This series of lessons is not for everyone. Jesus once said, “I have come that they may have life and have it more abundantly,” John 10:10. A Christian’s life should be a life where the mind and heart are at peace, contented, loving and joyful.
For some, this is rarely experienced. Instead, their lives have been filled with such things as anxiety, phobias, depression, worthlessness, obsessions, insecurity, rejection, guilt, bitterness, and feeling unloved. If you suffer from any of these, then this series is for you.
God has a cure for your emotional pain. It is yours for the taking. In fact, we can guarantee you that if you submit to the cure provided by God, you can soon divest yourself of painful emotions.
Unfortunately, many people who go through the trauma of emotional pain are not willing to do anything about it. Instead of seeking professional help, they choose to continue in their pain. Most of these feel ashamed to talk to anyone about their feelings.
Often, men are too macho, and women are too embarrassed to say anything for fear someone will think they are mentally unbalanced. Of course, this is not true. The emotional pain mentioned above has no connection with a person being “crazy.” Some feel that they can work through it or “snap out of it.”
Others are afraid they will reveal family secrets that could be very embarrassing. No doubt some refuse professional help because of the expense involved. As one who has experienced depression, the author knows how difficult it is to open up to others about one’s emotional pain.
In view of the refusal of many to talk with a professional counsellor about their emotional problems, I have tried to do the next best thing. You can allow this series of studies to become your personal counsellor.
Already over the past ten years, many have been using these therapy chapters with considerable success. You, too, can derive healing if you are willing to work at it.
In one of his sermons, Jesus said the following.
It is clear that Jesus is saying he can offer us a more abundant way of living than what we have been experiencing. God’s intention is that Christians have a good life that is free, abundant, overflowing, adventurous and exciting beyond any other kind of existence. He wants to provide us with love, peace, joy and security.
Unfortunately, many people fail to experience these attributes in their daily lives. Jesus said, “My peace I give you,” John 14:27, yet instead of peace, many have fears and phobias.
The apostle Paul exhorts us to “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!” Philippians 4:4, but some of us are very unhappy, even experiencing depression.
Jesus promises security. He said, “I am with you always, even to the end of the age” Matthew 28:20. Still, we can feel very insecure. The Bible assures us that the love of God can be “poured out in our hearts,” Romans 5:5, but we can feel very unloved and unwanted.
Why do we have all these negative emotions? Can it be that God’s word does not apply to certain people under certain conditions? Most certainly not! All of us will have certain negative emotions at various times, but we have been able to deal with them without interrupting our emotional stability.
Others, because of their emotional make-up, have great difficulty in dealing with their negative emotions. For example, fear can become very paralysing. The insecurity associated with fear can leave one an emotional casualty.
People suffer daily from such negative emotions as rejection, guilt, anger, grief, depression, worry, low self-esteem, insecurity, being a failure, phobias and panic attacks. Is there any hope for those who find themselves incapacitated by such feelings? There certainly is!
1. You will learn the reason why you have your particular negative emotions.
You will also discover the origin of these emotions. Once you understand why you have these feelings and their origin, you will have already won half the battle. You will come to recognise that negative thoughts and behaviour are choices you have made.
You may not realise it now, but we choose to be obsessed with our particular negative emotions rather than to think them out in a rational way. You can and will learn to choose differently from what you have been doing.
2. It is our contention that the Bible can empower you to recognise and change your negative thoughts and behaviours.
Therefore, you are going to depend on, trust in and lean on God’s wisdom to help you overcome your emotional pain. Thus, you can be completely victorious in your battle to overcome your emotional pain.
Do you believe God can provide you with the truth, which can set you free from your emotional pain?
God’s word is a corrector. His word can correct the deficiencies in your emotional make-up if you will allow it to do so. If you have fears, worries, insecurities or depression, these can be replaced with love, joy, peace and security. This is how powerful God’s word is.
This series you are about to embark on is designed to use God’s word in helping you to be a “complete” person. However, it is going to require sincere, diligent and dedicated daily effort on your part to accomplish the goal of a healthy emotional state of mind. If you will give the necessary time and effort, we promise that you will be rewarded with an abundant life.
These studies will focus on three things.
1. You will learn how to experience the love that God has especially for you.
This is very important if you are to have an abundant life.
2. You will focus on overcoming negative emotions, which can be so destructive and paralysing.
You will become aware of the origin of your emotional flaws. Understanding their origin will help you understand why you have so much emotional pain. Through the application of God’s word, you will begin to replace these old negative fixed concepts with new positive concepts from God’s word.
3. You will discover how peace of mind is achieved even when you live under severe or stressful circumstances.
Read carefully now what Paul writes in Philippians
Here is assurance that you can have peace of mind, a peace that is completely beyond human understanding. Notice also that it will guard your heart and mind. Guard you from what? It guards you from such things as fear, anxiety, phobias, depression, feelings of rejection and loneliness, etc. Do you believe this?
