This season is all about examining and responding to the faithfulness of God. Jamie and Heather are focused on being responsive to God’s direction and being faithful in every area of their lives. Last week, Jamie shared how her honesty and vulnerability paved the way for greater authenticity and intimacy in her marriage. Jamie’s confession allowed Heather to reflect on how much her own marriage has benefitted from increased vulnerability.
But it’s often hard to be faithful when old patterns and engrained responses try to keep us in old places of dysfunction.
In Part One, we asked the question, “How do we know God is faithful?” This week, we explore how we can respond to His faithfulness by submitting our whole selves to Him (flaws & all). Check it out!
We have all had thoughts, feelings, and anxieties that might not make a lot of sense, but they are so real to us that it can be hard to see past them.
PhD Katharina Star says, “Try not to ‘push’ the thoughts out of your head or punish yourself for having them. Try not to argue with the thought or belief, either. Simply notice the thought and accept that it is present. When you resist the thought, you give it more power.”
Emotions can be destructive if they, “overwhelm all else, determine the whole course of our lives, dictate our responses to others, or become centered as the only true or real thing about our experience of life.”
Heather has talked about her tendency to stuff her feelings, and this habit has inevitably affected her marriage. But in this season of growth, she’s working on dealing with her feelings in a healthy way and letting her husband, Whit, process them with her.
People don’t usually respond in the way we want them to or need them too, and that’s because they don’t understand our needs like we do, which is why we have to be specific in communicating them.
For Heather, this looked like directly addressing the fact that her feelings may be irrational, but she just needs to be heard.
“Here are all of my irrational feelings, can you just listen to them and hold them with me?”
Whit is now able to love her and serve her in a way that she’s never let him do before.
Sometimes, people try to logically explain away irrational feelings, but that isn’t very helpful in actually changing the way we feel. So, acknowledge that with your loved ones and invite them into those feelings with you.
Teach them how they can best serve you in those vulnerable moments and learn how you can best serve them when anxious or irrational thoughts plague their mind.
Faithfulness is so much more than just belief. The word faith can be translated to devotion or allegiance.
God wants more than just your intellectual belief; He wants your whole heart, every aspect of your life. Our faith results in faithfulness, which means we must respond through action. And we can take those steps into the unknown because we are putting our trust in a God who has proven His own faithfulness time and time again.
Allowing God into only certain areas of your life and your heart is not true faithfulness. Maybe like Jamie, you’re good at being vulnerable in the areas that you’re good at being vulnerable.
“Faithfully following Jesus and being loyal to Him means bringing my whole self to the table.”
This means even bringing your second-grade girl self to the table.
In the age of social media, we are all guilty of presenting a curated image of ourselves, hiding the messy areas of our life and instead showing posed perfection. This mindset can leak into our offline relationships and even into our relationship with God.
We don’t want people to know our faults because we’re afraid our true selves won’t be accepted. But we don’t have to worry about that with God. He knows all our mistakes, every irrational thought, every messy corner of our life and our heart, yet He still loves and accepts us.
But not just any community; we need to foster a community that’s loyal to Jesus first and foremost. We have to not only be vulnerable with God, but we have to allow other people into the truth of who we are.
Have you ever been in a small group where you or someone else is open about everything but 20% of what’s going on? When we don’t share the whole truth, we can’t be truly seen or known, and we can’t have the community we need to walk with us through hard times.
“Faithfully following Jesus is not always easy but it’s worth it.”
In these communities, you can present your requests to God and then tackle the emotional repercussions of things.
A lot of times we feel like we can’t be honest about how we’re feeling. If you get a scary diagnosis, how are you processing your fear? Are you even letting yourself?
What if you are physically healed but you’re so emotionally scarred that you never recover?
We need a space to bring our whole selves and our whole circumstances so that we can truly process them and be loved in all of our pain and imperfections.
The Lord wants to take care of your mind, emotions, heart, and body. Will you let Him?
Laying down your life for the Lord is sometimes scary. Just take one step with this week. What is He stirring in your heart? Tell somebody what’s really going on and commit to faithfully following Jesus in this season.
Text “Life” to 23101 so that we can pray for you.
Subscribe to In Motion on Spotify, Apple Podcast, or YouTube to stay up to date with season 4!
Don’t miss out on Part 1 of this episode:
Shownotes:
In this episode, Heather and Jamie talk about Blake’s message from the Daughters Conference. You can listen to that message here: https://youtu.be/OPGid2xhsm8
They also mention COTMU. COTMU is designed to equip followers of Jesus to take their discipleship journey to the next level. Learn more: https://cotmu.churchonthemove.com/
Needing community? Learn more about our Daughters Ministry:
https://churchonthemove.com/daughters
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