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An Alter (Insider) Learns How to Enjoy Life and Health Introduction People who have suffered trauma often find themselves disconnected from their inner feelings and even from their physical feelings. They had a time in their lives when they suffered significant physical or emotional pain and (sometimes without even realizing it) have trained themselves not to feel. Overcoming that fear of feeling when it is no longer a genuine reason for fear is challenging.   Emotions are a significant part of what distinguishes us from rocks and plants and animals and make us like God. They make us warm and alive and compassionate, rather than cold and lifeless and machinelike. Abusers, however, often try to dehumanize those they hurt by not wanting them to express emotions. Often they beat their victims if they show emotion and thus cause alters to fear that emotions will cause them to be beaten. Chances are, however, that you are now older, stronger and more independent and your former abusers cannot physically hurt you anymore. If so, you are able to get in touch with your emotions and no one will hurt you for it. And doing so will bring healing.   Another reason for parts of you being unable to feel is that the enormous burden of carrying the effects of traumas is often shared among alters so that only some are able to remember the feelings and emotional impact of certain traumas. Your mind cleverly compartmentalized the experience, with part of you storing the memory and part of you storing the emotions to make it less painful. There are several downsides to this, however. They fit into two categories:   1.  Some parts of you that feel are likely to be in needless torment because they have kept their distress hidden from other parts who would be able to inform them of critical things the hurting parts do not know, such as that they are now safe from further abuse, the abuse was not their fault, and so on.   2.  Other parts of you are likely to be scared to let themselves feel and – as explained below – this, too, ends up causing needless problems.   Being cut off from inner feelings is like having a local anaesthetic. Suppose you had a wounded leg and were given a local anaesthetic to stop the pain. That’s okay in an emergency but medics use a local anaesthetic only temporarily when the pain is at its worst. It would become a negative thing if you ended up fearing pain so much that you kept numbing your leg for years. Even though you would not feel pain, it would still feel very unnatural and a little unpleasant. It would even be a little dangerous. You could, for instance, further injure your leg by knocking it on things because there is no feeling to warn you.   Just like King Midas, who wanted everything he touched to turn to gold and then discovered to his dismay that this applied to food and to touching loved ones, not being able to feel pain sounds wonderful but the implications are much worse than one would expect. For example, leprosy does not directly cause flesh to rot or body parts to drop off. It merely causes parts of the body to no longer register pain, but this leaves lepers vulnerable to burns and injuries that can result in loss of fingers, toes and so on.   Physically, unless you reach the point in your healing where you are willing to stop the local anaesthetic and connect with what your leg is really feeling, it will end up harming you. In order to walk properly and get on with life, when an injured leg begins to heal you would need the courage to stop having it artificially numbed. Having feeling return to your leg might initially be unpleasant but it ends up being the best thing to do once the emergency has passed. You would end up with a leg that feels so much more natural and you would be able not only to feel warning pain to lessen the danger of re-injuring it and enable you to walk properly, but you could also enjoy nice things, such as the warmth of a shower on your leg.   Likewise, getting in touch with your inner feelings might seem scary because you think it will expose you to pain but it also exposes you to so much that is positive. It facilitates healing and allows you to begin to have nice feelings and enjoy life like never before. Emotions are so much a part of our humanity that remaining emotionally numb would leave you feeling less than human and this has huge implications, such as causing you to feel isolated from the rest of humanity and damaging your self-esteem.   In  Cure for Self-Harm  I write:   When people receive bad news they are usually left numb with shock. How long this lasts varies, with a key factor being how willing the person is to face the reality and full implications of the news. When someone has been traumatized, this numbness lasts indefinitely if the person is unwilling to face the full reality of what happened. People can be so determined not to let themselves feel the natural horror, grief and anger that such an experience produces that they become disconnected from their feelings. An added reason for this happening is that some people believe that anger, hate and bitterness are wrong. Some even feel condemned over experiencing deep sorrow. So, rather than resolve such feelings, many people keep suppressing the feelings, refusing to admit to themselves that these feelings/attitudes are boiling just below the surface. It’s like having cancer and supposing that if you stoically refuse to think about it, the cancer will magically disappear. Just as removing from our consciousness an unhealed part of our body does not cause it to heal, neither does removing unresolved issues from our consciousness cause them to become resolved.   This denial of one’s true feelings produces a numbness so unnatural and disconcerting that many people feel driven to inflict pain on themselves simply to give them something they can feel. Pain feels a particularly appropriate choice to them because deep down they know they should be feeling and expressing their pain over past suffering that still haunts them because it remains unresolved.   Some Christians mistakenly imagine that not getting in touch with the depth of one’s feelings is a sign of being godly but, as explained in  Real Christians Grieve , this is distorting biblical truth until it becomes quite unbiblical.   Here’s something profound an alter said: “Pain is the bridge between numbness and healing.”   For you, the emergency has passed and now you need to let yourself feel so that you can move to your next stage in healing. It is very much worth the risk. You need to courageously reach out to alters and encourage them to share their memories and feelings, assuring them that it is now safe for them to do so and they no longer need to bear those things alone.   The other side of this matter is that parts of you that have held these feelings have been suffering unnecessarily. They need you to connect with them so that you can reinterpret for them what they are feeling. For example, they might not know that they are now safe and that the cause of their pain has ended. They might fear things or feel guilty when there is no need for them to suffer these fears and guilt. Also, having been kept isolated from you has magnified their pain and loneliness. They need you and you need them.   What causes D.I.D. is parts of a person keeping secrets from each other – such as keeping the pain to oneself. Some alters take upon themselves unpleasant feelings to free up other parts to focus on other critical matters. Although in one sense this is heroic, there is a massive downside: it puts a gulf between each alter, with the result that not only are bad things kept from each other but also many good things. In fact, now that the abuse is over, the good things actually far exceed the bad. There are good feelings, as well as unpleasant feelings, and not connecting with the unpleasant ones keeps you from being able to enjoy the good feelings and causes other problems as well. Once anaesthetic is pumped into part of you, you cannot say, “I want to feel some things but not others.” It’s all or nothing.   The emergency is now over for you but you have felt so traumatized that parts of you have been acting as if the emergency were still present. In fact, you are continually creating an emergency and hurting other alters by not letting them share their pain and heal. You need to now start moving toward healing. Every part of you needs to connect with each other’s feelings. Even though getting in touch with one’s deepest feelings might initially be distressing and scary, it opens the way to more joy, fulfilment, peace, fun and pleasure than you have ever known. It will end up with you truly coming alive.   It is only by a willingness to embrace past unpleasant feelings that one can enjoy current delightfully pleasant feelings. Grantley Morris   An Ater (Insider) writes:   My host (I call her Mama because she is like a mother to me) takes us little ones out for various activities such as walks. At times some of us stay inside, but she never forces us out. Mama reassures us that it is okay to be okay. It is okay to smile. On our walks we stop and giggle at a bug, we look at the sky and we know it is okay to feel the sun. We never knew it was safe to feel the sun. How sad and depressed we were, living in a dark cave in our hearts, locked away from other people, isolated and never feeling human – just zombies with pain as a constant friend. Now I get to giggle as the sun warms my face. I get to watch a sunset and talk to my Daddy God about it. I get to be me. Sometimes I don’t know who that is, but I am beginning to learn who I am. I don’t have to live in pain. I choose not to. I had to deliberately work at changing my thinking.   Alters are super-sensitive. We take everything so personal. We had to be taught that it is good to live outside in the real world, instead of hiding inside. Most alters want to be good but believe it is hopeless and that they are freaks who deserved what happened to them in the past and deserve to be miserable for the rest of their lives.   A very important thing we learned is that feelings must not be allowed to lead us. When we let our feelings control us we end up in a mess. Feelings should be followers, not leaders. I make the decision to be happy and my feelings eventually follow. Sometimes it takes a while for feelings to catch up and for alters to understand that it is safe, but that is okay: God understands.   Sometimes it can seem scary to feel. In the past, we had times when we felt horrific things. We needed to learn that it is now safe to feel. That is why we needed to guide our feelings. I had to teach myself to feel. For example, we would put our hands in the sink, letting warm water run over them, and I would tell myself, “Okay, now we are feeling warm water on our hands.” Or, when outside I would say, “Now we are going to feel the sun on our faces.” My sister alters and I did this over and over until we came to realize that is was safe to feel.   Then we alters became interested in water and the sunshine. We knew what we felt like and what a warm sun felt like. I ached for so long to have my hand held. When someone is holding my hand I have to process how I feel – not just how my hand feels but how it makes me feel inside. It is confusing, but I tell myself, “I am safe. I am not alone.” It evokes emotion – inside feelings.   Inside feelings are a bit harder to cope with than outside feelings, but once you grow accustomed to outside feelings – such as cold, warm, wet, dry, smooth, rough, hard, soft – then you can try the inside feelings.   This is how I learned not to cry all the time.   Related Pages All Christians Deserve Happiness & Health? Real Christians Grieve

All Christians Deserve Happiness & Health? No matter how evil you might have been, humanity’s Judge declares to the entire universe that on the cross he swapped places with you to give you peace, and all good things.   It is sometimes unconscious, but many of us remain miserable – and perhaps even sick – because, deep down, we fear we might not deserve to be happy. Modern medical science is becoming increasingly aware that one’s mental state heavily impacts one’s susceptibility to illness. The Bible affirms this medical reality: Proverbs 17:22  A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones. Proverbs 18:14  A man’s spirit sustains him in sickness, but a crushed spirit who can bear? We can wither inside; worrying that no one could truly love us if our darkest secrets were exposed. But each of us can burst out of that shriveled existence and enjoy life like never before. What it takes is a deeper revelation of how God’s love soars incomprehensibly beyond fickle human love and how he washes clean our past, removing our every cause of shame, the moment we trust him to do so. It is because God passionately wants you to be happy and enjoy life that the Bible keeps urging you to rejoice (Philippians 4:4; 1 Thessalonians 5:16; James 1:2; 1 Peter 4:13). The Israelites provoked the Holy Lord exceedingly by rejecting their God and abandoning themselves to the worship of hideous false gods. They ended up exiled from the Promised Land. But no matter how abandoned they might have felt at times and how much they deserved it, God never deserted them. Not only did he bring them back to their land, look at how he treated them: Isaiah 51:11  The ransomed of the LORD will return. They will enter Zion with singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads. Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away. When Ezra expounded the Scriptures to these returned exiles, the throngs wept, presumably under deep conviction of their sin, but note the leaders’ divinely inspired response: Nehemiah 8:9-10  Then Nehemiah the governor, Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who were instructing the people said to them all, “This day is sacred to the LORD your God. Do not mourn or weep.” For all the people had been weeping as they listened to the words of the Law. Nehemiah said, “ Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks , and send some to those who have nothing prepared. This day is sacred to our Lord.  Do not grieve, for the joy of the LORD is your strength .”  (Emphasis mine.) Gripped by an awareness of their wickedness, the people wanted to agonize over their sin. They felt like being miserable, and to us this seems highly appropriate and even holy, but God saw things entirely differently. He wanted these grief-stricken sinners to throw a party, celebrating and enjoying themselves! This is the God of the Bible, even though we find it so hard to grasp because it seems the opposite of how most of us think of God. The Lord wanting them to throw a party when they felt they deserved to be miserable reminds me of Jesus’ famous parable of the son who acted atrociously. You remember the story. Not even waiting for his father to die, he demands his inheritance and sells up his portion of the family farm that had been theirs for who knows how many generations. Even after his father’s death, that would have been a travesty. Then this ungrateful, irresponsible fool abandons his family, leaving them not only to try to stagger on after the crushing financial and emotional blow he had inflicted, but depriving his father of years of loving labor he should have poured into the family business – work his father had gladly done for the prodigal’s grandfather, his grandfather had done for his great-grandfather, his great-grandfather had done . . . You get the picture. Then, for the final insult, instead of valuing the proceeds of the assets and heritage he had callously stripped from the family farm, he atrociously squanders it all on prostitutes and riotous living. Only when the inevitable happens and he’s left with no better alternative does he consider returning to the father he has hurt beyond measure. He despondently trudges home in utter defeat, knowing he deserves nothing but his father’s wrath and contempt. Having irreparably disgraced the family name and blown the inheritance, he has lost all right to be treated as a son. He is merely clinging to a thread of hope that just maybe his father might be so forgiving as to take him on as a hired hand. Bracing himself for a stormy, if not violently hostile reception, he suddenly finds himself kissed and in his father’s loving arms, before he can even start his well-rehearsed apology. Despite his protestations that he doesn’t deserve it, he is showered with gifts and honor. Not only is his father not ashamed of him, the father butchers the prized calf for a feast and throws a party, so that everyone could rejoice with him in celebrating his son’s return (Luke 15:11-32). That extravagant celebration is how God feels when you mess up big time and return to him. Don’t be a party pooper. Make God’s day by having a ball. You might be certain that you deserve to miss out on happiness and be punished, but, like it or not, God wants you to party. No matter how hard it might be for you to get your head around it, the mind-boggling reality is that since Jesus bore every trace of punishment you deserve, you now deserve bliss. Everything within you might scream in protest against this, but as much as you might recoil, you must embrace this truth to honor the one who gave his all to give us all. Don’t let the indescribable horrors Jesus suffered be in vain. Enjoy life to the max. You owe it to God. To think we deserve less happiness than some other people is an illusion, often caused by a distorted conscience or by being brainwashed in our impressionable years by people who did not show us genuine love as freely and selflessly as God loves us. The full truth, however, is devastatingly worse and astoundingly better than we dare think. Without Christ , even the most saintly person alive deserves endless punishment for his or her sins. All of us – saint and sinner alike – are in this same dire predicament.  But none of us need be without Christ . Jesus took upon himself every agonizing shred of punishment we deserve by being tormented on our behalf. How dare we insult God by acting as if Jesus did not suffer enough, and that we need to suffer further punishment or hardship to make up for the “inadequacy” of Jesus’ torture! God declares that through faith in his sacrifice we spiritually merge with Jesus, the Holy One, and through this supernatural event we become the righteousness of God. Here’s where God puts it in black and white: 2 Corinthians 5:21  God made him who had no sin [Jesus] to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. The Bible insists that through your faith in Christ dying in your place, God totally eradicates your every shameful mistake and failure. This is Jesus’ undeserved gift to you, received through faith in his power to forgive (Ephesians 2:8). Simply by trusting that Jesus has already suffered the full consequences of your sin, he gets your imperfection and you get the perfection of his righteousness. The apostle Paul confided that he had tossed into the garbage all his impressive moral achievements and colossal efforts to gain God’s approval. In seeking God’s acceptance, he trashed all claim to his devout, sacrificial living being taken into consideration. He threw all this away in order to be found “not having a righteousness of my own . . . but that which is through faith in Christ – the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith” (Philippians 3:4-9). It is a level playing field: both the very best and the very worst of us must abandon faith in our moral achievements, in favor of trusting solely in the divine purity that Jesus bestows on anyone who sees the need for it. In fact, the only people able to gain divine righteousness are those who regard themselves as so morally defiled as to be beyond human help. There is no hope for the self-righteous or those who imagine they can reform themselves. This truth is emphasized over and over in God’s Word. For example: Luke 18:10-14  Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men – robbers, evildoers, adulterers – or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’ But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. Jesus revealed that the most critical thing in our entire spiritual lives is how much we love God (Matthew 22:36-38) and that those who love God the most are those who have been forgiven the most (Luke 7:42-43,47). We are all equally unworthy of total forgiveness but those who love God the most – and so delight God the most – are those who are most grateful for their forgiveness. Let’s get very practical. How grateful we are – and how much we end up loving God – depends on two things: how aware we are that God truly does forgive all sin, and how convinced we are of the magnitude of our sin. So if you think yourself the worst of sinners, that gives you the edge over the rest of us, provided you believe that Christ’s sacrifice is powerful enough to cleanse you. By abandoning faith in your attempts to please God, and swapping it for faith in Jesus’ ability to please God on your behalf, you end up with  God’s  righteousness. There can be no greater righteousness or holiness or purity in the universe than the righteousness of God, and this is yours, simply by trusting in the spiritual transaction that took place when Jesus swapped places with you by dying for the sins of the world. Since you are declared by God to have God’s righteousness, to consider yourself to be still worthy of misery, deprivation, or some other form of punishment is an insult both to Christ who was tortured to death for your sin and to the righteousness of God. The Bible uses a huge range of different words to describe what has happened to your sin. It says, to cite some of its expressions, that your sin has been taken away, wiped out, blotted out, swept away, not remembered, unable to be found, removed as far as the east is from the west, trampled on and hurled into the depths of the sea, crucified, done away with, pardoned, forgiven, cleansed, washed, made as white as snow. This is why heaven declares you worthy of happiness. Feelings and reality can be opposites. Some people who are perfectly safe feel terrified in the presence of a harmless little spider. Some highly intelligent people feel stupid. Some passionately loved people feel unlovable. Some astoundingly successful people feel failures. And on and on we could go. If you, through simple faith, are spiritually one with Christ, every trace of your past failures, immorality and shameful acts has been completely scrubbed out, leaving you crystal pure in the eyes of God himself, and yet you can feel so guilty that you can barely live with yourself. As God’s forgiven one, you are the object of infinite love but could feel unlovable. You could feel a total failure even though through Christ you are a success in heaven’s eyes, exalted by the risen Lord to a status higher than any non-Christian hero, mega star or genius. It is immensely comforting – even exhilarating – to realize that regardless of how much you might happen to despise yourself, the Judge of all humanity is so tenderly disposed toward you, so unshakably loyal to you and so committed to your happiness that he surrendered his right to heavenly bliss and honor and instead chose to be tormented and humiliated to death so that you might spend eternity enjoying heaven’s pleasures with him. No matter what others might think of you, there is only one Person whose opinion really counts. He alone knows everything, has perfect moral standards and is not only your Judge but decides the eternal destiny of every person on this planet, And the one Person whose opinion really counts believes in you and declares you worthy of endless love, joy, peace, goodness, and honor. Let’s be very clear about this: Jesus is our Judge. John 5:22  Moreover, the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son Acts 10:40-42  but God raised him from the dead on the third day . . . he is the one whom God appointed as judge of the living and the dead. Romans 2:16   . . . the day when God will judge men’s secrets through Jesus Christ . . . The truth that Jesus is humanity’s Judge is emphasized over and over in Scripture. If Jesus is our Judge and is so passionately devoted to our happiness, why do we dishonor God by acting as if  we  are our Judge? Why do we disregard Jesus’ view of us and judge ourselves harshly, as if our standards were more lofty and valid than those of our holy Lord? As children and rightful heirs of the King of kings, we are royalty of a far higher order than any earthly king. In fact, through Christ you have not just been born into  the  royal family but, as impossible as it seems, you are born into the  divine  family. And this makes you worthy of riches beyond comprehension: Romans 8:32  He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all – how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? But this does not mean we should act like spoilt brats. On the contrary, we should act like the King himself, who willingly sacrificed everything in the hope of saving others from hell. Jesus relinquished opulent ease to dwell among us. Did he deserve to be placed in a feed box in a cow shed? When King Herod tried to murder baby Jesus and when, later in life, many people accused him of being demonic and some wanted him dead, he was not getting what he deserved, but suffering the consequences of living on this fallen planet. Our Lord exposed himself to the pain, shame and deprivation of living with sinful humanity because by so doing he could bless many people. Likewise, you and I, rather than being immediately whisked away to heavenly bliss, suffer the consequences of living among sinful humanity. And like Jesus, this is not because you don’t deserve heaven, luxury and bliss, but because God believes in you, as you believe in his Eternal Son. God knows that through you continuing your temporary residence here, you – yes, YOU – can bless people. You might not believe that, but God does. He has far more faith than you in the eternally significant things you can achieve in this world through partnership with him. Every moment we stay on earth, we risk deprivations and suffering that we would never have in heaven but it gives us the opportunity to eternally rescue others and/or help hurting people. Suppose a Christian who has a very hard life has a tragic accident with a feather duster and is tickled to death. Instantly, he awakes from death to find himself luxuriating in heaven, enjoying otherworldly pleasures. Did that fatal brush with a feather duster suddenly make him worthy of a total transformation of circumstances? Of course not. Since being tickled to death is not a particularly great spiritual achievement, he must have been just as worthy of heaven’s joys before he died, as he was after death. Death just ushered him in to his rightful inheritance. His time on earth was simply a delay in him receiving the full benefits Jesus earned for him by swapping places with him on the cross. So if, through your spiritual union with Christ, you will go to heaven when you die, you are worthy of heaven right now, no matter what your current trial. The Eternal Son of God obviously deserves to be honored and admired by everyone and to have countless thousands of angels responding instantly to his every wish. He deserves peace, ease, comfort, luxury and every good thing. And so do you; not because of what you have done but because of who you are in Christ – God’s child. Just as Jesus is God’s precious child, so are you, the moment you accept his gift. Just as Jesus is the rightful heir of all of God’s honor, power and riches, so he has made you: Romans 8:16-17  The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs – heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ . . . Galatians 4:7  So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir. Let’s Get Real Spiritually, all Christians are billionaires, but most of us live tragically impoverished lives because we neither realize how rich we are, nor know how to access those riches. The rest of this webpage is of extreme importance because it explains how to remedy this tragedy. Many of us think we know we are forgiven but we still end up sabotaging our health, happiness, rest and prosperity because our belief in God’s forgiveness is far shallower than we realize. Unless we work hard at getting the truth deep into our spirit, transforming our preconceived ideas, reprogramming the deep-seated effects of our upbringing, and counteracting all other damaging influences in our lives, spiritual truth will be as superficial as a coat of paint. We can be as covered with liberating truth as a newly painted car is with paint, and yet, no matter how impressive it looks, it can have little more effect on our well-being than a car’s paintwork affects how well the car runs. To be so profoundly transformed that not even the hidden depths of our lives can hold us back, we cannot treat God as some add-on to our lives; he must be our life. Galatians 2:20   . . . I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. . . . Philippians 1:21  For to me, to live is Christ . . . Colossians 3:4   . . . Christ, who is your life . . . For God to be our life, he must be our top priority, our driving passion, our deepest love, our reason for getting up of a morning. Psalms 37:4  Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart. Matthew 5:6  Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Matthew 6:33  But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Matthew 6:24  No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. . . . Matthew 22:37   . . . Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. To allow our wonderful Lord to keep raising us to our full heavenly potential, our entire lives must revolve around him. He must be our best friend, our haven when anxious, the one we most want to celebrate with, and the one we most want to be with when we kick off our shoes and relax. In getting spiritual truths into every part of us that needs it, the first step is discovering and comprehending each truth. We need divine help with this, not just because only an act of God can cure the spiritual blindness that plagues every human, but because the truths we most need are usually the very ones we can least accept because they clash with our preconceptions. Note from the following how revelation concerning the divine truth of Jesus’ teaching hinges upon a willingness to do God’s will. John 7:17  If anyone chooses to do God’s will, he will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own. For the life-transforming power of God to permeate every intricacy and complexity of our being, it is essential to be willing to yield to God. Yielding to God can seem scary, until we begin to realize how wonderful he is. Then all reason for fear evaporates. God truly is gentle and kind and can be totally trusted, but it is usual for people who are hard on themselves not to realize this. To cite what I have written elsewhere: At first thought, God’s will seems so oppressively restrictive that it’s frightening. And we’re scared we’ll be told to go somewhere awful and do something embarrassing. In reality, for us to fear God’s commands is as unnatural as a much loved baby fearing its mother’s breast; as a shivering child fearing sunshine; as someone sick fearing health. To obey God is to say good-bye to mistakes and regret and open the door to excitement and achievement. No one understands you like your Maker. No one knows your future like your God. No one has your best interest at heart like the One who shed his blood for you. No one can bring you happiness like the Giver of sunsets and flowers, softness and taste buds, life and growth. God always knows what is in your best interest and always wants it. He is passionately devoted to maximizing your long-term happiness. I stress, however, that one of the advantages he has over us is that he sees everything from an eternal perspective. He is always selflessly loyal to you. In links at the end of this webpage I expound further on how safe it is to yield to the God of all love and wisdom, but let’s press on for the moment. Take a more intimate look at a familiar Scripture: Romans 12:1-2  Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God . . . Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world [stop wrong behavior], but be transformed by the renewing of your mind [reprogram your thinking].  Then  you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will.  (Emphasis mine.) This means that a deep awareness of God’s will – which, let’s remind ourselves, is that we be showered with blessings – hinges on us sacrificially yielding ourselves to God and doing all we can to change our thinking. The Bible insists upon our need to die to self. An aspect of this is agreeing that the all-knowing Lord is always right. Dying to self involves choosing to believe God rather than our feelings, even when what God declares to be true (such as us being worthy of astounding blessings) clashes so violently with our interpretation of our past or present experience that everything within us screams that it cannot be true. Dying to self is not a one-off event or occasional attitude. It is a daily journey: Luke 9:23  Then he said to them all: If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross  daily  and follow me. (Emphasis mine.) The devil is forever seeking to deceive us and keep us living below the best that God has for us. 2 Corinthians 4:4  The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. 2 Corinthians 11:3  But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray . . . 1 Timothy 4:1  The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. To be free from the deceiver’s influence we must submit to God and keep resisting the devil’s attempts to con us out of God’s blessings. James 4:7  Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. The verse introducing this statement is noteworthy: James 4:6  But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” The proud think they are right. The humble think the all-knowing Lord is right. They submit to God’s assessment of spiritual reality. They dismiss their perception of truth in favor of whatever God declares to be true. Scripture frequently reveals the critical importance of this aspect of humility. For example: Romans 1:22  Claiming to be wise, they became fools (RSV). Matthew 11:25  At that time Jesus said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children.” Proverbs 3:5,7  Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding . . . Do not be wise in your own eyes . . . Jeremiah 8:9  The wise will be put to shame; they will be dismayed and trapped. Since they have rejected the word of the LORD, what kind of wisdom do they have? 1 Corinthians 3:18  Do not deceive yourselves. If any one of you thinks he is wise by the standards of this age, he should become a “fool” so that he may become wise. Consider the implications of this pivotal experience the disciples had with Jesus: Luke 24:45  Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures. They had studied the Scriptures all their lives and sat under Jesus’ teaching during his entire ministry and yet still they had not understood until this moment after Jesus’ resurrection. Their new understanding came not merely through listening to Jesus or studying the Bible; it took an act of God, as it did with Peter’s revelation that Jesus was the Son of God: Matthew 16:17  Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven.” Note the importance of revelation: John 16:14-15  He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and  making it known to you . All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will take from what is mine and  make it known to you . 1 Corinthians 2:9-10,12  However, as it is written: “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him” –  but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit.   . . . We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God,  that we may understand what God has freely given us.  (Emphasis mine.) How can we have such spiritually significant encounters with divine truth as the disciples had that day when Jesus “opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures”? Since our well-being hinges on us somehow spiritually activating in our lives the power of the word of God, we need to make this a prayer priority. In fact, prayer is critical. This is why we have such Scriptures as: Psalms 119:18  Open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law. Psalms 119:19   . . . do not hide your commands from me. Psalms 119:27  Let me understand the teaching of your precepts . . . James 1:5  If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God . . . Note how Paul did not consider it enough to write and teach the Word of God; he kept  praying  that God’s Word transform the lives of those who heard it. Ponder the implications: Ephesians 1:17-18  I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints Ephesians 3:17-19  . . . I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Colossians 1:9  . . . we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. Philippians 1:9  And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight As critical as it is to keep praying for revelation and praying that the revelation sink deep into every part of us, however, prayer is not enough. I live in almost a desert. In the middle of summer I can water the garden so that everything visible is wet and yet a mere fraction below the surface is powder dry. Just as it takes far more time and water than one would expect for that life-giving liquid to penetrate sun-baked soil and reach roots that desperately need it, so it takes more time, effort and continuous exposure to biblical truths than most of us realize for us not only to appear to be saturated with life-giving truths, but for those truths to actually reach the deep parts of us that desperately need them. This is why God says we should be continuously meditating on God’s Word, thinking about it and reminding ourselves of it: Psalms 119:97  Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long. Psalms 119:148  My eyes stay open through the watches of the night, that I may meditate on your promises. The first Psalm speaks of the person who “is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers” (Psalm 1:3). Here is the secret of this person’s contented abundance: “his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night” (verse two). As God told Joshua: Joshua 1:8  Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it.  Then you will be prosperous and successful .  (Emphasis mine.) Let’s take a second look at that Scripture: Joshua 1:8  Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may  be careful to do everything written in it . Then you will be prosperous and successful.  (Emphasis mine.) As important as continual meditation is for our success and prosperity, it must be combined with obeying the Word. Meditating on Scripture involves prayerfully thinking through the implications of scriptural truth. And, according to Scriptures we have just cited, it should be done continually. See in the following how regularly and frequently we should be pondering and deeply impressing upon ourselves the liberating truths of God’s Word: Deuteronomy 6:6-9  These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates. Repetition is critical if beliefs are to become so much a part of us that they become a life-controlling force. As children, most of us were told over and over that we are stupid, hopeless, a loser, a slut, or repeatedly plastered with some other label that is totally contrary to who we are in Christ. And, perhaps even more devastating, from then on, we began repeating those lies to ourselves over and over, year after year after year. It’s as though every time in our lives we are told or tell ourselves something negative, a pebble is added to the negative side of the scales, and every time we believe or tell ourselves the opposite, we put a pebble on the other side. Over our lifetime, tens of thousands of pebbles have weighed down the negative side but many of us have only added hundreds to the positive, with the inevitable result that our whole being leans heavily to the negative, undermining our attempts to live the abundant life Christ sacrificed everything for us to enjoy. “Now I Want to Live” Several years ago, my wife wrote: For years my joints ached. My hips hurt and I limped. I had shoulder pain and any weight on it hurt like crazy. I would wake up at night crying in pain. I was afraid of going crippled. A doctor told me I would need hip replacement surgery, but no tests were done to prove it. All my life I had been told that my family has joint trouble and I’d be no exception. Then my feet began to hurt. I freaked out. My feet got so bad that it was agonizing just to walk. Although I loathed going to doctors, I finally felt compelled to see one. He ran tests and said, “You need a leg brace for four weeks, and do stretch exercises every morning.” I asked how this was going to help joint problems. He looked at me strangely. “What joint problems? Your joints are fine. It’s just a tendon injury in your foot.” I left, thinking I must be nuts. When the joint pain came back, however, I told myself, “No! I am not falling for that. The doctor says I haven’t got bad joints and I am not living anymore as if I do.” Then I realized that, for perhaps the first time ever, I really wanted to live. My joints haven’t ached in months. I am truly living now. Inside, I used to cry all the time. I was deeply depressed and couldn’t see beyond it. I wanted to die because I figured that it was the only way I could escape all the inner pain. But now I want to live. I now reassure myself that it is okay to be okay. It is okay to smile and be happy. I go for walks and stop to giggle at a bug. I look up at the sky and know it is okay to enjoy the warm rays of the sun. I used to be so depressed; living in a dark cave in my heart. I used to talk to people but kept much of me locked away from them; isolated and never feeling human – just a zombie with pain as a constant friend. Now I get to enjoy a sunset and talk to my God about it. I get to be me. Sometimes I’m not sure who that is, but I am learning who I am. I don’t have to live in pain. I choose not to. I had to deliberately work at changing my thinking. An important thing I had to learn is that feelings should be followers, not leaders. If I follow my feelings, letting them lead me, I end up in a mess. I should be the one who leads. I make the decision to be happy and my feelings eventually follow. Sometimes they take quite a while to catch up but that’s okay: through God I take control. Weird? It is little understood that we could be dynamic Christians and still have a wounded part of us that knows absolutely nothing about the Gospel. This is particularly true of those who have Dissociative Identity Disorder (multiple personalities). Few people realize how common this is and most people suffering from it are quite unaware of it. Lest you think me mad, I’d be better off avoiding this subject but my conscience will not let me because it could be the very key you have been needing for years. I know many people who have had parts of their consciousness split off as a desperate mental trick to survive childhood trauma (often sexual abuse). I have had the privilege of seeing these people transformed as I explain the simple Gospel message to those parts of them that had been so successfully buried that those parts supposed they were still children and had never heard the Gospel. If interested, there are links at the end of this webpage about this. Crystallizing What We Have Discovered If a king married a prostitute junkie, the marriage would instantly make her worthy of honor. So it is with us. Our union with Christ changes everything. No matter how depraved you might have been without Christ, by the Son of the King of kings swapping places with you on the cross, you have gained his status, making you a son/daughter of the King of kings. Instantly, you became royalty. In the extravagance of divine love, Christ lavished upon you such mind boggling dignity and exalted status that all of heaven affirms that you now deserve happiness and to be loved and admired and valued for all eternity. Since the Innocent One took upon himself all the punishment you deserve, you now deserve fulfillment and to be in vibrant health. You deserve to be at peace, at ease and even to be pampered. You don’t deserve financial hardship or any other sort of hardship, any more than Jesus did. Nevertheless, the Bible is emphatic about the harsh reality that while you remain on this planet, unpleasant things can happen. 1 Peter 4:12  Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. 1 Peter 5:8-9  Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings. 1 Thessalonians 3:4  In fact, when we were with you, we kept telling you that we would be persecuted. And it turned out that way, as you well know. 2 Timothy 3:12  In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. Please resist the temptation to let this temporary situation shake your self-esteem. The world treating you badly is the price Christ’s champions pay for staying here on earth, the front line between good and evil. Like our heroic Lord’s suffering, this makes your suffering not only meaningful; your short-lived humiliation brings you eternal glory. No matter what you suffer temporarily, God hails you a hero and will eternally compensate you. Acts 5:41  The apostles left the Sanhedrin, rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name. 2 Corinthians 4:17  For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So everyone can expect tough times. But you can also expect God’s blessing. A simple prayer, yielding your life to God and asking Jesus to forgive all your past gives you access to all Christ’s riches. From that instant, your spiritual wealth is so mind-boggling that you need supernatural revelation to get even a vague idea of the magnitude of all that is yours. Then you need divine help to get those truths not just deep into your conscious thoughts but even into your unconscious parts that surreptitiously affect your attitudes and behavior, while keeping you barely aware of their influence. Since Jesus kept imploring us to keep on asking God, and James wrote that we have not because we ask not (James 4:2), we can expect to have to keep asking God both for supernatural understanding of spiritual truths and asking that those truths counteract the deeply damaging impact of all those years of having believed the opposite. In addition to prayer, however, we must cooperate with God in this transformation of our thinking. No matter how much a surgeon might care about your well-being and have the ability to heal you, it would be criminal for him to operate on you against your will. Likewise, your loving Lord does not abuse his power by forcing healing upon you. In his flawless integrity, the Almighty seeks your on-going permission for each of the complex processes required for your spiritual transformation. God can be trusted. It is safe to yield to him, but he respectfully waits for you to be willing to let go of your favorite sins and trust him enough to let him in to the most tender and private parts of your life. Another essential sphere of cooperation with God is to stop believing the degrading lies that people and circumstances seem to have told us, and instead accept his truth about who we are in Christ. Changing our thinking is at least as difficult as breaking any other life-controlling habit, but you need to keep wrestling the mental habit until you completely stop telling yourself things that are no longer true, such as “I’m hopeless,” or “I’m impure,” and establish a new, Christ-centered self-image by continually reminding yourself and repeating to yourself the biblical truths of who you are in Christ. To see how seriously the Lord regards this practice, let’s bring together some of the very many different expressions he uses. Different Scriptures say God’s word is to be upon our hearts, or hidden in our hearts, or in our hearts and minds, or stored up within us, even eaten. Another place says we should not let his word leave our mouths. Other Scriptures say we must lay hold of biblical truth with all of our hearts and not to depart from it, but delight in it, treasuring it more than our daily food. We should meditate on his truth day and night, being careful to do everything written in it. We are to impress his word on our children, talk about it when we sit at home and when we go out, when we lie down and when we get up, and we should surround ourselves with visual reminders of it. We are to remain in his word and let it dwell in us richly; not being merely hearers of the word, but doers. His word is to live with us and be with us forever, say still other Scriptures. With God going to so much effort to impress upon us the need to do this, do you suppose he is likely to ignore it all and transform the lives of people too lazy to follow his commands to keep reminding ourselves of his truths? If there is a lazy alternative that works, why doesn’t God tell us about it? Let’s keep yielding to God, praying for revelation, taking it to heart and reprogramming our minds with his truth so that we don’t miss God’s best. The results will be astounding. Finale We have been essentially unwrapping the gift contained in this Scripture: John 10:10-11  The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The Eternal Son of God laid down his life so that you might live life to the full. But you have a spiritual enemy who longs to rob you of the supernaturally abundant life that, through Christ’s sacrifice, is rightfully yours. If this insidious fiend robs you, it will not be by force – your divine Deliverer has heroically defeated him. The devil can rob us only by tricking us into believing his lies. John 8:44  . . . the devil . . . is a liar and the father of lies. 2 Corinthians 11:3  But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray . . . The deceiver is continually trying to dupe you out of all you have inherited through Christ’s death. If you let this despicable con artist fool you, it is not only you who end up ripped off, but also the Lover of your soul who paid such an enormous price for you to enjoy his rich blessings. Even if you cannot pull yourself out of despondency enough to enjoy Christ’s riches for your own sake, honor God by forcing yourself to do it for the sake of the one who gave his life for you. Related Pages This webpage is simply to help you grasp a fraction of all that you will miss out on if you fail to explore this subject so intensely that the truth permeates the most hidden parts of your being. In the links below I have devoted myself to expounding on some of the wonders awaiting you. If Unsure About Yielding to Christ You Can Find Love: What your fantasizes reveal   – foundational Why God’s Will is Not Scary  – encouraging Spiritual Secrets: Denying Yourself  – advanced Liberating Truths Forgiving Yourself  – then follow the main link at the end of each page Discovering How Much God Loves You Jesus, Our Brother: Insights into Our Amazing Status with God How to Change Your Self-Image You Can Beat Temptation How to Avoid Deception Healing From Sexual Abuse The Role of Sickness in Your Life There’s Hope! A Sane Guide to Finding Hope When There is No Hope

Help in Finding God’s Will For Major Life Decisions How to Avoid Deception How to Find the Correct Bible Interpretation This is for everyone anxious to discover God’s personal guidance, no matter what agonizing issues are involved. An early draft of the page was for those desperate to find God’s will about divorce and remarriage. This is a perplexing issue because there are so many conflicting opinions even among sincere Bible believers. As the page grew, however, it became obvious that it would be ridiculous to exclude people stewing over other life issues. The same spiritual principles apply to every difficult life decision. So you are the focus of this page, regardless of what issue you are seeking God about. Deception: It Can Happen to You Don’t bury your head in the sand: it is frighteningly easy to fall into deception. Even more devastating is that anyone deluded is completely unaware of it. Those in the greatest danger are the ones who think it couldn’t happen to them. Those who murdered their Messiah were appalled that their ancestors had killed God’s prophets. They were certain they would never do such a thing. The great apostle Paul wrote:   1 Corinthians 4:4 For I know nothing against myself. Yet I am not justified by this, but he who judges me is the Lord.   Let these Scriptures chill your spine:   Proverbs 16:2 All the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes; but the Lord weighs the motives.   Proverbs 16:25 There is a way which seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.   Jeremiah 17:9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and it is exceedingly corrupt: who can know it?   Matthew 24:24 For there will arise false christs, and false prophets, and they will show great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the chosen ones.   Matthew 25:44 , 46 Then they will also answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and didn’t help you?’ . . These will go away into eternal punishment . . .   James 1:22 Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. . . . (NIV)   James 1:26 If anyone among you thinks himself to be religious while he doesn’t bridle his tongue, but deceives his heart . . . Avoid Presumptions About God’s Will   If we are to truly hear from God, it is essential that we avoid the trap of blindly assuming that if it is contrary to our longings it must be God’s will. It is equally critical that we not go the other way and automatically assume that if it seems certain to make us happy, it must be God’s will for us.    Few Christians – maybe none – have walked with God for long without sometimes mishearing him because what the Lord was seeking to tell them was contrary to their expectations. Scripture insists that as the sky soars way beyond our reach, so are God’s ways far beyond our own ( Isaiah 55:8 ). Yet still we unconsciously develop presumptions about God’s ways that seriously distort what he is seeking to tell us.    No matter how sincere, our preconceptions blind us to possibilities, without us realizing it. They have horrifying potential to send us spinning into delusion.    Mindsets, whether positive or negative, can dangerously cloud our perception of reality and of what people are really saying. For example, there are people whose tragic pasts have convinced them that they are unlovable. Some of them end up married to adoring partners and yet their mindset so blinds them that they continue to be convinced that they are not loved, no matter what extremes their partners go to in trying to prove love in word and action. In fact, many such people are so blinded to all the evidence that they deliberately act obnoxiously in an attempt to drive their loved one away because that seems less painful than what they consider the inevitable shame of being dumped. They can even be doted on by the most loving and most important person in the entire universe – Almighty God – and they still can’t accept it and, despite everything, they continue to feel utterly unloved.    A positive mindset can be just as dangerously blinding. With tragic consequences, young people can feel so invincible that they are certain that no warnings of danger apply to them.    So let’s briefly explore how mindsets can hinder us from hearing God’s voice and discovering his will for us.    Many of us fall into the rut of always expecting God’s will to be challenging, scary, painful. The Bible is dripping with evidence for this expectation. We are to love God more than any other person or thing. This can be divinely tested, as it clearly was for Abraham when he was asked to sacrifice his precious son. Jesus was continually asking people to give up everything to follow him. An entire book of the Bible is devoted to Job’s horrific test. We know God’s will for Jesus was terrifyingly painful. Jesus and the rest of the New Testament warn us to expect severe persecution. Scripture tells us to rejoice when trials hit, because they build character.    As if hundreds of Bible verses were not enough to make us expect the worst, many of us have the additional pressure of being prone to feelings of guilt, depression, inferiority, or pessimism. A friend of mine shares his experience, which is an extreme example of how preconceptions distort our ability to hear from God.    I had an abusive father who only sent me to church to get a free baby sitter. I often looked at God as similar to my father. I stopped attending church when I was 13. I tried to be a good Christian for a while, but before long I plunged from being a good kid to being a mean spirited, hateful person.   I tried numerous times to get back to God but each time I hit a wall of fear that was so unbearable that I felt compelled to turn away from God. I often told myself that this fear was God’s punishment for my gross sins and that it proved I was beyond forgiveness. I had a lot of bad thoughts about God that I had no control over. As a result, I often slipped into depression. I would then get on medication and return to my sinful lifestyle.    It seemed the only way I could function was to eliminate God from my life. I did fine for a while. I got married and had a son. I got off drugs and alcohol. I even started a business. For the first time in my life I was finally happy. I thought I had completely erased my past.    Then I began to think that all these good things were from God. I told myself, “It can’t be! There is no God!”    “Why do so many people love God?” I puzzled, “He wants only to send everyone to hell.” Wondering if I had overlooked something, I explored a number of websites and learned a lot about God. I asked myself, “Why do I despise God so much?” Within a couple of days I was once again overwhelmed by fear. I told myself, “This fear is surely God again; I remember this from years ago.” I immediately cried and began repenting. I vowed that I would face my fear of God. I turned my back on everything evil in my life.    I started reading the Bible but I was afraid that it would only confirm that I’m condemned. Before long, it felt like everything in the Bible somehow condemned me. My mother worried about my spiritual state and visited me a lot. I would often tell her, “Look, this verse right here proves I’m going to hell!” We would then go over it and discover its meaning was totally different. I couldn’t figure out why I could read something and get such a condemning message from it. I would often stop reading the Bible because oppressive fear would come over me.    I bought a book about spiritual warfare. All was fine for a while, then even that book seemed to be condemning me and in despair I put it down. Eventually, I forced myself to open the book again. I re-read the condemning sentence I had underlined. To my surprise, I couldn’t find anything in it that could lead me to feel condemned.    I began to notice that as I read, fear would sweep over me, causing me to throw the book down without finishing the sentence.    I eventually learned that the fear and condemnation were not from God, as I had always thought, but were from the enemy. This discovery changed everything. I looked back on all the things in my life that I had considered were from God and realized that they were not from him at all.    My friend’s experience might be far more extreme than yours but any preconception you have about God and his will is just as capable of distorting what God wants to tell you, and, like my friend, wherever you look in the Bible and Christian messages you’ll find much to confirm your presumption – whether it is really there or not.    Most Christians who don’t habitually expect God’s will to be unpleasant, fall into the opposite trap. Again there is much scriptural encouragement for this view.    Abraham was renowned for his wealth; Isaac and Jacob enjoyed great material success; Job was very rich, Solomon was mind-bogglingly wealthy and many of the Bible heroes were kings.    A study of the Old Testament use of the word blessing is astounding. The way experts ascertain the precise meaning of a word is to find as many different occurrences of the word as they can and examine each context. Do this and you will discover that almost every time, the word blessing refers not to spiritual blessings but to material prosperity – many children, overflowing harvests, livestock breeding like there was Viagra in their hay.    The Bible is filled with promises of joy, God’s love for us, answered prayer, miracles, healings and victory.   John 16:24   . . . Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be made full.     Psalms 37:4 Also delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.    Not only will God give you what your heart desires, he will (as stated in Philippians 2:13 ) give you desires that are from him so that the more you grow in your love for God, the more the deep desires bubbling within you will have been put there by God himself.    The obvious truth is that both sides of the coin – all the tests and pain and trials, and all the blessings – are in the Bible.    We can rob ourselves if we are not expecting earthly blessings. When Jesus walked this planet, many got their miracle from him solely because their faith that God will bless them fired them to keep pushing through all the obstacles.    On the other hand, there are dangers in expecting continual ease. Jesus warned us to count the cost. We find Barnabas and Paul “confirming the souls of the disciples, exhorting them to continue in the faith . . .” I’ve stopped mid-verse. So far there seems nothing different here from normal prosperity doctrine. But let’s read the entire verse to discover how they strengthened and encouraged them:    Acts 14:22 Confirming the souls of the disciples, exhorting them to continue in the faith, and that through many afflictions we must enter into God’s Kingdom.    To embrace the full teaching of Scripture we must avoid both the mindset of always expecting God’s will to be scary and the mindset of always expecting God’s will to be deliriously easy and filled with more thrills than Santa Claus’ magic cave.    God’s will is always the best we could possibly experience and to settle for anything else is as smart as shaving with a chainsaw. But our long-term happiness and our short-term pleasure and ease are usually oceans apart. Our wonderful Lord wants our permanent happiness, not some sweet fizz that turns sour. We are so often like children wanting to sentence ourselves to a lifetime of gorging ourselves on no other food but chocolate and ice cream; having no idea that their conception of heaven on earth would slowly transmute into the opposite.    As God’s ability to see the future soars high above our own, so his knowledge of what will make us eternally happy is far above our guesses. Consequently, we need to look to God to guide us, and avoid presumptions.    Whether positive or negative, presumptions are dangerous because they can close our minds to things God wants to tell us and they can also cause us to seize what we suppose to be God’s will when it isn’t at all. To use marriage as an example, there are those who think to themselves, “I long to marry, so it’s probably God’s will for me never to marry,” or “There’s a degree of attraction between us but I wouldn’t want us to marry, so God probably wants us to marry.” Then there are others who tell themselves, “I love this person and feel I couldn’t live without him/her, so marriage must be God’s will.” In either case, one needs further confirmation of God’s guidance. We must confuse neither wishful thinking, nor confuse fear or pessimism with God’s leading. How to Avoid Misinterpreting the Bible Every Christian leader worth his salt – or to put it even better, everyone who is salt – stresses the vital role of the Bible in divine guidance. The necessity of verifying that any supposed word from God is thoroughly consistent with the written Word of God is so obvious that telling that to most of us is as superfluous as telling us to breathe. You’ll find this webpage crammed with Scriptures. What is seldom explained, however, is that unless our heart is right, a thorough Bible knowledge and deep reverence for the Bible will let us down – badly.   The devil used the holy Word of God to tempt Jesus. It was central to his plot to lure the Son of God from his divine mission. Scripture convinced devout Bible scholars that Jesus was a demon-possessed madman they should kill for the good of the nation. No doubt, it was also his knowledge of Scripture that played a role in firing up Saul to eradicate every trace of Christianity from the planet.   Bible knowledge is spiritual wealth. Give someone a million dollars and the vast possibilities range from using it to achieve enormous good, right through to destroying himself with it. Wealth – be it spiritual or material – tests a person’s character.   In a webpage for Christians agonizing over the morality of divorce, I briefly mentioned various Scriptural interpretations on the subject by sincere scholars. Rather than being enlightening, it was frustratingly confusing. Amazingly, however, it turns out that feeling confused and incapable of correctly interpreting God’s Word is a vital leg of one’s journey to hearing from God.   Those who suppose they have all the answers are the ones least likely to hear from God.   Ponder the implication of Jesus’ prayer:   Matthew 11:25 At that time, Jesus answered, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you hid these things from the wise and understanding, and revealed them to infants. . . .”   Those who are wise in their own eyes are in grave danger of spiritual blindness and deception.   1 Corinthians 3:18-20 Let no one deceive himself. If anyone thinks that he is wise among you in this world, let him become a fool, that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, “He has taken the wise in their craftiness.” And again, “The Lord knows the reasoning of the wise, that it is worthless.”   On the other hand, wondrous possibilities emerge for those with the humility to realize their “foolishness” – the natural human blindness to spiritual things – and their need of divine help in understanding biblical truth:   Psalm 25:9 He will guide the humble . . . He will teach the humble his way.   Even someone so spiritual and knowledgeable that he actually wrote part of the Bible, recognized his own need to pray for understanding of God’s Word:   Psalms 119:18 Open my eyes, that I may see wondrous things out of your law.   The Lord intentionally makes his Word difficult to understand to shake us out of complacency and inspire us to passionately seek his understanding of his Word, like Jesus’ disciples who couldn’t understand his parables and so came to him for understanding.   An intellectual approach to the Bible, no matter how studious and informed, is never enough.   1 Corinthians 2:14 Now the natural man doesn’t receive the things of God’s Spirit, for they are foolishness to him, and he can’t know them, because they are spiritually discerned.   Discerning biblical truth either takes us to the height of spiritual intimacy or we will drift into delusion, no matter how much, like the devout scholars in Jesus’ day, we think ourselves the epitome of orthodoxy.   Paul commented on how Jews could study the Old Testament with great thoroughness and still never realize that Jesus is the Messiah it prophesies. He put it this way:   2 Corinthians 3:15-16 But to this day, when [the books of] Moses [the first five books of the Bible] is read, a veil lies on their heart. But whenever one turns to the Lord , the veil is taken away. (Emphasis and explanatory text, mine.)   To know the will of God, it is not enough merely to know the words of Scripture, you must know the Author, being on the most intimate terms with him. To do the will of God, it is not enough merely to know the answer, you must be in spiritual union with the Answer.   Countless thousands of sincere, Bible-loving Jews longing for their Messiah rejected Jesus as their Savior because he did not match their Bible-based – yes, Bible-based – preconceptions. Much of their misunderstanding was due to confusing the Messiah’s second coming with his first coming, and much of that was probably because their longing to be delivered from hardship was greater than their longing to be delivered from their sin.   God made it so difficult to recognize Jesus’ true identity that when Peter made this discovery, Jesus exclaimed, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. . . .” (Matthew 16:17) .   Here’s my poem. I hope it’s not too long for you:   Spiritual concerns are spiritually discerned.   (Well, it almost rhymes.)   For proof of this great truth, we need go no further than this: evil spirits were far better at knowing who Jesus was, than were all the priests, spiritual leaders and Bible scholars combined. Demons knew in an instant what the best theological minds could not figure out about Jesus.   So a critical step toward finding the mind of God on any issue is to recognize that insights into spiritual matters will not be attained merely by the intellectual process of studying the relevant Scriptures and reaching one’s own conclusion as to what they mean. There must be a humble recognition of one’s dependence upon divine illumination of God’s Word. This naturally leads to fervent, faith-filled prayer for divine revelation but, as we will discover, there are additional heart attitudes to be mastered. Genuinely Want To Obey God God loves you mind-bogglingly more than you could possibly love yourself. Because true, godly love is utterly selfless, your best interest is God’s top priority. The infinite knowledge and wisdom of God make the smartest human decisions look like the guesses of a moron. If you combine all these facts and ponder their implications, it becomes clear that God’s will is the wisest thing you could ever do. Now combine this with Scripture’s famous truth: “ The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom ” ( Psalms 111:10; Proverbs 9:10 – Job 28:28; Proverbs 1:7; 15:33 are similar).   To fear God is to literally fear the consequences of disobeying the One who is Wisdom. Ideally, we should be so in love with God that fear doesn’t factor because God’s happiness means so much to us that we would rather die than sadden him. If we truly loved, to know we had disappointed the Lord would devastate us so much that something terrifying could not make us feel any worse. Nevertheless, there is genuine reason to fear disregarding the directions of the God of all love and wisdom.   In our relationship with God we are like electricians working on 100,000 volt transformers. We are perfectly safe, provided we act wisely. If you don’t realize the danger for Christian and non-Christian alike, you know little about the God of the New Testament and I suggest when you reach the end of this page you explore a link there about the fear of God.   Psalms 25:14 The friendship of the Lord is with those who fear him. . . .   The Lord shares his secrets with those who would sooner tongue kiss rattlesnakes than disobey him.   John 7:17 If anyone desires to do his will, he will know about the teaching, whether it is from God, or if I am speaking from myself.   Jesus is saying that to receive the divine revelation as to whether it is just a man spouting his own thoughts or God speaking, the critical factor is one’s willingness to obey God. An openness to God’s will – resolving to obey him no matter how unexpected and what the cost – unlocks our mind to let God in to give us the revelation we desperately need.   Note how the psalmist linked receiving divine revelation with a commitment to obey God.   Psalm 119:34 Give me understanding, and I will keep your law. Yes, I will obey it with my whole heart.   Psalm 119:145 I have called with my whole heart. Answer me, Lord! I will keep your statutes.   It is tempting to seek God, not because we want to obey him but because we are hoping to hear him say, “Yes, you can have what you want,” and if he says anything else we’ll ignore it. Such an attitude does not inspire the Almighty to speak to us. If we are not going to obey, the Lord telling us his will is not just God wasting his time; it increases our accountability and the severity of our judgment.   To paraphrase Jesus, if you seek first the kingdom of God all other necessities will be provided ( Matthew 6:33 ). Although Jesus said this in relation to our physical needs, the principle surely applies equally to spiritual needs. If we put God’s glory foremost in our motives, he’ll give us the guidance we need.    Count The Cost What would you think of a soldier who was expecting war to be so easy that he gets upset when he breaks a fingernail and deserts? When urging the crowds to count the cost before committing to him, Jesus spoke of a king going to war. To succeed in war one must steel oneself with the expectation that it will be tough.   Walking a tightrope might be easier than writing this webpage. Hopefully, from what I said earlier, you will understand how seriously I have failed you if I unintentionally foster a dread of God’s will. Just presuming that it will be unpleasant can cause serious problems. What makes the tightrope so precariously narrow, however, is that it is also my spiritual responsibility to steel you for the possibility that, although not guaranteed, God’s directions might occasionally seem unpleasant initially.   We need to long to do God’s will. And lest a closed mind causes us to mishear what God longs to tell us, we must be alert to all possibilities, which, of course, includes the likelihood that even in the short term God’s plans for us will exceed our fondest hopes. Nevertheless, much of Jesus’ teaching focuses on the cost, because he sought to instill in us the mental toughness required to be prepared for any eventuality. Without a willingness to embrace short-term pain for long-term joy, we Christians so easily fall into delusion. Should this happen we will be horrified when we face our Judge. Expecting to hear a “well done,” we would discover that despite all our prayer, good living, hard work and sacrifices we have missed God’s best and wasted our lives. We might make heaven but for all eternity we will suffer the loss.   