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.

Your Worst Enemy Is Also Your Best Ally

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Does that title seem strange? That’s because so often we really don’t know who our real enemy is. Let’s discover that first.

Not Other People

We often confuse people who hurt us with the enemy. But they are not our real enemy, even if they think they are. When people hurt us, they are acting out of their own wounding. Hurt people hurt people.

In fact, out of his great love for us, God often uses other people’s sin to refine us. That’s why Proverbs 27:17 says, “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.”

Have you ever said, “That guy, he just pushes my buttons!” Those buttons are actually sin in us that God is using the other person to highlight. God wants us to give him our buttons.

“But you don’t know what they did!” God will deal with them; that’s not your problem. Let God deal with you.

Not the Devil or Demons

Now, don’t get me wrong here. Satan and demons are very real. They want to, at minimum, derail the calling on our lives, and at most, kill us outright. That qualifies as an enemy. They certainly are. In Christian literature, when we speak of “the enemy,” that’s who we’re talking about. I’ve done it lots on this blog, and there’s nothing wrong with that language. It’s accurate. But they aren’t our worst enemy.

We don’t want to take them lightly or ignore them, but as Christians we don’t have to be afraid of them either. I love Graham Cooke’s attitude toward the devil and his minions: “If you don’t fight me, you’re going to lose. If you do fight me, you are so going to lose. Sucks to be you.”

Our Worst Enemy

Demons have no power over us that we don’t give them by our agreement. We empower what we believe.

We’re not our own worst enemy, but the negativity we believe is. When we speak negatively over our own lives or agree with the negativity others have spoken over us, we empower that reality. But the reverse is also true.

We are made in the image of the Creator God. As such, we have the power to create our own reality around ourselves and others within our sphere of influence. God created us with this power so we could bless ourselves and each other. But as is common with most tools, our beliefs can either give us unstoppable momentum forward or be an incredibly destructive weapon.

Our Best Ally

Yes, our belief is a tool. What we believe is either our worst enemy or our best ally. No force on the planet, for good or ill, can overcome the power of your beliefs about yourself, either positive or negative.

Although he is totally sovereign, not even God will override our beliefs. Instead, he engineers situations in our lives that overload our elaborate structure of lies. He wants to bring those negative, limiting, prison walls we’ve built around ourselves, to keep us safe by our own power, crashing down. And he is, in each situation, constantly giving us the choice of what we will believe: His uncharted goodness, or our comfortable lies?

Our lies keep us safe, as safe as a ship chained to the dock. Always yearning for, but never actually, riding the waves it was designed for. How sad. How tragic. What a wasted life.

On the other hand, God’s goodness wants us to sail out into the uncharted waters of our destiny. God has something unique that he’s created you to do in this world. And if you don’t do it, no one will.

Yes, it’s bigger than you. In fact, it’s impossible. God’s calling, the destiny on your life, is always impossible without him. He’s built divine partnership into the fabric of the universe. You follow your heart’s cry, and he’ll handle the impossibilities.

What makes your heart sing? Are you afraid to listen to that song? Are you afraid to go there? The only thing stopping you is what you believe. Once you believe what God believes about you and your calling and your destiny, there will be no stopping you.

So how about it?

What does God say about you that makes your heart sing? Tell us in the comments. What’s your calling? Are you pursuing it? Please share this post if it would inspire others.

How to Tell When You’re at an Extreme and How to Escape It

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None of us want them, but we all have them. Extreme positions, points-of-view, opinions, even behaviors that harm us and everyone around us. Often we grew up with them, so they are all we know. We think they’re normal, and so we don’t even question them. But they aren’t healthy.

The problem is, since we grew up with them, we often can’t even see our own extremes. We implicitly take them for granted. So how can we recognize when we’re at an extreme? Extremes reveal themselves by what we’re offended by.

Now don’t get me wrong here. Some things are worth being offended by. But, if we’re trying to be like Jesus, we don’t get to decide what those things are. He does. We should be offended by what he’s offended by, and nothing else.

What Is God Offended By?

Jesus is offended by unrighteous actions, not by unrighteous people. Many people have suffered terrible trauma. Hurt people hurt people. That doesn’t make it right, but that’s the fallen, unsafe world we live in. While, yes, sin is offensive to God, sinners are not. He loves them.

Jesus loves people but hates unrighteous actions (i.e., sin).

Unfortunately, too often today many churches love sin (by not calling it sin) in the name of loving people. But it’s actually unloving not to call out behavior that’s actually hurting people, like sex outside of marriage or LGBTQ. 

