How to Get Unstuck in 3 Questions and 2 Steps

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Judith MacNutt, wife of Francis MacNutt, tells a great story about a circus elephant she saw back-stage. The massive animal stayed in its circle, held by a chain around its foot staked at the center of the circle. The huge creature easily could have ripped that chain right out of the ground and taken off. But it didn’t. It obeyed the chain’s restriction on its mobility.

Fascinated, Judith MacNutt asked the handler how they trained such a massive animal to obey such a relatively small chain. “We first put the chain on when the animal’s small,” explained the handler, “The baby elephant learns it can’t pull the chain out of the ground. Then as it grows, it remembers that lesson and never challenges what it ‘knows’ to be true. So it’s not the chain that keeps an adult elephant bound, it’s the memory of the chain.”

Wow. How many of us are still bound by the memory of chains of trauma from childhood that we could easily break now as adults?

Trauma teaches us the world’s not safe. True lesson. The world’s not safe. What was done to us was absolutely wrong, sinful, and unjust. It was not fair, and it was not our fault. The problem is what we do with that lesson.

Often, rather than trusting God to protect us in an unsafe world, we vow to protect ourselves:

  • “I will never be angry like my dad.”
  • “I will not have emotions. Emotions hurt people.”
  • “I will not make a mistake. Mistakes can kill you.”
  • “I will never let anyone close enough to hurt me again.”
  • “I will take care of myself. No one else will.”
  • “I will be the good boy/girl so people love me.”

While the initial trauma is neither our sin nor our fault, our sinful response is our responsibility. We often vow to protect ourselves. Instead of trusting God, we become our own god. Our ability to control the situation (and the people) to protect ourselves becomes our very own personal idol.

The problem is, we make these inner vows based on their deceptive marketing. They don’t deliver. Either they don’t work at all, or they work in reverse, or they have an extremely high hidden cost the commercial didn’t tell us about. When they work at all, the cure is worse than the disease.

When They Don’t Work

If we vow to not have emotions, that won’t work. God made us with emotions, and we can’t undo what God has made no matter how hard we try. What happens instead is we don’t show emotions. But they’re there. Under the surface, simmering, like ripe magma getting ready for a volcanic eruption. There’s no such thing as an unexpressed emotion. It may come out 20 years later, and it may come out sideways, but it’s coming out.

“Out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.” (Luke 6:45) Not the overflow of our understanding. Not the overflow of our good intentions. The overflow of our heart—all those things we needed to express but never did. Like a volcano, the longer the pressure builds up, the bigger the eruption.

When They Work in Reverse

When we judge our parents or others in our lives, “I’ll never be like them,” we set ourselves up to be exactly like them. God promises us, “You who judge do exactly the same things.” (Romans 2:1) How often have we heard our parents’ exact same words coming out of our own mouth? The judgements we make set us up to do exactly the same things, cause the same hurt, and repeat the cycle all over again.

When They Have a High Hidden Cost

Sometimes inner vows actually do work as intended, but they have a high hidden cost we didn’t intend to sign up for. Often we make inner vows as children, a self-defense against the trauma, so we can survive. We don’t know they’re even there because they go back further than our memory. They can be hard to articulate when we made them in our heart before we had words.

For example, look at an inner vow to “never be vulnerable and let anyone close enough to hurt me.” Maybe a child made this vow at 2 years old while being molested. Even if the memory is completely suppressed, the vow is still in play, “protecting” our heart, like we told it to, like we decreed.

Decades later, we get married to a wonderful spouse. We want to fully give ourselves to that person. But we just can’t. We get frigid or impotent. Or we’re emotionally distant. No matter how hard we try, we just can’t be vulnerable with our spouse. The vow is in the way.

Or consider an inner vow to “never hope again.” How’s that work when we want to enter into worship and express our faith in God? Hebrews says, “Faith is the substance of things hoped for” (Hebrew 11:1). So if we’ve vowed to never hope, that inner vow gets in the way of our faith.

Salvation Doesn’t Remove Inner Vows

The good news is, yes, inner vows can be removed. There’s 3 steps to removing inner vows we’ll cover in a minute.

But I’m assuming first that you’re a Christian, having accepted Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior. You’ve made the decision to follow him with your life. If not, don’t bother trying to remove an inner vow. Don’t waste your time. Only the power of the blood of Jesus on the cross removes inner vows. If you’re not under the blood, it won’t work.

Having said that, getting saved and putting your faith in Jesus does not automatically remove inner vows! We so often assume once we get saved, everything’ll be just peachy. Often, the opposite happens. The effects of the inner vow get worse. This is a blessing from God in disguise. God is intentionally overloading the inner vow because he wants to expose it, so he can remove it from blocking the identity he created us for.

Even as Christians, the vow is in place until we remove it. God is a gentleman and will not violate what we’ve decreed over our own lives. We were created in God’s image, with his creative authority. He gave us the tool of authority so we could bless. How we use that tool is up to us. Like a hammer, authority can bring incredible blessing or incredible damage, depending on how it’s used. We can curse and bind ourselves, as inner vows do, if we choose to.

How to Identify an Inner Vow with 3 Questions to Your Heart

Like we’ve said, this can be tricky because inner vows are often older than our memory and were made in our heart before we had words. But if you’re stuck, without any other reason to be, there’s possibly an inner vow in play. If you’re wanting to do something good, like have faith, enter into worship, fully give yourself to your spouse, join in a certain (wholesome!) activity, but you just can’t for some unknown reason – well, there could be an inner vow getting in the way.

Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal it. “Holy Spirit, have I made an inner vow that’s blocking this?” Then hush and listen.

Inner vows were our way to protect ourselves from something we’re afraid of. So if you feel an irrational fear coming up, pray “Holy Spirit, help me hear my heart.” Then ask your heart, “Heart, why are you afraid?” (I’ve a whole post about how to talk to your heart.)

Sometimes I have to overtly tell my mind to hush so I can listen to my heart. Sometimes it takes a couple days or weeks. But in my quiet times, or when I’m alone in the car, I keep asking. “Heart, why are you afraid?”

Since often inner vows were made before we had language, our heart often answers with a memory. It’s your heart’s way of saying, “Because this happened.” Ok, now we’re onto something.

Ask your heart again, “Heart, because that happened, what judgement did you make about the world, about God, about other people, or about yourself?” And then the question to reveal the inner vow, “Ok Heart, therefore, what did you vow to protect yourself?” Bingo.

For example:

Q1: “Holy Spirit, help me hear my heart. Heart, why are you afraid?” A memory floods back of being abused as a toddler.

Q2: “Heart, because I was abused, what judgements did you make?” My parents won’t protect me. No one will protect me.

Q3: “Heart, therefore, what did you vow to protect yourself?” No one will protect me, therefore, I will protect myself. It’s all on me. I will take care of myself!

Bingo! There it is. This person will have a very hard time trusting in God’s provision, even if as an adult, mature, Christian, they really want to. Now they know where that irrational fear is coming from.

So out of that fear, they try to overly control the situation. “Thanks for the ride, but when are you leaving to pick me up? It’s a 20-minute drive from your office with traffic, so you need to leave by at least 9:10.” They really don’t want to be a control freak, but out of their fear, they just can’t help it. Now it all makes sense. The vow is trying to protect them and destroying their relationships in the process.

How to Remove Inner Vows in 2 Steps

So how do we get rid of an inner vow? 2 steps. Here we go.

