She didn’t judge his driving. She didn’t call him names like “irresponsible” or “dangerous” or “selfish.” She gave him information he didn’t have before – information about her.

Now he had a choice to make. He didn’t defend himself or his accident-free driving record. He didn’t explain the performance characteristics of the vehicle and how her fear was unwarranted. He didn’t call her names like “silly” or “paranoid.”

He slowed down. Why? Because he valued his connection with his wife. He wanted her to feel safe around him, not scared. He chose to value his connection with her above the fun he was having by driving fast.

When we mutually choose connection over distance, it makes a safe place for the intimacy we so long for.

When Distance Is Appropriate

Unfortunately, sometimes distance is appropriate. When people refuse, by their actions, to steward our hearts well, it is wise to set a healthy boundary and create a safe distance.

For example, suppose, in the example above, Danny chose not to slow down. What if he said, “No, I’m driving the way I’m driving. Get over it.”

Now his wife has a choice. He’s said what he’s going to do. What is she going to do?

Unhealthy things she could do are try to manipulate or control his behavior. She could shout. She could shame. She could cry. (I’m talking about manipulation crying here, not the honest sharing of genuine emotion.) She could try lots of different unhealthy things.

But the healthy thing is to tell him what she’s going to do, like:

  • “Next time, I’m driving separately.”
  • “I’m not going next time.”
  • “I’m calling an Uber to get home.”
  • Not get in the car with him in the driver’s seat. She drives.

“The only person I can control, on a good day, is myself.” – Danny Silk

There’s no judgement in that. No condemnation about his driving. She’s just telling him about her, and about what she’s going to do.

Then he has a choice. What is he going to do? Maybe, after a couple trips without her, or a couple expensive Uber bills, he slows down. Or not.

The point is, it is painful when, in that place of vulnerability, someone who should value and protect our heart hurts us instead. It is good and wise to set healthy boundaries so the person doesn’t have access to our hearts at a level where they can repeat that kind of damage.

We guard our heart by saying, “When you act that way, I feel ____, but I need to feel ____.” If they do not respond like we hoped, then we say, “Ok, when you do ____, I’m going to ____ so I can feel ____.” Then follow through and do it. Leave them the choice of your boundary and the limited access to your heart that comes with it, or changing their behavior.

I know families who have that one family member who ruins every extended family gathering by their outrageous behavior. Finally, they told him, “We love you and we want to spend time with you. But when you act this way, we feel angry, and it ruins the day for us. We all want to enjoy the gathering. So we’re not inviting you this year.” After a couple missed gatherings, he can choose whether he values connection with his family over his right to behave outrageously, or not.

Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it. – Proverbs 4:23

It is Biblical to guard your heart. But it’s painful when you have to guard your heart against someone you want to share it with, like your spouse or a family member. The good news is, your boundaries are under your control and you can relax them when you feel safe enough to do so. After the person demonstrates they will steward your heart well, you can gradually give them more and more access to your heart, and revoke that access if they can’t handle it.

Your Turn

Does this resonate? Are you pursuing connection or distance in your important relationships? These principles apply everywhere: with friends and family, at work, even at church. Have you had to enforce some healthy distance? What did the other person choose? Tell us your story in the comments; it will help others. And please share this post if it was a blessing to you.

These concepts are based on Danny’s Silk’s podcast, “The KYLO Show” (no affiliate relationship). I highly recommend it.

How to Get Out of Our Head

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So Why Don’t We Go There?

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

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

Coping is socially acceptable denial.

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

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

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

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

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

How to Get Out of Our Head – Facing the Fear

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

Intellectualizing everything does have its advantages:

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

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

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

Your Turn

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

3 Mindset Traps that Sabotage Jesus’ Mission to Wounded People

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As the church, we are Jesus’ hands, feet, voice, and heart to the world. We invite wounded people into transformational intimacy with our Savior by stewarding both truth and compassion. But there are 3 mindset traps that sabotage Jesus’ mission to wounded people.

These 3 mindset traps are so insidious and sneaky we often don’t realize we’ve fallen into them. But they can sweep whole churches away from their Kingdom calling and make them completely ineffective. Worse, these Christians (and even whole churches!) don’t know they’ve been spiritually shipwrecked because their metrics (the measures of man) look so good.

