Tag: Christ (Page 2 of 2)

Never Give Up

We all have hopes and dreams.

God puts hopes and dreams in our hearts and actually promises to carry out the good work He once begun in us. God puts purpose, plans, hopes and dreams in all of our lives, and then takes the primary responsibility of making them become a reality.

Yet, at times it seems like God is asleep at the wheel in His efforts to move our lives forward.  We go through challenges, times of waiting, and seasons where God seems silent and uninvolved. No one is exempt. If you are facing adversity, experiencing a loss of hope, and wondering if God has given up on you, take comfort in the fact that everybody must take this journey of faith.

Yet, what we believe during these times of waiting, worrying, and wondering is critical to seeing and experiencing God in the midst of it all, and most importantly, making sure we don’t give up.

Here are some important things to believe…

1) God never gives up on you- It’s that simple. God never gives up on you, His faithfulness is forever. No matter how you may feel, God is at work in your life with your best interests at heart. At this moment, it may not all make sense or seem like He is doing much of anything. But God promises that He will never leave your nor forsake you, nor will He stop short of making the very most of your life according to His purposes and plan.

2) God’s dreams for your life lie within you being yourself- The Christian life is best lived by you waking up and living. Be yourself. Trying to be someone else or something you are not will only lead to going in a different direction than God is trying to lead you. God doesn’t need you to become something in order to use you and fulfill dreams, He desires to use you and fulfill dreams right here and now because He has already made you into what He needs you to be. You are a new creation in Christ, lacking no spiritual blessing. Faith is what releases your newly created self for God’s use and the fulfilling of dreams. Don’t give up because you feel you are disqualified or inadequate. Jesus qualifies you and has made you completely adequate! Believe it, receive it, and live it!

3) God will make your life significant- Trust Jesus to do the heavy lifting, door opening, and opportunity bringing. Trying to force your way forward and make things happen will only leave you further behind. Jesus is not interested in spiritual gymnastics, just faith. Trust Jesus to create your influence and significance.  Meditate on God’s word, believe in His goodness for your life and watch your significance increase effortlessly. Trying to make a name and future for yourself is an ultimate expression of evil. It puts your trust in Christ’s performance in the back seat, and your trying and striving to make things happen in the front.

4) God is more interested in your faith than your performance- Don’t concentrate on your failures, shortcomings, and blind spots, Jesus isn’t. If your future hinged on your performance, you wouldn’t have a future.  Faith is what releases God to will and act according to His purposes in your life, not effort. Faith is what brings forward movement, not good works.  God is not punishing you or holding you back because of anything in your past or present.  Jesus paid it all. However, God is interested in your faith. Not perfect, enormous faith. Just faith. Trusting, resting, believing in Him.

5) God’s timing is perfect- Waiting is the hardest part. We feel like giving up often in times of waiting. Find me a person who feels like giving up and you will have found a person who has grown weary of waiting at some level or another. Waiting for things to get better, for things to change, for things to start moving forward etc. We suspect God is on to other things, and perhaps, therefore so should we.

Is there a time to backpedal and take a different course? Perhaps. Give up? Never. That is a card you need to take out of the deck of your life.

Wait as long as it takes. Move only when God moves. His timing is perfect. Trust, rest, and believe. He who began a good work in you WILL carry into completion. He is for you, with you, and ahead of you. Don’t lose heart, nothing is impossible with God.

For more on this subject, enjoy my ebook “Rise Above” downloadable (here).

 

 

Becoming a Better Person: The Secret You Never Knew

I suspect, we all want to be better people.  Deep down, most people are not satisfied with themselves, though they may never show it. In fact, many live lives walking around with deep feelings of guilt, shame, insecurity, and regret. The good we want to do is not what we do, and the bad we don’t want to do becomes exactly what we do. It’s an endless cycle in the quicksand of our human existence.