You will also begin to learn how to use a great tool often overlooked in Bible study, meditation. I can recall that, growing up and even later in college, most of my Bible study was learning facts. Certainly, facts are important for us to learn, but we are missing the entire purpose of Bible study if we do not learn to apply what we read.
In using meditation, you think about the passage, not just read it. You reflect on its meaning and see its application in your own life. Meditation is not just reading scripture but thinking it through, seeing how it applies to your personal, everyday life. It then becomes very meaningful and powerful in your life.
David in Psalms 1:2 speaks of delighting in God’s law and meditating on it day and night. Again, in Psalms 119:97, he says, “O how I love your law! It is my meditation all day.”
If you are presently in depression, your doctor may have you on a medication for depression. This is nothing to be afraid of or ashamed of, even if it is over a long period of time.
It has been proven that with some people, there is a definite relationship between depression and chemical imbalances that often occur in the brain. This is something you cannot help.
The medications used today are not addictive or harmful. Look upon your medication as you would a vitamin. It is putting into your brain chemicals that are needed to restore things back to normal.
If you are severely depressed and not on medication, we recommend that you see a medical doctor about the possibility of going on a medication that will help restore a chemical balance in your brain. He can determine if you need to do this.
We ask that you take only one chapter per week. At the close of each chapter, there will be certain Scriptures you will be asked to read and reread several times during the week. The power you will receive from these exercises will not be just reading scriptures over and over again, but in believing them.
You must bring yourself to strongly believe what you read. You need to understand that this means not only to believe but to feel. There is a vast difference between having knowledge about something and feeling deeply about it.
The problem with old emotional flaws is that they have become deeply ingrained over a long period of time, thus you have come to feel deeply about them.
You must now replace all these old feelings with new, healthy feelings. This will not happen overnight. It will take time. Most of the time, these negative emotional feelings have developed over a long period of time; thus, they do not go away immediately.
If you have the patience, change will begin to take place. You must bring yourself to believe strongly in what you will be reading. Your feelings will play a very significant part in attaining peace of mind.
Repetitive reading and meditation on certain scriptures will help you to reinforce your feelings. The apostle Paul writes something very interesting in his letter to the Philippians.
What we see in these verses is pure and simple thought control. You can change your thoughts, what you think about. You can change from negative thoughts to positive thoughts.
You can change from incapacitating thoughts to healthy thoughts. When you are willing to make the effort, God will be with you and help you to make these changes.
Just think, all those old hurtful thoughts can be exchanged for new thoughts that are uplifting and have positive value. But again, it is going to take time and diligent work. We witness many extremes in religion today. One of these extremes is emotionalism.
While such extremes can be harmful, we must recognise that there is a definite place for emotions in our lives. In fact, a lack of emotion in our lives can be very detrimental. Healthy emotions are never wrong.
One thing you will learn in these therapy sessions is to distinguish between harmful emotions and healthy emotions. Emotions are never wrong when based on the truths of the Bible.
There is a place for healthy emotions in your life. You need to feel deeply about certain things. Never be afraid or be embarrassed to have deep emotions and feelings about things that are based on God’s word.
For these therapy chapters to be the most effective, you need to find a quiet place where you can be alone for at least an hour each day. Don’t put yourself where a telephone call will interrupt you. Don’t be within the sound of the TV. It is important that you be able to have a quiet time with absolutely no interruptions or disturbances.
It just will not work if you do not arrange to do it this way. You have to pay a price for recovery. That price is finding a place where you can have a quiet time to yourself. Make this a daily priority. This will be the most difficult part of these studies: finding the time.
The fast pace of life that we live today makes it difficult for us to stop everything we are doing and have some quiet time for ourselves. However, it seems we do find time to watch television, go shopping, go to ball games, engage in social activities, etc.
The question is, do you really want to overcome your emotional pain? Finding the time will answer this question for you. Read each chapter slowly and carefully, comprehending each sentence as you read. Don’t get in a hurry.
After reading a chapter, go back and read the scriptures at the end of the chapter slowly and with conviction. You might like to read them aloud to yourself. Memorise them if you wish.
Meditate on them word by word, getting their full meaning and impact. Fix them in your mind. Think about how they apply to your particular problems. As a starter, read the scriptures below very slowly several times. Again, don’t be in a hurry. Meditate on and digest each word you read.
It is also very important that you have some prayer time each day. After reviewing each chapter and meditating on the scriptures that are provided, you need to take some time to talk to God about your problems. Just express in your own words how you feel and what is happening in your life.
God wants you to tell him about your problems. He wants to know how you feel. Prayer may be difficult for you at this point, but even if you can only say a few words, then say what you can. Just remember, “He cares for you.” The Lord wants you to tell him about your emotional pain.
Here is a suggested prayer to begin with.
