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Parenting: Immersion Into the Divine

Thursday, December 29th, 2011

In some ways, raising kids is an immersion into the divine. I don’t know about you, but the first thought that comes to my mind when I see pictures of a new little human being formed is miraculous. The second thought that comes to mind is Psalm 139:13; “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.” To experience life and birth is to experience the miraculous, the divine.

And once you know that this child you’ve been given is part of the divine, there comes a sense of immense responsibility. You haven’t been given a thing, an object, to take care of or money to steward; you’ve been given a human being, a soul, to love and cherish and nurture. As Psalm 139 also says, “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.”

But when that child is new and small and malleable, the responsibility seems easier. After all, you’ve got some time to work into this parenting thing, this “raising them up in the Lord” thing. By the time that child hits adolescence, as a parent, you realize how quickly you’re running out of time.

The book of Ecclesiastes says, “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven.” You are in the season of adolescent parenting; it’s a season that’s here for only a short amount of time, with an expiration date. So why is it that just when you figure out the clock is winding down on your parenting years and time is short, it seems like it’s harder than ever to pass your faith on to your teenager?

As your teen moves from dependence on you to independence, you want to direct him or her to voluntarily choose both independence from you and dependence on God. And you want all this, preferably, before age eighteen so you can have just a small vision of it to rejoice over and hang on to when your teen is out of the house. Talk about pressure.

As I said earlier, parents in general have a lot to worry about where their kids are concerned. Christian parents have an added spiritual dimension of eternal proportions. The only way, I think, to be able to manage this pressure is to remember back to that feeling you had at your teen’s birth — with your recognition of the miraculous and the divine.

Be honest; you knew when you held that baby for the first time that you were out of your league. You still are. Your child’s life, including salvation, has always been in God’s hands; it was just easier to see it back then when your son or daughter was small and cuddly, without all that adolescent attitude and teenage hormones. That precious little soul is still in there, still incubating, still being woven together by God just as surely as sinew and muscle and bone.

The above is excerpted from Chapter 10 of my new book, The Stranger in Your House.

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Should You Have ‘The God Talk’ With Your Teen?

Wednesday, December 21st, 2011

Judy kept looking at the clock, wondering how closer Jeremy was going to cut it to curfew. For 16-year-old Jeremy, curfew was midnight on a Saturday, though moving it to the a.m. hours had been a long, hard-fought battle. The only way she’d given in to a time she continued to consider too late was because Jeremy had promised he would still be up and ready for church on Sunday. The closer he cut it to midnight, though, the harder it was for him to get up in the morning. Even when he did get up, he wasn’t the most pleasant person to be around, especially when she was trying to prepare herself spiritually to worship. Less-than-loving thoughts tended to invade her mind when she had to deal with a grumpy, grouchy, resistant teenager.

Regardless of how difficult it was, Judy determined they were all going to go to church as a family. It was what she did growing up, and it was what she wanted for her family. Church was important. Jeremy might not appreciate it now, but Judy was sure he would later. She didn’t know how she’d have survived young adulthood without God in her life. That’s when all of it had become real to her – when God had intervened and rescued her, more times than she could keep count. Judy believed, and she wanted Jeremy to believe, as well.

Sometimes, she questioned herself. Should she continue forcing him to go to church, or did that imply that having him go through the motions was good enough? Should she allow him to decide for himself and let his faith and desire to come be authentic? It was 11:52 at night, Bob was already asleep, and she found herself going over the argument again. No, she wasn’t going to let him decide because she was afraid of how often he’d decide not to go. Bob had already weighed in with his opinion on the subject – his house, his food, his rules; everyone goes to church.

More than anything, Judy wanted to see signs that Jeremy was coming closer to a decision for God himself. She didn’t want to pressure him into anything more than Sunday-morning church attendance, afraid she’d drive him away. Afraid if she did; afraid if she didn’t. Without answers, Judy did what she normally did; she prayed. She prayed and watched the clock turn over to 11:59.