Step 1: Confess & Repent. The sin that tempted us to make the vow was someone else’s sin against us. It wasn’t our sin, nor our fault. But our sinful response to it is on us. We confess our sin in making the vow, in trying to protect ourselves instead of trusting God. Keeping with our example above:

“Jesus, I judged you as never going to protect me. I believed a lie that no one would. So I made a vow to protect myself. I repent of making this vow and ask your forgiveness.”

Step 2: Renounce & Replace. Renounce the inner vow, and replace the lying judgement it was based on with God’s truth. Ask the Lord, “Jesus, what’s your truth you want me to cling to instead of that vow?” Sometimes the Lord answers with a Bible verse or two.

In our example, suppose the Lord gave Proverbs 18:10, “The name of the Lord is a strong tower, the righteous run to it and are safe”, and Jeremiah 29:11, “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

So now we simply pray and renounce the vow and replace it with God’s truth. And when you pray the verses, personalize them. Make them yours.

“Lord Jesus, by the authority of your blood over me I renounce that inner vow to always protect myself and not trust anybody else, not even you. I ask you to remove it far from me in your loving forgiveness. Lord, I choose now to instead believe your truth, that you are my strong tower, and I’m safe when I run to you. Your plans are to prosper me and not harm me. You give me hope and a future. I choose to trust you.”

In the future, when that fear rises in our heart and tempts us to run back to all those old ways of responding, instead we go back to those verses. And we personalize them and say them out loud (if the location allows).

How about you?

Has this been helpful? What inner vows have you identified and replaced? With what truth? What differences are you seeing in your life? Tell us your story in the comments or shoot us an email. And please share if you think this post would help someone else.

5 Steps to Help Anyone with Anything

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We’ve probably all heard snippets of Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s first Christmas album, Christmas Eve and Other Stories, but do you know the theme of that album? If you buy the CD, there’s a story woven between the song lyrics. God sends his tiniest angel to Earth on Christmas Eve to bring back a token of what people do to honor the birth of God’s son. The angel weaves in and out of many people’s lives that Christmas Eve and brings back many tokens, but the upshot is the best honor of Christ’s birth is the wish of one heart for the good of another. That’s all. Simple. Honest. No strings attached. No hidden agenda.

I really believe, by and large, the church is like that. We all want to help people. We really do. It’s been my experience (mostly), that people who really love Jesus, when you strip away all the pain and all the confusion and the deception and the fear they may be living in, really do want the good of the other person.

The problem is, we don’t know how. We haven’t been trained how to really help someone. So we default to the ways of the world, rules and control. So often the church is about sin management instead of practicing the presence of Jesus.

We often try to control people’s behavior with fear of punishment instead of training people how to steward freedom powerfully. God created us to be powerful stewards of the freedom Jesus bought for us on the cross, not powerlessly victims of circumstances, bound by the sin of ourselves and others.

I came across this video from Danny Silk, about how to help someone with a problem. This is the best instruction I’ve ever seen on helping someone solve a problem. And it’ll work for pretty much anything. It’s about 20 minutes, but so well worth it! I’ll summarize it for you in the rest of this post.

When people are stuck, they feel powerless. The beauty of Danny Silk’s method is it restores a person’s power. And it does so by asking questions. As you’ll see, everything’s done with questions. You don’t tell the person anything. You just ask questions. Ready to dive in? Here we go.

Step 1: Empathy – How Do They Feel?

This is where we build trust. We listen to the person’s story. We’re not looking for what they did wrong or what they need to do right. We’re looking for how they feel. And we parrot it back to them as a question. Does that make you feel betrayed? Or maybe, Did that make you angry? Or even something as generic as, Wow, that hurts, doesn’t it?

The beauty of it is, you don’t even have to be right. If you guess wrong, don’t worry, they’ll correct you. In trying to understand how they feel, whether we’re right or wrong, we communicate to them, “You matter. I’m trying to understand.” Everyone wants to be accepted and understood. They know we’re on their side. They can trust us. The walls come down.

Step 2: Empowerment – “What are you going to do?”

We have to realize this is their problem. We cannot solve another person’s problem. God created us all to be powerful people, taking ownership of, and responsibility for, our own problems.

Sometimes, when people are feeling stuck and powerless, they will try to get you to solve their problem. They often would love to get you in a parental role of telling them what to do, and then watch you try to make them do it. It’s then your fault when they don’t do it, and now it’s your problem, not theirs.

“What are you going to do?” is the most empowering question you can ask. It communicates clearly that there’s no confusion about who’s problem this is. And it reminds the person they’re powerful. They can do something.

Often though, they are still feeling powerless and overwhelmed, so they might answer, “I don’t know what I’m going to do.” And that leads perfectly into Step 3.

Step 3: Exploration – “What have you tried so far?”

This is another empowering question. It reminds them they have the power to do something. They may not be able to change their circumstances, but they have the power to choose how they respond.

You’re giving them value by expecting them to make choices and do things. You’ve taken it for granted that they’re powerful. And that rubs off, they begin to feel powerful again going through this with you. And you’re still trying to understand, which builds them up.

Step 4: Education – “Would you like to hear some ideas?”

Finally, we get to the step where we can recommend they take certain actions we think might be helpful. But we still don’t tell them do to anything. That’s not our place. Like Alex Trebek on Jeopardy!, we put our advice in the form of a question. For example, we don’t say, “You need to read this book.” Instead, we say, “Have you read this book?”

If we tell them what book they need to read, even if it’s true, we’re re-lapsing back into control. They will often immediately get defensive and tell you why it won’t work before they’ve even read it. But if you ask, they have all the power. You’re acknowledging it’s ok if they don’t read it. It’s just an idea; it’s their choice, with no pressure.

We don’t just start telling them what they need to hear, as tempting as that is, especially when we know we’re totally right. Instead, ask permission. “Can I share something that’s helped in my life?” Now you’re not preaching at them, they’ve asked for the information. You’re helping them feel powerful again. They can say, “Yes I want to hear” or “No I don’t”.

Step 5: Empowerment – “What are you going to do?”

Yeah, I know, we did this step already. But that’s the empowering thing about this process. We always come back to, “What are you going to do?” This is their problem, and they have the power to do something about it. We’ve put out effort understanding how they’re feeling, we’ve explored what’s worked in the past and what hasn’t, we’ve given them our ideas (if they’re open to it), and now it’s up to them, as a powerful person, to choose what they are going to do about their problem.

We can be part of the solution. We can ask, “Do you want me to help you by giving you a ride to the garage?” They take us up on it or not. Being powerful doesn’t mean they have to solve the problem all by themselves. But they need to drive the solution and own responsibility for the outcome, not blame somebody or something else.

Jesus So Did This.

This method really helped me understand why Jesus asked such seemingly stupid questions. I mean, for the Lord of all the Universe, there are times when he just seemed really dense.

Like when Jesus walks up to a blind guy and asks, “What do you want me to do for you?” (Mark 10:46-52) Really Jesus? The guy’s blind, you have to ask?!? What did Jesus expect him to say? “Yeah, I’m blind and all, but really Jesus I was hoping you’d help me change the oil in my camel.”

Or how about when Jesus walks up to an invalid of 38 years at the pool of Bethesda, where all the sick people go to get well, and asks him, “Do you want to get well?” (John 5:1-15). “No, Jesus, I’m just laying here by the pool working on my suntan. Can you flip me over? It’s time to do my back.”

