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How to Change How You See Yourself with 2 Words

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“I’m learning.” These are the most powerful two words we can say. They will completely change our mindset about how we see ourselves. And they shut down the accusations in our head.

For example, when “I’m so disorganized” becomes “I’m learning to be organized,” that’s a total game changer. You no longer see yourself as a disorganized person.

The most destructive lie we can believe about ourselves is, “That’s just the way I am.”

That is one of my personal pet peeves. Don’t get me started. More than anything else, this lie shuts down any growth in our lives. It gives us permission to stew in victimhood.

Instead, saying “I’m learning to …” puts us in a whole new light. It gives us permission to not be doing it perfectly yet. It gives us permission to keep trying even when we make mistakes. And it reframes those mistakes as a necessary part of learning.

When you say, “I’m learning,” you’ve accepted a new reality about yourself in your heart. Because that’s where our beliefs about ourselves, and hence our words, come from.

Jesus explained it this way.

“For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.” – Jesus, Matthew 15:19

And again:

“A good man, out of the good treasure of his heart, brings forth good; and an evil man, out of the evil treasure of his heart, brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.” –Jesus, Luke 6:45

Negative thoughts about yourself start in your heart, not your head. Contrary to conventional wisdom, your brain doesn’t figure out what you believe. It rationalizes it.

Your heart decides what you want to believe, and your brain justifies it. That’s your brain’s job. (More about that here.)

So if your heart decides, “I’m just a disorganized person,” your brain will magnify every disorganized thing in your house, car, and workspace to reinforce and justify that belief. Your mind will be presented with an unorganized mountain of chaos that can never be tamed to rationalize what your heart believes.

On the other hand, if you choose to say, “I’m learning to be an organized person,” then your brain sees everything as a possibility. It goes to work to figure out how that cluttered area could be different.

The words we say and think about ourselves decide whether our brain sees all the negative evidence or all the positive possibilities.

Since God created us as integrated spiritual and physical beings, our behavior and our identity do this dance together. You can change what your heart believes by the words you choose to say.

Your Turn

What story do you tell yourself about yourself? What words do you use to describe yourself? What do you choose to believe about yourself? Have you learned to change the narrative?

Just learning to say “I’m learning” is a huge step forward. Do you have a negative narrative in your head that needs to change? If you’ve come out of that, tell us how in the comments. Your story will inspire others. And please share this post to get this message out to more readers.

How to Get Your Brain Working for You

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First we have to understand what our brain is really for. Contrary to conventional wisdom, your brain is not there to determine truth. Its purpose is not to figure out what’s true and what’s not. That is your spirit’s job. That’s why discernment is a spiritual gift. Truth is spiritually discerned, not physically reasoned.

The natural man does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God. For they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. – 1 Corinthians 2:14

I’ll give you an example. Amazingly smart people who don’t know Jesus invented evolution. They sat down to “reason” how we got here, and decided we evolved from primates, who evolved from fish, who evolved from single-cell organisms, which ultimately evolved from non-living material in the primordial soup. Even though this theory violates the sciences of physics, biology, geology, statistics, paleontology, and engineering, you can’t talk them out of it. (That’s another post—if you want more info about how evolution violates science, shoot me an email.) Although they espouse “science,” the actual facts don’t matter to them. Because it’s not about science. It’s ultimately about a spiritual truth, the existence of God, that their spirits reject.

Their brain has rationalized their spiritual bias. And that’s what your brain is for—to plan, chart, and route the course to the destination your spirit selects, for better or worse. Your brain is your spirit’s GPS.

Your brain isn’t there to figure out your calling. Your brain is there to plan your calling.

When we ask ourselves, “What’s my calling?” and we try to figure it out intellectually, it typically brings up a lot of fear and frustration. Your brain is not able to determine your calling. That’s not what it’s for. Your GPS is really bad at selecting a destination. That’s your job. That’s not what your GPS is designed for. And your brain is not designed to determine truth. That’s your spirit’s job.

Now once you’ve selected a destination, your GPS is really good at showing you how to get there. That’s what it was designed for. Your calling is something your spirit knows. Once you embrace it, your brain is excellent at planning the route, helping you find the first steps to get there. Your brain is designed by God to route you to the destination your spirit selects.

Here’s a negative example. Atheists’ spirits have selected a godless destination, and their brains have routed the course. Not to open up a huge can of worms here, but the two greatest hoaxes perpetrated on the public in the name of “science” are evolution and climate change (formerly “global warming.” They’ve changed the name since global warming has been discredited, but it’s the same thing.) Evolution is there to rationalize away what God did at the beginning of time. Climate change is there to rationalize away what God’s about to do at the end of time. (If you read Revelation, the first several plagues are all environmental. When these things start happening, the culture will blame climate change to avoid admitting God’s trying to get our attention.)

On the positive side, Hebrews 10:39 says, “We do not belong to those who shrink back and are destroyed, but to those who have faith and are saved.” So how do we, people of faith, use our brains to chart the destination to the calling God has for us?

Here’s 3 simple steps.

1) Set the destination.

Your spirit knows your calling. It makes your heart leap. What is that thing for you? 

It doesn’t have to be something spiritual. It can be fly-fishing or dancing or accounting. Remember the famous quote from the movie Chariots of Fire, about the UK’s Olympic track team? Eric Liddell said, “God made me for China, but he also made me fast. And when I run, I feel his pleasure.” While he felt a call on his life to go to China, he also knew part of his calling was to run fast. 

