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Why You Need Support Not Accountability

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Accountability groups, or accountability partners, are big in some Christian circles. But, while well-intentioned, accountability’s not all it’s cracked up to be. What you actually need is support, not accountability.

Here are 4 reasons why.

1) Support Helps, Accountability Controls

The critical difference between accountability and support is that accountability is “friendly” control, while support is help. But the truth is, to quote Danny Silk, “The only person I can control, on a good day, is myself.” Which also means that no one else can control you. No matter how well intentioned, it just won’t work.

“The only person I can control, on a good day, is myself.” — Danny Silk

We submit ourselves to accountability, either with a group or a single accountability partner, when there’s something we feel like we should be doing, but we really don’t want to. We think the guilt and peer pressure of having to report our failures will help. But think back. When in your life has peer pressure ever been a good thing? When have you ever been happy to be motivated by impending shame? Aren’t we much more likely to hide and eventually quit the group or partner?

2) With Support, You Bring the Motivation. In Accountability, It’s Imposed on You.

Who Brings the Motivation? We join accountability groups, or partnerships, when we’re guilted into admitting we should change our life. So we begrudgingly join the group (or partnership). But it feels like going to the dentist. We don’t want to go, we know it’ll hurt, but we know it’s good for us. It’s certainly no fun, and if we could rationalize a way out of it, we would. The motivation is imposed, or guilted, upon us by the rest of the group.

But in a support group (or partnership), we bring the motivation. There is something in our life that we actually, truly want to change. Or it’s a goal we’re passionate about achieving. But we know we can’t do it ourselves because we’ve been trying and it’s not working. So we ask trusted people in our life for help. We come into support situations grateful for the help, not dreading the “help” of accountability.

In fact, manipulative and controlling accountability is actually counter-productive. It can be demotivating, achieving the opposite of the intended result. 

3) Support Gives You Permission, Accountability Forces You 

In support, you’ve asked for help. This is something you want to do. People who support you remind you of your calling, your giftings, the positive words spoken over your life. They remind you who you really are. Their affirmation tears down the lies we believe about ourselves.

So often, when we’re having trouble moving forward, it’s because fear has gripped us. Fear often hides behind a mask of logic. Supportive people give us permission to take reasonable risks. They encourage us to take brave baby steps, and they cheer us on. 

There’s a sense of coercion by guilt that so often accompanies being held accountable. Even that phrase, “being held accountable,” has negative legal connotations, doesn’t it? Accountability attempts to force us to do the right thing. Support gives us permission.

4) Support Honors Your Choice, Accountability Shames Your Choice

What if you change your mind? Maybe you decide you don’t want this goal after all. Maybe you want to quit the group. Although supportive people might disagree, be sad and miss you, they honor your choice. Accountability groups (and partners) shame your choice. They try to force you back in line, away from being “out of control.” Think about that phrase! 

Shame never accomplishes anything good, but it’s the only tool (or weapon?) people who want control over your behavior have at their disposal. That’s a scary thought. Here’s a scarier one: Shame is actually the enemy’s main weapon against us. 

As believers, the enemy only has power over us when we believe his lies. Shame is one of his major tools for entrenching those lies in our heart. Shame activates fear. Fear drives us away from those who would love that shame away and take down those lies like a house of cards.

Since shame is something in the enemy’s toolbox, we can’t ever use shame to achieve a godly result.

Support over Accountability

It can be scary when a loved one is making destructive choices, especially an adult child. Sometimes, out of our very real fear, we try to control and hold them accountable with the best of intentions. We truly want the best for them. But we have to let them live their own adventure.

Jesus totally did this. For example, at the pool of Bethesda, he asked the paralytic, “Do you want to get well?” (John 5:1-15) And again, in Mark 10:46-52, he asked the blind man, “What do you want me to do for you?” These may seem like no-brainer questions, but he was overtly honoring their choice. He certainly wanted to heal them, but he was letting them choose it. He was letting them live their adventure. 

