5 Steps to Embracing the Intimacy We’re Both Terrified of and Longing for

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Are you ready to go deep today? Because in this post, I’m going to talk about what we all want and desperately need, but we’re all terribly afraid of. Deep down, sometimes way down there, we all want intimacy. But how can we embrace the intimacy we’re simultaneously longing for and terrified of?

Intimacy == Into Me See

 

We all want to know and be known. We were created in God’s image, after all. God is a triune God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He’s in relationship with and within himself. We were created for relationship, with him and with others. And in relationship we reflect his image much fuller than we do individually (especially in a marriage, but in friendships, too).

We long to live out who we were created to be, but because of our wounding, we’re often terrified of it. We send conflicting messages like “come here, stay away!” Or maybe “come close, not that close!”

Because of our heart-wounds, often very early in life, we make judgements and believe lies about ourselves, about the world, and about God. Judgements and lies like:

  • “Men can’t be trusted.”
  • “People will reject me.”
  • “I’m dirty.”
  • “Emotions are bad.”

Then, in a desperate effort to protect our heart, rather than trust God with our pain, we make inner vows to protect our heart, in our own strength.

  • “I don’t need anyone. I will take of myself.”
  • “I’ll reject people before they reject me.”
  • “I’ll be what anyone else wants me to be so I’m accepted.”
  • “I won’t have emotions.”

Yes, we’re keeping ourselves safe this way. But we’re doing it by chaining ourselves into a dark dungeon of our own making. And living in a dark, dank dungeon brings its own pain, which we live with as the price for safety. Like a boat safely raised in dry dock, we never risk setting sail on the adventure we were created for.

How tragic is that! Fortunately, God has something better for us, and Jesus made a way with his sacrifice on the cross. Here’s 5 steps to escape from this prison we’ve made for ourselves.

1) Talk to your heart. We can discover these inner vows by, when we’re feeling afraid of a relationship, talking to our heart. Maybe the fear is masked by anger or rage or some other bad behavior to keep people away. But at the root, it’s fear, and if we’re honest with ourselves in a quiet moment, we know it. So find a quiet place, and ask yourself, “Heart, why are you afraid?” Then hush up and listen.

Now our mind, wanting to be helpful, will often jump in and answer the question with lots of rational reasons. If we’re getting words, rather than impressions or emotions or pictures or memories, it’s probably our mind and not our heart. You have to tell your mind to hush up, too. You can literally tell yourself, “Mind, thanks for trying to help, but I was talking to Heart. So just be quiet now and let Heart speak for itself.” Then listen. Ask the Holy Spirit to help you hear your heart.

We’re not used to listening to our heart, so this can take a while sometimes. Maybe even a couple days or weeks. But keep asking your heart. And keep asking the Holy Spirit to help you hear your heart. Some of us have buried our heart pretty deep. And often our heart doesn’t speak in words, so it can take some effort to figure it out.

2) Identify the benefit. Once we know what the lie is that we’ve believed, and what inner vow we took to protect our heart, we need one more piece of information. What benefit did we get from the inner vow? Somehow it’s protecting us from the pain (although causing us worse pain). Again, ask your heart, and ask the Holy Spirit.

3) Get the opposite of the lie. The next step is to ask God what’s the opposite of that lie for us. If we’re familiar with the Bible, he will often pop a scripture into our heads. The Bible is a promise book, after all. Pastors and other spiritually mature mentors can be tremendously helpful with this. The game here is to replace the lie with God’s truth.

Now we have a choice. We can keep believing the lie, falsely believing we’re in control. Or we can surrender control to God and accept his truth. It’s up to us.

4) Forgive the person who hurt us. Nothing keeps us in prison like unforgiveness. Forgiveness doesn’t mean pretending they didn’t do evil to us. It’s coming to the place where they are not the evil they did to us. We know we’ve finished forgiveness (which is a process, not an event) when we can pray blessing over the person and mean it.

5) Replace the lie with the truth through repentance. Finally, repent of that vow and break it. We need to repent of the vow, and renounce the benefit we’re getting from it. Replace the lie we believed with God’s truth. Here’s a sample prayer. Use this as a template and make it your own.

Lord, I forgive _____ for _____. I repent of believing the lie that _____, and I repent and renounce the inner vow I made, _____. I renounce the benefit I got from that inner vow of _____. I’m now trusting you with my heart instead trying to protect it myself.

