“For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline.” 2 Timothy 1:7
Side Bar: Part of my desire with this blog is to share with you the steps God has had me take to “come back from the land of the dead” if you will…that is the coming out of the whale back onto shore part. (I’m still on my way to “Nineveh”, which while I want to get there now, I know that I need to pace with God and not rush the process.) I believe one of the key components missing in our churches today is to disciple new believers until they can become disciplers themselves. (Side note: what other word do we have in the English language that comes from disciple? Discipline – which is a very important word in the human life indeed.) While I am not quite qualified yet to be considered a discipler – I am on my way and can at least share the steps God has used with you to help you get on your way also!
Today has just been one of those days I desperately needed to hear the promises God has given me…and to repeat them out loud over and over again. I urgently needed to be told by myself and trusted kindred spirits that God’s promises are real, true and honest. For me, writing so I can visually remind myself is a great way to do this.
For you? What do you do when the trials come? Do you wallow in the facts that seem to oppose you on every front? I certainly have this tendency. Do you burry your head in the sand like an ostrich (BTW is actually just a myth)? Or are you like me, a turtle who sucks its head back in quickly at the perceived notion of danger lurking about?
Well, today – I got to put myself to the test…and by golly I think I am definitely learning. While initially I felt myself get angry, my stomach start to hurt at the thought of the danger coming my way and start to question if what God has told me is really true….I found myself asking, “Is there a new way to handle this dilemma? What would God want me to do here?”
I am happy to report that yes – you can teach an old cat (as I don’t want to call myself a dog) new tricks! That yes, as I recently watched in a most excellent movie The Help – you sometimes have to take a stand and speak up even when you face opposition and danger – but that God will never leave you alone when you are standing up for righteousness and holiness. And that God, if you call on Him, will remind you of all His good and perfect will for your life thru His words found in the Bible.
“Ok Holli, are you going to share any practical steps that you took to make this leap of faith?” Why, yes – I am so glad you asked. As this has been on my heart to start doing, in case any of you were like me: a believer in Christ but struggling to make the leap from just ordinary person to extraordinary follower; that you read the bible and know the promises of God yet the joy of your first taste of God has “worn off”; that you aren’t dying to sit down and read the bible every second of the day…over and above any other book or other movie; where you definitely know you love God, but feel stalled in your relationship with Him. Do you know what I am talking about? Have you been there? Or are you there currently?
For me, God has definitely been front and center since I became a follower…but as I got married and the kids came along – I found myself making excuses as to why I wasn’t in the Word. I hated those excuses and didn’t buy them, not even for a moment. Deep down I really wanted someone to challenge me and tell me not to believe the lies I told myself…and boy did God answer that feeble prayer I held in my heart.
First among the changes God made was to bring me a dear friend and sister in Christ, who slowly but surely showed and continues to show me there is a definite way to live this life for God…but it can’t be by chance or done half-heartedly. It has to be a conscious effort on my part, one in which I put the verses I read to good use…not just memorizing them, but using them in my daily life. She has taught me the importance of constant contact with God’s word, either through reading, hearing sermons or listening to worship music. She has shown me how to renew my mind and my attitude, doing away with my old-self that is being corrupted by my own deceitful desires…and having some self-discipline along the way.
Now as an…oh golly can I actually say this?…an athlete – I know a little about self-discipline. I know that you often times have to give up a little of what you might really like to do in order to train your physical body.
Yet, if you have ever trained for anything, you well know that the body isn’t the only thing you have to conquer. You have to conquer your mind almost more than your body. I always tell my clients that a workout is more about your mental state than your physical one. Sure, you shouldn’t ever over-train your body – that is almost more dangerous than being a couch potato…but if you are well fit, there comes a point where the only thing holding you back is your own mind.
I know that pastors often talk about the similarities of training the physical and training the mental…but something finally just clicked with me lately (okay, so maybe I’m not as fast of a learner as I would like to believe). That if I want to be able to perform in the battle – the spiritual one – that I needed to train my brain very practically. I cannot always control the thoughts that pop into my brain…but I CAN take those thoughts captive once I realize what they are, that I don’t just let them run around bouncing off the sides of my mind – but compare them to God’s truth and if they aren’t the same as what God says about life, me and the world – that I need to rebuke those thoughts and do my best to fight them out of my mind. Sometime the only way to do this is to speak out loud to the one that most likely is trying his best to put them there. (See my “No More” post on who this is.)
This is much like performing a series of bicep curls to make my arms more cut, or running sets on the track to make myself faster and/or have more endurance. The brain can be trained to be more “cut”, to be faster to capture wrong thoughts and have more endurance as well…if you are willing to put the time in and forsake some of those other things in life that look so appealing…just as you would train for a physical event.
Even the psychology world is figuring this out. David Burns in his book Feeling Good uses what is called “cognitive behavioral therapy”, giving his clients very practical ways to write down their thoughts, “rebuke” them by labeling them in categories of “distorted thoughts” and then writing down a counter, healthy thought. He has proven over the years that this is very effective in conquering depression, anxiety, OCD among other mental “sicknesses”.
This is what Paul and the apostles also taught almost 2000 years ago, which I will show you coming up. Yet first, I want to share where I was taught the following information, which my dear beloved sister I mentioned above pointed me to: The Self-Confrontation Manual produced by the Biblical Counseling Foundation.
One of the very first things this course has taught me is that I cannot go out and confront and disciple others in their life about their sin if I don’t first confront my own life and sins. (I can only imagine the “Amens” from all of you that yet to know Jesus on this one…how many times have you been confronted by Christians who you know personally to have habits they completely ignore while they try to get you to admit to all your faults.)
The BCF is very careful to always take EVERYTHING back to the bible, a point I dearly love even if it takes me eons to get thru a lesson cause I am looking up almost every single verse! Here are the verses that talk about self-confrontation 1st!
“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in our own eye? You hypocrite (which = actor), FIRST take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”
Matthew 7:1-5
PLEASE TAKE SPECIAL NOTICE:
I want to point out that my understanding of these versus, in conjunction with others in the Bible and the BCF course doesn’t mean we never as followers of Christ are too look at others lives and call out their sin. What it does tell us is we should NEVER approach another if we FIRST haven’t looked at ourselves. I believe for the most part we have gotten these versus all wrong. We either tend to believe we are to NEVER judge another person’s actions (not their heart) and call them to account and repent of their actions; or we try to approach them BEFORE we have done our own work and they don’t take us as credible but as mere actors. I will be addressing my view on this in an up and coming post…but of course!
That being said, how do we go about confronting ourselves first? Again, referring back to the manual for life, the Bible, we find almost verbatim the same practical tool David Burns uses:
“All scripture is inspired by God and is profitable
1) for teaching,
2) for rebuking,
3) for correcting,
4) for training in righteousness,
so that the man/woman of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”
2 Timothy 3:16-17
Holman Christian Standard Bible
Here God has given us a very practical way to capture our thoughts, label the distortion, assign healthy thoughts to replace the distortion…and one final step that God takes is to ask us to figure out a way to put this new thought process into practice – which will essentially change our behavior pattern. Cognitive Behavior Therapy right there in the Bible!
