The 3 Most Powerful Tools for Freedom & Healing

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One of the biggest disagreements in Christendom is over counseling versus inner healing versus deliverance. And within that sentence lies the whole problem: Saying the word “versus.” It’s not “either/or.” It’s “both/and.”

In our scarcity mindset and fear of doing it wrong, we so often make a controversy on earth where there isn’t one in Heaven.

As broken humans, we need all the tools in the toolbox. If your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. You can put a screw or a bolt in with a hammer. It’s just not going to work very well, and the end structure will be damaged. It works a lot better when you use the right tool for the right job.

So what’s the best tool for healing our brokenness? What’s the best tool for recovering from trauma or neglect? Is it counseling, inner healing, or deliverance? And the answer is a big resounding … Yes! All of the above. Quite frankly, most of us need some combination of all 3.

There’s a lot of confusion and bad information out there. So here’s a description of the 3 most powerful tools for recovering from our brokenness, whether it’s sin against us (like trauma or neglect), or our own mess.

1) Counseling

There is a tragic stigma in the world, and often even more in the church, against getting counseling. This should not be. When we “de-spiritualize” or stigmatize counseling, we slam the door of God’s healing in people’s faces. I know none of us want that.

Counselors are brilliant at giving us the tools we should’ve learned growing up but didn’t.

There is nothing unchristian or unspiritual about getting counseling.

In fact, getting counseling doesn’t even mean you’re unhealthy. Quite honestly, often the unhealthy person is the one who refuses to get counseling. So what’s a healthy person to do? Get counseling themselves! But I don’t need counseling! I’m the healthy one! Exactly. Go get the tools you need to deal with that unhealthy person.

Yes, your counselor should be a Christian. Non-Christian counselors are often sold-out to the spirit of the age, and the APA is pushing some really damaging, demonic agendas (for example, pro-choice and transgender). Even counselors who are Christians can be under these or other deceptions. But being a solid, Kingdom-minded Christian is not enough.

Pastoral counseling is great, but many pastors, quite frankly, have been schooled in theology and not in professional counseling. Sometimes you need a professional, especially if you’re dealing with trauma (what we call Type “B” trauma, a Bad thing happened) or neglect (Type “A” trauma, the Absence of the necessary good thing).

It’s totally ok and expected to try out a few counselors before you find the right match for you. If you have to go through half a dozen counselors (or more) before finding the right one, that’s perfectly normal and ok. It can take a year or so. Don’t give up; keep looking.

Here are some good resources for finding good Christian counseling.

2) Inner Healing

Although sins against us are not our fault, our sinful response to them is. Often, this happens in early childhood, or even in utero.

Our sinful responses can be bitter root judgements like “emotions are bad” or “I’m dirty.” Judgements lead to bitter root expectations like “people will always reject me.” (That was one of mine.) So to protect our own heart from that expectation (instead of trusting God), we make inner vows like “I will never trust anyone” or “I will always be the good guy.”

Although they can sound godly (what’s wrong with being the good guy?), they set us up for train wrecks later in life. For example, if you’ve vowed to always be the good guy, what happens when you need to have a hard conversation with someone? Say you need to address an issue that needs to be faced, but the other person doesn’t want to hear it. In the other person’s eyes, you risk being the bad guy, and that inner vow can block you from having that healthy but difficult conversation the Holy Spirit is leading you to have.

These judgements, expectations, and vows can be hard to recognize because we’ve grown up with them as implicit assumptions we accept as normal. And they can be hard to articulate because we often made them before we had language.

Please don’t misunderstand. This isn’t about blaming our parents for everything or digging around to find dirt in our past. But if our reaction to a past experience is causing bad fruit in our life today, it’s not in the past at all, is it?

So how do we know these hidden judgements, expectations, and/or inner vows are there? A major clue is having a mile of reaction to an inch of offense. This can indicate an inner vow is in play, and we need to ask the Holy Spirit to reveal it.

Inner healing is the process of breaking and renouncing those inner vows, bitter root expectations, and false judgements we’ve made about ourselves, about God, about the world, about how we deserve to be treated, and replacing them with God’s truth.

With inner healing, you need someone who knows what they’re doing. Here are some great resources:

3) Deliverance

Whether we believe it or not, spiritual warfare with demonic entities is a reality in our fallen world. Although Christians cannot be possessed (a demon cannot force you, against your will, to do something), Christians can be oppressed (influenced by the demonic).

“You cannot counsel a demon. You’ve got to drive that thing out with power and authority.” – Pastor John Fitchner, Liberty Church, Atlanta

This is nothing to get freaked out about. It is absolutely nothing like Hollywood portrays it. We give demons power over us at the point where we believe their lies. Deliverance is the process of breaking those demonic strongholds in our lives. Because so much of it revolves around replacing demonic lies with God’s truth, deliverance and inner healing often go hand-in-hand.

Often, if not always, when we got saved, the kingdom of darkness had inroads into our lives. And while often weakened after we got saved, the demonic presence in our life can remain until we stop believing its lies and order it out of our life.

Think of it this way. Suppose a house has a rat infestation in the basement. Just because the house gets sold and is under new ownership doesn’t remove the rats from the basement. Overt, intentional action is needed to address the issue and clean up the mess.

With deliverance, you really need someone who knows what they’re doing. Here are some great resources:

Our Biggest Mistake

We may get amazing, phenomenal healing through one of these tools. One of the most damaging things we can do to other people is assume that they need what worked for us. Now, maybe they do. But maybe they don’t. God may be doing something different with them.

For example, if I have a wonderful experience with deliverance (which I have), and then go on to flippantly tell anyone with a problem they need deliverance, I could do much more harm than good, especially if it doesn’t work for them.

One size does not fit all.

That is so not the Kingdom of God. Each of us needs a different combination of these things, and what worked for one person may not work for another. That’s ok. It doesn’t mean the person doesn’t have faith. It just means we’re all individuals and God’s doing something different with that person.

Do the Work

One more thing needs to be said. There is no silver bullet that will miraculously solve all your problems and suddenly life’s all rainbows and unicorns. You are not entitled to healing, although God totally wants to bring it. Whatever form it takes, it is a gift of grace from God.

All of these things take your engagement. You can have the best practitioners in the world, but if you don’t engage and do the work, nothing in your life is going to change.

Your Turn

So which do you need? Probably all of them. I know I did. Which have made a difference in your life? Which are you afraid of and hence resistant to? Has this post helped with that? Please tell us your story in the comments and share this post if it would bless others.

What to Do when the Pain Won’t Go Away

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None of us want to admit it, but we all have it. Or have had it at some point. Emotional pain that just won’t go away. Sometimes we think we’ve stuffed it, but then – bam – something seemingly innocent happens and it all comes crashing back.

Daniel was so past his divorce. He’d made his peace with it. Until he went to his nephew’s wedding. Emotions he thought were long gone were really only hiding. They rose up and slammed him out of nowhere. He drank way too much at the reception. And every night after that.

Melanie was over her abortion, or so she thought. No one knew, and she’d moved on. Until her best friend invited her to her baby shower. And it all came crashing back. She went and put on a happy face. No one knew she was dying inside. But she was.

Sometimes we can’t even begin to stuff it, and we just learn to live with it. Or better put, survive with it.

Lisa cannot remember a time when she wasn’t battling depression. She lives in a box, behind a mask, trying desperately to keep the outside world at bay, to stay in control. Where is the joy all the other Christians have? Are they just faking it, too? Or is there something wrong with her? She suspects the latter. She desperately hopes this next relationship will fix it all. Again.

Somehow we learn to cope. Maybe we self-medicate. Maybe we control. Sometimes we put on a face and pretend, hiding the real me. We’ve coped with it for so long we think it’s normal. But it’s not. Although it’s very common, just coping forever is not healthy.