This is how we start living in freedom and embracing intimacy with God and others around us. But freedom can be scary, because we’re not in control anymore. We’re living by dangerous faith. Yes, it’s dangerous. Living this way will change us. But don’t worry, it’s good. It is so worth it.

What do you think? Does this resonate? Please tell us in the comments and share it on social media. We’re looking forward to hearing from you.

How to Improve Any Relationship

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Anything involving humans can always be improved, and relationships are no different. But before we can improve one, we need to understand what makes the quality of a relationship better or worse.

The quality of any relationship is measured by the depth of the connection between the people involved. The best relationships are a safe place to enjoy being connected, being known and knowing another person. Healthy relationships are a treasure that give us the fulfillment of what we were created for – connection with another.

But not all relationships are safe places. Instead of being treasured, some relationships are tolerated. Unhealthy relationships can be scary places where we don’t feel safe, and the goal is not connection but self-preservation.

Maybe a relationship you used to treasure has tarnished into a scary, unsafe place. How do we turn that relationship around and get heading back in the right direction?

Since your relationship involves another person, there’s no guaranteed outcome. You can’t control what the other person does. You can only control what you choose to do. But, if you want to improve the relationship, there is a dialog you can start with the other person.

But first, you need to get clear within yourself about a few things.

The Goal of Self-Preservation Prioritizes Distance, Not Connection

Is this a scary relationship? Is it scary to be too close to the other person? There’s no condemnation in the answer to these questions, just facts.

If the relationship is scary, your goal is one of self-preservation. In that case, you’re protecting your distance from the other person.

There’s nothing necessarily wrong with that. The other person may be abusive, or may have a history of breaking your heart. But you need to think it through, Why is the relationship scary? What has happened, what am I afraid will happen if I don’t protect my distance?

The next question to ask yourself is, What needs to happen for me to feel safe in this relationship? Does the other person need to get counseling? Does an addiction need to be dealt with?

[BTW, if the other person is physically abusive, call law enforcement. No one deserves to live in a physically abusive environment and no one has to. Even if they are not actually physically hurting you, but if they are threatening to, or are breaking things, call law enforcement. Those things count as violence and you do not have to tolerate them. Make the call or nothing will change. There is help available for you.]

Do You Really Want a Closer Connection?

You don’t have to. Sometimes people are in an unhealthy relationship where they keep each other at arm’s length. They’ve gotten very comfortable protecting their mutual distance, and it works for them. It’s a known, “safe” quantity.

But it’s not a stable equilibrium. Like anything toxic, eventually, it will begin to seep into your soul and affect you. The bitterness, callousness, hardness-of-heart grows until they start affecting your other relationships as well. Many people don’t notice until it’s too late.

Connection is worth pursuing, but if you pursue it for that reason alone, it won’t work. Don’t pursue connection because you “should.” Pursue it because you want it.

Restoring a healthy connection can cost a high price. It’s a risk to the existing but toxic relationship, which could completely explode in your face, leaving you with no relationship at all with the other person. This has happened to me in several important relationships, which I trust God to restore at the proper time.

Sometimes, the other person doesn’t want a healthy relationship. They are perfectly fine preserving distance instead of connection. If you start pursuing connection, you overturn their whole applecart. “Hey, I thought we had an arrangement here?” You may be ready for healthy, but they may not be. I have a post on that subject here.

What Are You Prepared to Do?

Maybe the other person is equally sacred of you. Maybe, they will need certain things from you in order to feel safe. Are you willing to pursue connection over your preferences?

Maybe they need you to not watch TV during dinner. Or stop what you’re doing and greet them when they get home. Or talk about your day. Or let them into that place of your secret hopes and dreams. Maybe they want you to go to counseling.

Risking connection with another person can be scary. But it’s so worth it when it’s mutual.

The Choice Is Yours

Some people are toxic enough that the relationship has to be completely rebooted. Sometimes you have to protect distance, sometimes even physical distance with a restraining-order. Sometimes self-preservation is legitimately threatened, either physically or emotionally. In that case, the most loving thing might be to pull the plug on the relationship, for a season at least, until the other person does what they need to do to make the relationship a safe place. Have you had to pull the plug on a relationship?

Or have you risked pursuing connection, rather than distance, and come through the other side? When two people decide they value their connection with each other over their urge to protect themselves, it can be a beautiful thing. Have you experienced such a restoration?

Tell us your story in the comments; it will help inspire others. And please share this post if it will bless others.

