How do I deal with the emotional trauma of my mistakes?

How long to I have to be sorry for things that I have done wrong?

How many times do I have to repent?

When will the shame go away?

It seems that sin takes a huge toll on Christians when after they have found forgiveness and a new life, they make a mistake. The feeling of freedom and joy that come from forgiveness gets clouded and blotted out when we make a mistake…commit a sin. We wonder what happened. “I thought God had dealt with this in my life when I accepted Christ?” “Here I am again, falling for the same temptations…when will it end?”

It is frustrating to know that we have let God down and maybe even other believers. But it happens to all of us. So what is the key? How do we get over #1 the habit of sin, #2 the pain of sin? How do we, once and for all, get over our carnal cravings and stop obeying our flesh? Well, it is not simple, but let’s take a quick look at scripture.

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.” Hebrews 12:1 - 2

Sin carries with it “weight!” Weight that “clings to us,” and drags our spiritual life down, weight that bears down on our minds and spirit, weight that zaps the soul of emotional and spiritual energy and sucks it right out of us. The writer of Hebrews implores us to “lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely.” The word for “weight” in Greek literally means a mass that causes us to bend or bulge by the load. Think of it as a cancer that drains your energy and leaves you exhausted….that is what sin does to us.

So, what to do? “LAY IT DOWN!” “Sure, but how?” Three simple steps that I have learned in my life.

1.    The most obvious is to “look unto Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith.” Ask Him to forgive you.

2.    Forgive yourself. “Lay it down.” You made a mistake, you admit it, you are sorry, you’ve ask God to forgive you, so forgive yourself.

3.    Don’t let your sin or mistake define who you are. As a follower of Jesus you are a new creation…yes you failed a test, but that is not who you are, you are a new creation in Christ Jesus.

Now, run the race set before you with your eyes on Jesus, not on your mistakes. Let grace do its work in your life. Lift up your head and thank God that He bore your sin and the shame that goes with it so you can walk in His righteousness.

Conclusion: People may not forgive you…but God has. When you carry your guilt and shame around, and bear the weight of you mistakes on your shoulders, others will see it there. But when you lay it down and live free in Christ, forgiven and restored, renewed and “weightless,” others will eventually forget your faults as well.

Try it!

Someone asked one day, “How do you become so successful in all you do?” Well, I’m not sure how successful I am, but the secret to any success that I have ever had is… “I get along with people…for long periods of time.” I look at every person that I meet as a potential life-long friend. This usually ends up being a positive experience and adds to the potential of having success.

That means I had to overlook their faults, forgive their wrongs toward me, and never let hate enter into my heart. Actor Will Smith made this comment; “Throughout life people will make you mad, disrespect you and treat you bad. Let God deal with the things they do, cause hate in your heart will consume you too.” Love lasts when the relationship comes first! Work on it.

The key to having successful relationships in any area is to have complete obedience to the Word of God. The word “relationship” means to be connected by blood or by marriage. Both of these denote covenants. We are in covenant relationship with the Lord through His blood and we are His bride. We are in covenant relationship with our spouses by marriage. We are in covenant relationship with our families by blood. We are in covenant relationship with the body of Christ through Jesus’ blood.

If we look at friendships as “covenants” we sense the importance of holding up our end of the relationship. That is extremely important in marriage. Having been married for 42 years now I notice how faithfully my wife, Charlene, keeps her covenant with me and how I strive to keep my covenant with her. The same goes with my children and grandchildren, we all have a sense that we are bound to love and serve one another.

Matthew 26:28 - “This is the blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sin.” (NIV)

God honored His part of the covenant with mankind by sending Christ into the world to “pour out His blood” for us. Wow! So what is my part? To faithfully serve Him, honor Him in all I do, and fulfill the mission He gave me in life to accomplish. I have to work at keeping my part of the covenant with God…it is not always easy.

Note: Relationships take years to cultivate, and if we are not “maintaining” and growing in relationship, they can be destroyed in a few moments. This means we work on them during the good and bad times. You learn to like someone when you can laugh together, but you can never really know deeper love until you have cried together. When you share common joy it’s great, but when you endure common sorrow together it is wonderful…in the end.

There are lots of ways to maintain strong relationships but the two most important things I think are; Faithfulness and consistent honesty.

As I look at friends and loved ones that I have deep relationships with for many years I have learned that their faithfulness and honesty with me means the most. This is the way we walk in relationship with each other. If we lie or are unfaithful to each other, we don’t deserve the relationship. I have noticed that even great men and women carry with them the burden of bad relationships. How much greater could their lives be if those relationships were healed. Most of the broken relationships are a result of unfaithfulness or dishonesty.

RELATIONSHIP WITH THE LORD: We are to “walk” in relationship with Him.

Our relationship with the Lord was intended to be like that of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden before they fell. They walked and talked with God face to face. They had a personal and physical relationship with the Lord, but when they sinned mankind was separated from God, removed from the presence of the Lord and from direct access to the blessings of God. They broke covenant by being unfaithful and then lying about it and it affected us all. But, the Lord didn’t give up on us! Through His Son Jesus, God put into motion His plan to redeem us back to Him!

This is how we can express true and faithful relationship with Jesus.

Love the Lord: Christian love has God for its primary object and expresses itself first of all in implicit obedience to his commandments. All of the law is fulfilled in one word: LOVE! Matthew 22:37 - “…Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.” I Peter 1:8 - “Whom having not seen, ye love…“

Just to give the Lord our hearts is not enough–we need to unite our whole being, heart, mind, and soul, in order to love the Lord the way he wants us to. We should express our love to the Lord by loving His word and His people. Knowing his commandments in our heads is not enough, we must keep them in our hearts also. David, in Psalms said: “your law is within my heart,” “I delight in your Law.” And we should serve one another as we walk in the Love of God.

