How to Turn A Negative Vulnerability into a Positive Strength

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We all have them.

Vulnerabilities. Weaknesses. We hide them. We ignore them. We pretend they aren’t there. We’re embarrassed by them. They remind us of our small, frail, mortality. The last thing we want to do is deal with them. But that’s exactly what we need to do. And if we do it wisely, we can actually turn those vulnerabilities into strengths.

I’m talking about the secret sins. Pornography. Small cheats on expense reports at work. White lies. They don’t hurt anybody, do they? Yes, they do. They hurt you, and the people in your life. Every. Single. Time.

The worst thing we can do is ignore them. I can handle it. No, you can’t. Because here’s the thing. Sin is not static. It never remains at the same level. It is either increasing in our life or decreasing. If we think we’re “handling it,” keeping it at bay, we’re not, it’s secretly increasing.

And that’s a dangerous place to be. Because by the time we’re finally aware of it, it’s often too late. It’s exploded into our lives and it’s no longer a secret. 

The tsunami we’ve unleashed in our lives is upon us. The pornography has turned into an affair. Small “inaccuracies” on expense reports have turned into full-blown embezzlement. White lies have turned into perjury.

You’re most vulnerable when you don’t think you’re vulnerable.

And the tsunami doesn’t just hit us. No tsunami in history has ever drowned just one person. The wave hits our entire family and everyone close to us. There’s no such thing as a victimless crime.

So often we think we’ve safely hidden it away in a private corner of our lives. But seeing the devastating aftermath on our loved ones, we wish we could roll back time. If we’d known what it would cost them, we’d have dealt with it long before it got to that point. 

Look at King David and Bathsheba. His “secret” adultery (2 Samuel 11:1-5) unleashed this tsunami in his life:

  • He has to murder one of his most loyal soldiers, Uriah, Bathsheba’s husband, to keep it secret. (2 Samuel 11:6-27)
  • The son born from the affair dies. (2 Samuel 12:1-23)
  • David’s son Amnon rapes his daughter Tamar. (2 Samuel 13:1-19)
  • Another of David’s sons, Absalom, kills Amnon and flees to another country. (2 Samuel 13:20-38)
  • When Absalom returns, he stages a coup and David has to run for his life. (2 Samuel 15:1-14)
  • Absalom sleeps with David’s concubines in broad daylight, so all Israel knows he’s the new king now. (2 Samuel 16:20-22)
  • When Absalom is finally defeated, he’s killed by Joab, the general of David’s army. (2 Samuel 18:9-15)
  • For the sake of his army, David has to pretend he’s happy about his son’s death. If he lets his true emotions out, his army would perceive David mourning the victory they risked their lives to give him, and they would desert him. (2 Samuel 18:33-19:8)
  • Even years later, the devastation in David’s family continued. His son Solomon (of Bathsheba) had to kill another of David’s sons, Adonijah, to secure Solomon’s throne. (1 Kings 1:1-2:25)

That is one, crazy, jacked up story! But that’s what sin does in our lives when we think we can handle it. If David had known all that would happen — his daughter would be raped, 4 of his sons would die, and he’d flee for his life from his own son, whose death he’d have to pretend to celebrate — do you think he’d have chosen differently on that warm, fateful, seemingly innocent afternoon in Jerusalem? 

Yes, David was forgiven. Psalm 51 is a beautiful picture of David’s repentance. But he still had to live with the consequences of his sin the rest of his life, even though God stayed faithful and was with him all the way through it.

David thought he could handle it. The graves of his children say otherwise. You can’t handle it either. Neither can I.

So how do we keep from falling prey to our own vulnerabilities?

There are two big steps we can take to keep from being swept away by what we thought we could handle but couldn’t.

1) Set Boundaries

Billy Graham’s ministry never had a scandal. And it’s not because he was so righteous. It’s because he realized he wasn’t. He instituted a rule that no one in his ministry, including himself, ever traveled anywhere by car with someone of the opposite sex alone (except their spouse, of course). This wasn’t legalism gone mad. This was a godly man realizing he was vulnerable and putting boundaries in place to protect his heart. And, because he knew he couldn’t handle it, sexual integrity became a strength of his ministry.

When you admit you’re vulnerable, you’re not vulnerable. You set boundaries to protect yourself from your vulnerability. 

Billy Graham knew affairs didn’t just happen overnight. So he set boundaries, for him and his staff, so nobody, himself included, would even come close to starting down that deceptive road. If the situation required two unmarried people of the opposite sex to make a trip, I think he’d have canceled the event rather than put his people, or himself, at risk.

