We live in a world that values strength and belittles weakness. We idolize characters such as Rambo, John Wayne, and Jason Bourne. It is so easy to feel that there is no way to advance in life if people see our weaknesses, our personal struggles. So we tend to be drawn toward hiding these things about ourselves. We want to put them in the dark where no one can see them. Yet, if we can’t even acknowledge we have struggles, how can we ever hope to overcome them? Understanding what is darkness and what is light puts a huge tool in our hands for growth.

Blatant sin, of course, is darkness; however, there can be smaller, less noticeable ways where we might be living in the dark. 1 John 1:6 says,”… if we say we have fellowship with God, but we continue living in darkness, we lie and do not follow the truth.” So what exactly does this “living in darkness” mean? Simply put, anything that is hidden and not exposed. To paraphrase Andrew Murray’s definition of humility, darkness is not being willing to be known for who we really are.

If we are humble – being known for who we really are – then we find no reason to hide our past, our present struggles, or our future dreams. But being open and transparent like this involves risk. If we were to divulge certain things about ourselves, people may reject us or make fun of us, or even worse, they may not love and accept us. And it’s possible they may abandon us.

It’s much easier to stay in the dark than to take the chance of living in openness and transparency, but unfortunately, there are “friends” that tend to hang around us there. Fear, worry, anxiety, shame, guilt – all of these can be our ‘best friends’ when we’re in darkness. And there’s no peace or rest there. Only by embracing light do we position ourselves to experience growth.

We can be free from our past and live emotionally present in all our relationships today! By facing the hidden darkness in our lives, we can find freedom to be who we really are, unashamedly. Light is the place where we have the actual experience of feeling secure in our Father’s arms and live open-hearted to the world.

Stillness. Stillness in mind, body and spirit. Got it? I don’t always. Many times my mind is racing with ideas or replaying events over and over again. My body usually wants to be moving, remaining active with chores or exercise when possible. And my spirit…well, I don’t always check in to see how my spirit’s doing. My spirit is typically the one who wants to be still. It’s deeper and it’s hearing the voice of my Beloved calling from the deep, yearning to connect with Him.

I find myself most of the time staying “on the surface” of life, like the stereotypical news, sports and weather persona. I’m too busy to connect emotionally with God or anyone else. I have things to do, people to see, places to go, a long list in front of me to get accomplished. And where does this get me? Well, sometimes I get a lot done, but my spirit is undernourished. You see, Father God made us to be relational beings, and if I’m not being relational, then what’s the point of being?

We were meant to have emotional connections every day. Connecting with our own emotions, those of our spouse, our children, our friends and co-workers, and of course, the Lord. Some people naturally tend to link emotionally with others, sharing their dreams and desires as well as being a good listener to those who, in turn, disclose their   bundles of feelings. And emotional awareness is needed to unite with God too.

King David constantly was pouring his emotions out to the Lord. As you read through the Psalms, there are numerous examples of him sharing his fears, his anxieties, his joys, his sorrows. And God didn’t complain about it. I think we think that showing our emotions is a sign of weakness or a lesser, negative quality; but the Bible is full of people, including Jesus, who were keenly aware of their emotional state and brought it before the Lord. Their deep calling to His deep, spirit to spirit. They chose to stay connected to the One who could understand, console, and help them.

But to connect with God this way I have to know what’s going on in myself first. I have to still my mind and body enough to know how my spirit is doing. Brother Lawrence and Madam Guyon have shown us that it’s possible to continue working while communing with God, yet it’s more than just offering prayers and petitions to Him. It’s a relational linking, a joining of emotions, my heart to His, a deep to deep in the stillness of my spirit.

Everyone feels fearful or hurt from time to time; conflicts and misunderstandings are a part of life. There are basically two ways people respond: shame and condemnation, or guilt and accountability.

