Extending Grace

Grace is typically defined in Christian circles as unmerited favor; it's something we do not earn but are given freely. The Lord extends us grace so freely to us and that is a model for how we are called to live in relationship with others. His grace transforms us. How powerful to know that whether or not we are "good enough", we are given abounding grace! Grace is a powerful gift to give another freely and has the power to transform. Giving grace to others not only helps to transform the relationship we have with them, but is also something powerful that can potentially transform both people individually.

A great professor I had during my graduate program, Dr. Michael Sytsma wrote an article on grace. His ministry, Building Intimate Marriages has many great resources. He is also the co-founder of the ministry Sexual Wholeness which is another great resource.

Another great article about grace that I highly recommend is written by a talented friend, writer and colleague of mine, Jennie Brown. Her post challenges me to really think deeply about how I can give grace to others and what that might really look like.

Grief and the Holidays

The holidays are often difficult for many of us who have lost a loved one. Whether or not we lost our loved one around the holidays, this time of year can be very painful. Memories tend to come flooding back, usually uninvited. Oftentimes the people around us speak very little of the one we lost, perhaps "not to bring up anything that would make us upset", and maybe because they are uncomfortable with pain or sorrow themselves. However, we would typically benefit from talking about the ones we have lost, even if just for a moment. We need to connect with our lost loved one in some way, in many ways, during the holiday season.

The article here talks about grieving through the holidays and offers many helpful ways to not only honor your lost loved one, but also how to prepare the loved ones that are around for your grief at this time of the year. The article also reminds us that we need to take care of ourselves during this difficult time of the year when our grief can be almost palpable.

We that believe in Jesus Christ must also remember the hope that we have in Him during our grief and mourning.

1 Thessalonians 4:13-14 (New Living Translation)

¹³ And now, dear brothers and sisters, we want you to know what will happen to the believers who have died so you will not grieve like people who have no hope. ¹⁴ For since we believe that Jesus died and was raised to life again, we also believe that when Jesus returns, God will bring back with him the believers who have died.

Grief is difficult; it follows no easy formula, no clear timeline. Each person's grief is unique because each person's relationship with the loved one they lost is completely unique. Grief will sometimes cycle around unexpectedly and take us to new and deeper levels of loss, and of healing too. But within grief, there is an opportunity for deep healing, for remembering, and for forming a new relationship with the lost loved one. And there is the hope in Christ of seeing them again one day.

"But I'm not happy..."

Below is an excerpt from the book pictured here. This is an excellent book by Larry Crabb (though I think all his books are excellent)! It discusses our desire for happiness and how that tends to play out in marriage. Our society places such high value on happiness. American culture tells us that only when we are happy will we be fulfilled and living abundantly. Yet Scripture consistently tells us that it is actually obedience that leads to fulfillment and abundance. We must be careful what our driving forces are in life, in our decisions, and in our relationships. If we are seeking happiness, we will always come up short. But if we are walking in obedience, we will experience a deep joy that happiness could never give us!

“A second flaw in our views of Christian marriage (and the whole Christian life) is the appealing emphasis on becoming happy and fulfilled. Our peppy songs about joyful Christianity neglect the need to develop a holy, obedient walk with God no matter what personal suffering may be involved. Uppermost in the minds of many Christians, perhaps unconsciously, is a preoccupation with following Christ to achieve the abundant life of pleasant, satisfying emotions and fulfilling, enriching opportunities.

In the last decade or so, we have dignified the shallow appeal of “be happy, feel good” by substituting the more Christian-sounding invitation to find “a fulfilling life” and to become “self-actualized.” The joy and peace available to the Christian have become confused with the similar sounding but very different idea of fulfillment. This has been seized upon by our sinful natures and translated into a priority on subjectively experiencing this deep joy and a secondary concern with whether the route to fulfillment conforms to God’s holy character as revealed in Scripture.

In some circles, people warmly speak of fulfillment in relationships to the point where adultery, divorce, and homosexuality are acceptable if they enhance one’s own sense of meaning. “I must be happy, I must express who I am. Don’t condemn me to a life of limited fulfillment. Don’t box me in with your legalistic morality. Le me be Me. I must do what is best for Me. God wants me to become a whole person, and I cannot be whole within the boundaries of traditional morality.”