This is what Jesus so graphically talked about in the Sermon on the Mount.

“If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.” — Jesus, Matthew 5:29-30

No, Jesus doesn’t want a bunch of one-eyed Christians called Lefty. He’s saying not to put yourself into a situation where you may be vulnerable.

For example, has pornography been a weakness? Avoid movies with nudity and even TV shows with sexual promiscuity. Avoid music that glorifies sex outside of marriage, reducing women to objects of entertainment rather than human beings and daughters of the King.

2) Get Support. Tell Someone. Get Help.

This is not “accountability.” No fair making the other person responsible for your behavior. This is you, sincerely not wanting to be devoured by sin, asking for help from someone you trust.

Tell someone. Not someone who has a problem in that area also; there’s no point just commiserating together. But preferably someone who’s been through it and overcome it. Someone who’s either won the battle, or, if they lost it, come out the other side and received healing. 

We have authority over what we’ve been set free from. Find someone who either:

  1. Has never fallen in that area, not because they’re self-righteous, but because they realized they are vulnerable and set boundaries, or,
  2. Has fallen but recovered. It was years ago, and they’ve been clean at least a decade. They’ve received healing and are walking in it.

The good news is, Jesus is more into this than we are. He wants to help us walk in his ways so we avoid the self-made tsunamis in our lives. In this fallen world, they often happen without our help. We don’t need to make more.

But in all of it, whether we brought about the tsunami ourselves or not, if David’s story teaches one thing — it’s that God is faithful. Through it all. Always.

How About You?

How have you realized your own vulnerability and set boundaries? Or have you gotten hurt by not realizing your vulnerability until it was too late? Tell us your story in the comments — it will help someone else. And please share this post if it would bless someone else.

How to Break the Chains of Approval

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At some point, you yourself have to stand up.

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

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

King Joash

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What went wrong?

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

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

The One Thing that Defeats Peer Pressure

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How About You?

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

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

How to Fix Everything

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There is one particular quality that overrides all of our other faults combined. If we just cultivate this one quality in our lives, all our other faults will take care of themselves. Really? Instead of focusing on improving my weaknesses, I can learn this one thing instead, and that’ll take care of everything else? Yep. That’s exactly what I’m saying.

The reverse is also true, though. If we don’t get this one thing down, none of our other virtues matter. All of our other positive qualities will eventually flame-out if we don’t understand and figure out this one thing.

So what is it? Ok. Here it is.

Being Teachable.

God is constantly dorking with our environment. Adjusting things. He intentionally brings seemingly negative circumstances and people into our lives to work stuff out of us. Although I’m personally not fond of this process—it hurts—I must honestly say the seasons of pain in my life have been the seasons of greatest growth. Darn it.

The point is, God is taking us to school. He’s put us here to learn to love each other. Every choice we make is either a choice to love or a choice to fear. Now don’t worry, I’m not getting all drippy and gushy. Sometimes love means confronting someone with the truth they don’t want to hear but need to. And out of his great love for us, God does this for us all the time. In Christian-speak it’s called sanctification. It’s a pain in the neck, but it’s good.

He uses those people who push our buttons and those circumstances we suffer through to tell us what we don’t want to hear but need to. And if we’re teachable and learn the lesson, God deals with all of our faults and shortcomings, one by one.

If we choose to be teachable, God tells us the truth, often through our reactions to difficult people. The process works our stuff out of us. If we choose to not be teachable, we get stuck. We force God to bring harsher people and harsher circumstances to get our attention and learn the lesson. And around the track we go again.

So how do we cultivate being teachable? Here are 3 keys.

1) Talk less, listen more.

We’ve all heard the saying that God gave us 2 ears and 1 mouth because we’re supposed to listen twice as much as we talk. So often we get it the other way around. Start paying attention to how much, percentage-wise, you listen vs talk. In most of your conversations, do you talk more or listen more?

Even when we aren’t talking, we often aren’t really listening. We’re waiting to talk. We’re politely waiting for the other person to finish their unimportant thought so we can say something truly important. Instead of just blowing-off and reacting to what was just said, we have an opportunity to honor God and search for what he’s saying to us through that other person. He so often speaks through unrighteous vessels.

It doesn’t mean the other person is right or we have to agree with them. Often what God’s doing is showing us our own heart through our internal reaction to the other person. It’s got nothing to do with whether the other person is right or wrong. That’s between them and God.