And we have to live ours. Seek out people who will support you, tell you the hard truth, but then honor your choice. Rather than guilting you into what you should do, they ask you, “What do you want me to do for you?” Then they support you in that area, if they morally can, even if they think your main problem is in another area. If they can’t support you for whatever reason, they’ll tell you straight up and not play games with you.

How About You?

Does this resonate? Please share this post if it would bless others. And tell us your story in the comments. Have you been through “accountability gone bad”? Have you had good experiences with support? Your story will help others, and we’d love to hear it.

How to Tell if You’re Motivated by Wounding or Calling

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Everything we do in life is driven by one of these two things. At the end of the day, these are the only two motivations in the human experience. Everything we do is driven by either our wounding or our calling. Here’s an example.

Bob and Ted both help their church one Saturday morning a month serving breakfast at the local homeless shelter. They both get up at 5:00 AM, so they can be at the shelter by 6:00 to have breakfast ready for the residents at 7:00. They’re both happy to do whatever’s needed—scrambling dozens of eggs, cooking bacon, toasting slices and slices of toast, washing dishes, talking to and praying with the residents. Both are faithful. Both feel great afterwards, having been blessed with the opportunity to serve. But while they both look exactly the same from the outside, there’s a big difference inside.

Driving home, Bob is jazzed. He feels so good. For a few brief, shining moments, he feels good about himself, having done something good. Maybe that compensates for all his failures. Maybe, for a few hours, that’ll drown out the shame that just won’t let him go. Bob is serving out of his wounding.

Meanwhile, Ted is driving home, and he’s also jazzed. He feels so good. When he’s eating and talking with the shelter residents, he identifies with them. He doesn’t see a dirty homeless man. He sees a broken heart. He sees potential. He sees God’s hand of anointing and purpose on these precious people who have been so deceived and beaten up by the world. And Ted feels privileged to be with them, to tell them the truth of who they really are, how much they’re loved by God, and to pray with them. Ted’s high will last for days. Ted is serving out of his calling.

Do you see the difference? Both are doing the same actions. Both look exactly the same on the outside. Both get good feelings out of it (which is the outworking of a Kingdom principle, BTW. You can control your emotions by serving.) [https://identityinwholeness.com/how-to-control-your-emotions/]

But their motivations are totally different. Bob is serving for the benefit to himself. He’s medicating pain. He may or may not feel guilted into it, but either way, his wounding pushes him to serve. Ted, on the other hand, is serving for the benefit of the people he’s serving. He feels drawn to them. His calling pulls him into serving. He can’t not serve.

Let’s look at another example.

Bob and Ted both get home after the homeless shelter feeding and get their daughters ready for swim practice at the local pool. Their kids are both on the same swim team, and both Bob and Ted are very involved in helping the coach with the team.

Bob was a swimmer in his youth and a strong contender for the Olympics, until the injury. That ended that. But his daughter has an opportunity to succeed where Bob failed. So he pushes her to swim harder, faster, better. And he doesn’t understand why she seems to resent all he’s sacrificing so she can have this opportunity. Going to swim meets all over the country isn’t cheap. He’s living vicariously through his daughter. His wounding is pushing him and his daughter. This movie doesn’t end well. Maybe you’ve seen it. Maybe you’ve lived it.

Ted, on the other hand, can think of a thousand other things he’d rather be doing than spending Saturday at the pool. Mowing the lawn, mending that fence, trimming the roses. He loves being outside, and doesn’t look forward to spending another Saturday indoors at the pool smelling chlorine all day.

But from birth, his daughter was as comfortable in the water as she was on land. No one had to teach her how to blow bubbles in the bathtub, or to put her face under the water. She just did it naturally. She was almost swimming before she could walk. Ted realized something about his child: God hard-wired her to swim. So he silently sacrifices his Saturdays because he knows that as her father it’s his calling to gently guide her into who God created her to be.

Do you see the difference? Again, Bob and Ted look exactly the same from the outside. They both go to all their daughter’s swim practices and swim meets. They both help out the coach with the team however they can. But their inner motivations are totally different. Pushed by his wounding, Bob is doing it for himself, in a fruitless attempt to ease the pain. But Ted is pulled by his calling. He can’t not be there for his daughter, for her sake—not for his.

