What does it mean to adhere to the sensibilities of godly principles? Is it about obeying commandments and following religious rules, rituals, and traditions.? Or, is it about resisting temptation and desire that carries with it logical, unfavorable outcomes; consequences to my body, my mind, my relationships, and all the rest. Why do I give in so willfully to foolish nonsense, even when recognizing how much better my life is in the clutch of God’s favor? Why resist what is certainly good for me?
What I can do in my relationship with God pales so drastically in comparison to what God can do for me. So, why am I so challenged to my part in this relationship? Why do I have such a problem with that?
When I say I believe fully in what God can do, but tend to doubt what God will do, it is more likely than not that I am not entirely willing to do what I know is necessary for the change process to be effective. God wants to meet my need, to go beyond what’s humanly possible to deliver me, but I am too often unwilling to let go of what’s required of me if I am to experience what’s best for my life. It’s a relationship thing, at this point. Do I trust God in this relationship or not? How confident am I in this relationship? I’m all about what I can take from the relationship, but what am I willing to give to it?
Any chance you can relate to that?
Is it that I don’t trust that God is all in with me?
Or, is it that I struggle to believe that God is in it with me to intervene with his favor because I don’t believe that I am worthy of it?
He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Romans 8:32 (ESV)
So, in the same way others have left, how can I trust that God won’t leave me as well?
How does that feeling translate into feeling unworthy of God’s attention?
How does feeling unworthy, or worthless, translate into feeling less than lovable?
How does feeling unlovable produce feelings of hopelessness; that you have little to no control over anything, that it’s all a big mess and your life will never improve, or be any better than it’s been?
“What a relief, to be reminded once again, that I am not responsible for everyone and everything. Although I love to take control, it is so overwhelming and I know that it is not mine. That is why the load is so heavy when I try to carry it. I do that because I stop trusting that God will take care of it, and I think that I will feel better and everyone will be better off if I just take over. What a lie!” —Janet
Responsibility and Regret
Are you weighed down by the discontent and unhappiness of others? How might you take on the responsibility for someone else’s discomfort? How might you feel overwhelmed by the stress of all that responsibility? How heavy is the weight of carrying what’s beyond your control?
The stress of responsibility can be overwhelming. The emotion of failing the expectations of others you care about takes its toll over time. Behavior that causes someone harm can lead to the weight of intense guilt. Internalized guilt may through your eyes be a reflection of who you are: producing feelings of regret, deep sorrow and shame.
Regret involves events initiated by your behavior, or that of another against you. Regret emotes a deep sense of loss. The damage is done. You’re broken. It can feel like you’ll never recover what’s been lost. The burden of shame and regret is so heavy. How do you get out from under something that is crushing you? Shame and regret can have such a profound impact that it’s effect on you is debilitating. You can be so consumed by the burden of guilt that it’s as though you can hardly move.
“The deepest moral issue is always what we, in our heart of hearts, believe about God.” —John Eldredge, Counselor and Author
How can God forgive what I’ve done? Why would he? How can God repair what’s been done to me? How can God piece back together a life that is broken into pieces? How can God restore hope to a dream that’s been shattered? How can God pour life into a well that’s been drained dry? How can God fill a tank that is empty?
As a counselor, I have worked with individuals who tell me in the one instance that they don’t believe in God, and then suddenly from a place of desperation ask, “Why did God make me this way?” The tears flow while expressing their disappointment in the God they deny exists in the first place. They speak of reaching out to God, praying for answers. But the answers never came.
I try to let them know that, while it may have taken longer than they’d hoped, “God brought me to you, right at this moment. And we’ve got work to do.” By then, I have connected with my patients, building a relationship that is trustworthy. I offer them an opportunity to meet a Savior that they have not really known before; not even when they were praying with a broken heart. I want them to know about Jesus who loves them for who they are, where they are; not to concern themselves with whatever hang-ups they may have with religion, but to get in touch with their healer and deliverer.
For the patients struggling with feeling unworthy of God’s love and forgiveness, presenting them with godly compassion goes a long way toward challenging a twisted belief about the true nature of God. I can see their countenance change before my very eyes as God’s love slips in to provide immediate comfort to their soul, even though nothing about their circumstances has improved yet.
