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Abandoned

Sandra

10 years ago I snapped my Achilles tendon and had to have surgery to repair it.  After surgery I couldn’t walk at all, I didn’t even have crutches.  The day after surgery I was all alone and I had to drag myself on the floor to get to the bathroom, get food, or get my medications.

I felt completely alone, abandoned, and rejected by my friends, family, church, and everyone.  I called my friend in Portland in tears because I was feeling depressed and alone.

Just a couple of years ago I was telling this story, and my friend Crystal was there, and she said, “Wait a minute, I brought you a meal!”

As I have reevaluated that experience I realized that people DID reach out, but I rewrote history to match my feelings.  Now I remember Crystal’s meal, and that my pastor called me, and that my Life group leader asked if I needed meals, and I said “no”.  I felt so abandoned that I forgot about any of the positives of that time.  I looked at the experience through a lens of pain and it blinded me to anything that contradicted my feelings.  I took note of the negatives but not the positives.

I learned several things from Crystal’s awareness opportunity.

Sometimes I’m hurt, but nobody hurt me. I want someone to be responsible for the pain, but there doesn’t need to be a guilty party every time I feel hurt.  I felt abandoned, but that doesn’t mean that anyone really abandoned me.  It was just my own feelings.

Sometimes my hurt feelings are caused by my own insecurities. I might feel like I’m not worth people’s time, so when people don’t reach out, I hear them saying “You don’t matter,” when they never said that or communicated that in any way.  It is my own voice that I am wrestling with.  Or you could say Satan’s voice.

When I expect people to reject me, they do. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. I do things that set them up.  I treat them like they will, and then they do.  I hardly told anyone about the surgery.  I didn’t ask anyone for help; I expected them to be mind-readers.  And I expected that no one would reach out.  And because I expected to see rejection, that’s exactly what I got.

Expectations set me up to be disappointed. I decide what people should do, and make a rule that that’s what good people do, and then when they don’t, I convict them. I call it rejection.  And I feel rejection. Since then I have learned the skill of turning every expectation into a desire.  A desire is something that I would like, but I don’t have to have. I may ask for something but I don’t treat it like a rule.  So if someone doesn’t meet a desire, I’m OK with that, and not hurt by it.  Expectations just set me up to be angry or hurt when I am disappointed.

I realized that I never asked anyone for any help. My huge revelation was that if I had asked anyone for help, I would have had a houseful of help.  My phone would have been ringing off the hook, I would have had more food in my refrigerator than it could hold, and I would have had 10 personal assistants.  I know that’s the truth, but I never thought about it that way, because I was viewing the situation through a lens of pain and “victim”, and I didn’t want to see a contradictory story.  I felt rejection by people who weren’t even given the chance to reach out.

Thank you for the meal Crystal! It really brought healing to my life!

Personal Growth

Perfectionism

Sandra

Sometimes, the reason that it is hard to get along with others, is that we believe things should be done a certain way. We give almost moral weight to doing things the way that we think are the “right” or “wrong” way, when they are not “wrong” and “right” ways, but different ways.  Getting along with others requires a willingness to give up our personal preferences and desires.  There is nothing wrong with sharing a personal preference.  We can have opinions and even ask for what we want.  The problem is when we let our desires become demands.  If we are getting angry, then we know our desire has become a demand.  Also, when we want things our way too often, we become difficult to get along with.  We need to be able to hold our preferences with an open hand.  This requires the ability to accept and respect the way other people do things, even if they are not our way.

A perfectionist is someone who becomes obsessed with relatively trivial matters.  They declare these matters to be moral (right or wrong), when they are not.  They make trivial matters of utmost importance.  They allow these things to become more important than the relationship, and cause division between people.  They give criticism and withhold praise when things are not perfect.  They are willing to get angry and argue about small issues.

A perfectionist also holds themselves to an impossibly high moral standard, and judges themselves harshly for not achieving perfection.  They also sometimes see themselves as less flawed than they actually are, because it is too scary to admit to themselves that they are not perfect.  Perfectionism gives a false sense of value, and false sense of pride.