With our list of imperfections tight in hand, we set off on our pursuit of trying to figure out what we can do to become a better person. We buy the books, watch the shows, go to the conferences, and maybe even join up with a church or some kind of religion. Or, maybe we just find a tribe of people to immerse ourselves in with whom our idiosyncrasies won’t become so noticeable to others and especially ourselves.

When it comes to the brokenness in our lives, we typically go into either concealment mode, camouflage mode, or can-do mode.  We either try to hide our flaws, camouflage them, or self-improve them.

The problem is, none of that works, at least not for very long. Find me a person who has attempted to hide their imperfections, camouflage them, or self-improve their way past them, and at the end of the day you will have found a person that still deals with deep issues of guilt, shame, condemnation, insecurity and a lack of real, lasting improvement in their actions and attitudes.

The sad thing is, the Christian church hasn’t been a very good place to become a”better” person either.  More so than not, churches focus on being obedient and following religious rules while admonishing people to get better by doing better. Don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t chew, and don’t go with girls that do.  They treat obedience and doing the Word as the root of the Christian life.  The focus becomes on loving Jesus more as the solution and the path towards an improved life. If you just loved Jesus more than you would be so much of a better person and be able to follow the rules.

The problem is rules and religion don’t change people and behaviors. In fact, the Bible clearly states that the law (standards of God for living) actually stirs up the desire to sin. “…the sinful passions aroused by the law…” Romans 7:5  When you see a park bench with a sign that says, “wet paint” what do you immediately think of doing? Touching it. The truth is, I can’t love Jesus enough to get better. Trying to do so makes my love a self-focused work. It turns my performance into my identity. Therefore, I end up leaning on me instead of Jesus for who I am and what I can become.

Furthermore, we tell true believers in Jesus that if they don’t love and obey God enough they are not really completely forgiven, their standing with God has surely been compromised, and they had better fix it, quick.  We have told what are newly created people in Christ that they really aren’t completely new creatures because the “old man” is still there waiting to win back their life. No wonder people struggle with sin so much, especially believers. If you think, by your nature, you are a still a broken sinner at heart, then guess what you will do? Yup, sin. The Bible says, “As a man thinks in his heart, so he is.” Proverbs 23:7  If following the law (rules) and increasing your conscientiousness of sin is what we are told are the keys to becoming a better person, following that counsel will actually lead you to becoming a worse person in your behaviors and your heart will be filled with guilt and shame. No wonder why sin in the church is just as much a thriving reality as it is in the world.  Guilt, shame, depression, and frustration are just as prevalent in church as they are anywhere else.

The truth is, you can do all the spiritual gymnastics you want, but you can’t become a better person until you become a new person. All your efforts to become a better person won’t make you new or better, only the finished work of Jesus on the cross can make you new as you receive it through faith.

Right believing is what leads to right living. Faith in the pure Grace of God through Jesus is the root, obedience is the fruit. You performance doesn’t determine your identity, your identity determines your performance.

Satan always tempts us to do the wrong things by first tempting us to believe the wrongs thing about who we are and what we have (or can have) in Christ.  Notice that with Jesus, immediately after His baptism, Satan first tempted Jesus to doubt His identity as the “beloved son of God with who God was well pleased” which God had just declared over Him mere hours before Satan tempted Him to turn the stones to bread. In fact, Satan strategically and conveniently removed any mention that Jesus is beloved by God and well pleasing to the Father. Instead, he simply asks, “If you are the son of God…turn these stones…” in a futile attempt to get Jesus to believe the wrong things about who He is and what He has in the Father so that He would do the wrong things.

Satan is still vigorously trying to do the same with us, subtly trying to remove from our sense of identity that true believers are sons of God, beloved by God, and completely pleasing to Him. If we believe the wrong things about our identity, we will do the wrong things in life. An obedience problem is always first an identity problem.