God has something for us so much better than coping. He has a new-normal for us, without the pain. It’s called healing. But how do we embrace it? How do we move into that place?

The short answer is, Be the buffalo not the cow. Dude, what are you even talking about? What do bovines have to do with deep emotional pain? I’m glad you asked.

When there’s a thunderstorm on the plain, buffalo and cattle both panic. Both herds stampede, and you don’t want to be in the way! But there’s a major difference.

Cattle take off running away from the storm as fast as they can. If the storm’s coming from the west, they stampede east. This is the obvious, no-brainer thing to do to avoid the storm. The problem is, they’re running the same direction as the storm’s moving, and the storm always moves faster. So it eventually overtakes them anyway. And since they’re running the direction it’s moving, they actual maximize their time in the storm.

On the other hand, buffalo run straight at the thunderstorm. So if the storm’s coming from the west, they stampede west, right into it. This seems really dumb at first glance, but it’s actually brilliant. Since they’re running the opposite direction the storm is moving, they minimize their time in the storm. And they get rewarded with the yummy, just watered, fresh grass on the other side. Bonus!

Most of us run from our pain, like cattle running from a thunderstorm. But avoidance just maximizes our time in the pain when it catches up with us, and it always does.

John Sanford, founder of Elijah House Ministries said, “We need to embrace the fireball of pain.” Wow. Seriously, dude? Yeah, seriously. We need to go where it hurts, not avoid it.

Ok, you sold me. How do we “embrace the fireball of pain?”

I’m glad you asked. There’s 3 steps to start this process.

1) Start the journey with God.

Be honest. Don’t hide it or pretend it’s not there. Honestly tell God how you feel. It’s ok to hurt. It’s ok to not feel joy. Read the Psalms. Many of them are written from places of extreme pain. They are examples of God meeting people in the middle of extremely painful circumstance, doubt and fear. For a start, look at Psalms 3, 4, 5, 7, 10, 13, 17, 22, 28, 40, 120, and many, many more.

What gets scheduled gets done, so schedule time to pray and meditate each day with God, even if it’s just 10 minutes during a break. Stopping, unplugging, and getting alone with him, even if just for a few minutes, makes a huge difference.

2) Start the journey with someone else.

You don’t need to tell everyone everything. But you need to tell someone everything. So often the pain’s power over us is rooted in shame. Shame protects itself by isolating us. We think we’re the only one. But we’re not. Often, sharing our pain with someone else breaks the shame and that’s 80% of the healing right there.

So often we the church do such a disservice to people by forcing them to either hide their pain or face our rejection. I know someone who, in a vulnerable moment, shared the pain in their life. They were actually told by their Bible study leader at church, “Well, Christians are supposed to be joyful, so if you’re not feeling joy, are you even saved?”

What rubbish! Jesus does not deliver us from pain, he delivers us through it. He never promised we wouldn’t have trouble in this world (in fact just the opposite, see John 16:33). He promised us he’d be there with us in the middle of it. So we should be there for each other.

If your church shames you for having pain in your life, find a different church. There are many churches out there that get this right. Find someone you trust that you can share your journey with, and who is willing to share theirs with you. You’ll find that, no matter how perfect they look, they have pain in their life, too.

3) Recognize the season.

Healing is a season, it doesn’t happen overnight. The season can be weeks, months, years, or even decades.

Sometimes, for whatever reason he alone knows, God doesn’t heal as we expect. I know some very strong Christians, men and women of deep intimacy with the Lord, faith and power, who have battled depression their whole life. It doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with them or their faith. It means God is choosing to use that for his glory in their lives (see John 9:3). He is meeting them right there in the middle of it, just like he did the Apostle Paul, who, by the way, God also didn’t heal (see 2 Corinthians 12:7-9). So if this is you, you’re in good company.

I can’t promise God will eventually heal your situation. Often he totally does. But I can promise God is always good, and will meet you in the middle of it.

Personally, a moment of vulnerability here, I still struggle with self-hatred. But I’m getting stronger and it’s a lot weaker than it used to be. I’m learning how to not agree with it and instead agree with what God says about me. Jesus has been my deliverer in the middle of it. And continues to be.

So what about you? Where do you come down in all this? Tell us your story in the comments or shoot us an email. And please share if you think this would bless someone else.

Free Resources:

Do you know God wants to talk directly to you? Do you have trouble hearing him? Find out how to hear God with Dave’s free ebook “Hearing God and What’s Next: 12 Ways to Hear God, 3 Things to Do about It, and 6 Ways to Know You’re Not Crazy.”

Does your heart need healing? Learn the steps to inner healing with Jesus through a fun and engaging fictional story. Download Dave’s free ebook “The Runt: A Fable of Giant Inner Healing.”

How to Speak the Truth in Love

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As Christians, we are Jesus’ hands and feet. Jesus’ mouthpiece. The presentation of Jesus’ heart to the world. The uncompromising truth of God’s holiness walking lockstep with Jesus’ sacrifice and compassion for the world.

The church should be the most compassionate place on earth. And yet, the church has a problem. It’s made up of people like you and me. People who aren’t completely sanctified and holy yet. Out of our incompleteness and inadequacies, do we misrepresent Jesus to the world?

There’s one thing in particular where I think the church needs to grow up and become mature. Understanding people where they’re at. Not justifying or excusing where they’re at (like the media does). But understanding.

We need to understand sin is not the problem. Yes, it creates problems and devastation in our lives. But sin is just the outward, low hanging fruit everyone can see. Mistaking sin as the problem turns Christianity into sin management instead of inner transformation.

Understanding what’s really going on takes insight and discernment. The motivation causing our sin is the real problem – medicating the wounding and believing lies.

All sin is based on lies. Telling the world how bad their sin is just turns them off to Jesus because they see us hypocritically doing the same things. Instead, we should be telling them God’s truth, which contradicts the lies they’ve been taught.

If you’ve ever said, “I just don’t see how someone can _____,” you’ve just identified yourself (in that moment at least) as a pharisee. Doh! I know, that’s harsh. Guilty as charged, I’ve said this. Let’s go back to God and repent.

If we “just don’t see how someone can _____,” it means we don’t understand. Rather than condemning the person, let’s ask God for his heart for them. Because he does understand how they can do that thing. He understands the wounding of their heart. And if we as the church are going to be at all effective in ministering God’s healing to them, we need to understand also.

As Christians, we too often make one of two errors. Either we don’t speak the truth, or we don’t say it with love. The Apostle Paul says it best:

Let’s no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, let’s grow up to become in every respect the mature body Christ. (Ephesians 4:14-15, my paraphrase of the NIV)

If we as the church can learn to do these two things, in balance together, we’ll change the world.

(1) Learning to Speak Truth

Especially now, in this crazed cancel culture we find ourselves engulfed in, the world is acting out its spiritual infancy. Tossed back and forth by the waves of the latest media outrage, the world is blown here and there by the cunning and craftiness of dark forces in their deceitful scheming, who manipulate our emotions to secure their own power.

As Christians, we offer the world the truth of God. We truly are a city shining on a hill, a light in the darkness, shining like the stars in the heavens in a warped and crooked generation (Matthew 5:14, Philippians 2:15).

If we don’t speak the truth, no one will.

We are the ones with the word of life, the truth of God. We need to tell the world the truth they don’t want to hear but desperately need:

  • God created the world. We did not make ourselves. Christians must tell the truth about creation, exposing the lie of evolution.
  • Sex was created by God, for marriage between a man and a woman, as a beautiful thing to model our relationship with him, intimate and solely committed for life. (That’s why there’s no marriage in heaven, see Matthew 22:30, because we have the real thing.) Outside of heterosexual marriage, it’s a completely different picture, which is why it’s wrong. Christians must expose the lie of the sexual revolution, as well as the lies of the homosexual and transgender agendas.
  • All life is sacred. Christians must expose the lie of the abortion agenda, a multi-billion dollar industry profiting off the desperation of women in crisis and the death of their children.
  • God created all people, Jesus died for all people, and God wants his people to live in unity under his truth (John 17:20-23). Christians must expose the lies of racism, in all its forms and wherever it is found.