Challenges
Ron had a terrible day at work. His boss accused him of a mistake on a major project and he feels his job might be in jeopardy. He comes home wired, tense, longing for the refuge of his Lazy Boy/TV cave. His wife immediately hits him with, “the car won’t start” and “by the way, Jr. is failing math.” Then Ron loses it; he gets bitterly sarcastic with his wife and down right caustic with his son, “What’s the matter with you boy, are you an idiot? I told you to lay off those video games and study more.”

Shame and Condemnation
In a shame-based family system individuals respond to conflicts in shame perpetuating ways. There is a constant underlying message of devalue, not just communicating you did wrong but that you are wrong. These individuals have lived with the pain of shame instead of dignity and so spend their time protecting themselves from this pain by never allowing anything to be their fault. Since it is impossible to never be wrong, everything must be subject to judgment and charged accordingly. This ‘moral monitoring’ means that the littlest mistakes like, forgetting to floss, not rinsing off a dish, not taking your shoes off at the door, can get you “a look” that communicates, “What’s wrong with you?” The Pharisees lived here. Their hearts were never open to mercy and the smallest infractions were subject to their censure.

Shame is a hidden belief about self that “I am flawed.” This belief is triggered anytime something goes wrong. Therefore, life’s challenges can’t be seen on their own merits and viewed simply as a problem to be solved, but instead someone must always be to blame. I can’t allow it to be me, so it must be you. So Jr. doesn’t just need more study time or perhaps a tutor, Jr. needs to suffer for his insolence.

Personhood and Abuse
Personhood is the quality of being an individual person and so worthy of dignity. The origin of shame is abuse that violates and diminishes personhood. This is done through crossing mental, emotional, and physical boundaries by attacking another persons’ right to choose what they think or what action they’ll take. This plays out in statements like, “What’s the matter with you?” “What were you thinking?” or it could be a backhand across the face.

These attacks are in two categories: fight or flight. “Fight” is anything from a sarcastic remark, to a demeaning statement, to physical harm. “Flight” can be anything from the silent treatment, to not being willing to discuss certain issues, or even to full on abandonment.

Healthy Guilt and Accountability
All of us make mistakes sometimes. The provision for that is healthy guilt and accountability. If I have made a mistake, guilt is appropriate. Guilt is a painful feeling that I have violated one of my values. It is a remorseful awareness of having done something wrong. Healthy guilt leads me to take responsibility, walk in accountability, and make repair. If someone has acted inappropriately toward me, accountability has to do with honoring the other as a person yet not covering the consequences they face for their actions.

Unconditional love and healthy guilt allows people to make mistakes. When there’s a base of unconditional love and healthy guilt to resolve conflict rather than shaming behaviors to handle what bothers us, people can live in healthy community and growth takes place.

Growing in God’s love should move us toward treating others with dignity, even those we very much disagree with. The question of another person’s worth or dignity should never come into play. This has a huge affect on our walk with God. If I treat others with condemnation, I will not be able to escape feeling like God treats me that way. This is a milestone that must be crossed if we are to learn to walk in a depth of obedience to the Lord.

As I was praying the other day, I was taking some time to be thankful. I was going through a list of things that God has done in my life, all the changes I’ve come through lately – those kinds of things. And then as I continued to pray, I realized that I started to put in a few “buts.” Ever done that?  You know, “Lord, thank You for _________, but….” Prayers like, “Thank You so much for the overtime, Lord, but…now I have to work all weekend and miss the big game.” There are those tinges of complaints within the gratefulness.

Another perfect opportunity when this happens to me is when I look at myself in the mirror. I pray, “Lord, thank You for my good health and the ability to run, and surf, and workout, but…I sure wish I could loose about five more pounds.”  Or “Lord, I know You love me, but…I’m not sure You really like me.” What’s up with all the “buts”?

Now the day I was praying and God brought this to my attention I heard Him say two words very clearly: “no buts.” That one little conjunction reveals a heart of dissatisfaction, He told me. I’m may be grateful to a point, but those three letters tend to find fault or put blame somewhere. It’s a word of exception or a circumstantial scenario.