If we really listen, both to the other person and to the Holy Spirit, we can often deescalate a volatile situation by responding to the other person with honor instead of reacting out of wounded pride.

That guy! He just pushes my buttons! Teachable people realize our “buttons” are sin in our own heart. God, out of his great love for us, is using that unrighteous person to highlight it. He’s raising a red flag in our consciousness about what he wants to deal with.

2) Pay attention to feedback from more than 1 person.

I grew up with the saying, “When the rest of the world’s wrong and you’re right, it’s probably the other way around.” When we hear things from more than one person, we need to pay attention.

Notice patterns. Never settle for, “That’s just the way I am.” Some people blow-off correction they’ve heard multiple times with this ungodly phrase. But there’s no greater proclamation that someone’s unteachable than those 6 words.

3) Find the kernel of truth in the ugly package.

Truth we get from God through other people is packaged in the other person’s stuff. Sometimes we need to wade through the offense and the other person’s negativity to get at what God’s trying to say to us. Sometimes what’s at the root is a lie from the enemy that we need to blow off. But sometimes there’s a nugget of truth down there that God wants us to mine for.

Teachable people scrape off the coal and find the gold. Or to put it another way, chew the meat, spit out the bones.

So how about you?

Are you teachable? Has it been hard? Are you teachable in some areas, but maybe stuck in others? Tell us your story in the comments. And please share if this would bless someone else.

3 Conversations We as the Church Need to Have

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Church is the place where we come together as a people and celebrate all that God has done for us. Yes, we celebrate our salvation, but the cross was meant to be the beginning of our freedom. God has done miraculous things in all of our lives and continues to do so. Janet and I have received tremendous healing from the Lord, and we know many others who have as well. I bet you have, too. It makes sense to find a lot of happy, joyful people in church. As it should be.

But we shouldn’t only find happy, joyful people in church and, truth be told, none of us are happy and joyful all the time. Janet and I still have significant pain in our lives, and I bet you do, too.

Yes, our joy is rooted in who Jesus is, so it’s deeper than our circumstances. Yes, he imparts supernatural joy in the middle of horrendous circumstances. I’ve experienced his peace in the midst of tremendous pain, in circumstances that should’ve been anything but peaceful. But sometimes he doesn’t bring joy. Not always; not all the time. You can’t box him in or predict what he’s going to do.

What do you do when you pray, when you worship, when you read your Bible, when you’ve done everything right, and you still feel depressed? What if you still have lustful thoughts? Even suicidal thoughts? What if you still feel the pull toward the old addiction?

We shouldn’t feel like we have to pretend we’re happy and joyful when we’re not. We all continue to go through tough stuff. Jesus promised us we’d have trouble as long as we’re in this fallen world (see John 16:33).

What happens all too often is we sit in church thinking, “What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I be full of joy like all these people all around me? Just look at all these happy people entering into God’s presence. Why does God come through for everyone else but not for me?”

Want in on the big secret? Many, many other people in the room are thinking the exact same thing. And we probably all have thought that at some point.

What if you’re grieving a loss in your life? Maybe a loved one? Even if they’re saved, it’s never easy. What about a child? What about a marriage? A job loss? A home?

What if you’re caught in a mess of your own making? What if your addiction is crashing your life? What if you’re in a crisis pregnancy? What if you’re going to go to jail, maybe a DUI, shoplifting, drugs, or domestic abuse?

If you can’t go to church when you’re in crisis, where can you go?

Some churches are not safe places to be when you’re hurting. They question your faith if you show any signs of human frailty.

There are conversations we as the church need to have that we’re not having. Let’s go there.

1) Depression

Why are some chemical imbalances acceptable in the church today while others are not? No one would tell a diabetic not to take their insulin. But do we look down on people who need medication for depression as “unspiritual”? Why do we expect God to heal depression but not diabetes?

Everyone is different. We can’t fit people into formulas. Sometimes depression needs counseling, inner healing, and/or deliverance to address the root causes. But what about the people who do all that and still feel suicidal? More counseling? Maybe, maybe not. What’s God doing in that person? Sometimes the person needs medication to be leveled out enough to receive inner healing or deliverance. Sometimes it’s a legitimate chemical imbalance just like diabetes.

I’m not that person and I can’t tell the difference, so who am I to judge? I think I’ll leave that one up to God, and just be their friend, brother in Christ, and let them know how loved they are.