On the other hand, some churches actually hate people in the name of upholding righteousness. It’s not love to treat unrighteous people unrighteously. For example, God does not hate homosexuals. God loves homosexuals. He hates homosexuality, just like he hates adultery and cheating on taxes–the sinful lifestyles. But God loves homosexuals, adulterers, and thieves. There’s an eternity of difference between loving the person and hating the sinful lifestyle.

Jesus loved the people while making no excuses for their sin. One of my favorites stories is when he saved a woman caught in adultery that an angry mob was going to stone. (Where was the guy, BTW?) After he dispersed the crowd, he told her, “Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.” (See John 8:1-11.)

The point is that in a disagreement between our opinion and Jesus, we need to lose every time.

How to Tell if You’re at an Extreme with 2 Questions

Two questions reveal if we’re at an extreme, if we answer them honestly. Remember our own extremes are hard to see. The very nature of deception is you don’t know you’re deceived. This makes it hard to see in yourself. But these 2 questions are a great litmus test.

Question 1: What am I offended by? It’s good to recognize when we’re offended. When we’re angry or hurt over something, ask yourself, Am I offended? It’s a good first question to try and sort out what we’re feeling. If yes, we determine we are offended, move on to question 2.

Question 2: Is God offended by this? This is a dangerous question to answer honestly, because it reveals where we need to change. But that’s ok. Lovers of Jesus ask dangerous questions. If God’s not offended by what we’re offended by, we need to repent and change.

For example, we shouldn’t be offended by someone else’s music styles. If they’re worshipping in spirit and truth, God doesn’t care if it’s an old hymn, 1950s gospel, contemporary worship, or hip-hop. 

Another example: We should be offended by music lyrics, novels, movies, or TV shows that portray sex outside of marriage as a good thing, when actually it breaks the heart of God. We need to stop listening, reading, and watching this stuff.

How to Escape an Extreme in 2 Steps

So once we’ve identified we’re in an extreme, how do we get out? By repentance in 2 simple, but not easy, steps. Repentance means we change and don’t do it anymore. Attitudes are hard to change because they’re often an unconscious habit. Repentance is a process and it’ll take some time to turn around. But if you don’t give up, you win.

1) Confess it. Admit our extreme attitude to God as the sin that it is, without excuses. Sometimes, at the point of confession, if we’re really honest with ourselves, we don’t want to change. It’s ok to wrestle with God and slug it out. He can take it. Even if we don’t want to change, we can want to want to change. That’s ok, God can work with that.

2) Take a baby step toward the other extreme. Often, we’re at our extreme because we absolutely hate the other extreme. For example, maybe neat-freaks hate the disorganization of messiness, while messy people hate the rigidity of the neat-freaks. Both extremes are bad. But we justify our extreme by looking at the other one. 

To get out of an extreme, you have to take a step toward the other extreme. Now I’m not saying go to the other extreme, but if you’re going to find the balance in the middle, you have to move in that direction. 

To continue the above example, our neat-freaks need to learn it’s ok if something minor is left out-of-place and let it go. Meanwhile, the messy people need to put things back when they’re done with them. This is a silly example, but you get the idea.

So take a deep breath and take a step toward the other extreme. The world won’t come to an end. And Jesus will meet you there in the balance.

How about you?

Have you been at an extreme? How did you get out? Did you realize what you hated wasn’t so bad after all? Tell us our story in the comments, and please share if this would bless someone else.

How to Change

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Janet and I were recently at a writer’s conference in Franklin, TN, put on by our mentor Jeff Goins. In his final keynote, Jeff talked about how to move forward in your writing. But the 3 steps he gave apply to much more than just writing. They are fundamental to any change we want in our lives. If “change” is too scary, think about it as “making progress.” 

1) Take Ownership

If you’re going to make any progress at all, you’ve got to own the problem. Yes, maybe something was done to you, out of your control. Maybe you lost your job, or a crime was committed against you. Maybe someone died. Maybe you were assaulted, robbed, raped, or molested. None of these things are your fault, and are totally out of your control.

But your response is totally in your control. You own your response. That’s all you.

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” – Viktor Frankl, “Man’s Search for Meaning”

That quote sounds cute, until you know that Viktor Frankl was an Austrian psychologist who survived the Holocaust in multiple concentration camps, including Auschwitz. The full quote, including the preceding sentence, reads, “We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

You can choose your response to the evil done against you. You can hold perpetrators accountable. You can set healthy boundaries. You can forgive. You can be a creator in the situation and not a victim.