If you truly don’t know what your calling is, ask your heart. It knows. Often, knowing is not the problem. Admitting it is. You need to admit it and embrace it. Let your mouth say it. Out loud. Tell someone. 

2) Let your brain plan the course.

Once you’ve identified your calling, your destination, use your brain to plan how to get there. That’s what your brain is for. 

There’s usually one obstacle that trips us up here — FEAR. Here’s a life-hack to get around the fear.

Be an actor. This is your chance to win an Academy Award. Play the role of someone who isn’t afraid of pursuing your calling. What would that person do? To put it another way, what would you do if you weren’t afraid?  Do that. Now your brain is working for you.

3) Take the first step.

Any movement is good movement. You really don’t have to worry about making a mistake. If you do, you’ll have learned something and can course-correct. So it’s a win-win once you ditch the fear.

Think of it as an experiment. Then if it fails, it was just an experiment. If what you try doesn’t work, you learn a valuable lesson. And then using what you’ve learned, use your brain to revise the plan and try again.

But if your baby-step works — Bonus! So you really can’t lose.

My Story

I got over my fear of moving forward into my calling with another life-hack — playing one fear against another. I was driving to work listening to Michael Hyatt interviewing best-selling author Jeff Goins. During the interview, Jeff said this, and it rocked my world:

“I got to the point where I was more afraid of not trying than I was of failing.” — Jeff Goins

That hit me right between the eyes. It raised a question I could not get out of my mind. What if, on that Day when I meet Jesus face-to-face, I see all the dominoes God had lined up to help me succeed, one event and “coincidence” after another, but they never fell because I never tipped over that first domino? That question haunted me. 

It should haunt you. What if God has resources already prepared to make your dream succeed, but you’re tying his hands because you won’t take that first step? How tragic would that be?

That’s what sent me down this road of being a writer. How am I doing? I’ve had failures and frustrations along the way. But I have learned so much.

Your Story

How about you? Now it’s your turn. This is your time. What makes your heart leap? What’s the first baby-step in that direction? Are you ready to try it? The truth is, you’ll never feel ready. Try it anyway. Let us know what happens. Tell us your story in the comments and please share if this would bless someone else.

Use These 3 Guidelines to Speak Up for What’s Right

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Speaking up for what’s right is important. As God’s people, if we don’t speak up for what’s right, we leave the world in a moral vacuum that our enemy is all too happy to fill with deception. Much of the societal decay in the world around us has risen to unprecedented levels because God’s people have been asleep and silent for far too long.

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

But it’s not enough to speak up for what’s right. We have to do it the right way. We’ve all heard about “speaking the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15), but how do we actually do that? Here are 3 guidelines for speaking up for what’s right so we make a difference.

1) Respect

Everyone has the right to choose what they believe, even if we disagree. Everyone owns the consequences of their beliefs, whether they acknowledge it or not. We can tell someone their choices are leading to bad consequences, but we still need to respect their right to choose what they believe. God does this. God respects our choice but expects us to own the consequences (Deuteronomy 30:15-20).

So respect people’s right to disagree. Respect people’s right to be wrong, no matter how much that frustrates us. When speaking to others, whether it’s in-person or on FaceBook, do so with respect:

  • Don’t call them names.
  • Don’t insult them.
  • Don’t respond in kind.
  • Don’t copy the other person’s bad behavior.
  • Check your own spirit for self-righteousness.

The opposite of respect is offense. There is a major spirit of offense over our country right now. Some call it a political spirit. It’s obviously spiritual warfare because when we get offended, we too often go out of our minds, acting and speaking like no loving Jesus-follower should. But, in our minds, offense justifies all of our bad behavior.

No, it really doesn’t. We need to remember to whom we belong, and act like Him and not the pagans.

But Jesus made a whip and called the Pharisees a brood of vipers! Yes, he did (John 2:13-17, Matthew 12:34, Matthew 23:33). But that was a last resort. He didn’t start there. Jesus did many other things as a testimony to the Pharisees first:

  • Sending the cleansed leper to the priests to make the sacrifices Moses commanded (Matthew 8:1-4).
  • Paying his and Peter’s temple tax (Matthew 17:24-27).
  • Healing the man born blind (John 9).
  • Raising Lazarus from the dead (John 11).

I love the story of Jesus’ paying the temple tax for himself and Peter in Matthew 17:24-27. While Jesus makes it clear he doesn’t have to pay the tax, he pays it for himself and for Peter, and says in verse 27, “… so that we may not offend them…” Jesus picked his battles. So should we.

So yes, Jesus called them a brood of vipers. But he also paid the temple tax to not offend them. There is a time for every activity under heaven (Ecclesiastes 3), to offend and not to offend, and the Holy Spirit knows the difference. My counsel is to let the content of our words be the offensive thing, not the way we say them.

2) Uncompromising Truth

We’re not speaking up for what’s right if we’re not speaking the truth. My heart breaks when I think about entire Christian denominations that have compromised with the world in condoning abortion, homosexuality, and transgenderism. Janet & I pray often for God to open their eyes and send them a spirit of repentance. While sincerely wanting to love people, they are doing so much damage.

People engage in these behaviors because of pain in their lives. God wants to heal that pain. But when we compromise with the world by not calling sinful behaviors the sin that they are, we slam the door of God’s healing in people’s faces. You don’t need healing if nothing’s wrong, do you?

3) Not Being Controlled by the Fear of the Other’s Reaction

When we know we’re saying something the other person doesn’t want to hear, it’s perfectly normal to fear their reaction. There’s nothing wrong with being afraid. The problem comes when we let that fear control us. It’s amazing how much of our actions, and reactions, are actually governed by fear, although we generally don’t realize it.