The sticky wicket comes when our method of choice, be it counseling, inner healing, deliverance, or what have you, doesn’t work. Do we blame the person? You don’t have enough faith! You just need to embrace your healing! How dare you break my perfect formula! That’s an injustice that needs to stop. When things that should work don’t work, it just means God’s not done and wants to do something even better in the person. We need to encourage them, not shame them.

We need to have this conversation. How do we act around people who suffer from depression?

2) Post-Abortive

One in three women has had an abortion. Of those, 70% identify as regular church attenders. Janet and I volunteer at our local crisis pregnancy center here in Fredericksburg, VA. The ones that break our heart the most are the ones who say, “Yes, I’m pro-life, but I have to get an abortion because I can’t tell my church.” The shame is too great. This is an injustice that needs to stop.

And it’s not just a women’s issue. Do the math. One in three men has fathered an aborted child. Abortion cuts to the heart of a man’s identity as protector just like it does the heart of woman’s identity as nurturer.

Is it possible that our judgmental attitude and lack of acceptance of girls in crisis pregnancies, especially our own, is what’s funding Planned Parenthood more than Congress? Are we the ones keeping them in business with our shaming and religiosity?

We need to have this conversation. How do we act around unmarried, pregnant young women? How do we act around post-abortive people? Is it safe for people in your church to admit they’ve had an abortion? How would you react?

3) Sexual Purity

Our girls in our churches are getting pregnant with our boys in our churches because we’re not talking about sex in our churches. Sex is part of life, and we should be talking about it in church regularly, from the pulpit, not just in Youth Group. Our silence is letting the media teach our teens and young adults about sex. They’re getting a very skewed, unhealthy, lying, but very slick, deceptive and appealing, message.

“Silence does not interpret itself.” – Father Frank Pravone, Priests for Life

We need to have this conversation. How do we act around teens and talk about sex?

Are You Willing?

… to have the hard conversation?

… to have the uncomfortable conversation?

… to be friends with that person?

… to let those people in your church?

… to admit that we don’t have our act together all the time?

… to come clean about our own doubts and fears?

… to, in vulnerability, be Jesus to the ones who need him the most?

Who knows, if we as the church are willing to do that, we just might find ourselves changing the world.

Please share this post on social media if you agree with starting this conversation.

How to Live from Your Future, Not Your Past, with Two Simple Lists

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Most of us live from the pain of our past. We try to medicate it with addictions. We try to bury it by being busy doing good things. We try to drown it with a constant buzz of media, entertainment, and self-gratification. But none of it works because God, in his great love and mercy for us, doesn’t let it work. He has a better way for us to live. God’s calling us to live from our future.

How do you think God sees you? What face does he make when he thinks of you? Many of us think of God frowning and disappointed over our mistakes. We think God’s pre-occupied with our shame because we are. But he’s not. He sees us from the perspective of our future destiny.

Here’s why. God doesn’t experience time moment after moment, like we do. God experiences all the moments at once. So when God sees our future, it’s not some cosmic fortune-teller thing. He’s just telling us what he’s experiencing in that other moment.

Think of it like this. You’re in a house with walls but no roof. You’re in one room with a radio to a guy in a helicopter hovering over the house. He’s telling you what’s going on in another room. You wouldn’t think, “Wow, he’s got supernatural powers and can see through walls!” No, you’d just understand that from his perspective, he can see all the rooms at once.

That’s how God experiences time. From his perspective, he experiences all the moments at once, just like the guy in the helicopter sees all the rooms of the house at once.

So God is experiencing our future right now, and he speaks to us from that place, reminding us who, from his perspective, we really are.

When God thinks of you, experiencing your future, he has one of two different emotions.

Regardless of the pain in your life, which God weeps over right along with you, God smiles when he thinks of you. For those who have, or will, accept the love of God, he smiles a lover’s smile. He laughs a lover’s laugh. An intimate smile, an intimate laugh, reserved just for you. He calls to you from your future, that place of mature authority to which he sees your present suffering is bringing you. He tells you just enough now to encourage you and light the way to the destiny he created you for.

Look how God calls Gideon in Judges 6:12. Gideon, the weakest person in Israel’s weakest tribe (see verse 15), was threshing wheat in hiding, living in fear of Israel’s cruel, oppressive, and powerful enemies. But when the angel of the Lord shows up, he greets Gideon with Gideon’s true identity, “Hail, mighty man of valor!”