The truth is, of course Jesus knew what these people needed. But he valued them as powerful people by letting them choose it. He didn’t try to control them and force them to accept what they needed. We need to do the same.

This sounds like tremendous fun to me. I love helping people. How about you? Are you game? Has someone done this for you? How have people either empowered you or controlled you into powerlessness? How did that make you feel? Tell us your story in the comments. And please share if this post would bless someone else.

2 Practical Ways to Put God on the Throne of Your Life

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A while back I had a good Christian friend named Nate who had a small boat we’d take out on the Rappahannock River here in Virginia. We had some great conversations out there on the water. After one of these outings, when we got back to his house, somehow we got onto a subject we disagreed on.

Nate was a pot smoker, and I was not. After we argued ‘round the barn a couple times, I realized this wasn’t going anywhere. He had all his reasons why it’s ok, and I had all my reasons why it’s not. We were at an impasse. How was I going to make progress in my friend’s life? The Holy Spirit gently but with certainty reminded me that progress in Nate’s life wasn’t mine to make. Then he gave me a download for how to wrap up the conversation.

I said to Nate, “Look, some things we’re just going to have to agree to disagree on. But there are two things we both know are true. One, you smoke pot because you want to.” He started to look defensive, so I quickly added, “Not a condemnation, just a fact. True? We wouldn’t be having this conversation otherwise.”

Nate relaxed, nodded and said, “Yeah, that’s true. I do want to. I enjoy it.”

“Ok. The second thing we both know is true is,” I continued, “God doesn’t want you to.”

Nate sighed and said, “Yeah, I know that’s true.”

“Then the question I’m going to leave you with is, Who’s going to sit on the throne of your life?”

That’s the question God has for all of us. As more and more formerly illegal behaviors become legal, who’s going to sit on the throne of our lives?

Righteous laws can make a people look more righteous than they really are. Do we do the right thing because it’s the right thing, or because the wrong thing’s against the law? Are our hearts really right before God, or do we just fear punishment? Do we as a people really love and honor God, or are we just smart enough to avoid legal consequences?

When righteous laws are removed, the true heart of the people is revealed. God wants a people who do the right thing, not because they legally have to, but because they truly want to. Because they love him. They die to their own desires, and instead choose God’s way because they are so enraptured by his love.

Wasn’t this the choice in the Garden of Eden? God’s life or the experience of good and evil? (“Knowledge” in the Bible always means “experience.”) Adam and Eve chose to experience good and evil and broke God’s heart.

We’ve all made choices that have broken God’s heart. We’ve all chosen ourselves and our desires at the expense of the people around us. But God, in his love for us that never gives up, made a way for us back to that original choice in the Garden. That’s what the cross was all about.

God never wanted to control us—that’s why Adam and Eve had a free choice and so do we. God wants to love us, and he longs for that love to be returned. He grieves over our self-destructive behavior that breaks relationship with him.

But with sex outside of marriage as the norm, abortion legal, sodomy legal, same-sex marriage legal (with child molestation to follow), pot becoming legal in more and more places (with harder drugs to follow), it’s easy to ask, “Where’s God in all this? What’s going on?”

God’s sovereignty is not threatened by our sin. Here’s what I believe God is doing in all this. God’s known our heart as a people all along. But by allowing us to remove righteous laws, he’s allowing us to see our own heart. God is revealing our heart to us, longing for us to cry out to him for his heart.

God wants a people who will not break his heart. He wants a people who will die to their own desires because they are so enraptured by his love. He wants a people who choose the right thing because they love him and it’s the right thing, not because they have to. But to get that, he has to allow an atmosphere where we don’t have to do the right thing. Hence, in his sovereignty, he’s allowing us to remove righteous laws, and the subsequent increase in wickedness is on us.

We teach and exalt relativistic morals in our public primary schools, and our universities are institutionalizing immorality. We’re calling good evil and evil good. Then we’re shocked when the logical consequences of our choices play out and active shooters don’t know right from wrong.

But the good news is God’s love is more relentless than our sin. He’s not interested in controlling us. He’s interested in loving us, and seeing that love returned through the lives we live for him, dying to ourselves.

Who’s going to sit on the throne of our lives? Here’s 2 practical ways to put God there, if you choose to.

1) Frequent and Regular Time Spent with God

It all begins spending alone-time with God, just the two of you. A marriage where husband and wife don’t spend regular alone-time isn’t going to last long.

But it can’t be forced. It can’t be out of religious obligation. It can’t be checking a box. How would you feel if you spouse (or your BFF if you’re not married) came and, with a heavy sigh while checking their watch said, “Ok, I’m obligated to spend the next hour with you. I’ve set an alarm on my phone so we don’t go over, and I can get back to living my life that doesn’t have anything to do with you. What do you want to do for the next hour?”

Any takers to sign up for that relationship? Don’t we want the other person to actually look forward to spending time with us, like we do with them? That’s how God feels.

2) Have lots of sex with your (opposite sex) spouse. Only.

This is crazy, and I don’t really know why, but a sure sign of closeness to God is sexual purity. There are perversions on the other extreme in other parts of the world, but in the West, almost always false teaching winks at sexual immorality.

If you’re not married, regardless of your past, from this day forward, wait until after you’re married. God will totally bless that.

Marriage is an everyday model of our relationship with God. The idea behind marriage is one spouse, for life. And we share a level of intimacy with that person that is never, in our lifetime, shared with anyone else.

That’s a picture of how it’s supposed to be with us and God! One God for us, for life. We don’t flit back and forth between different idols. We live for our one God only, and we share a level of intimacy with him we don’t give to anything or anyone else.

But in our society, we totally flit around between different idols. In our teen years we live for sex, as young adults we live for entertainment, in our working years we live for money and security, and in retirement we live to play with our toys. None of these things are bad in and of themselves. But we pursue them outside of God’s boundaries because we care more about our own pleasure then we do about relationship with him. Because we still sit on the throne of our own lives.

Put aside all the arguments and emotions for a minute. There are two things we all can agree are true. One, we have sex outside of marriage because we want to. Not a condemnation, just a fact. And the second thing we both know is true is God doesn’t want us to. So who’s going to sit on the throne of your life?

(If you want to know why sexual integrity is such a big deal to God, and *why* God’s boundaries are what they are, I’ve written a small $5 book answering that question. But I’ll send it to you for free if you email me your address at dave@IdentityInWholeness.com and ask for it.)

So back to the question. Who sits on the throne of your life? If God sits there, what has giving him that place cost you? Was it worth it? If there’s an area of your life where God doesn’t yet sit there, can we help you come to that place of surrender? Tell us your story in the comments and please share on social media if you think this would bless someone else.

How to Control Your Emotions

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It was every pastor’s nightmare. Pastor Jay was watching a marriage disintegrate before his very eyes in his office, like a slow-motion train wreck. He just stared at this couple he’d known for years and couldn’t believe his ears. Bob and Joan were both saying the same thing, “I just don’t love him/her anymore, Pastor. I can’t help how I feel. I’m just being honest.”

And there is it. One of the biggest lies in our culture. Did you catch it? “I can’t help how I feel.” That is a lie from the pit! The truth is, yes, we totally can change how we feel. We totally have control over our emotions. The sticky wicket is, we can’t control our emotions by trying to control our emotions. Dude, start making sense!

Ok, here’s the deal. If we try to control our emotions by willing them, that won’t work. We can’t force ourselves to feel or not feel something. At best, all we can do is deny and suppress them, but then we’re only fooling ourselves. At the end of the day, there’s no such thing as an unexpressed emotion. It may come out 20 years later, and it may come out sideways, but it’s coming out.