Many times I’ve been screamed at by dysfunctional family members, “You said that because you knew it would upset me!” Yes, I did know it would upset them, and believe me, I fear someone being upset with me. (I die a thousand deaths before a confrontation!) But that’s not why I said it. I said it because it needed to be said. It was an issue between us that needed to be addressed. And I won’t be bullied out of addressing it any longer.

Here are two litmus tests to discover that we are being controlled by fear.

(1) Silence. When something’s wrong and we don’t speak up, we’re being controlled by fear. We’re afraid of offending the other person. Or of their anger. Or of damaging the relationship. Frankly, if the relationship is in a state where telling the truth will damage it, it needs to be “damaged,” because it’s not healthy the way it is.

Remember Father Pavone’s quote at the top of this post: “Silence does not interpret itself.” Whatever issues we are silent about, we condone.

Confrontation is a godly skill that can be learned through practice. I highly recommend the book “Keep Your Love On” by Danny Silk (Amazon affiliate link) for more on this topic.

(2) Control. When we try to control the other person’s reaction, we’re being controlled by fear. Here are some common behaviors designed to control the other person’s reaction. Do you recognize any of these?

  • Shaming them for disagreeing.
  • Bullying them into agreement.
  • Waiting to talk rather than listening.
  • Monopolizing the conversation.
  • Trying to win the argument instead of connecting to their heart.

As Jesus-followers, fear has no place in our lives. Or shouldn’t. Our entire Christian walk boils down to replacing fear-based behaviors with faith-based behaviors. Faith trusts the other person to God and does not let fear of their reaction control us.

Your Turn

So how about you? Is this helpful? How have people spoken into your life that’s made a difference? Did they follow these guidelines? Tell us your story in the comments, and please share this post to bless others.

The Most Damaging Thing We Do to Each Other without Realizing It

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People are people.

We get saved, and we’re instantly justified before God by the blood of Jesus. But we’re not instantly sanctified. We bring all our godless behavior with us into the church.

Being justified means being forgiven. Cleansed of our sin. No longer cannon-fodder for Hell. We were saved from hellfire and brought back into relationship with our loving God when we gave our lives to Jesus. Check.

But being sanctified means being like Jesus. Living like Jesus. Loving like Jesus. Seeing other people like Jesus does. We all have a long way to go. Being sanctified means agreeing more and more with God, and from that place of intimacy, we learn who we really are and start acting like it.

One of the most insidious ungodly behaviors we bring with us into the church is fear of the unknown. We try to control what we don’t understand. It’s natural and human. It’s also wrong, and it does a lot of damage, both outside and inside the church. 

Often, that fear comes out as this really spiritually immature Thing that we condemn in our children when we see it on the playground. In fact, much of our effort in guiding our school age children revolves around teaching them how to avoid this Thing. But we use this Thing on each other in church all the time. Here are some examples. See if you can guess what this Thing is.

Can You Guess This Thing?

Example 1: Someone else is expressing their Christianity differently in a way we don’t understand.So we punish them. Nasty glares. Avoidance. Gossip. Judgmental thoughts that sneak out on our faces.

In one church setting, this Thing might look like, “How dare they lift their hands during worship!” In another church setting, this Thing might look like, “How dare they not lift their hands during worship!” 

(Aside: And to both the Holy Spirit says, “How dare you look at the other person during worship instead of Jesus!”)

Example 2: A young mother, just saved, admits to her women’s Bible study group that she’s having a tough time. She admits to having an abortion years ago, and since getting saved, is grieving for her lost child. The older women scowl at her and say, “Don’t you know that everything in your past is under the Blood? If you’re not full of the joy of the Lord, are you even saved?” 

(Aside: There’s a mile of difference between being forgiven and being healed. If you’re post-abortive and grieving, that’s a sign this is your season of healing. Here are some resources that provide post-abortive healing: Rachel’s Vineyard and Project Rachel. Or call your local Pregnancy Help Center.) 

Example 3: A pastor works up the emotion during worship. “Come on, church! Let’s worship Jesus, he’s worthy! Sing louder! Sing with me!”

(Aside: Yes, he is worthy, but you can’t force or manipulate worship out of people. You can force & manipulate singing and dancing and carrying on, but worship has to be given freely or it’s not worship.)   

Christian Peer Pressure

So what do all these examples have in common? What is this Thing? Christian peer pressure. Yikes! That’s a thing? Unfortunately, yes, and it’s all too common. We’ve all experienced it, and, if we’re being honest, we’ve all done it.

We try to force other people to stay within the experience we’re comfortable with. C’mon, be a good Christian, stay in my mold for you! Conform!

When I was growing up in the late 60’s and 70’s, “cool” was the big word. Everybody wanted to be cool. The adults didn’t know what it meant. I remember hearing adults saying, “Why do you want to be ‘cool?’ It doesn’t mean anything!” While they were right to exhort us to not be influenced by that, it totally means something. It means “acceptable.”

And that’s the thing with Christian peer pressure. You’re only acceptable if you fit into the mold. Be comfortable in there, and don’t be peeking out over the edge!

To be sure, there are some non-negotiables in Christianity: 

  • Jesus is the name above every name and the only path to God. 
  • In fact, Jesus is God. 
  • He’s the God who loved us enough to become human and die for us when we hated him. Jesus was the only person ever who was born to die. All to demonstrate his love for us. What kind of over-the-top, crazy, passionate, love does that? Crazy stuff.
  • And there are a few others I won’t go into here for lack of space. But you know them. Sexual integrity. Giving. Respect. Fruit of the Spirit. Etc.