The truth is, God loves you perfectly. In fact, God is love. He can do nothing but love you. And you simply being created by God is reason enough for Him to make you the object of His love. It has nothing to do with what you have or have not done or will do. In a real sense, it would be illegal for God not to love you, He would be a house divided against Himself because He is love. We need this Grace because we are as good as dead without it. Deep down, everybody knows something profound and central is missing and there is a standard to which their life doesn’t measure up. When your heart leaps at this Grace and believe Jesus is the source of this Grace, everything changes. All that God has and provided for you becomes yours.

For a true believer in Jesus, there is no condemnation over their life, none. You have become, through Jesus’ shed blood, the righteousness of Christ, and that is not merely a positional reality, but a complete reality. You are without blemish, all your sins (past, present, and future) have been put away (killed) through the cross, they are no more in the eyes of God. You have been made a new creation, the old is completely gone. You don’t have two natures, you have one. The old Adam is gone. (ref. Romans 6:6, Galatians 2:20) Christ lives in you, you have His mind. It is no longer your nature to sin, fear, worry, be depressed etc. Do we sin? Yes, because we still have of our earthly flesh, but it is no longer our nature to do so, and when we sin, it no longer defines us or separates us. Glory be to Jesus for His abundant Grace!  You are no longer under the rules, but under Grace. You don’t have to be a better person, you get to be a better person. Your don’t live from you, trying to be a better person. You live from Jesus, through faith in His work in you, and become a better a person. In fact, in Christ, you aren’t just a better you, you are a completely new you. 100% Jesus, 100% you. You lack nothing, absolutely nothing.

This is the right belief of your identity, it’s all focused on Jesus and His Grace, not on your performance. Which, ironically enables you to perform with increasing faithfulness. Right identity leads to right living. People who believe in the true Gospel of the Grace of God through Jesus don’t sin more, they sin much less. Their freedom becomes a catalyst for faithfulness because their heart overflows with thanksgiving for what Jesus has done as they walk in a completely new sense of self and life without guilt, shame, and sense of condemnation. It truly is amazing Grace.

“For if by the transgression of the one [Adam], death reigned through the one, much more those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ” Romans 5:17

An abundance of Grace is what leads to reigning (living much better) in life, not an abundance of guilt, shame, and rules. Believe in the abundant Grace of God for your life and see the results! Remind yourself every moment, “I am already forgiven, I am the righteousness of Christ, there is no condemnation, it is no longer my nature to sin, I am better than that, I lack nothing, greater is He that is in me than is in the World, I am fully pleasing to the Father, I am perfectly and completely loved, I am a son of God (Galatians 3:26)” and see how your life and living improve.

Trying to live like Christ and become a better person from our own efforts is like trying to sing like Celine Dion. You can hear her voice in your head, but you never can match it with your own. But if Celion Dion could somehow live in you, you could sing just like her as you allow her voice to become your voice. Her identity becomes your identity. In the same way, Jesus lives (or can live) in you (through faith), and when we live from Jesus in us and the identity we have because of Him, we will more and more act just like Him.

Becoming a better person is about our actions catching up with our true identity, not our identity being caught up in our actions. You cannot become a better person until you become a new person and believe it. Only Jesus can make you new. If you are in Christ through faith, you are a completely new person. You are a much better person, and when you believe that, you will act more and more like the person you are in Christ… much better!

Right believing in the abundant Grace of Jesus leads to right living!

Hallelujah, glory be to Jesus!  Can I get a strong Amen?

Recovering From A Disappointing Dad

As a father, I know over the course of my parenting I will have many areas where I don’t measure up and will have times where I disappoint my children and God who entrusts them to me.  No father is perfect, and being a faithful father is tougher now than perhaps ever before.  Every dad, to at least some degree is a “disappointing dad.” Only our heavenly Father is perfect and leaves nothing lacking.

