#3Questions Archives - IdentityInWholeness

I recently did a post on how to come into agreement with other people; your spouse, your boss, your friends, whoever. This post presented the 3 parts of agreement, which I’ll summarize here.

1) Logical Agreement. Is this what you THINK we should do?

2) Emotional Agreement. Is this what you WANT to do?

3) Spiritual Agreement. Do you have a PEACE in your spirit that this is what God wants you to do?

Often, we charge off after some decision when we have logical agreement with our spouse or the other party, but there’s no emotional agreement. They never wanted to do that thing in the first place. Their heart’s not in it. They feel bullied or coerced into it. And when it ends in disaster, we’re shocked because we went out of our way to make sure everybody was on board.

My point in that post was, if you’re not in agreement in all 3 areas, you’re not in agreement. You need to go back and pray more, both individually and together, asking the Lord to give you agreement.

I had a revelation that this applies to our agreement with God also. So often in the church, we make this mistake. Well, here’s the Bible verse! Let me just quote it for you. There you go! Problem solved! Not necessarily. There are exceptions, but in general, we can’t argue people into the Kingdom of God by hitting them over the head with Bible verses.

Even with people in the church, we can’t solve deep problems with quippy Christian answers and flippantly quoted Bible verses.

Now, just cool your jets. I’m not knocking the Bible. It’s God’s word. It’s living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword. It’s got everything we need for life and godliness. God often speaks to us through his word. It’s powerful.

But it’s powerful because it hits something more than our logic, more than our intellect. It’s powerful when it hits our heart. It’s powerful when it hits our emotions.

So often we in the church aim to bring the culture into intellectual, logical, agreement with the Gospel. We try to win by reasoning with them. It’ll never work. Yes, it’s important to be able to rationally answer their questions and have a good rationale for our positions. But winning in logic is not going to change anybody’s mind. Only the Holy Spirit can do that. And he works in the heart as well as the head.

The Holy Spirit works in the heart because that’s where the pain is. We’ll never bring the culture into emotional agreement with the Gospel unless we address their pain.

Take smoking for example. Everyone knows smoking will kill you. It gives you cancer. The Surgeon General has had a warning label on cigarettes for decades. Yet, according to the CDC, 45 million Americans still smoke, 8 million are living with diseases caused by smoking, and over 400,000 die prematurely every year from smoking.

Everyone knows smoking is bad for you. We all have intellectual, logical agreement on this one. So why do millions of people still smoke? Because they don’t emotional agree that it’s bad for you. Smoking did something for them that medicated their pain. Often, it made them feel accepted. Medicating the pain in their heart right now is worth more to them then the high risk of cancer later. So quitting is not what they want to do. No emotional agreement.

Are there truths about yourself where you’re not in emotional agreement with God? Yeah, I know the Bible says God loves me, but that’s because he loves people in general. He doesn’t really love me. Maybe you’re in intellectual, logical agreement with God’s love for you, but you’re not in emotional agreement.

The Christian journey of being sanctified is the process of coming into emotional agreement with God’s love. It’s coming into emotional agreement that, no what the circumstance, God is good.

So how do we come into emotional agreement with God’s truth? Here are 3 ways to emotionally agree with God about that promise in his word that you just don’t believe is true for you. You know the one.

1) Engage your will.

Be an actor playing a role. “If I actually believed this promise of God, what would I do?” And then do that thing. You’re not faking it till you make it. You’re helping yourself believe until you become it.

2) Say it out loud.

Our words have tremendous power over our lives. God built this into the fabric of the universe so we could bless those within our sphere of influence (including ourselves). But the reverse is also true. We can curse others and ourselves if we choose. That’s why people who say they can and people who say they can’t are both right.

When you’re fighting to believe God’s truth, repeat God’s promise out loud.

3) Tell people you trust.

Again, along the lines of saying God’s truth out loud, telling other people “this is what I believe” is hugely powerful. And the beauty of this is, they can say it back to you when you need to hear it. Bonus! It’s not just you. You’re not alone. Others you trust are agreeing with you about this promise of God over your life. That’s uber-powerful in the spirit!

So how about you? What is that thing you believe intellectually and logically, but struggle to believe emotionally, in your heart? You can practice #3 above by telling us in the comments, and we’ll agree with you. Or maybe you’ve come through a season of learning to emotionally agree with God about something. Tell us your story in the comments; it will help others. And please share this post on social media if you think it would bless someone else.

