Journey into Lightl

There are many important things about ourselves that we just do not know about. Why not? One reason is that the stuff that makes us tick is often unconscious and buried deep within us. Jeremiah pondered this when he asked the rhetorical question about the heart, “Who can understand it?”

One reason is that from the day we were born, we have been trained to live life in ungodly ways. The reasons why we did what we did made sense to us as children. But now, they often do not. Now, we often do not understand what makes us tick.

For example, I was trained as a child to get good grades to feel important and loved. I got praise, avoided being criticized, and got respectful looks from my dad when I brought home a good report card.

As a result, I was trained to pursue achievement to feel worth and love. Some of this I brought into my adult world. Except the adult world did not always reward me the way I got rewarded as a child. Often in the adult world no good deed goes unpunished. Also, “The race does not always go to the swiftest” (Eccl. 9:11).

Nevertheless, I had been trained to find worth and love in doing good deeds and winning races. If I had continued in not knowing what made me tick, I would have likely beat my brains out trying to do good and win races for all the wrong reasons. Knowing that I tend to be this way has helped me to avoid the pitfalls of despair and workaholism.

We may find it hard to believe that what we thought was true as a child is what we still think is true as an adult. Even when the Bible clearly teaches otherwise, we can stubbornly cling to childish dependencies and “truths.” They do not automatically go away even when we become Christians. They have become so much a part of us that we are largely unaware of them.

This is dangerous. Someone once said, “It is not my problems I know about that scare me. It’s the ones I don’t know about.“ You and I have many lies we believe and wrong dependencies that rob us of living the abundant life that God promises (John 10:10).

Many times I have heard people dismiss the value of knowing themselves as “psychobabble” or “navel-gazing.” Yet, we cannot cooperate with God to solve a problem that we do not know exists. Knowing what makes us tick is a vital step in living in the glorious truths of God’s Word and not just knowing them (James 1:22)

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Many of us will not try to do certain projects or responsibilities for fear that we will fail. So, we tend to only do a project or take on a responsibility that we are pretty sure that we will succeed in doing. Many of these activities are ones that we are familiar with and know we can do reasonably well.

As a result, we often become limited in our willingness to learn new skills and new ways of doing things. We become like old and foolish kings who no longer know how to receive instruction (Eccl. 4:13). So, why are we so afraid to fail?

The sad truth is that many of have drunk the cool aid that tells us that our failure decreases us as a person. We often feel inadequate, unimportant and a loser in general when we fail in some specific effort. So, we stick with the familiar to avoid failure.

However, as Christians, we learn that our failure does not decrease how important we are to God. So what if people think we are a loser? God does not (1 Peter 2:9). His opinion is the only one that counts.

Sure failure hurts. It always does and always will. Failure to meet our expectations and the expectations of others will often have painful consequences.

Yet, those consequences do not need to include the belief that we are losers and not important. We are important! This will never change no matter how often we fail as far as God is concerned (Luke 12:7).

I have been testing living in this reality more in the last few years. This is the reality that I do not need to really fear failure. I do not need to shy away from attempting to pursue over-my-head goals for fear of failure. If God seems to be leading, that is enough reason to pursue them. God will not think less of me for trying and failing.

As a result, I have been willing to risk starting a writing ministry in the last couple of years despite having little experience or education for it. Many times I have felt like a loser doing this ministry. Many times I felt like I must be crazy for trying and feeling so bad at the results. Many times I have had to recall that I am not decreased as a person to God by my failures.

For some of us, we have taken decades to get the way we are. We have been drinking the cool aid for a long time that failure is something big to fear, something that can be devastating. So, we need to be patient with ourselves.

It will take time before we will become intelligent and bold risk-takers. It will take time for our deep beliefs and feelings to change. In the meantime, we still need to act on the truth that failure does not hurt us with God, even when it feels like it does.

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