So let’s go through these 3 mindset traps. And then we’ll talk about the mindset the church, and we as Christians, are called to have.

Mindset Trap #1: Empire Building

We fall into this one when we’re more concerned about building our empire than we are about building the Kingdom of God. If our goal is to have people swoon over our personal importance and status, we’ve received our reward in full from the people we’ve impressed. We have none from God. (Matthew 6:1-21)

If we’re not stewarding hearts well, our numbers don’t matter.

The thing about these mindset traps is they’re sneaky. They’re really easy to fall into because they look so good on the outside. And often, from just superficial outside appearances, you can’t tell someone building their own empire from someone walking out their calling and building the Kingdom. The actions can look the same. It’s all about the motivations.

Still, here are some example litmus tests to check our hearts to see if, and to what degree, we’ve fallen into empire building:

  • We base ministry decisions on how they will affect our numbers (giving, attendance, etc.) rather than on how they will affect the hearts we minister to.
  • We’re not willing to do it for the one.
  • The ROI (Return on Investment) is considered rather than whether God is calling us to do the thing or not.
  • We avoid making changes that will offend the biggest tithers.
  • We believe the ends justify the means, compromising our integrity or principles for “the greater good.”
  • We worry about which church gets the credit.
  • Decisions are based on protecting our power rather than what God’s calling us to do.

Jesus chose and poured into 12 guys. He had lousy numbers. But his Kingdom impact changed the world.

Mindset Trap #2: Legacy Saving

The hallmark of legacy saving is when we prioritize preserving the church experience we grew up with.

Although safe, comfortable, and familiar, such churches do not enable transformation. In fact, they shut it down. Can’t have the Holy Spirit coming in here and changing things! But God’s Kingdom is about saving lives not legacies.

We know we’re legacy saving when:

  • We’re afraid to make changes for fear of offending people.
  • We have “sacred cows,” emotional attachments to things, or to doing things a certain way.
  • We care more about preserving the church experience we grew up with than about reaching the changing neighborhood around us.
  • We hold on to things that used to work, but no longer are effective.
  • There is anything that’s not “on the table” to be cut if it interferes with reaching the region around us. The Bible calls these things “idols.”

The movie Jesus Revolution is a true story and a great example of a pastor (Chuck Smith, played expertly by Kelsey Grammer) deciding not to be a legacy saver when he opened up his church to the hippies in the early 1970s. He paid a high price. He lost friends who had been in his church for decades. That had to hurt. But he gained so much more. He gained partnering with the manifest Kingdom of God in one of the greatest revivals the United States has ever seen.

Mindset Trap #3: Sin Winking

We “wink” at sin when we condone, or don’t speak out against, self-destructive, sinful lifestyles. Too often, the gospel’s message of God’s grace to all people has been hijacked as an excuse to make people feel good about themselves, just the way they are, sin and all.

Yes, Jesus’ message is “come as you are.” You don’t have to get all holy first before you come to Jesus. In fact, you can’t. But Jesus’ message is never, “stay as you are.” He invites us into life-changing transformation, where we can no longer live sinful lifestyles that break his heart.

We know we’ve slipped into sin-winking when:

  • We’re afraid to say the word “sin.”
  • We pursue peace (unity) at any price. (Unity not centered on Jesus and his holiness is a false peace.)
  • We care more about offending the culture than we do about offending God.
  • We condone, look the other way, or are even proud of lifestyles that are blatantly anti-Biblical and self-destructive, such as sex outside of marriage (between a biological man and a biological woman).

When we don’t call out sin for the self-destruction that it is, when we tell wounded people they aren’t wounded, we are slamming the door of God’s healing in people’s faces.

What We as Christians and the Church Are Called to Be

I have another post here that describes the church as a lighthouse, a life-saving team of rescuers, in a shabby little building, saving shipwreck victims from drowning.

Yes,

  • Numbers are important.
  • It is right to honor our history.
  • Everyone is welcome in the Kingdom of God.

But the mindset traps we’ve discussed take legitimate concerns and twist them out-of-balance, into an end in themselves. And they are each motivated by fear.