“O Lord, how wonderful you are. Thank you for caring about me. Thank you for loving me. Thank you for letting me bring all my problems before you. My biggest problem(s) now is ________________________. Please help me to overcome this burden that I carry around with me because I cannot do it alone. I put my trust in you, Lord, for I know that all things are possible with you, and I know you will help me to do what is best for me and others also. In Jesus name, Amen.”
In one of David’s prayers, he said the following.
One of the things that made David so great was his ability to take his troubles to God and put his trust in God to deliver him from his anguish and troubles. You can do the same. So now you know how the plan works.
It’s not a difficult procedure, is it! It does require commitment, diligence and daily discipline. But you can do it. You don’t have to stay mired down in your emotional pain. There is hope.
The rewards will be worth every effort you have to make. You now have the opportunity to bring peace of mind into your life. So make up your mind that for the next few weeks, you are going to really give it a try. There is everything to be gained and nothing to lose.
Write out in your own words what you consider to be your main problems at this time, and then write out what you plan to do about them. In order to maintain privacy, you may want to keep these notes in a private place so no one will be reading them.
Write out in your own words what you consider to be your main problems at this time, and then write out what you plan to do about them. In order to maintain privacy, you may want to keep these notes in a private place so no one will be reading them.
Someone once asked the famous theologian Carl Barth, “What is the most profound thought in the universe?” He replied, “Jesus loves me, this I know.” This simple song expresses a profound thought.
God’s love and concern for humanity are indeed profound. In fact, it is so profound that it is difficult for us to grasp the full impact of how great it is and what it includes. Paul prays the following.
Notice that Paul even concludes that God’s love is so great that it cannot be fully understood and appreciated. John tells us that “God is love”, John 4:8. He is the personification of love. In other words, His love is perfect. It is impossible then for our finite minds to grasp how great and powerful God’s love is for us.
All we know is imperfect love; we cannot fully comprehend perfect love. Yet by faith we accept this fact and praise God for manifesting His perfect love toward us. Consider the following passages.
The greatest proof and example of God’s perfect love is seen in the death of His Son upon the cross. We remember the words of John.
In Romans 5:5, Christians are assured that “God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.” While you have this wonderful assurance, it may be difficult for you to feel it. You may intellectually acknowledge God’s love, but it is difficult for you to feel it.
It is easy to say, “Jesus loves me”, but difficult to feel “this I know.” You can accept something intellectually, but you do not always accept it emotionally. In other words, the problem lies in feeling loved.
When we do not feel loved, sometimes it is because we think we are not worthy of love, we think that somehow we are different and don’t deserve God’s love. “Would God love me the way I am?”
Maybe you are constantly criticising and blaming yourself for past mistakes and errors, feeling that God could never really love you. This is a false and destructive emotion you need to rid yourself of.
Sometimes our feelings can be traced to childhood, how our parents felt about us and how we felt about them. For example, if our fathers were too busy to pay attention to us, then we tend to project this feeling toward our Heavenly Father. If your earthly father put you down, then you may feel that God puts you down also.
If your parents never outwardly showed you love and affection, it may be hard to feel God’s love. If you could never trust in your parents, it could be hard to trust in God. If one had no earthly father or was abused by a father, then the problem is compounded even more.
It seems that our concepts of God are based to some extent on our relationship with our earthly fathers. This, no doubt, is one reason why the Bible places so much responsibility for the spiritual development of children upon the father rather than on the mother.
It seems that in our society, any spiritual training in the home comes primarily from the mother. Yet the father image is so important in a family for a proper God image. This is not to say a home will fail without a male spiritual leader.
We know that many children are brought up in homes where there is no father to give them spiritual training, or else if there is a father, he fails to give them any spiritual training. Yet these children have turned out successful as Christians.
The Bible even furnishes us an example of this. Timothy received his spiritual training from his mother Eunice and grandmother Lois, 2 Timothy 1:5 / 2 Timothy 3:14-15.
A godly mother can compensate in many ways, but the presence of a male role model enhances a child’s feeling that he or she is loved by God. Also, keep in mind your father may not have received love in his family, and it may have been difficult for him to show his love toward you.
The same holds true for a mother in a family. We do not want to get into the blaming business and lay all our problems at the feet of our parents. They probably did the best they could. If you come from a family that showed a great amount of love, be thankful you could grow up having that experience.
Sometimes we allow hardships, tragedies and traumas to cause us to question God and His love for us. It may be the death of a child, the sudden discovery of a tumour, a serious accident or some other event.
We often react with questions like, “Why me?” or “Why would God let this happen?” Especially, we wonder, “Why does God let bad things happen to good people?”
We often conclude that God must not like us or that he is punishing us and does not love us. Nothing could be further from the truth. We must realise that since the fall of man, with the tree of life being removed from man, life on earth will never be perfect.
We all have to die. Because of sin, life will have its ups and downs. Sometimes it may be our own fault that brings on tragedies. However, this never removes the fact that God loves us.