Both are driven. But while Bob is pushed by his wounding, Ted is pulled by his calling. And that’s how you can tell whether you’re being motivated by your wounding or by your calling. Wounding pushes you—guilt, shame, medicating pain. But calling pulls you—drawing you forward, wooing you, to the point that once you start thinking “what if…” you can’t not pursue it.

So what if I discover I’m being driven by my wounding? Do these 4 simple steps.

1) Admit it. Stop pretending otherwise.

2) Name the wounding. You have power over what you can put a label on.

3) Get help. There’s no shame wearing a cast on a broken leg. There’s no shame getting counseling for broken emotions. Everyone needs help at some point. Talk to your pastor, a professional counselor, a mature and godly parent, or a trusted friend. Or all of them. You need all the tools in the toolbox. But, please, talk to somebody.

4) Embrace this season of healing. You can get free. Healing is out there. Pursue it. Don’t give up. God wants to bring you freedom, so you can set others free. You have authority over what you’ve been set free from.

Once you’re walking in freedom rather wounding, you may realize your calling is totally different from what you thought. Whole new worlds may open up to you.

Or, you may have been pursuing your calling all along, but your wounding is like dragging an iron ball chained to your leg—so you can’t run very fast. Once you get some healing, maybe you’ll feel a new freedom and ease to chase the calling you never believed was possible.

Caveat: Healing comes in waves. This may not be your last season of healing. Healing hurts, so out of his mercy God gives us as much as we can handle at any one time. So don’t be surprised if, after years of living motivated by your calling, you suddenly discover there’s still some wounding there. Don’t be discouraged—God’s getting ready to upgrade you again! Bonus!

How about you? Are you operating out of your wounding, or out of your calling? Have you ever realized, after getting some healing, your calling was totally different from what you thought it was? Have you gone through seasons of healing? How did each give you another level of freedom? We’d love to hear your story in the comments or in an email. And please share if this would bless someone else.

Free Resources:

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

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

5 Ways to Validate Someone’s Pain

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

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

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

1) Get Comfortable with Silence.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2) Acknowledge their Pain with Reflective Listening.

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

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

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

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

3) Don’t Say “I Understand”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

5) Be Their Friend, Not Their Counselor

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

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

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

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

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

Your Turn

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

3 Ways to Help Someone with Depression

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Wrong Answer

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

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

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

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

The Right Answer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So How Do We Help People in Pain?

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

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

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

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

So what did they do during that first week?

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

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

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

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

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

3 Ways to be Jesus to Someone with Depression

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

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

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

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

How about you?

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

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

Photo by Kari Shea on Unsplash

How to Get Kingdom Gifts

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Everything in the Kingdom of God is upside down and backwards compared to how we as humans think. The best Kingdom gifts, the ones that give us the most pleasure and the most joy, are the ones we give away.

In Matthew 7:2, Jesus says, “With the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” That means we need to give away what we want to get. For example, to save your life, you lose it (Luke 9:24). To get the place of honor, give it away (Luke 14:7-11).

Give away what you want.

Do you want to be rich? Then give money away (Malachi 3:10). Do you want mercy from God? Then show others mercy (Matthew 18:23-25).

See the principle here?

Do you want people to overlook and ignore your mistakes? Then overlook and ignore their mistakes. Do you want people to listen to you? Then listen to them. Do you want people to think you’re important? Be humble and treat them like they are important.

Even Jesus did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but emptied himself and became nothing, taking on the form of a servant (Philippians 2:6-7), for the sake of the joy set before him (Hebrews 12:2).

In the Kingdom, we write our own Christmas list. We receive what we give away.

A Christmas Challenge

Do you want to really receive peace on earth and goodwill to all this Christmas? Then let’s give it away.

I’ve seen the demeanor of cranky store clerks change when I just said something nice to them that built them up, instead of tearing them down (2 Corinthians 10:8).

Today’s Action Step: I will be mindful of my interactions with people. Especially when they are being mean and cranky, I will try to make their day. Then Jesus will make my day.