I’m sure Gideon turned around to see who the angel was talking to. Realizing that, indeed, there was no one else there, I’m sure Gideon was like, “You talking to me?”

God was experiencing Gideon’s future, where Gideon, with just 300 men defeated an army of tens of thousands. He was speaking to Gideon from his future and inviting him into it. It was Gideon’s choice. Gideon had to work through some doubts, which God is totally okay with. But in the end, Gideon chose to follow God into his destiny.

But there are some people who, no matter what God does, will never respond to the love of God. For these people God weeps. By refusing his love, they’ve chosen to be separated from him forever. That’s called hell, the only place in existence where God has chosen to withdraw his presence, which is why it’s so torturous there. We don’t like to think about it, but that’s reality apart from the love of God.

This may sound strange, but the most loving thing God can do for those who absolutely will not accept his love is allow them to go there. Think about it. How would it be love for God to force people to spend an eternity with someone they’ve spent their whole life trying to avoid?

For these people God weeps. But he continues to woo them, romance them, and call them into the glorious potential he has for them, if they will just accept his healing love in the midst of their pain. He brings circumstances into their lives that make it very hard for them to not love him back. Because that’s what love does. It never gives up.

So how do we live from our future? You can start with two simple lists. This is a simple but powerful exercise I learned from Graham Cooke.

This first list goes really fast. Make a list of everything wrong with you, everything you’re ashamed of, all your faults. Give yourself two minutes. Go.

Then make a second list on a second sheet of paper. For every item on the first list, ask the Holy Spirit what the opposite is, and write that on the second list. 

Maybe you wrote anger on the first list. For one person, patience will be the opposite. For someone else, it might be sensitivity. For someone else, maybe gentleness. That’s why you have to ask the Holy Spirit. Write the first thing that pops to your head. God so wants to talk to you about this.

Then throw the first list away. Rip it up into little pieces. Do it right now. Enjoy it! Rip up that thing! That list is not you. It doesn’t exist in Heaven, so it shouldn’t exist on this earth. Don’t we pray, “on earth as it is in Heaven?”

Now take the second list and pray over it. Dwell on it. Keep it with you. Look for opportunities to practice those things in your life. The second list is your game plan for what God wants to do in your life. Not all at once, don’t panic. Pick one or two and focus on those.

When something on the first list pops up in your life, pray a moment and thank God he’s giving you an opportunity to practice the corresponding item on the second list. Focus on the second list. That’s the future God wants you living from.

Say you wrote anger on the first list and patience on the second list. Then you find yourself going into one of your rages. Don’t pray, “Lord, help me not be angry.” If you pray that way, you’ve just spoken over yourself what God says you’re not. You’re focusing on the sin that died on the cross with Jesus.

Instead, pray, “Lord, help me be patient.” Now you’re speaking over yourself who God says you are. You’re partnering with him working patience into your life. You’re focusing on what he wants to do.

Yes, you can do this. This is the empowering grace Jesus bought for us through the cross.

When we live from our future, we practice the habit of becoming. God loves this process. Just like a parent loves watching their child learn to walk, God loves watching us become who he knows we are.

We chose the picture we did for this post because that mom dressed her baby in a powerful identity, and he has no idea what it means. What identity has God dressed you in?

Who are you becoming? What future is God calling you into? What’s on your second list? Tell us in the comments. And please share if this would bless someone else.

You Need these 3 Things to Move Forward

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

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

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

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

1) You Need A Voice

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

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

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

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

You have a voice. Use it.

2) You Need A Community

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

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

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

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

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

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

3) You Need Momentum

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Do something.

So What About You?

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

How to be a Coach Not a Rescuer, and How to Tell the Difference

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As Christians, we all want to be helpful. We’ve experienced the blessing of sacrificing for another person. Unlike the world, most Christians I know really aren’t in it for themselves. We genuinely care about the communities we’re a part of, and we’re willing to sacrifice if it will contribute to the greater good.

We long to be like Jesus. That whole cross thing was pretty helpful, saving the world and all. It sure changed my life, as well as the entire trajectory of the world.

So while we all want to be helpful, it turns out there’s a good helpful and a bad helpful. It can be hard to tell the difference sometimes because often they look exactly the same, from the outside at least. But the inner motivation is different, and over time you can see the fruit on the outside also. 