The Way Out

The way out of all of these mindset traps is a single-minded focus on what God is calling us to do. As a Church. As an individual Christian. As a family. And the answer will be different for each church, each individual, and each family. Because nobody can do it all.

Yet we can all trust God to partner with us in what he’s calling us to do. It may be a rocky road at times. But we are never alone, even when it feels like it. We need to be willing to sacrifice:

  • Our importance and reputation
  • Our comfortable and familiar way of doing things
  • The approval of the culture and of others

And instead pursue what he’s calling us to with both hands. Then he will work all things together for the glory of his Kingdom. And that is the best possible outcome for us and everyone around us.

Your Turn

Does this resonate? What part of this post speaks to you? Tell us your story in the comments. And please share this post if it would bless others.

6 Ways to Facilitate God’s Healing Transformation in Wounded People

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As God brings wounded people to himself, we as the Church need to learn how to facilitate the healing transformation God wants to bring. Often, this starts with just learning how to pray for people effectively, whether it’s after-service prayer, a phone call from a friend in need, or in a private, dedicated, ministry setting.

When praying for people, we have the honor, privilege, and responsibility of stewarding their hearts well. This is a serious responsibility, and should not be taken lightly. They are being vulnerable by asking for prayer, and we can do a lot of damage if we go into this with the wrong heart posture.

As we step into this sacred space, we need a heart posture of Humble Boldness. We call this “Humble Boldness”, not “Bold Humility,” because humility has to come first.

1) Be Humble

This is not about you. It’s about them.

Jesus is the healer. We are not.  We are just the “stage hands.” All we’re doing is facilitating an environment where they can connect with Jesus, and he is free to do whatever he wants.

The good news is, you do not need to have all the answers. Actually, you don’t have to have any at all.

“Tell me more about that” is a great thing to say when you don’t know what to say, or feel out of your depth.

2) Avoid Spiritual Bypassing

I’m not in any way discounting the power of Scripture, or of a word aptly spoken (Proverbs 25:11). But quoting a Bible verse, or other spiritual platitude, because we don’t know what to say, actually can be very damaging because it discounts their pain. This is called spiritual bypassing, and is (unfortunately) very common. Do not give people a “quick fix” to a deep problem.

Example: “Oh, you suffer from depression? Just go home and get a nap and a snack and you’ll feel better. That’s the Biblical solution since it worked for Elijah.”

Superficial solutions do not address the underlying root of the problem and can cause a great deal of damage. We are setting the person up for believing the lie that there is obviously something wrong with them because the superficial solution didn’t work. The truth is, there is something deeper God wants to heal.

3) Avoid Telling Your Story

Telling your story can discount their story and their pain. We think hearing the story of someone (us or someone we know) who’s successfully gone through the same thing is helpful, but often it’s not. They do not need to hear your story. They need you to hear theirs.

This is not about you. It’s about them.

4) Honor Their Story by Validating Their Pain

Honor is the currency in the Kingdom of God. One of the best gifts you can give them is being heard. Repeat back what you thought you heard. This is called reflective or active listening.

Validate their pain. Take a guess at how they are feeling. “Does that make you feel …?” You don’t even have to be right. Just the fact that someone is listening and trying to understand how they’re feeling can be tremendously helpful. This creates a safe space.

Don’t underestimate the healing virtue of non-judgmental, active listening.

5) Be Bold

Without an agenda of your own (that’s the “humility” part), ask the Holy Spirit what he wants to do. We don’t want to be so “humble” that we’re afraid to do, say, or pray anything.

After asking the Holy Spirit, go with the thought that comes to mind. Believe God wants to partner with you to bring them healing in this moment.

The more you practice, the more you will learn what’s God and what’s not. It’s totally ok to make a mistake! That’s how we learn. And as long as you’re walking in humility, you won’t do damage.

Always validate their pain first (see above). After validating their pain, if you have a word-picture, or Bible verse comes to mind, or you get some advice or direction for them, don’t be afraid to tell them. But submit it with humility.

Don’t say, “Thus saith the Lord …!”

You can say, “I’m getting this picture (or this verse). Does this mean anything to you?”

