Emotionally Healthy Spirituality
Do you have emotionally healthy spirituality? I can tell you that I personally have lived most of my life with emotionally unhealthy spirituality, and unfortunately most Christians are as well.
When times have gotten tough in my life, I would do things like read the Bible more, pray more, get more involved with the church, read more devotionals, or worship more. I thought that through these things my mind would be transformed, or I would grow my relationship with God, and the rest would take care of itself. The problem is that no matter how much you do these things there is still something missing.
These things only treat surface wounds. Too often we only develop a surface level of spirituality, and we never let God change us deep down. Some signs that we are living emotionally unhealthy lives are that we suppress and ignore our emotions, we separate our lives into secular and sacred compartments, and we deny the impact of the past on the present.
Our emotions are one of the ways our subconscious, and I personally believe God, tries to communicate with us. Sometime I hear people saying that they have no reason to be sad because their lives are so good, so they push it down and pretend to be happy. As I’m sure you can guess this is never an effective solution. If you are constantly feeling sadness, anger, or fear towards certain things there’s a reason, and if you ever want to overcome those feelings and live the life God intended for you to live, you will need to confront those feelings and their source so you deepen your relationship with God.
Another mistake many Christians make without realizing it is we separate our lives into sacred and secular compartments. When we are at church, with life groups, or studying the Bible we embrace God, his laws, and his love. But when we are at work or with friends, we don’t carry any of those principles or feelings with us. The statistics bear this out, Church members are just as likely to get divorced as secular people, Church members are just as likely to commit domestic abuse, and Church members increasingly find it acceptable to cohabitate before marriage. Work to begin integrating your sacred and secular lives so God can bless every aspect of your life.
When we become Christians, the Bible says we are reborn, our old life is in the past and we are renewed. Many take this to mean that their past doesn’t affect them and that they should only look to their life moving forward with Christ. Because of this people try to ignore their past wounds and believe that they don’t matter, or they won’t affect them anymore. Unfortunately, life isn’t that simple.
In all of these cases the issue is that we don’t really know ourselves. If we want to form a truly deep relationship with God, one that can be integrated with every part of our lives, we need to go into our past and examine it. We need to dive into the wounds we have received throughout our lives and see how they are affecting our present. If we never look at our past and fix our underlying problems, we will keep making the same mistakes over and over. Those who don’t learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.
By going into your past and addressing the places where you are weakest you will be developing your true self. There are four practices we can all do that will greatly help us on our journey of developing our true self.
1) Pay attention to your interior in silence and solitude. In today's world we are constantly taking in information to the point where we rarely, if ever, give our minds silence and solitude to think and listen. Set some time aside each day to allow yourself to think, listen, and feel whatever it is that your subconscious is trying to tell you.
2) Find trusted companions. We all need people we can count on to help us on our journey to finding our true self. They will guide us, mentor us, and sometimes simply listen to us so that we can continue down our path of growth. No one can do it alone.
3) Move out of your comfort zone. Your false self wants you to stay comfortable, but when you get uncomfortable you shed layers of your false self, you fix things that are broken inside of you, and you slowly become more of your true self. Growth only occurs when you get uncomfortable.
4) Pray for courage. It is going to be a long and difficult journey and we will need courage to face many of the challenges in our lives. One of the biggest challenges will be the fact that as you begin to break away from your false self and grow, other people will try to hold you back. Many of your friends and family will resent you for changing, and will try to get you to stay in your current state of distress and unhappiness. Don’t let them. Maintain courage.
Today's post was inspired by the book Emotionally Healthy Spirituality by Peter Scazzero. You can find the book here on amazon (and support CTM). This book goes into much more depth as to how you can become emotionally healthy in your spirituality. It has game changing techniques and insights into how we work as people and how we can grow and improve in all areas of life. Good luck.