(Aside: I am not Catholic. But there is no Christian group on the planet that has stood for truth against the abortion and homosexual/transgender agendas like the Catholic church has. And they have paid a high price for it. The media hates them more than any other Christian group. To the degree our society still has a godly influence, it’s largely because we’re living in the plume of righteousness the Catholic church has stood for.)

It’s hard to stand for truth when people don’t want to hear it. They get mad and respond in anger, hatred, and ungodliness. What’s a Christian to do? That brings us to point #2.

(2) Learning to Love

Yes, we must stand for truth and oppose sinful behavior. But as Christians, we grow up in the mature body of Christ when we speak the truth in love. If we forget the “in love” part, we are still acting as infants, immature in our spirituality.

Our message against sin to the world can’t be, “Don’t sin because God hates sinners!” Unfortunately, some Christians scream this at the top of their lungs. And it’s just not true. God doesn’t hate sinners, he died for them out of love (Romans 5:8). God hates sin, because it’s self-destructive and it hurts the people he loves.

Our message of truth must be from a heart of compassion, not legalism. That’s why God so often gives people ministries to sinful lifestyles they’ve been set free from: (1), you have authority over what you’ve been set free from, but also, (2), you understand. Because you’ve been there and you’ve lived it.

But I believe we can still empathize with the heart-woundings of people, to a greater degree than we do now at least, even if we haven’t experienced it, by understanding and doing these three things:

  1. Realize you don’t get it. If you haven’t experienced it, there is a degree to which you will never completely understand, because you don’t know how it feels. Acknowledge there’s something you’re missing, and you don’t know everything.
  2. Ask the Holy Spirit for his heart, his empathy and compassion. Sympathy, just feeling sorry for someone, is worthless, because it’s degrading of the other person, putting them below you. Empathy, understanding how they feel, is everything. That’s where true, godly, compassion comes from.
  3. Read their stories. Find a book from someone who’s either come through it or who works with people in recovery and healing. For example, if you “just don’t understand how someone can get an abortion” (which we hear all the time in churches), then read Forbidden Grief by Dr. Theresa Burke (not an affiliate link).

Your Turn

What do you think? How have you learned to speak truth? How have you learned to love? Have you swung to one side or the other? How did you find balance?

Or are you struggling with this? If so, kudos to you! It’s by continuing to struggle with these things that we move closer and closer to being like Jesus.

Please tell us your story and thoughts in the comments. And please share if this post would bless others.

Why Neglect Is Just as Harmful as Abuse

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We all understand that abuse is harmful. It leaves deep scars and wounds on our heart, especially when committed by the people who should have loved us. That’s Type B trauma—a “Bad” thing happened. We all get that abuse is really bad.

But Type A trauma—the “Absence” of the necessary good thing—is still trauma. But it’s hidden. Families with Type A trauma can look great on the outside. But neglect is just as harmful as abuse.

“My dad never abused me. He just wasn’t there.” – Millions of people who don’t realize they’re suffering from Type A trauma.

Just like abuse, neglect teaches us we’re not lovable. At least not unconditionally. We have to perform to earn love. The truth is, earned love is not love at all. It’s approval. So many of us confuse approval for love.

We desperately sell our souls for love, get approval instead, and wonder why our need for love is still unsatisfied.

My Story

My neglect wasn’t even sinful. I grew up in a wonderful Christian home. Nothing bad happened. I always knew I was loved. My dad poured into me with lots of activities, which I loved. But they were what he wanted, not what I wanted. Playing baseball. Playing cribbage. All good things I enjoyed.

My dad spent many evenings at the kitchen table going over finances on his adding machine (in the days before computers). If I wanted to play a game with him and get some attention, I’d ask him if he wanted to play cribbage. It worked every time—he’d stop his work and play with me. He couldn’t resist a game of cribbage.

But he wouldn’t stop his work to play Sub Search or Super Spy or Radar Search or Stratego or any of the other silly ‘70s board games I had. It had to be cribbage. Something he liked. Not something I liked. It wasn’t intentional on his part. He was a very good dad. He was an excellent role-model of a Christian man.

I learned, consciously, a lot of good things from my dad: How to treat a woman respectively. Faith in God is important. Being a part of a church. Tithing. Family is important. Self-control. How to be a good sport. Don’t take any wooden nickels. (To this day, I still don’t know what that last one means!)

But what did I unconsciously learn? My preferences aren’t important. Other people’s preferences are important, but not mine. To get what you want, you always have to yield to the preferences of others. Couple that with an unhealthy misunderstanding of Christ’s teaching of dying to yourself, and you’ve got a recipe for the disaster that was my first marriage.

None of that was my parent’s fault, or my ex-spouse’s fault. Or God’s fault. It’s my fault. I was protecting my heart without trusting God. After all, if I yield my preferences, lay down my rights, even when I know it’s wrong in a given situation, God’s obligated to make it turn out right, isn’t he? Boxed him into a clever corner, didn’t I? All without having to do anything scary, like a confrontation. Fortunately, God loves me too much to fall for that one.

The First Step to Freedom

The first step to freedom is committing to a healthy, Christian community. Yes, God speaks to us in our private times with him—worshiping, praying, reading the Bible. Listening to teaching. Watching edifying videos. Reading good books. That secret, private, personal history with God is extremely important.

But so is community. If you suffered neglect, you especially need to join a healthy Christian community where you can let your hair down. Not everybody has to know everything. But a few close friends (or family, or Pastors) do.

Let a community love you to life. Accept hugs. Healthy human touch is vitally important to breaking those strongholds down. Find a place where you can truly be known and know others.

Here are some traits of healthy, and unhealthy communities.

Unhealthy Communities

  • Revolve (mostly) around a single person. If the leader’s not there, cancel the meeting.
  • Have to perform for acceptance. People look down on you if you’re not doing all the things.
  • Pressure to be happy all the time. You don’t dare for one minute not be full of the joy of the Lord.
  • Motivated by guilt. I knew a pastor once who’s common response when someone told him they were missing a service was, “Ok, if you can afford to miss the blessing…” Not healthy.
  • When someone falls, morally or spiritually, they care more about how it’ll make the church look than about the devastation in the person’s life and family and how to heal and restore them. They give people the “left-hand of fellowship” right out the back door.

Healthy Communities

  • Plurality of leaders, not a one-man show.
  • People see good things in you that you don’t see in yourself, and they’re constantly calling them out.
  • Freedom to express and process negative emotions. Don’t have to pretend to be happy all the time.
  • Ok to express doubts and fears. People rally around you, not judge you.
  • When someone falls, morally or spiritually, they care more about the person than the church’s reputation. Nobody gets escorted out the backdoor.

You can find a healthy community near you, if you’re not in one already. I believe God will lead you where you’re called to be if you keep looking. Keep looking until you find it.

Does this post resonate with you? Then please share and tell us your story of community in the comments. We’d love to hear from you.

Being Loved to Life—Authentic Christianity

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Sarah was in church smiling, conversing with all her church friends. “If they only knew the mess in my life,” she thought every week, “they wouldn’t have anything to do with me.” So she kept pretending, and she was good at it. They all knew Sarah the Good Girl. No one knew Sarah the Alcoholic. No one could get close enough in a few hours on Sunday morning. If anyone offered to hang out for coffee during the week, she’d gladly accept, and then cancel because “something came up.” Don’t want people too close, they might see the real me. If only she could walk a victorious Christian life like her church friends, Rose, Tanya, and Beth. What is wrong with me?

