Archive for November, 2018

When God Closes a Door

Posted in Lordship on November 21, 2018| Leave a Comment »

We all have suffered through disappointment from expecting a blessing and then having it taken away. What was that all about, God? Why did you allow me to get my hopes up then close the door?

Recently, I had a dream ministry offered to me to help out in. It has been my passion to see this ministry develop at our church for at least six years. Now, I was being offered an opportunity to assist in developing this ministry in a significant way. But there was no follow-through. No explanation as to why the delay – just silence. The only guidance from God was “Wait patiently” while feeling disappointed, bewildered, and sorrowful. I assumed there was a good reason for no action, but it still left me perplexed.

So why does God allow us to be offered something we have desired for a long time, and then apparently close the door?

Often, we will never know why for sure. It’s not because he is toying with us, for he’s not that way.

It may be to show us we wanted it too much, perhaps at the expense of an intimate relationship with  him. He loves us and will often keep us from receiving anything which will distract us from our relationship.

It may not be the right timing. It may seem right to us and others but God knows if we are ready to receive the blessing now or need to wait patiently for it (Psalm 40). I had to wait five long years before he fulfilled his promise of bringing me a wife if marriage was his choice for me. Looking back, there were many good reasons God closed the door on getting married sooner.

Other times, he may be teaching us obedience, even when we don’t understand. “Do it because you trust Me,” he says to us in Proverbs 3:5-6. God treats us as his children in gently teaching us to obey even when we don’t comprehend why. He wants us to know that sometimes we wouldn’t understand if he did explain.

Closed doors are always God’s doing. He either causes the door to close or allows it. “He rules over everything” (Psalm 103:19, NLT). We may rail against the person God uses to close the door, but ultimately our business is with God. I can trust God’s dealings with me a lot easier than people’s anyway.

Thus, we can say, “This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it” (Psalm 118:24, NLT). We can turn away from such thoughts as, God, you closed the door on my dream job. You are robbing me of fulfilling my passion.We may feel like a fool thanking him for the closed door but it helps to remember he loves us more than we can imagine. Paul expresses this in Ephesians 3:18:

“And I pray that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to comprehend the length and width and height and depth of his love and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.”

God greatly loves and delights in us. We belong to him. We are his possession. We exist for him and his purposes. Many times, our desires are his desires. But not always and when they’re not, when he closes a door, we are to pray as Jesus did when he said to God, “Father, if you are willing, please take this cup of suffering away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine” (Luke 22:42,NLT).

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Overcoming Your Distorted Thinking

Posted in Truth on November 10, 2018| Leave a Comment »

 

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We may think, I don’t have distorted thinking. I’m rational. My thinking is biblical. But is it?

We should not be surprised if some of our thoughts are distorted, exaggerated, or based upon lies. This is because we live in a world dominated by Satan and his deceitful influences.  “The world around us is under the control of the evil one” (1 John 5:19. NLT).

Distorted thinking is what occurs in our hearts. It’s not necessarily what we think in our heads. “As a man thinks in his heart, so he is” (Proverbs 23:7, KJV). 

Satan has planted many lies in our hearts which will result in distorted thinking. We tend to stubbornly cling to these false beliefs even after becoming a Christian and learning the truth. Only by working hard with Jesus can reality proceed from our heads to our hearts. Then, our thinking becomes more rational as God transforms our hearts.

As we work out our salvation (Philippians 2:12) with Jesus, we begin to let go of false beliefs, such as people can rob us our dignity. Instead, we learn to trust we are precious to God, no matter how much human rejection we have to bear.

I have little problem knowing the thoughts of my head, but can be fooled about the beliefs of my heart. The thoughts of my head are usually rational, but the thinking of my heart is often distorted. Jeremiah warns us about the dangers of our hearts. “The heart is more deceitful than all else and desperately sick; Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9, NASB).

How can we discover what our hearts are trusting in to make sure it’s truth, and allowing the Holy Spirit to change us if necessary?

One way that has been useful to me is to experience my feelings about various circumstances. I focus on situations which seem particularly emotional, knowing feelings are tied closely to my heart. In experiencing my emotions, I ask God to help me discern what thoughts are triggering these feelings. If not consistent with God’s perspective, they are brought to the Lord for change. “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, ….as the heavens are higher than the earth, are My thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8-9, NIV).

Another practice to be more rational has been to focus on an upsetting event and list the negative feelings tied to it. Then, I write down my automatic thoughts associated with the event. These would be thoughts like I will never get rid of this; This should not be; and No good will come from this. I then analyze the thoughts for different types of distorted thinking. These types include All or Nothing Reasoning, Ignoring the Positive, and Predicting a Negative Outcome without Facts. The last action is rewriting the thoughts eliminating the distorted thinking. For a full description of this practice, read The Feeling Good Handbook by David Burns, M.D.

Overcoming faulty thinking that keeps us from reaching our full potential is part of the growth process Paul describes in Ephesians 4:22-24. It is putting off the old and putting on the new. We can’t be lazy and tolerate being dominated by distorted thinking if we are to become the people God created us to be. May we allow God to transformed us by the Holy Spirit to think like Jesus in all of life’s circumstances.

 

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