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Why You Feel Unworthy

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As I work with people to help them partner with God for the calling on their lives, I see a common obstacle that holds many people back. Some people know their calling, but this holds them back from stepping into it. Other people can’t even approach God to have the conversation and investigate their calling, because of this one thing. Well, what is it already? I’m glad you asked.

It’s a deep-seated, underlying feeling of unworthiness, and the shame that comes along with it.

In my experience, feeling unworthy is one of the hardest obstacles to overcome, because most of us don’t correctly understand why we feel unworthy. And if we don’t even understand why we feel that way, it becomes really hard to address the root of the problem.

But before we unpack that, a caveat first.

Please Don’t Hear What I’m Not Saying

This is when all the Biblical scholars and theologians out there quote me all the Bible verses about our sinful nature, our unworthiness before a holy God, and how we can’t save ourselves. Yeah, I know all that. And I agree.

I’m taking for granted in this post that we all understand that, yes, of course we are all unworthy (Romans 3:10-11). None of us deserve the grace we’ve been given. None of us deserve relationship with God. None of us deserve his favor. This is not a post to encourage entitlement.

But wasn’t that the whole point of the cross? Jesus took all our unworthiness and nailed it to the cross, so when God looks at us, he sees Jesus’ worthiness (2 Corinthians 5:21).

That’s not license to presume on God’s grace and live however sinfully we want (Romans 6:1-2, Philippians 2:14-16). It’s recognition of the fact that, to restore relationship with God, Jesus took worthiness off the table at the cross.

So let’s talk about why we really feel unworthy. We can’t move past the unworthiness that Jesus died for if we don’t even understand why we feel it in the first place.

Why You Think You Feel Unworthy

You think you feel unworthy because “I’m so _____.” Fill in the blank with the negative adjective for you. Fat? Weak? Stupid? Vulgar? Dirty? (Feeling dirty is common for people who have been abused.) Sinful? Angry? Broken? Not good enough? Flawed? Defective?

What do your thoughts constantly accuse you of? What do you, in your heart, deep down, accuse yourself of?

The truth is, that’s a lie we believe. Sorting out lies is tricky. The nature of being deceived is we don’t know we’re deceived. It’s hard to identify lies we believe so deeply we just take them for granted.

But even if those things were true, which they aren’t, it still wouldn’t matter. Those things are irrelevant because that’s not how God sees us. (I have others posts on this subject here, How Your Negative Past is the Key to Your Awesome Future, and here, Why You Are Not Defined by Your Actions.)

So here’s the paradigm shift: Why you think you’re unworthy is not really why you feel unworthy.

Why You Really Feel Unworthy

The truth is, Jesus nailed all that negative stuff, both from our past and what we’re struggling with now, to the cross. And, honestly, none of that is why you feel unworthy.

You feel unworthy because you’re wounded. That’s what wounding does. It makes you feel unworthy.

Feeling unworthy is a sign that we have wounded, broken places in our heart that God wants to heal.

Remember that blank you filled in up above with your “negative adjective”? Inner healing is the process of replacing those lies with God’s truth, replacing how we see ourselves with how God sees us.

The Language of the Heart

So something bad happens in our lives. We call that Type “B” Trauma, Bad Thing Happened. Or something good fails to happen. We call that Type “A” Trauma, the Absence of the Necessary Good Thing.

This is our wound. Both types of woundings can be just as damaging. And neither is our fault.

But our response to it is. Because of what happened, or what failed to happen that should’ve, what judgements did we make about ourselves? About God? About other people? About how we would be treated? In inner healing lingo, we call these bitter root judgements and bitter root expectations.

Therefore, because we’ve judged ourselves, God, and the world this way, how did we vow to protect our heart? We call this an inner vow.

Inner vows are ways we’ve internally sworn to protect our heart ourselves, instead of trusting God.

An Example

Here’s an example of Type “A” Trauma, the Absence of the Necessary Good Thing.

So suppose a parent was physically present but emotionally absent. If it’s your mother, maybe you were never emotionally nurtured. You never learned you could be loved just for yourself.