Sarah thought she was the only one. Sarah didn’t know Rose fought depression and wore the same fake smile Sarah did. Sarah didn’t know Tanya suffered from post-abortive stress and was desperately trying to earn love from a God she believed she could never please. Sarah didn’t know Beth was on the verge of having an affair because of the pain from her abusive marriage.

In fact, Sarah had more in common with her church friends than they knew. The one thought all four had in common was, “If they only really knew me, they’d hate me like I hate me.” Each one of them thought the others had it all together.

Then one day, quite by accident, the dam broke. Eating donuts in the kitchen before the church service started, Rose whipped out a picture of her day-old grandson. Caught unusually off-guard, Tanya burst into tears before she could get control of herself. Today was the due date of her son, 20 years ago, who was never born. They went out in the hall around the corner to comfort Tanya and get some privacy. As Beth hugged Tanya, Beth’s sleeve was pulled back just enough for Sarah to notice a bruise. As Tanya’s tears wet Beth’s cheek, Beth’s make-up ran just enough for Sarah to see another bruise the make-up was covering.

“OMG,” thought Sarah. “I need a drink.” What is happening here?

The truth was, the Holy Spirit was showing up in their friendship, and it wasn’t pretty. But it was good. The four friends starting meeting for coffee to support each other and share their struggles. They were all shocked at each other’s struggles, not with condemnation or rejection, but because they truly had no idea their friends were in such pain. They all thought they were the only one.

Shame is such a liar. It tells us we are uniquely and fatally flawed. Fatally, because there’s no cure for us, we’ll always be this way, so we’d better hide it the best we can and not let anyone see. And uniquely, because we’re the only one who feels this way. What a pack of lies.

Shame’s lying house of cards is built on a foundation of isolation. It came crashing down that day, when these four church friends shared their pain and fears with each other, all expecting to be rejected, but all finding loving acceptance instead. The four friends received that day the best gift from the Holy Spirit, true loving community. They let Authentic Christianity replace their fake religion, and they could never go back. And all it cost them was the risk of being vulnerable.

Their community didn’t change their situations, but it changed them, and it changed their response to their situations. It gave them something they didn’t have before—hope. They did not have to walk through it alone. And there was a fifth person there in all of their get-togethers—Jesus. “For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.” (Matthew 18:20)

We receive healing when we let ourselves be loved to life by others in the Body of Christ. So often letting someone else into our struggle is 90% of the victory. Honestly sharing our sin, our pain, our fears, with a few trusted brothers or sisters in the Body of Christ so often breaks the majority of shame’s power.

Everyone doesn’t need to know your secrets, but someone does. Find that trusted person, a brother or sister in the Lord, and break shame’s isolating hold on you by confiding in them. We all desperately want to be known, and at the same time are terrified of being known. We hide with all our might, desperately longing to be found.

When the masks and methods we’ve used to hide stop working, and things are crashing around us, often it’s the Holy Spirit doing that, because he’s exposing something he desperately wants to heal. God is for us. We don’t have to earn his love, we already have it.

How about you? Does this resonate? Do you have a safe Christian community? We’d love to hear your story. Have you been loved to life? I have. And please share this if you think this would bless someone else.

You Have Value – My Journey through Self-Hatred

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The truth is you have tremendous value. I have struggled actually believing this. Well, truth be told, I have no trouble believing you have tremendous value. I have trouble believing I have tremendous value. Can you relate?

I’ve been asked by people I trust to share more of my story. So in the hope that it will help others, this post is about my struggle in this area, and how I got freedom. Don’t worry, it’s not a downer, despite the subject matter. It’s a story of hope and God’s faithfulness. I pray it gives you hope and some tools for hanging onto that hope.

A Little Background

I’ve been tremendously gifted. I have a master’s degree in Mathematics from UCLA. I’ve done software engineering for 30+ years. My specialties are reverse engineering computer/network protocols and developing digital signal processing applications. I’ve worked hard to get where I am, but God has tremendously blessed me with an ability to do with computers what not everyone can. Not patting myself on the back here. Just the facts.

I’m also a musician. Keyboards are my primary instrument (I’ve been playing since I was 8), but I also can fake playing bass, drums, and congas. My main keyboard influence is Rick Wakeman from Yes. (Remember that band? I’m totally dating myself here!) Nowadays I play keys in the worship band at church. I play Manheim Steamroller and Trans-Siberian Orchestra on my own for fun. I’ve worked hard to develop it, but God’s gifted me with some talent.

I’m smart and I’m talented. So why do I hate myself?

I grew up loving Jesus from a young age in a solid Christian home. My two older brothers treated me well. My parents loved me and were good, solid, godly parents. I’ve lived a moral life and not experienced any trauma. So where does this self-hatred come from?

Judgments and Inner Vows

Somewhere, deep in my heart, before I had language, maybe even in utero before I was born, for whatever reason, I judged myself as unlovable. We call that a bitter-root judgement.

(Aside: Judgements we make before we have language can be really hard to articulate. But you can discover them by asking the Holy Spirit to help you talk to your heart. I wrote a post on learning this skill, and how I made this discovery here.)

Anyway, I have a sense, deep in my heart, that you won’t love me. No matter what I do, you just won’t. We call that a bitter-root expectation. So in my heart I resolved that with an inner vow to always be good. You won’t love me anyway, but I’m not going to give you a reason. So when you don’t love me, which you certainly won’t, that’s on you. It’s a passive-aggressive way to get back, in advance, at the person (namely, everyone else in the world) who doesn’t love me. I make it your fault, not mine. So there.

It’s a crappy way to live. I’ve paid the consequences in my life. It set me up for a failed first marriage. It set me up with a scarcity mindset, biased against success, believing this lie: “Not everyone in the world will be successful, so it’s not fair for me to be.” I remember thinking this as early as 7 or 8 years old.

I Get It

I get the whole self-harm thing. Although I’m learning and healing, I have a very hard time being in the same room with people who are angry. It causes me a lot of emotional pain. Physical pain hurts less, so it’s tempting to inflict it on myself. It distracts from the emotional pain, and it’s easier to deal with.

I have never struggled with depression, although I’ve flirted with it. I know what it is to want to self-medicate the pain away by not getting out of bed and sleeping all day. I know what it is to go to sleep early as an escape. I know what it is to have gray days that have no color in them.

I know what it is to have suicidal thoughts. As a teen, I lived in a canyon-filled area, actually called Canyon Country, in an upper-desert suburb of Los Angeles. While driving those one-lane, windy roads, I’d think, “One quick, flip of the wheel, crash into the mountain side, or down the gorge, and it’s all over. Finally.” Or even as an adult driving on I-95 at 80 mph here on the east coast, “Undo your seat belt and spin the wheel. Do it.” Fortunately, I didn’t listen to those lying demons. Here’s why.

Psalm 139 – How to Love Yourself in a Healthy Way

Personally, I found healing in Psalm 139, the anti-self-hatred psalm. God himself taught me the stuff I’m about to share with you, when I read nothing but Psalm 139 for a year or so.

The first blow against self-hatred is realizing God wants you to love yourself. Jesus himself quotes Leviticus 19:18 when he says, “Love your neighbor as you love yourself” (Matthew 22:39, Mark 12:31). And Jesus agreed when it was quoted at him in Luke 10:27, before he told the parable of the Good Samaritan. The implicit assumption here is that you love yourself. You can’t love your neighbor as yourself if you don’t love yourself.

Ok, but how? It’s a mindset. Let’s go through Psalm 139. There’s revelation in here I never saw before, that helped me establish a mindset of loving myself. And I repeat it, out loud if I have privacy, but to myself if I don’t, whenever self-hatred comes at me. Here we go.