We might also consider the apostle Paul. He writes of his tribulations as follows.
In spite of all his sufferings Paul never for one moment doubted God’s love for him. Just remember this, God loves you, do not let anyone take this from you! Paul encourages us with these words.
Dwelling on this one passage alone for the next month can have a great impact on your feeling loved by God. We need to remember that God allowed his Son to die on a cross.
The agony and pain that he suffered are indescribable. This did not mean that God did not love His Son. However, he loved us so much that he was willing to stand aside and watch his son be tortured on the cross. This was the only way that we could be saved and have hope of eternal life.
John tells us that “God is love,” 1 John 4:8 / 1 John 4:16. This is his nature. He cannot be any other way. He loved his Son, but at the same time, he loved us. Sometimes God has to stand aside when bad things happen to us, but that does not mean he does not love us.
Again, don’t let anyone or any event take away from you the fact of His love for you. If you can’t feel God’s love now, when and how can you begin to feel it? The apostle John wrote, “We love him because He first loved us,” 1 John 4:19. Love was initiated by God.
When you consider the cross and what transpired there, you realise that because of the cross you can (1) be cleansed of all sin, (2) become a child of God, and (3) live in hope of being with God in heaven for eternity.
To put it another way, count your many blessings, name them one by one, just as the song says. Just these three things alone can cause us to feel God’s love. Therefore, you need to do a lot of meditation on the cross.
Read the accounts given in the Gospels of the death, burial and resurrection of Christ. Read them slowly and carefully. Then read them over and over again. You will begin to find yourself responding to God’s love.
These accounts can be found in Matthew 27:27-50 / Mark 15:16-37 / Luke 23:26-46 / John 19:16-30. Why not read a different account each day during your quiet time this week?
There is another principle that will help you to feel loved. This is found in 1 John.
The apostle seems to be saying that sometimes faithful Christians with good hearts (consciences) seem to dwell on their guilt, and they end up condemning themselves.
He goes ahead to say that God is greater than the feelings we may have. So don’t go by your present feelings, go by what Almighty God says. It is difficult for some Christians to feel they are saved.
They will express doubt with such expressions as: “If I should die, I don’t know if God would save me or not.” John has assured us that if we have been living in fellowship with God, we have the assurance of our sins being cleansed.
This is proof that we are in a saved condition. However, if this does not change your feelings, John says to believe it anyway. Then, in time, you will begin to have genuine feelings that you are saved. John says God is greater than the inaccurate feelings you may have now.
Go by what God says, not what your feelings tell you. In other words, God means what he says in spite of what your feelings may be telling you. One translation renders this as follows.
The conclusion is, start believing it even if you don’t presently feel it. Now, a very interesting thing will begin to happen. If you keep on believing in spite of your feelings, soon you will find yourself feeling what you believe.
At this point, we need to pause and ask, why is it so important that you feel loved by God? What is the point of all of this? What is being accomplished? The answer is this. The greatest enemy of your fears, insecurities, etc., is love.
For example, you are assured by the apostle John that love will drive away such negative emotions.
It is also very important at this point to recognise that love is a two-way street. Not only does God love us, but we, too, must love. We must love God and our neighbour.
This is putting things pretty strongly. It calls for an all-out effort to love God and others. When we read the accounts listed above of the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus, it can cause us to respond with love.
Jesus says it should be with all our being. No doubt this is something we have to work on. It is easy to allow our love to be misplaced on things that are not important.
To strengthen your love, give more time to meditating on the great sacrifice Jesus made for you. Partaking of the Lord’s Supper each Sunday will also strengthen your love for the Lord. Making the cross central in your life is the key to your love for God.
In the command to love, Jesus said we must also love our neighbour. Loving people sometimes is easy, and yet sometimes it can be very difficult. There are some people who are not very appealing.
There are others who are very unlovable. Loving one who is not very lovable can be a real test. Our love must extend beyond the unlovable but also to our enemies.
How can this ever be possible? When Jesus used the word “love”, it was the Greek word “agape.” This is the kind of love God has expressed toward us. It is grounded in the will and not in feelings or emotions.
It is a commitment to love in spite of and regardless of the situation or any set of circumstances. Agape is unconditional, unreserved love. It is doing what is best for the other person. It puts that person ahead of self and seeks his or her good before seeking your own good.
This kind of love does not require affection or close friendship, although we usually relate love to such relationships. Rather than revenge or resentment, one will seek to do good whenever the opportunity presents itself. This sounds difficult, but the Lord would not ask us to do something that is beyond our ability.
In Ephesians, Paul expresses a prayer which aptly applies to any Christian today.
Meditate for a while on the many things Christ has done for you. Count your many blessings. Go back to the scenes that took place on the cross. Experience God’s love as deeply as you can.
Read and reread the scriptures in this lesson. Now pray to your loving Father. Thank him for loving you even in spite of your failures and shortcomings. Tell him you are going to accept His love even if you don’t feel you deserve it. Tell him of your love for him.
