5 Easy Ways to Grow Your Spiritual Life

A client once said that she can’t seem to connect with God and hear from Him in her life.  While she really felt this and believed it to be true for her, it was clearly inaccurate.  The reason that it was easy to point this out as a fallacy to her was that she was sitting in a therapy session with a Christian therapist who cared about her, and she was actually making actionable progress toward her goals.  

The therapist response was something like, “You don’t think that God sees you, hears you, or is speaking to you?  Aren’t you here?  Haven’t you been looking for a therapist who can help you?  Haven’t you said you consider this a divine appointment? Aren’t you healing?”

The woman was amazed as she heard those words. “I hadn’t thought of it like that.  That’s true.  God did bring me here to you, and this is helping.”

So, if you want to grow closer to God and see Him more in your life, the first easy step is to:

Open Your Eyes- His mercy and blessings to you are all around you. Focusing your attention on His provisions, everyday kindnesses from others in your life, from a sincere, joyful greeting from a cashier to the gentle laughter of a child, to the food you eat and the clothing you wear lets you to notice the evidence that God is real and all around you in your everyday life.

Noticing then can lead you to:

Give Thanks- Giving thanks to God for who He is and all of the many things that He has provided and done for you allows your mind and your heart to attune to His good nature.  After all, the Bible says that every good and perfect gift comes from Him, James 1:17.  This ultimately lets us to see that God is our friend, and we want to spend time with our friends because they care for us and are enjoyable to be around.

Accepting that God is your friend can lead you to:

Accept that You Are Loved- This may seem like a basic church saying, but if you really believe and accept that God loves YOU, not a general you but a specific you, the one reading these words right now, it can change your walk with Him for the better.  Knowing that God is a personal God who loves you as a unique and valued creation of His is so powerful for growing closer to Him.  When you know this love is for you, you begin to realize that He has a specific plan for the ways He has created you, that you have a purpose in His kingdom, and that there are acts of service that He has already planned in advance for you to do.  This is world changing stuff, and when you know that God wants you to work with Him to bring more of Him to the world, you can’t help but grow closer in your walk with Him.  Imagine God or Jesus holding you or holding your hand, see Him in your minds eye as a friend who loves hearing your thoughts and being your friend.

Don’t Compare Yourself With Others or “Shoulds”- Knowing that you are a unique and wonderful creation of the living and present God, Creator of the Universe, then allows you to realize that you don’t have to compete with anyone else, compare your walk to the walk of anyone else, look like anyone else, talk like anyone else, or even engage in spiritual disciplines the same as anyone else.  Sure, it could be great if you get up at 5am each morning and spend an hour in prayer and Bible reading.  There can be benefits to doing this and reasons for doing this, but if you are then going to be grouchy, yell at your kids, kick the dog, and fall asleep at work, you may be better suited to do your Bible time later in the day.  If you can’t read without losing focus, try an audio version of the Bible via a phone app.  Go to church on Saturday night, pray during your time on the treadmill, or do something else that allows you to really connect with God’s presence rather than what you feel you “should” do based on what someone else does.

Lastly, to easily grow closer to God, realize that while He is God and His ways are higher than ours, He is also approachable in your everyday life.

Consider Worship the Whole of Your Life- Rather than compartmentalize certain tasks as holy or spiritual, realize that working as unto God in your day job is every bit a way of worshipping Him as singing to Him in church on Sunday.  Showing your spouse kindness and love is putting the Bible into action.  Even taking time to rest, is a reflection of something God first modeled for you.  Viewing and offering up you every day moments and activities as acts of worship to God can also allow you to see that He is there for you.

As the Bible says, “For in Him we live and move and have our being,” Acts 17:28.

Written by Guest Blogger Michelle Croyle

3 Ways Therapy Can Help You Get Unstuck and Why

You may be wondering how therapy can help you to heal and move into a life that would feel better, easier, and healthier.  While it takes work, therapy really can help you to get unstuck.

It has been studied and found that people often put up with signs and symptoms of mental health issue for approximately 11 years before seeking therapeutic help!  That is A LOT of time that could have been spent getting healing and being healthier.