Among the many other changes in your teenager’s life, they are coming into their own spiritually. For Christian parents, this spiritual emergence is an added source of joy and anxiety. It’s an added layer of anticipation and expectation. Everything else has here-and-now consequences, but spirituality, faith, and belief have hereafter consequences. Christian parents worry not only about how their kids are going to do in this world, but also about how they’re going to fare in the next. Complicating this, of course, is that teens can be even more tight-lipped about how they’re feeling spiritually than how they’re feeling sexually.

Some parents decide it’s just to hard to have The Sex Talk with their kids, so they leave it up to teachers and the middle-school health curriculum. Some parents find it just too hard to have The God Talk with their kids, so they leave it up to ministers and youth pastors. Your kids need to know and hear about sex from you, and they need to know and hear about God from you.
In some ways, faith can be even more personal than sex. Sex can be approached from a physical point of view – what, where, how – body parts, dos and don’ts. If you do X, then Y happens. It’s quantifiable, concrete, explainable in its physical formats.

Faith is something altogether different. It is not physical; it is spiritual. It is concrete, but its foundations lie in a different realm. The Message puts it this way in Hebrews 11:1: “The fundamental fact of existence is that this trust in God, this faith, is the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living. It’s our handle on what we can’t see.”

As a Christian parent, you’re trying to pass off a handle to your teenager that you know is there, that you desperately want your teen to know is there, that you desperately want your teen to know is there, and that neither of you can see. This faith baton is tricky. But, like every baton pass-off, it works better if you’re actually running the race, you’ve got a firm grasp on what you want to pass on, you pace yourself to the person you’re passing off to, and you get out of the way after it’s passed.

The above is excerpted from Chapter 9 of my new book, The Stranger in Your House.

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Relief Through Trust and Faith in God

Friday, August 19th, 2011

I’ve said it before in several ways, but I want to say it again plainly: you have grown comfortable in your fears and anxieties. In a perverse way, they have become the known, the predictable, your comfort zone of behavior and expectation. To use a phrase from the book of Job, your anxieties and fears are “miserable comforts” but comforts still. You are more comfortable giving them control over your life than you are giving your life over to God. You’ve allowed your anxieties to provide you with meager, miserable comforts instead of claiming the true comfort promised by your loving Father. Listen to him argue passionately in his own defense in Isaiah 51:

I, even I, am he who comforts you. Who are you that you fear mortal men, the sons of men, who are but grass, that you forget the Lord your Maker, who stretched out the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth, that you live in constant terror every day because of the wrath of the oppressor, who is bent on destruction?

For where is the wrath for the oppressor? The cowering prisoners will soon be set free; they will not die in their dungeon, nor will they lack bread.

For I am the Lord your God, who churns up the sea so that its waves roar – the Lord Almighty is his name.

I have put my words in your mouth and covered you with the shadow of my hand -

I who set the heavens in place, who laid the foundations of the earth, and who say to Zion, “You are my people.”

Do not take meager, miserable comfort any longer in your anxieties; choose to believe God when he says, “I, even I, am he who comforts you.” He is stronger, more powerful, and mightier than the fears and anxieties that oppress you, no matter what lies those fears and anxieties tell you.

There is, of course, another part of this: you must allow yourself to be comforted by God; you must accept his comfort. To do this, you need to reject the tie – the relationship – you have with your anxieties. They’ve become so much a part of you that to reject them can seem tantamount to rejecting who you are. Again, in a perverse and paradoxical way, you’ve developed a relationship, a friendship, with your anxieties that must be broken. This friendship is not grounded in the spiritual realm, in God-reality, as it says in the Message; it is grounded firmly in the perceptions and deceptions, in the lies, of this world. Tying yourself to your anxieties ties you to this world.

To go with God, you have to give up these ties to the world, this relationship you have with your anxieties. James 4:4-10 clearly shows you can’t have it both ways. The world and God are in direct competition with each other for your heart and mind. You already know what happens to your heart and mind when the world – when your anxieties and fears – are ascendant. Day by day, step by step, choice by choice, begin to shift your allegiance from the world of your anxieties, worries and fears to God.