Pour out your love for him and ask him to help you to feel deeply his love for you. Soon you will feel it. To truly feel God’s love is a supreme blessing. Don’t deny yourself of His infinite love. Accept it, feel it.
Finally, sing with feeling and conviction (either out loud or to yourself) the following wonderful little song.
Write out in your own words how you feel about God’s love for you.
For the past week, you have been reading and meditating on God’s personal love for you. How is it going? Can you begin to say, “This I know?” Remember, the more you put this thought into your mind, the more it will become a part of you.
But it is all up to you. God has given you a wonderful gift. He has built into you the freedom of choice, or as we sometimes say, “you are a free moral agent.” With this power of choice, you can choose your thoughts. You can replace old thoughts with new, uplifting, energising, and empowering thoughts.
Keep on keeping on with your meditation about God’s love for you. In time, you will really begin to feel it. Once you reach this stage, you will find fear, anxiety and many other negative emotions will begin to disappear from your life.
What do you think about yourself as a person? How do you view yourself? Who you think you are is related to a great extent to your childhood, especially in your parent-child relationships. You cannot cut yourself off from your childhood history.
Although we may not remember all the details of our childhood, the child you once were, is still very much alive in you today and affects everything you do, for good or for bad.
Whether you realise it or not, you are often letting that little child still tell you that you have very little worth. The good news is that you don’t have to let this inner child dominate your present life any more. You can break this power and render it inoperative.
Have you ever heard any of the following expressions? Perhaps you have even voiced some of them yourself at various times. Some of these may cause you to recall some of your past.
It seems that countless men and women today live in an environment which screams to them daily, “You aren’t worth much.” Many times, a negative scolding is prefaced by, “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times.”
We hear so much from the people we trust and depend on that we believe what they say about us. We end up internalising their comments into our very being, and this is what we become.
Parents who are from dysfunctional families may not have had their needs met as infants and children thus they often pass on their problems to their children. The result is shame and hurt feelings that come from the negative messages, affirmations, beliefs and rules that we hear as we grow up.
We hear these messages not only from our parents but also from teachers, authority figures, and even from preachers. These messages basically tell us that we are somehow defective and are not what we ought to be.
In this third chapter, we are going to think about your self-image, the mental picture you carry around of yourself, which you may not even be aware of. However, it is there, complete down to the last detail. This self-image is your own personal concept of what kind of person you think you are.
Growing up in a dysfunctional family is nearly always associated with shame and low self-esteem. Shame can be defined as an uncomfortable or painful feeling that we experience when we think that a part of us is defective, bad, incomplete, inadequate, or a failure.
Some of our negative feelings can be related to experiences in later life. If the person you are married to, your friends and associates encourage you and build you up, and if you achieve a degree of success in your work, then your self-esteem is enhanced.
If, however, you have lived with constant criticism, disappointment, and failure, your ego may have become deflated, maybe completely crushed. Once a negative idea of self goes into the overall picture of self, it becomes true. You do not question its validity but proceed to act upon it as if it were true.
The unfortunate thing is that many of these ideas are false. You just think they are true. Once the image is formed, you will “act like” the sort of person you conceive yourself to be. In fact, you are unable to act otherwise.
For example, if you feel you are a failure (“I just can’t do anything right”), you will act as a failure. If you feel you are a nobody, then you will be a nobody. A student who says, “I’m dumb when it comes to maths,” will find his grades will bear him out. Why?
One literally cannot act other than the way he conceives himself to be. The way you feel about yourself is the way you will act, for you will act out your feelings.
For you to have a life of joy, contentment, peace of mind and security, you must have an adequate and realistic self-image that you can live with comfortably. You need a wholesome self-esteem.
You need to feel good about yourself, who you are, what you can do and what you can be. This is not saying you should become arrogant. It is saying you need to know what your real worth is.
There is no better place to begin than to see what God thinks of you. God created you. He, above all others, has the correct image of who you are and what you are worth.
So consider for a few moments how God looks at you. You may be surprised to find out that God’s image of you is quite different from the one you presently have of yourself.
1. You were made in the image of God.
As you can easily see, you are very much like God. You bear his image. What a lofty concept.
2. You were made a little lower than the angels in heaven.
We usually think of angels ranking very high, in the very presence of God. Just think. You are just a little lower in rank than the angels.
3. You are of such value that God has sent his son to die on the cross for you.
Don’t ever be guilty of saying you are not worth anything.
4. You are unique.
No two persons on this earth are exactly the same. We are all different, just like every snowflake is different. The truth about yourself is this: you are not inferior, you are not superior, you are yourself. God has not created a standard person and said, “This is it.”
You have your own unique personality. So you don’t have to fit into some special mould, just be yourself. Why not accept Paul’s assessment of himself: “By the grace of God I am what I am,” 1 Corinthians 15:10.
