When a Christian Struggles with Doubt

When a Christian Struggles with Doubt

When you’re a Christian and struggle with doubt, you may wonder what’s wrong with you. You may even think your doubts prove you were never a Christian in the first place or, at best, a horrible hypocrite.

You might be tempted to give up, right?

The truth is, struggling with doubt is lonely and overwhelming and discouraging. But your struggling can also bring you closer to God.

What doubting sounds like

Struggling often sounds like this: A counselee I’ll call Katie began thinking God just didn’t care. First, her husband pushed her away. He kept playing video games late into the evening, even though he has promised he’d let up. So she thought–>Why did God give me an insensitive husband?

Second, her church made the news in a bad way. Under allegations of financial mismanagement and of a temperamental pastor who bullied the staff, her church was hurting. People were leaving in droves, disheartened. And she thought–> Couldn’t God have stopped this?

Finally, stress at work was getting worse. And her divorced dad kept bugging her to spend more time with him. And a good friend moved across country. It was just too much. Again, her thoughts questioned God –> Why isn’t God helping me? Don’t You care?

Doubt sounds like tears dripping on parched land.

So why hasn’t God — all powerful and all wise and all loving — made Katie’s life turn out better? And why can’t she know with certainty right here, right now that everything will turn out okay and she’ll feel peace again?

And what about you? What about your cries for relief from life’s struggles?

So we walk by …

… Faith. The Bible gives the reason for our struggles.

We walk by faith, not by sight. 2 Cor. 5:7

Yet, with physical bodies in a physical world, we very often rely on getting our certainty through our physical senses of touch, hearing, smell, taste, and sight. Elyse Fitzpatrick in Doubt: Trusting God’s Promises adds that another way we know what’s cetain is having been taught it. Consider the Civil War, or anything of historical record. Indeed, how would we know the Civil War actually happened but by studying it and seeing artifacts and visiting battlefields?

You’re in good company

Abraham, Moses, John the Baptist — these three faithful men each had their doubts too. You’re in good company, dear Doubter.

  • Abraham and his wife Sarah doubted God’s promise that he would give them a son in their old age (Gen. 17:17, 18:12).
  • Having parted the Red Sea and witnessed many other miracles, Moses still harbored unbelief (Num. 20:12).
  • John the Baptist had expected Jesus to bring judgment and, while in prison, he sent a message to Jesus: “Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?” (Matt. 11:3).

And we cling to our hope

When you struggle with doubt, you may wonder if you’re the problem. Or that this whole Christian thing is a joke. Or that you’ve been taught all wrong.

“Perhaps you started your Christian walk with a strong faith but have faced difficulties and setbacks, and now you’re wondering whether if any of it is true,” Fitzpatrick wonders. If this sounds like you, please don’t worry or think you’re the worst Christian ever.

Everyone questions the truth they had once believed wholeheartedly.

So what’s the hope?

I encouraged Katie, as I’ve encouraged my own heart (yes, I’ve struggled with doubt too), with biblical truth  reminders from J.I. Packer in his classic Knowing God.

  1. I am a child of God.
  2. God is my Father.
  3. Heaven is my home.
  4. Each day in one day closer.
  5. My Savior is my brother.
  6. Every Christian is my brother too.

My prayer is you’ll wrestle with your doubts and not give up. Choose to keep reminding yourself of the truth your clung to when you first came to faith in Jesus Christ. You are not alone. God is with you.

I’d love to answer your questions and encourage you. Simply send me an email. If you think you may be interested in biblical counseling by Skype or FaceTime, read this. It answers some FAQs. Let’s connect.

Counseling hearts to hope,

Lucy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stop Food Cravings and Glorify God

Stop Food Cravings and Glorify God

Food cravings can come on quick, right? You’re driving along singing to KLOVE or whataver, and out of nowhere food cravings strike.You may crave a Snickers or chips or a Ding Dong. Or you may crave strawberries!

And up the road a 7-Eleven beckons.

In this short article, let’s look at…

  1. Biological food cravings versus emotional food cravings
  2. A biblical solution to food cravings

Choose Your Choice 

So what should you do when hit by food cravings?

A. Try your very, very best to ignore them.

B. Proceed to the 7-Eleven and get the goodies..

Well, it depends! Biological food cravings differ from emotional food cravings. It’s wise to fill the biological kind because your body needs what is craves. Just think of how delicious a glass of water is when you are super thirsty. So when you fulfill this type of craving, you’ll think and feel better. But fight the temptation of emotional food cravings. If you cave, you’ll feel worse, and you’ll miss out on God’s best too.