But here’s the deal. God totally is anti-peer pressure. God doesn’t force us or manipulate us into his way of living. He gives us a choice. In fact, he’s so into this that there’s a whole book of the Bible — Deuteronomy — dedicated to nothing but God articulating our choice so we can make an informed decision. 

“I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him.” 

Deuteronomy 30:19b-20a

It’s the same choice today as he gave the children of Israel as they were about to come into the Promised Land. But it’s our choice. If we don’t choose God’s ways, it breaks his heart and he weeps for us, for the pain we’re bringing on ourselves. But God honors our choice by giving us over to the consequences of it. 

The difference between godly exhortation and fleshly peer pressure is honoring the person’s choice.

Sometimes churches mistakenly get into the business of sin management instead of transformation. And often the chief tool of sin management is Christian peer pressure. Conform. Be like us. Be acceptable. 

Now I’m not saying we need to pretend to agree with people’s bad choices. The world is trying to bully us into doing just that — calling us “haters” if we have the audacity to say someone’s sinful choices aren’t healthy. That’s worldly peer pressure, and whole denominations have succumbed to it.

But there’s peer pressure in the church too, and we need to stop it. God is not calling every man in the church to go to the men’s ministry breakfast, although he probably is calling most. He’s not calling everyone to feed the homeless every Saturday morning. 

Your Calling

But God is calling everyone to do something. If you’re just drifting through life with no real purpose, just killing time till retirement so you can play with your toys, you’re missing your calling. 

Sometimes we truly don’t know our calling and have to really pursue the Lord to find it. Sometimes it finds us while we’re pursuing something else. But often, we know our calling. We’re just afraid to chase it. We’ve found something we’re good at that’s comfortable and safe.  

What makes your heart leap but you’re terrified to pursue? Or to ask it another way: What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?

The best way to stand up against and defeat Christian peer pressure is to know your calling. Then, when pressured to do whatever, you can honestly say, “I’m glad you’re doing that; that’s really great, thanks for inviting me. But I’m called to do this.”

We’re learning to say “no” to good things we aren’t called to so we can focus on the good things we are called to. So can you. You don’t have to be controlled or guilted by someone else’s mold. You don’t have to be a prisoner to anyone else’s peer pressure, Christian or otherwise. Actually, that’s a choice we make to duck our own calling. Doh! No more. Your calling is too important to get run over by somebody else’s mold.

How About You?

Have you experienced Christian peer pressure? What happened? Tell us your story in the comments, and please share if this post would bless someone else.

How to Fail with Grace

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Failure is a part of life, and how we handle it reveals our character. I’m not talking about the iterative failures, like practicing a skill and getting gradually better. I’m not even talking about moral failures or sin, although how we handle that also reveals our character.

I’m talking about the “can’t get there from here” failures, where you realize it’s time to cut your losses and move on. I’m talking about when you realize something not only didn’t work, but isn’t going to work.

There is a time to “stay the course,” and not let a failure dissuade you from your goals. But there is also a time to cut your losses and move in a different direction. How to tell the difference is the sticky wicket, but that’s the subject for another post.

Reality checks hurt. But they are also extremely useful. Here are 4 things to do that transform present failures into future successes.

1) Treat Everything Like an Experiment

I recently failed at a major video project I’d put a lot of time and effort into. Called Having Hard Conversations, it was a series of four videos targeting adult Sunday schools and small groups in churches. The goal was to talk about things we aren’t typically talking about in church, but should be, like depression, trauma, suicide, and being post-abortive.

After making two of the four videos (depression and post-abortive), I realized I just was not hitting the video production quality the project required to be successful. Although the actual content was excellent, it was clearly amateur video, not production quality. No pastor would use, let alone buy, these videos for his adult Sunday school or small group. They’re just not sufficient quality.

This can be scary to admit, because “failure” is the worst label anyone can be taunted with. But the truth is, I didn’t fail. The project failed. There’s a huge difference. It was a good idea, and I tried my best. The only way to know it wasn’t going to work was to try it.

Some of us came from families where it wasn’t ok to try and fail. If you didn’t do something perfect the first time, you were shamed. That taught us to never try, to never take risks. This comes from the lie that your value is your success.

But the truth is, you are not what you do. Failing at stuff does not make you a failure. You didn’t fail; the thing you tried failed. The experiment failed.

So try new stuff. Treat everything like an experiment. It’s ok if it fails. It’s no reflection on you.

2) Lick Your Wounds

Even so, it still hurts to fail, especially coming to the realization that what you worked so hard at just isn’t going to work.

Be honest with yourself. Allow yourself to grieve the loss of that idea. Grieving gives your heart closure, and opens the door for the next thing. You don’t want the next idea to be saddled with baggage from the previous one.

So lick your wounds, and admit it hurts. Then pick yourself up, dust yourself off, re-evaluate, and move forward.

3) Learn Something

Do a “lessons learned” session. What went right? What went wrong? Write these lessons down so you don’t repeat what didn’t work, but can leverage what did.

It’s healthy (and important!) to learn what you’re good at, and what you’re not good at.

One of the biggest failures in the Bible was the Apostle Paul’s trip to Athens, Greece. You can read the story in Acts 17:16-18:1.