John 14:23 - “If a man love me, he will keep my words My Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.” We live our lives in covenant with God according to His word and our relationship with Him will grow and flourish. If we continually violate what we know to be the word and will of God, our relationship with Him will wane and grow increasingly cold. On the other hand, when we walk according to His word, we have joy and closeness with the Almighty.

Bottom line - Be faithful to God, the Church and to your love ones and you will have success everywhere you go in life. At least that’s what I believe.

Dealing with Our Emotions

A few months back I got a call from my podiatrist that took me on a journey with my emotions that I had never experiences before. She said, “The biopsy on that ulcer on the bottom of your foot came back as a level 5 melanoma.!” Uh-oh…that sounds like trouble…a million thoughts filled my mind and every conceivable emotion hit me right between the eyes.

Then I made a huge mistake…I googled “foot melanoma.” Try that and see what it says…YOU ARE A GONER!

My mind raged with a million thoughts, and most of which were not positive. “Where did that come from?” I would read about how people suffered from the disease and even the treatment and my mind would reel with images of intense suffering. Then I would pray and God would give me peace…only to go through the up and down emotional torment again and again. I could not believe what was happening to me. Then as I processed the situation and really turned it over to God, peace came…and peace remains today. I had surgery and was given a good report and prognosis…but I had suffered for weeks at the mercy of my uncontrollable emotions. “I was fed up with my emotions.”

So, where does all of that come from? Answer; It is a well designed part of you that God put there to get your attention when things go wrong, when you are in danger, and even when good things happen. Let’s look at our emotions here.

EMOTIONS ARE GOD-GIVEN - He has made us body, soul and spirit…emotions are weaved through every part of our fiber.

It starts with God expressing emotions. He shows us His emotions in scripture… grief, compassion, jealousy, anger and even, in the case of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, a stress over the eminent suffering He faced on the cross…he sweat drops of blood!

Since we are created in God’s image, it is natural that we have those same emotions and more. Look at our list.

Here is a partial list of emotions - anger, fear, happiness, sadness, temper, excitement, gloom, hatred, depression, jealousy, and the list could go on for a while. So, how do we respond to these emotions in a healthy way? Consider the following.

EMOTIONS CAN SERVE AS “WARNING LIGHTS” - WHEN SOMETHING IS WRONG, THE LIGHT COMES ON. Similar to the warning lights in your car, your emotions can alert you that something is wrong within you (fear, anger, depression from disappointment or bad news, etc.) There are of course good emotions. (But that is not so interesting to write about, so let’s look at the negative ones)

 These “warning lights” may have a “short circuit” - you may not be working right. There may be a sickness that is affecting your emotions like the news of the newly discovered cancer in my body. Or maybe you’re overworked and losing sleep. It could be relationships that are falling apart or the loss of a family member or even the loss of your job. All this can bring on strong negative emotions that have debilitating results.

Maybe you just have “flat” emotions - i.e., not experiencing a full range of emotions (this commonly occurs when people are denying some of their feelings - such as anger) (i.e. the quiet man next door becomes the serial killer). (Lack of emotion for family) Romans 1:31.

Whatever your emotions are at present, know that there is an overcoming power available to you through Jesus Christ. In my next blog I will discuss how God helps us overcome the most devastating situations in our lives and how He helps us control our most extreme emotions. 

p.s. So you don’t have to wait to hear about my cancer…it was removed surgically and the doctors think that they got it all. No evidence that it has spread…Thanks be to God…

Next post we will look at how guilt, shame and sin affect our emotional health. 

Q: what emotional binges have you been on lately?

The deeper life

Many churches that have “seeker” style services for the purpose of reaching the un-churched are accused of being a mile wide and an inch deep. In other words, “They reach a lot of people but the people stay carnal.”

They expect the Sunday service to save, deliver, disciple, and train future pastors…all in one hour a week! This is not possible no matter how good a communicator the pastor is. It takes more than Sunday to deepen the relationship that members have with God. Sunday is not only a day for Christians to learn and grow but a time to focus on the un-churched visitor.

Okay, so we have great Sunday services. There are lots of visitors. Christians and non-Christians alike come and feel safe and secure, but what about the deeper God-experiences that we crave? When can people experience the deeper life with God? How do we answer the charge, “Your churches, ‘Are a mile wide and an inch deep.’” How do we deepen our relationships with Almighty God?

Sundays alone are not enough to bring members into the deeper truth and life of God. Let’s face it, one hour a week is not going to bring much change to a person’s life. It can have an impact, but real change comes through discipleship. Sunday is not discipleship day. It is the most important day of the week to share the Gospel as it relates to the felt needs of the members and visitors alike. To try to make it the day to go deep with the believers is to ignore the under-churched that might be visiting. There are seven days in a week, one of those days should be specifically designed to reach the lost. The other six can be devoted to intense Bible study, healing services, and the discovery of spiritual gifts. There can be days for recovery ministries, intercessory prayer, small groups and anything else that brings people into a deeper more meaningful relationship to God. However, if they don’t get saved, or if they don’t feel comfortable in the Sunday service, you will never have the opportunity to bring them into that closer walk with God. Simply put, if they are not there, all the deeper life programs in the world can’t help them. Sunday can build up believers but not anything like small groups and personal one on one ministry.

Bottom line; Make your Sunday services as powerful and exciting as you can while realizing that Sunday alone will never be enough to bring new or existing believers into a mature walk with God. Focus on both evangelism and edification and provide other days of the week for discipleship, teaching and training.

So, the Christian life is not just attending a Sunday service, but living daily with the “Church,” the body of believers, in a growing and maturing relationship.

Q. Where do you find the “deeper life” in God?