If it’s your father, maybe you were never affirmed and approved, never called into who God created you to be, never given permission to be your true self. You only were acceptable if you performed properly.

Either way, what might you have judged about yourself, God, the world? Maybe one of these:

  • “I’m not worthy of love in and of myself.”
  • “I’m only loved if I perform.”
  • “No one will love me for me.”
  • “If I don’t give people a reason to love them, they won’t.”
  • ”People will only love me if there’s something in it for them.”

So then, because of that, what might you vow to protect your heart? Maybe one of these:

  • “I will always be the good person to earn love.”
  • “I will never disappoint anyone.”
  • “I will never let anyone come close enough to see the real me.”
  • “I will reject others before they can reject me.”

Can you see how these deep, inner beliefs we take for granted wreak havoc in our lives?

Inner healing isn’t about digging stuff up from the past or blaming our parents. But if past woundings are causing bad fruit in our life today, they aren’t in the past at all, are they? They are very much here with us in the present causing damage that God wants to heal.

Are You Willing to Pursue Healing and Wholeness?

Jesus took worthiness off the table at the cross. God isn’t looking for worthiness. He’s looking for willingness.

Inner healing, like a life-saving surgery, hurts. And there’s a recovery period. Like physical therapy after a surgery, you may need spiritual and/or emotional therapy for a while even after receiving inner healing. It’s not a “one and done.”

But getting your life back is worth it. It takes a willingness to go to the scary places that may have been buried a long time. Not to relive the trauma. But so that God can heal it.

Are you willing?

Your Turn

Does this resonate? Tell us your story in the comments. Do you feel unworthy? Are you willing to pursue healing? Please reach out to Janet & me here.

And please share this post if it would bless others.

You Have Value – My Journey through Self-Hatred

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

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

A Little Background

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

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

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

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

Judgments and Inner Vows

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

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

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

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

I Get It

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

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

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

Psalm 139 – How to Love Yourself in a Healthy Way

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And verse 6:

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

Translation: Mind blow!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then David ends Psalm 139 where he began:

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

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

No One Heals in a Vacuum

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Resources

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

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

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

For inner healing resources: Elijah House Videos

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

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

How We Get Trapped and How We Get Free

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The worst bondages are the ones we don’t realize we have. We’ve been like this so long, it seems normal. But it’s not normal. Bondages keep us from living our best life, and Jesus has healing for us. But to live in his freedom, we need to understand how we get trapped and how we get free.

Here’s the essence of inner healing in a nutshell.

How We Get Trapped

Typically, someone sins against us. That is not our fault. Never. Maybe you were abused, lied to, betrayed, rejected, abandoned, or something worse. No one deserves to be treated like that. Ever.

But what happens next is our fault. We vow to protect our own heart instead of trusting God. It happens like this.

When we are sinned against, we make negative judgements about ourselves, about others, about God, and about the world. Here are some examples:

  • “I’m dirty.”
  • “People hate me.”
  • “God doesn’t love me.”
  • “It’s dangerous to be too happy.”
  • “I don’t have value.”
  • “I’m only loved when I’m being good.”
  • “Emotions aren’t safe.”
  • “No one will ever protect me.”
  • “I shouldn’t be alive.”
  • “I’m the wrong gender.”

Based on that judgment, we form a negative expectation of how we will be treated.

  • “People will always reject me.”
  • “Everyone will betray me.”
  • “I will only be loved if I perform.”
  • “Men only love me as an object.”
  • “A father will always leave me.”
  • “I will always be betrayed.”
  • “I will never receive anything good from life.”
  • “People will never accept me as a man.”

Have you ever met someone, talked innocent small talk with them for 10 seconds, and thought, “I don’t know why, but I just hate this person!” You are actually feeling their expectation.

There are demonic spirits that read that expectation and say, “Ok, Dave expects everyone to reject him. Let me help him with that!” And that expectation goes out like a cloud from that person, tempting everyone they come into contact with to reject them as soon as possible.

Then the person is rejected, which strengthens their expectation, and around the track we go again.

Based on that expectation, we make an inner vow to protect our own heart.