Sometimes God’s answer is right in front of us, but we don’t recognize it because we are expecting the Lord to find some soft option to our crisis, when no such option is in his loving plans for us. Too often we overlook our Savior’s insistence that we take up our cross and follow the One who for the joy set before him dragged his cross to Golgotha where he was tortured to death.   Yes, Scripture says it was for the joy set before him that Jesus endured the agony of crucifixion ( Hebrews 12:2 ). Our Savior said that doing God’s will was his food ( John 4:34 ). It was prophesied of him that he delights to do God’s will ( Psalm 40:7-8; Hebrews 10:5-7) . Nevertheless, in the garden of Gethsemane we find our perfect Role Model sweating, as it were, drops of blood; hoping against hope for a legitimate way of avoiding God’s will. So let’s get real: if we are Christlike, there will be times when God’s will seems the most agonizing and undesirable option. At such times everything within us will seem to cry out against doing God’s will, and since we love God, we will be pressured to disobey and fool ourselves into thinking we are still obeying him.   God’s goal for us is to become champions. Could our goal sometimes be an easy few years, regardless of how much it eats into our eternal reward? The glory of Christ’s champions is, through him, to do things that seem impossible.   Jesus kept saying we must deny ourselves. Peter said, “ . . . since Christ suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same mind; for he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin ” ( 1 Peter 4:1 ). The parable of the sower refers to those who fall away when the going gets tough ( Matthew 13:20-22 ). If, for the One who gave his all for us, we are unwilling to embrace severe hardship, the possibility of falling into self-deception will skyrocket when obeying Christ becomes costly. If so, instead of having ears attuned to the Spirit’s whispers we will have, to use Paul’s words, ears itching to hear what we want to hear ( 2 Timothy 4:3 ).   When writing of those whose “god is the belly”, Paul seems to be referring to people who thought they were Christians ( Philippians 3:19 ). No matter how Christian they look, and how convinced they are that they are serving God, their real god – the one they serve and let determine the course of their lives and their eternal destiny – is not the wise, loving Lord, but their own passions and cravings.   Romans 16:18 For those who are such don’t serve our Lord, Jesus Christ, but their own belly . . .   There are those who seem indistinguishable from Christians when they can have a cozy life while acting godly. It is only in situations where they cannot have both their own way and God’s way that their real god is exposed. Even then, they will be so desperate to have both their fill of ease and the temporal status and eternal comfort of being Christians that their minds will buzz with excuses and rationalizations to the point of utter self-deception. Despite putting their own interests foremost, they convince themselves they are serving the real God.   These good people can be so anxious to have both God and their sin that they become the most devout non-Christians on the planet. We each have the potential to end up so sold-out to God that we match the Jews who went to extremes in keeping themselves ceremonially pure while finalizing the murder of their Messiah ( John 18:28 ). We could find all sorts of Scriptures to confirm the correctness of our actions, just like Satan found Scripture to prove the correctness of his arguments when tempting the Son of God to sin ( Matthew 4:5-6 ).   Once a person decides he or she wants to sin, the human capacity for self-deception knows no bounds. It is not the slightest surprising to find gay churches, embezzling pastors and adulterous or even incestuous Christian leaders.   We could find ourselves following not our crucified Lord but Ananias and Sapphira; struck dead for thinking they were having the best of both worlds by being hailed for their devotion, while secretly indulging themselves ( Acts 5:1-11 ). The easy way leads to destruction ( Matthew 7:13-14; Luke 13:24 ). If we want both our Lord and the easy life we can find ourselves with the throng on Judgment Day who will say, “Lord, Lord, didn’t we . . .” and will be stunned to hear those terrifying words, “I never knew you. Depart from me, you who work iniquity” ( Matthew 7:22-23 ). As Jesus says:   Matthew 7:21 Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter into the Kingdom of Heaven; but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.   Elsewhere the tragedy is described this way:   Proverbs 30:12 There is a generation that is pure in their own eyes, yet are not washed from their filthiness.   In the words of the prophet:   Jeremiah 17:9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and it is exceedingly corrupt: who can know it?   No wonder the psalmist prayed:   Psalms 139:23-24 Search me, God, and know my heart. Try me, and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me . . . When Sin Sparks a Divine Communication Breakdown Many of us suffer a love-hate affair with a particular sin. Our loving Lord is most patient when we genuinely want to be freed from it but have not yet discovered how to draw upon God’s power for total deliverance. The entire process is a rich, though frustrating, spiritual learning experience, which will cause us to grow, even though during most of our struggle we will feel that we are going backwards. A link at the end of this page will help you.   If, however, we are not struggling against our pet sin but want to keep it, divine patience will begin to wear thin. Until we repent, we can expose ourselves to the danger of a communication breakdown with the Lord.   Psalm 66:18 If I cherished sin in my heart, the Lord wouldn’t have listened [to me]   Isaiah 59:2 But your iniquities have separated you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear.   That is what happened to King Saul. He had surrendered to sin (for instance, he was continually trying to kill David, who as Saul had been, was God’s anointed). The spiritual implications of Saul’s sins came to a head when he desperately needed to hear from God. Not surprisingly, given his behavior, the Lord was silent. In desperation, he added to his sin by turning to a medium for guidance, despite being so aware of the sinfulness of this that he himself had previously banished all mediums from the land. He died just hours later ( 1 Samuel 28:3-29 ).   We can do the same in one of two ways. The first way is to keep trying to find the answer we want, rather than the answer we know God has given. If the Lord gives us an answer, but not one that we want to hear, we can keep seeking Christian advisors until we find one who says what we want to hear and choose to believe it, despite knowing deep down that it is not God’s counsel.   There are things we should not pray about because we already know God’s will on the matter and praying simply means we are hoping for a response that is contrary to the God of the Bible. For example, if a Christian prays, “Lord, should I rob a bank?” he is not praying to the real God because he already knows the true God is opposed to stealing. If he receives the answer he wants, it will not be from the true God. Such a person is, of course, careering into deception. When we are genuinely confused, the Lord is most patient with us, but if we know the answer is staring at us in the Bible and we are asking simply because we don’t like the answer the God of the Bible gives, then we are on very dangerous ground.   The second way we can act like King Saul is to consult non-Christian spiritual guides, such as reading the stars, having our fortune told, or even some secular means that does not focus on the Bible and seeking God through Jesus, and encourages us to take a path contrary to the leading of the one and only true God.   Scripture says that God put a lying spirit into hundreds of prophets, causing them to entice the king of Israel into a war that killed him. Why would the God of truth do that? Because these were prophets of a false god whom the king chose to worship; not prophets of the true God ( 1 Kings 22:5-38 ).   The Bible even says that God can go to the extreme of letting prophets of false gods foretell a miraculous sign that actually happens, and it is God testing his people to see if they truly love him or will knowingly reject him in favor of false gods ( Deuteronomy 13:1-3 ).   So to hear from God we must want God to wrench from our lives, not just the sins we hate, but the sins we love. And if at any time we have sought occultist guidance, we must repent and seek God’s forgiveness so that there is no blockage in our relationship with God. Look Beyond Human Advisors The word of God often comes to us served up by people. The Lord loves speaking to us through people because he loves people and delights in giving the objects of his love the astounding honor of sharing in his great work.   We are part of a body. We need each other, and the Lord has very deliberately placed spiritual leaders and teachers in the body of Christ. These are helps that we dare not ignore. If what we believe to be God’s guidance differs from the views of respected leaders, it is strong evidence that we have misheard God. We must be ever so cautious about disregarding their views.   Nevertheless, as I have said elsewhere, your church and favorite Bible teachers might be excellent and have far deeper understanding than me, but does that make them infallible? I doubt if anyone on the planet has a one hundred percent correct interpretation of every aspect of the entire Bible. How then can you be certain that that fraction of a percent where your church or Bible teacher is incorrect does not include the very issue you are seeking God about?   No matter how wise and spiritual people seem, they, like you and me, can occasionally have their own blind spots and their own hidden pressures influencing their judgment. We must not be content to have blind faith in anyone, but must personally seek confirmation from our Lord.   Even when God’s counsel comes to us through people, it is our responsibility to ensure that God truly is the real source of our guidance. The Holy Book preserves for our instruction the instance in 1 Kings 13, where a young prophet let himself be persuaded by a more mature prophet who claimed to have heard from God. Though it was contrary to the younger prophet’s personal leading he chose to believe the more experienced prophet. The mistake cost the young man his life.   Never Give Up Jesus deliberately made it hard for people to understand his teaching. We see this in his parables. Although powerfully helpful to the few who got close enough to him to be given the key to their meaning, to everyone else most of his parables were little more than frustrating puzzles ( Matthew 13:10-13 ). But Jesus even went beyond using parables in making things difficult for his listeners. He kept coming up with weird, even offensive, sayings such as, “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you don’t have life in yourselves” ( John 6:53 ). This saying was enough for many of his disciples to leave him. He could have explained. He could have worded it differently. He could have avoided the subject. Instead, he used it to test them. The twelve, though as bewildered and as offended as the others, clung to Jesus. It was perhaps years later – after the resurrection – when it eventually made sense to them, but no matter how ridiculous Jesus’ teaching seemed, they stubbornly clung to the belief that Jesus had the answers they needed and that if they kept with him for long enough, he would eventually reveal what they needed to know.   God has not changed tactics. He still uses silences and Bible difficulties and offensive situations as challenges for us to rise to the occasion and prove that we believe that no matter what, the answer is found in Jesus and in him alone, and that if we cling to him for long enough, all that we need will be revealed.   We again see this in Jesus’ interaction with the Canaanite (Syrophenician) woman. She needed him. He gave her the silent treatment. Instead of giving up, she hounded him all the more. When she finally wrung a response from him it was worse than nothing. He insulted her and said he wouldn’t give her a thing. Still she hounded him and ended up receiving not only her request but Jesus’ high praise ( Matthew 15:21-28 ). It turned out that despite not revealing a hint of it until it was all over, her persistence thrilled him. And when you receive the silent treatment, your determination to keep badgering Jesus because you believe he cares and will not remain silent forever, will likewise thrill him, gain you high praise – and you’ll hear from him as well.   It seemed to Lazarus’s sisters that Jesus had let them down by not responding immediately to their urgent plea for him to come and heal their brother. But they were wrong. ( John 11:1-45 ). Jesus is always faithful and always cares and always has more ways of bringing good out of disaster than our powers of imagination could cope with.   To our great loss, it is usually suppressed from official biographies, but many – perhaps all – great men and women of God have reeled in agonized bewilderment at having been certain they had heard from God; only for circumstances to later prove they had been mistaken. Why God allowed it, I do not know, but what proved these people’s greatness is that after that sickening blow they staggered to their feet and kept pressing forward for God.   We sometimes feel sure God will answer a prayer a particular way and for some mysterious reason it doesn’t happen. It can be bitterly disappointing and defy all understanding, but we continue to believe in prayer. Likewise when it turns out that we had misheard from God, we need to continue to believe in God’s guidance and his integrity.   Cling to him. Whenever God communicates, whether it be through the Bible, through circumstances, or whatever, he usually whispers. The further we let ourselves drift from him, the more likely it is that we won’t catch everything he is saying and we will unknowingly fill in the gaps with what we suppose he is saying, thus exposing ourselves to danger. Keep Seeking “Seek, and you shall find” said Jesus. And yet sincere, godly Christians have sought the truth about important spiritual issues come to opposite conclusions. This means that some must have stopped seeking before they truly found. They found perhaps half the truth and were content to stay there, rather than keeping open to the possibility that God still had more to show them. Don’t Let Your Feelings Drown Out God’s Voice   When we have already decided what we want God to say and anything else begins to seem unbearable, and – as always – we have a spiritual enemy who would love to trip us up, trying to discern God’s guidance becomes precariously difficult.   Try not to let strong emotions – passionate longings, pain, shame, fear, selfishness, or resentment – drown out the Spirit’s whispers. That’s a tall order when grappling with emotionally charged issues in which one’s feelings can rage almost uncontrollably. At the very least, however, you can be acutely aware of how strong yearnings for a specific answer greatly magnify the possibility of distorting your perception of what God is saying.   Do what you can – and pray that God will do the rest – to rein in your longings and bring your personal preferences as close to neutral as you can manage. I pray the next paragraph will sober your passions enough to save you from tragedy.   If, from heaven, you were to look back in time on what you currently think is the best option and, with everything revealed, you would still see it as the best option, then it is truly what your loving Lord wants for you. Remember, however, that millions of marriages turn out to be a most horrific mistake that scars and haunts people to their dying day. These people were once madly in love; desperate to marry the object of their passion because they are certain it would be heaven on earth. We can get it devastatingly wrong, not just with marriage, but with any other craving. When reality hits, our darling fantasies can so easily dissolve into nightmares. It is terrifyingly common to be intoxicated by an illusion. Likewise, we can dread things that eventually turn out to be a most wondrous opportunity that we dare not miss.   Paul Little rightly said that God’s will is the greatest good his infinite wisdom can devise. There is no greater security in the universe than snuggling in the center of God’s will. What is to be feared is every alternative to God’s will. Whatever God’s will for you is, you will spend eternity revelling in heartfelt gratitude to God for the perfection of his loving wisdom, and celebrating the ecstasy in having chosen it.   If you can absorb the truth of how good God’s will is and how secure it makes one, it will calm your spirit as you wait for him to speak. As the calming of a raging storm makes it easier to hear a conversation, so the calming of your passions and fears will help you hear the Lord. Wait Until You Are Certain   As I have said elsewhere, God loves drama. Often he waits until almost the last split second before giving us what we desperately need. That builds faith. It puts steel in our backbone, spiritually.   King Saul was chosen by God. He could have headed a royal dynasty, with his descendants ruling as king for untold generations. He lost it all because it seemed to him that things were so desperate that he could not wait a moment longer. In a panic, he acted hastily and paid for it for the rest of his life, and his descendents kept paying generation after generation. What he feared would not come soon enough, arrived just as he finished his rash act ( 1 Samuel 13:8-14 ). If only he had waited a few moments longer . . .   Don’t be like Esau; so driven to satisfy his craving that rather than endure the few unpleasant minutes that restraining himself would entail, he made the biggest mistake of his life. He thought every minute he denied himself would seem an eternity, but the real eternity was his never-ending regret over having sold his future for a mouthful of pleasure. He could never undo his devastating loss ( Hebrews 12:16-17 ). Avoid Complacency John Wesley remained single, denying himself for 47 years. Finally, this man of God, overflowing with spiritual wisdom, decided to complete his happiness by marrying. So atrocious was his choice that his wife ended up a continual source of torment and shame. They ended up permanently separated.   No one ever gets so old and wise or so spiritual that he or she cannot make a devastating mistake.   If Solomon with all his wisdom and initial devotion to the Lord could make wrong marriage choices and drift away from God, there is simply no way to avoid spiritual disaster other than daily obedience and intimacy with God.   Have A Real Need For An Answer God often shares his secrets on a need-to-know basis. Those whose interest is little more than intellectual curiosity or so they can point the finger at others, are much less likely to receive divine revelation than those faced with the serious need to make a decision. “ Call on me in the day of trouble . . .” invited the Lord in Psalm 50:15. The Answer Couldn’t Be Closer The Almighty is moved by your need. For our eternal benefit he develops our faith by stretching it, but at the right time he will come through for everyone who yields to him and in faith waits for him.   Rather than try to give you my answers to whatever issue is bothering you, I have pointed you to the Answer. Better than having all the answers, when Christ dwells in you, you have the Answer.

How to Change Your Self-Image & Boost Self-Esteem   Why changing your self-image is so difficult and yet so important       For most of my life I’ve thought it was safe to let my self-esteem flounder. I even thought it would make me more Christlike. I thought I was being biblical – aligning myself with Scripture’s emphasis on humility and dying to self. It turned out I was wrong. Very wrong.     For each of us, our self-image defines reality for us. Our self-image is our North Star. We use it to get our bearings and plot our course through life. If we get our bearings wrong, mistakenly thinking we are at a certain point on a map, we will interpret everything else we see – from close-by all the way to the horizon – according to our mistaken belief. We will get everything wrong and yet, apart from a little confusion, we will have no idea how mistaken we are.     Our self-image is so fundamental that if we get that wrong, we are completely lost and don’t even know it. And that’s such a scary thought that most of us prefer not to question our presumptions.     Should, for example, I think everyone despises me, I would interpret it as an act of spurning me if people typically go about their normal business without interrupting everything to make me the center of their attention. To my warped thinking, people’s normal shyness, fear of rejection, preoccupation with their own affairs, and so on, would “prove” I disgust them. Even if a few people actually went out of their way to say nice things about me, I would dismiss it as an act of insincerity (forcing themselves to be polite, feeling sorry for me, trying to manipulate me, etc.) or based on ignorance (not really knowing me, being poor judges of character, etc.). As a final resort, if anyone acts in a manner I find impossible to squeeze into the categories just mentioned, I would interpret it as “the exception that proves the rule” and would probably even find perverse satisfaction in restoring my equilibrium by deliberately recalling events that seem to confirm my distorted self-image.     So to summarize, for each of us, our self-image seems rock-solid reality, and rather than conclude that we have got it wrong, we interpret everything else to fit our conception of reality. The disturbing thing is that almost all of us have a wrong or distorted self-image, which leads to a wrong or distorted understanding of just how important and loved of God we are and how enormous our ability is to achieve great things.     Everywhere I look, I see people whose lives have been ruined or at least crippled because of a distorted self-image. For example, a heartbreakingly large number of women have confessed to me that they ended up in appallingly abusive marriages because their self-image prevented them from believing they deserved to be treated with kindness, gentleness and respect. Even more people could have glorified their Maker by becoming great achievers, but instead wasted their lives in the mud of mediocrity, simply because they had been deceitfully enticed into the snare of seeing themselves as incompetent.     How We Got in this Mess     With few exceptions, our self-image is not a perspective we have carefully and rationally investigated, but something picked up primarily when we were little, easily influenced, children. We got it from our guess about how we supposed certain people thought of us. These people happened to be very significant in shaping our lives but, like all people, they were very fallible.     We were too young to know any different, but we virtually turned these significant people in our lives into our God – our infallible source of truth. The real God is now challenging us to make him our God, and redefine our sense of reality according to who  he  says we are, rather than the person we have presumed we are – a presumption we have clung to for our entire life, or most of it.     Even those who do not desperately need to redefine their self-image will immensely benefit from the change. Just a small change, however, can seem a scary mega shift. Our whole perception of reality is threatened. It means admitting that we really have been lost and everything we thought was real, was an illusion. Rather than come to terms with that, most of us stubbornly hold on to our twisted and battered self-image; refusing to believe that we have got wrong something so fundamental, even though it was something thrust on us as a child, not an opinion we have carefully – much less, prayerfully – thought through.     Most of us have for so long presumed that we are of little value that we have cemented this lie into our self-image, worshipping it as truth, our North Star. The implications of retaining this false self-image are terrifying, but do we have the courage and sense of adventure to engage in the mega shift of a radically new self-image, or will we remain in the security of the familiar, even though it keeps us languishing in the mud of mediocrity and despair?     All of us were brought up to accept a false self-image. Though we probably did not think of it in these terms, we might have even been subjected to what amounts to relentless brainwashing during our most impressionable years by authoritative-sounding accusations that we are “hopeless’ or “stupid” or other such lies. This so powerfully shapes one’s self-image that the victims accept it as truth and subconsciously reject anything that suggests otherwise.     From the way highly inadequate, but significant, humans in our lives have verbally or even physically abused us, many of us quickly conclude that we are unlovable, and so we interpret everything else in life according to this lie. For instance, our head might tell us that God loves us, but our heart will scream the opposite and refuse to accept the reality of God’s love. Nevertheless, despite what everything in your experience might shriek at you, the truth is astounding: you are of infinite value. That seems beyond belief, so I’ll have to explain.     If we stumbled upon natural diamonds in a wilderness, most of us would ignorantly walk over them and treat them as dirt, having no clue as to their value and how exquisite they would look if expertly cut and polished. Likewise, most people might walk all over you and treat you as dirt, having no clue that you are priceless. Only God sees your true worth because he alone has the astounding expertise to transform you into an exquisite jewel. It matters not what you can do or how others see you. All that matters is the staggering power of God to transform into something of breathtaking beauty what everyone else thinks is a worthless lump.     A diamond is just a piece of rock. It can’t love, talk or think. You can’t eat it, cook with it, hunt with it, keep warm with it, and so for centuries vast numbers of tribal people considered diamonds worthless. A diamond’s worth is based not on what it can do but simply because of what people are willing to pay to have it. You are far more precious to God than tons of diamonds and he paid a far higher price than all the wealth of a million earths – the willing sacrificial death of his holy Son – to have you as his best friend.     Like a huge diamond, your worth is not based on what you do. You are of infinite value because of the infinite price the God of the universe willingly paid for your friendship. And if he has invested so much in you, he will treasure you and cherish you for all eternity.     For your entire life you might have been surrounded by people who were unable to see your value, like primitives who cannot see the value of a diamond. But God’s view of you is astonishingly different.     Who are you going to make your God – your source of truth who determines your self-worth? Will you assign that role to the “ignorant savages” around you, or to the God of infinite wisdom and knowledge who gave his Holy Son for you?     Without Christ, everyone on this planet is a disgusting failure, hopelessly evil and incapable of ever pleasing God. Without Christ, the best of us is ruined, repulsive to God and deserves nothing but an eternity in hell. But you are not without Christ! It is insulting to God to treat yourself as if Christ were a failure; as if all the astounding things he has done at such enormous cost to transform you have achieved nothing. You are divine royalty – a child of the King of kings who is God of the universe.  And God wants you to know it and live it.     Another Big Factor Affecting Self-Image     Let me share a portion of what I have written elsewhere:    Because self-image is so critical and is affected by other people’s opinion:   Your entire life ends up limited by how you suppose other people think about you.     Let’s refine this still further:     How you live is limited by how you suppose other people would think about you  if they knew everything about you.     This addition is critical. It explains why many people can receive an abundance of heart-felt praise and encouragement and it doesn’t do a thing for them. Even if literally millions of people were to think the world of them, they would still feel lonely and unloved and be haunted by an abysmally low self-esteem. Praise is wasted on them because they have no idea whether anyone would praise the person they really are. They have concealed a secret about themselves precisely because they think – usually wrongly – that the truth would completely alter everyone’s view of them.     We can go one step further in our maxim about what determines our self-image and the life we end up living:     How you live is limited by how you think others  whose opinions you respect  would think you are if they knew everything about you.     Some people respect their own opinions so strongly that they are little influenced by the views of others. As Christians, the opinion we most respect should be God’s. In theory, no other opinion should matter to us. In practice, it is almost impossible for us to think God thinks a certain way about us if we suspect that all of God’s earthly servants would think otherwise if they knew all there is to know about us.     Of course, even the refined maxim does not define exactly who you are, but it determines your self-image. It is what you end up genuinely believing about yourself. And it is as difficult as trying to act out of character to avoid acting in complete conformity with your self-image. The self-image God wants Christians to have – the one he has painstakingly portrayed in his Word – is a continual inspiration that fills us with zest for life. The self-image our spiritual enemies want us to have is an oppressive straightjacket.     The Twelve Steps Programs have a powerful saying:     “You are only as sick as your secrets”     The agents of darkness lose much of their power when hidden things are brought into the light. To hide the things that haunt us, treating them as dark secrets to be kept from other Christians, is to try to fight the forces of darkness on their own turf. It is to play into their hands, foolishly putting ourselves at a dangerous and totally unnecessary disadvantage in our spiritual fight.     “ . . . in; the multitude of counselors there is safety” (Proverbs 11:14). The cunning enemies of our soul are well aware that their chances of hoodwinking us soar if they can somehow pressure us into isolating ourselves from our greatest human sources of comfort and spiritual wisdom. Their evil strategy is to keep us from sharing with other Christians our deepest concerns because these spiritual con artists know that feedback from God’s children will bring us back to reality and help us see through the lies deceptive spirits have kept whispering in our lonely ears. The forces of evil want exclusive access to the most vulnerable area of our lives.     Every street-wise city dweller knows that to walk alone in the dark is the scariest, most unwise place to be. There is security in numbers.     Beasts of prey are forever on the prowl for sheep that become separated from the flock. To try to isolate us from the counsel and comfort of every Christian on the planet is a truly devilish trick. And this is exactly what happens when we are conned into condemning ourselves to the icy loneliness of keeping an area of our life hidden from even the most trusted of our friends and the most warmly accepting, Christlike person we know. The enemy is happy for us to receive affirmation in those parts of our life in which we don’t need help, as long as we are duped into cutting ourselves off from every trace of love and support in the very area of our life that is causing us the greatest torment. Refusing to unburden ourselves to anyone Christlike makes us terrifyingly vulnerable to spiritual blackmail, demonic delusions, groundless fears, suicidal despair, and being cheated out of all the wondrous privileges that cost Christ everything to lavish upon us.     Child molesters have the condemnation of society and the full force of the law against them and yet still they turn innocent children into long-term helpless victims. It would almost seem impossible they could get away with it, and yet they do because they fill childish minds with false guilt and with despicable lies about the consequences of spilling the beans. They might say, “If you breathe a word of this, whoever hears it will know it is all your fault and that you are the most repulsively wicked person on earth. They will tell your parents who will be so angry and cry for days, wishing they had never had you and punishing you worse than you could ever imagine. Then they’ll have to tell the police, who will arrest you and keep beating you to make sure you tell them every single detail. The story will be headlines in all the newspapers and television, and everyone in the whole world will hate you. Mobs will march through streets burning photos of you and demanding you be executed. The police will throw you in jail for life and all the other prisoners will be do cruel things to you because they know you are so much worse than any of them.”     Such threats are made to seem so real to little children that they dare not say a word, but in terrified silence they suffer unspeakable horrors alone, cut off from all the comfort and protection that would have been theirs.     Thus these law-breakers keep their victims suffering horrifically when in reality help is so close at hand and it is the molesters who should be guilt-ridden and terrified of being discovered. Demonic powers – the slimy agents of evil that lust after your soul and long to dominate you – use the same evil tactics, hounding you with groundless fears in the hope that you won’t breathe a word to someone who could give you the love and comfort and relief you so desperately deserve.     The spiritual lowlife arrayed against us aren’t too excited about us having good, Christian friends that we let into 99% of our life. Nevertheless, they are thrilled if there is just a small but vulnerable area of our life in which we act like loners. We give our spiritual opponents the upper hand whenever, by giving in to false shame, we in effect block everyone out of the very part of our life that is under spiritual attack. That way our enemies have a wounded part of us that they can cause to fester because we won’t let others touch it with the healing balm of their love and understanding and acceptance. They seek an area of your life into which they can keep pouring in false accusations unchallenged by the truth that God imparts through other Christians.     Throughout history, one of the hallmarks of genuine revivals has been the open confession of sin. What seems scary, turns out to be one of the most liberating experiences known to humanity. The ending of guilty secrets brings heaven – that joyous place of transparent honesty – to earth.     One of the most astounding tragedies is that many of those who feel the loneliest, most unloved people on the planet have wonderfully loving friends, families and marriage partners. Their lives seem flooded with love and yet to them it feels like a sham because they are living a lie. You are doomed never to know you are capable of being loved if you shrink from letting anyone know the real you. You can never feel loved while hiding in the bleak, scary, lonely hole of secrecy. Holding on to a guilty secret is the loneliest place in the universe. It is locking yourself up in a haunted dungeon filled with ghosts from the past. It is sentencing yourself to being constantly on edge, afraid of shadows.     The time will come when every secret will be exposed. Get it over with now so that you can start living. Leave it much longer and it could be too late. To freely confess will be your glory. To have it exposed against your wishes will be to your eternal shame.     You might suppose you have no need to share your secret with anyone because it is a matter between you and God. There is no question that God’s view is paramount. If, however, you are too ashamed to tell others about something God says is totally forgiven and is no longer a part of you, it would seem most peculiar. It means you are cutting yourself off from much of the comfort God wants you to have through his children. Moreover, it suggests you are struggling to believe the past has really been cancelled. If so, you would greatly benefit from the support of other Christians and from the knowledge that they accept the real you.     