• insecurity
    Anxiety,  Bonding,  Featured

    5 Ways Insecurity is Ruining Our Lives and 1 Way to Stop It

    Insecurity and anxiety are the two hands of unhappiness that we wring over and over. Like two snakes swallowing each other by the tail, this deadly circle can go round and round without end. It is hard to know which comes first; they can be so merged into one shaky, needy emotion. Everyone suffers from insecurity to some extent, but here are some signs that your inability to receive love is killing your relationships and harming you. 1: Insecurity drives us to court approval. I don’t think we realize what a strong drive approval-seeking is. Some of us constantly recite our successes in order to prove to everyone that we…

  • abuse,  Anxiety,  Communication,  denial

    Deflection: How to Spot and Stop It

    Deflection is a go-to defense mechanism that started in the Garden of Eden. Adam deflected onto Eve and Eve onto the snake. I’m not the bad guy here. He or she is the bad guy! In order to avoid unpleasant emotions or realities in our lives, we distract ourselves and others from the source of the difficulty. We change the conversation to something else entirely. For some of us, being thought of as the bad guy is the worst fate possible. Anyone with children sees this in action daily. If Mommy reprimands Jimmy for hitting his brother, Jimmy will use deflection to draw the attention from himself. Mommy, but Billy…

  • spiritual rebellion
    Featured,  Self-Acceptance,  Spiritual Rebellion

    The Painful Truth about Spiritual Rebellion

    Spiritual rebellion is not a popular topic for the sermon of the week. I think that is because even pastors can be somewhat unclear as to what it really is. The word, rebellion, summons up pouty teenagers staying out past curfew or military coups somewhere overseas. Most people I ask believe that spiritual rebellion is disobeying God.  I suppose it is in a very vague sense, though occasionally I do disobey God, and I am no longer in spiritual rebellion. Spiritual rebellion is an incredibly painful rejection of the life that God has given you. Do you wish you had been born to another family? Do you wish that you…