  • “I will never let anyone get close to me so their inevitable rejection won’t hurt.”
  • “I will always be the good boy or good girl so people will love me.”
  • “I will protect myself.”
  • “I will hurt them before they hurt me.”
  • “I will not have emotions.”
  • “I will never be like my parent.”
  • “I want to die.”
  • “I will be the other gender.”

This is our sin. We are protecting our own heart, instead of taking our pain to God and trusting him to protect our heart. It’s the same as in the Garden of Eden. We are being our own god.

Our inner vows are our prison bars.

Living in an isolated prison cell is pretty safe. But it’s a prison cell. It’s not living; it’s just existing. It’s cut off from joy, from love, and from everything else that makes life worth living. We will never live the amazing adventure God has for us in that place. He created us for so much more.

It’s like a boat being chained to the dock. It’ll never risk going out in deep water where so many other boats have sunk. But being chained to the dock is not what that boat was created for, and it’ll never be fulfilled there.

Yes, those inner vows keep us safe, but it’s a miserable safety. It’s a case of the cure being worse than the disease.

Are you chained to the dock by your inner vows? Jesus created us to sail out into deep water. True, it’s not safe out there, but God is good. Jesus will be our safety, whatever happens.

How to Recognize an Inner Vow

Often, we form inner vows very early in life, even before we have language. That makes them very hard to articulate. Or even recognize. We’ve had them virtually our whole life; they seem normal. So how do we recognize when an inner vow is in play when they are hidden from us?

A big clue is when we have a mile of reaction to an inch worth of offense. For example, maybe we fly off the handle in a rage when the other person really didn’t do anything rage-worthy. Ask the Holy Spirit if an inner vow is affecting our behavior. Ask your heart.

Another big clue is when negative behavior is confronted in our lives and we say, “That’s just the way I am.” Perhaps, but that’s a choice we make. That’s not how we were created to be, and Jesus has freedom and healing available, if we want it.

How We Get Free

So how do we get free from inner vows? Here’s a 5 step process. We do this in prayer, and it’s best to go through it with someone else, like your spouse, pastor, Christian counselor, or friend. Someone who understands inner healing and can support and lead you through it. But if you don’t have that safe person, do it just you and Jesus.

  1. Identify the judgement, the expectation, and the inner vow. These questions can help you through this process.
  • What happened to you?
  • Because that happened, what did you decide about the world? Yourself? Others? God? (This is the judgement.)
  • Because you believed that to be true, what did you come to expect?
  • Because of that, how did you vow to protect your heart?
  • Repent for making the inner vow. Break it, declaring out loud that you no longer hold to that vow. Take it to the foot of the cross and leave it there.
  • Renounce the benefit. In some way, that vow was keeping you safe. If you don’t know the benefit, ask the Holy Spirit; he’ll tell you.
  • Replace the judgement and expectation with God’s truth. For example, if the expectation was to be rejected, maybe God’s truth is Hebrew 13:5, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” Replacement happens with practice over time. In this example, when tempted to expect rejection, or when feeling it, say (out loud if possible), “No, God will never leave me nor forsake me.”

We can walk in the freedom God has for us. We can walk in Jesus’ healing. Having gone through this process several times, I can tell you, freedom is so much better than the prison cell. Let the Holy Spirit take you there.

Your Turn

Have you had a mile of reaction to an inch of offense? What inner vows have you identified in your life? What judgements and expectations? What is God’s truth that sets you free? Tell us your story in the comments, and please share this post. Let’s get this message out there.

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 Tell the Difference between 3 Types of Emotional Pain We Feel

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Pain is something we don’t understand very well, especially here in the West. We avoid it, medicate, and ignore it, none of which actually fixes it. But pain is important. It’s telling us something’s wrong that we need to address.

Pain is like the idiot light on your dashboard. What if the oil light comes on in my car, and I say, “I can fix that. I’ll just cover it with a piece of electrical tape. Problem solved!” And I can pat myself on the back for my cleverness. A one penny piece of electrical tape is way cheaper than a $30 oil change (or $100 if you’re using synthetic oil!) Aren’t I clever? For a moment.