How to Unlearn the Church’s Worst Habit

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Loving Jesus, I love God’s people. I love the church. This is not a church bashing post. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of that going around. It’s always easier to attack someone else’s faults than deal with our own, and sometimes the church is an easy target.

So while I love the church, there’s something we need to talk about. Can we have a family meeting? The church has a nasty habit we need to unlearn.

We all say we want the church to be a safe place, a strong tower people can run to in the midst of their brokenness. A safe place for people to repent and come to Jesus. A safe place to work out our salvation with fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12). But is the church a safe place for people to make mistakes?

The church’s worst habit is throwing out everything someone has ever said or done, or will say or do in the future, because of one mistake. Let’s look at a current example.

Cancel Culture Christianity

Many voices have recently given prophetic words about the recent presidential election in the United States that don’t appear to be happening. And many in the church are verbally shooting them for it. Regardless of what side of the political spectrum you’re on, that’s not ok.

The pagans do this. It’s called Cancel Culture. A celebrity makes an insensitive tweet, and they get fired from their sitcom. Their concert gets cancelled. Their speaking gigs get canceled. “They made a mistake! How dare they! Off with their head!” This just makes everyone live in fear. But the church is called to freedom. We need to stop “cancel culturing” our prophetic voices if they make a mistake.

Do we realize how much courage it takes to put yourself out there and give a prophetic word? To share with others, especially on the dangerous Internet, what you think God is showing you? Do you know how embarrassing it is to share, “I think God is telling me this,” and have it not happen? Prophetic voices are taking a huge risk! Courage and vulnerability are godly qualities we should be encouraging.

Yes, we also want to encourage accuracy. So what do we do with prophetic words that don’t happen?

(1) Let it play out without judgement. For the current prophecies about the election, although at the time of this writing it’s looking bleak for some prophetic words, the jury’s still out. Anything can happen over the next month or two. Wait until it’s an absolute impossibility before judging. (Please don’t get hung up or triggered on politics; this is not a political post. That’s just an example.)

People who don’t believe in prophecy jump on the bandwagon whenever a prophecy goes awry. “See, I knew it all the time! I knew they were a false prophet, that all this prophetic stuff was hogwash” This negative pre-judgement reveals more about the person judging than the person who missed the prophetic word.

God doesn’t wait for us to make a mistake so he can say, “See, I knew it all the time!” So let’s stop treating each other like that.

(2) Don’t reject the person as a false prophet. I’m talking about people rooted in Jesus, loving Jesus, who just missed it. I’m not talking about people who encourage others to sin, or condone immoral lifestyles that break God’s heart. Those are the “false prophets” the Old Testament has strong admonitions for.

Here are some true prophets in the Bible who actually missed it. (Taken from a great Intercessors for America article, here.)

  • Nathan. David wants to build the Lord’s temple, and Nathan wrongly tells him to go for it. The Lord later sends Nathan back to David with a correction; Solomon is to build the temple, not David. (2 Samuel 7:1-13)
  • Agabus. He bound his own hands with Paul’s belt, and told Paul, “In this way the Jews will bind the owner of this belt” (Acts 21:10-11). Although Paul was bound, it was by the Romans not the Jews (Acts 21:33). Agabus got it mostly right, but missed a detail. Prophetic voices today do the same thing. That does not make them false prophets any more than it did Agabus.

(3) Consider the conditions. Now, yes, sometimes people add conditions after-the-fact as a way to blame shift when they miss it, and that hurts their credibility. But sometimes prophetic words come with legitimate conditions. If we as the people of God respond in a certain way, often repentance, then God will do something. We shouldn’t discount the prophetic word if we didn’t fulfill the conditions.

(4) Consider the timing. Also consider the timing. Joseph and David were both given prophesies decades before they were fulfilled. Maybe the person giving the prophetic word wasn’t wrong. Maybe they were just early.

(5) Be teachable and admit mistakes. On the prophetic side, we need to admit it when we miss it. I know getting tarred & feathered by the rest of the church can make this difficult and scary. It’s embarrassing. But it’s the right thing to do. It’s ok to say, “I don’t know what happened. I thought it was God, but I guess I missed it.”

And to the rest of the church, enough with the witch hunts already! Put down your pitchforks, and let’s encourage people genuinely trying to hear God, like we all should be, to try again.

Mistakes are not sin. Mistakes are learning.

Recently, Kris Vallotton from Bethel apologized for a prophetic word he believes he missed. That took a lot of guts and humility! Regardless of whether you believe in modern-day prophecy or not, regardless of what you think of Bethel, we should commend him for this. Rather than saying, “See, I knew it all the time!” we should commend him for having the humility to admit what he believes was a mistake.