In reading the Bible, you have to think Hebrew. The word translated “know” in Psalm 139 and elsewhere in the Bible, really means “experience.” (Where do you think the phrase, “he knew her in the Biblical sense,” meaning they had sex, came from? It means he experienced her, fully!) In Hebrew, to know something means to experience it.

So whenever you read “know”, substitute “experience.” I read verses 1-4 and verse 23 like this:

O Lord, you have searched me and you’ve experienced me. You experience when I sit and when I rise; you experience my thoughts from afar. You experience my going out and my lying down; you experience all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue, you’ve experienced it, O Lord. … Search me, O God, and experience my heart; test me and experience my anxious thoughts. (Psalm 139:1-4,23)

Wow, that’s intimacy with Jesus, right there! That can be really scary. Some people tragically run and never go there. But I encourage you to go there. Going there saved my life. It’s what kept me from driving my car over a cliff. And it continues to defeat self-hatred in my life and keep me alive. His intimacy with me keeps those thoughts from sticking. That’s the deep level of intimacy Jesus wants with you. That’s what he went to the cross to win—relationship with you.

Keep reading. Verse 5 talks about laying his hand on me. That’s not a smack down! He’s stretching out his hand to bless me and commission me. So you could read verse 5 like this, and I read verse 16 along with it:

You hem me in—behind and before; you have laid your hand of anointing and purpose on me. … All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. (Psalm 139:5,16)

And verse 6:

Such experience is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. (Psalm 139:6)

Translation: Mind blow!

Keep going. I personalize verses 7-12 like this:

Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to Heaven, you’re there; if I make my bed in Sheol (i.e., Hell in Hebrew), you’re there. [That’s extreme!] If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea (or the interstate), even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,” even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you. (Psalm 139:7-12)

If that doesn’t speak to God being with me in the pit of depression and despair, I don’t know what does. In the darkest night, with blackness of soul all around me, I’ve prayed these verses back to him. I’ve prayed, “Lord, it’s dark all around me, and I need you to shine in this darkness right now like you promised.” And in my experience, he always has. I’d press in, warring with this prayer as my weapon, until I either felt his presence or I fell asleep—and woke up victoriously refreshed.

And OMG, the Bible talks about Hell! These verses promise that whatever hell you’re in, there’s no blackness that’s too dark for God. There’s no sin that disqualifies you from his love. No trauma he won’t meet you in the middle of. His love is bigger, stronger, and way more persistent. His love will run you down and find you, even there. No darkness is too dark for him to meet you in and rescue you from.

It’s in this context, God being there in the middle of the blackest blackness, that David writes the most beautiful verses in the whole Bible:

You created my innermost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. (Psalm 139:13-14)

This means, God made me, and he likes who I am. This is true for you too. God made you, and he likes you, he loves who he created you to be, even if you’re not acting like it at the moment.

Look at verses 17 and 18, “How precious are your thoughts to me, O God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand. When I awake, I am still with you.” Gee, that “when I awake I’m still with you” is awfully random.

While it’s true that God has a lot of thoughts and they’re important to me, that’s not what this verse means at all! There’s a footnote in my Bible on the word “to” flagging that it could also be translated as “concerning.” So verse 17 becomes, “How precious are your thoughts concerning me, O God!” That puts a whole different spin on these two verses, and it explains the random bit at the end of verse 18.

Since God taught me this, I read now these two verses like this, and they blow me away. They have become one of my favorite passages in scripture:

How precious are your thoughts about me, O God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand. When I awake, I am still with you, because you’re still here thinking about me. (Psalm 139:17-18)

God thinks about me a lot! And they’re good thoughts! Even while I’m sleeping, he’s thinking about his plans for me, wringing his hands in anticipation. When I wake, he’s there, excited to bring me the next day of my life, one day closer to the destiny and identity he has for me. Take that, self-hatred. In! Your! Face!

The next verses, 19-22, get aggressive and can sound a bit extreme. They start out, “If only you would slay the wicked, O God!…” But to me, in the context of self-hatred, they’re talking about the spiritual forces lying to me and tempting me to hate and harm myself. He’s talking about the demons behind all the negative chatter I hear in my head. I personalize these verses like this:

If only you would slay the wicked, O God! Away from me, you bloodthirsty demons! They speak of you, God, with evil intent; they are your adversaries and they misuse your name. Don’t I hate those liars who hate you, O Lord, and abhor those who rise up against you? I have nothing but hatred for them; I count them my enemies, and I will never compromise with them. (Psalm 139:19-22)

I hate the lies that rise up against God’s truth for my life, and I hate the lying spirits who tell them. That’s hatred placed where it belongs. “I count them my enemies” means we don’t go shopping together. Don’t be friends or compromise with the liars in your life.

Your agreement is everything. The freedom, or the bondage, in your life comes down to what, and who, you agree with.

And then David ends Psalm 139 where he began:

Search me, O God, and experience my heart; test me and experience my anxious thoughts. See if there’s any offensive way in me, and lead me in your way everlasting. (Psalm 139:23-24)

I love that David ends the psalm where he began—with intimacy. It’s intimacy with Jesus that ultimately set me free from self-hatred and protected me from its devastation in my life.

No One Heals in a Vacuum

While God taught me a lot one-on-one in Psalm 139, and it’s been a powerful, healing force in my life, I didn’t come to the degree of freedom I have alone or in a vacuum.

I’ve sought out and received inner healing prayer ministry, to expose the lies I’ve believed and replace them with God’s truth. I’ve received deliverance ministry to overtly break the power and presence of self-hatred in my life. God places us in community because we need each other. I’ve needed others in my life to love me back to life. So do you. That’s why Satan’s number one weapon against us is shame–to isolate us out of community.

I haven’t arrived yet. I still struggle sometimes. But God’s winning. And I am growing so much in the process.

But what if you know all this, done all this, and it’s not enough?

That’s great that Psalm 139 worked for you, Dave, but it’s not doing it for me. What if you’re still depressed or still have suicidal thoughts? It’s ok. You’re ok. There’s nothing wrong with you. It just means there’s some deeper level of healing God wants to bring you. Get help.

Should I talk to my pastor, or get counseling? Yes. Do both. There’s nothing “anti-Christian” about getting counseling from a counselor/therapist with a Christian world-view. Most pastors are not trained to deal with depression. It’s not an either/or. If your pastor doesn’t get it and shames you for getting counseling (pastors are human too and allowed to make mistakes), then find a different church where the pastor will work with your therapist on the same team.

The same goes for medication. There’s nothing “anti-Christian” about taking meds if you need them. If your church shames you for taking depression medication, find a different church. Those same Pharisees go home and take their insulin for their diabetes and their heart/blood-pressure medicine. But somehow the chemical imbalance in your body doesn’t count? Horse-pucky! There are good churches out there who get it. I encourage you to keep looking until you find one.

(Yes, I believe in supernatural, miraculous healing. I’ve prayed for it and seen it happen. God heals by miracles, but he also heals by medicine. It’s his call, and it’s a different mix for every person. No one type of healing is more holy than any other. All healing is from God, however he chooses to do it.)

Resources

While it’s true that receiving deliverance and/or inner healing ministry from unhealthy or immature practitioners can be worse than none, these are solid, godly ministries that have blessed my life. Getting ministry may not be the whole deal for you, but it can be a huge piece if that’s what God’s doing.

For inner healing and prayer ministry: Dominion Counseling and Training Center (Richmond, VA)

For deliverance ministry: The Church Unchained (Stafford, VA)

For inner healing resources: Elijah House Videos

If you suffer from suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255), or text HOME to the Crisis Text Line at 741741. You matter.