If you’re not sure if your thought is God or not, one technique is to sit on it first for a few minutes. Often, if it’s God, it won’t go away, but will get stronger.

If you want to give them a scripture verse, for example, ask yourself and the Holy Spirit these questions to test for spiritual bypassing:

  • Does this make light of their situation?
  • Could this be discounting something deeper going on?
  • How can I share this verse (or advice, etc.) while honoring their pain?

6) Be Honoring and Affirming in a 3 Step Finish

When you’re done, here are 3 steps to end a prayer session well:

  1. Thank them for their vulnerability in letting you pray for them. Never take for granted how hard it was for them to ask for prayer.
  2. Pray blessing over them.
  3. Ask the Holy Spirit what you can say to affirm them. How does he see them? What does he want them to know?

Stewarding Hearts Well

So let’s adopt the heart posture of humble boldness. That’s how we can be Jesus’ hands, feet, voice, and heart to a wounded, lost, and dying world. That’s how we facilitate God’s healing transformation. God is trusting us to steward their hearts well in this sacred space.

Because if they can’t go to the people of God when they’re hurting, where can they go?

Your Turn

Does this resonate? Have you been on the receiving end where your heart was stewarded poorly? If so, tell us your story in the comments. And please share this post if it would bless others.

Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash

What to Do when You’ve Got Nothing

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So I’m staring at a blank screen where this week’s blog post is supposed to be. And I’ve got nothing. My mind is just blank. So I pray, “Lord, I got nothing.”

“So write about that,” came his soft, whispered, answer.

“What?!?” was my bewildered response. But then I thought, “Ok, let’s go with that. What do you do when you’ve got nothing?”

So this’ll be a little different post. I’m writing something about having nothing to write about. That’s meta. 🙂 And it’ll probably be shorter than usual.

So here’s 3 steps to follow when you’re trying to move forward, but you’re stuck and you’ve got nothing.

1) Admit the obvious to God. Ask him for guidance.

This takes humility. But God knows we’ve got nothing. He knows we’re stuck. It’s not like it’s going to surprise him. And, honestly, the people closest to us probably know it also. So who do we think we’re fooling?

When we pretend to have it all together, but we’re really stuck, we’re just fooling ourselves.

It’s like flooring the accelerator when we’re stuck in the mud. We think we’re moving because the speedometer says 60 mph, but really the tires are just spinning. Everyone else knows we’re not going anywhere. And we’ll never get unstuck until we admit we’re stuck.

2) Take one giant step back. Get some distance.

Sometimes it helps to sleep on it. It always amazes me how insurmountable obstacles look so much smaller and more manageable the next day after a good night’s sleep.

Or maybe you take a walk. Get outside and do some yard work – that’s a favorite of mine. Not that I particularly enjoy yard work, but the fresh air and doing something physical does me good.

Maybe you read a chapter in a novel. The point is, move away from the problem, do something you enjoy, get a little distance from it. Distance gives perspective. And a different perspective sparks different ideas.

I’m writing this on a different day, and at a different time of day, than I normally write. Because doing something differently gives distance, distance gives perspective, and a different perspective sparks different ideas.

So here we are. And I think this post has a different feel than my usual posts, and sometimes different can be refreshing.

3) Try something.

It really doesn’t matter what. Just try something. Maybe you know your idea isn’t very good. But if it’s the only idea you have, give it a try.

One of two things will happen, and they are both positive. Either it fails, and you learn something, which is a positive outcome. Or, surprise, surprise, the darn thing actually works. Bonus!

Try Something. There is no failure, only learning.

And probably, what will most likely happen is a mixture of both. It will partially work. So chew the meat, spit out the bones. Double-down on what worked, and dump what didn’t.

Success is iterative failure.

Really, and this is really true, there’s only one thing you can do to fail. Quit. If you don’t quit, you win. Eventually. Because if you don’t quit, you keep trying things, you learn and you get better. So here’s to learning!

Your Turn

Does this resonate? What do you do when you’ve got nothing? When you’re stuck? Tell us your story in the comments. And share this post if it would bless others.