Yet we can totally control what we feel. But before we talk about how, we need to understand some key concepts about emotions.

Acknowledge the Negative Emotion

Emotions are the idiot lights on the dashboard of our lives. They tell us when something’s wrong, and we’d do well to pay attention to them.

Say the oil light comes on in your car. You have a choice. You can deal with the cause, or you can deal with the light. “Hey, I fixed it! I put a piece of electrical tape over that nasty little light. Now the dashboard looks all black. Problem solved!”

Um, really? How’s that going to work out for this person? I have a nagging feeling they’re going to find out the hard way their problem’s not solved. I just hope it’s not in the pouring rain, in the middle of the freeway, in rush hour! That’s a bad place to find out you’ve turned your engine into a boulder. That’s a bad place to find out saving that $30 on an oil change just cost you thousands of dollars in engine repair. And then we blame the car. Doh!

That’s what happens when we don’t pay attention to what we’re feeling. Except instead of days or weeks later like the oil light on a car, we often don’t find out we’ve turned our life into a boulder (or our marriage, or whatever other relationships) until years, if not decades, later. And then we blame the relationship. Doh!

We need to acknowledge the negative emotion we’re feeling, preferably (1) between us and God, and (2) with a trusted friend.

Don’t Serve the Emotion

The idiot lights on your dashboard, although very important, are not the steering wheel. Imagine if you only turned left when the oil light went on, and only turned right when the check engine light came on. Crash! Although the idiot lights shouldn’t be ignored, they can’t drive the car.

If you let your emotions drive the car of your life, you’ll crash, usually rather spectacularly. We all know people who live with no thought for future consequences, driven into doing whatever self-destructive behavior will mask the pain for just one more precious moment. It’s God’s grace in their lives when such a lifestyle can’t be sustained for long.

You can’t change a negative emotion by focusing on it. We become what we behold, so all that’ll do is make the negative emotion stronger. So although we need to acknowledge it and admit it, we don’t want to dwell on it. We need to change it.

“I know, I know! That’s why I’m reading your post! How do I change my negative emotions?”

I’m glad you asked.

How to Change the Emotion –This Is the Key

Pastor Jay had a revelation for Bob and Joan. He said, “You know, when you called me about needing to meet, I’d had a really tough morning. My computer crashed, losing all my sermon notes for Sunday. My secretary’s out sick, the oil light’s on in my wife’s car, and I’ve got a really full schedule this week. I did not want to meet with you guys today. I felt no compassion for either of you. Just saying. I can’t help how I feel. I’m just being honest.”

Bob and Joan just stared at each other. They couldn’t believe their ears. After all, as their pastor, they paid him to be at their beck and call, didn’t they? They each threw $20 in the plate every Sunday, so they knew he had money. “A pastor isn’t supposed to say things like that!” they finally both yelled at him in unison.

“Neither is a husband. Neither is a wife,” Pastor Jay quietly answered them back. “Hmm. Didn’t my honesty comfort you?” he asked them in mock surprise. “Weren’t you impressed by my ‘integrity’,” he made figure quotes, “by being so honest?”

“No,” they both said. “It really hurts that you would say something like that!”

“That’s the hurt your ‘honestly’,” more figure quotes, “just caused each other.” And for the first time, Bob and Joan began to think about how the other person was feeling.

Then Pastor Jay began to unwrap the onion and teach them how to feel the love again. They had a lot of problems in their relationship, mostly stemming from their own unaddressed personal wounding, and Pastor Jay helped them unpack all of that over the coming year. But today, he gave them a good start. He taught them how to control and change, not suppress nor serve, their emotions.

“Had I not told you, would you have known I’d felt negative about you earlier?” Pastor Jay asked.

“No, we felt the warmth of your compassion for us as soon as we walked in the room!” they both answered, still shell-socked by his admission.

“I started getting God’s heart for you both after I agreed to meet with you,” Pastor Jay explained. “I realized this was serious, and I felt the Holy Spirit prompting me to clear my schedule and make room for this meeting. I spent some serious time praying and interceding for you. As I did those things, I started to feel compassion for you. I started to get God’s heart for you. I changed my negative emotions toward you into positive ones by serving you.”

When you serve another person, the byproduct for you is good emotions toward that person.

“But they’ll take advantage of me!” they both objected simultaneously.

Pastor Jay knew neither of these two were narcissists. (When dealing with narcissists, Pastor Jay taught the other spouse how to set and keep healthy boundaries. He had to work with the other spouse because the narcissist usually stormed out of his office never to return when they realized he wanted to deal with their behavior instead of “fixing” their spouse.) But Pastor Jay correctly discerned that these two were each good-willed people, who each were still willing to change, if they believed it would matter.

So Pastor Jay just put it out there and asked them straight, “Do you want this marriage to work? Are you still in? Yes or no.”

Bob and Joan, one after the other, with tears in their eyes, said yes.

“Ok then,” Pastor Jay said. “Die to yourself and ask the Holy Spirit how to serve the other person. For this week, the other person gets a bye on their behavior. You just serve them. We’ll meet this time next week and you tell me how it’s going.”

This was not some quippy, magic-formula-fix for their marriage; that took a lot of hard work on both sides to bring healing to areas of personal wounding that had been festering a long time. But this was a good start. It at least took the gasoline away from the fire.

Bob and Joan began to have good feelings for each other again. Not because they were being served, but because they were serving the other person. It gave them a little more patience and grace for the other person, instead of just reacting. The Holy Spirit used their selfless service to convict the other person’s heart, much more effectively than any nagging, arguing, or “being right” could have done. And that made it easier for the other person to serve them, which made it easier to serve the other person. And around it went, the cycle spinning in their favor for a change.

This post isn’t about marriage. Kingdom of God principles work in all relationships—marriage, work, school, family, and friends, and even in church relationships. Imagine that! J

While we cannot directly control our emotions by willing them, we can totally control them, indirectly, by serving the other person. The byproduct is good emotions toward them for us. This is a Kingdom of God principle that God wove into the fabric of the universe.

Love is Not an Emotion

Love is a choice. When we choose to serve, we choose to love. And we are setting ourselves up to be great in the Kingdom of God. That why Jesus said,

The greatest among you will be your servant. (Matthew 23:11)

Again:

Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. (Luke 6:38)

And again:

For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. (Mark 10:45)

When we die to ourselves and serve, we partner with Jesus. So will you ask the Holy Spirit how you can serve that person who’s bugging the tar out of you today? In a way that’s meaningful to them? Ask the Holy Spirit. That’s a prayer he’ll answer quickly.

Does this resonate? Tell us how serving others has changed your world. And please share if this would bless others.

5 Ways to Birth Life in Everything We Say

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It’s been several years since my own mom passed into Jesus’ physical presence in glory. Shortly afterward, my brother had a dream where the Lord told him, “She likes the accommodations up here.” Yep. That’s totally something my mom would say.

Mothers have a special place in the heart of God. Mothers actually partner with God in bringing forth life. It’s amazing, and as I guy, I totally can’t understand it, and I don’t pretend to. But I am in awe of it.

It is God’s heart to bring life. Jesus said, “I have come that they might have life, and have it to the full.” (John 10:10b) Bringing life was Jesus’ mission.

Although only women can actually birth another physical life out of their own bodies, we can all birth life. We have the opportunity every day, in every situation. We birth life with our words. Or not.