Furthermore, by maintaining the secret, you are keeping others from a blessing. Too many of us act as if our mighty Savior is as pathetic as petty humans who can only forgive “small” sins. We reinforce this heresy when we participate in the giant cover up in which Christians dare not glorify their Savior by declaring the extent of God’s forgiveness in their own lives for fear fellow believers prove unable to believe – or at least unable to act as if they believe – that God is as forgiving as the Bible says. Open confession helps break the satanic conspiracy of silence that causes so many Christians to clam up and makes each think that they alone in their congregation have serious battles with sin. It is the breaking of this silence that helps power revivals.     Help in Breaking Free from the Need to Keep Secrets     Keeping secrets messes us up but what makes bursting out of that dark, icy cold dungeon so scary is that we do not know how people will react. They might reject us or gossip about us or, if we have done something illegal, turn us over to authorities.     We need to be wise and prayerful about who we select to tell. We need to know their integrity and how well they can maintain confidentiality. We also need to somehow get an accurate idea of how what we tell them would affect the way they view us.     I would like to help you get a feel for how people would respond if you were to confess to them. If you are considering confessing to a friend, tell the person, “I have heard of a game to improve friends’ understanding of each other. Could I play it with you? It simply involves dreaming up weird, largely out-of-character scenarios and taking turns asking how the other thinks he/she would respond to that situation. It takes us beyond what we have experienced with each other and so gives us new insights into each other’s attitudes.”     Use your imagination to list every shameful and embarrassing thing you can think of. Fill in the dots below and add any other situations you can think of. If you feel the response you receive is too shallow, question your friend deeper about how he/she would react if the situation were true. Ask your friend, “How would you feel and what would you do if I told you that:     *  I had lied to you all my life about . . .     *  I am addicted to . . .     *  I have told others that you . . .     *  I have secretly thought . . . about you.     *  I have these spiritual doubts . . .     *  I have these daydreams and longings . . .     *  I have cheated you out of . . .”     Don’t restrict yourself to just one possibility per statement. You might like to make it even harder for your friend to guess why you are doing this by adding some scenarios that are not confessions, such as, “What if in the future I . . .”     If you find your friend’s response favorable, slip in your confession, but treat it just like the others, not letting on that it is genuine. Then later decide if you can trust the person sufficiently to confess.     When All Else Fails, the Best is Still to Come     Sadly, it can sometimes be exceedingly difficult to find friends who truly understand us, warmly accept us and think highly of us despite knowing our greatest shame. It is especially difficult if we lack the courage to keep doing everything possible to find such people.     Even for those who persist, however, finding trustworthy friends in their locality might be impossible. For example, I do all I can to support people who have multiple personalities. It is often heart wrenchingly difficult for them to find ordinary people they can unburden themselves with and reveal their condition. The average person would freak out, letting their imagination fly to ridiculous extremes, suddenly fearing the person is dangerous, has demons, or whatever.     No matter what, however, there is always one Person who truly understands you, and what is particularly thrilling is that this Person is the only one whose opinion truly counts because he alone is always right. Every view other than his will end up proved wrong.     To explore the exciting implications, let me plunder something else I’ve written:     You are passionately loved. In the eyes of the one Person who really counts, you are special. To other people you might be just one of thousands, but not to the One who made you. You mean so much to him that what God wants with you is like a perfect marriage in which you can enjoy each other forever.     Believing in the opposite sex does not make one married. Neither does believing a creed give us the right to live with God. It is not enough to walk down a church aisle. True marriage is believing in someone so completely that you commit all that you are, and all that you have, to that person for life. Your Maker is eager to be that devoted to you, but for marriage to work, the commitment must be mutual.     If a street kid married a millionaire, she would get his riches and he would get her debts. He would be tarred with her shame and she would gain his honor. For this to happen, she must turn from rival relationships and bind herself and her meager possessions to this man in marriage. Everything he owns would become hers, if she lets everything of hers become his.     Similarly, if we entrust to God everything we have – our time, abilities, relationships and possessions – he will reciprocate, embracing us with divine extravagance. We hand our depravity to Jesus, relinquishing even our fondest sin. It becomes his. That’s what killed him. In return, Jesus’ sinless perfection envelops us, enabling us to be on intimate terms with the Holy God.     In entering this love pact, we give God the right to do whatever he likes with our assets, but the Owner of the universe makes his riches available to us. We trade our talents, for his omnipotence; our attempts to run our lives, for his unlimited wisdom. We give him our time on earth and he gives us eternity.     In every way we benefit from this proposal and God gets the raw end. But God is in love with you. He wants this holy union more than you can imagine. Don’t break his heart and miss out on the ultimate human experience by holding back.     When Diana Spencer married Prince Charles, instantly she was royalty. Suddenly, she was rich, famous and important. She was one with Charles. His assets and honor became hers, as much as they had ever been his. That is rather like your transformation, the moment you were born again. Your status and assets skyrocketed, although at the time you were only vaguely conscious of the enormity of what happened. (For a little more about the staggering benefits of your union with Christ, see  Spiritual Riches .)     After that famous wedding, Princess Diana underwent a second, much slower and uneven transformation. Step by faltering step, a shy, plainly dressed girl gradually became a confident, sophisticated, superbly dressed woman who captured the admiration of millions. That second change was only possible because she firmly believed in the reality of the first transformation – that she really was royal, rich, important and famous. Had she kept telling herself that she was insignificant, that she had no right to Charles’ money, that nothing she did was of any consequence, she would still have had much, but that second change would never have occurred. As it was, she would probably have blossomed further, had she felt more secure in Charles’ love and in the acceptance and approval of the royal family.     As I stumble to find words to describe the breathtaking transformation of your status and what has taken place within you, let me quote from more of my writings:     Something stupendous happened the moment you spiritually united to Christ. Instantly, your status and potential rocketed heavenward, leaving the person you used to be so mind-bogglingly far behind that, along with every other Christian, you actually need divine psychiatric help (Ephesians 1:16-19; Colossians 1:9; Philemon 6) to grasp the merest fraction of the enormity of what has happened to you.     We Christians are like paupers ecstatic because we think we have inherited $10,000, when we’ve actually received $1 billion. We live chronically impoverished lives and the less we know of our spiritual inheritance, the greater the tragedy.     The gulf between who you think you are and who you really are is so serious and so beyond normal comprehension (Ephesians 3:19-20; 1 John 3:1-2) that whereas some psychiatric patients have delusions of grandeur – supposing themselves to be ridiculously more important than they really are – you and I suffer the opposite problem. What God did within us, without us even knowing it, was so staggering that even Christians with dangerously inflated egos suffer from what I call delusions of insignificance.     The psychiatric definition of a delusion is a false notion that cannot be altered by reasoning. That’s why I could write a million words and the implications still won’t hit home without supernatural revelation. A major task of the Holy Spirit is to help us grasp the enormity of the transformation that has taken place within us (John 16:14; 1 Corinthians 2:9-15; 1 John 4:13; Ephesians 3:3-5; John 14:26; 16:13). It is vital that we keep probing the Scriptures (2 Corinthians 4:6-7) and pleading for spiritual revelation as to who we are in Christ.     Drown the doubts, insecurities and guilt feelings. Cling to the emphatic Word of God that affirms that God’s estimation of you is far too immense for human fame or shame to budge it (e.g., Galatians 2:6; Ephesians 6:9; Job 34:19). Whether the high point of your Sundays is counting the souls you have won or counting the specks on your pew, the King delights in you.     What has happened is so far beyond our expectations that even after glimpsing a little of who we now are, we keep reverting to our old self-image. You are so different to what you once were that it will be a long, uphill battle just to turn your thinking around until your thinking is consistently even in the right direction, to say nothing of it being as far as it should be.     It is so frustratingly easy to let go of the truth about God’s view of ourselves and slip back into our former depressed thinking. Keep praying for a revelation. Keep trying to claw your faith higher. Keep pushing out the million doubts. Keep flooding your mind with the glorious truths that will set you free. And rest in the certainty that Almighty God has invested everything – even the death of his precious Son – to ensure you make it.     Our current mindset and self-image took our entire life to form and harden. To reverse this and create a new self-image corresponding to how the King of kings sees us is a long and laborious process in which it is perversely easy to slip back into our old dreary mode of thinking. In a flash we changed in God’s eyes from a debased child of the devil to an exalted child of God. For us to catch up with this in the way we view ourselves, however, is a slow, arduous slog. In fact, we will need to keep working on it for the rest of our lives.     No Longer the Person People Think You Are     Here’s another quote of mine with the power to change your life if you can fully absorb it:   You Are a New Creation  (you could almost say a new species)     Your old guilt-ridden self is dead and buried. That’s the most wonderful news anyone could hear! Gleefully devour the  Scriptures  that make this announcement to the world! You are a totally different person to the one who sinned. Just as you are utterly innocent of the sins of another person, so you are innocent of your past sins. The devil has no more right to accuse you for Charles Mason’s or Jack the Ripper’s sins than for your past sins.   2 Corinthians 5:17  declares you to be a new creation – a totally new person – because of what Christ has done. The old has passed away. The person who was defeated, the person who sinned, the person who didn’t radiate the beauty of Christ, is dead. You are someone new, a completely different person to the one who, like all of us outside of Christ, had reason to feel ashamed.   Satan could accuse you as much as he liked for Hitler’s sin or Fred Nerd’s folly, but the accusations would be meaningless. You would ignore them because you know you’re not Hitler or Fred Nerd. Likewise, he can accuse as much as he likes about the person you once were, but you can ignore it. That person is dead. It’s not you. It was someone else who did those shameful things. You have a whole new identity. The new you, the person you now are, is pure and holy and righteous and filled with the beauty of God; a prince or princess – a child of the King of kings – heir to the riches of God, someone in whom God delights and is proud of.   No one likes being slandered and that is what Satan is trying with you, but it’s a case of mistaken identity. Satan is accusing the wrong person. The person he’s accusing is dead and buried with Christ. Just ignore him.   When the Accuser Knocks, He’s at the Wrong Address! Imagine you’ve just moved into a new apartment. It so happens that the previous tenant had foolishly amassed a huge debt and then died. The day after moving in, there’s a knock on the door. It’s a debt collector claiming you owe quarter of a million dollars. ‘You’ve got the wrong person,’ you tell him.   ‘I was given this address,’ he replies.   ‘Maybe so, but I’m not the person who owes the money.’   ‘No, this is the address, alright!’   ‘The person you want is  dead! ’   ‘Look! I’ll bring the full weight of the law down on you!’   ‘Please do!’ you reply, ‘the law will prove I’m not the person you claim I am.’   Suppose this goes on day after day. Each time you could slam the door in his face and refuse to listen to his groundless accusations. Or you could choose to waste hours every day arguing with him. Or you could meekly listen to all his insults and foolishly begin to believe him. No alternative would be entirely pain-free. And none of them would change the fact that you are innocent. But clearly some responses would be far more upsetting and disruptive to your life than others.   This, of course, describes your situation, and that of every Christian. You live at the same address as the guilty person – your body. But the person living at that address is a new tenant. No matter who comes knocking at your door, the law (of God) is always on your side. God pronounces you innocent. It’s up to you how much you let the Accuser annoy you. You won’t be able to stop him knocking at your door, but it’s your choice whether you keep ignoring him or invite him in and give weight to his lies. Either way, you are still innocent, but why put yourself through unnecessary torment?   The Old You Died With Christ –  Galatians 2:20   So the old you, the person who had reason to feel dirty, ashamed and inferior, is dead. Christ now lives in you – Christ in all His beauty and purity and perfection; Christ in all his goodness, splendor and favor with God. A little girl, when asked how she dealt with temptation, said that when the devil knocks, she sends Jesus to the door. That’s what you can do. Christ has taken up residence within you. The previous tenant is dead. Christ now lives at your address. You don’t even have to worry about trying to forgive yourself, because the real you, the person you now are in Christ, never did anything that needed forgiveness. The old you, the person who needed forgiveness, no longer exists.   You have been born again –  John 3:3; 1 Peter 1:3;23   Sadly, overuse of the term born again has sapped this mind-boggling expression of its power. It is such an astounding concept as to be almost beyond our powers of intellect to grasp. What more powerful way could there be to convey the fact that, spiritually, you have no past? You weren’t even born when the things your mind accuses you of took place! You can’t get any more innocent than that! What a miracle! What a display of love, for God to do that for you!   (If the sins that haunt you happened  after  you were born again, don’t be disturbed. Once repented of, later sins, like surgically removed tumors, are no longer a part of you. They are a dead issue, a non-event, consigned to the same fate as pre-conversion sins; wiped from heaven’s data banks. (As you keep following the main link at the bottom of each page you will discover entire webpages devoted to reassuring you about sins committed after conversion.)   Maintaining the breakthrough   God has promised you everything mentioned in this webpage, but he never promised you would  feel  it. Father God expects his children to place their confidence not in their fickle feelings, but in the integrity of the one who rises the sun each morning. The Christian religion is rightly called the Christian  Faith . Faith is paramount.   When Jesus successfully resisted every temptation hurled at him in the wilderness, Scripture says Satan left him, not for forever, but for a while  ( Luke 4:13 ). Through Jesus, we too, can have spectacular victories over Satan and he will withdraw,  for a while . He’ll skulk into his hole to lick his wounds, but he’ll be back. That’s not because of any inadequacy in you. He did the same with Jesus. When the battle returns, you’ll need to rush to these webpages to once again take your fill of Scripture’s liberating truths with which to resist the awful, deceptive feelings and accusations he’ll try to land on you. Below are more webpages on the same theme. You might not need them now, but print them off in readiness for when the battle returns.   I also suggest you pamper yourself by regularly reading the following Scripture:   Romans 6:3-12  Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin –because anyone who has died has been freed from sin. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires.   Our self-image is of extreme importance because it has serious spiritual implications. For example, an entire generation of Israelites missed out on the promised land and ended up dying in the wilderness because they saw themselves as “grasshoppers” rather than as people who are empowered by Almighty God.   Numbers 13:33   . . . We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.   They based their self-image not on what God said about them but on their past (slaves in Egypt) and their guess as to how others saw them. Actually, despite their seeming logical guess that others viewed them as insignificant, even that was mistaken. (Joshua 2:9-11 For more on this amazing story, see  The Power of Self Esteem: Bible Proof .)   The way we think of ourselves has become a deeply entrenched habit. Any habit is difficult to break, let alone one that has hardened by very many years of constant repetition.   How to Change our Self-Imag e   Earlier I called the way many of us were brought up a form of brainwashing. It literally changes the structure of one’s brain, creating strong neural pathways so that one no longer thinks as other people do. Picture a little child’s brain as a virgin jungle of thorny bushes. When the child has a thought, it is like bashing his way through new territory, leaving behind a few footprints and a few broken twigs. As he slowly matures, every time he takes the same path, that faint path becomes a little more pronounced and easier to take, until it becomes a well-worn track, and eventually a road, and finally a super-highway, along which thoughts effortlessly zoom. For his thoughts to go in another direction, however, is like having to bash his way through virgin jungle again. And if the new thought is not regularly repeated, the faint track is quickly overgrown again, so that he is likely to get lost, even if he makes the huge effort to try to force his thought in that direction. This is a crude analogy of what modern research has discovered actually happens to the structure of one’s brain.   The great tragedy, however, is that most of us who have suffered unhealthy childhood brainwashing end up perpetuating the process by repeating to ourselves over and over the very putdowns that others have told us, even long after these people with flapping gums and shriveled hearts are out of our lives.   Once started, beating oneself up becomes as easy as sliding down a huge Sahara sandhill. It is climbing back up again that is such a hard slog.   It becomes an automatic, almost uncontrollable, response to normal slips to berate oneself with such putdowns as “I’m an idiot!” “I’m a useless waste of space!” “I can never do anything right!” “Everyone hates me!” or whatever becomes one’s favorite way of tearing strips off oneself. This degenerates into a deeply engrained habit, as strong and cruel as heroin addiction and as difficult to break.   There is often a huge difference between what is sometimes called head knowledge and heart knowledge. Put another way: what we intellectually know must be true can be very different to what  feels  true. Usually the only way to move from head knowledge to heart knowledge is by desperately clinging in faith to what we know to be true, and doing all we can to keep on living it and affirming it to ourselves, despite the immense pressure to give up.   What feels true to us largely depends on what we have told ourselves over and over. If we have spent years programing our minds to accept something as truth, reaching the point where the exact opposite  feels  true will be enormously difficult. Each time we tell ourselves something, or accept as truth something someone else says about us, is like putting a weight on one side of a balance. Every time we tell ourselves the opposite is like putting the same size weight on the other side of the balance. If for years we have told ourselves  tens of thousands of times  that we are useless, do you really think the effect on our feelings will be outweighed by affirming to ourselves with conviction a mere  fifty times , “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me”?   This does not in any way mean we are doomed to keep believing devastating lies about ourselves, but for a long while we will have to keep clinging to what God declares to be true even though everything within us screams that it does not  feel  true or  seem  true. And it means that we must keep fighting our addiction to repeating lies to ourselves and instead keep repeating to ourselves the truth, as God declares it, over and over until we have done so with conviction enough hundreds of times that it slowly begins to counter the incalculable thousands of times we have repeated lies to ourselves.   But is this Scriptural?   This laborious process is in line with such Scriptures as:   Deuteronomy 6:6-9  These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.   Joshua 1:8   Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night , so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.   Psalms 119:11  I have  hidden your word in my heart  that I might not sin against you.   Proverbs 2:1   . . .  store up my commands within you  . . . (Emphasis mine.) It also gels with such Scriptures as:   Luke 10:27   . . . ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and  with all your mind ’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’   Romans 8:5   . . . those who live in accordance with the Spirit  have their minds set  on what the Spirit desires.   Romans 12:2  Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by  the renewing of your mind . . . .   Ephesians 4:22-23  You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be  made new in the attitude of your minds.   Philippians 4:8  Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable – if anything is excellent or praiseworthy –  think about such things .   Colossians 3:1-2  Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.  Set your minds on things above , not on earthly things.  (Emphasis mine.) Making the effort to reprogram one’s thought life is even consistent with Scriptures like these:   Proverbs 18:21  The tongue has the power of life and death . . .   Proverbs 18:7  A fool’s mouth is his undoing, and his lips are a snare to his soul.   Matthew 12:36  But I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken.   Ephesians 4:29  Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.   James 3:6,9-10  The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire . . . With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in God’s likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers, this should not be.   If, as the last Scripture insists, it is wrong to curse anyone made in God’s likeness, it must be equally as wrong to say bad things about yourself because you, too, are in God’s image. And thoughts must be as deadly to us as words, since both we and God hear our thoughts as strongly as if they were screamed at us.   If you beat up a child, loving parents will be upset, no matter which of their children you attack. Regardless of whether it is ourselves or someone else that we despise or hurl insults at, humanity's Maker and Savior takes it personally.   With a little thought, you will see how each of these diverse Scriptures is relevant:   1 John 5:1   . . . everyone who loves the father loves his child as well.   1 John 4:20  If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.   Matthew 5:22  But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. . . . anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.   1 Corinthians 6:19-20   . . . You are not your own; you were bought at a price.  . . .   Romans 14:4  Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To his own master he stands or falls. And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand.   A powerful demonstration of how important God deems self-image is seen in the name changes he initiated, such as Abram – meaning exalted father – being renamed Abraham – exalted father of a multitude (Genesis 17:5), his wife Sarai, becoming Sarah – mother of nations (Genesis 17:5) and Jacob – supplanter – renamed Israel – contender with God (Genesis 32:28). This was not just an Old Testament phenomenon. Jesus gave people new names: Simon, he renamed Peter (John 1:42) and the sons of Zebedee he named the sons of thunder (Mark 3:17). This is also somewhat similar:   John 15:15  I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.   Note also the term “Christian name,” which originally referred literally to the name a person receives when baptized.   You might find it helpful to do something similar. If, for example, you use an alias or nickname in emails, you might change it to something that builds your self-esteem. If you use nicknames or pet names with some of your friends, you might also seek a name that uplifts you.   For insight into another biblical example of God seeking to change people’ s self-image, let me again quote myself:   A woman was praying for the home-fellowship I attend when she saw “mighty man of valor” written above me. I don’t care whether you think that was of God; when she shared her experience with me it put steel in my wishbone. That boost has given me an inkling of why God speared those very words into Gideon’s head (Judges 6:12).   I’d have worried about Gideon staggering around with a size 20 head. A healthy self-image must be more important to God than I had thought. Those ego-inflating words coincided with Gideon’s divine call. Faith in those words apparently played a critical role in his future ministry.   Gideon had seen himself as inferior:   Judges 6:15  “But Lord,” Gideon asked, “how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family.”   God could not use Gideon until he changed his view of himself.   In fact, most divine encounters recorded in Holy Writ had the effect of highlighting deficiencies in self-image and then correcting the way they saw themselves so as to empower them for ministry. Even though the encounters were supernatural this change of self-image still took effort on their part. The Lord emphasized how he saw them and who they were because of him but they still had to believe it.   Let’s glimpse some examples.   When Moses was called to lead God’s people out of bondage he saw himself as a stuttering no-hoper who lacked what it took to fill this role. The Lord patiently gave him signs – a staff turning into a snake and back again, a hand turning leprous and back again – that the Almighty was with him and that others would accept his authority. Despite these miracles plus the burning bush, Moses still saw himself as incapable until God’s anger was ignited and Moses finally saw this self-image as unacceptable to God (Exodus 3:10-4:14).   Isaiah saw himself as “a man of unclean lips.” Then a seraph touched Isaiah’s mouth with a sacred coal. Thereafter he started seeing himself as having been divinely purified and no longer disqualified from holy service (Isaiah 6:5-8).   Jeremiah saw himself as too young and weak for the task God had assigned him but the Lord told him to change his self-image:   Jeremiah 1:6-9  “Ah, Sovereign LORD,” I said, “I do not know how to speak; I am only a child.”      But the LORD said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am only a child.’  . . . Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and will rescue you,” declares the LORD. Then the LORD reached out his hand and touched my mouth and said to me, “Now, I have put my words in your mouth. . . .” “Get yourself ready! Stand up and say to them whatever I command you. Do not be terrified by them, or I will terrify you before them. Today I have made you a fortified city, an iron pillar and a bronze wall to stand against the whole land— against the kings of Judah, its officials, its priests and the people of the land. They will fight against you but will not overcome you, for I am with you and will rescue you,” declares the LORD.   Solomon, too, saw himself as too young and stupid to fulfill his calling, so God had to promise him great wisdom (1 Kings 3:7-12). Receiving wisdom was not enough, however. Solomon had to believe he now had the required wisdom or he would never dare use it. There are many highly capable, intelligent people who remain non-achievers because they doubt their God-given abilities. Remember how James says if we lack wisdom, we simply have to ask God for it, but he immediately added that faith is critical (James 1:5-6).   Peter saw himself as an uncouth fisherman so defiled that he should be avoided like a skunk. To Jesus, however, he was someone of immense value to God and to humanity; someone he longed for as a close friend and protégé.   Luke 5:8,9  When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus’ knees and said, “Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!” . . . Then Jesus said to Simon, “Don’t be afraid; from now on you will catch men.”   Later, after humiliating himself in a cowardly display of disloyalty, Peter slumped to seeing himself as confirmed lowlife with the backbone of a sea slug. Nevertheless, Jesus labored three times to lift Peter’s eyes to see himself as someone who still loved his Lord and as God’s chosen leader of the early church.   John 21:17  The third time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me? . . . Feed my sheep.”   Paul saw himself as a persecutor of heretics. First, he had to reverse this to seeing himself as a persecutor of the risen Lord and then change his self-image to someone who is on Jesus’ side with the strength to endure great persecution (Acts 9:4-5,16).   The Challenge   Maintaining a revamped self-image is exceedingly hard. Here’s what I wrote near the end of my favorite web book:   Despite my relentless longing to share these truths, it hurts to let this book be published. The more I work on the book, the more immersed in its truths I become. It’s continually washing away layer after grimy layer of negativity and buoying me ever higher. I hate the thought of this process ever ending, but dour experience affirms that it will – soon after I put the book down. I have had to reread it scores of times to halt my slide back into the bog. And still I need it.   Though my need is chronic, I doubt if the mildest affliction could be relieved forever through a single reading of this book. I expect you to feel better after a single dose but regular doses are essential for a permanent cure. So I urge you to keep this book handy, even after completing it. Long-term problems need long-term solutions. I covet a new life for you, not just a momentary easing of the pain. Experience suggests you will need this book year after year. We never reach the point where temptation leaves us forever.   Negative thoughts have been roosting in our heads, pecking away at the fruit beginning to form in our lives. We’ve shooed these pests away, but they will stealthily return. That’s our cue to skim through the book again. Highlight the parts that especially speak to you or uplift you. Personalize them. Write them out. Display them. Memorize them. Add to them. Share them. Live them. They will keep the vermin away and bring you to new levels of fruitfulness.   Find ingenious ways to keep in your consciousness truths you particularly need. At work I must set and use several computer passwords. I might say to myself  I can do all things through Christ , while typing the first letter of each word. ICDATTC then becomes my new password. No one could guess such an apparently random string of letters and I can remember it only by rehearsing in my mind that positive declaration every time I must use it. Perhaps you could put a little heart somewhere to remind you how much you are loved by God. There are thousands of possibilities. Finding some that work for you will be well worth the effort.   I’d be thrilled if my expressions sometimes help. I have tried to shape them to stick in slippery memories. But don’t be chained to my words. Using your words will help the truths become yours. And don’t be confined to the paltriness of my insight. Hound God with the passion and confidence of a cherished lover until you receive your own Bible-based, Christ-centered revelations.   No matter how hot it’s served or how much it’s sweetened, second-hand revelation is as insipid as second-hand tea leaves unless the Holy Spirit comes upon you, exploding those words within you with such power that it becomes your own divine encounter. A hand-me-down word from God might bring a little refreshment, but a truth super-charged by the Spirit of God percolating through one’s life is so superior that no cost is too high a price to pay for it. Fervent prayer and Bible meditation is the usual price.   Though I have prayed incessantly that this book bless you as much as it has me, I fear I’m asking God to break one of his principles. Why should he command us to seek and to ask and devote our lives to poring over Scripture unless that’s the way he prefers to reveal his truth? It is truths in the heart, not words in a book, that set us free. And lodging them there takes spiritual and mental effort. I crave the joy of serving you by doing all the prayer and study, but that’s like trying to play tennis for you – I get the healthy exercise and you miss all the fun.   I admit it: repeating positive truths to ourselves seems like eating chalk much of the time, but it is not something we can afford to be lazy about. Like clawing our way out of a deep hole, causing our self-image – the way we habitually think of ourselves – to align with spiritual reality is hard work, but very much needed.   This is All Wrong   Discerning Christians will realize that this whole webpage is twisted. Only now, however, are some of us ready to face the reality that if our self-image is our North Star, it shouldn’t be.   Instead of focusing on ourselves and our inadequacies, we should be continually reminding ourselves of, and delighting in, our God and his perfection. This is why the Bible is filled with such declarations as:   Psalms 34:1   . . . his praise will always be on my lips.   Psalms 35:28  My tongue will speak of your righteousness and of your praises all day long.   Psalms 63:6  On my bed I remember you; I think of you through the watches of the night.   Psalms 145:2  Every day I will praise you and extol your name for ever and ever.   Philippians 4:4  Rejoice  in the Lord  always.  I will say it again: Rejoice! (Emphasis mine.)   Our entire lives fall into a heap when we exalt ourselves or other people as our Judge. That position belongs to God alone.   We often recoil from seeing ourselves through God’s eyes because we have supposed that if even we or other people look down on us, the Almighty must be infinitely more critical.   It is undeniable that the Holy Lord’s standards are terrifyingly more exacting than our own, but we have grossly underestimated the infinity of his love that yearns to forgive and to pronounce us perfect. Moreover, we have failed to grasp how our Judge, at the incredible cost of the perfect Son of God swapping places with us on the cross, has made it possible to pronounce us perfect, despite the appalling magnitude of our sin.   Extolling the Almighty’s greatness over and over and over will accomplish little if we regard God as a remote being. For continually praising God to achieve what he wants, it must be combined with an awareness that not even the deepest imaginable marital union matches the wonder of our union with God through Christ.   