So whatever you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. 1 Corinthians 10:31

Biological or Emotional?

Here’s a simple what to tell whether your food cravings are biological or emotional:

When you have a biological food craving and fulfill it, you feel nourished. And it doesn’t take much food to meet such a need either. One bagel, a wedge or two of low-fat cheese, or a couple of chocolates–that’s it.

But emotional food cravings aren’t about food. Giving in is an attempt to meet a need apart from God. That’s right: An emotional eater looks for comfort in food. Sometimes it follows “I’m a loser” self-talk.

Solution to Food Cravings

The good news is by obeying and trusting God, you can have victory over food cravings.

You make this break when you begin desiring what God desires and, with God’s help, change your heart. His power helps you make good and godly food choices, straighten out your thinking on food, and practice, practice, practice. A great resource for we who mess up — and this is all of us, right? — is Love to Eat, Hate to Eat by biblical counselor Elyse Fitzpatrick.

God wants you to live life based on truth, not emotions. The truth of who he is. The truth of who you are. His truth is sure.

But our emotions go up and down like an elevator. Now emotions are fine; God gave them to us. Just be sure you don’t let them yank your around. Rather, live out truth.

7 Quick Stop-Craving Tips

Here’s truth talk on healthy eating. Yes, you’ve heard it before … except maybe the last one … but it’s the best.

  1. Choose water over coffee and soda pop.
  2. Shrink your portions by using smaller plates.
  3.  Limit your consumption of sugar.
  4.  Skip foods with ingredients you cannot pronounce.
  5.  Sit down during meals.
  6. Eat slowly.
  7.  Remember eating becomes sacred when it becomes worship.

Remember the Bible verse I mentioned? So whatever you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. Let it guide your choices.

And when you do, then everything — from washing dishes and sweeping floors to writing blog posts to selling  — can be worship. As long as you line up your thoughts with God’s, the simplest things become sacred.

And so it is with food.

Counseling Hearts to Hope,

 

Don’t Make This Counseling Mistake

Don’t Make This Counseling Mistake

I made a monster counseling mistake . . . as a counselee. My mistake?

Assumptions! I wrongly assumed a Christian counselor would counsel according to the truths of the Bible.

Before continuing, may I say this? There are wise Christian counselors trained as professional state-licensed counselors who counsel hurting people with the gospel of Christ. Perhaps you’ve received help from one of them. Maybe they pointed you to Jesus and to God’s words as the answer to your emotional problems. You are fortunate. That wasn’t my story.

Why I needed counseling: I was an emotional wreck. My thoughts raced, my appetite plummeted, and memories of sexual molestation in childhood by one family member and deep rejection by another bubbled up and I freaked.

My husband witnessed my tears, even my wailing coming from deep deep inside, a hiding place only God knew existed. My anger stuck him too. I tried to act normal near our four-year-old daughter. Now nearing 30, she says she doesn’t remember anything unusual about that tumultuous year. No doubt she picked up my tension and inattentiveness. When stressed I plopped her in front of the TV.

But Barney the Purple Dinosaur is a poor “babysitter” when a kid needs her mom, don’t you agree? 

How the Counseling Mistake Began

Back in the 1990s, I thumbed the Yellow Pages, landed on “mental health” and picked a Christian counselor based on the word “Christian.” When I phoned his office, I failed to ask questions about his counseling approach. The listing said he got his degree from a well-respected Christian college, so he’d steer me to Jesus, right? Wrong.

My counselor, though a Christian, was a proponent of psychodynamic psychotherapy, including transference, a Freudian tool. Transference messed me up big.

Here’s a definition of transference:

In psychiatry, the unconscious tendency of a patient to assign. . .to the therapist of feelings and attitudes associated with a parent or similar person from childhood. The feelings may be affectionate (positive transference), hostile (negative transference), or ambivalent.

My counselor said through transference, I’d experience healing. Instead I became more confused, more anxious, more depressed. He said feeling a lot worse was also part of healing. To crunch this story into a sentence: I had dump this counselor. 

From Counseling Mistake to Real Hope

Desperate for peace and wooed by Christ, I looked to biblical truth for the answers to my emotional pain. Like Elyse Fitzpatrick before me — who shares in Love to Eat, Hate to Eat how she ran to Christ and listened to God’s words to overcome an eating disorder — I also counseled myself with God’s words. God healed me of depression, though anxiety hung on.