Fallen Christian Leaders

Recently, some high-profile Christian leaders have walked away from Christianity. What do we do with that? Don’t throw out every book or song they’ve ever written. It doesn’t mean nothing they ever did was anointed by the Holy Spirit. It means Satan is having a field day in their lives right now. Pray for them, don’t gloat over them. “See, I knew it all the time!” Don’t do that.

I went to a church for a long time where the pastor had an affair. Anyone who knows me knows how strongly I feel about sexual purity. I wrote a book on it. But I learned about the Holy Spirit in that church. I learned how to worship there. I got so much from his teaching and grew so much in that church.

That pastor’s sin does not invalidate the good God did in my life through him and his ministry. We need to realize the calling of God and the work of the Holy Spirit in someone’s life is greater than their mistakes, even greater than their sin.

Yes, we should call out mistakes, especially public ones that could harm others and lead them astray. But let’s stop throwing out everything someone has ever done or said, past, present, and future, because they made a mistake. Or even sinned. God doesn’t treat us that way. Let’s stop doing it to each other.

Your Turn

So what do you think? Please share your thoughts and story in the comments. And please share this post to bless others.

White Repentance: How Not to Miss a Daniel 9 Holy Moment

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We are in a holy moment. It’s one of those times when heaven bends near to earth. If we don’t miss it, our actions now can affect great change on the earth.

A Daniel 9 Moment

Daniel 9 is one of the most mind-blowing chapters in the Bible. Because they abandoned the Lord, the people of Judah had been conquered and hauled off to Babylon. Daniel was a righteous man. He had nothing to do with the sin of his nation.

Daniel 9 is a beautiful prayer, where Daniel repents on behalf of his nation. Even though he personally had nothing to do with it, he owns his country’s sin, even from past generations, as his own. And he repents for them. There’s a spiritual Kingdom principle on display here—the righteous repenting for the unrighteous.

Repenting for Generational Sins

We talk about this all the time in inner healing. Often, the sins of our ancestors manifest bad fruit in our lives. We often see patterns in families, conditions or events happening generation after generation. For example, the first male infant dying. The onset of mental illness in adults in their 40s. A particular kind of abuse. Every adult male dying of a heart attack in their early 50s.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that every heart attack is a sign of generational sin. But if every adult male for the last five generations has died of a heart attack between ages 50-55, there’s something generational going on. Now these are extreme examples, but it’s very common in inner healing to go back through your family line and look for obvious patterns.

The good news is the blood of Jesus is stronger. We can repent for the sins of our ancestors and break judgements and curses off our family line. And it’s not just possible in families. Daniel 9 is an example of one righteous man repenting for the sin of his whole nation. We can do this for our family, our nation, and our race.

White Racism in America

Rebellion is usually a bad and ungodly thing. So in the 1770s when the 13 American Colonies decided to rebel against England and form their own country, Thomas Jefferson was charged with writing a document that intellectually defended why rebellion was actually the moral thing to do in this case.

While writing the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson couldn’t justify the Colonies’ right to be free, without also justifying their slaves’ right to be free. He couldn’t reconcile freeing the Colonies from tyranny and establishing a free people while enslaving a people within our own borders. So he wrote the abolition of slavery into the original draft.

That sparked a heated debate in the Continental Congress. It was a non-starter for the Southern states. The Northern states knew, if they were going to pull off this Revolution thing at all, that all 13 colonies had to be united. So they capitulated and dropped that clause out of Jefferson’s Declaration. (NOTE: I am not justifying their decision; just relaying what happened.)

With that fateful decision, by refusing to abolish slavery, the founding fathers baked racism into the country they founded, into the very fabric of this new nation. They tabled that decision, deferring to fight that battle another day.

Please don’t get me wrong. This is the best country on the planet and America has blessed the world. People are fighting to get here. But I think that decision had consequences, unintended by those who opposed slavery at the time, but none the less. Allowing that spiritual stronghold to remain at the founding of the nation did us no favors.

So fight that battle another day we did. Less than 100 years later, the Civil War became the bloodiest devastation this nation has ever seen, before or since. In his second inaugural address, President Lincoln correctly discerned the heavenly justice being wrought upon his country by that terrible war.

“….  all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword…” – President Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address

Lincoln correctly discerned Heaven’s judgement: Every dollar made through free and stolen slave labor was repaid by the economic devastation of war. Every drop of slave blood taken by the whip was repaid on the battlefield by the musket ball and the bayonet.