The upshot is that Paul was greatly distressed to find Athens so full of idols. There was even an idol to an unknown god, in case they missed one. Paul knew the Greeks were into logic. So when he got to speak to the city’s thought leaders, he made a very logical argument. He cleverly used the “unknown god” idol as an entry point. He referenced their own poets and literature. It was actually a brilliant speech to lead someone from idol worship to Jesus.

It was also a dismal failure. They laughed and sneered at him. Then they pocket-vetoed him. As they dismissed him, they told him “we want to hear you again on this subject.” Yeah, right. They never called him; it was just an easy way to show him the door.

Paul had very little success in Athens. But he learned something. He made a resolution within himself. His next stop was Corinth, and, based on his failure in Athens, his message in Corinth was very different. He wrote about it later:

I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power. – Paul, 1 Corinthians 2:2-5

This is a very different approach than he used in Athens. No more wise and persuasive words, he resolved to know only Jesus crucified, and use only the argument of the Spirit’s power.

Paul learned from his failure. So can we.

4) Increased Clarity Is a Win

From his failure in Athens, the Apostle Paul got great clarity about what his message should be moving forward, and it shaped the rest of his ministry.

Before starting my video project, my well-thought out plan looked like a winner. It should’ve worked, but it didn’t. Now I know why. I learned a ton along the way. My faulty assumptions were revealed. Professional quality video is a lot harder than I originally thought.

I still think Having Hard Conversations is an important message, and I’m not giving up on it. If our churches are going to host the Third Great Awakening, our churches have to become a safe place for people to grieve and heal. I’m still passionate about seeing that happen.

Having failed at producing adult Sunday school quality, full-length, professional video, I have better clarity now. I can’t bring about the change I want to see through that means, at least not with my present resources or abilities.

But I have a ton of great soundbites from experts, as well as my own soundbites, that would make a lot of great, short (< 5 min) videos on YouTube. Maybe we launch a YouTube channel on this subject. A two to five-minute video on YouTube requires a lot less quality, and can be just, if not more, impactful to the culture at large.

The seeds of your future success are your failures today.

So try stuff. You can’t move on to what works until you’ve discovered what doesn’t. And you only discover what doesn’t work by trying stuff.

What About You?

What have you failed at, where you realized you had to cut your losses? How did you do that? Your story will help others; please tell us in the comments. What are you struggling with now? Can the community help you? And please share this post if it will bless others.

3 Great Ways to Hack Your Fear

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The most dangerous contagion in our society right now isn’t covid-19. It’s fear. It’s actually more contagious and can be more deadly. Here are 3 great ways to hack your fear and keep it from spinning into overdrive and irrationally controlling you.

First, though, remember fear does have its rightful place. It’s a God-given emotion. Our previous post talks about how to use your fear along with your faith to your advantage.

But when fear gets in control, it warps our thinking and paralyzes our whole being. The fear center in our brain, the amygdala, can actually take our cerebral cortex offline, so we’re temporarily incapable of rational thought while the fear is in control.

Here’s a 90-second video to explain how this works:

The Hand-Brain Model

Here are 3 great ways to hack your fear, so you can use what it’s telling you, but not be controlled by it.

1) Play the Game

My daughter had a very bad experience with horses at a camp where the leaders really didn’t know how to introduce kids to horses. So years later, when she started taking riding lessons, she was severely held back by this fear. Until I taught her to play the game.

Her fear of falling off the horse was keeping her from riding (posting) properly. I asked her, “What would you do if you weren’t afraid? How would you ride?”

“Well, I’d ride confidently like this and this and this,” she answered.

“Then do that. This is your chance to be an actress. Play the role of someone who’s not afraid, and ride like they would. Do that.”

That helped her tame her fearful heart enough for her head to take over and ride well. Pretty soon her heart caught up and realized it didn’t have to be afraid, and that fear was over.

Don’t let fear paralyze you. Play the game. What would you do if you weren’t afraid? Do that.

2) Don’t React before It Happens

When I was young and my dad took me to the dentist, I began to cry in the waiting room, afraid of the imminent, painful, experience. My dad gently stopped me, and said, “David, has he hurt you yet?”

“No,” I answered.

“Then don’t cry yet. There’s nothing wrong with crying when you’re hurt. But don’t cry before you’re hurt.”

That made a lot of sense to me then, and it still does today. I know people whose family members have checked themselves into hospitals because watching coronavirus news reports whipped them into a frenzy of fear where they could not function. For these people, the coronavirus itself didn’t disrupt their lives as much as the fear of it did, the fear of something that hadn’t happened yet.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m in no way disparaging social distancing, shutdowns, etc. Yes, be careful so you don’t get shot in the foot. But don’t shoot yourself in the foot. Don’t cry before you’re hurt.

The saddest covid-19 story I’ve heard is a man who took his own life because he had covid-19, to protect his family. There are two really tragic points about this.

One, covid-19 has a 97% recovery rate (according to WebMD). Yes, it’s the worst flu you’ve ever had, and you feel like you’re going to die for three weeks instead of three days, but 97% of patients recover. Three bad weeks are not worth the rest of your life, or depriving your family from their husband/father for the rest of their lives.

Two, he didn’t actually have it! He had some symptoms, but, post-mortem, tested negative! What a tragedy!

This man actually died of the fear contagion, not the coronavirus one.

3) Realize You Are Being Played

We rely on the news media in order to stay informed and aware of what’s going on. Unfortunately, keeping you informed is not the news media’s mission.