How about you? Have you suffered, or do you suffer, from self-hatred? Tell us your story in the comments or shoot us an email on the Contact Us page. We’d love to hear from you. And please share this post if it would help others. God really does love you. You have value.

How to Walk a Hard Road with 4 Mindsets

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Too often, “how to walk a hard road” isn’t something we talk about enough in Western Christianity. Our life is so comfortable, on the outside at least, that too often we neglect talking about walking hard roads. And yet, although we have freedoms and conveniences, our lives can be just as painful and torn as those suffering in third world countries.

Our favorite TV series, The Chosen, has a scene in Season 1, Episode 8, about 16 minutes into the episode, where Nicodemus and his wife Zohara talk about walking hard roads. They are talking about Hagar, who bore Abraham’s son Ishmael. (You can read the story of Hagar, and how God met with her twice, in Genesis 16:1-16, 17:24-26, and 21:9-21.)

Nicodemus: “Hagar was caught up in something complicated and fraught, but not of her choice. And yet, God saw her, and he knew the path she was forced to take would not be an easy one.”

Zohara: “When we stumble onto hard roads, he finds us and comforts us.”

Nicodemus: “Or does he call us to them?”

Too often in Western Christianity, we approach life with Zohara’s response: It’s God’s job to comfort us in our pain. There is an element of truth to that. God does find us and comfort us. After all, Jesus calls the Holy Spirit the Comforter (John 14:26).

But I think Nicodemus was on to something here. While, yes, God comforts us when we find ourselves on hard roads, often he’s the one calling us to walk the hard road.

But we have a choice. The world gives us a plethora of other alternatives. Plenty of ways to medicate the pain. Plenty of distractions to otherwise occupy our time. Anything to keep us off that hard road God is calling us to and the impact it will have. Because walking our hard road will encourage other to walk theirs.

“A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you.” – Psalm 91:7

One person choosing to walk one hard road shatters ten thousand demonic strongholds for others. While we won’t know the full impact until we see Jesus, our walking our hard road terrifies the Kingdom of Darkness, which does see the effects. They see strongholds they’ve invested generations building up come crashing down in a day, all because one follower of Jesus chose to walk a hard road. That could be you. If you choose to walk your hard road, demons will need therapy. It sucks to be them.

So you matter. Walking the hard road Jesus is calling you to matters. So how do you do it? Here are 4 mindsets to choose while walking a hard road.

1) The “Uncompromising Decision” Mindset

My dad always used to be first in line for birthday cake or whatever other sweets were offered around the office. Until he was diagnosed with diabetes. Then he dropped sweets cold-turkey. People would ask him how he did that so consistently, without cheating at all. He’d answer, “Simple. I can’t have them.”

“100% is easier than 98%” — Benjamin Hardy

Decide. The mindset of uncompromising decision is our primary defense against the world. My dad found that “I can’t have any sweets” was a much easier road to walk than “how many sweets can I have?”

2) The “On Your Face” Mindset

When you’re walking a hard road, I highly recommend lots and lots of facetime before God. No, I’m not talking about the Apple app. I’m talking about physically lying, face-down into the carpet, before the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. This mindset is a posture of the heart (and often of the body) of humility before the Lord.

I was literally on my face before God, crying out for his intervention in my marriage and my family, for at least 18 months. I’d be on the floor in the corner of the room during worship time at church. I’d be on the floor of my office at home in the early morning hours when no one else was awake. I’d park in some distant spot in a remote parking lot during the day, because home wasn’t safe, and pour out my heart to God.

And I eventually saw God move, although not the way I wanted. Everyone has a choice. My wife left. The divorce devastated my children and continues to. It was the worst time in my life. But God was faithful and brought Janet. God has restored my calling, brought tremendous healing, and Janet and I walk out our callings that dove-tail so beautifully together.

3) The “Manage Your Influences” Mindset

After being diagnosed with diabetes, my dad didn’t frequent bakeries. While he could say “no” to sweets offered to him by others, he didn’t put himself in situations where it would be any harder than it had to be.

If you’re struggling with pornography, don’t watch movies with nudity or that glorify sex outside of marriage. Don’t listen to music that glorifies sex outside of marriage or objectifies women.

“The eyes are the window to your soul.” – William Shakespeare

Your senses are the toll booths guarding your heart. Guard your eye gates and ear gates.

If you’re trying to stop smoking, don’t go to the vape shop or hang with friends who smoke. If you’re struggling with alcoholism, don’t go to a bar or hang with friends who drink.

This mindset removes negative influences from your life. This means you might have to let go of certain friends. Ask the Holy Spirit to bring you godly friends who support the hard road you’re walking, instead of trying to pull you off it.

But I’m trying to reach them for Jesus! That’s good, that’s noble. But if they are pulling you back into a sinful lifestyle, you’re not reaching them for Jesus. They are reaching you for Satan, and you need to let them go. Put them in God’s hands, and trust that he will reach out to them through someone else who will not be compromised by them.

There is one relationship you can’t walk away from, and that’s with your spouse. If your spouse is a wet-blanket on your calling, I’ve put together a one-page resource just for you. You can download it here. Let me know if it’s helpful and how we can pray and support you.

Download the Guide
“7 Ways to Deal with a
Wet Blanket Spouse”

4) The “Focus on Eternity” Mindset

This mindset focuses on eternity, knowing that our hard road in this life is only a vapor compared to our eternity with Jesus (James 4:14).

Francis Chan says it much better than I can. Please watch this 4-minute video of The Rope.

So How About It?

What hard road are you walking? How can we support you on it? You’re not the only one, and your story will help others. So please leave a comment, and share this post to bless others.

How to Make It Through to a New Season

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One of the biggest lies we constantly believe is our current situation is forever. It’s not. It’s a season. Whatever you’re struggling with, you don’t have to endure it forever. Unless you choose to. Here’s an example.

For those of you who don’t live in the Washington DC area, Interstate 95 is a giant parking lot where everyone idles their vehicles for an hour or two going to and from work. It’s probably the single largest cause of stress in this region. According to US News and World Report, DC has the second worst traffic in the country, after LA. Not having to commute is a huge win.

I vowed to myself early in my career that I’d never commute. I was successful until 2012, when the small company I worked for got bought out and shut down. I had to take what I could get, which meant a job with a big company 40 miles away, up I-95. Translation: Hour and a half in the morning, two hours or more in the afternoon.

After a year, I started taking a vanpool which cut it down to 40 minutes one-way because the van took the HOT lanes (reversible toll lanes in the middle of the interstate by-passing the traffic parked in the non-toll lanes).

But that meant getting up at 3:30 AM to catch the commuter van. I’d get 5 or 6 hours sleep and prop myself up on artificial stimulants (coffee) at work. Then I’d catch-up on my sleep on the weekends as much as I could. Not a healthy lifestyle.

Every couple years, I’d pop my resume out on the Internet and see if I could find anything where I didn’t have to commute. I noticed new construction and drive around getting names and addresses of companies in my industry with local offices. I’d get on their websites and apply for positions that were great matches. And each time, I’d just hear crickets. It wasn’t God’s timing.

One day, an external thought just popped into my head about how much I’m paying to commute. I’ve walked with the Lord long enough to recognize the Holy Spirit, so I put my resume out there again. And this time, I was flooded with responses. I was able to find a small company with a site 20 minutes from my house. Finally!

Why now? I don’t know. That was just God’s timing. Time for that season to end, and a new, healthier season to begin. The funny thing is, I was able to land my new position largely because of a new technology I’d learned over the last year with that other company. It’s like God had me there for a reason. Go figure.

The point is, whatever most of us are going through, it’s not permanent. It’s temporary. It’s a season.