SOURCE: Chapter 14 in Overcoming Anxiety, Worry and Fear: Practical Ways to Find Peace.

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The Journey of One Thousand Miles in the Body God Designed

Friday, June 3rd, 2011

On June 15, EatingDisorderHope.com is giving away 10 copies of my book The Body God Designed. (To enter the drawing, click here.)  For a preview of what to expect, here’s an excerpt from Chapter 2….

Do you know that adage that says something like, “The journey of one thousand miles starts with a single step”? The basic premise is you can go a long way over time if you do small things today. I put it a different way. There’s a term I use that’s very helpful to me personally and to those I counsel with. It’s the term baby steps.

In therapy, baby steps are the small increments (steps) of simple, doable (baby) things that a person can do to get better. They are realistic and attainable. Not single steps of one thousand miles but but single steps toward on thousand miles. Baby steps are the way you change your habits and your life slowly and steadily.

The world says you have to take thousand-mile leaps in order to be successful. God knows better. He knows we learn incrementally and that understanding is a journey.

In Romans 12:2, Paul talks about this incremental change when he says, “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.” He doesn’t say your mind will be transformed in one fell swoop. He says transformation is a process and renewal is a life journey.

After all, it was God who sent His people on a little journey for 40 years in the wilderness, truly a thousand-mile journey made up of single steps. Was all that wandering a waste of time? N0. During the journey the people of Israel learned about God, and they learned about themselves.

Similarly, in order to achieve your thousand-mile destination, your body designed by God, you need to accept that you’re on a journey. The journey itself is not a waste of time because along the way you’re going to learn about God, and you’re going to learn about yourself. Do not despise God because He’s asking you to take baby steps toward your destination instead of miraculously transporting you there in one fell swoop.

Too often we focus on the destination and not the journey. “One thousand miles!” you say. “That’s too much!” It’s not as much as you think. I run an average of 20 miles per week. At the end of the year, that’s just over one thousand miles. And how do I run those one thousand miles? One step at a time. It’s not my “goal” to run one thousand miles a year. Rather, my goal is to get outside, enjoy the day, and get some physical exercise. The one thousand miles is a result of something I enjoy doing. Your own journey of one thousand miles can also be the result of something you enjoy doing.

Wait. I know what some of you are going to say. “But I enjoy sitting and watching television.” True; so do I, but that’s not the only thing I enjoy doing. The good news is you can take those baby steps along your journey in a myriad of different ways. By praying and looking and accepting yourself, you can find the steps that you enjoy.

Not everyone likes to run. If you don’t, that’s okay; it’s not a requirement for good health. You’re not defective if you don’t like to run. You’re not going to fail to meet your goals if you’re not out there running 20 miles every week. The beauty of this body God designed for you is that it responds very well to everyday, moderate physical exercise.

Simply be physically active. Does it mean you have to go out tomorrow and run 20 miles? No. Does it mean you need to find ways in your daily life to increase your physical activity? Yes. You cannot achieve the health benefits you desire without physical activity and exercise. Remember, God designed your body to be physically active. And the beauty about God is that the more you study about this body He gave you in relation to physical exercise, the more benefits you’ll learn.

Please also know that it’s not too late – once a couch potato, not always a couch potato. You are not destined to grow roots out of your eyes. Just get up off the couch and move around.

One of the most heartening areas of research shows the benefits of physical exercise fore those who are sedentary. According to the American Heart Association’s Statement on Exercise: Benefits and Recommendations for Physical Activity Programs for All Americans, “The greatest potential for reduced mortality is in the sedentary who become moderately active.” If you get up off the couch, you will reap incredible health benefits, and doing it doesn’t involve running a marathon!

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How Do You Hear God?

Friday, May 6th, 2011

On May 15, EatingDisorderHope.com is giving away 10 copies of my book Happy for the Rest of Your Life. (To enter the drawing, click here.)  For a preview of what to expect, here’s an excerpt from Chapter 9….