1 Corinthians 6:16-17   . . . For it is said, “The two will become one flesh.” But he who unites himself with the Lord is one with him in spirit.   To be one flesh is superficial, relative to being one spirit. We are in Christ (1 Corinthians 1:30; 2 Corinthians 5:17) and he is in us (Ephesians 3:17; Colossians 1:27). We have merged with God on such a profound and intimate level that it surpasses what is humanly possible. We have explored the implications of a street kid entering into a perfect marriage with a millionaire, but this level of oneness is totally eclipsed by our union with God. Unlike human marriage, we do not part, spending much of our lives separate as we go about our own business during most days and sometimes spend little more than evenings and weekends together. Neither do we have a “till death do us part” relationship with God. Indeed, to die is to be “at home with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8).   Like trying to describe the Trinity, our intimacy and extent of our union with God defies analogy. Here are some biblical efforts to describe the indescribable:   God is your shield, behind which you are safe   Psalms 3:3   . . . you are a shield around me, O LORD . . .   Psalms 18:30   . . . He is a shield for all who take refuge in him.   Being continually cradled in God’s arms   Deuteronomy 1:31   . . . the LORD your God carried you, as a father carries his son . . .   Deuteronomy 33:27  The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms. . . .   Psalms 73:23  Yet I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand.   Isaiah 40:11  He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart . . .   Isaiah 46:3-4   . . . you whom I have upheld since you were conceived, and have carried since your birth. Even to your old age and gray hairs . . . I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.   Isaiah 63:9  In all their distress he too was distressed . . . In his love and mercy he redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them . . .   God clothing himself with you   Judges 6:34   . . . the Spirit of the Lord clothed Gideon with Himself . . . (Amplified Bible)   You clothing yourself with Christ   Galatians 3:27  for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.   Romans 13:14  Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ . . .   Christ being formed within you   Galatians 4:19  My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you.   Here is a Scripture about the role of the Holy Spirit that used to puzzle me:   John 16:14-15  He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you. All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will take from what is mine and make it known to you.   Why is it so vital that the Spirit  make known  the spiritual riches that belong to the risen Lord, rather than simply make those riches available to us? For us, becoming spiritually one with Christ and thus gaining all that is his, is a breeze. Our Lord is so eager for this that he instantly does it the moment we are born anew. Our difficulty lies not in entering the union but in grasping the mind-boggling implications of that union. It is in this area that we need what I earlier called divine psychiatric help.   You are joined to the divine King of kings; a living part of him, as a branch is a part of a vine, with his very life flowing through you, bringing growth and fruit. The God of perfection lives in you, and you in him. The Almighty is your strength, your joy, your love, your life, your hope, your glory. His honor, his victories, his power, his perfection – all that he is – is yours.   To be born of God means you have, as it were, his very genes. And are not just his child – as astonishing as that is – you are a part of the Eternal Son’s very body (1 Corinthians 12:27). Marvel at the implications: it means that he feels everything that happens to you and it affects him profoundly. (Consider, for example, how the head – the brain – is acutely aware even of an itchy back, a speck in the eye, a runny nose, a stubbed toe, an insect in the ear or a burnt finger.) Being part of his body means that where he goes, you go; what he achieves, you achieve. And, as a nose is part of a person’s beauty, you are a part of his beauty.   Serious Blockages to Changing our Self-Image   Blockage 1: Having a Low Opinion of God   Since we are naturally driven to continue accepting as reality the view of ourselves that we have long held, we can even find ourselves despising God’s opinion rather than having our perception of reality shattered. Even if we accept that God sees us in a better light than other people do, we can tell ourselves such things as: “Oh, he’s just God. He  has  to love everyone. I’m not in heaven; I have to live on earth. God’s opinion doesn’t matter much down here.”   Whenever we idolize other people’s opinion, we dethrone God in our lives and worship creatures rather than the Creator.   Ponder the thrilling implications of these Scriptures:   Exodus 23:22  If you . . . do all that I say, I will be an enemy to your enemies and will oppose those who oppose you.   Isaiah 40:17  Before him all the nations are as nothing; they are regarded by him as worthless and less than nothing.   Isaiah 54:17  no weapon forged against you will prevail, and you will refute every tongue that accuses you. This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD, and this is their vindication from me . . .   Isaiah 45:24  They will say of me, “In the LORD alone are righteousness and strength.” All who have raged against him will come to him and be put to shame.   And consider these hints at how significant God’s view of us is:   Luke 6:26  Woe to you when all men speak well of you . . .   Luke 12:4-5  I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no more. But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after the killing of the body, has power to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him.   Luke 16:15   . . . What is highly valued among men is detestable in God’s sight.   John 12: 41-44  I do not accept praise from men, but I know you. I know that you do not have the love of God in your hearts. . . . How can you believe if you accept praise from one another, yet make no effort to obtain the praise that comes from the only God?   Romans 14:4  Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To his own master he stands or falls. And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand.   1 Corinthians 4:3-5  I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself. My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me. Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait till the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of men’s hearts. At that time each will receive his praise from God.   1 Thessalonians 2:6  We were not looking for praise from men, not from you or anyone else.   We should keep moving towards the point where no one’s opinion matters to us except God’s alone. He alone is Truth.   Blockage 2: Fear of Pride   Sincere Christians can mistakenly think they are avoiding pride (and hence pleasing God) by putting themselves down.   I passionately believe in humility and dying to self but both of these include dying to our own self-image – our perception of truth and how we think others see us – and accepting God’s view of ourselves as the only valid one.   It is not humility, but the height of arrogance to treat our own view of ourselves as more accurate than God’s.   It is vital that we understand the nature of true humility and rid ourselves of all false conceptions. Permit me to adapt what I have written elsewhere:   The issue of pride and humility is a deathtrap strewn with confusion and false concepts. Let’s clear this minefield before anyone else is hurt. We’ll begin with the analogy of a lamb in Bible times.   Pride says, “I can find better pasture than the Shepherd. I’ll always find water. I can handle bears, and lions are probably a myth invented by the Shepherd so he can dominate me.” That’s dangerous.   Godly humility rejoices in the certainty that the Shepherd knows best. Having abandoned faith in itself or in luck, it puts all its hope in the Shepherd, believing that to leave him out of sight for a second is to flirt with disaster. This virtue hugs the Shepherd, delighting in his every whisper, feasting on his goodness. Sometimes humility is led over rocky terrain but ultimately it enjoys the best pasture and the highest security. Not only is it not mauled by predators, it produces the best wool and the best offspring. It sometimes staggers up hills to stay with its Shepherd but it frolics in the warmth of the Shepherd’s love.   There’s an attitude masquerading as humility, however, that beats itself miserable. “I’m dumb. I’m ugly. I’m hopeless.” Give no room to this imposter.   Just to be sure you have grasped the difference between this beautiful quality and the ugly imposter that beats oneself up, let me quote from something else I’ve written:   James 4:6   . . . God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.   For most of my life, scriptures like this have filled me with such dread of the dangerous trap of pride that I felt driven to avoid it at all costs. Tragically, this commendable attitude got me nowhere. My godly intentions were sabotaged by such a mistaken understanding of pride that all I managed was to fall into false humility. I wrongly thought I could foster humility by thinking negatively about myself. To my horror, I eventually discovered that false humility is itself a form of pride.   I correctly understood that if I thought I could achieve anything of lasting value without God’s help, or if I thought I were moral enough to gain God’s approval outside of Christ’s forgiveness, then humbling myself involved lowering my opinion of myself. My mistake was in wrongly concluding from this truth that the basic ingredient of humility is having a low opinion of oneself.   Godly humility flows not from thinking lowly of oneself but from seeing things through God’s eyes. Pride is having the audacity to disagree with God. It is saying I know more than the God of the universe; my puny intellect knows better than the Almighty; the God of truth is wrong and I am right.   Since the God of love sees you as lovable, and true humility involves taking God’s assessment of everything as gospel, humility requires you to see yourself as lovable. If God sees you through eyes of love, how dare you see yourself in a different light, as if your perspective is right and your Creator and Savior is wrong? If God forgives you, to refuse to forgive yourself is to have the audacity to imply that you have higher moral standards than the Judge of all the earth; that you are holier than the Holy Lord. Isn’t that the very pinnacle of pride? Please avoid this deadly trap.   Make God your God by agreeing with him. He says you are the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21). Dare you exalt yourself above God by disagreeing with him? Stop wounding yourself by squandering your faith on a lie, thus robbing God of faith that should be invested in him. Refuse the sinful, pride-filled path that deceptively seems humble but is actually implying that you know better than the Almighty. Set yourself free. Embrace God’s truth.   Our goal – and God’s goal – is for us to become increasingly Christlike. But what was Christ like? Jesus’ own behavior confirms that a good self-image is compatible with humility. He maintained a healthy self-image even when telling everyone how humble he is:   Matthew 11:29  Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.   “He was only telling the truth,” you protest.   Yes, Jesus is the Truth – he said so himself – but when you put yourself down, you are not declaring God’s truth. Instead, you are copying the devil who is “the accuser of our brothers,” (Revelation 12:10) – and you, too, are among the brethren he would love to accuse – and this accuser is a compulsive liar (the “father of lies” – John 8:44).   We are tempted to disqualify Jesus as a role model because he was divine. The apostle Paul, however, was certainly not divine but under divine inspiration he wrote:   1 Corinthians 4:16   . . . I urge you to imitate me.   1 Corinthians 11:1  Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.   That itself sounds far from putting himself down, but if the Word of God tells us to imitate Paul, let’s examine how he saw himself. Even though he called himself the least of the apostles (1 Corinthians 15:9) and “less than the least of all God’s people,” (Ephesians 3:8) and so on, the apostle had a robust self-image. For more details, see  Jesus’ Self-Image & Paul’s .   Blockage 3: Thinking God Should Change our Self-Image   A dangerous mistake is to presume that God should do for us things he expects us to do. To suppose God should change our self-image or boost our self-esteem is like thinking God should read the Bible for us or give up smoking for us or provide us with an income while we waste our lives away watching daytime television.   Someone has said that God is the world’s fastest chess player – it’s always our move. It is disturbingly easy to squander valuable years waiting for God to move when he is waiting for us to move.   God has already done his part. He loves you. He made you in his image, and despite sin marring the perfection he created, he is using everything that touches you to transform you into the very image of Christ, and he already sees in you the beauty and glory that will one day be visible to the entire universe.   Romans 8:28-29  And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son . . .   2 Corinthians 3:16,18  But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. . . . And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.   2 Corinthians 5:17,19,21  Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! . . . God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them.  . . . God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.   Yes, God has already done his part: your part is to believe it. Over and over, Jesus commended or chided people according to how much faith they exercised (see  Faith is Our Responsibility ). God holds us accountable for how much we believe. Our Lord is way too intelligent and righteous to praise or rebuke people for something that is entirely God’s doing. As in the parable of the talents, God gives but then it is up to us to use and develop it.   Our Lord does not condone laziness. The same God who made our bodies made our spirits. Just as “no pain, no gain” is an unchangeable truth in the physical realm, so it is in the spiritual.   Our goal should be to consistently see ourselves in a way that truly honors the God who loves us and has re-made us. If, however, it takes enormous amounts of practice – irksome repetition – to become a concert pianist, a tennis star, a sniper, or whatever, we cannot expect perfecting our self-image to come easily. Any want-to-be champions who consider countless hours of repetition to be beneath them will languish in mediocrity. No matter how naturally gifted they are, they will be left behind by those willing to put in the effort.   Regardless of how bitterly we complain about sowing being boring and repetitive, and no matter how long it takes before we see the benefits, the fact remains: those who sow little, reap little (2 Corinthians 9:6; Ecclesiastes 11:6; Proverbs 6:10-11). And this truth is preserved in the most spiritual of all books: the Bible.   Although the Almighty occasionally does things for us that take no effort on our behalf, he is too loving and wise to regularly do this for us. This is because, despite what we might think, it turns out not to be in our own best interest. I explain why this is so in a link at the end of this webpage ( Life’s Mysteries Explained ).   Blockage 4: Leaving it to Other People to Determine our Self-Image   Thinking it is the role of others, not us, to boost our self-esteem and encourage us is as foolhardy as letting every decision in our lives be determined by the flip of a coin. Letting other people’s opinion – or whether they ever get around to expressing any good opinion they have of you – determine your self-esteem or your emotional well-being or your motivation, is on par with relinquishing control over your own life and destiny and signing it over to other people.   Final Thoughts   We have seen that it is in our selfish interest to make God our North Star but what a pathetic reason for doing it! In the way we view everything, we should exalt God as our Judge because it is the right thing to do and because only his judgments will stand for all eternity. He truly is Judge and pretending otherwise is burying our head in the sand.   One final, critical point:   Don’t expect to be granted the gift of seeing yourself through God’s eyes if you are unwilling to see everyone else – including those you despise – through God’s loving eyes. Over and over God emphasizes in his Word the necessity of being as nonjudgmental and forgiving of others as we want God to be of us. As we give to others, so it will be given to us.   Let’s stop usurping God. Let’s dare seek his heart until we view ourselves and everything else from God’s perspective – the only perspective that is true. And then the truth shall set us free.   If you are serious about seeing yourself as God does, bookmark this webpage, or record the web address, so that you can read each of the links below and keep returning here for more links.

Willie Burton, pioneer missionary to the Congo, prayed for Chief Lubinda’s withered arm. As he prayed the arm healed. Astounded at this proof of divine omnipotence, the chief pleaded with Burton to bring the gospel to his people. One problem. God’s miracle worker was too sick to go.   If you think that’s bizarre, read on.   In 1950 Siamese twins were born. Separation was impossible. They shared the one bladder, lower intestine and reproductive system. Of their three legs, two were functional. Masha controlled one. Dasha controlled the other. Yet though they shared organs and the same disease-carrying blood, they contracted illnesses separately. When one was stricken with measles, for instance, the other was perfectly well.   Sickness and disability touch so many of us that we cannot avoid the issue, though unravelling the easy cases would take a spiritual Sherlock Holmes. Desiring to simplify the complexities of life, we tend to ram the many reasons for illness into just one or two categories and then wonder why our answer doesn’t work with everyone. Let’s prod the writhing mass of possibilities.   You will recall, at his royal command performance, Moses’ rendition of  If I had a stammer . That song and dance didn’t go down too well. Mrs Scudder was denied mission board support because her ailing body could not withstand the harsh conditions in India. She went despite their protests and remained for sixty-three years. Clearly, some disabilities are toothless tigers. Like Moses, we could cower before our limitations, unaware that we are being terrorised by a set of gums!   I have researched the lives of hundreds of people and of all the things that moved me, I was perhaps most powerfully struck by those who faced crippling health problems and won. I refer to people who won, not in the sense of quickly regaining health, but by achieving amazing things in the face of infirmities that would have rendered other people helpless. Earth owes much to tough people in weak bodies; people like Livingstone, Brainerd, Hudson Taylor, ‘Praying’ Hyde, ‘Granny’ Brand, Catherine Booth and a multitude more. A strong spirit brings more glory than a strong body.   SICKNESS, A FRIEND So some afflictions are oppressive or deceptive obstacles that must be blasted by the explosive power of faith and persistence. But some are God’s ministry launching pad, firing us into wondrous service. The disciples probed the Son of God with one of the most perplexing questions ever contemplated. ‘Why was this man born blind?’ ‘That the works of God might be manifested,’ came the reply. (John 9:1-3) Then Jesus healed him. From that moment, a flood of witnessing opportunities engulfed the beggar. It seemed everyone wanted to hear his story. Healing is a striking testimony to the power of God, (Matthew 11:21-24; Mark 16:20; John 5:36; 10:25,38; 11:4; 14:11; 15:24; Acts 4:14; 14:3; 15:10-12; Hebrews 2:4) but ill health can launch us into service without such fireworks. ‘You have heard of the endurance of Job,’ wrote James as he sought to spark his readers. (James 5.11) From a ministry perspective, the most productive part of Job’s long life was the time of his illness. Even today Job lifts us. We know he understands. Some people suffer so greatly that all they need do is remain remotely Christ-like to achieve more for God than a thousand sermons. You’ll find that unbelievable until touched by someone whose flickering love for God continues despite intense suffering. Leslie Lemke personifies another route to ministry. Blind and spastic, with severe mental retardation, Leslie has inspired thousands. Appalling handicaps have empowered his ministry by focusing the world’s attention on the musical gift God has given him. Finally, there’s the pruning principle. It is said George Matheson’s blindness sharpened his spiritual perception. Pious nonsense? Fanny Crosby wouldn’t think so. She claimed that if offered the chance to regain her sight she would refuse. Fanny believed she would not have been such a prolific hymnwriter if forced to cope with the distractions presented to seeing eyes. Call me a sceptic, but Fanny was blinded soon after birth. How accurately could she guess the ‘disadvantages’ of sight? Was she over-zealous in wanting to see blessing in tragedy? Surprising confirmation of her view flows from a secular source. British medical professor, Sir George Pickering, explored the lives of five famous people whose work, he believes, benefited from psychosomatic illnesses. Pickering also noted that one of his students was unexceptional until tuberculosis confined him to a sanatorium for a year. He read and thought and emerged a changed person who extended the boundaries of human knowledge. The professor tells of another colleague whose great intellect apparently benefited from the ‘enforced solitude’ of illness. For similar reasons, when Pickering was cured of a painful arthritic condition, he admits his relief was mingled with sadness.   New Zealand artist, Rei Hamon, discovered his unique ability when as an injured logger he began filling the empty hours by making little dots on paper. Similarly, for Geoff Goodfellow, back pain boarded up previous openings and turned a poetry-hater into one of Australia’s most popular poets.   People are amazed at what physicist Stephen Hawking has accomplished  despite  his chronic limitations. Yet the world-famous scientist achieved little before contracting motor neuron disease. There were too many other things to do, and no apparent urgency. Hawking, like so many people before him, seems to have excelled  because  of his handicap.   So there are at least four ways in which the wall of affliction can become a door to service.   * Your ailment could be used to display the healing power of the risen Lord, blazing new avenues for witness.   * It could highlight your godliness, inspiring others and demonstrating the reality of God, even if, like Job, you lack special talent.   * Or, like black velvet behind a diamond, it could draw the world’s attention to your talent, as it has done for Leslie Lemke, quadriplegic Joni Eareckson Tada and many others.   * Lastly, it could seal off distractions, funnelling your efforts into those skills the Lord wants you to excel in. THERE ARE STILL OTHER POSSIBILITIES * Poor health could be a leash used by God as the only way of restraining us from a foolish move. * It could be the product of an ungodly lifestyle. I’m sure you could denounce drunkenness, drugs, smokes and promiscuity as eloquently as me. Most of us are also alert to the health-destroying sins of anger, envy and bitterness. But I draw attention to lack of faith, manifesting itself in worry, frantic activity and a refusal to delegate. More subtle still is the pressure to be over-zealous, slaving dangerously long hours ‘for the Lord’. * As already suggested, frail health could be a Satanic onslaught against which we should call down fire from heaven. * On the other extreme, Scripture is emphatic that illness could be divine punishment. (Eg, Numbers 12:8-10; 2 Samuel 12:13-14; 24:10-15; 2 Kings 15:5; 2 Chronicles 21: 14-15; 26:18-20; John 5:14; Acts 13:10-11; 1 Corinthians 11:29-30; Revelation 16:2) We need go no further than Job’s counsellors, however, to see how this truth can be horribly abused. * Arthritis might be a cross to bear - if it resulted from languishing in a damp cell while awaiting trial for one’s faith. As Jesus used the term, a ‘cross’ is suffering  voluntarily  embraced in order to follow Christ. Paul’s wounds and Epaphroditus’ illness fit this narrow slot. (Philippians 2:27, 30) When looking down on earth from heaven, things are seen upside down: Paul’s marks of shame become medals of honour; causes of pain become reasons for joy. MIND GAMES Irrespective of whether it is hepatitis or a broken leg, chicken pox or cancer, sickness is sometimes the physical manifestation of a mental problem. If, for instance, we fear God’s call, sickness can be an agonising but effective way of avoiding it, without the need to consciously rebel. Be it social or family or work pressures, competitive sport, exams or whatever, if an individual finds something sufficiently traumatic and yet feels obliged to do it, medical illness is an escape hatch the unconscious mind is likely to seize.   Or illness could be our psyche’s attempt to entice the attention or sympathy of someone, perhaps even of God.   Another possibility is that we are unconvinced of our right to vibrant health. Again, this may be conscious or unconscious, spiritual (eg guilt), or non-spiritual (eg parental messages received as a child). Whatever the cause, a weakened will to resist illness can make us vulnerable to almost any illness. As we saw from twins Masha and Dasha, there is more to illness than the chance exposure to disease.   It may be liberating to prayerfully and gently let God examine our hidden motives, but in the lives of other people, we should play psychologist no more than we would play back-yard surgeon. Consider Amy Carmichael, who spent twenty highly productive years in India with seldom a pain-free moment and practically never venturing out of her room. I dare not touch even her memory by wondering whether Amy sought healing with sufficient intensity; whether, for instance, her subconscious found sickness a way, albeit a tortuous one, of avoiding distraction, thus empowering her to focus on more critical work. Since God has vowed to mould all things for good in the lives of His darlings, it is hardly surprising if we could see certain advantages in Amy’s tragedy. So rather than flirt with the devil, who delights in turning the screws on suffering Christians, I exalt Amy as an inspiration to all who are afflicted by limitations that will not budge. As distressing as infirmity is, we should follow her lead of refusing to use painful limitations as an excuse for opting out of divine obligations. MYSTERY   Could a heavenly experience make you ill? It happened in the Bible and my refusal to lower Scripture from the rank of God’s Word For Today to spiritual ancient history book compels me to conclude that it could happen to you and me. Paul’s encounter with the risen Lord damaged his eyes. (Acts 9:3-18) On Patmos John fell down as if dead. (Revelation 1:17) ‘No-one can see my face and live,’ the Lord warned Moses who had to settle for a lesser revelation. (Exodus 33:20-23) After a vision ‘Daniel fainted and was sick’ for days. Another vision physically overwhelmed him and temporarily left him dumb. (Daniel 8:27; 10:8-17) For Ezekiel and John the Baptist’s father, their loss of speech lasted much longer. (Ezekiel 3:23-27; 24:27; 33:22; Luke 1:19-22) It is difficult to gauge how serious such afflictions would have been had the Lord not intervened with healing. I would like to argue that in such circumstances God would always heal. However, many scholars believe that Jacob’s heavenly wrestler left both Jacob and my argument permanently lame. (Genesis 32:24-32) Such mysteries highlight my ignorance, bolstering my suspicion that there are causes of sickness I have not even identified. Certainly in the realm of rare events one might find almost anything. For Bruce Olson, lone missionary in the jungles of South America, life-threatening illness was the only thing keeping him alive. The savage he loved wanted to kill him but superstition forbade the murder of anyone critically ill. Chronic hepatitis not only saved Bruce’s life, it played a key role in winning over an enemy and proved a significant factor in Bruce’s eventual success.   TOWARD HEALING   God’s leash, Satan’s hammer, rod of correction, (Eg, Psalm 119:67,71) black velvet, red herring, pruning hook, badge of honour, springboard to service, glory aftermath, sealed mystery - who knows the true character of your disability? God. And with those who press Him, He shares His secrets - on a need-to-know basis. (Sorry about that last phrase, yet even that is comforting. Seek, however. Your need to know may be greater than you think.)   Before abandoning you with this seething brew of possibilities, I offer a suggested vantage-point from which to view the cauldron.   We should not exult infirmity, nor bow to it. Even if through divine genius sickness often ends up more of a surge than a scourge, all affliction - like death - can be tracked back to Adam’s sin. (Romans 5:12; 8:18-23) If God ever uses sickness, it is a demonstration of His terrifying power. He can even compel evil to perfect His holy purposes.   Irrespective of whether Paul’s ‘thorn’ was physical sickness, it has much to teach us. Christ deflected the Devil’s dart with such precision that it punctured only that part of Paul that was in danger of bloating with pride. Though hurled in Satanic wrath, it passed through the scarred hands of Jesus and entered Paul as a manifestation of divine love and wisdom. Nevertheless, we can so focus on the good God squeezed out of this that we overlook the key elements. Paul’s discomfort originated with the Evil One and became necessary because the sin of pride lurked dangerously near. (2 Corinthians 12:1-7)   Ill health is not God’s first choice; Adam and Eve were created whole. Neither is it His final solution; sickness has no place in the world to come. (Revelation 21:4)   Aeneas was bedridden ‘eight years, and was sick of the palsy’. (Acts 9:33) ‘After eight years, I’d be sick of the palsy, too,’ cracks some clown. Not necessarily. Remember Fanny Crosby. One woman, reports a British medical journal, soon recovered from influenza, yet remained bed-ridden for forty years. ‘Wilt thou be made whole?’ probed Jesus. (John 5:6, see also Luke 18:41) For the long-term patient, full health often means an unnerving disruption of lifestyle. Even when infirmity is spiritually beneficial, we can dwell too long in that state. If we need a pride pricker, we obviously have a problem with pride. If we need the pruning power of sickness, it suggests inadequate self-restraint, insensitivity to the Spirit’s leading, or some other spiritual deficiency. We should seek to overcome the deficiency so we no longer need our sickness. If you lie awake worrying about how they’ll fit all your medical conditions on your death certificate - even if you are so near death you look like your passport photo - I believe you have a right, almost a duty, to pray for healing. And unbelieving prayer is wasted prayer.   Never give up your quest for healing. Consider the cripple who habitually begged at the temple gate. Innumerable times, possibly every year since His childhood, the Son of God must have walked past this man. After more than forty years of disability, even after the Messiah had left the planet, God healed him. (Acts 3:2,10; 4:22)   One final reassurance: agonising health problems can never thwart the Almighty’s love. Job’s ailment was not allowed to be lethal and his reward was great. (Job 2:6; 42:10ff) Willie Burton recovered from his fever. The pruning temporarily limited his ministry but not God’s work. I’m told a friend went in his place and a Mission Station was established, though beyond that, my source is silent. The intricacies are kept from me. I’m used to that. But I know enough about God to know it worked out perfectly.   The above is an extract from a fascinating book available free to internet users:   Book Other Related Pages The Use of Medicine and Doctors Suffering: Why does God Allow it? Life’s Mysteries Explained When God Seems Far Away God’s Love God’s will