Yet after slavery officially ended, even after that terrible war, racism persists, even to this day. Spiritual strongholds die hard.

Our Chance

So now we find ourselves, I believe, in a holy moment. We have a unique opportunity.

To my white brothers and sisters: We have a unique opportunity to listen. It’s a rare gift. We have an opportunity to make our black brothers and sisters feel heard. They have felt unheard and invisible for far too long. Although we weren’t even alive during slavery, it’s our generation’s responsibility to hear the pain our brothers and sisters feel today because of the enduring effects of racism.

We have an opportunity, I believe a heavenly window, to repent for the generational sins of our white race. But Dave, I had nothing to do with it! I treat everyone the same! I abhor racism! Yeah, I know. So do I. I don’t practice racism either. And I know we are all just as shocked by the police brutality we’ve witnessed.

Daniel didn’t have anything to do with the sins of his people that led them into captivity in Babylon. Yet he repented for those sins, as if they were his own. And heaven heard. We can do the same thing.

In this holy moment, we have the opportunity to end racism in this country once and for all. I know change doesn’t happen overnight, but we can, in this moment, commit to see it through.

Call to Action

Will you, as a white Christian, join me in repenting for the sins of our race? Go into your prayer closet and cry out to the Living God in repentance, like Daniel did.

Will you take this pledge with me?

I will speak up and not be silent when I hear it from others.
I will film and post injustice when I witness it.
I will get involved, and willingly pay the price for doing so.
In as much as it depends on me, I will not tolerate the existence of racism.

To my black brothers and sisters: Please forgive us. Forgive my people for our shameful and sinful treatment of you. Forgive us for not hearing your pain, and so often blaming you for it. Forgive us for looking the other way. No more. Although there will be pockets of hatred in all races until Jesus returns, please know that the vast majority of whites are just as horrified by the death of George Floyd as you are. I pray in the wake of this that police reform sweeps the country. And I pray that you feel seen and heard. You deserve to be. #BlackLivesMatter.

Your Turn

We’d love to hear your story, questions, and respectful dialog in the comments. And please share if this post would bless others.

4 Steps to Authentic Relationships

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This morning, as I look out on our deck, I see a glorious new day with radiant sunshine. It speaks of promise. Each day brings beauty and the prospect of hope.

However, the visual beauty is marred by something ugly. As someone who finds beauty restorative, I find this disturbing. You see, I love my flower boxes on the railing around our deck. They bring such beauty with colors of pink and purple. Unfortunately, the critters, namely squirrels, mess with my flowers. They tear up my beautiful petunias much to my consternation. So, in fighting back to protect my territory, I put netting and cages around my flower boxes.

Well, there’s good and bad here. This sort of worked. It is a deterrent to those pesky squirrels, but, boy, do they look ugly! These cages I built to keep stuff out is ruining the lovely view I want.

As I mediated on this image this morning, I couldn’t help but think of how inner vows we make in life are like those cages. Yes, they keep us in prison. Really??? Wow! Who knew? I thought I was protecting myself from those things that would hurt me, but in the process, good, healthy relationship has been shut out also.

So what is an inner vow? Inner vows often use the words “always” and “never.”

  • “I will never be angry like my mom. Emotions are bad. I will always stay in control.”
  • “I will always be a good girl and never make anyone upset.”
  • “I will never allow anyone close enough to hurt me.”
  • “I will always be the good guy. I will make you love me.”
  • “I will always avoid conflict and be the peace keeper.”

Inner vows keep us in a cage that, while beautifully decorated on the inside, is very lonely.

So how does that work? Well, I’m glad you asked. It’s so easy to will in our hearts things that don’t seem like a big deal at the time. But each vow is like the bar of a prison.

The strongest inner vows happen when we are young. Often before we even have language. We judge the world around us as safe or not safe. In childhood, we determine in our little hearts what is to be trusted in the world. We can also judge our parents from our own perspective.

Oftentimes, I may not even know there is an inner vow working in my life. But there is bad fruit manifesting in our relationships.

Yes! That’s why we need to be in relationship with others in the Body of Christ. In loving relationships, we can see where we are closing ourselves off from each other.

As we grow in love, we want to be in healthy relationships with healthy boundaries. Healthy means loving people and allowing people into our lives. The Lord has called us to love others and love Him. We are not meant to isolate ourselves from people like islands in the middle of the ocean. The Kingdom of God is about relationships.