This is not “buck up and pull yourself up by your bootstraps” (like that ever works). This doesn’t mean you have to do it all yourself (like that ever works). It means being honest about your situation, about what you can do yourself and what you need help with. It means owning responsibility for moving forward, including proactively getting help when needed.

The point is that getting help from someone doesn’t give them the problem. It’s still your responsibility.

(Free aside: This is important to remember when you’re helping someone else. Don’t own their problem. Working harder on someone else’s problem than they do is codependency.)

2) Design Your Environment

For inner healing, you need to design your support system. It’s really hard to make progress out of toxic thought patterns when you’re still living in the toxic environment that fostered them. Some of us can’t change our home life, but we can get additional support from healthy friends, counseling, pastors, or a godly church. A healthy support system doesn’t happen by accident. You have to design it into your life.

Ben Hardy has an excellent book called Willpower Doesn’t Work (not an affiliate link) about how to design your environment so it supports your goals instead of fighting against them. This is an easy read and has helped me move forward in several different areas of my life. 

Let’s dial back a moment to understand this “designing your environment” thing. Here’s an example:

I want to work out in the morning (either run or hit the gym), but it’s really hard when I get up at 5:00. I’m groggy and it’s hard to think about what to do to move forward toward my goal instead of going back to bed. How could I design my environment to help me with my goal of working out? Turns out something as easy as setting my gym clothes out before going to bed does the trick. Then when I get up, I see the gym clothes and don’t have to think to put them on. Then suddenly I’m dressed for working out or running so it’s much easier.

Little, simple, insanely effective life-hacks like this have done wonders for me. They are really easy to do, but they don’t happen by themselves. I had to actually think about what changes I could make to my environment to support my goals. Ben Hardy’s book taught me how to do that. 

Now I don’t mean to make designing your environment sound like all rainbows and unicorns. If you’re going to make progress in anything, at some point you have to tell yourself “no.” That can be hard and unpleasant. But it’s a lot easier when you’re not in the heat of the moment.

Here’s another example. If you’re trying to lose weight, don’t have junk food in the house. You don’t have to fight not eating it if it’s not there in the first place. In order to not have it in the house, go to the grocery store right after eating a big meal, so you’re not hungry while you’re at the store. Yes, you still have to tell yourself, “Don’t buy those Twinkies,” but that’s a lot easier (especially when you’re not hungry at the moment) than not eating them when they’re in the house calling your name. 

Said the skinny guy. Yes, I know I’m over-simplifying weight-loss. Often there’s wounding and inner healing issues that need to be addressed. But when designing your environment works, and you’re forced to face the terror of not having Twinkies at the ready, you can talk to your heart about where that’s coming from and deal with the actual issue, instead of just medicating the pain. 

If you live in a toxic environment, how can you design a healthy support system into your environment? Who can you have on speed dial? What is one simple boundary you can set? I highly recommend both professional and pastoral counseling. Ask your pastor and counselor to call and talk to each other. They will both probably want you to sign a release–sign it. It is to your huge advantage if they are in communication with each other. 

3) Take Action

This sounds too obvious to say, but so often we get paralyzed right here. If you don’t take action, nothing will change, no progress will be made. You need to actually do something. And preferably something different.

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” — Albert Einstein

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not talking about madly running around in circles but not going anywhere. I’m not talking about flooring it when you’re stuck in the mud. It sounds impressive, like hard work and effort, because the engine’s revving so loudly, but really you’re just splattering mud everywhere. 

I’m not talking about activity for activity’s sake. But I am talking about taking action. Measured action. Not necessarily even the right action. You find out afterwards whether it worked or not. But some action. Take your best guess, arrived at through prayer and thoughtfulness and advice from wise counsel.

The thing is, if your action fails, you learn and adjust. But you never learn (i.e., you stay ignorant) if you never take action. Perfectionism is just a culturally acceptable label for procrastination.

Have you ever seen a hockey player move the puck down the ice? He doesn’t send it careening straight toward the goal; the other team would intercept it. And he doesn’t just push it on one side straight toward the goal either; it would get away from him. No, he taps it on the left, taps it on the right, taps it on the left, taps it on the right, avoids obstacles (opposing players), and gets help from his teammates (passing it back and forth).

If you look at the track of the puck down the ice, it’s almost never heading exactly straight at the goal. But it’s moving in that general direction. And the composite total of all those little adjustments is ultimately a score. 

You can score too. Own your situation. Design your environment to help you. Make a plan and then go for it. Take the first baby step in the direction you want to go. If it fails, learn from it, adjust, and try something else. Eventually you’ll score.

So how about it? Tell us your story in the comments and please share if this post would help someone else.