Yet, there are those fathers whose disappointment factor rises to a level of leaving severe scars and deep unmet needs in their children’s lives.  They are the abusing, absent, or abdicating dad.  Some fathers abuse their children, emotionally and physically. Other fathers are absent from their children’s lives as they bury themselves in work, hobbies, distractions, or keep an emotional distance from their child’s life, sometimes to the point of abandoning their children all together. Other fathers abdicate their role to the mom, coaches, schools, churches, and culture as a whole as they refuse to lead, set the example, take responsibilities, and become an active, beneficial part of their child’s life. This is what I am referring to when I speak of “Disappointing Dads.” Fathers are to be the lead example setters, coaches, spiritual directors, protectors, correctors, monitors, providers, and time involved persons in their child’s life.

The role of father in our culture needs to be reclaimed and restored in our culture. Our society has portrayed fatherhood as one big joke, and fathers like Bart Simpson and Ozzy Osbourne are leading the way. Unfortunately, many men have gladly kicked backed in their recliners and adopted the mindset they see on television.

Sadly, just ask any school teacher, the carnage from “Disappointing Dads” is everywhere. Kids, mothers, families and society as a whole are paying the price big time. Furthermore, though this reality is probably worse now than ever before, there are previous generations now in their adult years who are trying to recover from “Disappointing Dads.” In fact, gen-“x”ers (now in their late 30’s to late 40’s) were the first to be named “Latch Key Kids” as their pre-boomer parents were off chasing the American Dream and living their own post-version of the 60’s.  The fathering trends haven’t gotten any better since then, but only worse.  I suspect the counseling, psychiatric side of the economy will be doing well for many years to come as these generations age.

Obviously, when it comes to recovering from a “Disappointing Dad” finding a good, Christian counselor is likely going to be a must. There are so many layers and connections that only a trained counselor can help you integrate into your life and faith in a way that is going to bless you and glorify God.  Yet, here are few steps you can take that will surely help you recover.

0.01  Grieve the Loss

Life is full of loss and pain. The hurts these cause in our life become most harmful when we don’t properly grieve.  So much of the dysfunction in our life is a result of a loss that has not been grieved completely.  Grief is God’s way of healing us from pain and loss in our lives.  Grieving is not an easy process, but it is a necessary process for finding healing and purpose within our pain and loss.

“Disappointing Dads” leave our lives with loss and pain. This pain and loss often centers around areas where they fell short as fathers and/or took something from us. That is why there is disappointment. God knows we can’t go back and remove the pain or undo the loss. This is where God’s gift of grief comes in. Grief enables us, through the power of Jesus, to integrate the pain and losses of life into our present and future in ways that ultimately bless us and glorify God.

The basic stages of grief are as follows… 1) Shock 2) Painful Feelings 3) Acceptance 4) Meaning 5) Empowerment

This process requires us to go through all 5 steps in order. And even though we may get through all five steps, it doesn’t mean we  still won’t have moments where we revisit one of the other steps. However, as you go through these steps, God is able to transform you and your circumstances to the place where you discover the tremendous purpose in pain and a ministry from within your misery.

I strongly encourage you to listen to the message series, “Rise Above: Defying the Gravity of Adversity” located on this website. This message series will guide you step by step through discovering the purpose within your pain and how to get to a place in your life where you actually have overcome the pain and loss you have experienced.

God fully understands and cares about your experience with a “Disappointing Dad” and desires to come along side of you as your Heavenly Father and heal those wounds. Walking with Him through the steps of grief will be a significant part of your healing and transformation.

o.o2  Renew and Release

One of the most powerful verses in the Bible that applies to an issues like this is…  Proverbs 13:12 Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life. 

There are two critical ideas presented in this passage. 1) When we hope or long for something to come into our lives that for whatever reason is very likely not going to occur, it creates pain and suffering. 2) When our God given hopes and longings are fulfilled, it brings growth and life to our being.