That’s where my cage is a problem. While protecting myself from being hurt by others, I have also protected myself from good, healthy relationships. I’ve prevented myself from being able to love others or to receive healthy love from others.

So how do we break out of this mess? The place to start is to renounce and repent of those unhealthy inner vows and be free of those walls that keep us trapped. Then we are in a healthier place to love and be loved.

Here’s 4 steps for breaking the power of inner vows over my life:

  1. Repentance and confession for my responses that led me to make that vow.
  2. Forgiveness of those who’ve hurt me.
  3. Renounce the vow. Come out of agreement with the lie behind the vow.
  4. Replace the lie with God’s truth. Ask the Holy Spirit for the truth the lie was hiding from you.

Our agreement is everything. Inner vows are tied to a false identity. By renouncing inner vows and coming out of agreement with them, we’re taking back our ability to trust Jesus.

How about you? Do you hide behind a mask in your relationships? Or have you learned healthy boundaries? Or, like most of us, are you in the middle somewhere, learning to be vulnerable? Tell us in the comments, and please share if this would bless someone else.

How to End the Disconnect between Our Head Knowledge and Our Lives

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There’s a deception going around the Body of Christ that breaks my heart. We have seen so many lives ruined because people believe this lie. To some degree or another, this lie is at the start of every deceptive road a Christian goes down.

“I Know It’s Sin, But I’ll Be Ok”

Abortion-minded clients come into our local crisis pregnancy center and identify as Christians. Even after seeing an ultra-sound, sometimes they leave still determined to have an abortion, saying, “I know it’s a sin, but I’ll be ok.”

That breaks my heart. But I see it all over the place in the Body of Christ. It’s our favorite line to justify our sin, whether it’s abortion, pornography, or cheating on taxes.

Does any Christian man doing porn really not know it’s sin? I doubt it. Does any Christian couple living together, acting like they’re married without really being married, not know it’s sin? I doubt it.

So, why? There are many reasons, many ways to get caught in a web of deception. But they all have an element of, “I know it’s sin, but I’ll be ok.”

No, You Won’t Be Ok. You’ll Be Alive, But You Will Not Be Ok.

It’s like saying, “I can cut my arm off. Everybody’s doing it. Lefty is the new cool. I’ll be ok.”

No, you won’t be ok. You’ll survive, you’ll still be alive, but you’ll be far from ok. Just think about this absurd example of actually cutting your arm off. You’d never be able to tie your own shoes or cut your own meat.

“But all my shoes have Velcro and I’m going vegan.” You’re missing the point. You can try to mitigate the consequences however you want, but life will never be the same. Sin destroys. You will not be ok.

“No One Will Know:” An Example from a King Who Was Not Ok

Look at King David. His sin, “secret” adultery with Bathsheba, did not leave him ok. He probably thought, “Look at that hottie taking a bath. I’ll bring her over to the palace for a quickie. No one will know. Yeah, I know it’s sin, but I’ll be ok.”

Yes, he was forgiven. Psalm 51 is a beautiful picture of David’s repentance. And God was with him through all his subsequent troubles, including having his daughter raped, 4 sons die, including running for his life from his own son, whose death he had to pretend to celebrate. David was far from ok. (You can read the whole story in 2 Samuel 11 through 1 Kings 2.)

The Problem: A Disconnect between Our Head Knowledge and Our Lives

We show what we really believe by how we live. If we say we believe something, but don’t live it out, we don’t really believe it.

We go to church every Sunday. We read the Bible. We’ve accepted Jesus as our personal Savior. But when it comes to situations in our life, do we give ourselves a bye on what we know is right?

Do we risk following Jesus and doing it God’s way when it’s our own life? If not, we don’t really believe it.

Intellectual assent is not Christianity. The only person we’re fooling is ourselves.

The Solution: 3 Choices

There is a solution. It’s a series of 3 choices we, as the Body of Christ, need to make.

Choice #1: Repent of Our Idolatry

“I know it’s sin, but I’ll be ok.” That’s idolatry at the deepest level. It’s not ok, and you won’t be ok. Although God will be with you through the consequences, God’s grace is not a license to sin. The book of Romans was written to address this fallacy.

We cannot tolerate any secret sin within ourselves. We notice it, and we cry out to God in repentance until he removes it. We design our life to keep us away from that thing as much as possible.

You get the idea. Repentance isn’t just tears and confession, although confession is certainly part of it and tears often come. Until we make a practical life change, we haven’t really repented.