Proverbs 18:21a says, “The tongue has the power of life and death,” and we choose between the two with every word we speak. We have the power, and as Christians the authority, to speak life or death into every situation we face, every minute of every day.

We partner with God when we choose to speak life; we partner with other spiritual forces when we choose to speak death.

So let’s put some skin out it. How do we speak life? Here are 5 practical ways to speak life into our everyday situations.

1) Remember a Kingdom perspective. If we love Jesus, then it’s always about what he’s doing in the situation and not our agenda. It’s good to win the argument, and it’s better to actually be right, but it’s best to accomplish God’s purpose in the situation. That often means laying down our right to win the argument.

Counter-intuitive to most Americans, the Kingdom of God is not about claiming our just rights, it’s about sacrificing them and laying them down. It’s about letting go of our right to be right. And in giving up our rights and instead focusing on what God’s doing, we often win something much more valuable than the argument. We win the other person’s heart.

Can we serve a person who’s wrong today? Can we ask God how we can honor the person we like the least today?

2) Focus on healing not punishment. A good friend recently posted on FaceBook, “To rescue people from the natural consequences of their behavior is to render them powerless.” While this is probably true, I commented that, “To rescue and to bring healing are two different things.”

It seems to me liberals are always wanting to ride in on the white horse and rescue everybody. Their mantra seems to be, “The Government as Salvation.” Conservatives, on the other hand, want people to fry for their actions, emphasizing “personal responsibility.” As Christians, though, IMHO, we shouldn’t target either rescue or justice. We should target healing. We should be bringing life.

Liberals address people’s situation, while conservatives address their behavior. As Christian’s we should be addressing their heart. We should be bringing life to their wounded places.

So in a godly confrontation, the right question is not, “How can I help them?” nor “How can I avoid further conflict?” nor “What do they deserve?” nor “What threat of punishment will be scary enough to control their behavior?” The right question is, “What is the real problem here? What is the wound?”

3) Ask for God’s help. This seems like a no-brainer, but how many of us, every day before exiting our car and going into work, actually ask for God’s help us bring life to our co-workers today with our words?

Honestly, this is one of the most practical things we can do. It starts our day focusing on God’s perspective, on what he wants to do. And in that frame of mind, we just might interpret (and hence respond to) the events of the day differently.

4) Sometimes the right word is hard. Life-giving words can be unwelcome to people stuck in destructive behaviors and lifestyles. For example, homosexuals, transsexuals, and heterosexuals sleeping together outside of marriage typically aren’t in a rush to hear the life-giving message of sexual integrity. But often a lack of sexual integrity’s not the issue, it’s just the bad fruit. The real root of the matter is wounding down there somewhere deeper. And that’s what life-giving words from God go after.

So often in the church, we go for the low-hanging fruit. We’ve been taught to address the bad fruit in people’s lives. People’s bad behavior is an easy target. If we can get them to clean up their act, their bad behavior no longer makes us uncomfortable, and we feel good about ourselves. But they’re still hurting inside, and that unaddressed bad root will just pop up somewhere else.

5) Intercession brings strategy. We’re all busy, but when we set aside time to pray, really pray for specific people, when we sacrifice our schedule for God’s heart, he gives it. When we have God’s heart for the situation, and more importantly for the person, we have life-giving words to bring. We have words that pierce hearts, jump over defenses, and bring godly sorrow unto repentance.

We all have a choice, with every word we speak. Will it bring life, or will it bring death? I pray this post has brought life.

A mother partners with God and births new life from her own body. Can we all partner with God and birth life with our words?

Does this resonate? How have your words (or others) brought life to a situation where it seemed impossible? Tell us your story in the comments. And please share on social media if this post would bless someone else.

The 3 Sides of Agreement and the One Thing that Prevents It

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Agreement is powerful. We all know that. Jesus himself said, “Truly I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven.” (Matthew 18:19) But what we may not know is there are 3 different sides of agreement. Like a 3-legged stool, we’re not in agreement unless we’re in agreement on all of these sides.

Intellectual Agreement. This is what we usually mean by “agreement.” We agree on the reasons. We see the logic in it. It “makes sense.” But if this is all the agreement we have, we’re not in agreement yet.

Emotional Agreement. Emotional agreement is just as important as intellectual agreement. We’re in emotional agreement if it’s something we both want to do. It just “feels right.”

Spiritual Agreement. We’re in spiritual agreement if we both have a peace about it and believe it’s God’s will. We see God’s hand in it. We agree it’s what God’s doing.

We’re in agreement with our spouse, church members, co-workers, employees, employer, friends, etc, if:

  • We all intellectually agree it’s a good idea. We agree on the logic.
  • We all want to do it. We agree it feels right.
  • We all have a peace about it, believing, yes, God is in this. We agree we can see his fingerprints.

So often we charge ahead once everyone agrees on the logic, thinking we’re in agreement. But if we’re not also in emotional and spiritual agreement, then it’s a false unity.

For example, we can steamroll over our spouses with logic. Maybe they agree whatever it is makes sense, but something just doesn’t feel right. The truth is, we can spin logic any way we want, and, unfortunately, we often do. But maybe they’re picking up on something they can’t articulate (yet). That should be a clue: There’s some piece of logic we missed. We’d do well to pay attention to our spouse. Because they aren’t in emotional agreement yet, we need to wait and keep seeking the Lord.

God loves partnership. He loves partnering with us, and he loves it when we partner with each other. He loves it when his children play nice. No wonder Jesus said, “… if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them …” Agreement is one of the most powerful tools we have on this earth to move the Kingdom of God forward, or in general, just get stuff done.

The Enemy’s Strategy against Agreement. No wonder our enemy tries everything he can think of to keep us from agreement. And he’s come up with an extremely effective strategy against it. If he can get this one thing, he can block agreement for decades, even generations.

The enemy’s most powerful weapon against agreement and unity is Offense. If he can get us offended, we can rationalize just about any kind of bad behavior. Think about it. You can’t be in agreement with someone you’re offended at. The enemy uses this tactic everywhere.

  • It works against marriages.
  • It works against families.
  • It works against friendships.
  • It works in the workplace.
  • It even works on a global scale against countries.

ACTION STEP: The next time I’m offended at someone, I’ll ask the Holy Spirit if there’s something I should be working toward agreement with them about, that the enemy is trying to block.

An Important Caveat. Agreement is not the “be all end all” of spirituality. It is not an end in itself. There are things we shouldn’t agree to, and we should not allow ourselves to be pressured or bullied into a false agreement. Here’s a free tip: If you’re not respected when you disagree, not given the common courtesy every human being deserves, if you’re being punished (e.g., the silent treatment, screaming and yelling, avoidance) simply because you disagree with something, you’re being bullied. And we have no right to bully someone else.

Look at the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11. They were in total agreement over the wrong thing. God had given humanity the mandate, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it,” specifically in Genesis 1:28 (and similarly in Genesis 9:7 after the flood).

But we had other ideas—the exact opposite of God’s mandate, as usual. Instead of filling the earth, we had this plan, specifically so we wouldn’t fill the earth: “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.” (Genesis 11:4)

Look at what God says, especially about the power of their agreement: “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.” (Genesis 11:6-7)

God had to come down and confuse the languages to break their agreement. Course correction for humanity. Agreement is that powerful, and there are some things we shouldn’t agree on. Or to say it another way, there are some things we should agree against. (Certainly anything that dehumanizes people like slavery, human trafficking, or calling human beings a “product of conception” or “blob of tissue.” But I digress.)