The Bad Helpful — Rescuers

Rescuers have to be helpful. Of course being helpful is good in and of itself, but with rescuers there is something else going on. Rescuers get their value from helping. That’s why they have to. It’s really not about the person they’re helping at all. It’s all about the rescuer and how it makes them feel.

And actually, there’s even something deeper going on — the inner heart motivation. Rescuers are driven by fear. While looking great on the outside, they’re actually terrified of becoming a victim. “If I’m rescuing a victim, I must not be one, right?”

At first, the rescuer and the victim are thrilled to have found each other. The victim feels safe that someone is finally helping them. And we, as the rescuer, feel all good and warm and fuzzy inside; we feel valued. Nothing wrong with that, per se. But it goes off the rails as soon as the rescuer actually expects something of the victim.

The solution to every problem in life requires us, at some level, to tell ourselves “no.”

The victim is unwilling to tell themselves “no,” at least not the “no” that would lead out of the problem. They’re unwilling to give up the lifestyle or the addiction or whatever is causing the problem. They just want the pain to go away. 

So when we, as the rescuer, require something of them, they turn on us. “Hey, I thought you were supposed to be helping me!” We’ve suddenly become the new persecutor, and the poor victim searches for a new rescuer.

Meanwhile, we, playing the misunderstood rescuer, feel frustrated that all our good advice is going to waste. “I only wanted to help!” We feel devalued because we got emotionally attached to the solution. Since we’re getting our value from solving their problem, when our solution gets rejected, so do we.

Acting as rescuers, our worst comes out. We control and manipulate to force our advice and help into being accepted, because our value is on the line. 

This sounds strange, but when we pop into rescuer mode, we’re actually giving away our power over our own life. Because our value is now in the hands of someone else accepting or rejecting our advice. So when our advice is rejected, it’s off to find another victim to validate us by accepting our advice, letting us control their situation and solve their problem. 

The Good Helpful — Coaches

On the other hand, coaches are the good helpful. Unlike rescuers who have to be helpful, coaches are available to be helpful. 

While rescuers look at the landscape and seek poor victims who won’t make it without them, coaches don’t see victims at all. They see creators who have forgotten who they are. 

In the midst of the storm, people can feel pretty powerless, at the mercy of forces they can’t control. And while this world is full of forces one can’t control, in every situation one can still do something. Coaches restore people’s power with one, simple, empowering question: “What are you going to do?”

As a good coach, if the other person is open to it, we can still offer advice. But we always ask first. There’s no point trying to solve a problem the other person says they don’t have. 

But even when offering advice, coaches are not emotionally attached to the solution. When we’re in coach mode, we may feel disappointed our advice or help was rejected, but it doesn’t wreck us. We give the other person the freedom to reject our advice. 

After giving our best advice, we simply ask them again, “What are you going to do?” As a powerful person, it’s their choice. By giving them the freedom to choose without manipulation, we’re pulling them out of victimhood by restoring their power.

As coaches, our value is in who we are before Jesus, not whether our godly wisdom is accepted or not. Since our value isn’t on the line, we give the other person the freedom to reject our advice if they choose. We honor their choice, even if we know it’ll be bad for them in the long run. We accept that the Lord will walk them through learning that themselves, if they’re determined to go down that road.

Everyone has to live their own adventure.

It can really hurt to watch a loved one go down a dark path. But trying to rescue them won’t work, in the long term at least. You can’t force it. They have to live their own adventure. You can coach them, to the degree they choose to accept it. But working harder on their problem than they do is the definition of codependence, and it never ends well.

How to Tell if We Are Rescuing or Coaching 

Like most things in life, the difference between rescuers and coaches isn’t always black ‘n’ white. Often, we both play both roles at different times with different people. So how can we tell when we’re slipping into rescuer mode vs being a healthy coach? Here are 3 simple clues:

1) You’re owning the problem.

When you’re working harder on the other person’s problem than they are, you’re slipping into rescuer mode. It’s their problem, let them own it. That includes allowing them to deny the problem exists and live with the consequences, if they so choose.

This can be harder than it looks. When they’re in pain, people often don’t want to own their problem. They’d much rather give it to you. Then you’re responsible for the negative consequences of their choices. And they get the added entertainment bonus of watching you try to make them follow your advice. Good luck with that.

Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. (Galatians 6:7)

When we take ownership of their problem and rescue people from the logical consequences of their choices, we’re actually interfering with God’s process of sowing of reaping. Don’t do that. 

Yes, we can help. I’m not saying we don’t have compassion and just let people drown in their messes. But we need to stay in a posture of helping them solve their problem, not solving it for them.

