Spiritual Health - Jeremiah's Vow

Who’s Driving Your Emotions?

When others use our emotions either against us or for their own goals, they are not trustworthy sources of counsel.

God gave us emotions to serve as brakes. Not the gas pedal. But there seems to be a growing epidemic of emotional pedal confusion¹ in our world. Then, unironically, people are surprised by the carnage and chaos that results.

Watch out for those who are constantly pressing the gas on your emotions. They are not trying to help you. They are using you. Controlling you. And you should ask yourself why you let them.

What’s worse is those people are doing you a disservice and spiritual harm. When others use our emotions either against us or for their own goals, they are not trustworthy sources of counsel. I will grant that not all people who do this may have malicious or nefarious objectives, but the end will be the same. We have to become more discerning in who we allow that kind of influence in our lives.

This happens in the church. At your workplace. On the news. In your family. And especially on social media. It’s going to happen anywhere two people interact.

But, learning to be a steward of your own heart is the key to becoming free from these tactics. It can be challenging to set up healthy barriers. But doing is so is an essential part of growing emotionally and spiritually.

One of the most important disciplines we can cultivate is reflection. Taking the time to think about what is happening in and around your life. Slowing down long enough to make sure you are going where you planned and doing those things that are healthy and good.

When we reflect on those moments and events that caused us emotional frustration, we begin to discern how we respond to different stimuli. This is how we grow.

It’s one thing to be passionate. But it’s quite another to have your passions enslaved. And even more dangerous when our passions are used for the purposes of another’s agenda. We can be so passionate about something we can’t actually change we lose sight of who we are in the process. This is a recipe for being deceived and misled.

It’s one thing to be committed to a cause. But it’s quite another to give blind allegiance to anything. Particularly anything that does not provide a path toward forgiveness and reconciliation.

Too many people can no longer tell the difference. Why? Because they have invested too much of themselves into what they are promoting. And no one wants to admit they are wrong. That they may have been misled. Or even manipulated.

When our identity is subsumed into another’s or into a cause, no matter how noble its purported aims, we will become cogs in someone else’s machine. This is not how we are to live our lives. We should not surrender our personhood to anyone or anything. Who we are is a gift from God. To give ourselves in a way that only rightly belongs to God to anyone or anything earthly is a form of idolatry.

Good intentions are not good enough. Good intentions are the internal reasons for why we act. And it’s important to have them. I will not deny that. Wanting positive results can be and is commendable.

The challenge is recognizing whether or not those intentions actually produce the intended results. If they don’t, and we continue to do those things that are inflicting obvious harm, then we have become the very thing we were trying to oppose. Our intentions have to be evaluated by the results they produce. Otherwise, we will give ourselves, and others, a pass on their actions when the results are negative.

Judas had good intentions. But he ended up betraying the Son of God. And Peter had good intentions, but when confronted with his association with Jesus he denied Him three times. One could not forgive himself, the other found forgiveness he didn’t deserve.

Our intentions should not be the metric we use to evaluate what we do. What results from our actions should be. And the results must be under constant evaluation.

Steps for Reflection

Because learning how to reflect on our lives and our responses is so important, I’ve asked my friend and contributor to this site to provide us with a simple pattern we can use. There is also an example below. When you find yourself feeling like you are not clear about a reaction you had to an event or situation go through the following steps.

1. What emotion do I feel the strongest right now?

(If you’re having trouble identifying it, use a feelings wheel – you can find one fairly easily on Google)

*Express your emotion to God, be specific about why you feel that way.

2. What might God want to say to me in the midst of that emotion?

(It can be helpful to use the Psalms in this case – Google the emotion you feel and the word “Psalm” and see if you find one that you identify with)

*Pray, listening to what God might say about that emotion to you.

3. What is a healthy way to express that emotion to those around me?

(This might be the step that requires you to talk with a trusted mentor in the faith – despite a culture that wants you to react immediately)

*Act on the emotion in a Christlike way that displays empathy and humility.

Example:

Someone shares an example of injustice in the world that is horrible.

1. What emotion do I feel the strongest right now?

Anger. Specifically frustrated and infuriated.

*God, I am angry about this injustice. Why would such a thing be allowed?! Do something!

2. What might God want to say to me in the midst of that emotion?

I see examples of anger about injustice in several Psalms, so I read those Psalms.