So what do you do if you disagree? How do we seek agreement? Keep seeking God. Pray separately and pray together. Keep seeking God until agreement comes and don’t rush it. But this is a perishable opportunity! We might miss the deadline! Then miss it. If you’re not in agreement by the whatever deadline the opportunity has, then it’s a no-go. And that’s ok. The lack of agreement probably just saved you from a big mistake.

But isn’t the husband the head of the home? Shouldn’t he decide and break the tie? Yes, the husband is the head of the home, but not the way the world means it. He has the mandate from God to be a servant-leader, and pursue agreement—intellectual, emotional, and spiritual. He should lead, not pressure or bully, his wife in seeking the Lord. When she says to him, “Look we’ve been at this for days/weeks/months, just make a decision,” then he can break the tie. But it’s not, “Ok then, we do it my way.” It’s like this: “Let’s agree to try this. We can course correct if it doesn’t work. Not because this is my personal preference, but because I honestly believe this decision is in the best interest of the whole family.”

A marriage where the spouses really agree in truth (not where one is being bullied) is unstoppable. Agreement is a powerful thing. Even secular (healthy) companies pursue buy-in on the corporate vision from their employees because they’ve figured this out.

Let’s end by repeating what Jesus says about agreement. Really think about this today.

“Truly I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven.” –Jesus (Matthew 18:19)

What do you think? Does this ring true to you? How have you worked out agreement in your relationships? How has it been powerful? How has the lack of agreement cost you? Has not moving forward due to lack of agreement saved you from mistakes? Tell us your story in the comments, and please share if this would bless someone else.

How to Live in Blessing

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Is there a glaring contradiction in the Bible? God loves his people Israel, but he sends them into exile. That seems like a strange kind of love. Or take Jesus lamenting over Jerusalem in Matthew 23:37, “How often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings.” Great, sounds like love! But in the very next verse (38), he says, “Look, your house is left to you desolate.” Hey, what happened to love?

Does God love his people or not?

The truth is, God does love his people. God totally loves us more than we can understand. He even loves us enough to withhold the blessing he longs to give us. Dude, start making sense! If he loves us, why would he withhold blessing?

Ok, here’s the deal. Love is unconditional. But blessing is very conditional. It depends on relationship.

We need to grasp in the depth of our being that God loves us unconditionally. There is nothing you can do or not do to make God love you any more or any less. He poured out his blood for us. That’s love. Did he do it out of obligation? “Oh, bummer, I guess I have to be a good God and go die for those losers.” No, not at all!

Then why did he do such a crazy thing? Think about it. God left heaven and became human for one purpose: Not to rule the world but to die the most excruciating, torturous death ever devised. That’s pretty whacked. What would possess someone to do something so over the top?

Only reckless love could inspire such radical sacrifice. Hebrews 12:2 says Jesus endured the cross because of the joy set before him. Even the possibility of relationship with you, with me, made it worth it for him. The thought of relationship with you made his heart leap. It made the cross a small price to pay in his eyes. God thinks you’re worth it. His love is unconditional.

But we also need to understand that God is a healthy person with healthy boundaries. His blessing is very conditional. Being out of relationship with God blocks his blessing in our lives.

I was mentoring a young man at our local crisis pregnancy center, and he was telling me about taking his 5-year-old son to the movies. The boy wanted candy and a soda before the show. But my client told him, “No, you didn’t eat your dinner, so you don’t get no candy. I’m not gonna let you starve, you can have a hot dog and water, but you don’t get no candy or soda.”

Later in the session, we were talking about sexual purity, and he said, “I get it. God loves you more if you do it right.”

I told him, “No, God’s not like that. He loves you the same no matter what you do. You can’t make him love you more or less. But our sin holds back his blessing.

“Think about taking your son to the movies. Did you love him any less when you didn’t let him have candy? No, you still loved him the same. But his bad behavior blocked the blessing you otherwise wanted to give him.” His eyes opened wide, and I could see the light bulbs of revelation going on in this young man’s heart.

Confession time—I misquoted Jesus in the opening paragraph of this post. I cherry-picked the content I wanted from those verses. Look at the full two verses, Matthew 23:37-38, what Jesus really said:

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing. Look, your house is left to you desolate.”

Their behavior was blocking the blessing God wanted to give them. Blessing is conditional. Being out of relationship with God blocks the blessing he wants to give us. Eventually. God is very long suffering, and he gives us time to repent and turn back.

He gave Israel generations to repent. Finally, in his love, he brought the discipline of exile they ultimately needed. They wouldn’t repent any other way. He sent prophet after prophet after prophet, trying to turn their hearts back to relationship with him. But they wouldn’t have any of it, so finally, like any loving parent of grossly rebellious children, he had to bring discipline.

It’s the same way with us today. God sometimes withholds his blessing to bring our hearts back to him.

Here’s a free tip for the young adults and teens reading this: Don’t expect material blessings from your parents if you’re out of relationship with them. It is actually love for them to pull back and not give you what they otherwise would have, until you’re back in honest, healthy relationship with them. Expecting blessing without relationship is the essence of entitlement.

Now, this post is only covering one part of suffering. If things are bad in your life, it doesn’t necessarily mean there’s sin in your life. Look at Job. Things fell apart for him because there wasn’t sin in his life. Out of God’s great, unconditional love for us, he sometimes allows suffering in our lives so he can bless us more, like he did with Job.

But in your heart, you know which it is. Are you living a lifestyle you know breaks God’s heart? Like living with your boy/girl friend? Like having sex outside of marriage? Living a homosexual or transsexual lifestyle? Other addictions? Are you medicating pain in your life that God wants to heal?

If that’s you, God’s unconditional love for you has never changed. But your lifestyle is blocking his blessing. I encourage you to do this one thing.

Get help.

Share with someone, some other Christian you trust and respect. Not someone who’s going to tell you your sin is ok or someone who’s going to condemn you. But find someone who will stand with you and support your repentance, helping you get free.

Does this post resonate? Have you been there? Are you there? Tell us your story in the comments, and please share if this would help someone else.

The Key to Getting Free

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The concepts in this post come from an amazing book I read recently, Killing Kryptonite: Destroy What Steals Your Strength by John Bevere. This is an insanely practical book that will plus-up your relationship with Jesus to the next level. You can get your copy here. This is not an affiliate link. I get no commission if you click the link or buy the book. But you’ll get a huge benefit from reading it, I promise.

John Bevere gives a gentle but Biblically accurate message the church desperately needs to hear. He talks about, at a practical level, our relationship as Christians with sin, and how it steals who God created us to be. There’s not an ounce of condemnation in this book, just the loving truth God’s called John to bring us. The quotes in the rest of this post are from the book.

Three scenarios plague Christians when it comes to sin.

  1. The Complacent. Many Christians “choose to overlook sin because of their hardened hearts. They are immune to the reality of breaking God’s heart.” Unfortunately, whole denominations today don’t acknowledge sinful lifestyles as the destructive thing they are, and by doing so withhold the healing God wants to bring. After all, you don’t need healing if nothing’s wrong.
  2. The Defeated. Some Christians believe “the blood of Jesus is powerful enough to free us from the penalty, but not the bondage of sin.” They believe that in Christ we are spiritually made holy, whatever that means, but at a practical level it’s not necessary to live a sanctified lifestyle. It’s a convenient way to pretend to be a Christian so I feel good about myself, but still live however I want to.
  3. The Trapped. These Christians “struggle to break free from sin. They want out, but it has a tight grip on them… The shame of their sin holds them down.” John brings a powerful message to this group. You can get free and John shows you how by an example: his own.