This is so ridiculous you’re probably laughing, “Until the engine blows up, dude! Then it’s not so clever anymore. That $30-$100 oil change is way cheaper than the $2500 (at least!) engine repairs you’re in for.” And you’re right. But we do this all the time with our pain.

Our problem is we treat pain like the problem. Just like the oil light on my dashboard isn’t the problem, our pain is not the problem. The pain is trying to tell us something. The thing causing the pain is the problem. And that’s what we need to deal with. The pain is just the fruit. We need to deal with the root cause.

Here’s an everyday example we’re all familiar with of dealing with the bad fruit and not the root causes. My parent’s generation took all sorts of medicine as they got older. People still do today. Blood pressure medicine, cholesterol medicine, heart medicine, arthritis medicine, etc, are all very common. Some people had/have so many medicines they can’t remember them all. They have a pill box with a compartment for each day of the week. Have you seen those? The pharmacist just fills them up with what they’re supposed to take that day.

But we’re learning now that many of these issues can often be corrected through changes in diet. Yes, medicines still have their place, but people going gluten-free, dairy-free, GMO-free, etc., are experiencing a lot less need for all these medicines. They are dealing with the root issue, and the fruit (their health) is taking care of itself.

Ready to learn how to do this with the pain in our lives? Let’s explore three types of emotional pain, and how to go to the root of each.

1) Pain from Wounding

In a certain season of my life, I was feeling a lot of emotional pain that I just couldn’t shake. I cried out to the Holy Spirit, “Why am I hurting so badly? What’s wrong with me!”

He answered quickly, “There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re wounded.” Being wounded from someone else’s actions really hurts. Their sin against us is not our fault. It’s not fair, but we often get to experience the repercussions and the pain of other people’s actions. There’s no such thing as a victimless crime. There’s no such thing as private sin that doesn’t hurt others.

While the sin against us isn’t our fault or our responsibility, our sinful response to it is. So often we respond by making false judgments about the world, others, ourselves, and God. These are bitter root expectations. Our agreement with them gives them power over our lives and they become self-fulfilling prophecies.

  • “People will always reject me.”
  • “God doesn’t love me.”
  • “No one’s going to protect me.”

Then we make inner vows to protect our heart, instead of crying out to God for his healing.

  • “I’ll reject them before they reject me.”
  • “I’ll always be good so people love me.”
  • “I’ll take care of myself.”

We get healing from wounds from others with three steps:

  1. Repenting of our judgments and inner vows.
  2. Replacing them with God’s truth.
  3. Grieving the loss.

We’ve got lots of posts on inner vows. (Just type “inner vows” into the site’s search field up above.) So I want to talk here a little bit about grieving the loss.

The original wound was a loss in our lives that we need to grieve. Maybe a loss of innocence. Maybe a loss of trust. Maybe those who should’ve protected us didn’t. Maybe it was a brutal welcome into a cruel world, designed to short-circuit our true identity God created us to walk in.

There are five phases of grief:

  • Denial
  • Anger
  • Bargaining
  • Depression
  • Acceptance

They can go in any order, and they can repeat. But we need to work through these. Find a trusted friend, pastor, counselor, mentor, parent, spouse—someone you trust—and start grieving what you’ve lost. Be honest about it. Start by naming the loss—articulate it. Then start working through the five phases.

2) Pain from Our Own Stuff

It could be sin, or it could just be a mistake. Mistakes aren’t sin. If I clumsily fall down the stairs, that’s just a mistake and it’s not a sin. But I’ll still have pain from it, at least some bruises, if not a broken bone of two.

We don’t need the world’s help to hurt ourselves. We’re perfectly capable of doing it on our own, thank you very much. Living a sinful lifestyle is a great example. Janet and I see this all the time in the crisis pregnancy center where we volunteer. People want relief from the pain in their lives, but they want to continue the behavior that’s causing the pain. It just doesn’t work that way.

If you want relief from your headache, stop banging your head on the brick wall. Trying to find a better helmet so you can keep head-banging won’t help. You need to stop the behavior that’s causing the pain. “Don’t judge me!” Translation: “I know you’re right, but I don’t want to hear it.” Hey, I’m just saying.