Matt. 5:45 says He causes the sun to shine on the just and the unjust. It rains on good people and on bad. “Hello, welcome to life!” My level of acceptance of all things working for good is a bit low at times (Rom 8:28), and I know I need growth there.

So I’ve made a decision based on my prayer time: no more buts. I’m going to just state the first part of the sentence and leave it simple. I don’t want to “compound” the problem (a little English grammar joke there). “Lord, thank You for _________.” Period. No “buts.” Lord, forgive me for my murmuring and complaining and for adding that tiny word in my prayers. Thank You for Your grace and mercy as I grow in Your love. Period. End of prayer and article. No buts.

Why is it that whenever we get afraid, angry or hurt we like to run away? You know -  escape from pain – avoid it, deny it, anything but deal with it. And running away can come in many different forms. One form is simply quitting (maybe just in your heart and not in reality). We can quit working, quit being a mom, quit trying to loose weight, quit trying to be happy, or even just quit trying, period.

When the going gets tough, many of us get going. It’s much easier to withdraw from the negatives in our life, rather than face them head on, looking eye to eye and dealing with them. But what if we knew that dealing instead of dodging could lead us to a place of serenity and balance? Would we be willing to face the spouse or face the boss if it could lead to better emotional health and wholeness?

Conflicts and controversy are not easily squared off face to face. Texting, emailing and other new technological advances have helped us circumvent these events. We are uncomfortable and feel uneasy when we stare down the conference table and state the only opposing opinion in the room. And it’s much easier to ignore your wife as she audibly puts things away and says everything’s “fine” than to gently discuss the communication breakdown and open-heartedly try to repair the breach. And then there’s the silent teenager, the nosy neighbor, the demanding father, and the co-worker who just won’t listen. We all have variations of these characters in our lives, and we all have relationship with them in some way; so why do we choose to run away from rather than towards them?

Well, it’s very possible that we honestly haven’t learned the life skills needed to handle such situations. Conflict resolution and communication skills are skills that aren’t always taught to us by our parents, teachers, professors or bosses. Unless these are modeled for us, we generally don’t just “pick them up” from nowhere. There are, however, seminars, conferences and books to help us with these (and we here at FOL do some of these things ourselves), and they can be learned.

Another reason we flee is because it’s too fearful; we would rather not try to sort through  this because, bottom line, no one really wants to feel pain. But what we’ve come to see through many, many hours of prayer ministry, is that once you get through the hurt, the uncomfortable feelings, and resolve the reason you are running away, you find out that when you run towards the issues and embrace the disagreement, the opposition, the clash and are able to elucidate and manage it in emotionally healthy ways, life becomes good and pleasant again.

Running towards something is better than running from something. And when we run away, we are running from the very thing that can mature us and cause us to grow.

What do you think of when you think of peace? My thoughts go to descriptions like quietness, calmness, lack of strife and contention. It is a non-warring condition. It is a place of silence and stillness, whether that be in physical surroundings or internally in my spirit. Peace is more than a symbol, more than a “hip” greeting to others. It is a state of being.

Many of us are living in conditions of turmoil and stress everyday, much like the sea on which the disciples found themselves in the middle of in Mark 4. As the great storm was upon them and the waves were crashing on the sides of the ship, Jesus remained asleep on a pillow through it all. He was at peace. He stayed at peace. He was peace. When He was awakened by His frantic friends who were fear-stricken to death, He simply brought His peace to His surroundings and calmed the sea. The wind and the waves ceased and there was calm.

Isn’t it wonderful to be in that kind of a calm? That hush where there’s no stirring or movement? Jesus can bring this. He is the Prince of Peace. This is where I need to go when my mind won’t stop running. This is Who I need to turn to when my circumstances won’t change but stay churning all around me. This is the place of comfort I need to be enveloped in when my present situations do nothing but remind me of my past.