We know agreement is a key to any kind of successful partnership, whether it’s in business, a marriage, or a creative partnership. Unity is a powerful thing that can weather any storm. When troubles destroy a relationship, be it a marriage or a business or what have you, it’s not the troubles that actually destroyed it. It was the lack of agreement. The circumstances just exposed the area of disunity.

Here’s a radical statement, but it’s true. Human agreement is even strong enough to thwart the plans of God. Now just give me a minute here, and I’ll prove it. It’s one of in the craziest stories in the Bible. It’s in Genesis 11, the Tower of Babel.

The backstory is God, when he created people, gave us the charge to, “Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the whole earth and subdue it.” (Genesis 1:28) God’s plan was for humanity to scatter itself over the whole face of the earth.

But we had a better idea in Genesis 11:4: “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower reaching to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the earth.” They had agreement. They had unity. Done deal.

Now this is the crazy part. In Genesis 11:6, even God admits their human agreement was stronger than his plan: “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing will be impossible for them.” Translation: “I’d better do something here.”

And he did. God intervened. Basically, he cheated. Those of us who know God chuckle at this, because we know he so does this, all the time. He came down and confused the languages. No communication, no agreement, problem solved. Look at Genesis 11:8: “So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth.” God’s plan wins after all.

Now this is a negative example of the power of agreement and unity. Just imagine how strong agreement is when it’s actually for something God is doing. Imagine how powerful agreement can be if, along with agreeing with each other, we’re also in agreement with God! Obstacles, get out of the way, you’re about to be road-kill!

So why is agreement so hard? How often has this conversation happened:

Husband (or business partner or wife): “Don’t you see the logic of this decision? A implies B implies C, botta bing, botta boom, and there you go!”

Wife (or other business partner or husband): “Well, I guess it does make sense…”

Husband (or first business partner or wife): “Great! We’re in agreement! Off we go!”

And it results in disaster. The wife (or business partner #2) was never in agreement with the decision to begin with. They feel bullied and steam-rolled over. Meanwhile, the husband (or business partner #1) is flabbergasted and shocked, because he was sure they were in agreement. He went out of his way to talk about it with the other person before implementing the decision!

The problem is, while they were in logical agreement, they were not in agreement. The thing many people don’t realize is this: There are 3 parts to agreement.

(1) Logical Agreement.

“Do you THINK this is the right thing to do?”

In other words, you both agree on the logic. Unfortunately, many people stop right there thinking they’re in agreement with the other person, but they aren’t yet. Yes, you do need to have logical agreement, but if that’s all you’re going on, it’s a lose-lose and you’re headed for a crash. One gets steam-rolled and the other is shocked to find himself (or herself) in the middle of a huge disagreement over something he (or she) thought they both agreed on.

(2) Emotional Agreement.

“Is this what you WANT to do?”

Even if the other person sees your logic, if it’s not what they want to do, you’re not in agreement yet. If it’s not what both of you want, then maybe there’s some piece of logic you missed. We can twist logic to arrive at almost any foregone conclusion. God often speaks through that nagging feeling that we just don’t want to do a thing, but we can’t put our finger on why.

(3) Spiritual Agreement.

“Do you have a PEACE in your spirit that this is what God wants you to do?”

You both truly have a sense that this really is God. Yes, you know this is what God wants you to do. It passes the peace test. “Do you have a peace about this decision?” Both people need to have an uncoerced “yes” to be in agreement.

If you both answer “yes” to all of these 3 questions, then you’re in agreement and you can move forward. If not, time to go back and pray more, separately and together, over the decision, asking the Lord for agreement. God often gives each spouse (or partner in a business) a piece. So often, working out the decision together with the other person leads to a better solution than either would’ve come up with on their own.

Now this assumes both parties are healthy, seeking connection in their marriage or partnership, rather than seeking a safe-distance. Sometimes fear and wounding prevents agreement, and you’ve got to go the way God’s leading you anyway. But I wouldn’t recommend that without specifically hearing from the Lord. Pursue agreement for a God-defined season first.

So what do you think? Does this ring true? Have you been in agreement with someone that really wasn’t agreement? How’d that go? Or, do you have a successful strategy in pursuing agreement? Tell us in the comments; someone may benefit from your story. And please share on social media if this would bless someone else.