We need to realize the media is playing to a business model—selling fear and outage. That influences (1) which stories they bring you, and (2) how they spin those stories. This is not a liberal vs. conservative thing. Fox News is just as guilty as CNN. Both sides have devolved into (1) selling you what they think you want to hear, and (2) spreading FUD—Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. They do this for one, simple reason: It works. Unfortunately. But we can change that.

When they spin the news to stroke your bias and emotionally charge you up so you watch the next segment or click the headline link, they make money. It’s really that simple.

Now here’s the rub. We have to listen to or read the news to find out what’s going on. But realize neither side is giving you an objective presentation of the facts. If you feel outrage or fear rising up, especially fear, realize you’re being played. They have designed what you’re consuming to manipulate that fear you’re feeling right now.

So why consume news at all if they’re manipulating me? For the same good reasons that armies question enemy prisoners. Yes, you know they’re going to lie to you. You know they’re going to try to manipulate you. But knowing that, you can still glean useful information if you filter it properly.

Do that with the news media. If you feel your fear or outrage rising, it’s time to turn it off. Practice social distancing with the news media.

Realize you’re being played. Assimilate the information, but reject the manipulated emotion.

How about You?

Does this help? What fear are you dealing with? You have a whole community here to help you; this is a safe place. Sometimes just talking about it and expressing it helps tremendously. Or how have you overcome fear? Tell us in the comments; your story will help someone else. And please share this post if it would bless others.

Entering God’s Rest

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The best analogy I’ve heard about entering God’s rest is from Graham Cooke, one of my favorite teachers. This is my (admittedly poor) paraphrase of his vision/dream.

Orcs were chasing me. I ran up mountains and through forests, and was nearing total exhaustion. They would catch me soon, and my one sword would not be enough. I was running across a grassy plain, about to collapse, when I saw a tent in front of me and ran inside. It was strangely peaceful. There was a fire pit of burning coals in the center, from which I could sense the presence of the Lord. I turned to see my pursuers running full speed, close to the tent. Unable to run any further, I drew my sword.

Gently and softly from the fire behind me, I heard the Lord say, “You won’t need that.”

The orcs ran right past the tent as if they couldn’t see it. In fact, when they moved onto the space the tent occupied, they didn’t come inside but instantly appeared on the other side, as if in their dimension the tent wasn’t even there! They were shouting angrily at each other for losing their prey (me) who was there just a moment ago. In the middle of a grassy open plain, where could he have gone? And they loudly and with much cursing blamed each other.

Meanwhile, I heard the Lord, softly chuckling from the fire. He was laughing at them!

Where was I? Safe, yes, totally, but where was I? I was in the Lord’s rest.

From Graham Cooke’s vision on The Way of the Warrior Series CD series. (You can get your own copy here , and Graham’s general website is here. Very much worth a browse. BTW, these are not affiliate links. I get no commission if you click them or buy from Graham. This is an honest recommendation.)

So what exactly is God’s rest?

God’s Rest, “rest” in Hebrews 3 and 4, doesn’t mean physical rest or sleep. It’s the opposite of being anxious. It’s the opposite of being fearful.

It’s that place of quiet confidence, believing the Lord would do what he said. Believing his presence in my life is enough. A place without striving. A spiritual eye in my very real hurricane of life.

Hebrews 3:19, talking about those Moses rescued from Egypt, says they were not able to enter God’s rest because of their unbelief. Earlier in chapter 3 the writer quotes Psalm 95, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion,” and “So I (God) declared on oath in my anger, ‘They shall never enter my rest’ ”. Then he says in 3:19, “So we see that they were not able to enter, because of their unbelief.”

Entering God’s rest doesn’t change the circumstances around us, but it changes the power those circumstances have over us. Our fear gives them power. When we’re not afraid of them, because we’re in God’s rest, they have no power over us. We can think clearly and act from the wisdom of the Spirit.

Today’s Action Step: When things are crazy around me, I will enter God’s rest by choosing to believe him over the fear my circumstances are trying to inspire.

I’m learning to enter his rest more and more. What are your experiences with God’s rest? How do you personally enter it? Tell us in the comments; we’re looking forward to learning from you. And please share on social media if you think this would benefit 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.

2 Steps out of Self-Condemnation and into Believing in Yourself like God Does

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Too often we listen to self-condemning lies because we don’t understand how God sees us. We put ourselves under pressure to be perfect. But God never designed us to bear such pressure.

We can understand how God really sees us by looking at how we, as good parents, interact with our children. Let’s look at a couple examples:

First Steps

It’s that magical time. Your baby is about to take his first steps. He can stand and balance (mostly). You can tell he wants to walk, but he’s not sure about this balance-while-moving thing. It’s a lot to balance just standing still!

But you don’t want to miss those precious first steps. So you plop Mr. Wobbly down a few feet away and hold out your arms. “C’mon! Come to mommy!”

He smiles, wanting to come to you. He wobbles a bit, trying to figure out how to lift a foot and still balance. Then he drops to his knees and crawls to you.

“What’s the matter with you? How could you make such a mistake! You never do anything right!” Said no mom ever.

No. What do you do? You laugh, pick him up, give him a big smoochie kiss, and plop him right back down in the same spot again. “C’mon! Come to mommy!”

Do you care how often he drops to his knees and crawls to you? No, not at all, you’re not even counting! You’re just loving the process of watching him learn to walk, doing something he’s never done before. You love participating in it with him.

First Hit

How about this. Your toddler’s ready to start hitting a whiffle ball. You’ve watched baseball games with him and tossed a ball back ‘n’ forth. Now you got him a plastic bat and you’re pitching to him. You toss him his first pitch in the living room, much to your wife’s chagrin. It’s only a plastic ball. What could happen?