Similarly, if we want to eliminate the bad fruit in our lives, we have to eliminate the root that’s causing it. Often that root is our own sin.

Here are some lifestyles that will cause you tremendous pain in your life, whether you believe it or not:

  • Sleeping with someone you’re not married to
  • Addictions (drugs, alcohol, pain killers, etc)
  • Workaholism
  • Raging at God and his people
  • Narcissism
  • Trying to earn love through performance

Healing comes when we admit our sin is actually sin and repent of it. Repenting doesn’t mean feeling sorry for it, or sorry for getting caught. It means “to turn around.” It’s like we’re walking East, we do a U-turn, and now we’re walking west. We stop doing that thing.

We were designed to be in community. If this is you, find someone you trust, and get help breaking out of this self-destructive cycle. Usually people can’t do it alone. There’s nothing wrong with you.

3) Hurting for Others

You can be hurting for others without being wounded by them. I’m talking here about a godly sorrow, a pain we feel on behalf of someone else. Maybe they’re causing havoc in their own lives with self-destructive behavior they don’t want to give up. Maybe they’re suffering from wounding caused by others against them. Maybe both. Maybe one is the root of the other.

Although it hurts, this is a good kind of pain. We are feeling a tiny sliver of God’s heart for them. This is a powerful place to be. This is the time to pray.

Often, when we feel anger, sadness, or other strong emotion at a person or a situation, it’s God calling us to pray for that person or situation. And I mean really pray. Like, for an hour or more. I’m not talking about a half-hearted, half-thinking, “Lord, bless Sally Smotch,” four words and then we go about our business. I’m talking about serious pressing in with intercession. Intercession enters into the Holy of Holies on behalf of someone else, crying God’s heart back to him.

It’s not about performance. It’s not about manipulating God into begrudgingly doing something. “Ok, I prayed for an hour. God owes me now.” No. But there’s something about sacrificial prayer, sacrificing our time, some other activity we’d otherwise be doing, for the sake of someone else that moves the heart of God.

And seeing your prayers answered in the person’s life makes it all worth it. It’s amazing. As intercessors, we live from testimony to testimony.

How about you?

Hurting from wounding, from the logical consequences of our own sin, and hurting for others are three different things. Which have you experienced? Have you transitioned through these 3 types of pain? Where are you in the process? Have you benefited from an intercessor praying for you? How have you seen your prayers for others answered?

How to Tell when It’s a Season to Heal

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Do you ever get confused by the weather? Do you ever think the weather itself is confused? I’m looking out the window watching the rain fall on a completely sunny day! Yes, it’s dumping rain at the same time the sun is shining. Does it do that where you live? It does it here in Virginia. All. The. Time.

It’s like God spun the weather spinner, and it stopped on the line between “Sunshine” and “Dumping Rain.” The angels are like, “Liner! Bummer, Lord. Shall we spin it again?” And the Lord goes, “No, it’s fine. Sunny and rainy, I’m God, I can do that. Watch this.” And bam, I need my sunglasses while turning on my wipers. Crazy!

The changing of seasons in our lives can be like that. Sudden and startling. Contradictory things start happening. Old, secure comfortable ways get uncomfortable. The grace for certain activities is just gone. What used to work no longer works. Ever experience this?

Often God does this on purpose when he brings us into a season of healing. In inner-healing lingo, it’s called “overloading our structures.”

Here’s what happens. We get wounded, which is not our fault; it’s someone else’s sin against us. But we respond sinfully with a false judgement, a foundational lie, about the world, about God, about ourselves, or about how we can expect to be treated.

  • “I’m bad. I’m dirty.”
  • “I’m not lovable.”
  • “Men will always abuse me.”
  • “You can’t trust women.”
  • “God isn’t there for me. He doesn’t care.”
  • “People will always reject me.”
  • “Emotions are bad. Emotions can kill you.”

Based on that judgement, we make sinful inner vows to protect our own heart, instead of trusting God.

  • “I’ll never have emotions.”
  • “I’ll take care of myself.”
  • “I’ll never trust anyone.”
  • “I’ll never be vulnerable.”
  • “I’ll always be the good person so people will love me.”
  • “I’ll always stay in control. Then I’ll be safe.”