Here are three ways that therapy can help you to get unstuck:

1) Therapy can help you to get all of the chatter inside your head out into the open in a safe space, and this can help you to process things clearer than you are able to when you are in the problem.

Why?  Therapists offer empathy and active listening, which is something so rare in our society today.  When we are actively attended to and heard, met with compassion and support, amazing things can happen that influence our internal meaning making.

In fact, it has been shown that more than 80% of the healing process is due to this unconditional positive regard and connected human relationship between the client and therapist.  Best of all, the therapist is ethically bound to keep everything in confidence so that what is said in the therapy room stays in the therapy room.

2) A therapist can offer you the tools and skills that they have learned to help you resolve your issues more quickly than you can do on your own.

Why? Your therapist has years of experience dealing with mental and emotional health issues as well as years of training to be able to provide you with solid counsel.  It’s like taking a car to a mechanic who can identify what a “ching, clunk, ching” sound is just by your sound effect description to them.  Therapists know what to listen for to help identify what might be underlying your pain or struggle so that precious time can be saved as they help you to hone in on what they are hearing you need.

3) Therapists can see blind spots that you don’t even know you have, and this can help you to be able to look at things from different vantage points and be able to get movement toward healing and problem solving much faster than if these blocks had not been revealed.

Why?  We each have our own personal worldview that has been cultivated over years of life experiences and influences.  It leads us to make assumptions as to what we are seeing, hearing, and experiencing as our brains try to categorize information it already believes it understands.  An outsider who is trained to listen for ways our thinking may be experiencing distortions can help to bring you a lot of movement that you may not have been able to glean and experience on your own.

You don’t have to go it alone.  Therapy is a powerful tool in your self-care and healthy self-management toolbox, but for it to work, you have to actually do it and use it.  

If we can be of help as you go about seeking to get the therapy you need, please let us know, and we can get you started: 541-275-0412

Peace Keeping vs Peace Making

A teenager was sharing with her mother about an issue that some others were having in their relationship.  The teen was close enough to those involved that she was emotionally aware of the stress but not actively engaged in the conflict.  In trying to help her daughter to navigate such tricky relationships, the mother gave the following advice, “Just keep your mouth shut.”  

Of course, this mom was attempting to be helpful and to keep her child out of arguments, drama, and chaos, but what she actually was doing was advising her daughter to walk away from being a potential source of help and support to those about whom she cares.  Perhaps, by taking part in the conflict right outside her proverbial front door, she could actually help her friends in their resolution.  

While what her mom advised may sound like a piece of solid wisdom, it is actually, fundamentally flawed.  There are times that it may be wise or even beneficial to remain silent, but there are many other times where seeking to be a peace keeper rather than a peace maker is doing more harm than good.  In these times, peace keeping can be harmful, and peace making can be beneficial.

What is the Difference Between Peace Keeping and Peace Making?

The following are some Key Reasons Peace Keeping Can Be Harmful:

• Peace Keeping can be an avoidance technique that allows sin to continue unchallenged.

• Peace Keeping is an attempt to manage what things seem to be on a surface level and fails to address the deeper and more meaningful roots of issues where true growth can happen when these places are directly addressed.

• Peace Keeping can keep important information silent when what really would be helpful is for it to be known.

• Peace Keeping can unintentionally serve as a silent endorsement of something that is clearly wrong by omitting the opportunity to disagree and take an appropriate stand for something that is not okay.

• Peace Keeping can leave others alone as the peace keeper neglects standing up for people who deserve it and neglects confronting what needs to be confronted.

• Peace Keeping focuses more upon covering up conflict rather than truly building up those involved.

In truth, avoiding taking a stand or speaking up isn’t always helpful, but it may provide the allusion of being a good thing.

Key Reasons Peace Making Can Be Helpful:

• When truth is spoken, it challenges the lies and changes hearts

• Peace making is internally edifying in the peace maker and in those people and situations that the peace maker speaks truth into

• It encourages others to become the best versions of themselves

• A peace maker can help to break down the obstacles that get in the way of true connection with others, and this can open the way to health in the situation or relationship.