The root cause of perfectionism is a belief that your worth is determined by the opinion of others, and by what you accomplish, and fail to accomplish.  They believe that they gain or lose value based on their behavior.  A perfectionist has too low of an opinion of himself because he has normal human limitations and fails to be perfect.  But he is also prideful in his ability to maintain stricter criteria than other humans.

The cure for perfectionism is to accept yourself as a human being with human limits and human vulnerabilities to mistakes and criticisms.

The way you see yourself affects the way you treat others, because we evaluate others using the same criteria we use for ourselves.  Your value does not come from being perfect.  Remember that when you make a mistake, it does not need to threaten your value.  Learn to be comfortable with mistakes and imperfection.  Have compassion for yourself instead of getting angry with yourself.  This will lead to having more patience and compassion for others.

Strive to be perfectly human (dependent on God) instead of being perfect.  In other words, know your identity.

Most people look to their skills, accomplishments, status, and or appearance for their identity.  Identity is very tied to self-acceptance, self-worth, self-image, and self-esteem.  It is all “how I view myself”.  People use these things as a source of being “ok” with yourself, feeling like you are “enough”, feeling confident and secure, liking yourself.  When we get our identity from things about us, it leads to either pride or self-hatred/low self-esteem.  We need to discover our God given identity and gain our self-acceptance from the only true source of our worth.

Who are you? What is your Identity? You are God’s prized creation.  You possess dignity. You are worthy of respect.  You are worthy of high esteem. You are God’s chosen and adopted child.  You are a loved son or a loved daughter.  You are a citizen of heaven.  You are God’s heir.  You are worth dying for. You are worth saving.  You are worth loving every day of eternity.

3 Biblical Truths:

1.We are only valuable because of God’s love. We are not valuable because of looks, talents, or anything that we do.  God’s love is the only thing that makes us valuable.  This truth leads us to humility as we realize our need for dependence on God rather than ourselves.  We are incapable of earning our own value.

2.We are completely valuable because of God’s love. God’s love actually makes us worthy of respect and high esteem.  This truth leads us to a very positive self-image, but not in a prideful way, because it is based on what God has done not what we have done.  We receive our value as a gift, not something we can earn.  This gift is unconditional; it can’t be earned or lost by our behavior.  We can be confident and secure in our value as a person at all times because of God’s love.

3.We can never be more or less valuable than anyone else.  There is no room for comparison.  God decides who is valuable, not us, and not the world.  And God said everyone has value, so everyone does. God says that every single one of us is important, valuable and needed, and no one is any more or less valuable than anyone else. God gave us value and we should not let anyone take it away.  We need to decide to be secure in His love for us.  And we should never treat someone else like they are less valuable than us, because that would be like stealing away from them the value that God gave them.

Personal Growth

God’s Acceptance

Sandra

Sometimes when people tell us that we have hurt them, we become angry and defensive.  We don’t want to take on more blame than we deserve.  We find a way to turn the blame back on them.  We blame them for hurting us.  But the truth is the pain that we feel comes from our own realization of being sinners, and not wanting to be a sinner because we must protect our view of ourselves.  We want to see ourselves in a good light.  Admitting being a sinner is admitting failure.  It is survival, we must protect our view of ourselves because if we are not good people even though we try to be, we are a failure at life.  We don’t want to admit that we have faults, because then we can’t evaluate ourselves as a good person. We need to see ourselves as a good person because self-worth is based on seeing yourself in a good light.  Self-esteem is liking yourself, and you can’t like yourself if you are not a good person.