Sometimes it takes work and effort on my part to put myself in a position where I can hear God. Some people call this effort “spiritual disciplines.” Some of the ways you can look for God to speak to you are through:

  1. Prayer
  2. Meditation
  3. Reading
  4. Journaling
  5. Studying
  6. Seeking counsel
  7. Listening

If you’re already doing some of these, congratulations! Rededicate yourself to the task. If one or more of them have become stale or rote, switch it up:

  • Choose a different place or time to pray or meditate.
  • Try using a journal to record your prayers or meditations.
  • Read a different translation of the Bible. Try one that you’ve never considered before.
  • Switch it up. Be more structured with your study if you haven’t been studying the Bible much, or, if you’ve been very diligent, change your study topics for the next six months; be more spontaneous. Start opening up the Bible at random, and study from there.
  • Find a wise, godly person who you can be open and transparent with, seeking accountability and a sounding board for spiritual matters.
  • Spend some time each day just calming your mind, opening it up, and listening to what God might want to say that day. Whenever possible, go outside and walk in order to get out of your environment and into His.
  • Pay attention to what God is saying to you. Write it down as soon as you hear it. Use your journal or keep a small spiral notebook or pocketbook with you or available so you can make sure not to lose what you hear. Make sure to put it by your bedside, as God often has used the time of either going to sleep or upon waking to capture your undivided attention.

This is by no means the definitive list of ways you can hear God. What others would you add to the list?

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Countering Satan’s Lies With the Truth of God

Monday, April 25th, 2011

On May 15, EatingDisorderHope.com is giving away 10 copies of my book Happy for the Rest of Your Life. (To enter the drawing, click here.)  For a preview of what to expect, here’s an excerpt from Chapter 6….

Do you remember when Jesus was tempted by Satan during His time of fasting in the wilderness before He began His public ministry? Satan would distort the truth in order to try to trap Jesus, but Jesus would counter the lie with the truth.

Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.” Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” ~Mathew 4:1-4

Next, Satan tries to use Scripture to get Jesus to act outside of God’s will and plan.

Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written: ‘He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’” Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” ~Matthew 4:5-7

Finally, Satan tries to use bribery to tempt Jesus.

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.” Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’” Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him. ~Matthew 4:8-11

Distortion, half truth, and outright lies must be countered every time with the truth. Satan uses the same tactic today to weaken your resolve and hamper your ability to be about your work in this world for God.

Satan didn’t want Jesus to succeed; he doesn’t want you to either. Scripture calls Satan “the father of lies” (John 8:44), and the negative messages you hear in your head have his fingerprints all over them. You must reject them and turn instead to God’s truth to counter their destructive influences.

Through all of the chatter and static this life puts up, one truth should always ring aloud and clear: God created you; He loves and values you. Don’t let anyone else take that truth away from you!

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Pursuing God Out of the Pit of Despair

Tuesday, April 19th, 2011

On May 15, EatingDisorderHope.com is giving away 10 copies of my book Happy for the Rest of Your Life. (To enter the drawing, click here.)  For a preview of what to expect, here’s an excerpt from Chapter 2….

Happy are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

This beatitude is self-explanatory, and you can readily see how the pure in heart would be happy because they are able to see God. I get in my mind the picture of small, trusting children, whose innocence and purity allow them to comprehend God at a fundamental level. It becomes a little harder to see yourself, however, as that pure and trusting child. You’d love to be that child, but you left purity behind in your search for happiness awhile back. In fact, you exchanged some of your purity for a map to happiness that left you stuck in a decidedly unhappy place.

Children don’t make it into adulthood and retain their spiritual purity because of our sinful nature. When you read Scritpure, it’s hard for you to miss the point that sin has dire consequences. Occasionally, in your own life, I imagine you’ve deluded yourself into thinking you can skate above these consequences. But this delusion that the consequences of sin won’t surface to interfere with your life eventually cracks. When you live a life of active sin, you are skating on thin ice, which will break, plunging you into frigid and sometimes life-threatening circumstances.