Is this possible? With God, all things are possible. “But how do I get there?” you may ask. Sometimes we have to labour to enter into the rest. We have to work at it, be willing to face the pain, the conflict, the discomfort and let God deal with it. As we discover what is behind the chaos, His truth will set us free, and we can rest in His loving arms.

Yes, peace is more than a symbol. It’s a person, and His name is Jesus. Sometimes He’s hard to find in the whirlwind. So stop. Quiet yourself and look for Him in the still small voice.

As many of us have experienced, I went through some painful times of rejection growing up: the fight I not only lost, I didn’t even see coming; my best friend deciding to un-friend me; Dad not showing up to watch me compete in the skateboard contest. And there are the smaller things. Getting yelled at when you didn’t even realize you were in error, getting disciplined in a demeaning way. These experiences caused me to wear a mask, to put forth an image of myself that seemed more acceptable than simply being me. It was not unlike when Adam suddenly had the need to cover his newly self-conscious nakedness with fig leaves and hide when God showed up because he was afraid.

There are many masks we can adopt. In grade school I was the class cut-up. In high school there were many manifestations of the mask: you had the nerd crowd, the jocks, the heavy-metal kids, and some country. I was a preppy druggy. I made fun of the goody-two-shoes nerds, the spastic jocks, and the loser heavy-metal crowd. Don’t even get me started on the rednecks. Then I got saved and became Bible man. No one could know the Bible better than me. I became a spaz for God. But in all of these examples I was hiding, wearing a mask. It didn’t feel okay to simply be me.

We all have ways we hide, things we don’t ever want others to see about us, things we don’t even want to know about ourselves. Nobody is completely exempt from dealing with issues of shame. However, the idea is to be ever moving toward intimacy (“into-me-see”). This is were we can be transparent, genuine, and vulnerable. This is where we can find connection with God and others and come out of loneliness.

God wants us all to be His transparent bride, who looks forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, awesome as an army with banners (Song 6).

Have you ever noticed that when we are frustrated or upset with something we tend to look for relief and escape rather than looking into the source and cause of it? I know when my day is going awry, my computer is freaking out, and nothing seems to be right, I just want a Diet Dr. Pepper. Chips, French fries, and ice cream all seem to help too. It makes me feel better, at least for a moment, but then the problem is usually still there afterwards and now with added guilt for eating something unhealthy.

I get cravings when my emotions are fired up and tend to be swayed by them at that point. Instead of searching through the emotions as to why I’m so upset, frustrated, angry, sad (you fill in the blank here), I run to food, Facebook or “freedom” – I choose to run away. I choose comfort. All those disturbing emotions are uncomfortable, why would I want to deal with them?

David had this same nature in him. If you look through Psalm 77, the beginning verses are full of distressful emotions. Most of them pretty hopeless and despairing. But David found a key to dealing with his emotions – he told all of his frustrations and feelings to God. He chose to pour out his heart to the Lord and as he did, from verses 10 and 11, he began to remember the goodness of the Lord. He found Godsight, which is seeing things from God’s perspective.

By seeing things from God’s perspective, we see them with Him – we step back out of our emotions that we are entangled with and get a different view, a much better view. David acknowledged his emotions and took them to God instead of just running from them.

This is a great example for me to follow. As I just want to get through the day so I can “treat” myself to an Oreo milkshake after work to “make it all go away” and feel better that it’s finally over, I could choose to take a moment to talk to the Lord about what’s going on in my day AS it’s happening. I could tell Him this malfunctioning printer is troubling me deeply because I can’t finish my work. I could ask Him why do I get irate when something breaks around the house. And you know, whenever I have stopped and done this, either by journaling or talking, God shows up, like in David’s case, and He pulls me up so I can see things from His view. I get Godsight, my emotions settle down, and I come up with ways to handle the situation. The problem may not always be solved, but I’m calm enough now to deal with it. And the Diet Dr. Pepper and ice cream are not my “savior” anymore, He is.