But the truth is, we are not good. Our sin nature is not likable and we can’t get rid of it.  But our sin nature is not us.  Our true self is our spirit which is redeemed by God and it is only “good” because Christ has redeemed it, not because of our own success.  We ourselves could never be good.  But we can love our redeemed selves, not because of goodness but because of gratefulness to God with humility.  We can love our “self” that is clean and redeemed by God. But we still have to fully own (admit to) our sinfulness; it is a part of us.  The fact that we are still sinners does not have to threaten our love/acceptance of ourselves; we can love ourselves the exact way that God does.  He loves us even in our sin because we are worth it not because of righteous things we have done but because of his grace.  We can love ourselves in spite of our sinfulness because we have been redeemed.  This is a humble love for ourselves because we did not earn our lovableness, God provided our value by his choice to love us. When we try to love ourselves because we are so good it is based on a lie, a false evaluation of ourselves, because no one is good even on their best days.  Goodness is not achievable, so if goodness is the indicator of self-like, no one can every really like themselves legitimately because we are sinners and will continue to sin until death.  We need to have a healthy love and acceptance of ourselves based on what God has done, not what we have done.  And we need to fully accept that we are not only sinners, but we are responsible for each and every one of our sinful thoughts and actions, and we need to hold ourselves responsible for our sin rather than deny that it exists.

“A complete knowing of our self in relation to God requires knowing our self as deeply loved by God, our self as deeply sinful, and our self as in a process of being redeemed and restored.”  “A genuinely transformational knowing of self always involves encountering and embracing previously unwelcome parts of self.”  David Benner

When we recognize that we don’t need to be “good” to be a valuable person, we are free to accept ourselves, the good, bad, and the ugly.  We can acknowledge our shortcomings and not be so threatened.  We can listen to the feelings of others and actually care about how they feel and apologize when necessary, even when we ourselves are in pain.  When we know our true identity in Christ, we become secure.  We become strong enough to hear painful things about ourselves.  And we become strong enough to care about others in spite of the pain.

 

Blogs

God is Not Condemning

Sandra

If you have in your mind a condemning God, you don’t have the right view of God.  When you have received his love you won’t be afraid; you will hear “I love you.”

1 Jn. 4:17-18 says: “Love is made complete so that we will have confidence on the day of judgement…There is no fear in love. Love casts out fear, because fear has to do with punishment.” When we have received God’s love, we don’t need to fear losing our forgiven state with Him.

Rom. 8:1-2 “There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

John 3:17 says “God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”

Rom. 8: 33-39 says that “Nothing can separate us from the love of God.”

When we “believed”, we were declared “not guilty.”  There is no more separation. There is no more anger, or wrath. We do not have to fear condemnation or guilt.  (Jn. 3:18; Heb. 10:14; 17-18) We are legally “not guilty” by believing.   A guilty Christian is an oxymoron.  We don’t become guilty again each time we sin.  We don’t lose God’s love or acceptance when we sin.  Jesus died for all of our sins, past, present, and future.  The whole point of Jesus death was so that He could have a relationship with us even though we are, and continue to be, sinners.  He knew that we would wrestle with a desire to be independent from Him until the day we die.  God sees our inability as a part of our reality and he is not mad at our weakness.  In Matt. 5:3 Jesus calls being “poor in spirit” or being in a state of incompleteness before God, “a blessed state”.  In 2 Cor. 12:7-10, Paul says that our weakness keeps us humble and dependent upon God’s strength.

If we are still feeling guilty when we sin, the problem is inside of us.  God does not give us feelings of guilt.  The Holy Spirit sends us messages of conviction, not feelings.  We decide how to feel about the message.  God does not motivate us by guilt, he motivates us by love.  The more we receive God’s love, the more that we will be motivated by his love to live the way that we were created to live. We don’t need guilt motivation.  God does want us to know how terrible sin is and that it needs judgment, but only so that we understand how great our salvation is, not so that we think we are bad forever.  He has rescued us.  He wants us to see ourselves as rescued forever, not judged forever.

God does not want us feeling guilty.  Jesus died on the cross to cure us of our guilt.  Guilt does not motivate us to change for the right reason.  Guilt is focuses on how we feel about ourselves, not on the offended party or the destructiveness of our actions.  When we feel guilty, we want it to go away so that we can feel better about ourselves.  But when we are motivated by God’s love for us and therefore our love for his perfect design, and for all of his valuable creations, then we change because we have empathy for the people that we hurt and we have a desire to do things that are right because they bring life and not death.