People don’t generally come to see a person in my line of work (therapy) when all is going well. Instead, something is wrong, and they want help to fix it. Now, please don’t misunderstand me here; there are plenty of people who come to me for help who are in a difficult situation through no fault of their own. However, sin may still be an issue if their difficulties arise not from their own sin but from the sin of others: the sin of abandonment, neglect, abuse, selfishness, pride, favoritism, stubbornness, apathy, oppression, or evil intent. The sins of others have poisoned their lives and hearts, and they need help to detoxify, to heal and recover.

Now, there are some people who just seem to be naturally pure in heart. They are generous, forgiving, long-suffering, and patient, and they run far, far away from even the appearance of evil. You may look at them and think, “How can I be like that?” The apostle Paul, in a letter to Timothy, provides an answer: “Flee the evil desires of youth, and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart” (2 Timothy 2:22). You’re back at the word pursue again, aren’t you? It all depends on what you’re pursuing and how you conduct your pursuit.

In my line of work, I’ve also seen a great many people who wind up in the pit of despair by jumping in feet-first themselves. No one pushed them in; they climbed down willingly, often on a misguided quest for happiness. Covered with the muck and stink of their current situation, they find themselves well removed from any sort of purity. They need help to extricate themselves from their pit. They want to leave their pit, but a small part of them doesn’t. They got into their pit for a reason in the first place, and leaving it is hard, even though they are tired of being trapped inside. I’ve seen so many people struggle to get out of some pretty horrific pits, only to become fearful and dive right back in.

This pit leaving is a process. It requires a refocused life, a life dedicated to pursuing righteousness, faith, love, and peace. This is how you get your purity back. Deep down, don’t you long to be that little child again, the one who was trusting and innocent, the one who was able to see God? You cry out, as David did in Psalm 51:10, “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.” David cried out this prayer after digging his own deep pit of adultery. God granted David’s prayer and renewed his heart David repented and acknowledged his sin.

Sin has consequences, and it stains you. If you give in to it, it blinds your ability to see God. If you give in to it, you will be unhappy, guaranteed. Sin needs to be called out for what it is, for the destructive force it is in your life, whether it is your own sin or the sin of others that has adversely affected you. When you reject and turn away from that sin and instead pursue God, you are cleansed and returned to your childlike state of being pure in heart. Your lives are redeemed from the pit (Psalm 103:4), and that’s a cause for happiness!

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How God Promises Hope

Monday, April 11th, 2011

On April 15, EatingDisorderHope.com is giving away 10 copies of my book Gotta Have It! Freedom from Wanting Everything Right Here, Right Now. (To enter the drawing, click here.)  For a preview of what to expect, here’s an excerpt from Chapter 12….

In this life, there is nothing outside of God that is reliable, permanent, and unchanging. When you anchor your hope to things tied up with this life, you will be disappointed. If you want to find hope fulfilled, you must place your hope in God. When you do this, your hope is safe; your hope is true. Hebrews 6:19 says that this hope is an anchor for your soul.

Here are just a few promises about putting your hope in God. I venture to say that all of the other things you’ve been pinning your hopes on are unable to claim the same:

  • God promises in Psalm 25:3 that if you hope in Him, you will never be put to shame for that hope. How many times have you been ashamed of where else you’ve placed your hope?
  • God promises in Psalm 31:24 strength and courage for all those who hope in Him. How many times have your strength and courage failed you because of where you’ve placed your hope?
  • God promises in Psalm 33:18 to watch over you and love you when you place your hope in Him. In all of the things you’ve put your hope in, which one of them has ever had the capacity to protect and love you?
  • God promises in Psalm 62:5 to give rest to those who hope in Him. Further, He promises to be enough, to be sufficient, for the hope that is in you. Of all of the things you’ve put your hope in, which one ever gave you a true sense of rest and peace? Which one proved to be enough, to be sufficient? Instead, didn’t each one keep demanding more and more and more?
  • God promises in Isaiah 40:31 to renew your strength. Which of your excessities ever provided long-term renewal?

