Paths to Dwell In

“No one respects me; people are always trying to take advantage of me.” This person battled negative thinking and bouts of depression. The immediate answer was obvious: “hold your boundaries with people”. Yet, if it were that easy, she would not have been coming for ministry. She was reaping from seeds of judgment she had sown; there was legal ground for the enemy to operate that kept things in a flux. Think of a computer that gets too many programs constantly running in the background, and a few viruses. It starts to run slow and crashes often. There are internal conflicts.

When the Bible talks about the consequences of not forgiving, it is real, a principle as real as that of gravity. We cannot have peace, joy, or rest when we are walking around with unresolved issues, violating the law of judgment. This lady struggled with depression. Depression always involves negative thinking; it has to do with too many internal conflicts. Having depression or being Bi-Polar certainly can include a chemical imbalance, but to make medication the only answer is woefully inadequate. Negative thinking comes from judgments we have made and lies we have believed about our self worth.

The woman I was ministering to had a lot of conflict in relation to her mother and even wished when she was younger her parents would have divorced. Her mother was controlling and often crossed her boundaries. The principle of fruit and root says that there is a reason for everything. Once we discovered why she was holding on to the anger, she was able to let it go. Suddenly God’s love flooded her heart with compassion and she started saying, “I love you Mom! I love you Mom!”  By doing the legal work, she suddenly had an understanding of the brokenness her mom had been living with. Not only did she feel compassion, joy, and peace, the negative thoughts and feelings of depression left as well.

Feelings of depression do not always clear up this easily; sometimes it takes a number of sessions to clean up all the “viruses” that may be slowing us down. However, when we are faithful to do the legal work, we always find freedom.

There is a lot of fear in the world today. What will happen to the economy? What will our futures look like? There is one thing we can focus on that will cause us to rise above all our fears. That is the kingdom of God.

2 Timothy 2:3, 4 You therefore must endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. No one engaged in warfare entangles himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who enlisted him as a soldier.

1 Corinthians 3:14, 15 If anyone’s work which he has built on it endures, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.

The US is perhaps one of the more difficult places in the world to be a Christian. When times are good it is difficult not to focus on the good life, the American dream. There is so much pressure from media, peers, and even some preaching, to save for a good retirement, to take nice vacations, to live in nice homes and drive nice cars. We want the best for our kids and try to get them on the right sports teams and into the right colleges. All these things are not necessarily bad as long as they do not replace the main thing.

If I lay up treasure in heaven, no one can take that away from me. If I seek to grow in spiritual authority, the government can take my house, even throw me in jail—yet I can lead the guy in the next cell to the Lord. Perhaps some of the fear we are experiencing in this time of economic crisis is rooted in too much focus on the temporal and not enough on the eternal.

1 John 2:15-17 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world — the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life — is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever.

God has called all of us to walk in authority and dominion. The trap of the enemy is to get us focused on other people rather on the destiny God has for us. “Judy grew up in a household with a father who got drunk every weekend, and her whole family had been organized around trying to keep father on an even keel.” (Facing Shame) This really tends toward victim thinking and the idea that our destinies are tied up into the response of others.

I also grew up in an alcoholic home. We all felt we had to walk around on eggshells. What I did not see for a long time is that tiptoeing around is a form of control; it’s trying to control another person’s mood. The alcoholic is sometimes of the pathetic variety, but more often than not, he is abusive. He controls through fear, threat, and intimidation. When you grow up in an environment of fear, trying to keep an abuser happy, it is hard to be free of the idea that the world is a scary place and if you are not careful, someone will get mad at you.

Anybody I feel I have to be careful around is a person seeking to push me into a shame pattern. If we embrace walking on tiptoes, we have abdicated our authority and entered a cycle of shame-them trying to control us, and us trying to control them.  The person that tries to control others through moodiness or sharp comments or anger needs boundaries not appeasement. It is hard to come into the health and destiny God has for us when our focus is on another person instead of on God. I believe this is part of learning how to walk in our authority and walk free from the fear of man.

What keeps us from growth in life? What fuels a fear of failure that keeps us locked into defeat for years and years? There is an old saying, “If you keep doing what you have always done, you will get what you have always gotten”. Shame is a major force in keeping us from ever trying anything new, from taking steps that can lead to our healing, maturing, and destinies.

Families that operate according to a shame interaction maintain the system according to a set of rules. One of the rules is perfectionism. My dad wanted me to play football and put me on Pop Warner teams as a kid. I did not like it much because I was not that good of a player. The reason I was not that good was because my dad never practiced with me. There was one time, I remember, we went in the yard to play catch. He told me to go out “longer…, go longer”. He threw the ball so far and hard I had no chance to catch it. Dad then gave me that look, you know the one that says, “What’s the matter with you; every kid knows how to catch a football”.

My dad did not have the ability to meet me where I was at in my skill level and work with me to grow. You either did it right the first time or you were unacceptable. His dad had treated him the same way. These are shame-inducing behaviors. They serve to put people into a cycle of shame. They communicate that it is not okay to make a mistake and people that do are to be mocked or demeaned. It puts a fear of failure into us. It communicates to us that it is not okay to go through a learning process, to fall down, get back up, progress a little further and make another mistake until you master a given thing.

These rules of shame can be difficult to overcome and can keep people locked into patterns where very little growth takes place. I believe this is one key reason why people have trouble progressing in their walks with the Lord. A pattern of shame keeps them rarely learning or trying anything new.

The first step in finding freedom is to begin to recognize these patterns. We do this through studying these concepts and then waiting on the Lord in prayer for Him to show us where they occur in our own lives. (See last week’s SS) Another step might be to go for counseling. Finding our acceptance in Father’s love sets us free in so many ways. His love is the path to both freedom and walking in dominion. If fear were not an issue, what could you accomplish?