God’s acceptance of you, and therefore your acceptance of yourself as a continually sinful person, does not cause you to sin more.  The lack of fear allows you to face the truth instead of deny it or try to escape the guilt feelings. Once you don’t have to worry about guilt anymore, you are free to be motivated by love.  When you realize that God is “for you”, and he loves you, and has always had your best interest in mind, you understand that all of his instructions and commands are good, and benefit you, and bring life.   This leads to freedom from sin motivated by love rather than guilt.

Theology

Does God Leave Us When We Sin?

Sandra

Many Christians believe that when they sin, God turns away from them, he leaves them because he can’t be in the presence of sin.  And then when we repent he comes back.

I have been thinking about this and it seems to me that the Bible teaches something different.

First of all, there are many examples in the Bible that make it clear that God can be in the presence of sin.  Satan was in the presence of the Lord in Job chapter 1 verses 6-12 and chapter 2 verses 1-7. God not only allowed Satan in his presence, but took his suggestion to strike Job.   Jesus was God incarnate.  He came into our world and lived and ate with sinners.  Also the Bible teaches in Jeremiah 23:23-24 that God is omnipresent.  God is present everywhere.  He fills heaven and earth.  If he is everywhere, then he is in the presence of sinful people.

If God could only be around us when we were morally perfect, wouldn’t that mean that such a thing was possible?  Have you ever had a day you were morally perfect? I haven’t.  Every Christian in the world wrestles with sin every single day of his or her life.  Even the apostle Paul complained, “The good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice” (Romans 7:20).  Paul also said in 1 Corinthians 4:4 that even though his conscience is clear, it does not mean that he is innocent.  None of us is conformed to the image of Christ overnight.  Sanctification is a lifelong process.  That process will not be complete until we are clothed with our imperishable bodies, enter the Holy City, and see the Lord face to face.  If we had to be morally perfect for God to be in our presence, then he would never be in our presence. And yet God lives inside of us. (1 Cor. 3:16) And he is with us. (Matt. 28:20; Heb. 13:5)

If God can only be around us when we are sinless, that would make God’s forgiveness conditional.  God’s love for us always has been and always will be in spite of our behavior, not because of our behavior. (Eph. 2:4-5 “We were by nature objects of wrath.  But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions.”  Titus 3:3-5 At one time we were foolish, disobedient… but when the love of God appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy.” Rom. 5:8 “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”)  The Bible clearly teaches that salvation is given because of God’s grace, not because of our good behavior.  And if it is not based on our behavior before our salvation, it doesn’t get taken away based on behavior after. (Rom. 11:6; Gal. 2:16, Gal. 2:21; Eph. 28-9)  The Bible also clearly teaches that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. (Rom. 8:1-2; Jn. 3:17; Rom 8:33-39)

Maybe the idea that God can’t be in the presence of sin comes from Habakkuk 1:13 where it says that God’s “eyes are too pure to look on evil”.  Could it be that Habakkuk 1:13 is a picture of God’s moral perfection and holiness?  Maybe it is not meant to be a statement about his physical presence. We know God does not literally have eyes.  God is spirit (Jn. 4:24) and does not have a physical presence.

The Bible teaches that God is opposed to sin and evil, that he is holy and righteous.  We know that eventually he will quarantine evil from good when he creates the New Heaven and Earth (Rev. 21).  At that time, God will physically separate those who love him from those who don’t.  Those who love him will no longer be in the presence of sin from that point forward.

Until then, God tolerates the presence of sin in order to accomplish his purposes with mankind.  Thank goodness, because if God truly could not be in the presence of sin, none of us would be here!