Choice #2: Speak & Teach the Hard Truths

I went to a church for many years where, in his sermon every Sunday, the pastor wove in something about sexual integrity, tithing, or TV. Even if it was just a sentence, it was there. Every. Single. Sunday.

As churches, we need to stop taking for granted that people know how to live righteously. Even people in the church, who have been Christians a long time, often don’t. And it’s our fault for assuming they do and not regularly teaching on it.

As Christians, we are God’s voice of love to the world. It’s not love to watch destructive life styles devastate people and not say anything. The world desperately needs us to speak the truth in love.

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

When the church doesn’t regularly teach about practical righteousness, or when Christians don’t speak up about what we know is wrong, we’re leaving our friends and children to the influence of the world.

Choice #3: Trusting God: Prepare to Die

One of my favorite memes is from the movie The Princess Bride: “Hello. My name is Indigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”

If we’re really serious about being Christians, and not just playing church, we need to live this version: “Hello. My name is Jesus. You follow me. Prepare to die. To yourself.”

(NOTE: I’m not talking about suicide here or being martyred, or giving up on life. I’m talking about living the life God’s calling us to live, dying to our own selfish desires that don’t honor God.)

When disaster strikes, we need to be prepared to follow God’s ways no matter what. Because in the heat of the moment, the lie is, “If you do it God’s way, it’ll kill you.” And in the heat of the moment, we believe it. From where we stand, looking at this mountain in front of us, it looks true.

And maybe it really is. Ok then. Time to test our belief in the afterlife. Here we die.

The truth is, even if we actually die following God, that’s not really dying. You just passed the test and now are in glory. Small price to pay, looking back on it from the other side.

But the truth also is, the vast majority of the time, you won’t die. God will come through. And not trusting God, doing it our own way, actually brings the disaster we tried to avoid.

Your Turn

What are your thoughts? Tell us your story in the comments. Did this post strike a nerve? Or did it resonate? And please share if others need to read this post.

How to Move from Scarcity to Abundance

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Janet and I were at a local restaurant recently. The waiter wasn’t complaining, but it’d been a really lousy Sunday. He was struggling with some things in his personal life, his customers had been grouchy, and he really needed the money he didn’t get it in tips that day. It was his worst shift ever.

It’s well-known in the restaurant business that the Sunday after-church crowd is the stingiest and most demanding crowd of the week. Ask any waiter or waitress you know. These are largely Christians going out after church, still dressed in their Sunday best. We are the most demanding customers and the worst tippers.

This breaks my heart. We give a false testimony of the Kingdom of God when we act like this. We should be the most generous people on the planet, not the stingiest. We should be the most easy-going customers, not the most demanding. Servers should be fighting for the Sunday afternoon shift instead of dreading it.

After the waiter took our order and left the table, Janet and I decided we wanted to make his day. We wanted to bless him. We wanted to turn his day around and make it his best shift ever. So after our $30 meal, we left him a $100 tip. And it hurt financially. I can’t afford to be doing that all the time. But it felt really good because we obeyed the Holy Spirit.

The next time we went in that restaurant, he ran over to our table. He shared his life with us and we had his ear. We told him about the hope Jesus wants to bring to his life. That was $100 well spent.

We’ve actually done this twice. The other time the waiter chased us out into the parking lot to let us know we made a mistake. When we told him it wasn’t a mistake, he was blown away. That was really fun. That waiter also had had a really depressing shift, and we were his last patrons of the evening, and we really made his day.

I’m not patting ourselves on the back here. But I am consciously trying to be more generous with my tipping as a general rule. As royalty, as sons and daughters of the King of kings and the Lord of lords, who has infinite resources, shouldn’t we be the most generous people on the planet?

A standard tip is 18%. I’ve typically tipped 20%, not because I’m being generous, but because 20% is easier to calculate. I can calculate 10% in my head, just shift the decimal point, and then double it for 20%. Easy. And I feel good about myself because it’s more than 18%. The Holy Spirit has shown me recently that it’s all been about my convenience and feeling good about myself, not about blessing the server. So I’m upping my standard tip to 30% to overtly bless the server. Honestly, it hurts. But being more like Jesus is worth it.