Think of all the Facebook posts, tweets and emails you receive on President Obama. There is generally a common theme: in some way he is doing something wrong or violating our values. However, how often do you see a post on a prayer strategy for God to work in Obama’s life? We spend a lot of time focusing on the problems and very little on being a part of the answer. I believe this points to a much greater problem in the church at large.

Picture a girl that grew up in a great home. Her parents were very healthy emotionally. Her whole life she saw her parents resolve conflict in a respect-based way. There was no blame; everyone had a voice. No one was belittled for their thoughts and opinions, even when wrong. People were held accountable for their actions. Affection was prevalent. Fast forward years later when the girl becomes a young adult and meets an attractive young man. She notices fairly quickly little ways he lacks respect of other people’s boundaries. She may not have all the language for it, but she knows deep inside, “This boy is not like Dad.” Maybe at first she tries to call him on it. He accuses her of being overly sensitive or unable to take a joke. She understands that it is not funny and feels confident in that belief. Because of what was modeled for her by her parents, she can be secure, sense the wrong, drop him and move on to date someone else.

Most of us were not raised in such a home and do not have the ability to recognize these things. In this case, these emotional skills will have to be learned as an adult. Many people end up being hurt by others, however, the reality is, no one can hurt us unless we let them. It is easy to put all the emphasis on the predator being so very wrong, but the victim that allows the behavior also needs healing and growth.

Feeling powerless at times is a universal theme but there is no future in it. When I find myself complaining about someone or something, what is underlying that is a feeling of powerlessness. I am allowing that person or thing to affect my life; I am allowing it to influence and change me.

If President Obama is promoting policies that are anti-Israel or pro-abortion, yes, we need to have a voice, yet respectfully. We also need to be fasting and praying or our voice may be more based in our fears rather than in our faith. There is no place for complaining and gossiping about our president. Those things indicate much more than a president we don’t like. They reveal issues of victim thinking, powerlessness, and ways we still struggle to trust God; and these issues need to be dealt with.

Interventionist Teaching
Much of the teaching we hear in church has to do with faith: being encouraged that God will come through, that God is faithful, He is for you, just keep hanging on. This is good and right but not the whole picture.

We use the analogy that making an airplane sound to feed a baby is cute. But doing it to feed a 16-year-old is wrong! This exemplifies the relationship to faith. This teenager should now be better able to trust God since he’s not a baby anymore. Again, here’s good truth, so let’s expand that out some. In real life, the 16-year-old has learned some skills. Some hand to mouth coordination. He can probably even fix some meals himself. Certainly he can plate his own food.

If we aren’t careful, being overly focused on God’s intervention can lead to a victim mentality. We take steps to trust God, we fast, we pray and we end up feeling like God has not come through for us. We end up depressed and even angry at God. Yet, many times, we didn’t learn a single new skill in the process of exercising our faith.

Life Skill Sets
Maturity is more than faith and it is even more than repentance or casting something out. There are also things God wants us to learn in the process. There are those who have developed excellent people skills. Insecure and controlling people don’t “push their buttons.” They can speak up for themselves while maintaining respect in the conversation. There are people
with excellent writing and speaking skills, and those skills bring opportunity into their lives. Also there are people that have learned to handle finances well.

Dealing properly and responsibly with our emotions is a skill. Walking in empathy is a skill. Walking in the humility to take the “high road” with others is a skill. Learning to overcome a victim mentality is a skill.

Effort
When I studied for my masters in Christian counseling, I had to write a fifteen-page research paper for every class. That was in addition to  a couple shorter papers and reading several books on the given subject. What if a given Christian put that kind of effort in learning to develop good communication skills, or in understanding effective leadership that could help them on their job or leading in community volunteer projects? What if someone decided they have struggled long enough with a victim mentality and chose to study everything about it to walk out of it?

We will always need faith, but faith without works is dead. It’s not always about Divine intervention. Knowing there are skills and other things God wants us to mature in opens up new avenues of growth and gives us greater hope to see sustainable change.