But wait a minute, Dave! What about someone with an autistic child or quadriplegic loved one they care for? That’s pretty permanent! Yes, unless God intervenes, that’s permanent. But even in that, there will be seasons. There will be seasons where it’s unbearably hard, and other seasons where there’s an abundance of grace for it. No matter what your struggle, God will meet you there in the middle of it, in the person of Jesus.

And even with something life long, remember life itself is just a season. We Christians take a much longer view. If you drew an infinite line to represent the eternity of your existence, then the first inch is your life here on this planet. The Bible says we get eternal rewards for what we temporarily suffer through in this life. That’s so not fair! God has so stacked the deck in our favor!

So how do we do this?

There’s one major difference between those who make it through and those who don’t. Those who don’t make it do this one thing that those who make it don’t do. Avoid this one thing, and you’ll make it through. What is it? Drum roll please… the one thing that people who don’t make it do is…

Quit.

That’s why they didn’t make it. So how do you not quit? Here’s 3 major ways to not quit.

1) Intimacy with Jesus

Whatever your struggle, he wants to walk it with you. Daily intimacy with Jesus, our lover-king, gives us the strength and the wit and the wisdom and the humor to make it through today.  Which brings us to point 2:

2) Just Do Today

Today itself is a season. You will never have enough strength to make it for the whole season all at once. And that’s why it can get so discouraging. We look at the enormity of what we’re going through, and we think, “I don’t have the strength for all of this!” But we do; just not all at once.

We don’t need the strength to make it through the whole thing today, at this moment. Today, we just need the strength to make through today. That’s how it works. Through intimacy with him, God gives us the strength for that day. And when we look back, we’ll be amazed that we did make it through that whole thing, one day at a time.

3) Find Support

Find people (yes, they’re out there) who’ll support you. They can’t fix it, but they can be there with you in it. Lone Ranger Christians aren’t Biblical. God created us to be in community. We desperately need each other.

Churches are great places to get support. So are therapists (everyone needs help once in a while, there’s no shame in that.) Maybe healthy family members or friends. You can even google support groups for people going through what you’re going through. And if you can’t find anyone, email us. Janet and I will support you.

So what do you think?

Do you have support? What season are you in? Have you had a season you thought was forever and then ended up being really short? Have tough seasons let you help others through tough seasons? Tell us your thoughts in the comments, and please share on social media if this would help someone else.

5 Ways to Validate Someone’s Pain

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People come to church in silent pain, isolated and hurting. “Look at all these happy people getting close to God. I’m the only one who’s faking it.” Nothing could be further from the truth. But we drive people to internalize and hide their pain because, by and large, the church doesn’t know how to help somebody who’s hurting.

Too many of our churches are not safe places for people to admit they’re in pain, whether it’s depression, being post-abortive, struggling with self-harm or suicide, or what have you. But we have to figure this out. If you can’t go to the people of God when you’re in crisis, where can you go?

I hope this post is a positive step toward remedying this situation. Helping someone who’s hurting starts by validating their pain. Here are 5 great ways to do that.

1) Get Comfortable with Silence.

Think about it. Everything in our modern Western world is designed to protect us from one thing. Silence.

“I really need to spend some quiet, reflective time. I think I’ll get on FaceBook,” said no one ever. If we’re not careful, our lives can get driven by notifications. Someone reacted to your post! Text message! Look who added to their Instagram story!

I’m not knocking social media. They are great communication tools, and they’re fun. They have their place. But we’ve inadvertently engineered ourselves into a world with no silence.

So when we’re talking to someone who’s hurting, we don’t like an “awkward silence.” So we break it too soon. But the other person needed that silence.

Silence is healing. They are processing in the silence, and if you break it too soon, you can rob them of what God is doing in that moment. Sometimes just waiting for them to form the words speaks volumes more than anything you could’ve said.

There’s a great model for this in the book of Job. Job’s friends often get a (well-deserved) bad rap. But they actually got it right for a whole week when they showed up and just sat with him in silence, in the ashes of his life.

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

Then Job’s friends opened their mouths, and it was all downhill from there.

The point is, when you’re trying to comfort someone who’s hurting or grieving, don’t be the one to break the silence. Let them break it when they’re ready.

2) Acknowledge their Pain with Reflective Listening.

When someone shares their pain with you, don’t judge it, dismiss it, or minimize it. Reflect it back to them in your own words. Some examples of good things to say are:

  • “So do you feel like …?”
  • “I’m so sorry you’re going through this. That must really hurt.”
  • “Tell me more about that.”

This is not a politician’s hollow “I feel your pain” so they can manipulate a vote out of you. No, they don’t feel your pain. For the most part, they have no idea. (Aside: Never vote for anyone who says “I feel your pain” because they’re lying already.)

This is an honest attempt to truly listen and hear, not only what the person said, but how they feel. By reflecting back what you thought you heard, you communicate that you’re trying to hear their heart.

3) Don’t Say “I Understand”

One of the worst things you can say is “I understand.” The truth is, you don’t understand. You’re not them, and you haven’t been through what they’re going through. No, you really haven’t.

Even if you’ve been through something similar, you’re not them. Your backgrounds and make-up are different. Your needs are different. Your support system is different.

When we say, “I understand,” we minimize their pain. We trivialize what they’re going through. Instead, a great thing to say is, “I have no grid for what you’re going through, but I’m here for you.”

4) Don’t Share Your Story. Shut Up and Listen.

This is not time to share your similar story. They don’t need to hear your story. They need you to hear theirs. In their pain, their heart needs to speak and be heard. They need you to listen and make sure they feel heard.

They need you to hear their heart. When the other person is talking, most people aren’t really listening. They’re politely waiting to talk.

When we share our story, we take the focus off of them and put it on us. We’re telling them, “Your experience is common. I went through it. I got through it. You will too.” While that sounds great on paper and may even be true, that’s not what they need to hear right now.

They need to hear that they were heard. They need to hear that their pain is legitimate, and you’re not shaming them for it. (So often we blame trauma survivors because we’re trying to make sense of an unsafe world.)

Don’t blame them. Validate their pain. “That must really hurt,” is a great thing to say.

After you validate their pain, after they feel heard, then you earn the right to ask them if you can share your story. At the right time, your story might truly be helpful to them. But keep it short. They don’t need all the gory details. Get the focus back onto them as soon as you can.

5) Be Their Friend, Not Their Counselor

You don’t have to fix them. And, frankly, they don’t want to be fixed. They want to be healed. And the first step toward healing is being heard. If you do nothing else, communicate to them that you’ve heard their pain. Not understood it or felt it, because you don’t. But you’ve heard it.

When they believe they’ve been heard, you’ve validated their pain. You’ve validated their story. You’ve validated their worth as a person and as a child of God.

Offer to help them find good help, whether it’s pastoral or professional counseling, or whatever resources their situation requires. Always ask first, don’t impose a solution, but give them options and the freedom to choose to take them or leave them without condemnation from you. They need to drive their healing, not you, although you can respectfully suggest possible routes.

There’s nothing more rewarding than being a friend to someone in their time of need. There’s nothing more rewarding than being there, not necessarily being the person with all the right answers, but being the person who was just there when they needed us.

This is how we, as Jesus’ hands and feet, can support those in crisis who need us. This is how we can make our churches safe places for people in crisis. And we’ll be grateful for that safe place in our time of need as well.

Your Turn

What do you think? What’s your story? Please tell us your story in the comments; it will help others. And please share this post if it would bless other people.

3 Ways to Help Someone with Depression

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This could quite possibly be the most important post I’ve ever written. It could save a life. It’s based on Sarah Robinson’s excellent post here (not an affiliate link). Sarah is a personal friend in our writer’s mentoring group, and a very strong believer. Please read her article, share it, and then come back and read this post.

Before we get to the 3 ways we can help someone with depression, we need to understand a little more about it, and how we as the church often, unfortunately, miss critical opportunities to be Jesus.