We have become so conditioned to measuring the rightness of what we do by the quality of emotion it generates that we’ve developed a new version of relativistic ethics that might be called the Morality of Fulfillment. “Fulfillment” has taken on greater urgency and value than “obedience.” Psychologists do great damage by encouraging this reversal of priorities.

Does fulfillment have a place in biblical thinking? Of course. Each of us feels a deep concern for our own well-being, and this is as it should be. I long for an ever-increasing sense of personal fulfillment, and I confess this longing with no fear that my desires are sinful. The crucial issue is not whether we should be interested in our own welfare, but rather how we believe our welfare is best served. Pursuing whatever path brings the deepest immediate sense of internal well-being appears to be rather sensible strategy for finding fulfillment. But the Bible teaches that there is a way which—although it seems right—in the end leads to death: the tragedy of personal emptiness and desolation. Scriptures about dying to self, finding one’s life by losing it, being crucified with Christ, and living only for Christ make it clear that realizing true fulfillment depends not on preoccupation with fulfillment but on preoccupation with knowing God through absolute surrender.

In other words, the route to fulfillment is not the one with the road sign reading “Pleasure Ahead” or “If it seems to meet your needs, keep going.” The only sure path to real and lasting joy is the steep, rugged road marked “Obedience.”

We have allowed a natural concern for our own satisfaction to slide into an ethic that says that whatever seems to bring happiness is right. A married woman told me recently, “I want to follow the Bible, but I just don’t know if I can be happy in this relationship. He simply isn’t the kind of man I can love.” When we began to discuss what is involved in adhering to the Bible, it became clear that, to her, God’s thoughts on what she should do were a bothersome bit of judgmental moralism. So many people close their Bibles tightly, then confidently assert that “God wants me happy and fulfilled, but I can find neither in giving myself to this marriage.” How difficult it is to believe that a loving God with our deepest welfare in mind insists on painful conformity to the standards of His Word!”

A Relationship Resource

Whether you are married or in a relationship, conflict happens! The following website has many resources to help increase personal awareness, interpersonal skills, conflict resolution skills, communication skills, and more. The authors of the site and many of the the accompanying resources are Dr. Greg and Erin Smalley. They have written numerous articles and books on friendships, relationships and marriage. This is a very helpful site with a great resource section. I encourage you to check out the Smalley Marriage website!

Defending Against Pain

We often don't want to feel pain. Instead, we want to do everything we can to avoid it. But in order to avoid pain we have to avoid deep relationships, avoid any relationship where we would give or receive deep love. We would have to avoid deep friendships, avoid marriage, maybe even avoid having children. Would this really achieve the goal though? Would we avoid pain altogether or would we just feel a different type of pain? A pain from not knowing love, not knowing what we were made for: to love and be loved. We may think that if we experience deep relationship that we will in turn relive the pain we endured in our past or that we will feel the pain that we fear. So instead we make decisions, we set up defenses that limit the amount of emotions we will feel. The less entangled we get with someone, the less pain we might have to endure. If we choose not to give too much to another, and choose not to accept anything real and deep from another, then we'll be safe from the pain.

But there's something there, someOne there pushing us towards deeper relationship...towards being known and knowing others intimately. We are pushed towards it because relationship is what we were made for: deep, intimate relationship with Our Creator. We allow fear to step in and we think that staying in or getting into deep relationship means that for the rest of our lives we're vulnerable to deep pain. We want to avoid that and so we defend against it with attempts at "controlling" situations and relationships around us. We may even walk away from people or situations that would call us into deeper relationship for fear that pain will exist there. And often, pain does exist there. But if we are avoiding feeling pain, we often are not vulnerable to experiencing deep love.

We try to control our lives such that we will avoid feeling pain but something beckons us to choose relationship with others. So we walk through the fear and walk towards relationship. But then the pain comes and we feel foolish for choosing that deep relationship because we worked so hard at defending against the pain. Yet amidst relationship, even through pain there is healing, restoration and the experience of a deeper love. When we walk through it we are not alone and there's the deepest intimacy waiting for us and even walking us through. The Lord is there amidst the deep pain. We just have to choose to let go of our defenses, trust Him and keep walking.

Counseling can be a vessel to help us identify our defenses, our fears, and ways we defend against pain in our lives. It can also help us to identify things that keep us from deeper, more intimate relationships with God and with others.