*It seems like God is saying it’s okay to be angry over such things, to trust Him that He will enact justice, and to seek Him on how to participate in His justice.

3. What is a healthy way to express that emotion to those around me?

I think about a humble and empathetic way to respond in my context. I seek the advice of trusted mentors.

*I commit myself to on-going prayer and periodic fasting concerning this injustice. I decide to start a petition to change the laws and I contact lawyers and politicians to begin making changes.

Footnotes:

¹ Pedal confusion is the phrase used to describe when a driver presses the wrong pedal while driving. Usually leading to an accident.

Calm Down and Shut Up, Listen and Live.

Stressed, depressed, busy, angry, anxious, tired.

I bet you identify with one or all of those, or have gone in and out of them for the last 6 months. I have.

And in the last month God has clearly spoken similar words to my soul as the brother of Jesus wrote in James 1:19-27…except this is how I heard it: Calm Down and Shut Up, Listen and Live.

This is how James says it:

19-21 Post this at all the intersections, dear friends: Lead with your ears, follow up with your tongue, and let anger straggle along in the rear. God’s righteousness doesn’t grow from human anger. So throw all spoiled virtue and cancerous evil in the garbage. In simple humility, let our gardener, God, landscape you with the Word, making a salvation-garden of your life.
22-24 Don’t fool yourself into thinking that you are a listener when you are anything but, letting the Word go in one ear and out the other. Act on what you hear! Those who hear and don’t act are like those who glance in the mirror, walk away, and two minutes later have no idea who they are, what they look like.
25 But whoever catches a glimpse of the revealed counsel of God—the free life!—even out of the corner of his eye, and sticks with it, is no distracted scatterbrain but a man or woman of action. That person will find delight and affirmation in the action.
26-27 Anyone who sets himself up as “religious” by talking a good game is self-deceived. This kind of religion is hot air and only hot air. Real religion, the kind that passes muster before God the Father, is this: Reach out to the homeless and loveless in their plight, and guard against corruption from the godless world.
[The Message Paraphrase]

I’m not sure what you gather from those passages, but for me it boils down to 2 essential rhythms: Listen & Live it out.

Seems simple enough, right? Except it obviously isn’t as evidenced by the roller coaster of our spiritual lives that COVID has revealed.

Our Lives Need To Be Broken

One thing I have realized during this time is that the gardening and farming analogies used by Scripture are very intentional. In order to have the “good soil” of healthy rhythms in your life, the “hard soil” you’ve likely created (or at least allowed to form) needs to be broken up…

And that starts with the first 2 things I heard: Calm Down (both your emotions and your schedule) and Shut Up (both your mouth and your mind).

Many Christians simply go throughout our weeks trading the busyness of one thing (maybe work) for the busyness of another (likely kids activities), the distraction of one thing (likely social media) for the distraction of another (maybe sports), and the consumerism of one thing (usually materialism for most Americans) for the consumerism of another (usually a religiosity that touts itself as Christianity but really looks only partially like Christ).

What COVID has revealed is a disturbingly ugly truth about many Christians in America: we actually live very little like Jesus did.

Jesus was calm and never hurried. Jesus listened and had compassion.

We are anxious & stressed and always in a hurry for one reason or another. We can’t stop long enough to actually listen, let alone have compassion.

Many in the American Church seem to be worried about many things today, mostly concerning COVID: masks, whether the numbers are accurate, gathering in person, government overreach, and so on.

And while those are not unimportant things, they are certainly not the better portion. The better portion is what Jesus said Mary chose – sitting at Jesus’ feet as a disciple – when Martha was worried about so much (Luke 10:42).

Rebuilding Our Lives To Look Like Jesus

If COVID was a test, I’d say the American Church has widely failed it if I had to be honest. I’d say most have still missed what Jesus has been trying to say, because we haven’t really sat at His feet. We’ve been afraid (of the disease or of the economy) and we’ve been rushing to get back to some semblance normal (which clearly wasn’t working anyways).

What if Jesus wanted to use COVID to get us to Calm Down and Shut Up, Listen and Live like He lived? To change the rhythms of our lives and our churches which continue to produce rampant spiritual and relational immaturity? To make us more compassionate, more connected, more Christlike?

There’s a line in one of my recent favorite songs: “So don’t tell me God is silent when your Bible is closed.” [“Enough” by Social Club Misfits]

Have you been listening to God? Are you even stopping long enough to?