One of the most destructive things “Disappointing Dads” leave in our lives are unfulfilled hopes and longings.  God created us needing and deserving of fathers that meet critical needs in our lives. Furthermore, God designed our fathers to shape and mold our futures in ways that honor and foster God’s plan for your life. Unfortunately, when those needs, longings, and positive influences that only fathers can give do not occur, it leaves our lives filled with longings and hopes that are unfulfilled. In a very real sense, your “Disappointing Dad” owes you big time.  Maybe they owe you your innocence back, the childhood you deserve, the attention you should have been given, the father you should have had, etc.  Unfortunately, with many “Disappointing Dads” they either can’t repay what is owed you, or they refuse to do so. Either way, you have a “hope that is deferred” or said another way “a debt that isn’t being paid”  What happens? We live our lives hoping that somehow or someway these needs will be met by the person that should have met them in the first place, our father.  We look for the apology that is likely never to come, the change of heart or behavior that is likely never to change, and the list can go on and on. What’s the result? Our hearts grow sick with bitterness, disappointment, anger, frustration, guilt, and alike. We want to love our father and for our fathers to love us the way it was supposed to be, but that reality very likely just isn’t going to ever happen. That reality makes us sick in more ways than one.

So, what are we do to? Be heart sick the rest of our lives holding onto the past and feeling emotionally incomplete and cheated, many of us having the scars to show for it?  No.

God came up with the most brilliant solution to the pain and loss people create in our lives, especially “Disappointing Dads.” The solution is… forgiveness. Now before you wig out and click off this post thinking there is no way you are going to forgive the dad that screwed up your life, please hear me out.

Forgiveness does NOT mean that what your dad did or didn’t do is somehow now “o.k.” Forgiveness does NOT mean that the relationship is automatically reconciled or restored. Forgiveness does NOT mean you have to remove healthy boundaries and feel good about being around that person, what happened in the past, and what the relationship is like now.

Rather, forgiveness means you are canceling the debt. You are emotionally releasing your father of the debt they owe you that they cannot or will not repay.  Through forgiveness you are fulfilling the longing and hope you have for the father and childhood you did not receive by canceling the debt. In so doing, you are moving from bondage to the past into life for the present and future. You or no longing looking to your father to be or become someone to you that they cannot or refuse to be or become. The hole that your father left in your life is now able to be filled by the presence and provisions of God. Unforgiveness keeps this from happening and prolongs the pain and suffering that was caused years ago. Forgiveness stops the negative pattern, and our emotional enslavement  to it.

Forgiveness is very likely going to be the only thing that satisfies the longing and hopes left in our lives from the blood sucking of “Disappointing Dads”  Forgiveness removes the leach of their behaviors from continuing to suck the life out of us long after our childhoods are over.

Forgiveness is not easy and takes the power of God working in our lives, but it is perhaps the most critical step in recovering from “Disappointing Dads”

I strongly suggest reading my post “What’s Up With Forgiveness” for more details on what forgiveness is and isn’t and how to apply it to your life.

0.03  Take up Your Cross

I believe the purpose of your life can be found very close to the pain in your life. Taking up your cross, at least in part, means being willing to use your experiences of pain for the glory of God. Additionally, it carries with it the reality that we will all have crosses to bear as we do our best to live our lives and make the most of them for God’s purposes.

Recovering from a “Disappointing Dad” is a life long  journey.  Sometimes, you will make great strides forward and other times you will have to “fight the good fight of faith” as you battle to create a better future.  God knows you and your needs better than anyone. Jesus’ invitation to “take up you cross and follow me” is a sure indicator that 1) Jesus wants you, baggage and all 2) Following Jesus is the best way to live (though it may not be the easiest)  3) The best chance and only chance you have to take your disappointments and turn them into destiny is by placing them at the feet of Jesus.

You won’t ever be able to truly leave the pain and loss all behind while on this side of heaven, but you can take it up and follow Jesus. As you do, your pain and loss will be transformed into peace and gain. It really is true. That’s the miracle of following the Master!


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