Posts Tagged ‘growth’

A great question was posted on the forum at Higher-Calling.com. I felt that it was worth sharing.

“And He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.’”
2 Cor. 12:9a NKJV

How do I make this exchange? What does it look like in practice? Your input please.

Here was my response:

Great question, Paul. Thanks for asking. I have some thoughts about it. I will be the first to admit that I don’t do this perfectly or even as well as I would like. But here goes…

As with anything, this exchange has to begin with faith. If we don’t trust that this is available to us for some reason, then it will ultimately be ineffective in our lives. We have to allow the words of Jesus to be what they are – transcendent. They transcend our shame, our feelings of inadequacy, our circumstances, our hurts, our flesh, our temptations and everything else that would tempt us to believe that Jesus’ grace is not sufficient for us. The wonderful thing about this verse is that it acknowledges the very things that made up my previous list…our weaknesses.

Another observation is that Jesus said his grace is sufficient, not the law, our discipline or anything other than free, undeserved blessings and favor of God.

The context for this verse is wonderful as well. Paul is pleading for God to take away this “thorn in his side.” There is a lot of speculation as to what the thorn was. We really don’t know and so we can only conclude that what it actually was is not an important detail. What is important is that God reframed the reality of this fleshly haunt of Paul’s into a blessing…something that God allowed to remain in order to keep Paul humble.

Why is this so wonderful? Because Paul’s default response was not condemnation and shame, but humility. He saw his fleshly issues, whatever they were, as a reason to walk in humility before God and probably more importantly before other people. After Paul asked God to remove this issue from him and God did not, Paul took it in stride and accepted it as a blessing. When was the last time we saw suffering as a blessing?

Here is the full passage in The Message. A little context – Paul had just described some amazing revelations of Heaven that God had given to him in the previous verses.

Because of the extravagance of those revelations, and so I wouldn’t get a big head, I was given the gift of a handicap to keep me in constant touch with my limitations. Satan’s angel did his best to get me down; what he in fact did was push me to my knees. No danger then of walking around high and mighty! At first I didn’t think of it as a gift, and begged God to remove it. Three times I did that, and then he told me,

My grace is enough; it’s all you need.
My strength comes into its own in your weakness.

Once I heard that, I was glad to let it happen. I quit focusing on the handicap and began appreciating the gift. It was a case of Christ’s strength moving in on my weakness. Now I take limitations in stride, and with good cheer, these limitations that cut me down to size—abuse, accidents, opposition, bad breaks. I just let Christ take over! And so the weaker I get, the stronger I become.
- 2 Cor. 12:7-10 (The Message)

After being in recovery for a while, you realize that addiction of any sort, porn/sexual addiction included, is an attempt to meet legitimate needs through illegitimate means. The way we define sexual addiction on the Higher-Calling.com FAQ further explains this perspective.

With that in mind, I have come to believe that temptation to engage in acting out behavior is like the check engine light on the dashboard of my car. The pull toward pornography is an indicator that I need to check under the hood.

In recovery terms, this is known as identifying your triggers. The acronym HALT is a well-known list of common triggers (Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired). This article further explains HALT.

It is very helpful to identify triggers in two categories: visual/physical or emotional. HALT identifies two physical triggers (hungry or tired) and two emotional triggers (angry or lonely). Seeing a person or picture with certain physical attributes or wearing specific clothing can visually trigger arousal.

Emotional triggers are much more difficult to identify. In part this is because addicts are generally not connected to their emotional selves and therefore have a hard time identifying and expressing their emotions. Shame is probably the most powerful triggering emotion for addicts. Often confused with guilt, which is the negative feeling tied to wrong behavior, shame is a much deeper sense that we are fundamentally worthless and unacceptable. Anything that triggers our shame is sure to kick off a strong pull to act out.

Being aroused by certain physical/visual or even emotional stimulus is not abnormal. However, addicts take it a step further and engage in acting out behavior. Acting out repeatedly over time hard-wires our brains to associate arousal of any sort with our acting out behaviors. All arousal, regardless of the trigger, leads us to the same place.

Coming back to our metaphor, these triggers are glaring check engine lights on the dashboard of our consciousness. They indicate places where we may need to grow, establish accountability, forgive ourselves or others, or simply confess past sins in a safe place. The point is to not let the “service required” indicator go unnoticed.

Take a few minutes to reflect on what is going on under the hood the next time you are triggered to act out. It is an essential element of keeping the engine of our sobriety running smoothly.

This is reposted from Pastor Steven Furtick’s blog

Green Grass and Deep Crap

We have several patches of unusually green, extremely tall grass in our front yard.
We also have a problem with our septic system.  It leaks into the aforementioned part of the yard, where the grass grows tall and green.

There is a direct correlation:
The place where the crap runs the deepest
is the place where the grass grows the greenest.

(It’s a stretch, but…)
The same is true in our lives.
The more crap we go through, the more we grow.

James said it in a more profound and appropriate way:
Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance.
(James 1:2-3)

Thought for the day:
Deep crap=Green grass