My Journal

My Story

Sandra

For years John and I repeated the same patterns.  He would do something or not do something, I would feel like he didn’t love me and become angry.  No matter how many times he told me that he loved me, I never believed him.  I thought that he was just being a good person and loving me out of duty.  The most consistent fight was over his being late for dinner.  I felt that it was proof that he did not love me.  We tried to work it out on our own but we couldn’t, so we started meeting with another pastor couple.  They listened and encouraged us.  The wife recognized that I had low self-esteem and gave me some verses to memorize about God’s love.  It was while I was thinking about God’s love that I realized that I was not believing that I was worthy of love because I had never been loved.  It didn’t matter how much John actually loved me, I would have never believed him, because the problem was inside of me.  I had always thought that I believed that God loved me, but it didn’t make a difference in my life because I didn’t realize that love made me valuable.  So I didn’t really like myself and I was convinced I wasn’t worth loving by anyone else.  As a child I felt that my parents never told me they loved me, never spent time with me, never came to any of my cross country meets or any other important events in my life.  I used to beg my dad to teach me to golf or how to fish because he had taught my brother, but he always refused.  My parents hardly ever even talked to me.  When we needed medical attention my parents never seemed to notice. We would just suffer with disease until our school called home.  They didn’t protect us from people who they should have protected us from.  I was so angry because of the pain of not being loved by anyone.  So I believed that all of John’s actions of love were only out of duty because he could not possibly truly love me, because deep down I believed I was not valuable enough to love.   When I realized this false belief, I began to accept John’s love as genuine.  I realized that I was deeply hurt, but the hurt wasn’t caused by John.  I had been angry at the wrong person.  I was punishing him for my own insecurity.  I needed to resolve the hurt so that I didn’t have to live an angry life any more.

I started really working on the question of where our value comes from and realized I had been trying to get my sense of value from the opinions of the people around me.  I have finally come to terms with the fact that people don’t get to tell me my value, I am simply valuable because God created all human beings with value.  It can’t be taken away by anyone but it also can’t be earned.  My value is a gift from God and I am completely dependent on Him for it.  I have become very realistic about my weaknesses and inability to be “good” and yet I still believe I am immensely valuable and worthy of love.  My dad doesn’t get to tell me by his treatment of me that I am not worth anything.  The belief that he could, is a lie.  God is the only one who gets to assign my worth.  Worth also does not come through our own accomplishments such as physical appearance, popularity, intelligence, wealth, competence, ability, talents, grades or success.  It feels like it does, but it doesn’t.  I am only valuable because of God’s love and I am completely valuable because of God’s love.  There is no one who is more valuable or less valuable than anyone else, all people are valuable simply because they are made in the image of God and are deeply loved by Him.  Brad Pitt is equal in value to Nick Vujicic (a paraplegic); the homeless or disabled person is equal to the president of the United States; there is no room for comparison.  We can never be more or less valuable than anyone else.

God has become the loving father that I never had.  I have reclaimed the true meaning of father.  I choose not to allow my dad to define ”father” for me anymore.  I am choosing now to allow The Father’s love to transform me in a way I never did before.  I have become completely dependent on His view of me.  I have a set of verses that I read every day to remind me.  When I don’t go to God for the truth, I slip back into believing I have to earn love, or rely on people propping up my insecurity, or be good at something to be worth anything.  God reminds me that love is unconditional, and love gives me value that cannot be taken.

I have agreed with God that a father should love his girls well and that my father is guilty of not doing that. Yet I have also accepted that I am equally deserving of judgment, God is the only rightful judge, and I have received the free gift of forgiveness. So I really can’t withhold forgiveness from anyone else without becoming ungrateful and callous to the forgiveness I have received.

Another thing I learned through counseling was that blaming my parents for the way I turned out was keeping me from growing.  Although it is true that their neglect did result in my lack of social skills, a low view of myself, and mistrust of people’s motives towards me, I had to take responsibility for learning how to grow in those areas.  These shortcomings were not my fault as a child but as an adult they are my responsibility to take ownership of and do the hard work of changing my thinking, my behavior, and become an emotionally, relationally, and spiritually healthy person.  When I was holding my parents responsible I could just dislike myself and feel sorry for myself, but when I took ownership of my own brokenness, it opened my eyes to my part in perpetuating these things in my life. I realized that I could change myself and I didn’t have to be a slave to their mistakes. Whether they apologized or not, or changed or not or even acknowledged it or not, I am choosing to not allow them to have so much power over my life.