5. The prayer of Jesus to His Father in John’s gospel cannot help convince you that God continually cherishes the soul of every person, no matter how bad he or she may feel about themselves.
What a deep sense of self-esteem this should give you! Just think, God loves you with the same identical love He had when He gave His Son to die on the cross.
This is how valuable the Lord thinks you are.
6. God, in contrast to man, is perfect.
He came in the flesh, and we have his example to imitate. If you want to, you can be like Him. Not in the sense you can ever be perfect, but you can imitate his ways.
The life of Jesus on this earth is a perfect example of how to live. However, he is the only man to ever live a perfect life. And while you cannot be perfect, you can be like Him. You can imitate his life to a great degree.
Jesus selected twelve men to be apostles. Every one of them had some very rough edges that needed to be smoothed out. He said to them, “Follow me,” Matthew 4:19 / Mark 1:17 / Matthew 8:22 / Luke 9:59. They did, and soon they became men who were completely changed.
Each retained his own personality, but in their outlook on self and others, they adopted a way of thinking that was radically different from the way they had previously conceived themselves. This proves you can change.
Instead of being a failure, you can be like him. Instead of being a nobody, you can be like Christ. The important thing is to recognise that your self-image can be changed.
Replacing the old negative images with new positive images that are given to you by the Lord does this. Peter tells us that we can be “partakers of the divine nature,” 2 Peter 1:4.
What greater self-image can one have? Yes, you can change. You can be like Jesus. You can partake of His very nature. Do you believe this? Do you believe God means what He says? Then start believing it, and soon your belief will become an emotional feeling.
The concepts you have of yourself probably developed over many years. They came about in a slow and gradual way. Thus, they may be well entrenched in your thinking. But even with bad stuff in your past, you have choices.
Everyone must overcome something. This is life. Within each of us is the power to change and move on. Satan would certainly like to convince you that you are worthless so as to discourage you from even trying to change. He is the originator of the inferiority complex and pessimism.
Remember, you are what you think you are. When you have low self-esteem, you will never accomplish what you were created to do. Earthly accomplishments are futile when you approach life with a negative disposition.
If you feel you cannot do something you have already set up enough roadblocks to guarantee failure. The apostle Paul had the perfect formula for success.
There are six billion people on the earth now. God has made you one of a kind, and that in itself makes you important. Once you get on this track, you can never fail. What greater peace of mind can you have than to know that the creator of his vast universe knows you personally?
Just think! You are more valuable to God than the entire world and its accumulated wealth. Start now by making up your mind that you are not going to degrade yourself as of no importance.
To do this is to deny the truth God has revealed about you and your importance to Him. Shameful and hurt feelings need to be expressed in a healthy way. You need to talk them out with someone you feel comfortable with and can trust to keep everything in confidence. This, of course, is difficult for most of us to do.
We seem to think, “If I were to tell you, you would be ashamed of me.” You may think I am bad, and I don’t want you to feel this way toward me. As a result, we often hide our feelings. But you need to get them out in the open.
It has been said that we only show our true self about fifteen minutes a day, thus the rest of the time we are manifesting a false self. We begin to feel that this false self is our natural self. We think that this is “the way we should be.” It is actually a cover-up.
Even though you may do a good job of acting out your shame and hurt, you give yourself away when you hang your head, slump down, avoid eye contact or apologise for having needs or rights. Your shame will not go away until you learn what it is, express it and share it with a safe and supportive person. We cannot overstate how important this is.
For the past two weeks, you have been engaging in daily exercises of reading, meditating and praying, even singing. These exercises are designed to develop within you a feeling that God loves you.
You were asked to visualise certain scriptures, to use your imagination and see yourself as the one addressed in the scriptures you read. Continue to review these each week so that you will not only know them intellectually but also feel them emotionally. It is recommended that you continue to reinforce these feelings during the coming week by being as positive about yourself and others as you can.
Make up your mind, you are going to be kind to yourself. You are going to think of yourself the way that God thinks of you. Make these truths as vivid in your life as you possibly can.
The following are some scriptures you can add to the ones you already have.
No one has ever had more in his past to overcome than the apostle Paul. Steeped in the human traditions and the religion of the Pharisees, he became the greatest persecutor of Christians in his day.
Then, suddenly one day, he came to the shocking realisation that he had been wrong in his deep-seated beliefs. Without hesitation, he changed and became a Christian.
The terrible things he had done to Christians seemed to have haunted him later on. Certainly, there had to be a great amount of shame over his past actions. However, this was something that was in the past, and he could not change what he had done. So he had to put everything in the past.
Paul could have dwelt on the past. No doubt some of us could spend our entire time dwelling on the past if we had a great number of negative things that had happened in the past. Paul chose the wise thing. Since he could not change the past, he went forward to make the best of the present and the future.
There is a very beautiful song entitled “Does Jesus Care.” You may know it. If so, sing it out loud. If not, read it.