What about when you get lousy service and they don’t deserve it? Tip them more. You’ve got the awesome opportunity to demonstrate the unconditional love of God. Think about it. Which is more likely to portray Jesus in a good light:

Option A: When our service is really lousy, make a point and a political statement by leaving a 1 penny tip. (Confession time: I’m not proud of it, but I’ve actually done this. I justified it by thinking if they don’t know something’s wrong, they can’t correct it. So I was really serving them by holding them accountable. Boy, they were sure lucky to have me as a patron that night! Not! Who did I think I was fooling? It may have been myself, but it sure wasn’t the Holy Spirit.)

Option B: Saying to them, “I can tell you’ve had a rough night tonight, so we left you a little extra, because God is for you and wants to bless you.” And then leaving them a lot extra.

Flip it around. Think of the equivalent situation on your job. You screw up. How do you want your employer and co-workers to respond to you? Which one of us doesn’t want something similar to Option B? Then we need to be Option B to the rest of the world. That’s being salt and light.

Generosity is a trademark of the Kingdom of God. It’s the easiest form of evangelism. You don’t have to knock on doors, just leave big tips. If we can bless people into the Kingdom of God, can you think of a better use for money? I can’t.

Bringing someone into the Kingdom is giving Jesus the reward for his suffering. Whoa! That’s a mind blow. So we’re using a temporal resource and reaping an eternal reward. Talk about return on investment!

The opposite of generosity is hoarding. Hoarding comes from a scarcity mindset. “There’s not enough to go around, so I need to protect what I have!” But the Kingdom mindset is one of abundance. We have plenty to share, even if we can’t see it all yet. We know our God will make more. Look what Jesus did with the loaves and fishes, feeding thousands with a small boy’s lunch. This is such an important concept all 4 gospels cover it (Matthew 14, Mark 16, Luke 9, and John 6).

We problem is, when we get saved, we bring our worldly scarcity mindset with us into the Kingdom. Actually, it’s not a problem, it’s natural. We all do it. It’s so ingrained in us we take it for granted and don’t even realize there’s another way to live. The problem is when we hang on to that mindset and refuse to be teachable. That’s a problem. The trick is to replace the scarcity mindset with an abundance mindset.

The best way is just start giving. As both spiritual and physical beings, what we do with our body affects our spirit. So it’s ok to start being generous even if our heart’s not in it yet. One of two things will happen:

  1. Our heart will follow along shortly once we get the hang of it and start to experience the abundance of God’s provision when we’re generous. It’s fun to try and out-give God. It’s a game that’s really awesome to lose!
  2. God will reveal our wounding. Maybe that scarcity mindset is rooted in something deeper. Maybe we have foundational lies God wants to deal with. Maybe we internally believe lies we don’t even know are there but are blocking the abundance of the Kingdom of God in our lives. God wants to heal those areas by replacing the lies with his truth.

The cool thing is, generosity is a way we can overtly practice and show our Christianity without offending anyone! Believe me, even the most hardened atheist won’t be offended if you give him money. When we’re generous, it gets people’s attention, because we’re doing something they can’t. And we’re joyful about it! Radical giving is actually really fun. We’re showing people something outside their normal paradigm and it rocks their world.

What are some practical ways we can be generous? Here’s some ideas I’ve experienced.

  • Leave big tips. However much you normally tip, up it by 10% for 30 days and see what happens. Who’s up for the 30-Day Tip Challenge?
  • The car ahead of me paid my toll once on the interstate (before EZ Pass). It was only 75 cents, but it felt really good! After that, I often paid the toll for several cars behind me.
  • A local Christian radio station in our area frequently has a campaign where they encourage people in the drive-through lane at fast-food places to pay the bill of the car behind them. Brilliant!
  • A church I was at did free car washes. People were blown away. “Why are you doing this?” they would ask. “Just to bless you.” That’s it. No tract, no hype, no hard-sell. A lot of people came to our church through that, and we weren’t even trying. It hurt giving up a Saturday, but it was fun because the Holy Spirit loved it.

I’m sure you can think of many other practical ways to be generous. Post them in the comments! And please share this post on social media if you think it would help someone else.

How to Turn A Negative Vulnerability into a Positive Strength

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We all have them.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1) Set Boundaries

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2) Get Support. Tell Someone. Get Help.

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

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

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

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

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

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

How About You?

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

How to Break the Chains of Approval

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At some point, you yourself have to stand up.

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

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

King Joash

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What went wrong?

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

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

The One Thing that Defeats Peer Pressure

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How About You?

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

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

How to Fix Everything

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

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

So what is it? Ok. Here it is.

Being Teachable.

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

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

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

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

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

1) Talk less, listen more.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So how about you?

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