Why New Year Is in the Dead of Winter

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How to Live through Painful Holidays by Doing a Gift Exchange with Jesus

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When I was a kid, Christmas couldn’t come fast enough. I loved the big family gatherings, seeing my cousins, all the great food (especially my mom’s fudge), decorating the tree, and of course all the presents. I loved it all. And my birthday is in December. It was the best month of the year.

Now, my family is broken, I have children who don’t speak to me, and all decorations are just work I don’t have time for. December hurts and January can’t come fast enough. I just can’t wait to get it all over.

December is hard for a lot of people. The physical darkness in the Northern hemisphere this time of year doesn’t help any either. It’s a well-known fact that depression increases this time of year, and the lack of sunlight is one component. Another, and probably larger, component is the holidays highlight the pain in our lives from broken families that we push down the rest of the year.

When parts of your family are dead to you, either literally, emotionally, or relationally, how do you get through watching everybody else’s happy family? What do you do when everyone else’s happy, jolly Christmas just screams to you your own loss and brokenness?

I had a pastor who, as a young boy, used to love visits from his favorite uncle. His uncle would always invite him into a pocket swap: “I’ll give you what I’ve got in my pocket for what you’ve got in yours.” The young boy always had something ordinary in his pocket he gladly gave his uncle. Sometimes a rock. Or string. Or a frog.

But the uncle always had something special in his pocket. Sometimes a piece of candy. Sometimes a shiny silver dollar. It was always worth the exchange.

Jesus is inviting us into a gift exchange with him this holiday season: “I’ll give you what I’ve got in my heart for what you’ve got in yours.” This is how I get through the holidays. By doing a gift exchange with Jesus. Sometimes every day.

I’ve got pain, brokenness, pain, betrayal, more pain, rejection, and yes, even more pain. I get away by myself, usually in the mornings, behind the closed door of my office at home. Sometimes I play my keyboards and worship. Sometimes I lay on the floor and cry. Sometimes I pour my heart out in travail. But there’s one common thread. In those moments, I give Jesus all my pain in my heart. It’ll probably look different for you. That’s ok.

And I stay there until I get what he’s got in his heart. Peace, joy, stillness, quietness of spirit, and most importantly, hope. Precious hope. And I realize, after receiving it, that hope is the thing I was missing and needing the most.

One of the most deceptive lies is that the current situation will last forever. “This is just the way it is.” Not true. It’s a season. We don’t know the length, but God does, and it is of limited length, one way or another. This pain will not pass into eternity, even if it’s not healed in this life, which a lot of it will be. Because that’s God’s desire. Hope blows away the lie that this pain is forever. It’s not.

My gift exchange with Jesus doesn’t change the painful situation. I’m still living in the loss and living with the pain. But it’s no longer overwhelming, and my sense that He’s on it, in control, not caught off guard by it and in fact is working in it. The blood of Jesus is stronger than the pain.

How about you? If the holidays are hard for you, how do you get through them? Have you come out of a season of hard holidays back to a season of blessed holidays again? Please share your story with us to encourage others. And please share if this would inspire and bless someone else.

Photo by Gustavo Fring on Pexels

Why I Would Rather Live in Failure than Regret

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At the end of the day, we all have a choice to make. To keep going or quit. Those are the only two options. We all can have many pivots along the way, where we quit something lesser to pursue something greater. But we never want to quit something greater to pursue nothing at all. I don’t want to live in the regret of giving up.

If you don’t quit, you win. Eventually. But, darn it all anyway, failure is hard.

Failure Is Hard

Doing what you’re called to do is hard. It can be scary. Stuff that should’ve worked, that seems to work for everybody else, doesn’t work. And with every failure, Imposter Syndrome shouts, “See, who are you to do this? It’ll never work. Stop embarrassing yourself.”

It doesn’t matter what you’re doing. You might not be starting an online business like me. Parenting is hard. Staying married is hard. Being a student is hard. Working a job is hard. Moving forward from trauma is hard.

Life is hard, if you’re doing anything worthwhile, anything that will make the world a better place. That could be speaking to thousands of people or raising one child. It’s all fraught with failure.

Failure is hard. And repeated failure is hard repeatedly. It can really wear you down.