Now go to your Heavenly Father in prayer. Thank Him for creating you a person of great worth. Don’t ever let anyone take away this precious truth from you. Write down some things that have happened in the past that you feel may have caused you to feel of little worth.
Since these are things you cannot do anything about now, draw a big X through them, putting them to rest forever. Now write down what you consider to be your good points.
Don’t allow yourself to be critical as you write. No more negative baggage about how awful or bad you imagine you are. From now on, it’s what God thinks you are.
On four different occasions, Jesus said to his disciples, “Oh, you of little faith,” Matthew 8:26 / Matthew 14:31 / Matthew 16:8 / Luke 12:28. These disciples had been with him almost every day over a long period of time.
They had witnessed his miracles, heard him speak and listened when he prayed to the Father. Yet they had their moments of doubt. Even John the Baptist, one of the greatest men who has ever lived, seemed to have had doubts while he was in prison, Matthew 11:2-5
Jesus often marvelled at the lack of faith among his disciples. We, too, like the disciples, often have our doubts. Thus, we constantly need to work on building up our faith and eliminating our doubts.
It seems that our doubts have a way of taking over and controlling us at times. It isn’t that we do not believe in the Bible, Jesus or God. The problem is we just don’t trust them enough.
We read the Bible believing it is God’s word, but end up saying, “It’s hard sometimes for me to believe that” or “It won’t work for me.” It seems we often pray without expecting an answer to our petitions.
We often fail in some good work because we doubt it can be done. We have our failures, frustrations, discouragement, and our faith always seems to suffer. Oh, for the ability to explicitly trust in the Lord, never doubting him for one moment.
Do you remember the story of Peter who wanted to walk on the Sea of Galilee to meet the Lord who was walking on the water? Matthew 14:25-31. He started out fine, but as he took his eyes off Jesus and began to notice that the wind was stirring up the sea, fear overcame him, and he started to sink.
Peter cried out for help. He said, “Lord, save me.” How quickly doubt took over. Jesus reached out to him to pull him from the water and said, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?” Matthew 14:31.
We are so much like Peter. Because we do not start out with complete trust, we end up like Peter, afraid and in complete doubt. Solomon has instructed us to do the following.
“With all your heart” is the real key to a conquering faith. There are three stories in the New Testament that impress us about having faith. One is the Centurion in Matthew 8:8-10.
This man is the last person on earth we would expect to find faith in. He was not a Jew. He was a Roman. A commander of Roman soldiers. Yet he explicitly trusted in Christ.
He did not feel it was necessary for the Lord to be present to heal his servant. All the Lord had to do was just speak the word as far as he was concerned. Jesus commended this man’s faith, saying, “Truly I tell you, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith.” Matthew 8:10.
Then there is the woman with an issue of blood mentioned in Matthew 9:20-22. There was no doubt in her mind that if she could just touch the Lord’s garment, she would be healed. She did not even speak to him, asking for his healing power. She just wanted to touch him; that would be enough.
Last, there is the woman of Matthew 15:22-28, who is an example of complete trust in the Lord. She made a request of the Lord, and it appeared he would not grant it. However, she would not give up.
There was absolutely no doubt in her mind that he could relieve her daughter of her suffering. Jesus granted her request. Her persistence impressed the Lord. He commended her faith. He said, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted,” Matthew 15:28.
The one element that seems to stand out in each of these examples is that there was never any doubt. They all had complete, absolute trust in the Lord. It is doubt that weakens faith. Doubt is the great enemy of faith.
Our faith will be in proportion to the amount of doubt we have. Certainly, no one has ever had perfect faith. Most of us are at times filled with some doubt. Yet we must determine which we are going to be ruled by.
Satan is active and is determined to fill our minds with as many doubts as he can. He started doing this in the Garden of Eden and has continued to do so until now, and will continue to cast doubt in our minds.
Notice the contrast the Lord makes between faith and doubt.
Our success in spiritual matters depends upon our ability to eliminate doubt. Our ability to control doubt is the key to successful faith. Doubt always sends our faith spiralling downward.
Doubt destroys and weakens faith. Don’t allow doubts to rise and take over. Give yourself in complete, absolute trust to God and his will. Feed your faith and starve your doubts.
We can learn to “walk by faith,” 2 Corinthians 5:7, just as Abraham did. Faith, instead of doubt, can become the ruling factor in our daily lives. Phillip’s translation of Hebrews 11:1 reads as follows.
Purposely start exercising your faith. Simply refuse to even think about doubt. Practice overcoming doubt. True, we live in a world that is filled with doubt, suspicion, frustration, fears and uncertainty. We are surrounded by negative thinking. However, we do not have to be a part of the doubting crowd. We can choose to be among those who explicitly trust.
Abraham of the Old Testament has been called the father of the faithful. He is set forth in the Bible as an example of faith, one that we should imitate. In other words, Abraham is a model of faith. He is our example. He had tremendous faith and exercised it repeatedly throughout his lifetime.