It’s the first pitch he’s ever been thrown, and he misses it.

“What’s the matter with you? How could you make such a mistake! You never do anything right!” Said no dad ever.

No. What do you do? You toss him another one. You don’t even have to retrieve the first ball because you bought a bucket of them. You knew he’d miss most of them. “Great cut! Keep swinging like that and you’ll be in the Majors! Keep your eye on the ball; here’s another one!”

Eventually he hits one. It tinks on the carpet a foot in front of him. “Run! Run!” you shout as you make a big show of diving for the ball. He runs around the living room and, as you barely “miss” tagging him, he scores his first home run! You swing him around the room to celebrate singing “Take Me out to the Ballgame”. Then you get ready to pitch some more.

Eventually he connects and smacks a line drive that breaks the lamp. Who would have seen that coming? But you realize your wife was right and take Slugger outside so he can really hit.

God Celebrates Our Learning

We celebrate our children’s learning. We understand their mistakes and failures are part of the learning process. And we celebrate those mistakes and failures along with their successes. We get that their mistakes, even their failures, are not sin. They didn’t do anything wrong. They’re just learning. It’s all part of the precious process of helping our children learn. We get that and we love to be in the process with them.

So why, we when we make an honest mistake, do we tell ourselves, “What’s the matter with you? How could you make such a mistake! You never do anything right!” God, our good parent, doesn’t say that! He just wants to hug us and love us and plop us right back down to try it again.

We put pressure on ourselves that God never does, that no good parent would. He just wants to toss us another ball. He’s not counting how many we miss; he’s actually expecting us to miss a bunch while we’re learning. If we bomb a situation, don’t worry, he’s got plenty more lined up.

It takes a lot of practice to learn to walk—to balance with one foot in the air while moving forward. To hit a thrown ball with a stick. To live a healthy, godly life in an unhealthy dangerous world. You know your child needs practice. God knows we need practice.

You’re not Failing, You’re Practicing.

Honest mistakes, even honest flat-out failures, are not sin. There’s nothing wrong with making an honest mistake. We’re just learning. Why can’t we give ourselves the same grace that God does? The same grace that we give our children?

Rebellion

Yes, there are mistakes and failures that are sin. If your toddler throws the bat at you or whacks the coffee table with it (after having been told not to), that’s different. That’s rebellion. That’s sin. You wouldn’t handle that by tossing him another pitch. You’ve got to re-orient him to the pillow you’re using as a make-shift home plate, and get him, as a hitter, back in right stance, in the right orientation, or relationship, to you as the pitcher, waiting to hit your pitch and not trying to hit anything else.

And yes, as humans we’ve perfected rebellion to an art form. Our society has normalized rebellion, and even celebrates certain forms of it, transgender being the hot one right now. If I decide I’m going to be someone other than who God’s made me to be, that’s spiritual rebellion. The truth is there is tremendous wounding in that person that God wants to heal, but that’s a subject for another post.

Sometimes we try to pitch so God can hit, and we’re shocked when he doesn’t swing. God deals with rebellion by bringing circumstances into our life to remind us who’s pitching and who’s hitting here. He invites us to get reoriented, back into right relationship, with him as the pitcher, and us as the batter, waiting to hit his next pitch.

2 Ways out of Self-Condemnation

If you’re truly chasing, longing, after what God has for you, if you’re partnering with him for your life, honest mistakes are just learning. Be gentle with yourself.

The truth is, all that negative self-talk, all that condemnation, is really from the enemy. We often don’t recognize it as such though, because the sneaky bugger talks to us in our own voice. He disguises his hellish lies as our own thoughts.

But if we’re alert to it, we can recognize that condemnation for the lie it is. Often, that’s enough. But sometimes, even when our head knows it’s hogwash, it’s lodged in our heart somewhere. And when we believe it, it has power over us. Here are 2 ways out of self-condemnation:

1) Ask Somebody to Pray with You. Please talk to someone. That’s what God put them in your life for, so they can help you in these times, and likewise. Don’t suffer alone. Tell someone how you’re feeling, if you just can’t shake it, and ask them to pray with you. Not for you. With you. Right then and there.

There is no shame in counseling. Counselors teach you the life-tools your parents should’ve, but (out of their wounding) didn’t.

There are a lot of options here. A phone call with a friend. Counseling. A talk with your pastor. Regular coffee with a mentor. Inner healing. Deliverance. (Inner healing and deliverance need to be from trained individuals who know what they’re doing.) Give yourself all the tools in the toolbox you need; everyone needs a different mix of these. Here are some resources. If they are not in your geographical area, call them anyway and ask if they can recommend resources that are. (None of these are affiliate links.)

Counseling:

Spotswood Biblical Counseling Center (Fredericksburg, VA)

Dominion Counseling and Training Center (Richmond, VA)

Inner Healing:

Elijah House Ministries (HQ in Coeur d’Alene, ID, with trained resources across the US and around the world)

Restoring the Foundations (HQ in Mount Juliet, TN, with trained resources across the US and around the world)

Deliverance:

The Church Unchained (Stafford, VA)

Christian Healing Ministries (Francis & Judith MacNutt, Jacksonville, FL)

2) Replace the Lie with the Truth. Ask the Holy Spirit for the opposite of the lie. Speak God’s promise over yourself out loud.