2) Where’s your value coming from?

Can you still feel good about yourself if the person doesn’t solve the problem? If you’re emotionally attached to the solution, you’re slipping into rescuer mode. 

I know this can be really hard when a loved one is screwing up their life. But we have to let them live their own adventure. When our value becomes dependent on the success or health of their life, we’ve become a rescuer.

3) Do the potential consequences of this problem scare you?

If the person doesn’t solve the problem, have you failed? If your success as a parent (or spouse or mentor or friend or whatever) hangs in the balance, then you’re in rescuer mode. This is a sign you’re being driven by fear.

Let you be you and them be them. You can still be you and move forward even if they fail at being them. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt, especially if they’re a loved one. There’s plenty of pain and loss to go around. But you’re not going to fix anything in the long run by being their rescuer, by being their savior. They already have one, and they need to deal with him.

Does this resonate?

Have you made the transition from rescuer to coach? Is God bringing up relationships where you’re more rescuing than coaching? Tell us your story and your thoughts in the comments. And please share this on social media if it would bless someone else.

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

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

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

First Steps

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

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

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

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

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

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

First Hit

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

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

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

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

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

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

God Celebrates Our Learning

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

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

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

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

You’re not Failing, You’re Practicing.

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

Rebellion

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

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

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

2 Ways out of Self-Condemnation

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

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

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

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

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

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

Counseling:

Spotswood Biblical Counseling Center (Fredericksburg, VA)

Dominion Counseling and Training Center (Richmond, VA)

Inner Healing:

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

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

Deliverance:

The Church Unchained (Stafford, VA)

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

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

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

So How about It?

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

How to Make Real and Lasting Change

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It’s Not “Just the Way You Are”

Do you have a behavior you just can’t stop? Maybe an addiction? Maybe just a bad habit that you keep finding yourself doing? Maybe you’ve given up and told yourself, “That’s just the way I am.”

Hogwash. It doesn’t have to be the way we are. That’s a choice we make. We can make another choice. But just trying harder is not going to work. We actually have to do something different.

As long we’re still breathing, God’s not done with us. Sanctification is a lifelong process. “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks” is nonsense. That’s a choice the dog makes. Personally, this puppy wants to keep learning until the day I die.

“The Room Was Unlocked Again!”

Years ago I worked for a certain engineering company with government contracts. We had several “cleared” program rooms; they were special rooms with added security for processing classified information. We had different rooms for different programs, which could all be locked and alarmed independently.

We also had a serious problem. Every other month or so, one of the rooms wouldn’t get locked at night.

They were always innocent mistakes. Maybe the guy who unlocked the room in the morning didn’t know the guy who usually locked it at night left early that day. Or the person who meant to lock it up got busy with some other important project and just forgot, an honest mistake. Or some such thing.

But we had to figure this out. Leaving a special room unlocked is a security violation we had to report to the Customer. Too many of those and they cancel your program. This was a really big, serious deal.

After every violation, our boss would email everybody about the importance of making sure the special rooms were locked each night, reminding everyone to be vigilant and try harder.

After several episodes, I had a talk with our boss and our security officer. “Trying harder is not going to work,” I said. “We are all conscientious, responsible people. We can’t try harder; we’re already trying as hard as we can, and this keeps happening. We have to do something different.”

I had an idea from what I’d seen work at other facilities. We needed a physical token. Room tags. We laminated 4” x 6” colored cards: red, blue, orange, and green. Each program had its own color. We put each one on a lanyard so you could put it around your neck. When the room was locked, its tag hung on a hook outside the door.

When you unlocked a room in the morning, you put the room tag around your neck. It was big and clunky enough so you couldn’t go home and forget you had it. Before you left, you had to give it to someone else. If they accepted it, they were now responsible for locking the room that night. If you couldn’t get anyone to accept the tag, you had to go lock up the room before leaving.

It worked! Once we started doing this, our security violations completely stopped. We did something different.

So What Can You Do Differently?

Here are some ideas to get you started thinking about what you personally, in your situation, might do differently.

If it’s a social thing, like drugs or alcohol, you need to change friends. Ouch! That’s hard, I know. But if the thing you want to change is something you do when you hang around certain people, you need to stop hanging around those certain people.