Your Turn

How about you? What are you giving away this holiday season that you want to receive back? Have you seen this principle work? Tell us in the comments or shoot us an email. And please share on Facebook (or your fav social media channel) if you think this would bless someone else.

How to Help Someone without Rescuing Them

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One of the hardest things to navigate is helping someone in a healthy way, without rescuing them in an unhealthy way. We don’t want to interfere with God’s process of sowing and reaping in their lives. (Here’s my previous post with 3 reasons why.)

Sometimes it feels like watching a train wreck in slow motion.

Compound that with, so often, people don’t want to change the lifestyle that’s causing the pain in their lives. They just want to be free from the pain.

It’s like someone banging their head on a brick wall. They want the headache to stop. But rather than being willing to stop banging their head on the brick wall, they’re looking for a helmet with more padding.

Giving Them Their Power Back

People in crisis often feel powerless. Like someone trapped on the third floor of a burning building, they want someone to pull up in a magic firetruck and rescue them from their pain.

True healthy help restores them as a powerful person who can make choices over their own life. Rather than swooping in with the magic firetruck, healthy help leads them to the fire escape and helps them navigate it.

But it’s their journey. We never take ownership away from them. Even when it’s painful to watch them move forward so slowly, and we could do it for them so much faster.

How to Help: Asking Questions not Making Statements

This is a brilliant 20-minute video by Danny Silk on how to really help someone with a problem. I highly recommend watching it.

So often it is more helpful to ask questions, rather than stating the obvious or just telling someone what to do to solve the immediate problem.

  • What’s the problem? If they don’t acknowledge there’s a problem, you’re done. If this is a family relationship, this is often a strong indication that someone has interrupted God’s process of sowing and reaping.
  • What are you going to do? At this point, often people won’t know. They feel powerless, like they can’t do anything. Their emotions are supercharged, and their rational brain is offline. But it’s important for you to ask this question. It clearly defines who owns the problem, and whose it is to solve.
  • What have you tried before? This is a great first step to help them slow down. Have you had this problem before? What have you done before that’s worked? Can you do that again? This helps them start thinking through the problem, helping their rational brain come back online.
  • Would you like some suggestions? Advice requires permission. If they don’t want your advice, don’t give it. Jesus put it somewhat graphically, “Don’t throw your pearls before swine.” (Matthew 7:6)
  • Have you tried…? Don’t say, “You should read this book.” Instead ask, “Have you read this book?” You are restoring them as a powerful person who can choose what they want to do to solve this problem.
  • What are you going to do? The most empowering question in the universe. Keep coming back to this one.

The Mastermind Process

In writer’s groups I’ve been in, we have a process called “mastermind.” It’s an absolutely genius way to help someone get unstuck. I’ve seen people who were stuck on something for months (or years!) get unstuck in 10-15 minutes. It works like this.

The person with the problem states it, and we ask clarifying questions to make sure we understand. Then comes the fun part.

For the next five minutes, group members give recommendations. The person with the problem is not allowed to talk during this. They just write all the recommendations down in a list.

Then the person with the problem chooses three things off that list they are going to do in the next 30 days. No explaining why they chose certain suggestions and not others. No judgments, no apologies, no commentary. Just choices.

People come into this process scared because they don’t know what to do. But they come out of it energized and excited. What was an overwhelming and vexing problem just a few minutes ago is now solvable. They have a list. They have a plan. They have support.

And most importantly, they have ownership. The beauty of the mastermind process is that, while it never solves anyone’s problem for them, it empowers them to solve their problem.

There are two key factors that make this process work.

(1) The person owns the problem. No one tells them, “Hey, I noticed you have a problem on your blog. Let me tell you how to fix that.” They decided it was a problem. And they decided they needed help fixing it.

(2) The person owns the solution. While the group process helps them think through possible solutions, they choose what they’re going to do and not do. No pressure to pick certain options over others. And nobody in the group gets their nose bent out of joint if the person didn’t pick their recommendation.

Your Turn

Have you been on either end of this? Did someone help guide you through a problem? Or did someone “rescue” you, leaving you to solve a bigger problem with higher stakes later in life? Tell us your story in the comments and please share if this would bless others.