They can get a real sense that God is not sleeping, even while it feels as though he hasn’t noticed them. He is in the midst of the storm they are in, with them, with the power and intentions to calm the wind and the waves.
When Jesus woke up, he rebuked the wind and said to the waves, “Silence! Be still!” Suddenly the wind stopped, and there was a great calm. Then he asked them, “Why are you afraid?” Mark 4:39-40 (NLT)
My purpose here is to reveal to you how hijacked beliefs escalate anxiety and fear at the heart of maladaptive thinking and behavior. When beliefs are shrouded in fear, your doubt that God will deliver is front and center. So much of FREEdom from MEdom Project unveils of this mystery of who and what we are, while revealing the truth about who God is; that it’s God’s resolve to ease our minds and to set us free.
So, what about you? Is what you believe about God trustworthy? Does what you believe about God promote courage and confidence? Or, does what you believe about God cast doubt and fear, leading you to feeling like you really can’t trust anyone (enough), internalizing growing insecurities while the anxiety builds about how you will navigate your way through on your own?
I cried out, “I do believe, but help me overcome my unbelief!” Mark 9:24 (NLT)
“There is a sorrow that the soul must go through in letting go of what it thought it loved. We have to come to the place where we truly get it that what God wants for us is GOOD. To some degree, our resistance to his will reveals that we do not really believe it is good—at least not the kind of ‘good’ we want.” —Francis Leeman, Pastor
Let me ask you again. If you could know that God sees you, is interested, wanting to be involved, ready to engage and is listening, what would you ask God for? What might you want from God?
God does see. God is listening. God is engaged. God is good and wants good for you. God is waiting for you. TALK TO HIM!
Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. 1 Peter 5:6-7 (NIV)
Humble ourselves? Right there may lie the underbelly of the problem. The weight of what burdens us may be heavy but to cast it onto someone else means to drop it; to lay it down. It means surrendering what we believe we want most in favor of something else we are attracted to that runs contrary to what we truly value. It’s hard to let go. So, we go at it on our own with some idea that we can manage. But, since we are not capable enough on our own to get to where we want to be, we typically end up settling for what we can achieve in our own strength, as depleted as that may be.
“The human spirit will not even begin to try to surrender self-will as long as all seems to be well with it. Now error and sin both have this property, that the deeper they are the less their victim suspects their existence; they are masked evil. Pain is unmasked, unmistakable evil; everyone knows that something is wrong when they’re being hurt.” —C.S. Lewis
Settling for Less
Ask yourself the following…
“Is how I live my life rewarding, or is how I live costing me too much?”
“What do I want most for my life? What all needs to be better in my life for me to be better… to truly enjoy living?”
“Being entirely honest with myself, what’s all getting in the way of what I want? What burdens are so heavy, they’re crushing me? How am I tempted to settle for anything that feels just a bit better?”
“Does what I do to feel better in the moment work for me over time, or does what I do to feel better lead to other problems or make existing problems that much worse and discomforting?”
How you overcome those obstacles in the way of what you want most—what you value most—IS RECOVERY! To deny recovery is to willingly head down the slippery slope of self-permissive thinking and behavior pursuant of what you feel you deserve. Once tickled by temptation in the mind, behavioral responses to temptation are what advance the swelling of a malignant attitude and elicit behavior.
Temptation comes from our own desires, which entice us and drag us away. These desires give birth to sinful actions. And when sin is allowed to grow, it gives birth to death. So don’t be misled, my dear brothers and sisters. James 1:14-16 (NLT)
When what I am doing (behavior) consistently drags me farther away from what I want and value most, instead of drawing me closer to what I want (and probably need, for that matter), it is clear indication that I NEED RECOVERY. Baited by what feels right, I am hooked yet again, as if I cannot help myself, one way or another ingesting the toxins that are infecting my mind and body, increasing the distance between where I am and where I want to be. I am settling for less than what I want and value most.
How does what I do to manage and cope with anxiety and stress draw me closer to what I want most for my life? Or, how does my “pain management” applications drag me farther away from what I truly want for my life? How am I better than I was? Or, am I worse for wear in how I cope? Maybe, I’m stuck… in some kind of malaise, spinning my wheels.