A few years after the black cloud lifted, I stumbled on books on true Christian counseling, which I and others call biblical counseling. What a difference!

Biblical counseling weaves together God’s love and truth. It is comprehensive biblical wisdom and compassionate Christlike care. It addresses life’s problem (emotional and mental) with the hope Christ offers.

Here’s how Bob Kellemen describes the hope of biblical counseling in Gospel-Centered Counseling.

  • Biblical counseling helps you and me to develop confidence in how we understand and view the Bible and real life.
  • Biblical counseling helps you and me to develop the competence to use God’s words in solving real life issues.

We All Have Bad Days, Right?

Of course I still have bad days. And I keep making one mistake after another. We all do. My ongoing struggle with anxiety ended about three years ago when I took a very scary (to me!) chance and applied God’s words, no matter my feelings, to my various fears, including a highway driving phobia.

God continues to teach me who I am in Christ — loved, chosen, redeemed, forgiven, and more — and show me who he is: loving, compassionate, good, and holy. These are life-giving, hope-enlarging lessons. You see, I used to picture God as a dark, creepy giant ready to squash me for the tiniest mess-up. This is why I tried to be a good girl while believing lies that God screwed up when he made me.

Do you believe lies too?

Does Satan mess with your mind and convince you to believe his lives?

How My New Hope Became a Ministry

As God comforted me, I now comfort others through the ministry of biblical counseling. For nearly 20 years, I’ve counseled women and families in person and by Skype/FaceTime/WhatsApp, using the word of God, and modeling care.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort,  who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. 2 Corinthians 1:3-5, ESV

Counselees come with every sort of life struggle. Among them are a young mom who experienced panic attacks, a 30-something woman in an difficult marriage, a confused college-age 20 year old who self-injures, a wife who feels rejected by her husband, a woman dealing with addiction, and many more.

Would you like help? I encourage you to reach out to a family member, a friend, or a pastor for help. If you’re interested you could learn more about biblical counseling in person on by Skype/FaceTime/WhatsApp.

COUNSELING: Would you like a free consultation by phone to see whether biblical counseling could help you personally? Please contact me and let’s set it up.

Counseling Hearts to Hope,

Emotions: 4 Steps to Emotional Wellness

emotionsEmotions can sometimes wreck your day, can’t they? In this brief article, you’ll learn

  1. You are not alone,
  2. Emotions — including the hard ones — assist in your sanctification.
  3. 4 steps to emotional wellness

You Are Not Alone

Meet a former counselee I’ll call Linda, who feels like a twisted piece of metal. Among her emotional wreckedness: rebellious teen, overworked husband, tight finances, loneliness.

And weariness. Deep weariness. Sound familiar?

Her teenage son is a Christian but runs with the beer-drinking crowd and stopped attending church. Linda fears he may get in a car crash. Just as bad, her husband is travels for work most of the week. So loneliness darkens her days and nights. In addition, household finances are tight, and the roof is beginning to leak.

And her emotions have affected her psysically. She sleeps poorly, gets migraines, and feels anxious all day.

I and other biblical counselors — some are listed on my Heart2Heart Counselor Directory, by state and specialies — come alongside the hurting every day, listening, giving hope, isolating the problem, determining direction, and helping them implement God-honoring solutions that result in peace and contentment, and most important, God’s glory.

Emotions Help You Grow Spiritually

Emotions tell us something about our hearts. They are neither morally good nor morally bad. Consider Jesus. He expressed emotions and never sinned.

  • ANGER: Jesus felt righteous anger while he turned over money-changers’ tables who were making his Father’s house a “den of robbers” (Matthew 21:13).
  • SADNESS: He sorrowed over the death of his friend Lazarus. (John 11:35)
  • FEAR: He feared the pain of dying on the cross. (Luke 22:42-44)

While Jesus felt a myriad of emotions and did not sin, you and I know that we often have ungodly thoughts (“Jerk, why don’t you learn how to drive?” or “No one loves me”) and act in ungodly ways (yell, pout, slam doors,  and so on).

To help you achieve emotional wellness, may I share a four-step plan (adapted from Elyse Fitzpatrick, a leading biblical counselor)? It skims the surface. So if you you desire biblical counseling via Skype or in person, check out my counseling info page. We can work together on your emotional wellness.

4 Steps to Emotional Self-Care

God wants to free you from the emotions that lead to sin. So here are four steps to emotional wellness.

1. Agree with God that your current way of handling negative emotions is sinful and cease from it. The one who changes your emotions is the Holy Spirit as you cooperate with him.