So, if you find that you are acting more as a peace keeper than a peace maker, I encourage you to consider the cost of that surface level peace.  It may just be more costly than you imagined, especially if confronting people and issues in an appropriate way now may save years of further conflict down the road for all involved.

Where Do You Find Your Value and Worth?

There are many different ways we try to find our self-worth and value in our lives.  We try through work, marriage, parenting, etc.  We also try to gain self-worth and value from perfectionism, but when we do it is not always in the good way.  As we’ve talked about over the last several weeks, perfectionism comes with a lot of self-criticism and can transfer to how we experience our partners.  In general, our parents want the best for us so they push and push us to achieve perfection which carries over into adulthood.  For a while we may even feel valuable when we are trying for the best, but we may not actually feel that way internally or for long because our perfectionism tells us there is always more to strive for.  We learn a lot about our value from our relationships, especially during our childhood.  We first learn from our parents (whether they accept or reject us) and then as we grow older we learn about value from our friendships and whether or not they accept our bids for connection.  We have all had experiences where we question our connection to those around us.  When we question that we also question what our value and self-worth are.  

As Christians we often struggle with perfectionism because we feel the pressure to be perfect all the time.  If God is perfect, shouldn’t we be?  But nowhere does God ever call for us to be perfect, that is human pressure that we put on ourselves.  God tells us “In your sin, I died for you.”  This means that he knows we make mistakes and mess up, but he loves us anyways and because of it.  When we or our partners make mistakes it is easy to show disappointment towards them and ourselves.  How can we engage with compassion and grace rather than criticism and disappointment?  As always, we have to take baby steps to changing our responses.  It is important to first notice the challenge in front of you; understand that perfectionism is something that we are taught.  We have to reteach ourselves that there are many ways to achieve a goal and that in general we are all doing our best (even if it doesn’t match your perception/expectations of “best”).  After that we have to ask ourselves what is the message we want others to get from us?  This applies to everyone, children, partners, friends, etc.  How did you feel as a child when your parents pushed you to be your “best”?

A big part of the Christian journey during our lives is learning that God is the one who ultimately decides our value and worth.  God tells us that you are special, he made you, and sent his son to die for you.  We are all called children of God and this inherently makes us special and valuable.  His unconditional love and acceptance is the foundation of our value.  In the movie Fight Club they say at one point, “If our parents were models for God and they failed us, what does that say about God?”  It’s easy to think that way, but it’s also not quite fair.  Our parents and our friends are human and fallible just like we are which is why God doesn't fail us. 

With that being said, if there is something that is bothering you, you have two options.  You can either try to get over it and not let it bother you, or you can address it with the individual.  When you are addressing the issue it is not a time for judgement and criticism.  It should be a discussion with that individual where you show up with grace and compassion and are able to express what your needs and hopes are.  You don’t have to suffer in your frustration, tell your partner “it really is frustrating to me…” They may respond with “I am feeling judged or less than right now.”  That is okay!  Respond with something along the lines of, “I’m just bringing this up because I want you to know what is going on inside of me not because I am judging you.”  When both partners are able to be honest with where they are at in the moment it can be worked through.  By leading with grace, compassion and acceptance you are creating a safe space where having differing experiences is okay.  By doing this you are honoring that you are both in the process of learning and growing and neither of you are less than because of the situation.  You are valuable, they are valuable, you make a team and are in it together!

For those of you on the other side of the relationship, maybe your partner is struggling with perfectionism, this is for you.  When they are hard or negative towards you, they are probably equally if not more hard on themselves.  This is not an excuse to allow them to continue, but hopefully help gain some understanding for their experience.  You can stand up for yourself without putting your partner down.  Remember, you are good enough, you are good as you are, you are lovely, and your value is not determined by what you do.  You are just letting them know how it affects you.  Use the example above and tweek it so it feels more natural for you!

If you remember one concept from all of this it should be that your value and worth cannot be defined by anyone else.  Only God can determine that.  Being human means we make mistakes, this does not lessen your value!  How we respond and interact with ourselves is just as important as how we interact with others, at times maybe more important.  Once we recognize that we are inherently valuable we can treat others like they are as well.