Or are your thoughts and your actions keeping you so busy you can’t hear Him? Are social media and the voices of others creating so much noise that you can’t even hear His voice?

Maybe we’ve missed the opportunity to hear from God. Or maybe the opportunity is still here.

For us to learn to listen.

Listen to Jesus.

Not to ourselves.

Not to others.

Just to Jesus.

Will you Calm Down and Shut Up, Listen and Live like Jesus?

Listening Is An Intentional Act

So go ahead and make plans to do it. Not a “one off” period of listening. But a consistent, daily (throughout the day) & weekly rhythm of stopping your busyness, resting in His presence, calming your mind, and slowing down long enough to actually hear His voice.

Make these rhythms a priority in your life, but especially in this season more than they’ve ever been.

Listen in the morning, in the middle of your day, and in the evening.

Once a week, set aside a half day (or even better a whole day – a Sabbath), to listen more closely and with others.

Figure out simple ways you can hear from Him and live like Him: reading Scripture (alone and with others), spending time in prayer (alone and with others), recreating & eating (definitely with others), showing compassion toward those who are hurting by listening to them (definitely with others), and engaging in meeting the physical needs of those around you (also definitely with others).

It’s these rhythms of life that like a plow running through the ground will actually break up the hard soil that has been there. Plowing is intentional, it takes action, and its hard work. So will living in healthy ways during a season that could only harden you more, make you more busy, and make you less likely to listen (to anyone, let alone Jesus).

Calm down.

Shut up.

Listen.

Live.

It’s not just good advice. It’s how you will tend for your stressed, depressed, busy, angry, anxious, and/or tired soul.

Confession & Prayer: Why we don’t experience healing from our sins

Growing up in a Protestant tradition I’ve noticed that we don’t have much of a concept of why confession matters and to whom we are called to confess.

Growing up in a Protestant tradition I’ve noticed that we don’t have much of a concept of why confession matters and to whom we are called to confess. Most of the Protestant faith tradition today focuses primarily on the vertical relationship of an individual person with God. Our main emphasis is that if we can just get enough people into a right relationship with God, then everything else will fall into place.

Anyone who’s worked in ministry for more than a day will tell you that is hardly the case. Sure, that is the foundation necessary for transformation in someone’s life – it must start with a relationship with God. But that is just the beginning of what transformation looks like, and most of what will need to be transformed in our lives will have to do with our horizontal relationships.

Tending the Seed of the Gospel

The best analogy I can think of for the process of salvation, and specifically sanctification, is one the Bible uses: gardening or farming. We know that ultimately God is who controls the most necessary parts of the process – rain, sunshine, hot or cold weather, etc. All of that is true.

However, the other necessary part to the process involves us as humans. We must till the soil, prune the plants, potentially assist with nutrients in the soil or bees to pollinate the flowers, harvesting at the right time, etc. And this process is not an individual effort for a Christian. It involves others in our lives. John Wesley termed this as the idea of “social holiness.” He said: “There is no holiness apart from social holiness.”

What he meant, and what many others before and after him have said in different ways, is that salvation is a process that involves both God as primary actor and us as secondary actor. And when I say “us” I mean it as a plural “us” – not just you working on your salvation alone in your closet somewhere, but you working on your salvation with other believers alongside you.

So That You May Be Healed

This is where a passage in James 5 comes in that helps explain the process of healing in the life of a believer. In James 5:13-18 it says:

“Are any of you suffering hardships? You should pray. Are any of you happy? You should sing praises. Are any of you sick? You should call for the elders of the church to come and pray over you, anointing you with oil in the name of the Lord. Such a prayer offered in faith will heal the sick, and the Lord will make you well. And if you have committed any sins, you will be forgiven. Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results. Elijah was as human as we are, and yet when he prayed earnestly that no rain would fall, none fell for three and a half years! Then, when he prayed again, the sky sent down rain and the earth began to yield its crops.”

The picture we get here is of a group of believers who are pursuing healing and holiness together! Yes, this description of healing includes physical healing, but if you read closely the emphasis is ultimately on healing of the whole person. This is why confessing your sins and praying is included as a vital element to the healing process. It’s not a “spiritual formula” you use for physical results. It’s a spiritual rhythm you participate in that produces fruit.