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.

Why Good Friends Don’t Accept You Just the Way You Are

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What do you want in your friends? What makes a good friend? Many people would answer, “A good friend accepts you just the way you are.”

I beg to differ. That’s not a friend.

Both your local waiter and the cashier at your gas station accept you just the way you are. Because they don’t care about you. As long as you leave a good tip or pay for your gas with a good attitude, they’re fine with you. They really don’t care if you’re hurting yourself. A good friend does.

A good friend receives you just the way you are, not accepts you just the way you are.

A good friend receives you just the way you are. But they won’t accept your self-destructive behaviors, and they don’t want you to accept theirs.

We Don’t Accept Self-Destructive Behavior in People We Love

The world has this very confused. The world says, “love is love,” meaning any sexual relationship is acceptable if the people involved love each other. But that’s simply not true. Far too many churches, some whole denominations, have compromised on this point to gain the favor and acceptance of the world.

The world’s definition of “love” is not saying boo to anybody about what they do or how they live. But that’s not love. That’s indifference. Indifference (not hatred) is the opposite of love.

There are forces in the culture trying to bully us into accepting sexually immoral lifestyles as normal in the name of love. They do so, not because they love the people involved, but so that they get votes and cling to power. Once firmly entrenched in power, they will enslave the very people who voted for them.

Faithful are the wounds of a friend; but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful. (Proverbs 27:6)

Love is shouting, “Stop! You’re hurting yourself! Don’t do that!” Not out of legalism or religion, but out of an identification with the deep harm and pain the person is causing themselves.

The world hates Christians for this. Christians should be passionate for sexual integrity and purity – sex reserved for one man and one woman inside a marriage relationship.

Think about it – most of the lawlessness we see in our society today comes from fatherlessness, which is a direct result of sexual immorality.

To truly love people the way Jesus did, we need to be willing to tell them their lifestyle is self-destructive. Now please hear me. I’m not saying beat anybody over the head with your 97-pound Scofield Reference Bible. We need to be wise, which usually means being gentle, but sometimes not. But being wise always means being led by the Holy Spirit, communicating in a way the other person can understand. Whether they receive it or not is on them.

Good Wisdom from a Lousy Movie

Remember the movie Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull with Harrison Ford, Karen Allen, and Shia LeBeouf? Indiana Jones (played by Harrison Ford, of course) runs into his ex from Raiders of the Lost Ark, Marion Ravenwood (played by Karen Allen). She’s remarried and has a son (played by Shia LeBeouf).

Indiana talks to the boy who’s complaining about the rigorous education his mother tried to force on him, and how his dropping out of school has strained their relationship. Indiana Jones assures the boy school’s really no big deal. When Indiana sees Marion, he tells her to lighten up on the boy. After all, school’s not for everyone.

Marion tells Indiana the boy is actually his son. After he picks his jaw up off the floor, the first thing out of Indiana’s mouth is, “Why didn’t you make him stay in school?!?”

While a humorous scene in a silly movie, it illustrates a deeper point. When the boy was somebody else’s kid, Indiana Jones couldn’t care less about him, and just wanted him to be comfortable and happy. Primarily because that made life easier for Indiana Jones. Who wants to deal with somebody else’s problems?

But as soon as the young man was his son, well, suddenly, that’s different. Now he cares about what’s ultimately best for the boy, not just what brings happiness at this moment.

Good Parents Don’t Accept Just Anything

I have heard so many of my fellow parents say, “I just want my daughter (or son) to be happy).” I’m not a violent man, but when people say that, I just want to smack them.

“Don’t you love your child?” I want to scream at them. “Why on earth would you just want your child to be happy?”

There are so many more important things for your child to be than happy. What about maturity? What about loving God? What about self-sufficient? What about giving? What about being a person of character? None of those things are built into a person’s life by happiness, but by hard work, sacrifice, and choosing delayed gratification.

Honestly, if you just want your child to be happy, let him live with you in your basement playing video games until you die. We all know those people, and we pity them. Their parents have crippled their children for life.