John Bevere takes a brave risk in the book, sharing his own personal struggle with pornography, one of the most powerful and mentally addicting traps in our world today. Kudos to him for his radical vulnerability. I have no doubt it will facilitate a lot of Christians finally getting free.

So often we get in this cycle where we fall into the same old familiar sin, go through genuine heartfelt repentance, think we’re free, only to fall prey again to the same sin. Sometimes Christians give up. “Oh well, that’s just the way I am.” As if their sin is stronger than the blood of Jesus. It’s not. The problem’s not the strength of the sin, the problem’s the type of sorrow we have over it.

There’s two different types of sorrow, a worldly sorrow and a godly sorrow. John Bevere illustrates this so beautifully. In his struggle to get free from porn, he asked a world-renowned evangelist his church was hosting to pray for him. The man prayed with authority and power, but months later John was not free. About nine months afterward, John was crying out to the Lord to know him more intimately, and he was broken because his sin was interfering with his relationship with Jesus. Then he got free.

He didn’t understand and was asking the Lord about it. The Lord explained it to John like this: “When you opened up to the evangelist, you were afraid the sin of lust would keep you from the ministry you knew I’d called you to. You were fearful it would disqualify you. The focus of your sorrow was on you; it was a worldly sorrow.

“Nine months later, because you had been crying out to know me intimately, your heart was breaking because you were hurting My heart by your sin. You knew I had died to free you from this sin, and you hated participating in anything that was along the lines of what sent Me to the cross. The focus of your sorrow was on Me; it was a godly sorrow.”

John explains it further: “Sorrow of the world focuses on us—What are the consequences? Will I be judged? Will I be disqualified? Will I suffer from my sin? What will people think of me?—and so forth. Godly sorrow focuses on Jesus; I’ve hurt the heart of the One I love…”

Isn’t that good? “I’ve hurt the heart of the one I love.” I love that. That’s true repentance right there.

But why does it even matter? Who cares how you live? Will you Christians just get over yourselves and all your dumb rules anyway?

It’s not about rules for rules sake, or feeling good or self-righteous about ourselves. When we’re in love with Jesus, when we’ve done this heart exchange where he has my heart and I have his, then I can’t live in a way that breaks my lover’s heart. I just can’t do it. (Please forgive the shameless plug, but this is the subject of my own book, True Self: Sexual Integrity out of Intimacy with Jesus.)

John puts it really well, “Holiness therefore is not an end in itself, as legalists portray it. It’s the entranceway to true intimacy with Jesus.”

Once you’ve had an intimate experience with Jesus, up close and personal, you won’t trade it for anything. Jesus is the most beautiful, compassionate, gracious, funny, holy, lovely being in the whole universe. All you want to do is be closer to him. I’m addicted. I love his presence, and I get heart-broken over anything that interferes with our relationship.

Is that you? How close are you to Jesus? How intimate? It’s not a contest or a challenge. It’s real life. There is nothing more real in this world than Jesus. And where there is sin, it’s because we don’t understand how beautiful he is and how much our destructive behavior is keeping us from his presence. Tell us your story in the comments and please share if you think this would help someone else.

How to Say “Yes” to God’s Promises when Life’s Pain Says “No”

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Has the pain, abuse, and unfairness of your life erased God’s promises to you? You believed, but where are they? Instead of your Promised Land, all you see for miles around is desert. This post is for you. Caleb, through no fault of his own, finds himself in exactly the same situation. Check this out.

The Israelites had been miraculously delivered from Egypt. They’d seen God’s wonders and his glory over and over again in the desert. They tasted the sweetness of his faithfulness, and also the sting of his discipline at their rebellion (more than once).

But now, all that is just about to pay off. They’re at the borders of the Promised Land and just about to enter their inheritance. And that’s when it gets insane. All chaos breaks loose. The insanity in your life means God wants to break in and do something.

First, there’s internal attack. Miriam and Aaron, Moses’ co-leaders, more than that, his siblings, his own family, start bad-mouthing him (Numbers 12). It’s the struggle of religion vs God’s heart, the very same struggle that nailed Jesus to the cross. Miriam and Aaron don’t think Moses is following the rules properly. Actually he is, but not according to their understanding. In fact, their case against Moses is really thinly veiled jealously. The Lord has none of it and comes to Moses’ defense. God settles it quickly by turning Miriam leprous for a week.

Do you struggle with internal chaos, internal condemnation no matter what you do? God is on the verge of breakthrough in your life.

Then there’s external attack. Moses sends twelve spies to explore the Promised Land (Numbers 13). They all come back with the same report. The land is awesome, it’s flowing with milk and honey just like the Lord said. They bring back some of the fruit, huge grapes and other goodies. Oh, and by the way, the land’s filled with giants who are much stronger than we are. We looked like grasshoppers to them. The external obstacles are insurmountable.

Although they all agree on the state of the land, it’s inhabitants, and what they found, the twelve spies have two opposing recommended courses of action. Ten of the spies are terrified and say there’s no way we can do this. We’ll get slaughtered.

But the other two, Joshua and Caleb, are all for taking the land. They have a promise from God that he’ll be with them and they can do it. So I imagine it goes down something like this:

Ten Spies: “The people in the land are huge giants, infinitely bigger and stronger and more powerful than us!”

Joshua and Caleb: “I know, right! It’s going to be exhilarating beating those guys! I can’t wait, let’s go! This is going to be so epic! They’ll sing songs about us for centuries! We have a promise from God, we can’t lose! Stinks to be them. Let’s go do this!”

But the other ten convince the people not to trust God and rebel. They talk about stoning Moses, Joshua, and Caleb, heading back to Egypt, and just forgetting the whole thing. Quitting. This is not what we thought it would be. It’s just too hard. Time to cut and run.

Are you going to quit on the promise of God in your life? When life gets impossible, God’s promise is on the verge of fulfillment. Just like with the Israelites, the hardest struggles, both internally and externally, are on the borders of our Promised Land.

And you know the scariest part about this? God honors your choice. The people rejected God’s promise and chose to believe in their fear instead. And you could say they benefitted from it. They lived out their lives in safety, not having to take the risks that God’s promises required. But it was a hard, meaningless, bland life in the desert, on the border of God’s rejected promises. Nothing horrifically bad happened. But nothing amazingly good happened either. Like a ship chained to the dock, or a Lamborghini that never sees the light of day outside the garage, they all died in the desert of complacency. How sad. Don’t let this be your tragedy.

I think the saddest part is, Joshua and Caleb also waited 40 years. That’s the part that seems really unfair to me. Even though they had nothing to do with it, they were caught in the consequences of their unbelieving community. They were ready to grab God’s promises with both hands, but they had to wait 40 years too.

But it was worth it! They did eventually see the fulfillment of God’s promises in their lives. And this is the most amazing part of the story—how Caleb finally entered the Promised Land. Think about this.

It would have been easy for his passion to grow cold through the pain of life. He could’ve turned bitter over the unfairness of it all. 40 years in the desert? Are you kidding me?!? Many of us turn bitter in the desert. Do you know someone who has? Have you?

But Caleb didn’t. He just became more and more determined to seize God’s promises when he finally got the chance. Listen to him talk to Joshua, who had seceded Moses as leader, when the people are finally ready, 40 years later, to enter the Promised Land, really this time.