And it is not a spiritual rhythm you can do alone! This passage implies that the full experience of the forgiveness of sins actually involves others (which should not be ground-breaking for us as Christians since Jesus’ Prayer in John also says something similar – “Forgive us as we forgive those who sin against us”).

The last part of the passage reiterates the use of the analogy of gardening or farming when it comes to our spiritual growth. It shows how Elijah joins God as the secondary actor in God’s plan of caring for the world. Paul uses this story to show how we join God as his people in his work in our lives. It’s powerful, and very humbling. But it’s God’s plan.

Recovering Confession

The lost practice of confession of sin to other believers I blame partly on the Protestant desire to separate ourselves so distinctly from the practices of the Catholic Church. However, it has hurt us that we do not have healthy contexts in which to express this vital part of the healing and holiness process.

Without someone else there to hear our confession, remind us of our forgiveness, and pray for the power of the Spirit in our lives to overcome sin, Scripture implies that our growth in those areas will be stunted.

And what it says to us from a Biblical Theology perspective is that we are being terrible “stewards” of the Gospel. Meaning we are not fulfilling God’s created purposes for our lives as stewards of his garden (our lives, his people, and the world).

To start practicing confession in your life it will certainly be awkward at first. But every important area of growth in your life is awkward at first. There’s always a hurdle to get over. Whether it’s changing your diet, balancing your budget, or in this case rediscovering Scriptural Christianity, you will have to push thru what’s uncomfortable to get to what is transformative.

So now you just have to decide whether you will or not.

Is healing and holiness what you want for your life? Do you want to be spiritually whole and on track with Jesus? Do you want people around you who fully know you (even the most difficult parts of who you are) and fully love you?

Let me tell you from experience: it’s worth it. It doesn’t make it easier. You will still want to revert back to old ways even after you get into it. But in the long run, you will notice the change in your soul as you recover the rhythm God intended to heal you of your spiritual sickness: confession and prayer.

A Definition of Spiritual Injuries, Updated and Expanded

We continue see those failures and injustices that we should have “learned” to overcome by now. The deeper problem is that we cannot learn out way out of spiritual trauma. We must be healed from it first!

UPDATED: June 1, 2006.
Originally Posted September 19, 2016 as Spiritual Injuries: A Definition.

In light of the circumstances in which we find ourselves in the United States, I felt compelled to revisit this post. Bishop Luis R. Scott has also updated the book in which the concepts and definitions below are contained. I felt it prudent to take some time to update and amplify this article.

It is my conviction that the conversations that many desire to have around the issues of racism, justice, and the Church’s role have been hampered by a deficit in the language we use. To that end, I resubmit this article as a jumping off point to reframe the conversation in language that points us to the truth of the Gospel, the reality of God’s healing power in the human heart, and the place the Church needs to play in our journey toward peace and lasting justice.

Bishop Scott has also graciously allowed me to share Chapter 3 of the 2nd Edition of his book, Healing the Broken Spirit. This chapter deals specifically with the issue of Blind Spots, namely, what they are, how they develop, how to spot them, and what can be done to address them. Please take the time and read it. It is long, but if you are interested in having better and more fruitful conversations, take the time and prepare yourself for them.

Download Chapter 3 | Blind Spots: Instinctive Reactivity by Bishop Luis R. Scott, Sr.

Over the last 20 years my father, Bishop Luis R. Scott, Sr., has been thinking about and refining the idea that God desires for all of his children to experience spiritual healing and live in spiritual health. The challenge that seems to persist in our world, and more specifically the Church, is that we do not have the framework to work towards these realities. We continue see those failures and injustices that we should have “learned” to overcome by now. The deeper problem is that we cannot learn our way out of spiritual trauma. We must be healed from it first!

While there may be some who use similar sounding language, the concepts that are described in my father’s book and have been manifested in day-to-day ministry at our church are truly unique. I have come to this conclusion for two main reasons. First, we have heard so many stories from those who have learned about the concept and reality of spiritual injuries who have told us about the impact this understanding of spiritual health has had. Second, we have continued to refine the concepts and those who claim some awareness of the words we use do not really understand the conceptual framework that we are using in our conversations about spiritual health. In short, we believe that what we are doing is unique and we humbly embrace this as a calling and a great responsibility we must guard. Continue reading “A Definition of Spiritual Injuries, Updated and Expanded”