Not Accepting and Controlling Are 2 Different Things

Not accepting self-destructive behavior doesn’t mean trying to control or manipulate the person into making good choices. It is their life and they have to live it and be responsible for it. Not accepting self-destructive behavior does not mean that we don’t honor their right to choose.

We need to let our children live their own adventure.

Not accepting self-destructive behavior means we speak up. For God’s sake, speak up! From a place of relationship, not legalism, we speak up. Put as many disclaimers on it as you want to soften the blow, but speak up. Tell your friend, or your family member if you have the relationship to do so, that they are harming themselves, or about to.

That’s your responsibility as a good friend, or a parent, or family. What they do with it is up to them. So we speak up, but we still honor their right to choose.

It’s Not about the Behavior. It’s about the Wounding.

Remember also that the real issue with self-destructive behavior, whether it’s addictions or sexual immorality, isn’t the behavior itself. It’s the hidden wounding causing the behavior. That’s what we need to get to. Get the person’s wounding healed, and the behavior will take care of itself.

That’s why so many people who quit smoking gain weight. The addiction just pops up somewhere else because the underlying wound was never dealt with.

That’s why legalizing same-sex marriage and normalizing transgender is so destructive in our society. These people are deeply wounded, to the extent that even their sexual attraction and gender identity are confused.

But our society puts a band-aid on their bleeding emotional artery and says, “No, you’re fine! No problem here.” And so we deny them the healing Jesus wants to give them. That is not love.

We need to love people enough to tell them the truth. In love, with all the disclaimers you want, but still the truth. With a spoonful of sugar maybe, but not watered down. Are you willing?

Your Turn

Has someone spoken into your life something that you initially resented, but later respected and appreciated them for? Or maybe you’ve taken the risk to share something the other person really needed to hear that you knew may not be well received? Tell us your story in the comments. And please share this post if it would bless others.

How to Validate Someone’s Pain

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As Christians, when we see someone hurting, we all want to help. That’s good, we should. The problem is, many of us have never been trained how to really help someone who’s hurting. We don’t know how, or even what to do. Often, unfortunately, well-meaning Christians do more harm than good.

As the church stands on the brink of the Third Great Awakening, our churches are going to be overwhelmed by a flood of hurting people. We need to get comfortable being around people who are hurting, without trying to fix them.

And it’s not just the unsaved coming into our churches who are hurting. There’s a huge number of people in our churches right now who are hurting. But they’re hiding their hurt because:

  1. They think they’re the only one. Look at all these happy people. I’m the only one who’s faking it. No, believe me, you’re really not.
  2. They’re afraid of being judged. Because either they have been in the past, or they’ve seen other people with similar issues be treated as “less than.”

So our lack of understanding is actually preventing people from getting the healing Jesus has for them. And that’s the last thing any of us want.

If you can’t go to the people of God when you’re hurting, where can you go?

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Before trying to solve the problem, or offering them help, there’s something important we need to do first. And it makes all the difference.

The single most important thing you can do to help someone who’s hurting is validate their pain. Before you do anything else, validate their pain. Validate how they feel. This gives them acceptance instead of judgement, and it creates a safe place.

So how do we do this?

Let Them Hurt

That sounds really strange, doesn’t it? Let them hurt?!? That’s not compassionate! Let me explain. I don’t mean ignore them or their pain. I don’t mean being cold or distant or uncompassionate or insensitive.

Here’s the deal. When someone’s going through their valley of the shadow of death, either physically, emotionally, or spiritually, we naturally want to find them an off-ramp. Out of compassion, we want to fix the problem for them. Don’t do that, because you can’t. Only Jesus is the healer.

What am I supposed to do then? I’m glad you asked.

Be Present

There’s a great model in Job 2:11-13.

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

Job’s friends normally get a bad rap, and rightfully so. But they got it right for a whole week, when they just sat with him in the ashes of his life, and didn’t say anything. Then they opened their mouths, and it was all downhill from there.

Ok, so practically, how do we do this? Proverbs 18:21 says, “Life and death are in the power of the tongue.” What we say, and don’t say, is important.