My lie was, “I don’t deserve better.” For me, the opposite is Psalm 139. On bad days I read it out loud. There is power in the words you say. They define the atmosphere around your life. And while you’re at it, tell that lying spirit of self-condemnation to go soak its head in a bucket of ice water. You’re not listening to it anymore.

So How about It?

Are you ready to step out of self-condemnation and into the adventure God has for you? Tell us about it in the comments or shoot us an email. We’d love to hear from you. And please share if this post would bless someone else.

How to Grow Your Mindset

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We have complete control over our biggest problem. Getting this one thing right changes everything. Our mindset—the assumptions, judgments, and expectations we have about the world, about God, about ourselves—filters how we perceive and process information. Our mindset is such a powerful force over our lives, determining what we do and what we don’t do. Yet often it’s invisible, taken completely for granted. Worse, we often don’t realize it’s lying to us.

I’m seeing this theme repeatedly repeated over and over, again and again. (Aside: That last sentence was just to troll the grammar nerds and make them twitch. Did it work?) I have read several unrelated books in the last few years, and, although they use different terminology, they all focus on this same theme. I want to share the latest one with you today, because changing your mindset will change your life. It’s changing mine.

Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, by Carol Dweck, PhD (not an affiliate link; I’m not getting any commission here). This book is about the difference between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset. Dr Dweck writes very accessibly, in plain, everyday language, no psycho-babble, with lots of stories. It’s a fun, easy, and very worthwhile read.

The fixed mindset says our traits, like intelligence, athletic ability, musical talent, writing or math competence, business and social skills, etc., are fixed at birth. You either have a skill or talent or you don’t, and there’s nothing much you can do about.

This is the fundamental lie that holds us back. Because if my abilities are fixed and I can’t change them, then any failure is a reflection of me and my character, so I dare not risk trying. And any successes I experience validates my superiority over other mere mortals who weren’t born special like I was. So failure is a threat to my identity, because I am what I do. We write a lot about this lie on this site, most recently here.

Yet the fixed mindset breeds failure, because it disparages hard work. Having to work hard at something means I don’t have natural talent. We can’t risk exposing that, especially to ourselves. Because my fixed mindset value comes from what I can do and how well I do it, not who I intrinsically am; namely, a child of God.

The growth mindset, on the other hand, says you can develop skills and talents through hard work and effort. Yes, some people are more gifted in certain areas than others, but there are no “naturals.” Everything worthwhile requires hard work. Growth mindset people view failures as learning experiences, not threats to their identity.

We feed either a fixed mindset or a growth mindset to our children, employees, spouses, and even ourselves by what we praise or criticize.

If a child brings home an “F” on a test and we say, “You’re so stupid”, we’ve tied their value to their results. We get that. But the same is true in the positive. If the child got an “A” instead and we say, “You’re really smart!” The child hears, “So if I’d gotten an ‘F’, that would mean I’m really stupid. My value is tied to my results. I’d better only do safe things I know I can succeed at.” What’s happened? We’ve instilled a fixed mindset by praising (or criticizing) the child’s traits, in this case their intelligence.

To pass on a growth mindset, don’t praise (or criticize) traits. Praise (or criticize) effort. When the child brings home an “A”, say something like, “Wow, that’s great! You must’ve studied really hard!” The message the child hears is, “My performance is tied to my effort, not my value.” If they bring home an “F”, say something like, “What happened? Did you study? Did you do the homework? Or did you just not understand the material? Let’s figure out what went wrong and then I can help you fix that.” Then help them build study habits, get tutoring, or find whatever strategy works for them. The message they hear is, “When I fail, I can fix it.”

Note: Dr Dweck caveats that this is not an argument for lowering standards or giving “effort grades,” like we see sometimes in schools today. A growth mindset keeps the standard high and tells the truth about failure, but also provides the tools to meet that standard.

Yes, this is trendy pop-psychology. But it’s accurate. And I love it when modern psychology catches up with the Word of God, don’t you? Mindset is all over the Bible. Here’s my favorite mindset verse:

For God has not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. (2 Timothy 1:7)

The fixed mindset is all about Fear. People with this mindset live in fear of being discovered—that they aren’t really smart or talented. They aren’t really the “natural” everyone thinks they are. They live their life one failure away from being discovered and having their identity completely destroyed. Their fixed mindset chains them to safe mediocrity, never daring to be who God created them to be, never chasing the thing that makes their heart leap.

As Christians, we know where the fixed mindset comes from: Inner vows we make to protect our heart because of past wounding. Judgments and words spoken over us by authority figures. Lies of the enemy we believe.

But Jesus wants us to live from the power of his love. He bought freedom for us on the cross, and the Holy Spirit makes it available to us every day. His love is the most powerful force on the planet. There’s no fear when we’re living out of that place. We make decisions from the sound mind he gave us, we take wise risks, and we learn from our failures.

It’s not a binary thing. The truth is we all have fixed mindset days and growth mindset days. Learning what triggers your fixed mindset is the key. If you recognize your fixed mindset, you can actively replace it with a growth mindset.

For me, my biggest trigger is when I feel overwhelmed. My fixed mindset kicks in, opening the door to self-hatred: You’re not doing all the things. Look at everything you didn’t get done. You’re such a loser! And it’s all downhill from there. I’m learning a growth mindset: No, I got something done, and I did it well. And my value isn’t in what I do, but because Jesus loves me so much. I choose to see myself through my Lover-King’s eyes.

What areas in your life are under a fixed mindset? What triggers it? In what areas have you learned a growth mindset? Tell us how you’re growing, or where you’re struggling, in the comments. This is a safe place. And please share if this post would bless someone else.