Inspiration for everyone with Dissociative Identity Disorder (D.I.D.) and their friends and marriage partners Note by the Website Owner: To my astonishment, this webpage has caused someone I don’t even know to mercilessly slander me behind my back. Those who know me find the accusations hilarious, though they are too compassionate to laugh. I understand, however, how easy it is to be triggered and although I’m mystified, I presume this is what happened with the person who made this mistake. I do not only hold no ill-feeling toward her and wish her well but I was most impressed by something she has written. It made me feel very warmly toward her as my sister in the Lord. One of the few things I know about her is that she had D.I.D. This world desperately needs Christians who are healing or have healed from D.I.D. I pray our Lord not only blesses her but powerfully uses her for his glory. For anyone who is interested: I am very happily married and my goal is not to counsel anyone with D.I.D. privately but to integrate them into a group setting as soon as practical. To keep the writing style consistent on my site, I adjust the wording of most of the quotes I publish, while keeping true to the person’s meaning. Even though I protect people’s privacy by keeping each source anonymous, it is my habit to always confirm that they are completely happy with what I do with their words. Grantley Morris Why I Adore My Girlfriend’s Alters The average person knows not just next to nothing about alters but  worse  than nothing. Because of the weird and insulting misconceptions that some people have, my girlfriend, whom I’ll call Cindy, is shy about people knowing she has Dissociative Identity Disorder. So for her sake I’m obligated not to tell people about her alters. This frustrates me enormously because I long to boast about her wonderful alters to everyone who will listen. Even the mere fact that she has alters proves what an incredible survivor she is. Each alter is like a soldier’s Purple Heart – a badge of honor. So when Grantley offered me the opportunity to write this webpage, I leapt at it. I also thank him for acting as ghostwriter, as he has for others who have shared their stories on this amazing website. As you read, you will discover that I am deeply committed to God’s morality and “girlfriend” is not euphuism for a de facto or sexual partner. I was in love with Cindy long before either of us discovered that she has multiple personalities but her alters have added such an amazing richness to our relationship that, in all seriousness, I feel sorry for every man whose wife/girlfriend does not have Dissociative Identity Disorder. Thankfully, most men have no conception of what they are missing or I think they would feel somewhat deprived. Few such men are likely to read this webpage, however, so I feel free to share my heart. What follows are just a few of the other ways in which Cindy’s alters have caused me to feel more loved than an average woman is ever likely to do for a man. Cindy has said certain flattering things about me that have floored me. I’ve had women in love with me, but no one has ever given the slightest hint that anyone could see me in certain positive ways that she does. Although I longed to believe that she really meant it, my low self-esteem and life experiences left me with a niggling doubt as to whether she was just trying to boost me, rather than being totally honest. Her alters, however, have convinced me in a way that no other woman could possibly achieve single-handedly. I was a complete stranger to each alter when they first surfaced. Their independent reaction to me proved over and over that Cindy – in fact every part of her – truly saw me in that light. This has been deeply healing to me. * Cindy’s childhood abuser was into the occult. To silence one particular alter he implanted a demon, and impressed upon the terrified alter that the demon would kill her if she ever spoke to anyone but him. This alter heard me talking with Cindy’s other alters and decided she loved me so much that she would speak to me even though she was sure that she would be killed for doing so. How’s that for love! * I think we all know how deeply attached little children are to their favorite stuffed toys. Of course, not being married, Cindy and I still do not live together, but when we were first in a serious relationship with each other we lived too far apart for her even to visit me. Nevertheless, one of Cindy’s little alters shocked me by deciding to express her love for me by sending me her favorite stuffed toy for me to keep. I think the adult equivalent would be willingly cutting off one’s arm for a loved one. * Having been privileged to overhear many of the frequent divine encounters these alters have with the King of kings, I am in awe of the fact that with these dear alters, God has entrusted to me his very own daughters, the apple of his eye. I am acutely aware that to dare exploit their innocent vulnerability would be to expose myself to divine fury. Nevertheless, the way they have trusted me has made me feel loved in ways that few other people could hope to achieve. Like many abused children, Cindy had suffered deep humiliation as a child over potty training. Even as an adult, using the toilet was frequently an excruciatingly painful, terrifying experience. Despite their childhood suffering making them extremely modest, several of her alters have said they would be comforted to have me with them, holding their hands when they use the toilet. Not being married, I would never do such a thing but the staggering degree of trust that represents leaves me speechless. * Cindy had some alters who have loved men before, but always there were several alters who did not like them. Every one of Cindy’s alters deeply loves me. You might imagine that I would find it confusing relating to so many alters. Not in the slightest. It is deeply fulfilling and intellectually stimulating and enriching. It is a continual source of delight and surprise. Each alter gives me a deeper insight into the woman I love and allows me to share her past in a way that is denied men whose loved ones do not have alters. My only lament is that having so many alters means there are not enough hours in the day to speak individually to each alter for as long as I would like. While I’m talking with one alter, the others usually overhear but I find myself always longing for so much more one-to-one sharing with each alter. Each is so special and dear to my heart. Cindy is like the most amazing diamond with each alter being a facet revealing a unique color. Although Cindy has very many alters, each one of them is irreplaceable to me. If just one of them wasn’t in love with me, I’d be heart-broken. Sometimes alters who are just in the early stages of healing want to go back into permanent hiding. I’d be deeply distressed if ever that were to happen. I feel like the shepherd in Jesus’ parable. As wonderful as it is to have ninety-nine, just one being lost would be deeply upsetting. Often Cindy and I have believed we have at last discovered her every alter, only to find still more. I’m delighted whenever that happens. It is yet another precious one to love and enjoy, and be loved by; yet another one to be so very proud of and yet another discovery to deepen even further my beloved Cindy’s, healing and her sense of wholeness and further expand her significant intellectual skills. Through these delightful alters, my understanding of God has deepened. They so often tell me about their encounters with God and I’m left in awe; first because God has never interacted with me in such a powerfully real way, and second because these interactions typically highlight God’s patience, tenderness, humility in astounding ways. Even though it is second-hand, I count it such a privilege to be granted such an intimate glimpse of God. And the courageous way some of them – particularly two of the younger ones – engage in spiritual warfare is inspirational. The alters keep inventing fun, unexpected ways of amusing me. To describe how hilarious their antics are takes more skill than I’ve got. You would need to know them well to fully appreciate the subtleties, so my attempts to let you in on the joke fall a bit flat. Rather than risk boring you, I’ll limit myself to just two examples: * Cindy has an alter who keeps a necessary tight rein on finances and the others support her in this. (I’m very thankful, because before this alter surfaced, finances were a challenge for Cindy.) Recently, one of the little ones wanted to go to a restaurant for her favorite dish, Mandarin Chicken. She is often allowed to get her way in this, but this time it was better to save the money and eat at home. However, Cindy has another alter who discovered a way of saying in a sing-song, hypnotic way “You’re getting s-l-e-e-e-e-p-y” that would send the other alters to sleep. The alters get on with each other much better now but she used to do that to get her own way, such as having an uninterrupted conversation with me. So the alter who wanted to go to the restaurant told this alter she would do her a favor if she used this technique to lull all the others into thinking they were h-u-u-u-n-g-r-y for Mandarin Chicken! (Cindy’s alters love and support each other in a way that moves me deeply, and there was no maliciousness in her ingenious prank. She openly told me about it as she was hatching her plot.) * As mentioned, Cindy’s alters often have difficulty using the toilet. Recently a young alter announced she wanted to be become a toilet terrorist and blow up toilets. I thought that funny, but it got worse. “No!” insisted an older alter, “That it is not a career option!” And worse . . . The next morning in the store that she manages, Cindy heard what sounded like a loud explosion coming from the direction of the bathroom. As she looked in that direction, the door opened and out walked one of Cindy’s customers, wet and very red faced. She looked at Cindy and sheepishly said, “Er – I seem to have blown up your toilet.” “Hallelujah!” yelled Cindy, and gave her a hug. “You aren't angry?” asked the customer. “No!” replied Cindy, “I think it is wonderful! I hate toilets.” Cindy then proceeded to give the bemused woman a “toilet terrorist discount” on her purchase. Cindy has alters that were formed at very many different ages, ranging from very young to adults. The young ones are fun, cute and adorable. The older ones, are equally lovable and satisfy my need for deep, adult companionship and humor. I have always refused to have favorite alters but it’s impossible, anyhow, because they all offer something special. Cindy lets her alters call her Mommy and this is a great source of comfort to them – even for the older ones – because they had never managed to gain their real mother’s approval. They do not, however, call me Daddy, and I support this. They have bonded with God as Daddy. That’s best for them emotionally and spiritually. He’s the perfect father. He hugs and kisses them and plays with them in a totally safe, nonsexual way. I cannot be with all the time and I can never be with them when they are distressed in the bathroom, but he can. A second reason for not bonding with them as a father is that I think it would be emotionally unhealthy for Cindy, or any part of her, to marry someone she regards as a father figure. I want to give a totally frank assessment of what it’s like to have a girlfriend who has alters, so I’m trying to think of downsides to share with you. It usually only takes a few days for them to turn sweet, but often upon first surfacing alters are in a foul mood and might even be angry with me. This hurts a bit, but I know that like the pain of childbirth, it will end up being more than worth enduring. Often the other alters are deeply concerned, not wanting me to be subjected to the slightest disrespect by a newly surfaced alter, and so they try to restrain the alter, but I always beg them not to; knowing that every alter needs to express her heart fully in order to find full healing. Often newly surfaced alters choose to reveal themselves to me before their host or most of Cindy’s other alters know that the alters even exist. I count this such a privilege. I’m thrilled to sometimes and in certain ways be able to know the one I love better than she knows herself, and for part of her to trust me with her secrets even slightly more than she trusts other parts of herself with them. Speaking of secrets: something that I find a challenge is that alters were formed to keep secrets. Secrecy is at the very heart of their being, whereas for me total transparency is one of the greatest delights in a relationship. I’ve never had a girlfriend with whom achieving total openness is such hard work, but every bit of progress is worth it. There’s another side to openness, however. Most people have suppressed/unconscious parts of them that they are incapable of revealing because they are not even aware of them. Through her alters, I am able to access these parts of her and so know her on a very deep and intimate level. When talking to me, Cindy frequently flits from alter to alter. This is fine but I often cannot discern which alter is speaking, since all alters share the same vocal cords. (I can tell who is talking with perhaps 30% accuracy.) Often every few moments I find myself asking who is speaking to check if I am still speaking with the same alter. I find this a bit frustrating. I ask them to get into the habit of telling me each time, but often they forget and sometimes they are shy about revealing their identity. I long to know who is speaking because each is priceless to me. Cindy’s alters are fascinating, endearing, inspiring. Different alters touch me in different ways. Some are cute, some are passionate, some are funny, some have amazing intellectual ability, some are highly courageous, some are timid, some are deeply spiritual. Together they touch me and fulfill me on every level I can think of. I’ve been spoilt. Women without Dissociative Identity Disorder seem one dimensional compared to the woman I’m privileged to know. Comment by Grantley From what I know of the man who wrote the above, I believe God has been preparing him for very many years to minister to Cindy, giving him all the necessary wisdom, skills, integrity, self-control and so on, before they ever met. What they have is more than some human-initiated romance. There are many strong indications that it is God who brought them together. Like this man, there will be rare exceptions but in general I don’t recommend anyone with Dissociative Identity Disorder getting even close to romantic involvement with anyone until he/she has travelled a long stretch of the road to recovery. I particularly do not recommend someone with Dissociative Identity Disorder becoming deeply involved with an abuse survivor (and this man isn’t one). Obviously, it is easy for abuse survivors to be attracted to each other because they see similarities in their past suffering, but it usually doubles their problems and hinders their healing, because their sensitivities and problems trigger each other. There is another very serious issue: most people with Dissociative Identity Disorder bond exceptionally strongly with anyone who is the first person to give them and their alters unconditional love and lets them share their secrets. It is frighteningly easy to mistake this powerful bonding and dependence for romantic love or for God indicating that they should marry.

Healing testimony for Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA) victims and everyone with Dissociative Identity Disorder (D.I.D.) The woman I’ll call Alice who shares her testimony below obviously has multiple personalities. Although she suffered prolonged sexual abuse she was not subjected to Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA). Nevertheless, her love for her insiders (also known as alters or parts – I particularly like the latter term) is an inspiration to everyone, regardless of whether the insiders were formed through Satanic Ritual Abuse, Sexual Ritual Abuse or any other means. If you have alters, they are likely to be bitter, angry and nasty until your love begins to soothe their hurts and isolation. In the early stages of their healing, alters are usually hard to love and yet they desperately need your love as a key factor in transforming them into your most delightful friends. Alice has gone through this process with each of nearly forty alters and is now enjoying the rich benefits. Grantley Morris I wouldn’t trade any of my insiders for a million dollars. Each one is a part of me that I had once lost. I am thrilled to be reunited with them. Now that we function together I can do many things that I hadn’t been able to do. Through getting to know and love my insiders, I not only have joy, peace and contentment like never before, my skills and intellectual capacity have increased. And even before I discovered my insiders I was intellectually above average. For me, the hardest part about having insiders is that the average person, having had little or no experience of insiders, finds the whole thing hard to understand and often has totally bizarre ideas about Dissociative Identity Disorder. Once a person becomes familiar with Dissociative Identity Disorder, however, it becomes as normal as the fact that one person’s body has many parts – arms, legs, hair, kidneys, and so on. Insiders are simply parts of one person’s mind. They can work together, just like different parts of our bodies work together to accomplish things. The relationship each insider has developed with God has brought God alive to me in so many ways. Now, instead of feeling alone, I have God and my insiders. I get lots of love and hugs and encouragement from my insiders and often they clown around in delightful ways that make me smile. People speak of the importance of stopping to smell the roses. This hints at one of the precious gifts my young alters bring. They look at things with childlike wonder and take delight in simple things adults are too jaded to treasure. An insider who is hurting is simply a wounded part of a person. Just as a broken leg isn’t any less a part of you because it is injured, neither is an insider. And just as a broken leg is not something to be ashamed of, but deserves extra care, so it is with a wounded insider. When a broken leg heals you can be as strong as ever, but when an insider heals you can be stronger than you have ever been. Healing is a process. Just as there are times when physical therapy is needed for a wounded leg, so emotional therapy is needed for a wounded insider. Dreams, nightmares and flashbacks are often the mind’s ways of flushing things out. Our body must get rid of waste or we’d die. It is not always a pleasant experience, but it’s a fact of life. Likewise, to keep secrets festering deep within us is emotionally dangerous. They need to surface. Dreams, nightmares and flashbacks usually alert every part of the mind to something that just one part of the mind had been unsuccessfully trying to cope with. When the entire mind is involved, the resources available to resolve the problem are multiplied. Once alerted to the problem, the spiritual parts of a person can involve God in the healing, the adult parts can bring human wisdom, and the hurting part is no longer isolated, cut off from the love and understanding of the rest of the person. Once we refuse to be intimidated by fear and we allow our insiders to express themselves, they can heal. Would you yell at your broken leg and call it insane for being in pain? No, you understand that pain is there to tell you that you need to deal with the broken leg. Do you then ignore the pain and cause further damage? No. You understand that there are temporary restrictions and you respect them while the leg heals. So it is for insiders. For example, when my insiders were still hurting I had to give up almost all television. I’m stronger now, but for quite a while various things shown on television triggered distressing memories and so hindered my healing. What is hardest is getting past the fear of having insiders and the fear of letting them express themselves. But now that I have pushed through that needless fear, I can’t begin to describe the joy that my insiders – thirty-eight of them, last count – bring me. Usually when I gather them around me it is a time of healing and giggling. Watching God interact and play with the younger insiders has brought me closer to God and caused to me to see his love of the human soul in ways I would have never known without insiders. God isn’t conventional. He resists human attempts to put him in a box and brand him. So do insiders. I’m not going to be held back by narrow minded people who don’t understand insiders. I am not afraid to break human conventions that enslave the human soul. And neither is God.

It is common for people with Dissociative Identity Disorder (also known as Multiple Personality Disorder) to have parts (known as alters or insiders) who are convinced they are the opposite sex to their real (external) body. My understanding of what is involved has recently been shaken up but let’s start with what I already knew and applies to most people. Years ago, I wrote: Alters of the opposite sex to their physical body are typically formed, not because of any homosexual tendencies, but solely because of the need to feel safe. One can well understand abused children supposing that being the opposite sex would lower their chances of further abuse and so wish they were that gender. Both boys and girls can reach this conclusion and, in the case of their particular abuser, they are often right. Additionally, if children are sexually abused by a member of the same sex, it can be expected to affect their sexual identity and they might even be labelled by their abuser as being the opposite sex. Given the power of a traumatized child’s imagination, it is not surprising that some desperate alters under such pressure completely take on this false identity and genuinely believe they are the oppose sex. Some alters have so little body awareness that they believe their real body is fully the opposite gender to what it really is. Not surprisingly, sexual confusion results, but this can be resolved by helping them realize that there is no need for them to be their imaginary gender in order to be safe or loved. Preferably, only after ensuring they realize that their safety and acceptance is not at stake, should the actual gender of their bodies be pointed out to them. This delay is desirable because knowing their real gender is likely to be a significant shock to them, and one that would be most disturbing without helping them understand this does not put them in danger. Great care should be taken in dealing with this sensitive issue. Even without safety concerns, imagine your reaction if you were to discover that you are not the gender you had always thought you were. Recently, however, I met an alter who opened my eyes to additional forces that can keep alters tricked and trapped in gender confusion beyond what I had already seen. I thought I’d seen it all but I was headed for more than one surprise. Hush, a male alter in a female body, wrote to me saying he was thinking about becoming a girl and asking several questions about it. In my reply I launched into my usual spiel that has helped others: You were forced by your abusers into unbearable and unnatural situations and the result was that you came to see yourself as a boy. This happens to many alters and the reason varies from alter to alter. In some cases it’s because alters have a desperate need to feel strong and to feel safe and it seems to them that if they were male they would be tougher and perhaps less likely to be abused. So they imagine really hard that they are boys in order to feel that bit better. An alter’s imagination is so powerful that they can come to believe what they imagine. The truth, however, is that no matter how much your imagination convinces you that you are male, it cannot change your outside body, so it doesn’t actually make you any stronger or safer. Moreover, an adult woman is far stronger than a boy, and your outside body is now that of a strong woman, and because police are more likely to believe adults than children abusers are more frightened of adults. This means you are actually stronger and safer than you imagine. Furthermore, all of your abusers have now left. In other words, the need for you to see yourself as a boy has gone. Another possible reason for alters seeing themselves as the opposite gender is that abusers made them do things as if they were the opposite gender. But those awful people are no longer around and they won’t make you do such things ever again. Yet another possibility is that abusers demand that certain alters think of themselves as being the opposite gender, but you are no longer subject to those people and you no longer need let them determine any aspect of your life. “Is it possible to turn back to a girl?” you asked me. Yes, very much so. You really are a girl, so all that it takes is for you to want to be a girl and believe it and it will happen. If you don’t want to be a girl, it’s because you don’t realize how safe and how cool it is to be one. That’s okay. Feel free to talk it over with me. It’s extremely confusing for you at present and I feel for you. I know you are amazingly capable, however, and you can come to terms with this. Please remember that God wants to rob you of nothing. He wants only for you to find more fulfilment than ever. “Why can’t boys live inside of girls?” you asked. Obviously, you do, except that you are not really a boy – you just think you are – and, since you are one of many parts of the same person, it ends up confusing for other parts of you. In many ways, you and the others can all pull in the same direction and achieve great things together, but with regard to gender you would be disunited and pulling in the opposite direction to most of the others. It would end up weakening all of you in this area, instead of strengthening all of you. There is no pressure, however. This is just something for you think about. God made you a girl and your abusers turned you into a boy. To reverse their evil schemes and see yourself as a girl is a way of getting back at those who hurt you and having victory over them. Hush already had certain advantages. He had some fellow alters who used to be male and were now fully female. He also knew all about the astounding ability of alters to transform what they regard as their body (what they look like in their inner world to themselves and to their fellow alters). In fact, he had seen some of his fellow alters instantly change, just for fun, into a giant bug or a cloud or some such thing, and then just as quickly and effortlessly change back again. Moreover, through observing his female host he knew how amazingly strong and capable females can be. However, although Hush had role models – fellow alters who had formerly seemed male but now saw themselves as female – most of these alters had been formed more or less accidentally. In contrast, Hush was formed as a direct result of Satanic Ritual Abuse. SRA, whether Satanic Ritual Abuse – involving the worship of Satan – or merely Sadistic Ritual Abuse, is more insidious than other types of abuse that end up producing alters. One of the hallmarks of SRA is that alters are not formed merely as an accidental by-product of abuse. On the contrary, these abusers have accumulated considerable knowledge of Dissociative Identity Disorder and deliberately create alters. From what Hush next told me, it seems his abusers apparently wanted to specifically produce a male alter. I conclude this because they not only forced him to molest other girls in their charge but the abusers combined it with the atrocious lie that for a boy to molest a girl was less morally despicable than if a girl did it. In fact, they claimed that for a little girl to do it to another girl was an unforgivable abomination that would damn her to hell but it was acceptable for a boy to perform that atrocious act. As would be expected from people sexually abusing children, their ludicrous assertions are totally contrary to God’s morality. It is outrageous to claim that a sex crime is less appalling if the performed on the opposite sex, and it is insulting to our holy Lord, who died for the sins of the entire world, to suggest that some sexual sins are beyond the power of Christ’s sacrifice to cleanse. The gender issue was the final straw that threatened to tip Hush over the edge, but even without it, he was so overwhelmed with guilt that he felt that by what he had been forced to do to girls, he has grievously sinned, not just against individuals, but against all of humanity. His tortured conscience based this devastating conclusion on the fact that each girl he had touched was someone else’s daughter, sister, niece, cousin – in fact, through Adam and Eve, he saw each one as being related to every other human and that he had therefore hurt and rightly incurred the wrath of every man, woman and child on the planet.   I told Hush that, because of Jesus, his sin is nowhere to be found, and I backed my claim with the following words from God. Your eye can quickly slide over them but if you take time to prayerfully ponder them you will discover just how powerful they really are:   Psalm 103:12  as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.   Isaiah 1:18  Come now, let us reason together, says the LORD. Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow . . .   Isaiah 43:25  I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more.   Micah 7:19  You will again have compassion on us; you will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea.   Jeremiah 50:20   . . . search will be made for Israel’s guilt, but there will be none, and for the sins of Judah, but none will be found, for I will forgive.   Isaiah 43:18-19  Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?   2 Corinthians 5:17  Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!   Philippians 3:13-14  . . . But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.   Hebrews 8:12  For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.   1 John 1:7  . . . the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.   For many more such scriptures, see  It’s True! You’re Forgivable: Bible Proof   but first  note the web address of this page so that you can return here.   Anyhow, what I have proved as nonsense – that Hush would be unforgiveable if he were a girl – is the very thing this child was being taught by her school teachers in a Christian school, and they used torture to beat into her their instance that they were always right. Not surprisingly, the terrified little alter accepted this unbiblical garbage as truth and believed she had no moral choice – and no chance of avoiding hell – unless she became a boy. So she convinced herself that she was a boy and when I began conversing with her, she was terrified of the spiritual consequences of seeing herself as a girl. Of course, I explained how contrary to the Word of God these teachers’ lies were but the way this alter’s gender transformation occurred took me by surprise.   The host – the mature alter, known to the little alters as Momma, who is most often in charge of the body – told me what happened immediately after receiving my email to Hush:   After your email I got one and a half hour’s sleep and had a vivid dream that Hush might be being tormented by a demon. I woke and thought I ought to go to camp [her inner world is modelled on a wonderful holiday camp she went to when young]. Usually I can just imagine camp and I’m there, but this time a white wall blocked the way. I tried calling out to the alter who is my second-in-charge but my words went nowhere. I asked Jesus what to do. He replied it was demons playing havoc and that I needed to deal with them. So I used the usual speech I give demons. “I am a daughter of the One True King and I stand in his authority. You are no longer welcome here! You must leave!” Then I tried going to the camp but although the wall was more permeable I was still unable to get a full picture of the camp. Jesus said to do it again. This time it improved still more. After yet another time I was able to push through. I found the camp filled with smoke and overrun by a driving wind.   I found my second-in-charge. She said everyone was safe, though coughing. The chaos had begun as soon as I went to sleep but she had been unable find me. We went to the camp chapel and all the furniture had been thrown to the edges of the room. In the center, however, was a table with Hush chained to it, screaming in pain. Around him were four powerful demons carving symbols into his flesh. They felt much stronger than other demons I had dealt with. Three times I told the demons to leave but I was getting nowhere. So I told them if they didn’t leave I would call Jesus in. They stayed. I called Jesus. He shone on them the most brilliant light I have ever seen. The demons ran fast and far. The chains holding Hush broke, and a little girl ran to me, threw herself at me and said, “Momma! You rescued me!”   “I had nothing to do with it,” I replied. “Jesus did it.”   “My name is Lucifer” she said. “That’s what they called me. I like ‘Lucy’ better. I was trapped in that boy body. I tried really hard to get out but the demons held me. But now I’m in a girl’s body. I wanted this for so long.”   Then Lucy looked to Jesus and said, “Thank you Jesus! I love you!” and gave him a big hug. Afterward, I asked Hush, who now calls herself Lucy, to share her side of the story. She said: Those demons were always with me. The bad guys [the SRA abusers] made it that way so that I was always a servant of Satan. If I didn’t stay a boy and say I was a servant of Satan, the demons would come and torture me. It was really bad. But I saw Momma being so big and strong, even though she is a girl, and you said that Jesus would forgive me for touching girls. I wanted so bad to be a girl that I tried really hard to be one, even though I knew it would mean getting hurt.   Then Momma came and she scared the demons and they stopped hurting me and just looked at me. Then Jesus came and his light was so bright that he scared all the demons away just by the light. I guess he really is the light in the darkness.   Now I don’t have to be afraid of being in the light because I am free; I am really free. I’ve never felt like this before. It’s like a warm blanket. Momma says it’s called peace. I love peace. I walked out in the sun and saw people and didn’t cry at all. My face even curved up. Momma says that’s a smile. I didn’t know that either. Things are all different and better! You were right!   My name means light bringer. Jesus says that’s what I am. I’m a light bringer. That’s my new identity. I want to bring everyone his light. It brings peace. Everyone should have it. The name also helps me remember that I was Lucifer before but now I am different forever. Now I’m a light bringer. Remember the part of the Bible you quoted that lists all that bad stuff and then says “that is what some of you were” [1 Corinthians 6:9-11]? It’s like that. I was all that bad stuff. I was Lucifer. But now I’m light bringer. Now I’m Lucy.     Important Things I’ve Learned from Hush/Lucy   It is common for people with Dissociative Identity Disorder to be unconcerned about their alters’ gender, and since so many different things can be simultaneously tormenting someone with Dissociative Identity Disorder, it can indeed often be best not to give it top priority. Nevertheless, gender affects so much of our identity, and God’s Word indicates that gender issues are important to our Creator. Moreover, I’ve learned from Hush/Lucy that sinister forces could be keeping alters tricked and trapped in the belief that they must remain the opposite sex. I now know that these forces can include a torturously distorted morality and needlessly tormented conscience and even demonic tormentors.   If we let them, demons can be a nuisance but to the weakest Christian who understands, they are less of a concern than pesky flies. Just hold on to Jesus , stubbornly stand your ground and, as Jesus’ ambassador, keep ordering them to leave. Keep refusing to take no for an answer and these cowardly trespassers will slink off.   Lucy’s experience proves that we can’t just assume: we should ask alters with gender issues why it is important to them to be the gender they believe they are, and what they think would happen if they were to change. Once we understand the reasons, we can start finding appropriate solutions.   Don’t Presume: Seek God   To demonstrate the importance of seeking God’s guidance and timing, let me tell you about one woman’s three alters. All of the following happened not just with the same woman but on the same day.   A new alter had surfaced. She looked like a toy and believed she was one and so she believed she was neither male nor female but an ‘it’. Since this alter lived in a woman I decided to preempt things by referring to this alter in an email as ‘she’. Another of the woman’s alters, replied, saying she felt the alter was male because this ‘toy’ seemed to act masculine. She leaned toward referring to this alter as ‘he’ but sought my advice. I replied that Jesus is so much smarter than me and it would be better for her to ask Jesus about this matter.   Another alter, who now went by the name Raj, not only believed she was male but had believed (and had convinced other alters) that she was Jesus – actually a cruel Jesus. Raj was progressing in coming to accept she was not Jesus. She was so terrified of demons that to appease them she had done terrible things. I told her that the real Jesus could keep her safe and empower her to send demons fleeing. She was scared of the real Jesus but I eventually coaxed her to speak with him. Before long, she emailed me back, saying:   This Jesus is strange. I went to talk to him. He said, “If you want to know real power then you need to be a woman.”   That is strange. So I said, “How is that going to help? Women are pathetically weak. Come any source of pain and they begin crying. Crying makes them weak. But men hold back their tears and get angry. Then they can do anything.”   Jesus replied, “There is immense power in being a woman. There is immense power in tears. Find these and you will have all the power you seek.”   I said, “Do I look like a girl? I am a man . . . well nearly there. My training was almost complete before this happened. I can’t be a woman. I have a penis. I don’t have breasts. I have sex with women and dominate them. I am no weak woman.”   Jesus said, “Look in an outside mirror and try telling yourself that. I have already given you power. You have rejected it because you think you are a man. The truth is you are a woman. On the day you find pride in being a woman, please come see me again. Until then I will not give you my power. It is reserved for truth and not lies.”   I admit to being a little surprised at how strongly Jesus had worded this. I might not be too bright but at least I’m smart enough to know that Jesus is always right.   I replied to Raj, saying such things as, “Real power comes from Jesus, not from gender. With Jesus in your life, even demons will flee from you. Human strength is pathetic, relative to the supernatural power the real Jesus offers you. A muscle bound he-man can’t make demons flee, but a little child who knows the real Jesus can. Whether one is male or female is of no consequence when one has the power of the Almighty Son of God in one’s veins. If you observe the woman in whose body you live you will discover that she is both beautiful and powerful.”   “They told me crying is for sissy men and weak women,” said Raj.   “They lied,” I replied. “They were trying to get you to deny your humanity and become like a cold machine. God is warm and you are called to be warm and real, not like a lifeless rock.”   “Do you know what happens if I act like a sissy boy?” asked Raj.   “Nothing will happen to you, “ I replied, “because you are free now and no longer subject to their lies and their punishments.”   “Do you mind if I keep talking to you – at least till I feel less nervous about Jesus?”     “If you are so strong,” I said, “how come you are nervous about Jesus and yet the women and children whose body you share are fearless when they are with him? I repeat: strength does not come through being male, but through having a good relationship with Jesus. He is truth and he honors truth.”   “Isn’t truth just a concept?” asked Raj. “But this Jesus has a body.”   “Jesus is truth personified,” I explained. “Everything about him is true and real. There is no falsehood or deceit in him and he knows everything. This is one of the things that gives him infinite power. You can be strong and powerful and smart and fearless and be a woman. You are not called to be weak or fearful or an emotional wreck. That has nothing to do with being a woman.”   The other alter took my advice and spoke to Jesus about the one who believes she is a toy. Unlike his directions concerning Raj, Jesus told her that it is fine for this alter to be treated as a boy for now because that’s how this alter currently feels. “It’s more important,” Jesus told her, “that this alter become a person. He’ll feel safer being a boy and so he will become a person quicker if you call him a boy.”   I bowed to Jesus’ wisdom. No doubt the time will come for this alter to realize she is female, but God’s timing is perfect. He understands each alter’s needs precisely. The only smart thing is to never go ahead of our Lord, nor lag behind.

