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Throw away your Christian checklist
Bible Teaching, Christian Life, Spiritual Growth, Spiritual Life, Uncategorized

Why You Should Throw Away Your Christian Checklist

It’s well past time for you to throw away your Christian checklist. But first, quickly, what are the things you DO as a Christian?

If you’ve spent any time in church at all, you probably immediately list prayer, Bible study, and attending church services. And if you’re a relatively new believer you may find those activities incredibly meaningful and even exciting. If you’re really into spiritual disciplines you may also think of fasting, praying in the Spirit, giving, sharing your faith with others, and perhaps more.

But too often our spiritual lives can become all about doing certain things. As long as you pray, read your Bible, and go to church you somehow check off a list in your head and feel you’re at least a reasonably OK Christian. Don’t do those things and you have to start expending emotional energy to quiet the little imps of guilt building up in your soul.

But have you ever known someone to become a believer because they just couldn’t wait to do those certain behaviors? “I’ve just got to become a Christian so I can spend 30 minutes a day reading my Bible and sit in church an hour every Sunday.” Not a chance! Any time our spiritual life becomes about a list of behaviors it quickly becomes dry, empty, and potentially destructive.

And yet there are things Christians do. Our behaviors do make a difference.

So how are we to think about our Christian behaviors without letting them become dry, empty, or worse? Why do we do the things we do? What’s the point?

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Healing in marriage
Christian Life, Marriage and Family Life, Marriage and Relationships, Relationships, Spiritual Growth, Uncategorized

How God Uses Marriage to Heal You

God uses marriage to heal you. It’s one of the most important and effective tools He uses to bring you the healing and transformation you need.

If you’re in a miserable or dysfunctional marriage that may seem completely contradictory. How can I experience healing when my spouse is emotionally unavailable, won’t communicate, continues to cause me pain, refuses to understand me, and withholds intimacy? I need healing FROM my marriage!

You’re right; you married a sinner. You married someone who doesn’t meet your needs and keeps wounding you over and over again.

But your spouse married a sinner too – YOU. You don’t meet their needs and you keep wounding your spouse over and over again too.

Didn’t God know marriage would cause so much pain? Couldn’t He have created us without these needs and desires?

Yes, He could have. But without marriage we would be deprived of one of God’s most effective tools through which we experience our need of Him as well as His healing and transformation. Some of His best miracles only happen in the impossible environment of marriage.

(Note: Trauma, abuse, and violence is always wrong. If you are in an abusive marriage, get help right away.)

Here are some of the most important ways in which God uses marriage to heal:

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Christian Life, Emotional and Mental Health, Overcoming Hardship, Spiritual Growth, Spiritual Struggle, Uncategorized

How to Receive Healing from God

We all need to receive healing from God. (And if you believe you’re the exception, you need an extra special kind of healing!) I believe healing is perhaps the deepest meaning of redemption. Something has happened to us on the inside that has left us seriously broken. And even forgiveness, as wonderful as it is, provides only a partial answer. Those steps to healing have some common characteristics for each of us.

The need for healing comes in many varieties;

  • The child abused or neglected during his most formative years
  • The woman used for someone else’s pleasure so long she believes that’s all she’s good for
  • The addict whose soul, body, mind, future, and finances are completely controlled by an outside substance or behavior
  • The “good” church member exhausted from endlessly doing good things so she will look good
  • The spouse left hopeless, angry, and bitter from decades of marriage misery
  • The man whose unhealthy lifestyle has left him with humanly incurable diseases
  • The woman whose genes, choices, and circumstances leave her depressed and anxious
  • The parent, spouse, child, sibling, or friend grieving the death of a loved one
  • The person who sees no future beyond poverty, persecution, violence, or slavery

Jesus applied Isaiah’s passage to Himself when He said, “The Spirit of the LORD is upon Me, Because He has anointed Me To preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, To proclaim liberty to the captives And recovery of sight to the blind, To set at liberty those who are oppressed; To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD.” (Luke 4:18-19)

We can hope that happens in one mysterious moment. And sometimes it does.