In Genesis 12, we learn that God called Abraham to leave his country and kindred and go to a strange land he had never seen before. He was given no explanation for this change in location.
Abraham did not question God about the matter. He did not raise questions as to why God wanted him to move. Later, when he was called upon to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice, he did not hesitate to obey God. He did not seek a reason for God’s directions. We marvel at his absolute trust in God, never questioning God’s purpose or reason.
Yet we know from reading about his life that he had weak moments too, just like us. There were times when he had doubts, and these doubts weakened his faith. This should encourage us. It makes us realise that none of us is perfect in our faith. Thus, we should not feel guilt because doubts enter and weaken our faith.
At the same time, we realise that doubt can be minimised and that an active faith can be the ruling factor in our lives most of the time. For the most part, doubt can be eliminated. Maybe not 100%, but at least a major portion of it can be eliminated.
Herein lies, to a great extent, the problem of doubt. We are impressed with what we can see rather than what we cannot see. We see and feel many things that are negative and destructive, causing us to doubt.
For example, you may be suffering from depression. You ask how I can endure this any longer? It’s hard to pray, to read the Bible, to worship. Why has this happened to me? Etc. One thing that can help is that we can accept our suffering knowing that God deals with us as his children.
What God may allow to happen to us (not directly sent) is for our good. He loves us enough to allow things to happen that will do us good. Even Jesus, God’s only begotten Son, “learned obedience from what he suffered,” Hebrews 5:8.
Suffering does not mean that God has ceased to care for us. It may be that he is training us for something far greater than we can imagine. God has chosen not to remove pain from his people. If he did, we might serve him for the wrong reasons. Neither has he left us to fear that our suffering is useless.
Also, He has demonstrated through Jesus that we, too, can finish our course.
This is a quotation from Proverbs 3:11-12. The writer seems to be saying that these Hebrew Christians should not have been surprised at what they had been suffering.
All the suffering allowed to come upon God’s people has a benevolent purpose to strengthen and correct his people. The writer goes ahead to say they should consider hardships as God treating them as sons. He refers to the corrections fathers give to their children and then adds the following.
Chastisement may come in a variety of troubles and sorrows. Usually, these are in the sense that God allows such things to befall his children. There is an eternal purpose of God in allowing hardships that we cannot always understand.
We are assured, however, that they are designed to test our hearts, correct us and strengthen us. They correct our faults, strengthen our faith and promote our eternal welfare.
It is not God’s will that his children should have everything they desire in this life. Riches and luxuries may cause pride to flourish in our hearts; success in life’s various projects may cause men to trust in themselves; and even true righteousness may lead to despising others. Trials have a way of bringing us down to reality and making us realise our need for God’s strength.
Paul in Romans gives us something to think about when we have been subjected to any kind of suffering as a Christian.
The natural reaction to this is how could this work for my good? Why me? Why so much? We can never second-guess God for his reasons. However, faith requires us to accept his chastening without resentment, realising that he has something great in store for us. In Corinthians, Paul discusses his sufferings and their effect on him.
The conclusion Paul reached was “I accept this.” He considered it a blessing. He felt he gained strength because, in his situation, he had to totally depend on God. He could not trust in his own strength. He had to turn to God.
Control is perhaps the most dominant issue in our lives. We feel we must be in control, but the more we try, the more out of control we feel. We find out that life cannot always be controlled.
There are so many things we cannot change that are completely out of our hands. It does not matter who you know, what you know, how much money you have, or how intelligent you are; there are some things you cannot do anything about.
The way out is to surrender and allow God’s will to prevail in our lives. One of the most powerful and healing acts is giving up our need to always be in control. Turn it over to God and let him take control. The bottom line is to just let go.
What about your physical and emotional problems? What can you do? You continue to strengthen your faith by reading and meditating on God’s word. The passages assigned over the past three chapters, as well as the ones in this chapter, should be read and meditated on every day. Fix them firmly in your mind.
Remember that Jesus travelled the way you are travelling. He, too, experienced the same kinds of emotional pain you are experiencing. He demonstrated that it is possible to overcome. We must keep our eyes on Jesus. He is our example. You can be victorious.
Not only read these scriptures, but also do a lot of meditation on them. Then go to God in prayer and let him know about your pain. Ask him to give you the strength to bear up under your pain, to give you victory over your hurting.
Begin now and make a fresh start with your faith. Start feeding your faith, and at the same time start starving your doubts. Jesus told Thomas, “Stop doubting and believe,” John 20:27. It seems like Thomas needed to start all over with his faith.
We do too sometimes. Don’t forget your prayer time. Put your faith to work in prayer, letting God know you depend on and lean on him for the strength to get you through the trials of life.
Write down the doubts you are going to start starving. Next, write out a plan that will get you working toward feeding your faith, so that it will grow and grow.