If you understand O.C.D., you might prefer to go straight to Medical Considerations . In the following I wish to address the general question of whether it is honoring to God for Christians to take medication or any other kind of medical or psychological treatment for mental problems but I will do so using Religious Obsessive Compulsive Disorder as an example. For this I have extracted medical information from my series of webpages commencing at Scrupulosity: Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (O.C.D.) , which discuss treatment options for this distressing mental condition. If you suffer from O.C.D., you are advised to read the full series, as it contains much additional help. Religious O.C.D. is a perplexing mental disorder that one would expect to be spiritual rather than psychological or medical. It can manifest itself in one of two ways: 1. Being plagued by blasphemous thoughts 2. Or, despite repeated assurances, continually fearing you are unforgivable. If you fall into either category, your friends, loved ones, counselors and spiritual advisors will end up not only distressingly perplexed and frustrated but unable to give you appropriate support. The condition affecting you is so rarely understood that the dear people who care about you need these webpages almost as much as you do. If you suffer from this, I understand your agony. God’s solution, however, is very different to what you expect, and you and I will be at cross purposes until you can see beyond the superficial to understand what is really happening to you. Our priorities will differ as much as if you had acute appendicitis and want nothing but painkillers whereas my understanding of the medical necessities obligates me to focus not on pain relief (as much as I want that for you) but on the cause of the pain and to convince you of the critical importance of getting proper treatment. Just as pain killers would not be the real answer to appendicitis but would actually lessen your motivation to get the help you desperately need, so assurance that you are divinely forgiven or ending your unwanted thoughts is not the help you really need, despite it seeming that way to the sufferer. It can take them years of agony before they finally realize it but it turns out that for many devout Christians nothing – with the possible exception of medical help – is capable of ending their doubts, fears and overwhelmingly strong guilt feelings. Like a thirsty man chasing a mirage, these genuine Christians sincerely believe there must be some assurance that would finally satisfy them. They will temporarily feel better after receiving a full explanation of why their fears are spiritually, biblically and rationally groundless but the horrible worry that they are doomed will soon return. Despite the mirage seeming so real, the truth is that this side of heaven there is literally no experience or proof, no matter how stupendous or spectacular that could permanently quell their fears. Many people are tormented incessantly from what feels precisely like a guilty conscience and inability to feel God’s love, and yet it turns out that the cause is not spiritual at all. It seems initially unbelievable but for these people what drives intense feelings that are so easily mistaken for divine judgment – and it can even generate horrifically blasphemous thoughts as well – is a mild medical disorder that causes excess anxiety. None of my vast array of carefully written information will lower the deep concerns plaguing the millions of people whose anxiety has a medical basis. Just as proof that you are forgiven will not end the pain of a physical illness, neither will proof that you are forgiven end the inner pain of all the doubt, fears and worries caused by a physical illness – a disorder in one’s brain chemistry. I completely understand you thinking I am mad , or at least unspiritual, to suggest such a thing. If you have not yet read many of my other webpages, you have not had the opportunity to discover how strongly conservative and into prayer and Scripture I am. If you need convincing, quickly scan You’re Forgivable: A Sample of the Bible Proof and Life’s Too Short to Skimp on Prayer for just a couple of sample webpages, and then immediately return to this page. For years I have devoted enormous amounts of time and agony trying to help people who felt unforgivable. (For example, despite me being an exceptionally slow writer you will find on this website enough words to fill a 500 page book, written specifically for people who find it hard to believe God forgives them.) For very many of those years, if anyone had suggested that there could be a medical component to this spiritual matter I would have thought they were crazy or ungodly. Large numbers of people kept e-mailing me seeking help, however, and as I kept pouring my life into trying to help them, I began noticing something peculiar. It was astoundingly common for those who could not be helped even by large numbers of faith-building Scriptures to have an anxiety disorder. Usually they regarded their anxiety disorder as irrelevant to their spiritual concerns, but as I kept conversing with more and more people, the link kept occurring far too often to be mere coincidence. Eventually, I discovered that a huge body of scientific research had already confirmed the link. Like me, you will probably need a lot of convincing. That’s okay. I am so passionate about helping people who are suffering this horrific spiritual torment that I have gone to immense lengths assembling and carefully explaining the evidence in a logical, easily intelligible manner. All I ask is that you keep prayerfully reading it. People afflicted by blasphemous thoughts or by continual doubts are among the surprisingly large number of people who are perfectly sane – and some are highly intelligent – except that their mind plays tricks in whatever narrow area of their life is of greatest importance to them. It is not because they have less faith, Bible knowledge, will-power or devotion than other Christians. In fact, they are usually above average on such measures. It is just that in this area of life, anxiety is almost literally driving them crazy. Contrary to what seems intuitively obvious, their fears are not spiritually or rationally driven but stem from a chemical imbalance that causes them to suffer from abnormal levels of anxiety. Because it has a medical basis, you cannot switch off this anxiety (and corresponding guilt feelings, worries about salvation, inability to control your thoughts, etc.) by more Bible reading, trying to worry less, working harder on building up your faith, or whatever. To suffer from medically caused anxiety is no more an indication that one is spiritually lacking than suffering a broken leg means one is spiritually lacking. It boils down to the fact that the unfortunate people suffering this physical problem feel needlessly guilty, ill at ease or worry about at least one thing (it usually zeroes in on whatever is most important to them) far more than average people. And regardless of what they do – how much fellowship with God they have, how much faith they muster, how much theological knowledge they gain – that awful, unsettling feeling keeps gnawing away at them because the cause is not spiritual or rational but physical. No matter what they believe or think and how much God approves of them and delights in them, that horrible feeling keeps returning. Our brain is designed to treat that feeling – usually called anxiety – as an alarm warning us that something is seriously wrong. The problem is that when a chemical imbalance sets off a false alarm, the very alarm we rely on to alert us to physical or spiritual danger has been triggered. The part of our brain designed to respond to the alarm cannot distinguish a chemically induced false alarm from the real thing. As the alarm keeps on and on, the brain keeps frantically hunting for some danger that set off the alarm. No matter what reassurances come from God, Scripture, spiritual authorities, past experiences or whatever, the alarm keeps blaring and so the fear keeps persisting that there must be some genuine spiritual danger. What confuses these people is that what some call their gut feeling – some call it one’s conscience and some even confuse it with the voice of God – has been seriously distorted by a condition well known to the medical profession. Unfortunately, in contrast to the experts, the implications are rarely understood by the general population. With this deeply disturbing false alarm indistinguishable from the real thing blaring within a person day after day it is enough to seriously distort anyone’s spiritual perception. This devastating feeling keeps incessantly nagging; drowning out what for anyone not subjected to it would be more than enough proof of God’s acceptance. Although this highly unpleasant and confusing affliction troubles a relatively small proportion of people, the numbers add up to literally millions of people worldwide. Multitudes of people suffer from an undiagnosed anxiety disorder. There is no space for a full explanation here but once the process is carefully explained, it is readily understood by average people. Those suffering from this affliction, however, will have a much harder time accepting the truth because they find it so contrary to what feels intuitively right, and that dreadful feeling that something is terribly wrong keeps droning on as incessantly as ever. Everything within someone suffering from excess anxiety will scream against the truth. So despite trying to the point of utter exhaustion, those suffering this way will keep getting worse instead of better unless they totally change their understanding. I hyperventilated once. I felt certain I was not getting enough air and so I breathed harder, totally oblivious to the fact that I was actually suffering from too much air and I needed to breathe less. So it is with those who are hounded by unwanted thoughts or yearning for assurance of salvation. They will only get worse until they learn to do almost the exact opposite of what they feel sure will help. They are so convinced that they need to be doing the opposite of what will actually help that they usually cannot even grasp what the following webpages are saying, but keep misinterpreting them to line up with their mistaken views. Although most people have heard of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, few recognize it when it turns spiritual. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is an anxiety disorder. Some experts go deeper into the cause of the anxiety and call it a biochemical or neurological (nerve) disorder. This highlights that the anxiety is not the person’s fault or ignorance or lack of faith. It is still correct, however, to call it an anxiety disorder because it manifests itself as anxiety that, in turn, causes repeated, unwanted thoughts or doubts (obsessions). For many, but not all OCD sufferers, these obsessions lead to feeling driven to certain repetitive behaviors (compulsions) such as excessive cleaning, checking, counting or seeking assurances. A not uncommon form of OCD that is less publicized is for a normal heterosexual to be plagued with fear that he or she is homosexual. Another is for a normal, mild mannered person to be stricken with an abnormal fear that he or she will violently harm loved ones. The United Nations’ World Health Organization ranks Obsessive Compulsive Disorder high among the most disabling of all illnesses, in terms of the monetary and personal cost. Millions of people have their lives dominated by some form of OCD. It is so common throughout the world that if there are just one hundred people in your church, two or three of them probably have OCD, although there is a good chance that one is so embarrassed by it that he is trying to keep it secret, and another does not even know she has it. Put at its very simplest, OCD seems to be the consequence of a brain mechanism intended to warn a person of danger, doing so excessively. Scientists think they have identified a small part of the brain that does not function as perfectly in people with OCD. A key role of this part of the brain is to filter out inappropriate thoughts and feelings. Unless this filter is functionally normally, another part of the brain becomes overactive. Scans have shown unusual patterns of activity in the brains of OCD sufferers. In a few cases, head injuries seem to have caused OCD. Scrupulosity is a form of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder that plagues people who are anxious to please God. For them, the unwelcome, involuntary thoughts or images feature God or the devil, and compulsions feature the need to keep seeking assurance of salvation, or repeatedly engaging in some sort of religious exercise – such as prayer or witnessing or confessing sin – beyond what other Christians feel is needed. Medical Considerations It is tragically common for doctors to misdiagnose people with OCD as having depression, bipolar disorder, ADHD, autism or schizophrenia. Studies show that in USA it takes an average of nine years from the onset of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder for people to receive even a correct diagnosis and, amazingly, a further eight years before they are suitably treated. But if having the courage and knowledge to find treatment is difficult with general OCD, it is usually significantly harder with scrupulosity. Few people suffering from religious OCD even realize they have a medical or psychological problem. It is much easier, for example, to recognize that washing your hands fifty times a day is abnormal and undesirable than if OCD manifests itself as an overly sensitive conscience or feeling the need to pray or witness for hours each day. In fact, people with scrupulosity usually mistake their out-of-whack, condemning conscience for their loving Savior. They feel driven to excessive devotion that leads only to feelings of inadequacy and burnout, or to mistakenly supposing that the Bible condemns them as unforgivable and because anxiety feels like an unappeasable guilty conscience, they are likely to stubbornly cling to this delusion, no matter how many pastors, theologians or spiritual advisors tell them otherwise. Similarly, it is easier to realize you have a purely psychological affliction if you feel compelled to keep checking locks, than if you feel compelled to cuss the Holy Spirit. These serious hindrances to seeking treatment are further magnified by some Christians, who have no qualms about seeking human help if they have a plumbing problem, but somehow fear it might be unspiritual or a lack of faith to seek human help for a medical or mental problem. As a man of science, and someone who has devoted his entire life to serving people without charge, I find it annoying that almost every possible natural cure for anything has been less rigorously researched and tested than substances that drug companies could make money out of. There is much scientifically based evidence that there are medications that can help OCD (although, because everyone reacts differently, finding the exact medication that best suits you is likely to take patience and trial and error). However, there is some scientific evidence that there are some simple things like vitamins that can be equally effective, often at lower cost and with fewer side effects. Since I am not medically trained, I urge you to consult a doctor before trying even vitamins but if you have not yet tried medication, I suggest you seek medical advice about first trying inositol, an essential, apparently harmless, naturally occurring substance found in every cell of your body. Although the current amount of scientific proof is less compelling for the effectiveness of inositol than for certain medication, it is also less likely to have any side effects. Information about inositol and other simple, natural cures is provided in a subsequent webpage ( Natural Cures for Anxiety-Related Illnesses ) but I suggest you keep reading and come to that webpage at the end of this one. When I mention medication, don’t for a moment suppose this is to drug you or in any way make you less mentally alert. I want your thinking sharpened, not dulled, and the way to facilitate mental clarity is for you to be in peak health and especially to correct any bodily abnormalities and imbalances that have the potential to distort one’s thinking and perceptions. Our bodies are highly complex and dependent upon a vast number of factors. If some imbalance prevents our bodies from functioning normally, it could affect not only our physical well-being but our feelings, emotions, perceptions and clarity of thinking. Here are some well-known examples: * Sleep deprivation can cause learning, concentration and memory difficulties, mood changes, lowered ability to tolerate stress, and make you error/accident-prone. Severe sleep deprivation often results in hallucinations. * Low blood sugar can cause impaired mental functioning, irritability, confusion, difficulty speaking, anxiety, paranoia and/or aggression. * Insufficient oxygen (such as in altitude sickness) can cause confusion, clumsiness, and stumbling. The first signs may be uncharacteristic behavior such as laziness, excessive emotion or violence. * Hormonal imbalance can cause all sorts of mood changes, including postnatal (postpartum) depression. * Insufficient sunlight can cause depression (Seasonal Affective Disorder, for example). If your body were lacking in iron and it were affecting your health, would you refuse to take an iron supplement? Providing a doctor confirms you will benefit from an iron supplement, I believe it would be sinful to refuse because: 1. Our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit and so should be looked after. 2. As in the parable of the talents, we have a responsibility before God to develop responsibly what God has entrusted to us. If someone kindly gave you a new car it would be disrespectful to the giver to let the car deteriorate by not changing the oil and so on. Likewise, it is disrespectful to the One who gave us our bodies not to do what we can to keep ourselves in peak health. We will one day have to give account to God if we achieve less in life because we have let ourselves be physically run down. The same would apply if we achieve less in life than we are capable of because we let ourselves be psychologically run down by not taking dietary supplements if we have a deficiency. Just as being intoxicated creates a chemical imbalance that lowers one’s ability to think clearly and resist temptation, so do a number of other chemical imbalances that can occur within the body. Religious OCD sufferers either feel spiritually inferior to most Christians or realize that they have it harder than most Christians. Few realize that the primary reason is not spiritual but physical. Correcting a physical imbalance that affects one’s thinking gives people a head start (pun intended) relative to where they would be if they kept suffering the disorder but it is no head start relative to where healthy people are. Knowingly maintaining the handicap by refusing to correct an imbalance is as spiritually irresponsible as deliberately choosing to expose oneself to horrific temptation. Like being sober, correcting an imbalance in no way eliminates the need for spiritual weapons, spiritual graces and so on; it simply allows a person to have more of the basic resources that help other Christians cope with trials. To refuse whatever it takes to have a properly functioning body is neither being spiritual nor macho. It is simply being irresponsible. There is not a Christian on the planet who is not tempted and it seems logical to assume that demons play a role in most temptation. Certainly Satan does not have the divine power to be everywhere at once, so if he is involved, it could only be through his underlings. Demons are nothing to be freaked out about; we should simply seek to expose and resist their attempts to deceive us. With this in mind, sober thought and experience with literally hundreds of people suffering from religious OCD has forced me to conclude that the temptation to not do whatever one can to correct a bodily chemical imbalance is not just illogical, it is demonically inspired. It is undeniable that demons have much to gain and the kingdom of God much to lose by keeping Christians from anything that would allow them to think more clearly. Serotonin is a bodily substance essential for health. As a neurotransmitter it plays a vital role in brain function. Medications usually prescribed for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder are intended to affect serotonin levels and are technically known as Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs). Confusingly they are often popularly referred to as antidepressants. (It is not uncommon for a single medication to be prescribed for a diverse range of illnesses. For example, quinine is the first effective treatment for malaria and yet is used to treat arthritis and also lupus.) Certain medications that help people with OCD might happen to also benefit some people who are depressed, but their primary function is to correct a serotonin imbalance in the brain. This chemical imbalance seems to be a key factor in OCD and associated deceptive guilt feelings and unwanted thoughts. Sometimes a higher dosage is needed to treat OCD than to treat depression. Interestingly, in trials involving placebos, a high proportion of depressed people reported less depression after taking fake pills, but very few people with OCD responded to fake pills. Treatment of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder has sometimes been found even more effective when two or more medications are combined. If, with a particular OCD sufferer, a prescribed medication has an unwanted side effect, there is often an alternative medication that is just as effective and for that person does not have the side effect. In fact, my mother’s doctor told her there are four different classes of Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors. She had to try all four until finally finding one that suited her. Abruptly ceasing medication can cause additional problems, such as withdrawal symptoms. So if dissatisfied with the medication, there are good reasons for seeking further medical advice. A general doctor could get you started but for maximum effectiveness it might be best to see a doctor who specializes in this type of medication. These medical specialists are psychiatrists. They should not be confused with psychotherapists – the type popularly portrayed as getting you to lie on a couch and talk about your childhood. Neither should they be confused with psychologists. In contrast to psychiatrists, psychologists are not qualified as medical doctors and so cannot prescribe medication. Psychologists usually specialize in cognitive-behavior therapy, which we will discuss shortly. A common mistake that even some doctors make is to underestimate how long it will take for the medication to begin to lessen the symptoms of OCD. Although medication often takes just a few weeks to begin to work, in some cases it could take up to three months. It is also important to realize that treatment is expected to reduce the severity of OCD rather than a complete removal of all symptoms. If you cease the medication, symptoms could return to pretreatment levels. In fact, Professor of Psychology, Henry A. Virkler wrote the following in The Journal of Psychology and Christianity (Vol. 18, No.3, 1999, page 269), I quote it because it might also apply when these same medications are used to treat OCD. Persons with major depression who stop antidepressants too quickly may experience a recurrence of the depression, and it may not respond to a second round of antidepressants as rapidly or fully as it did to the first round. Similarly, for those with bipolar disorder, current treatment guidelines recommend permanent use of mood-stabilizing medication, for without it each manic or depressive episode tends to become more serious and difficult to treat. A woman shared the following with me and has allowed me to quote her. Her experience of medication helping but not eliminating the problem is what I expect to be fairly typical. I have suffered from scrupulosity practically all my life. It started with blasphemous thoughts while I was in church when I was 12 years old, and I am now a bit beyond middle-aged. Ultimately I stopped going to church because of the guilt. I felt as if I were possessed. Shortly after the thoughts, I began washing my hands a lot as if to “cleanse” the guilt. I also started checking things a lot. I basically suffered in silence and was not diagnosed until many years later. Then I was put on Prozac and later Zoloft. The medication helped quite a bit with the thoughts and cleansing rituals. The thoughts are still there, but more like background noise and less guilt-inducing. The hand washing is pretty much gone, and the checking is under better control – only at times of stress does it resurface. The only thing that still plagues me is an overwhelming feeling of responsibility, as well as feeling guilt over things I enjoy. It is clear that she still has challenges – medication is not the wimp’s way out – but like carving an occasional foothold into a cliff face, it helps. Please don’t be reluctant to get help. You owe it to God to seek the best treatment. For information about non-prescription ways of improving your brain chemistry, see Natural Cures for Depression & Anxiety-Related Illnesses. New treatments are currently being tested, such as deep brain stimulation. Trials are also underway with drugs that target the brain chemical, glutamate, that is thought to be a factor in OCD. In cases that are both extreme and rare, brain surgery or Electro-Convulsive Shock Therapy have been suggested. However, cognitive-behavioral therapy is far more proven and safe. It is widely recommended for people with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, often in conjunction with medication. Cognitive-behavioral therapy is basically being skillfully guided to train yourself to lower the anxiety that causes the problem. You could think of it as overcoming a brain problem by retraining the brain. The effect is a little like what happens when, by retraining themselves, people overcome the debilitating effect of brain damage caused by a stroke. Cognitive-behavioral therapy is usually done in a carefully controlled manner, but treatment typically involves deliberately doing the thing you fear, and refusing to engage in any compulsive “remedy.” For a compulsive hand washer, for instance, it would usually involve reaching the point of deliberately getting the hands dirty and refusing to wash for hours. At first, the anxiety over not washing would be high, but as time progresses without washing, anxiety would gradually lower. For the treatment to be effective and long lasting, anxiety merely has to be lowered, not necessarily completely eliminated. This exact approach is awkward with religious OCD, however. It is easy to believe that you will not die or go to hell if you do not check locks thirty times a day. You will then be free to use cognitive-behavioral therapy to address the irrational anxiety you feel over not engaging in that behavior. But for cognitive-behavioral therapy to work, someone with scrupulosity must first reach the point of believing that the behavior he is anxious about – such as uncontrollably swearing at God or witnessing less – does not threaten one’s walk with God. Arriving at that belief will not automatically lower one’s anxiety – that’s where cognitive-behavioral therapy comes in. There’s an alternative to a purely medical approach . Research has proved that, through continual practice, our brains’ physical and chemical structure can be altered. As a faulty alarm system needs at least part of it to be rewired, so if you have OCD, a part of your brain needs rewiring – new neural pathways need to be developed. This can be done by retraining your brain, just as certain neural pathways might no longer work because of a stroke but continual practice will establish new ones. Consider someone who panics whenever he sees a spider. If you were to monitor his pulse, how much he sweats, and so on, you would find they suddenly peak at the sight of a spider. Such a person is not unintelligent or a nutcase; it is simply that something has caused his brain to be wired in such a way that seeing a spider triggers the alarm system in his brain. Through practice, however, that connection between the sight of a spider and his brain’s alarm system can be rerouted. This can be done, for example, by the person being exposed to a spider that is so far away that he feels calm, and over a long period of time he gets closer so slowly that his brain establishes a connection between seeing a spider and remaining calm, rather than seeing a spider and triggering an internal alarm. Similarly, much patient practice can train one’s brain not to set off false alarms that seem like spiritual worries. Psychologists are able to guide people in this retraining process. Whether it be through medication or retraining the brain or a combination of both, using any such means is exercising faith in God. It is clinging by raw faith to the belief that God loves and forgives through Christ and that any feelings or thoughts to the contrary – no matter how intense – are simply false alarms that need correcting. Exercising this degree of faith will be exceedingly difficult because the false alarms will so be so deeply disturbing that few people who have not suffered them will be able to comprehend the magnitude of the challenge. Further on in this series of webpages I provide information and techniques that consistently put these principles into practice. They have the potential to be life-transforming for scrupulosity sufferers. Nevertheless, I make one last plea to try combining it with appropriate medication. I remind you that opting for medication is not wimping out but is exercising faith in God. It shows you believe in God’s goodness, faithfulness and righteousness by not accepting a tormenting conscience as being your loving Lord. When the Bible says there is no condemnation in Christ Jesus and our conscience says there is condemnation, which will we call the liar? Opting for medication declares to the entire spirit realm that you have correctly chosen to regard your conscience as malfunctioning when guilt feelings contradict the basic Christian revelation that Jesus saves from all sin. Scrupulosity can be spiritually crippling. Honor God by doing everything you can to fight it, including taking medication. You might convince yourself that it is “faith” that is keeping you from seeing a doctor, but could it actually be pride or fear? Suppose we were missionaries whose vehicle has broken down, thus render us unable to reach the remote peoples we are called to minister to. Would it be honoring to God to refuse to call a mechanic and instead spend years sidelined doing nothing but pray that God “heal” the vehicle? Everyone knows God would expect us to do everything we can to get the vehicle fixed, including seeking human help. What matters is that we leave behind pride and stubbornness and get on with serving God. So why should anyone throw all logic out the door by refusing help from someone who fixes human bodies? Some anti-depressants can help not just depression but anxiety and OCD. That’s a bonus because some people suffer from all three. For most illnesses, currently available medical options cannot be guaranteed to work for everyone. Except for a revelation from God himself, however, you will never know how much it could help you unless you try it. If medication works for you, it could help you successfully concrete into your life the truths expounded elsewhere in my webpages. Related Pages Natural Cures for Anxiety-Related Illnesses The Use of Medicine and Doctors: A Christian View. Coping with Guilt The only way to not miss any of the uplifting webpages about false guilt is to start at Feeling Condemned? There’s Hope! and follow each link. You won’t regret it! Feeling Rejected by God An important part of this series of webpages Unforgivable? The part of the series that deals with the unforgivable sin Testimonies They thought they were unforgivable Does God Love Me? God’s Love for You Revealed A separate, very important series Demons The beginning of a series of webpages Dealing with Depression and Discouragement Becoming a Winner Breaking addictions and besetting sins Encouragement When You Feel Defeated