Is the gospel “Try Harder!” or is it “God loves you. You matter.”?

Listen to the common responses I’ve heard Christians give to people suffering from depression:

  • “You just need to choose joy!” Translation: “Try harder!”
  • “You just need to believe and live the word!” Translation: “Try harder!”
  • “Take those dark thoughts captive to Christ! Apply 2 Corinthians 10:5 to your life.” Translation: “Try harder!”
  • “You just need to pray, read your Bible, and/or worship more!” Translation: “Try harder!”

Yes, we all have choices to make. Yes, no one is arguing against believing and living the Word. Yes, learning to take our thoughts captive to Christ is a skill we as Christians need to learn. Yes, intimacy with Jesus through prayer, Bible reading, and worship is critical.

But what if someone does all those things and more, and they’re still depressed? What if they do everything you tell them perfectly with all their heart, and yet they still feel the crushing blackness?

I think most of us would tend to say, “Well, you have to fight for it! You have to contend!” And then we’d quote them some verse about God’s faithfulness. Translation: “Try harder!” And the truth is, for most of us, we get very uncomfortable about now, because what we thought should be working isn’t working.

The sticky wicket is, those things are all true. God is faithful, and we do need to contend. But that’s not what they need to hear right now. That’s not how to be Jesus to them right now.

Before we dive into the 3 ways to be Jesus to them, we need to understand WHY all the good, solid, Biblical advice and scriptures we’re quoting at them aren’t working.

The Wrong Answer

The obvious (but incorrect) answer is, they’re not doing it right. We think if they were doing it right, these things would work. So we conclude they must not be doing it right. And we tell them to try harder in all of the Biblically accurate, kind but self-righteous ways we can muster.

At the end of the day, we’re preaching Works Righteousness. We don’t mean to, but we totally are. “If you were doing it right, it would work. Try harder!” We may not say it, but we’re thinking it. That’s works righteousness.

There’s a natural reason why we do this. We need our world to work. We need to at least pretend it’s a safe place. Say our neighbor’s child commits suicide or something really bad happens to them. We search for a reason to believe they were bad parents. Or he’s an alcoholic. Or she’s whatever. Something negative. Because if we find that negative, and we avoid it ourselves, then we can secretly believe that bad thing can’t happen to us. Our world works.

That’s works righteousness, and it’s a false hope. The truth is a lot messier and uncomfortable. The truth is, the world doesn’t work. It’s not a safe place. Bad things do happen to good people.

The Right Answer

Here’s the uber-counter-intuitive secret of why quoting the Bible verses and all the good Christian principles don’t always work. Ready? Here it is. God’s not letting them work. What?!? God’s not letting his own Word work? That makes no sense at all!

Hang with me a minute here. Let me explain. If God allowed quoting the Bible verses to work, if he allowed doing all the things to relieve the pain, we wouldn’t search for deeper healing. There’s something else God wants to do in our lives, some deeper level of healing and anointing he wants to give us.

Maybe there’s wounding so deep it happened before we had language. Often, we come out of the womb with wounding, or someone did something to us very early in life. That’s not our fault. The sin done to a child is never the child’s fault. Our responsibility is the judgments we make afterward, and the lies we believe about ourselves, about God, about others and how they will treat us, as a result of our wounding.

That early wounding can manifest in our lives in a lot of different ways; unfortunately, some of them are less socially acceptable in Christian circles than others. Depression is often not accepted in the church, and that’s an injustice we need to correct.

Please don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying we ignore or sugar-coat stuff in people’s lives. But I am saying we need to accept the person without judging their pain.

There might be no wounding at all. Maybe God wants to give them a powerful anointing over depression to help others. The good news is we have authority over what we’ve been delivered from. The downside is we have to pass through the darkness to be delivered from it to get that authority.

So what’s Biblical? Inner healing? Counseling? Deliverance? Medication?

They are all just as Biblical. We tend to tell people with depression if they just had more faith they wouldn’t need that medication. But we won’t dare tell a diabetic that, and for good reason. It’s the same thing.

Medicine is not unbiblical. Penicillin was discovered completely by accident. Someone left a petri dish uncovered by an open window. It got moldy overnight, ruining the planned experiment, but there were no bacteria around the mold. That’s how Alexander Fleming, in 1928, discovered the medicine that’s saved millions of lives and changed the world. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penicillin#Discovery) How much do you want to bet an angel opened that petri dish and moved it by the window? The same angel probably opened the window, too! The discovery of medicine and the wisdom to use it is from God.

Yes, God often heals miraculously without medicine. And, personally, in the West, I think we turn to medicine too quickly. It should be our last resort, not our first. But there’s nothing wrong, and everything right, with taking medicine if you need it.

It’s not “either/or.” It’s “and.” Often, a person needs medication first to get leveled out enough to receive inner healing, counseling, and/or deliverance. Sometimes deliverance needs to happen first to remove spiritual blockages that are keeping the medicine from working. Sometimes inner healing goes first. They can go in any order. None are contradictory, and they are not all always needed. It just depends on what God’s doing with that person.

Yes, sometimes with depression there’s something else going on, but sometimes there’s not. Either way, Christian shaming about taking medication is not Christ-like! We need to stop it.

So How Do We Help People in Pain?

How can we be Jesus to our brothers and sisters suffering from depression?

Look at how Job’s three friends handled it, in Job 2:12-13:

When they saw him [Job] from a distance, they could hardly recognize him; they began to weep aloud, and they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads. Then they sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was.

Job’s three friends typically get a bad rap, but they actually got it right for a whole week! Then they opened their mouths in Chapter 4, and it was all downhill from there.

So what did they do during that first week?

  • They went to him. They didn’t let him be alone.
  • They shared his pain. They wept with him.
  • They sat with him in the middle of it, in the wreckage of his life.

We need to get comfortable around each other’s pain.

People don’t share their pain with us because we judge it. Too often, we’re quick to whip out Bible verses or some Biblical principle because we’re honestly trying to be helpful. We don’t realize it, but we’re actually trying to fix them, and it’s not helpful. People want to be healed, not fixed.

We have not been taught how to be around hurting or grieving people. We don’t know how to process someone else’s grief. We’ve been taught, falsely, that real Christians don’t hurt or grieve. But Jesus said just the opposite (see Matthew 5:11, John 16:33, et al.)

So we tell them, “This too shall pass. It’s only a season.” And while that’s true, that’s not helpful to them. Because they can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, it’s around a corner. All they see is the blackness. Instead of trying to fix them, we need to love them through it. Love, with no expectations, is healing.

3 Ways to be Jesus to Someone with Depression

1) Honor them by letting them be hurting. It’s ok for someone to be hurting. Let them grieve. We don’t have to be afraid of their pain or try to fix them.

2) Tell them they matter. To us. To God. That he loves them. That we love them. That we will walk through the dark with them. They are not alone.

3) Do something kind. Ask the Holy Spirit what you can do to show them they matter, that these aren’t just words. What can you give them? Maybe it’s time—just having coffee, or a phone call. Maybe it’s a gift, something they would enjoy, or just a card. The Holy Spirit knows. Ask him until he tells you.

That’s being Jesus. That’s living the Word. We let people grieve, we let them be hurting. But we don’t let them do it alone. We get in the ashes of the wreckage of their life with them, and just sit there. Yes, there’s a time to speak into someone’s life, but there’s also a time to be silent and earn that privilege (Ecclesiastes 3:7b). By just being there. By just loving them.

How about you?

Have well-meaning Christians been complete idiots? Or who was that special person who made all the difference? Tell us your story in the comments. And if you are suffering from depression or suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255), or text HOME to the Crisis Text Line at 741741. God really does love you. You matter.

Please share on social media if you think this would help someone else.