How will turning to this remedy or that actually help you? Or, is your antidote for discomfort merely a mirage? The remedy looks good from a distance, but up close, when intensifying your pain, is not attractive after all. How does settling for counterfeit gains only add to your loss? How does settling for less aggravate your problem, elevating your stress, increasing the severity of your discomfort? The reality is that settling for less pulls you farther away from what you know at your core is best.
“Your freedom gets limited by an internal reality that is a kind of brokenness or weakness or dividedness inside you. If our will is enslaved to our appetites, if our thoughts are obsessed with unfulfilled desires, if our emotions are slaves to our circumstances, if our bodily habits contradict our professed values, the soul is not free.” —Pastor, Dr. John Ortberg, Psychologist
The remedy is the means to escape. The truth is that to leave from a place, is to enter in to another place. To escape from something, is to escape into something else. Is it less painful there? Maybe for a time. But when the remedy includes the logical consequence of increased pain and struggle, the choice is regrettable.
Trusting Feelings Over Reason
“I don’t care what happens to me.” Disregard consequence? Until when? Until I suffer the consequence! Now, I care! Belief, deceived by emotion, fuels choice, driving choice and behavior. I made my choice. I acted on my choice. Now I have to live with my choice; living with the outcomes produced by my decision.
“When I let my feelings control what I do, I do lots of dumb things… My feelings need not control my decisions. My decisions need be what controls what I feel.” —Pastor Marty Sloan
Sometimes, that’s how it is with choices. You can make an impulsive feeling-driven choice and act on it, only to realize how badly you messed up. You regret the choice once you’re aware of the incoming consequence, and somehow try to undo or unsay what what’s been done or said. Only, it’s too late. Here comes that sinking feeling. Now what?
The more I am separated from that which I truly want, the more it hurts me. I don’t even have to know what I’m missing. Something in me always knows. I’ll buy into the lie that the next big thing I settle for is good enough—even believing it makes me happy—until I experience the hurt connected to what I’ve settled for. The distortions come at a price. Counterfeit pleasure and relief is costly. How much am I willing to pay—to lose—before I come to my senses? Must I go broke? Emotionally, relationally, and perhaps even financially, bankrupt?
It turns out what I chose to do or say did not get me what I wanted, or any closer to where I want to be. Not really.
Is what I want most simply to be free? Free from what… sadness, anger, anxiety, stress… hmm… fear? What am I afraid of? Am I bound by insecurities, afraid to be vulnerable? Do I fear risking my already weakened sense of self-worth?
Is what I want most to be free to love… without fear or reservation, holding nothing back, never afraid of being hurt again? Is what I want most to be free of fear so that I am free to truly enjoy my life, especially with those I love?
Turn to me and have mercy, for I am alone and in deep distress. My problems go from bad to worse. Oh, save me from them all! Feel my pain and see my trouble. Forgive all my sins. Psalms 25:16-18 (NLT)
If you agree with something you’ve heard or read it’s because you already knew it to be true. You agree since it makes sense to your rational mind. You’re more aware and alert when trusting in what you know, rather than trusting in what you feel. Ever heard the expression, think before you act, or react? When behavior is driven by rational thinking, it tends work out more favorably than a sudden, perhaps impulsive, emotional (and too often irrational) reaction to something.
“Emotions too often drive what we do. This is not God’s plan for any of us. Jesus said, ‘You shall know the truth and the truth will set you free.’” —Pastor Rich Wilkerson, Sr.
The truth is that our brains have been short-circuited by the problem of the fallen nature of all of us to be selfish. There is a scientific reality concerning the human brain that dictates—even predetermines—our thinking, feelings, beliefs, and behavior. So, in the context of our nature to be self-centered, we model what we experience growing up, conditioning our emotional sensibilities, shaping our values and beliefs, and influencing how our brains think and process information, which then directs how we behave.
In the current of emotional malfunction, trusting in feelings betrays reasonable thought.