Excessities, though they can take control, are still ultimately under your control. You set the time, the place, the amount. You even set what the reward is. You establish the parameters for your own excessities. Truly, you give the excessity power. God, however, is sovereign unto Himself.

Bottom line: God delivers hope; excessities provide only a shadow.

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Is There an Emotional Abuser in YOUR Life?

Friday, February 18th, 2011

On March 15th EatingDisorderHope.com is giving away 10 copies of my book Healing the Scars of Emotional Abuse. (To enter the drawing, click here.)  For a preview of what to expect, here’s an excerpt from chapter 4, “Emotional Abuse Through Words”….

Conventional wisdom may teach that “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me,” but we know better. We know that words have the power to hurt or help, wound or heal. God, who spoke the first word, reveals this clearly through Scripture, where words are compared to everything from sharp swords to smooth oil, from being harsh to being sweet as honey.

As we think about the power words have had in our own lives, let’s first take a look at God’s truth about the power of words.

Psalm 55:21 speaks of how people can say one thing with their mouths but mean something completely different in their hearts: “His speech was smoother than butter, but his heart was war; his words were softer than oil, yet they were drawn swords” (NASB). This is so true when pronouncements of comfort and love are in word only and are followed by deeds that testify to anything but.

In Psalm 57:4 King David articulates the plight of those who are trapped under the influence of verbal abuse when he says, “I am in the midst of lions; I live among ravenous beasts – men whose teeth are spears and arrows, whose tongues are sharp swords.” This is especially haunting to me, as I have heard these thoughts and fears expressed by verbally abused children. These children and adult children truly feel devoured in spirit by the verbal abuse suffered – sadly, too often by those given to them by God with the charge to love and protect them.

Psalm 64:2-3 reveals the power of words and the true nature behind the motivation to harm with words: “Hide me from the conspiracy of the wicked, from the noisy crowd of evildoers. They sharpen their tongues like swords and aim their words like deadly arrows.”

In the hands of the wicked, words become the weapons they use to launch harm against another.

Proverbs 15:1 says, “A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” Verbal emotional abuse is the harsh use of the words that produces anger. It is this built-up , unresolved anger that festers inside a person, damaging self-esteem and poising relationships.

Proverbs 16:24 says, “Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.” When honest affection and love are expressed through words, they bathe the soul in comfort. This comfort is desperately needed in this world and in all our relationships – and it is what emotional abuse utterly destroys.

While each person is different, there are several distinct methods the emotional abuser can use to dispense his or her abuse. It may be a single form or a combination of forms; however, most are recognizable:

  • The overbearing opinion – whose intensity of opinion overshadows everyone else
  • The person who is always right – who turns the words “I told you so” into a verbal indictment
  • The judge and the jury – who reserves the right to pronounce judgment on all actions on any given day in any given mood
  • The put-down artist - who uses words to crush the spirits of others
  • The stand-up comic – who laughs at you, not with you, and encourages others to do the same
  • The great guilt-giver - who burdens others with false guilt for all of his or her own problems
  • The preacher - who has a long-winded sermon, full of fire and brimstone, for ever occasion
  • The historian - who has a photographic memory for the lapses of others but a blind eye to his or her own shortcomings
  • The silent treatment abuser – who transmits volumes of negative thoughts without saying a word

The words and phrases we use are very important, as is the way they are delivered. Yet often we are the most careless with this vital form of communication. Now take some time to consider the type of communication you have with other people in your life:

1. As you think over your life, how have words been used as weapons against you?

2. Have you experienced a time when the words of another were “softer than oil” but ended up wounding you deeply, as with a sword?

3. In reading over the different types of verbal abusers, did one or more stand out to you? If so, why?

4. Were you able to identify yourself in any of these examples?

5. Do you have patterns of speech you’d like to change?

6. Identify the main types of verbal abusers you have dealt with.

7. What effect did their words have on you?

8. How do you feel about them today?

9. What lies have you believed because of their abuse? Be specific.

It’s time to begin to reclaim the truth and put the lies to rest. As you think about the lies you have believed, think about the truth. What is the truth about you?