Then the enemy says, “Look what they’ve decreed over their own life. I can help them with that.” This is why some people seem to have an invisible bulls-eye on them; for example, abusive partners are just drawn to them. They keep making the same relationship mistakes over and over again.

So events happen in our lives to reinforce that foundational lie, we double-down on our inner vows, and around the track we go again. This builds up a whole spiritual defensive structure around us, effectively defending us from God’s love and his destiny for our lives.

But you might ask, “I don’t want to be out of control. Being in control sounds like a good thing. How does being in control block God’s destiny for my life?” Believe me, if you’re living out God’s destiny for your life, it’s not something you could have planned for yourself. It’s an adventure. You are definitely not in control.

As CS Lewis said in The Magician’s Nephew, “O sons of Adam, how well you defend yourselves from everything that would do you good.”

The good news is, God won’t tolerate it forever. He loves us too much. He often allows it for a season, perhaps as a defense mechanism so a child can survive trauma. But when he knows it’s time for us to receive healing, God brings us into a new season. He knows when we’re ready, even if we don’t even realize there’s a wound at all.

The problem is, the sick way is all we know and we think it’s normal. And it is normal for us. It’s how we’ve lived. It’s how we were raised. It is all we know. But while it may be common, it’s not healthy, and it’s certainly not the Kingdom freedom he has for us.

So God starts overloading our structures. He brings situations, events, and people into our lives where the old coping mechanisms don’t work anymore. How we coped was how we hid the wound, often even from ourselves. But he wants to heal the wound, so he has to expose it, so our coping mechanisms stop working.

When the way you’ve coped in the past no longer works, God is bringing you into a season of healing. He wants to heal that root wound that’s been festering all these years. Rejoice and cooperate with the process. You’re about to experience more freedom than you’ve ever known.

Seasonal transitions can be rough. They drive my sinuses crazy. The weather patterns seem to be at war with themselves. And you never know what to wear. I end up changing clothes twice a day. But God’s healing is worth it.

How about you? Are you going through a transition? Find a trusted friend and share with them what you’re going through. Or your pastor or small group leader. Or email us, although it’s better if you can share with someone spiritually mature in your life. Maybe they can help you identify some inner vows God wants to heal. Often others can see what God’s doing in our lives better than we can, since they’re not so close to it. Tell us your story in the comments. And please share if this post would bless someone else.

How to Get Unstuck in 3 Questions and 2 Steps

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When They Don’t Work

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

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

When They Work in Reverse

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

When They Have a High Hidden Cost

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

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

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

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

Salvation Doesn’t Remove Inner Vows

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For example:

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

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

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

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

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

How to Remove Inner Vows in 2 Steps

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How about you?

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

Forgiving Ourselves

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Sometimes the hardest person to forgive is ourselves. We haven’t forgiven ourselves when we hold something against ourselves. Often, it wasn’t even our fault.

For example, children often believe abuse was their fault. Abuse is never the victim’s fault, even if different behavior would have prevented it. Even if we did something stupid to get into a bad situation, our mistake does not justify the other person’s sin.

Even if it was something heinous that we actually did do, we are not the evil we did. God sees us through the blood of Jesus; to him we are not the evil we did. We are still responsible for our actions, of course, and often have to live with the consequences. But we are not the evil we did, even though our shame tells us otherwise.

Godly conviction or guilt tells us, “I did something wrong.” Shame tells to us, “I am something wrong.” No, we’re not, that’s a lie. We are not the thing we did. We have intrinsic value because God made us and loves us.

When we hold something against ourselves, we give root to lies like, “I’m unlovable,” “no one will ever care about me,” “I deserved what happened to me,” etc. These lies build a prison of shame around us, and we live our lives out of a false identity for fear of being exposed. We need to forgive ourselves, so we don’t hold anything against ourselves. It’s in that freedom that we can live who God really created us to be.

So how about you? What’s your story? Do you need to forgive yourself? Or have you and what difference did it make? Tell us in the comments or shoot us an email.