If it’s a private thing, like porn, you need accountability. Throw away your laptop and disable the data on your phone. Buy a desktop computer and put it in a very public/open area of your house. Everybody can see what you’re doing on the computer. Alternatively, ask a spouse or friend to regularly review your browser cache to see want you’ve been doing. You can also buy software that blocks those sites.

If you’re trying to go to the gym every morning, set out your gym clothes the night before, next to a glass of water. When you get up, first thing, drink that glass of water. It hydrates your brain and helps you think clearly. Your gym clothes are there staring at you. It’s easy to put them on and go. This has worked wonders for me.

It’s a Kingdom of God principle that we attract to ourselves what we think about, what we dwell on. Write down your goals every morning and pray over them. It’ll focus your mind on your goals instead of your problems.

These are just some ideas. What ideas can you come up with for your situation?

Let’s Be Honest

Listen, if you don’t want to change, then don’t change. But be honest with yourself, and everyone else, about it.

If you don’t do something differently, if you don’t change your behavior, you need to face the truth that you actually want the addiction, bad habit, or whatever it is. You’re getting something out of it. It’s probably medicating pain on some level. Knock yourself out, you’re free to choose.

And honestly, if you’re medicating pain, just stopping the addiction won’t work anyway. You’ll just trade it for something else. You need to deal with the root cause of the pain. We write a lot on this blog about doing that.

But if you do want to change, what’s the first step? What can you do differently? Tell us in the comments, and please share if this post would bless someone else.

Turning Around

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Let’s start with a fun story today. Bob had a business meeting in Boston, and decided to drive instead of fly from his home in Washington, DC. His wife, Barb, called him to see how the road trip was going.

Barb: How’s the road trip going, Honey? Where are you?

Bob: I’m in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Barb: Honey, you’re going the wrong way!

Bob: Yeah I know. I want to go north, but the car’s going south.

Barb: Who’s driving the car?

Bob: I am.

Barb: Then why are you going south?

Bob: I don’t want to. I want to go north. But the car got on the southbound ramp and won’t turn around. I’m worried I might be late for my meeting in Boston if the car goes to Florida.

Barb: Honey, turn the car around.

Bob: Hey, don’t judge me! I’m the victim here in this crazy situation! I want to go north; it’s not my fault the car’s going south!

Pretty jacked up, right? Bob’s words, saying he wants to go to Boston, all of his good intentions and planning, all of his heart-longing for it, aren’t going to get the car there. His actions are driving the car, not his words, not his intentions, not his desires. If he ever wants to get to Boston, he needs to take responsibility for his actions and turn the car around. Pretty obvious, huh?

But we do this in our relationships all the time. We pursue our life-goals this way. Our actions drive our car to our destination – not our stated good intentions or our desires.

When we live this way, we’ve taken the Vows of Victimhood. But we can choose to turn around.

No Gain without Vulnerability

“I want to relate but not be hurt.” Although we say we want a relationship, we take steps by our actions to push people away. We decide we’re going to control the situation to keep from getting hurt, instead of trusting God to heal us through the hurt. And it turns out that our trying to control causes us worse hurt than the natural situation would have. But we blame the situation.

“I want to learn but not fail.” We say we want that promotion, but we’re not willing to learn the technology or acquire the skills or do anything different. We don’t want to risk failing. It’s as if Bob intentionally drove to Raleigh to avoid the traffic in New York City. He will avoid the traffic in New York City with this strategy, but he’s also not going to Boston.

Repentance not Remorse

“I want the pain in my life healed, but I’m not willing to change the lifestyle that caused it.” We see this one all the time in the crisis pregnancy center where Janet and I volunteer. So many people are willing to come to Jesus to heal the pain in their lives, but not for the transformation to change their lives. Yes, God can and will heal your headache, but if you bang your head on the brick wall again, you’ll get another headache.

I’ve found sexual integrity is often the litmus test for whether a person really follows Jesus or not. It’s not a legalistic thing (although those people are out there, too). Here’s the deal: Do I love Jesus enough to love other people to the degree that I want to protect them from my own desires? Do I love my girlfriend enough do protect her from myself? Even if she wants it? Do I love Jesus enough to tell her no and wait for marriage?

Most of the complexities in our lives are because we’re not doing it God’s way. Living for God makes everything simpler, it really does.

Kudos to Dr. William Clark from The Lay Counselor Institute for this excellent analogy.

Does this strike a chord with you? Been there, done that, got the tee-shirt? Tell us in the comments or send us a private message with the Contact Us link above. We really want to hear from you. And if this would be helpful to someone else, please share it.