When you get to know people well enough, you’re able to predict outcomes on the horizon because you know how they think, what they appear to believe, and how they react emotionally to situations and circumstances. You are not surprised by what simply makes sense to you about how they process, emotionally and intellectually, the events of their lives. Of course, that was going to happen to them when they… because they… It’s to be expected.
Clogged Filters & Blocked Pathways
It turns out that the brain is a complex automated system. Neurobiology is the study of cells of the nervous system and the organization of these cells into functional circuits that process information and mediate behavior.**
“I can to some extent control my acts. I have no direct control over my temperament. If what we are matters even more than what we do—if indeed if what we do matters chiefly as evidence of what we are—then it follows that the change which I most need to undergo is a change that my own direct, voluntary efforts cannot bring about.” —C.S. Lewis
We don’t intentionally activate ingestion in order to swallow food. The brain decides then what’s nutritionally useful about food and discards the rest as waste. When faced with sudden driving decisions, before contemplating how to maneuver the vehicle, our brains know to avoid disaster. We’re able react to things before measuring potential outcomes. We just do it, seemingly without thinking.
We also make behavioral choices according to how our brains automatically process information every moment of our lives. We ought to think before we act. Instead, we react impulsively (automatically) to what we feel—believe—in the moment, betrayed by emotion, as if we’re not entirely in control of ourselves. What we believe is shaped by how our brains interpret every experience we’ve ever had. What we believe, according to our interpretations of experience, determines meaning; what we identify as meaningful and significant. It’s indeed our individual and collective reality that raw emotion typically overrides rational thought, and what collective we understand to be common sense, and so we behave accordingly.
“When things are working right, the ‘go’ circuitry and the ‘stop’ circuitry really are interconnected and are really talking to each other to help you weigh the consequences of a decision and decide when to go or not to go… It’s not that they’re separable. They’re interactive. They’re interlinked at all times.” —Dr. Anna Rose Childress, Psychology Researcher, University of Pennsylvania
Distorted beliefs and values typically fuels feelings that cry out for a remedy driving behavior that so often leads to addiction to one degree or another. Addictive behavior complicates neurobiology in the brain and compels the ‘go’ circuitry of the brain to go rogue and on it’s own bypassing the warnings of the ‘stop’ circuitry as it pursues what it wants when it wants. It becomes a force that cannot be stopped so long as what it wants is pleasurable and rewarding. So long as it feels good, or at least better than it did, the behavior is reinforced.
At the risk of repeating myself, the following needs to be said to drive home such an important truth about why we do what we do, even though it is painfully clear that so much of what we do makes so little sense; all in the pursuit of relieving discomfort. It seems we can’t help but to trust our feelings, as fragile as they may be.
Therefore, when we act on impulse and react according to what we believe, which dictates how we feel, it might just be what we would later recognize to be an overreaction, in that it defied common sense. When how we interpret an experience shapes how we see ourselves (self-esteem), leading to behavior with the potential for harm to ourselves and/or others, the interpretation likely activated an irrational belief that predicts continuation of the destructive behavior; behavior that continues until the outcome produced by the behavior hurts enough to dispute and challenge the irrational belief.
It’s this pattern of behavior that produces the consistency of disappointment that leads to deepened discouragement, sinking into the depths of depression, until drowning under what feels like overwhelming distress (that hopeless feeling). All because we cannot help but to trust these feelings fueled by irrational beliefs, betraying what we know rationally makes the most sense.
We need help filtering what we feel through what we know rationally makes the most sense.
Of course, the emotional function of the human brain is essential to our life experience. To experience joy we need to feel it for it to mean anything. We were created to feel what we experience. The problem we share is that trusting flawed wounded feelings convinces rational thought to believe in something irrational in the pursuit of happiness. Irrational beliefs trigger impulsive behavioral responses fueling choices that in time, or all at once, produce harmful outcomes that threaten to jeopardize our quality of life.
“Everyone is not okay as they wander through life, and when we know people intimately we will find that much has been stolen from them, that many hearts have dried up and died, and that they cannot find a way out of those prisons by their own power.” —Francis Leeman
Continue reading by clicking on, Irrational Beliefs
Written by Steven Gledhill for FREEdom from MEdom Project