More often it’s a process, one in which you and I fully participate.

These steps are almost always important as you receive healing from God:

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Couple in rowboat
Christian Life, Emotional and Mental Health, Marriage and Family Life, Marriage and Relationships, Relationships, Spiritual Growth, Uncategorized

Married On Purpose: Intentional Relationship Investments

Too many people slide into marriage without much intentionality. It’s just something you do – “if we feel like it.” But for something as important as marriage, something that will affect your health, wellbeing and happiness for the rest of your life and the wellbeing of many others, “sliding” isn’t a good plan. The only way to succeed is to be Married on Purpose.

Marriage is perhaps the riskiest endeavor humankind currently engages in. Is there any other agreement you would enter into when the general failure rate is around 50%? Two attached sinners are certain to destroy each other if left alone. And even if your marriage lasts you are guaranteed a super-sized dose of frustration, disappointment, and deep internal pain.

Is it any wonder young people are frequently delaying marriage, opting for other living arrangements, trying the hook-up culture, and/or declining to get involved in serious dating relationships? That’s certainly not the case for all. But for the first time there are more single adults in our country than married adults.

Of course most people who get married believe they’re the exception. MY husband won’t get too busy with work to have time to make me feel special, or leave dirty sox and dishes lying around. MY wife will always look beautiful, and always cheer me on in whatever I’m pursuing. OUR relationship will never deteriorate into apathy, conflict, or miserable détente.

If you’re right, if your marriage is the exception, it will be because you and your spouse make daily intentional investments on purpose. Like a garden, without daily attention to planting good seeds, pulling weeds, and watering regularly, your marriage will produce thistles instead of flowers.

Here are some things to invest in daily to assure you are Married on Purpose.

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Permanent Freedom
Bible Teaching, Christian Life, Overcoming Hardship, Spiritual Growth, Spiritual Struggle, Uncategorized

How to Experience Permanent Freedom

Wouldn’t it be nice to live completely free – permanently? Imagine how it would feel to not have to expend energy fighting against fear, or anger, or lust. Think what your life would be like if the fruit of the Spirit – love, joy, peace, goodness, faith, etc. – was your default mode of responding to people and circumstances. There’s a permanent freedom God has promised that can begin now.

Sometimes I think back to the years I was so dysfunctional. But the truth is, I have to work hard to remember. The sting is gone – permanently. As I walked with God out of that prison in my mind I learned a way to live that has brought permanent freedom. Who I am on the inside is different. My default way of responding to even the worst of circumstances is not the same. I’m not vulnerable in the ways I was. I’m not holding on by my fingernails, desperately praying I won’t fall apart again. It’s just not there any longer.

I say that humbly and gratefully. I am still a sinner saved by grace. I am still dependent moment by moment on God’s presence through His Holy Spirit. But I have absolutely no fear that a negative circumstance, attack from the enemy, or some toxic person will wreck my peace and spiritual joy.

My experience of permanent freedom has lasted 20 years. Do I feel pain? Yes. Must I make a daily choice to live in that freedom? Yes.

But this I know; “Once I was blind. Now I see!”  (See John 9:25)

Wouldn’t you love to stop wrestling with the same sins year after year? I think God sometimes pleads, sometimes shouts, “You don’t have to live like this!” You can come to the place where:

  • The desire for cigarettes or alcohol is gone
  • Someone irritates you and you feel no internal anger
  • A horrible circumstance happens and you respond calmly without angst
  • Your default response to a real need is not how little can you give, but how much
  • Your mind forgets the pathway to pornography or illicit sex

Don’t get me wrong. We live in a sinful messed-up world, and will until Jesus returns. We will never be “good enough” on our own. We will be forever dependent on the cleansing power of the blood of Jesus and the sustaining power of His Holy Spirit.

But we don’t have to be slaves to sin any longer!

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