2. Be convinced that God’s way of becoming emotionally healthy are right and begin practicing them. Again, this is accomplishes through relying on the power, strenth, and grace of the Holy Spirit, who cares for you and you enables you to achieve God’s purposes in you.

3. Seek to change the way you think and become conformed to God’s will, especially in the emotions you struggle with. Yes, God is able to change you and heal your emotions. Yes, he wants to.

4. Continue to engage in your new godly thoughts and behaviors even when you fail and need to repent.

Achieving emotional self-care is never easy, and in giving four steps, I do not imply that is is. Becoming emotionally well is contrary to “the natural man.” Indeed, it means saying, “Lord, your will be done” when our easy-to-deceive hearts insist, “My will be done.”

The Good News

The good news is, you CAN know peace and contentment. You CAN put away selfishness, fear, and your need to control. And you CAN fight anger and win. Yes, you CAN fall into the arms on God, not the pit of despair. All because of Jesus and his redeeming love shown on the cross.

His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence. 2 Peter 1:3

May I pray for you?

Heavenly Father, this one needs your touch. She needs to know you are real and you care and you love her. You know her struggles. You desire to heal her. May your will be done. In the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Sharing Hope with Your Heart,

Self-Care: Heart Checkup for Your Soul (part 1)

Self-Care: Heart Checkup for Your Soul (part 1)

SELF-CARE: The best self-care is a heart checkup.

In part one of this 3-part series, you’ll discover…

  1. Why you may bristle at the word “self-care.”
  2. A definition of heart checkup.

Self-Care Hangup?

Self-care may sound…extravagant, even selfish. But for some of up — my old me! — I didn’t think I deserved self-care. Then I dared to ask myself, What’s my hangup?

Also I considered that Jesus took time to rest, didn’t he? He got away to the mountains and rejuvenated. He hung out with the broken people and lunched. I can imagine him smiling and laughing and cracking jokes.

And I asked myself, Am I denying the reality of my own humanity when I think I’m too busy to watch birds flit about my neighbor’s feeder? Or take time for a walk?

Could I reek with. . .twisted pride?

Reminder: The self-care of rest, exercise, meaningful work, eating well (and, for me, chocolate too!) isn’t selfish when your self-care is “onto the Lord.”

So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. 1 Corinthians 10:31

But divorced from a Godward focus, self-care can be selfish, wouldn’t you agree? Indeed, your motivation matters.

Heart Checkup

Most people think the heart is the emotional part of a person. Scripture suggests that it is your mind, emotions, and will. So you may compare it to a control center. Your heart controls what you think, feel, say, and do.

Proverbs 4:23 says it well:

Above all else, guard your heart,
for everything you do flows from it.

Everything.

But there’s bad news. The Bible says your heart “tricks or deceives us into thinking that our desires are pure, that we want what we want because it is good and God approves,” writes Elyse Fitzpatrick, biblical counselor and author.

And this is why you need a heart checkup.

During the check up you’ll see whether your thoughts align with God’s thoughts. Also, you’ll find out if your actions and emotions are rotten or good.

By the way, in the counseling office, we focus on the heart. And when the counselee’s heart changes so does her life. But the goal isn’t life transformation per se; it is growth in Christlikeness.

3 Parts of the Heart

As mentioned, “heart” is the word the Bible uses for your mind and your emotions and your will altogether. Your mind, emotions, and will influence one another. Let’s look at the parts of the heart.

Your mind: Your mind involves your ability to understand, reason, and discern. It includes your beliefs and opinions.

Taken aback with news from angels about her son, Mary the mother of Jesus “treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart” (Luke 2:19).
The power of God’s word “judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12).
As a man thinks in his heart so is he (Proverbs 23:7, NLT).

Your emotions: You emotions include your moods as well as your longings, desires, and hopes.

But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation (Psalm 13:5).
If you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts. . . (James 3:14).

Your will: Your will is the part of your inner person that chooses what actions to take. Your mind and emotions inform your will what to do.

Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve (Joshua 24:15).
Even if I should choose to boast, I would not be a fool, because I would be speaking the truth (2 Corinthians 12:6)

I pray this three-part series helps you understand why your do what you do, so that you can choose God’s best always. Next time will focus on your emotions and thoughts. If you haven’t signed up for my blog and complimentary eBook, please do. Then you’ll get parts 2 and 3 delivered to your inbox.

God bless you as we grow together.

Counseling Hearts to Hope,

 

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