Regret Is Easier

Living in regret is certainly easier. You’ve quit trying to do that big, hard thing. You can get comfortable and just get used to the idea that it never would have worked anyway. You can save your energy for comfortable things. Safe things. Boring things.

Living small is so much easier and less painful. You don’t have to endure the disappointment loop of continuing to try and watching it fail. Again.

Starting the Lawn Mower

Ever try to start the lawn mower the first time of the season, after a long winter? It can take a long time and a lot of persistence when the engine is cold and hasn’t been started for 3 months. You pull and pull that starter cord. And each time the engine sputters, and … doesn’t start.

After half a dozen times, you think something’s got to be wrong here. So you check the gas. You check the oil. All full and ready. You’re doing everything right. Why isn’t the darn engine starting?

Failure is so frustrating. Repeated failure is repeatedly frustrating.

All you can do is pull the cord again. How many pulls will it take? As many as it takes. You never know which pull will start the engine. Until it starts.

But you know one of these pulls will start the engine. And the truth is, the failed pulls weren’t failing, although it looked like it. Each pull warmed up the engine just a little bit more. And when the engine finally got warm enough, the next pull started it.

But it never would have started if you didn’t keep pulling.

Failure Is a Gift

A failure is not a failure when you learn from it. It’s a lesson. And lessons are gifts from God. Painful in the moment, but worth it in the end.

I’ve worked on technical computer research projects for TLAs (Three Letter Agencies). We got funded to try outside-the-box ideas that may or may not work. One of these research groups had the motto, “Negative results are just as important.” Because documenting those negative results saves the government considerable time and expense when other research teams don’t have to hit that same roadblock. So even if we didn’t get the results we wanted, if we learned the lesson, everybody wins.

Thomas Edison tried a thousand times to make a light bulb before he figured it out. He said, “I didn’t fail. I learned 999 ways not to make a light bulb.” But he only had to win once. So do you.

How I Keep Going with My Three Connections

When the failure gets overwhelmingly frustrating and discouraging, I keep going by staying deeply connected to My Three.

(1) Connection to My Jesus. When trying everything and failing gets the best of me, it’s usually because I’m out there trying it on my own. I’ve forgotten to partner with Jesus, my Lord and Savior, and my Friend, in everything. I have two yellow stickies on my computer monitor:

  • “I will learn all the stuff and do all the things, but You have to make it work.” That’s our partnership.
  • “Intimacy over Productivity. Intimacy First.” When increasing my productivity is not productive, I’ve learned I need to pause productivity and increase my intimacy.

(2) Connection to My Peeps. I maintain intentional connections with certain people I could never do this without.

  • Janet. My wife is there for me when no one else is. She tells me things no one else will, things I need to hear. She hears the Holy Spirit really well. And every time we disagree, God is trying to tell me something. I have learned to value Janet’s words, ideas, and misgivings. Identity In Wholeness would not be possible without Janet.
  • Other Online Entrepreneurs. When you’re doing something hard, you have to be around people doing the same thing. I meet regularly, on zoom, with friends and other entrepreneurs who are also trying to build their businesses online. Some are ahead of me and some behind. We all learn from each other’s lessons through our failures and successes. Sharing the journey is invaluable.

(3) Connection to My Why. I have another sticky note on my computer monitor: “Because God wants to partner with us to bring GA3.” (GA3 means the “Third Great Awakening.”) That’s why Janet and I do this. We are passionate about seeing the Body of Christ healthy and walking in wholeness. We are called to help Jesus prepare his Bride for the coming global revival. What an honor and privilege. That gets me out of bed in the morning.

Who are your Three? How is your connection to Jesus, fresh or stale? Who are your peeps who get what you’re doing? What is your why? Tell us in the comments.

So Dare Greatly

There is no knowing victory without knowing defeat. Teddy Roosevelt said it best:

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.” – Theodore Roosevelt, from a speech at Sorbonne, Paris, France, on April 23, 1910

So, yes, I would much rather live in continual failure than comfortable regret. Because eventually the engine will start.

Your Turn

Does this post resonate? How have you pushed through failure in the past? What did you learn? What are you trying to do now that isn’t working? Share your story and your lessons in the comments. And please share this post if it would bless others.