Keep in mind reading this that in war, you want the high ground. So the “hill country” Caleb’s talking about here is where the enemies have the high ground. It’s the hardest land to take by far. There are only two types of people who would even attempt it. Soon to be dead fools who don’t have a lick of common sense, or soon to be victorious recipients of a promise from God.

Caleb to Joshua: “You know what the Lord said to Moses the man of God at Kadesh Barnea about you and me. I was 40 years old when Moses the servant of the Lord sent me from Kadesh Barnea to explore the land. And I brought him back a report according to my convictions, but my fellow Israelites who went up with me made the hearts of the people melt in fear. I, however, followed the Lord my God wholeheartedly. So on that day Moses swore to me, ‘The land on which your feet have walked will be your inheritance and that of your children forever, because you have followed the Lord my God wholeheartedly.’

“Now then, just as the Lord promised, he has kept me alive for 45 years since the time he said this to Moses, while Israel moved about in the wilderness. So here I am today, 85 years old! I am still as strong today as the day Moses sent me out; I’m just as vigorous to go out to battle now as I was then. Now give me this hill country that the Lord promised me that day. You yourself heard then that the Anakites [the giants] were there and their cities were large and fortified, but, the Lord helping me, I will drive them out just as he said.” (Joshua 14:6b-12)

The guy was 85 and wanting to go take the hardest part of the land! And this time, he would not be put off. He had yet another promise from God he was believing. I could see people saying, “But dude, you’re 85! How about you plan the battle, but we’ll go do the heavy lifting on this one.”

Caleb: “Don’t you ‘but dude’ me! I’ve waiting 45 years for this, and I’m going giant-whomping!”

And you know what? The “unfair” delay really wasn’t. It made Caleb’s character shine all the more brightly and made his victory all the more spectacular. The promises of God triumph over the pain and unfairness of life.

God didn’t forget about Caleb. And he hasn’t forgotten you. What promises have you seen fulfilled in your life that you thought were gone? What promises are you still waiting for? Tell us in the comments, and please share if this post would bless and encourage someone else.

How to Believe in a World that Mocks Faith

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Wild animals surrounded him. This was not looking good. They were all looking at him and making their wild animal sounds. “How did a respectable English scientist like me get here,” thought Uncle Andrew. “What did I do to deserve this?” Indeed, when he could avoid it, he himself never actually did anything. Safe in his laboratory, he convinced or tricked or blackmailed others to do his experiments and take the risks, even his own nephew, Digory. Uncle Andrew had to stay safe in order to objectively evaluate the results. All for the greater good of science, of course.

He was sure this all must be his nephew Digory’s fault, that bratty child who wasn’t even afraid of all these wild animals. Fear gripped Uncle Andrew, such fear as he had never known. He knew from his scientific training and great career as a master of rational thought that his best chance of survival among all these wild beasts was to be silent and perfectly still. So he was, while the animals continued to bray, howl, trumpet and bark at him.

What really happened, on that remarkable first day in Narnia, was this. Aslan, the lion, had just created Narnia and all of its wonderful talking animals by singing everything into existence. Young Digory, his friend Polly, his Uncle Andrew, a carriage driver and his wife, along with an evil destroyer of worlds – the sorceress Jadis, had found themselves witnessing the whole thing. How this happened is too long a story to relate here, but CS Lewis tells it masterfully in The Magician’s Nephew, Book 6 in The Chronicles of Narnia. It’s actually the prequel to the rest of the 7-book series, explaining, among other things, the origins of the White Witch and why there’s a lamppost in the middle of a forest.

Anyway, the animals were actually talking to Uncle Andrew, but the way he’d prejudged the world, in his scientific, humanistic arrogance, prevented him from seeing, hearing and accepting what was really happening. Instead, his mind only allowed him to hear generic animal sounds, not the words and syllables they were actually speaking.

When he wouldn’t speak back and interact with them like the other humans did, the animals had a hilarious discussion about whether or not he was really a plant, probably a tree that needed to be planted. The bulldog was convinced, by the amazing sense of smell Aslan gave him, that Uncle Andrew was, in fact, a human. But the other animals prevailed, and they planted him up to his waist in a hole. Then the elephant watered him, hoping it would revive the droopy vines on top of his head.

Although they should’ve listened to the bulldog, you have to give the animals a break here. It was their first day in existence and they weren’t experts in biology yet. When Aslan rescued poor Uncle Andrew, although all Uncle Andrew allowed himself to hear was a lion roaring and growling, Aslan lamented, “O, sons of Adam, how well you protect yourselves from everything that would do you good!”

Although we laugh at poor Uncle Andrew, we do this all the time, both as individuals and as a society. At the root, we don’t want a God hanging around telling us how to live our lives, so, in our arrogance, we explain him away in the name of “science.” Never mind the fact that our “scientific” theory of evolution has more holes in it than a fisherman’s net and leaks logic like a sieve, not standing up to scientific scrutiny itself (that’s another blog post, don’t get me started). But it protects our desired world-view from the reality of the world-view we don’t want.

“Denial protects what we want to believe from being overthrown by what is real.” – Dr. Theresa Burke

We live in a secular society that denies, mocks, and often persecutes any type of faith. So how do you believe in the face of so much scorn? Here are 3 key take-aways.

1) Dare to Take the Risk. So often people say, “Well, if God does a miracle for me, then I’ll believe.” That’s a safe bet. The problem is, God’s not into safety, he’s into faith. Dangerous faith. Faith that puts you out there on a limb. Faith that remains out there, even when the limb breaks.

In the Kingdom of God, everything’s upside-down and backwards from human thinking. There are exceptions, but in general you get your miracle after you believe, not before. God responds to faith; he just laughs at ultimatums.

People don’t believe because they don’t want to look foolish if they’re wrong. Perfect love drives out all fear. Faith takes the risk, and it doesn’t disappoint us (Romans 5:5). In fact, in the Kingdom you spell faith R-I-S-K.

2) Know Experience the Reality of Jesus. As Christians, we have the advantage of personally knowing who we believe in. Jesus is a living person we can really talk to, and who really talks to us. In the Bible, the word “know” can be translated “experience.” It is Greek philosophy, not Hebrew, that separates the two. As Christians, loving the Jewish Messiah, we follow Hebrew, not Greek, thinking. In fact, Proverbs has a special word for someone with head knowledge but no experience—fool.

God wants to make himself real to you. That looks different for every person. What works for me won’t work for you, and vice versa. But there’s something that will work for everyone – pursuit. God promises us, “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” (Jeremiah 29:13)

How long do you have to pursue him? As long as it takes, through all the pain. Until he shows up in your life in the middle of that pain. And he always will. He wants it more than you do.

3) Share without Apology. We don’t have to prove there’s a God. Honestly, people know there is, they just don’t want to admit it. The word of your testimony is powerful (Revelation 12:11). Just share what God’s done for you. Answer their questions when they ask, but don’t waste your breath answering questions they’re not asking.

The truth is, many people really want to believe, but their fear and their wounding are holding them back. But we have the perfect love that drives out all fear (Jesus himself). When they are mean to us, and we still treat them with love, respect, and honor, it shatters their bitter-root expectation about how people will treat them, and they want what we have.

So how about you? How do you practice believing in an unbelieving world? Your faith changes the atmosphere when you walk in the room. Have you seen how it affects those around you? Share it with us in the comments, and please share if this post would bless someone else.