Most of the time, words roll off our tongues without our thinking much about them. It’s time to consider our words carefully – what we say and how we say it. Perhaps the Golden Rule has no greater application than in the realm of communication. Internalize this statement: “I will strive to speak to other people the way I wish to be spoken to – with kindness, respect, and consideration.”

SOURCE: Chapter 4, “Emotional Abuse Through Words,” in Healing the Scars of Emotional Abuse by Dr. Gregory Jantz, founder of The Center for Counseling and Health Resources, Inc.

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The Role of Joy in Being Happy

Wednesday, January 5th, 2011

A truly joyful, optimistic, positive person is wonderful to be around. Because they act in ways that are so contrary to how people usually handle situations, they are immediately noticeable. Others are aware that these people are different. In this way, God is glorified through your ability to exhibit joy in difficult circumstances. Your joy becomes a living testimony to others. You radiate out.

Usually when negative or pessimistic people suffer, they become incredibly inward focused. Their world shrinks and collapses in on itself, coalescing into a self-absorbed core. This core can become so dense with negativism and pain that other people get sucked in and depleted. Interacting with a pessimistic person who tends to always suffer from something can suck the joy right out of you if you’re not careful. Being around them makes you feel drained.

I have had the privilege to be around joyful, optimistic people who were undergoing hardship of incredible proportions. I have gone to visit them, fully intending to try, in some small way, to offer comfort and instead found myself receiving much more comfort. Here they are, in dire physical or circumstantial straights, and they end up doing more for me and my attitude than I ever did for them. Their complete reliance on God and the Holy Spirit to get them through the situation is crystal clear. I go to give them comfort, and they wind up giving me hope.

Their attitude is summed up for me in a passage from one of the minor prophets, Habakkuk. It’s a small book, only three chapters. Like Jeremiah, it was written at the time of the Babylonian invasion of Jerusalem. Like Job, it contains a series of conversations with God. Habakkuk doesn’t understand why God is working the way He is (using the Babylonians to punish Judah and Jerusalem), seeming to allow evil to oppress His people. In the end, Habakkuk comes to understand that God really does have the final say and will make sure justice prevails, even though it will not come about in Habakkuk’s lifetime.

At the end of the book, Habakkuk’s final words hauntingly echo in my heart as they speak to me of today’s hope anchored in tomorrow, of joy expressed defiant of circumstance, of optimism tightly grasped in trust:

Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior. The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to go on the heights. ~Habakkuk 3:17-19

I don’t know what you personally are going through or what might have prompted you to pick up this book. If it was a time of prolonged sadness or tragedy, please know my heart goes out to you. And if it were only my heart I could give, frankly, it wouldn’t be enough. What I can offer you is to embrace the attitude of Habakkuk. Pray and ask God to empower you through His Spirit to experience joy within your situation. For God, nothing is impossible. The reality of this world is set; hardships and suffering are a given. God will not always remove the impossible situation from you, but He is always able to fill your heart with joy.

One way God can fill your heart with joy is through prayer, as you’ve read.

Being in constant communication with God, to receive His Spirit and perspective on life and what you’re going through, is integral to a life of joy. Another way to experience joy is through worship. This doesn’t necessarily mean only in a religious building or at a religious event. God is worshiped when you offer your life up to Him on a daily basis through the routine events of life. Worship focuses your attention on God and instills reverence and awe. In worship, you acknowledge God for who He is, in all of His attributes. This is the same God who loves you and has promised to care for you. When the world and its problems seem far too large for you to handle, prayer and worship to God can bring it back down to its proper size.

When the world and its negativity threaten to suck the joy right out of you, drawing near to God can cause it to flood back into your life. When the road of life gets bumpy, joy acts like spiritual shock absorbers and allows you to still enjoy the ride.

SOURCE: Chapter 12, “The Role of Joy in Being Happy,” in Happy for the Rest of Your Life by Dr. Gregory Jantz, founder of The Center for Counseling and Health Resources, Inc.

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