What to NOT Say

Too often, we unintentionally discount people’s pain. The following are things well-meaning Christians often say, but are not helpful because they discount the person’s pain.

  • “I understand.”
     No, you really don’t. You haven’t experienced what they’re going through. And even if you have, you haven’t experienced it as them, with their backstory, their fears, and their previous hurts. They are a different person and are experiencing it differently than you would.
  • “I went through something similar…”
     This is not the time to tell your story. Listen to and validate their story. Telling your story, when they are trying to tell you theirs, minimizes their story and discounts their pain. Be a real listener. Don’t be a wait-to-talker.
  • “You’ll get through it.”
     Again, this minimizes their pain. What they are really hearing is, “No one understands me, my pain, what I’m going through, or how sacred I am. And it’s not ok for me to tell them. I better hide it.”
  • “Just have faith.”
     Whether you mean it or not, they hear condemnation: “They think I’m a bad Christian because I’m going through this.”
  • “God’s got this.”
     While very true, this totally discounts their pain. Whether you mean it or not, what they hear is, “You’re wrong to feel bad about this. Why are you so upset? Relax, God will work it all out.” While a great thing to tell yourself when you’re going through painful times, don’t flippantly say it to others.

Ok, so what should we say? What do we say to validate someone’s pain?

What to Say

Here are some great things to say. These things make the other person feel heard, and create a safe space for them to share and seek healing.

  • “Tell me more about that.”
     This is a great default when you don’t know what else to say.
  • “I’ve got no grid for what you’re going through. It must be really hard.”
     This is very validating; it invites them to share their feelings. It assures them you care and you’re listening.
  • “You’re really brave to face this.”
     This can be so validating. Believe me, they feel anything but brave right now.
  • “That must really hurt.”
     Again, an invitation to share their feelings, hurts, and fears.
  • “So do you feel like…”
     and take a guess at how they’re feeling. It doesn’t matter if you’re right or not. Just the fact that someone is trying to understand how they feel is huge.
  • “You’re not a bad Christian for going through this.”
     You may see tears with this one. Because believe me, the enemy, and sadly other Christians, have told them they are.
  • “I don’t know what to do.”
     It’s great to admit you don’t have all the answers. This validates them as a person because then they don’t have to feel condemned for not having all the answers either.

Don’t Try to Be the Professional

Don’t try to be their savior; that’s Jesus’ job. Don’t try to lead them through healing if (1) you haven’t received healing yourself, or (2) you don’t know what you’re doing. Especially if they have been through trauma (emotional or physical abuse, abortion, sexual abuse, etc.). Don’t try to be the professional when you aren’t.

Instead, ask if you can help them find the right help. Asking is very important. Never impose a solution by saying things like:

  • “You should read this book.”
  • “Here’s a counselor that deals with these issues.”

Get permission first. Ask first, like this:

  • “Would you like some resources to help with that?”
  • “Would you like me to help you find a counselor (or pastor) who deals with that?”

If they say yes, then you can ask them if they’ve read that book, or give them your counselor or pastoral recommendation. Now you have their permission and you’re not imposing one more thing on them. Now you’re being truly helpful.

If they say no, then just drop it. No matter how much you think your resource will help them, respect their no. They aren’t ready for it yet. Keep it in your back-pocket for another time when they’re ready.

If we do these things, we can make the church a safe place for hurting people. People won’t let us help them until they know they won’t be harmed by doing so. But if we validate their pain, we create a safe place for them to get healing.

Your Turn

How have you been validated (or not) by the church when you were hurting? What did people do that was helpful (or not)? Are you currently hiding because your church isn’t safe for what you’re struggling with? Tell us your story in the comments; let’s get this conversation going. (If your story is sensitive or private, you’re welcome to send us a private email here.) And please share this post if it would bless others.

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

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

A Daniel 9 Moment

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

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

Repenting for Generational Sins

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

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

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

White Racism in America

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our Chance

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

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

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

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

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

Call to Action

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

Will you take this pledge with me?

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

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

Your Turn

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