I am learning to own my part in my poor self- image, angry behavior, bitter attitude, pride, etc.  It’s no longer my parent’s issue, its mine.  I am responsible for who I am and how I behave.  I need to be secure enough in myself to be able to allow others to be who they are, warts and all, and not let it affect how I feel about myself.  When I am secure in myself I don’t have to require that people around me build me up, think well of me, or like me, etc.  If their differences upset me, there is something wrong inside of me rather than them.  Security in God means that nothing and no one can shake my belief that I am “OK”, I am loved, and I am worth something.  Taking responsibility for my own behavior does not mean that other people aren’t responsible for their behavior, it just means they are responsible to God rather than to me.  I can’t control others anyway so it is best to give up trying.  It is amazing how much love I have to give others when I am completely secure in myself because of God, and I can love them even though they don’t think or act the way I think they should.

My Journal

My Lies

Sandra

All of my life I have struggled with talking to people, making friends, and just being social in any way.  I tried so hard to understand why, because I really wanted to change but didn’t know how.  I thought maybe I was just born that way.  Maybe it was just the personality that I inherited.  I was just shy.  But then I started to doubt that, because in some situations I am a leader and very outgoing.  I started to believe that maybe the issue was just a lack of social skills.  I grew up in a family that did not talk at all.  Both my parents were very quiet and very solitary.  We never had company and we didn’t talk at all as a family.   Maybe I just had big gaps in my knowledge of normal social behavior.  When I started seeing a counselor, I realized how much more complicated the issue really was.  As a child I interpreted my parent’s behavior toward me and came to conclusions about my value and how to survive in the world.  I came up with some strategies that helped me through childhood but now sabotage every possibility of relationship.

I believed that my parents did not want me.  I felt rejected and abandoned by them.  I believed that they thought I was bad.  I believed that they saw me as a burden.  I concluded that I was not worth loving.

As a child, I thought that if people really knew me they would find out how worthless I was, so I didn’t risk reaching out for relationship. That way I could protect myself from ever having to experience rejection again.

I didn’t want to be a burden to anyone.

Burden; that is what I thought I was to everyone.

That is my number one agreement- I will never be a burden to anyone again.  I will never need love or anything from anyone.  And I will not push myself on anyone because I am a burden.  I will not put them in that position and I will not put myself in that position.

I thought the only way anyone would ever be my friend was out of pity and I didn’t want anyone’s pity.

I thought there was nothing good about me that anyone would want.

I never responded to peoples attempts to reach out to me because I didn’t want to impose my yucky self on anyone. I believed it was a matter of time before they found out, so I didn’t let them in.

I was convinced that I did not need any relationships, and that I was just fine without anyone.

I didn’t know that I had these commitments and beliefs buried deep inside, and that they were guiding everything.  It wasn’t conscious thought, it would just happen automatically, I would just shut down any communication with people.  But there was a whole other side of me that was becoming dissatisfied with not having relationships and I was beginning to recognize my loneliness.  And I hated that I could not talk to people or make friends.   But I didn’t know why it was so hard, but now I know.

I have learned that I gave my parents the power to define my value, and I am learning to take it back.  My value isn’t based on what anyone thinks of me.  My value is a gift from God and it is not dependent on anything that I do.

Since I have begun to believe the truth of my value, I have taken more risks.  I have joined bible study groups, and risked friendships, and put myself out there for people to reject.  The most amazing thing that has happened, is that instead of experiencing rejection, I have experienced acceptance. I didn’t think people would be able to see past my awkward behavior to the real me, but they can, and they still accept me.

My view of relationships has changed in a huge way.  I always acted like I didn’t need people and I could care less if anyone liked me or talked to me.  I developed a skill of invisibility.  I could get in and get out without ever being noticed.  If people reached out, I gave one word answers.  I thought “they don’t need me, and I don’t need them, and it doesn’t matter”.  Not only do I now believe that relationships are important, I believe that relationships are one of the most important things in life.  I believe that we were created for relationship.  I believe that I can benefit from knowing people and that they can benefit from knowing me.  People are valuable to me, and I am valuable to them.  We need each other.  We grow and thrive through human connection.  We were made to pour love and acceptance into the lives of others, and sadly I wasted most of my life so far being so busy protecting myself from pain that I didn’t have anything to give anyone. With God’s help I hope to change that.

Parenting / Passionate Legacy

We Pass On What We Receive (Part 5)

jgolling
Freedom to Choose

God did not force us to love him or obey him.  God does not use anger, intimidation, or guilt.  He holds us with an open hand.  He pursues us with love, not authority. 
When our children are young we must train them to live according to God’s life-giving principles.  We must have control because we are responsible for their safety and training.  We must provide the moral storehouse and the discipline that they need to be able to follow through.  But as our children grow older we must trust that they have the tools, and accept the fact they have the choice of either adopting them as their own, or rejecting them.  When we understand that God allows us to make our own choice about whether or not to make God the source of our life, we understand that it is up to our teens to make the same choice for themselves.  Our goal is that our children would recognize that God truly is the source of Life, and decide for themselves to depend on Him.

We must respect our teen’s ability to have beliefs and opinions that are independent of ours.  We cannot control the thoughts or motivations of our teen’s hearts and minds.  When we try to exert power that we don’t have over our teens, we undermine our own goal of helping them know the love of God, and choose to look to Him as the source of life.  We must accept that we are not in control, and give our teens room to make their own autonomous choices.  We can best do this by allowing our life to speak for itself. As we build a relationship with our children that is based on respect, we will naturally gain an invitation of influence.
Parenting / Passionate Legacy

We Pass On What We Receive ( Part 4)

jgolling
Biblical Discipline

Confrontation and discipline should be done in love, to benefit someone who is making choices that are damaging to themselves or others.  God teaches us in His word that confrontation of sin is for the purpose of restoring, rescuing, redeeming, and reconciling, and should always be done in humility, gentleness, and love.  God does not want us to confront sin to get even, to vent anger, or to punish.  Sadly, not many people have experienced confrontation according to biblical principles.  Most people have experienced a corrupted version of biblical confrontation that was not life-giving at all.  This leads to many destructive parenting practices in discipline. 
God does not want us to confront someone to show them that they are “bad” or that we are mad.  He does not want us to confront for the purpose of controlling people through fear and intimidation. When we do, we demonstrate that we believe that it is our job to judge and punish people and make them be good.
Jesus did not die to make us be good people, he died to give us life. Confrontation should communicate a bigger picture than just to stop being bad and be good.  It should communicate the importance of coming back to the life that God created us for; life as God designed it to work. When we return to dependence on God as the source, we benefit from experiencing Life as God created it to be.  Turning from our sin is not just a means to escape condemnation, it is the way back to Life.

When confrontation is done for the right purpose and with the right attitude in relationships, families, and communities over a long period of time, trust is developed.  When people are able to trust that confrontation is for their benefit and not to point out their badness, they become more willing to humbly look at themselves and see the areas in which they need to grow. If we are using biblical discipline we don’t use the tools of anger, shame, or intimidation. When we understand God’s model for confrontation, we can give consequences to our children in a loving and positive way that is focused on rescuing, redeeming, and reconciling, rather than punishing. 
Parenting / Passionate Legacy

We Pass On What We Receive (Part 3)

jgolling
Humility

We are in the process of being perfected.  We all vacillate several times a day from one false God to another, to find our sense of worth and significance.  When it comes to sin, we are all on a level playing field.  We are never “good” or in a state of sinlessness.  Our only goodness comes from God.  On our own we have nothing to be proud of or take credit for.  Understanding this allows us to be humble with our children.  We can admit that we don’t always get things right.  We can sympathize with their struggle with sin.  We are not above it.  We struggle every day and we need to depend on God for his help.  We know God accepts us in our struggle and we accept ourselves.  This leads to humility.  And it leads to being able to accept our children when they fail.  Acceptance enables our children to humbly admit their sin and turn to God for help rather than deny their sin.  Children only feel safe to be humble when they know they will be treated with grace when they fail.  Spiritual growth happens when we face our sin humbly and honestly.