Unforgivable? The Unpardonable sin of Blasphemy Against the Holy Ghost (Matthew 12:31-32 Luke 12:10 Mark 3:29) Luke 12:10  And everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven,but anyone who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.     Overview Since salvation is all about faith and not works ( Scriptures ), the only thing that could keep anyone from being forgiven is not some past sin (or work) but a current refusal to believe the promise of 1 John 1:9 (and elsewhere) that the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin. In other words: stubbornly refusing to accept Jesus as one’s Savior. Our faith might waver but forgiveness is ours every time we return to faith in Jesus’ power to forgive our every sin. Introduction Jesus spoke about sin being unforgivable when the Pharisees decided that what was empowering Jesus was not God but the devil (Matthew 12:24). For as long as anyone continues to believe that blasphemous lie, it is impossible to believe that Jesus is God’s way of salvation. One cannot be saved until one corrects that wrong belief about the Savior of the world. So it is not some past sin (no matter how gross or repeated) that makes forgiveness impossible. It boils down to whether one chooses to believe Jesus is God’s way of salvation and therefore that he can cleanse us from all si n. Whatever Jesus meant by his puzzling statement about the unpardonable sin of blaspheming the Holy Spirit, the correct interpretation will be consistent with the rest of biblical revelation. And we know that in the rest of the Bible, God over and over declares his eagerness to forgive anyone and everyone who comes to Jesus, genuinely wanting forgiveness. The God of truth has emphatically given his word about this. In the light of so many unbreakable promises, it must be that if anyone were to become unforgivable, something happens that makes that person for the rest of his/her life refuse to accept through Jesus the forgiveness that God freely offers us all.   We will carefully examine the meaning of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit and look at Bible saints who were clearly forgiven, even though they seemed guilty of the unforgivable sin.   Some of the following might initially seem unbelievable, but keep reading: further biblical proof will unfold as you proceed with this webpage.     What must one do to blaspheme the Spirit?   The Bible was not even originally written in English, so – as any Bible scholar will insist – to understand what  the Bible  means by blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, it is pointless consulting an English dictionary for the definition of “blasphemy”. Instead of jumping to our own presumptions in panic-stricken horror, we need to calmly and prayerfully delve deep into God’s Word. Let’s see what the Bible says Jesus was referring to:   Mark 3:22-30  And the teachers of the law who came down from Jerusalem said, ‘He is possessed by Beelzebub! By the prince of demons he is driving out demons.’ So Jesus . . . spoke to them  . . . ‘I tell you the truth, all the sins and blasphemies of men will be forgiven them. But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; he is guilty of an eternal sin.’  He said this because they were saying, ‘He has an evil spirit.’  (Emphasis mine)   These people were not cursing or swearing, nor knowingly insulting the Holy Spirit. In fact, they were devout theologians who would rather face a thousand deaths than be disrespectful to the Spirit of God. They felt certain that they deeply revered the Holy Spirit.  Whatever Jesus meant by the unpardonable sin, he was not referring to the use of foul language against the Holy Spirit when he warned these people. They were not even seeking to target the Holy Spirit. Jesus was the focus of their attack. Jesus, not the Holy Spirit, was the one they sought to insult and discredit. It just turned out that, as would be expected, insulting one member of the Trinity insults all three. The doctrine of the Trinity renders ridiculous any notion that the Holy Spirit might be more holy or more sensitive or less forgiving than the Son of God. Their salvation (eternal forgiveness) was at stake not because they were disapproving of some aspect of Jesus’ humanity – his fashion sense, table manners, or whatever – but because they were disapproving of something fundamental to Jesus’ spiritual role as humanity’s only Savior. They were not merely insulting the Holy Spirit; they were blasting any possibility of Jesus being the Savior of the world. If, in speaking of blaspheming the Holy Spirit, Jesus was not referring to specifically targeting the Holy Spirit rather than another member of the Holy Trinity, neither could he be referring to a fleeting thought or a persistent unwanted thought. Let’s see why. Suppose it were taught in Christian circles that thinking of blue giraffes is an unforgivable sin. ‘Think once of a blue giraffe and you’re eternally damned.’  Every  Christian exposed to this teaching would end up thinking of a blue giraffe, since it is a fact of life that the harder anyone tries not to think of something, the more that person will think of it. This is not sinfulness; it is simply how the human mind works. Do you suppose our Maker doesn’t know this? Do you think he’s set everyone up to be eternally damned? That’s what you would have to think if you suppose that God treats as unforgivable unwanted thoughts buzzing around in our minds. So let’s look closer at Jesus’ statement to see what he meant. Mark 3:30  He said this because they were saying, ‘He has an evil spirit.’ This makes it crystal clear: it was specifically because these Bible scholars genuinely believed that Jesus had a demon that Jesus issued them this warning. Imagine knowing the Scriptures inside out and yet being so willfully blind as to be convinced that Jesus’ miracles were evil and that the Savior of the world – the Holy Lamb of God upon whom their eternal destiny hinges – is demon possessed! These theologians were not merely resisting the Holy Spirit’s powerful testimony that Jesus is from God; they actually chose to believe that the Savior of the world was so anti-God as to be in league with the prince of demons. This was not some fleeting or unwanted thoughts, as hits many true believers; they were so certain that their hideous belief about Jesus was right that they strived to convince everyone else to spurn Jesus, their only hope of salvation. Christ did not say that even these people could not repent and find forgiveness, but in his love he saw them as needing to be warned. To understand what renders unforgivable the sin Jesus was referring to, we must ask ourselves what is it that makes any sin forgivable. We know that God’s forgiveness – his ability to be committed to justice and yet overlook sin that deserves to be punished – is possible only because the Holy Son of God was sent to earth on a divine mission to bear the sins of the world. He suffered for each and every sin that any human has ever committed. Christ could do this only because he was utterly pure and sinless. As we know from Adam’s sin, the final wages of just one sin is death. Had Jesus the slightest trace of evil in him he would have been dying not for our sin but for his own sin. His death would then have had no more saving power than anyone else’s death. Moreover, had Christ been of the devil, as these theologians stubbornly asserted, his sacrifice would have been utterly unacceptable to the Holy God. Anyone blaspheming the Spirit in the sense that Jesus used the term, genuinely believes that the Spirit through whom Jesus ministered was evil. We know that there is salvation only through Jesus and that no one can find God’s forgiveness while he/she is actively rejecting Jesus as Savior. We can get many things wrong about Jesus and the way he won our salvation – no one has perfect theology – but believing Jesus is working for the devil is just too fundamental an error. Anyone believing this about our Lord will refuse to accept that Jesus offers divine forgiveness. No matter how compassionate God is, no one believing that Jesus was acting on behalf of the devil could be forgiven in this life, nor in the next, because such a person is rejecting his or her only means of salvation. Should, however, anyone stop believing that blasphemy and start believing that Jesus is God’s sinless sacrifice for the sins of the world, that person is no longer blaspheming the Spirit by which Jesus operated, and can now find forgiveness through Jesus. We all know that people who for a period in their lives have rejected Jesus as Savior can find forgiveness if they change their beliefs about Jesus. Likewise, forgiveness is available to every former blasphemer of the Holy Spirit who reverses his or her beliefs about the Spirit who indwelt and empowered Jesus. We will carefully prove this from Scripture.   Hope for Those Who Have Blasphemed the Spirit Since we are saved by grace through faith in Jesus, what we believe about Jesus is critical to our salvation. And since we are not saved by works, our firm beliefs about Jesus are far more important to our salvation than any slip of the tongue or spur-of-the-moment action. Anyone trusting in Jesus’ salvation can be forgiven even of the sin of having  in the past  believed that Jesus, the one mediator between God and humanity (1 Timothy 2:5) is so vehemently opposed to God as to be in league with the devil. But no one can ever be forgiven  while  they believe Jesus is in league with the devil. This offer of forgiveness for past blasphemy is confirmed in the book of Acts. Beginning with his Spirit-filled sermon on the Day of Pentecost, Peter repeatedly preached forgiveness of sins to people to whom he said such things as, ‘Jesus, whom you crucified,’ and ‘You handed him over to be killed, and you disowned him before Pilate, though he had decided to let him go. You disowned the Holy and Righteous One and asked that a murderer be released to you. You killed the author of life . . . Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord . . .’  Salvation Offered to Those Held Responsible for Murdering their Messiah Acts 2:36 “Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ.” (37) When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” (38) Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Acts 3: 13 The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified his servant Jesus. You handed him over to be killed, and you disowned him before Pilate, though he had decided to let him go. (14) You disowned the Holy and Righteous One and asked that a murderer be released to you. (15) You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this. (16) By faith in the name of Jesus, this man whom you see and know was made strong. It is Jesus’ name and the faith that comes through him that has given this complete healing to him, as you can all see. (17) Now, brothers, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did your leaders. (18) But this is how God fulfilled what he had foretold through all the prophets, saying that his Christ would suffer. (19) Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord. The religious people Peter charged with these offenses obviously did not believe they were killing a godly man, and yet they were well aware of the undeniably supernatural character of Jesus’ miracles. If the power behind Jesus’ miracle were supernatural but not from God, it had to be demonic. These people must therefore have blasphemed the Spirit of God by passionately believing that Jesus was empowered by an evil spirit. And yet Peter, under the Holy Spirit’s anointing, offered these very people salvation if they were willing to repent – to change their beliefs about the Spirit through which Jesus operated – and put their faith in Jesus as their Savior. Tucked away in this Pentecost sermon is something else highly significant. Forgiveness is offered to people who ‘disowned’ (the word, translated ‘denied’ in the King James Version, is used twice in Acts 3:14-15) Jesus. In the original Greek, this very word is the one Jesus used when he stated: Matthew 10:33  But whoever disowns me before men, I will disown him before my Father in heaven. Jesus’ pronouncement here is as emphatic as the one he made about the unforgivable sin. It offers no hope for anyone disowning/denying him, and yet Scripture elsewhere proves beyond doubt that this sin can indeed be forgiven. This highlights the fact that whenever we see in Scripture what seem like terrifying pronouncements of doom, they apply only to those who die without ever regretting that sin and seeking forgiveness for it through Jesus’ shed blood. Consider this Scripture: 1 Corinthians 6:9-10  Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. Like very many other disturbing parts of the Bible, this seems to give no hope to anyone found guilty. If we panic, however, it is because we have ripped such verses out of the Bible; reading them in isolation, without adequately considering the rest of Scripture. In this case, the answer is in the very next verse: 1 Corinthians 6:11  And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. It is simply not true to the nature of the Bible, however, to always expect to find hope in the immediate context. For example, we read something similar in the book of Revelation, but the surrounding verses do not hint at forgiveness being available. The verse seems to say that  all  liars are sent to hell, but we know this cannot be true because that interpretation is inconsistent with the rest of Scripture, and what human has never lied? Revelation 21:8  But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars – their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death. It makes no difference whether the interpretive key to a Scripture is in the next verse or a hundred verses away; it is a serious mistake to try to interpret supposedly damning Scriptures while disregarding the repeated teaching of the Bible about the power of our risen Lord to forgive  all  sin. A verse is taken out of context not only if surrounding verses are overlooked but whenever a passage is divorced from the full biblical revelation of God. Statements of doom, like ‘the wages of sin is death’ or ‘anyone who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven’ were never divinely intended to be torn from the rest of the Bible and twisted into something that nullifies other parts of God’s revelation. Suppose a parent warns a child, ‘Disobey and I’ll kill you!’ The correct interpretation of those words depends entirely on the person’s character. It will mean radically different things if the parent is loving and gentle, with a sense of humor, or is harsh, or is quite capable of murder. To correctly understand the Word of God, one must understand the heart of God. So what is the heart of God? Love, says the Bible. It is love that causes him to strongly warn and it is love that causes his heart to melt and forgive at the first sign of repentance. To understand what God means by harsh statements that seem to deny all possibility of forgiveness, we must get to know God as deeply as we possibly can. A key way of knowing how someone will react in a new situation is to observe over a long period how he handles similar situations. So to understand how God will react to someone blaspheming the Spirit, let’s look at how he acted previously, after issuing other dire warnings. Over and over, the Bible records God seemingly giving people no hope, and yet letting them off the hook anyhow, the moment they changed their attitude and looked to him in faith. For example: *  God told Moses, ‘Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation.’ Moses disobeyed the Almighty’s command to ‘leave me alone.’ That’s a bold act, since it was for disobedience that all the others were about to be destroyed. But this man knew God’s heart. He prayed and God reversed his decision to destroy them (Exodus 32:10,14). *  The Law of God said no Moabite could ‘enter the assembly of the LORD, even down to the tenth generation’ (Deuteronomy 23:3) and yet Ruth, David’s great-grandmother, was a Moabite and became God’s chosen ancestress of the Messiah. *  God’s law said that everyone guilty of adultery must be put to death (Leviticus 20:10; Deuteronomy 22:22; John 8:5). David the adulterer repented and, despite God’s anger, he was not only allowed to live but to continue to reign as king with God’s full blessing (2 Samuel 12:13). *  Jonah was a prophet (2 Kings 14:25). His  entire  prophecy, according to Scripture, was ‘Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown’ (Jonah 3:4). The prophecy held not a shadow of hope. God’s chosen instrument to pronounce this death sentence was a man who hated these people with a passion. He wanted them annihilated. You can be sure there was nothing about the body language or tone of voice of this messenger from God to hint to these pagans that the God of this foreigner might be loving or merciful. Everything hitting their senses told them they were doomed. They were wicked. They deserved destruction. Their time was up. Yet they repented and the divinely inspired prophecy fell to the ground. *  The prophet Micah prophesied in the days of King Hezekiah, saying, ‘This is what the LORD Almighty says: “Zion will be plowed like a field, Jerusalem will become a heap of rubble, the temple hill a mound overgrown with thickets.”’ Hezekiah sought the Lord, and God relented (Jeremiah 26:18-19). *  King Hezekiah was terminally ill. The great prophet Isaiah said, ‘This is what the LORD says: Put your house in order, because you are going to die; you will not recover.’ Hezekiah prayed and another prophecy hit the dust (Isaiah 38:1-5). *  The Bible clearly indicates that prophecies of doom are not given so that God can prove how smart he is in predicting the future, but are given in the hope that the prophesied condemnation will be averted by the people repenting. ‘If at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed, and if that nation  . . . repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned’ (Jeremiah 18:7-8, see also Jeremiah 26:3.13; 36:3). ‘And if I say to the wicked man, “You will surely die,” but he then turns away from his sin and does what is just and right . . . None of the sins he has committed will be remembered against him. . .  he will surely live’ (Ezekiel 33:14,16). Why is this? Because of the heart of God: ‘As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live . . .’ (Ezekiel 33:11). *  Jesus repeatedly rebuffed the Canaanite woman, calling her a dog and saying in response to his disciples’ plea to get rid of her, ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel’ and later, ‘It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to their dogs’ (Matthew 15:24,26). She persisted and got what she wanted – the very thing Jesus had just pronounced ‘not right’ and contrary to his divine mission. This overview allows us to see deep into the heart of God and know what he really means by harsh statements that seem to give no way out. Their very harshness is intended to move people to seek God so that he could relent. God is neither fickle, nor a liar. He sticks steadfastly to what  he  means; never to anyone’s misunderstanding of what he means. The only way to avoid misunderstanding God is to never underestimate his merciful, loving heart, and how an offender’s change of heart and faith in Christ’s sacrifice frees God to forgive as he longs to, and suddenly the impossible becomes possible. Of course, if a person does not respond the way God hopes, the dire statement remains in force. To understand what God means by an unpardonable sin, it is essential to interpret it in the light of God’s forgiving heart, and his ability to forgive through Christ,  and  his inability to forgive outside of faith in Christ. If, however, instead of reading the Bible in sync with God’s heart, we read it while letting ourselves be dominated by a condemning conscience or by fear that Jesus is not ‘able to save completely those who come to God through him,’ (Hebrews 7:25) we will repeatedly get it wrong. Sadly, feeling sure of God’s forgiving nature is particularly difficult for some people suffering psychological afflictions such as Generalized Anxiety Disorder (free-floating anxiety can be misinterpreted as being unable to be freed from guilt), Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (which can cause a condemning conscience and/or uncontrollable, blasphemous thoughts), major depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia or delusional disorder. I explain this more – especially OCD – in subsequent pages. Of course, not everyone suffering this way has been diagnosed. Treating such illnesses will help people read the Bible in a way that is closer to how God intends it to be understood.   Another Holy Spirit Blasphemer Forgiven We saw that Peter was divinely inspired to offer forgiveness to Jews who had committed the unpardonable sin of so hardening their hearts as to genuinely believe that the Spirit by which Jesus operated was demonic. Let’s explore this further by looking at Saul of Tarsus, who later became the apostle Paul. I can find just one explanation for Saul’s behavior: he believed – and did all he could to force others to believe – that Jesus performed his miracles through the power of demons. The supernatural character of Jesus’ ministry was common knowledge at that time in his part of the world. So much was this the case that Peter could confidently say to a stranger living on the geographical fringes of Palestine, quite distant from Jerusalem and Galilee where Jesus performed most of his miracles, ‘You know what has happened throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee . . . how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and how he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him’ (Acts 10:37-38). Saul, a most intelligent man with connections with the top Jewish leaders, and deeply involved in trying to change Christians’ beliefs, would have had to have known all about Jesus’ famous miracles. Furthermore, he was not some modern day skeptic. Being a Pharisee, he strongly believed in the supernatural – angels, demons, life after death, and so on. Clearly, when Saul was violently opposed to Jesus, the miracle worker, he must have been convinced that Jesus’ power to supernaturally heal was demonic. The man who became God’s chosen apostle, literally tortured Christians, trying to force them to blaspheme (Acts 22:19; 26:11). Since he was a God-fearing man who thought he was serving God by doing this, he could not have supposed at the time that he was seeking to make them blaspheme God. He must have been trying to get Christians to utter the blasphemous things about Jesus and the Source of Jesus’ power that at that time Saul himself firmly believed to be true. To leave us in no doubt, Paul himself declared in writing that he ‘was once a blasphemer and a persecutor’ (1 Timothy 1:13). He said he acted in ignorance, but it was a very limited ignorance. He blasphemed despite being a Bible scholar, knowing every word of Old Testament Scriptures, including all the Messianic prophecies fulfilled by Jesus. And he continued to be a blasphemer despite the witness of all the countless Christians he argued with and all those he tortured. This man’s total forgiveness proves how eager God is to find reason for mercy. In contrast to Christians who blaspheme only half-heartedly or occasionally, Paul was relentless in his blasphemy and in his determination to force Christians to blaspheme. ‘But Saul was not a Christian when he thought such horrible things about Jesus,’ object people who feel if they sin after becoming a Christian it somehow stops God from being forgiving. This implies that God was more loving or gracious towards us when we were his enemies than after he had made us his own. That’s ridiculous! If God can find the grace to forgive his enemy, can he not forgive his own child? Romans 5:10  For if, when we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son,  how much more , having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!  (Emphasis mine) Hebrews 7:25  Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them. If Saul’s evil could not only be forgiven but he was selected by God to be one of the greatest Christians, then God will forgive you and make you great. As Scripture affirms, the Lord truly is ‘patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance’ (2 Peter 3:9). (In the original Greek, ‘repentance’ literally means to change one’s mind.) So Saul, and anyone like him, could be forgiven and wondrously used of God for the rest of his life simply because he had a change of heart and no longer believed that Jesus had a demon. What makes people unforgivable is not God hardening his heart against them. The God of eternal love, who wants no one to perish, does not suddenly crack and no longer  want  to forgive certain people. They are unforgivable solely because there is salvation through no one else but the One they are dismissing as demonic. It is an eternal sin because once a person dies still consciously rejecting Jesus’ salvation, there is no opportunity for forgiveness in the next life. Anyone repenting and believing in Jesus before death, however, will be forgiven.   Impossible to be Saved? When forgiveness is impossible, cling to Jesus, and ‘impossible’ becomes a word that loses all meaning. It is utterly impossible for any camel to pass through the eye of a needle, and yet Jesus said that even that impossibility would be easier than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. Let’s not water down what Jesus was saying. A camel was the largest creature commonly found in the nation and the eye of a needle was the tiniest easily describable opening. It’s not just hard; it’s impossible. The disciples understood. They were flabbergasted. ‘Who then can be saved?’ they asked in astonishment. If ever you are tempted to think it is impossible for God to forgive your hideous sins, then burn Jesus’ reply into your brain, ‘With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God’ (Mark 10:27). Let’s clarify the matter by revisiting this incident. Jesus stated that it is impossible for some people to be saved. Then – apparently only because the disciples queried him – in the next breath he said that with God nothing is impossible. From this we see that no matter how impossible it might be for a Holy Spirit blasphemer to be saved, it suddenly becomes possible when the God of the impossible becomes involved. The issue then becomes: will such a person change his or her attitude and seek God for this miracle or will the person continue to spurn his or her only hope of salvation? We already know where God stands – he wants no one to perish. The ball is back in the blasphemer’s court.   The Truth Distilled At first reading, Jesus’ statement about an unforgivable sin seems to contradict the rest of Scripture. The Bible says  every  sin can be forgiven; Jesus says the sin of blaspheming the Spirit by which Jesus operated – believing that the Spirit in Jesus is of the devil –  cannot  be forgiven. In reality, they are saying exactly the same thing. The Bible says your every sin will be forgiven,  if  you believe that Jesus is God’s means of salvation. Jesus says your every sin will be forgiven,  unless  you refuse to believe that Jesus is God’s means of salvation, and instead choose to believe Jesus is of the devil. No one believing the damning doctrine that Jesus is demon possessed can be forgiven, but anyone no longer believing that blasphemy can find forgiveness. As explained earlier in this series of webpages, however, God’s eagerness to forgive does not mean he will make faith easy. It is those who face great challenges to faith who end up achieving great things for God and will enjoy immense eternal glory. For your loving Lord to make it easy for you to believe that you are forgiven, would be to rob you of a reward greater than we could ever imagine.   Any sin for which you sincerely seek Jesus’forgiveness, is not the unpardonable sin Scripture promises forgiveness to any wicked person who turns to God. Isaiah 55:7  Let the wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts. Let him  turn  to the LORD, and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will freely pardon . (Emphasis mine) Anyone who seeks Jesus’ forgiveness is obviously turning to God. It would make God a liar if he were to spurn anyone who regrets his sin and seeks God’s forgiveness. The judgment of God upon those who continually resist his Spirit is not that God won’t respond when they turn to him. The judgment is that they would become so hardened that they do not turn to God for forgiveness. Isaiah 6:10  Make the heart of this people calloused . . . Otherwise they might . . .  turn  and be healed.  (Emphasis mine)  Do you see it? If they turned they would be forgiven (healed of the eternal consequences of sin). The judgment is that their heart becomes so callous that they refuse to turn to God and put their faith in Jesus’ power to forgive.   Proof that you have not blasphemed the Holy Spirit Jesus’ warning against blaspheming the Holy Spirit sends a chill down us. And rightly so. We dare not abuse God’s grace. It is true that God’s Spirit will not ‘always strive with man’ (Genesis 6:3). However, if you find yourself longing for fellowship with God, it is clear that the Spirit is still ‘striving’ with you – passionately working within you in an attempt to woo you back to God. John 16:8  When he  [the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth]  comes, he will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment Since conviction of sin is the work of the Spirit, if you feel convicted of your sin, the Holy Spirit obviously has not withdrawn from you. On the contrary, he is actively working in your life seeking to bring you back to Jesus. Feeling the need of forgiveness is clear proof that God has not given up on you. John 6:44  No-one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day. Your longing to come to Jesus is proof that Father God is drawing you. It is irrefutable confirmation that he has not abandoned you. Someone who is unforgivable must be someone who no longer meets the conditions of God’s promises of forgiveness. In other words, they become so hardened that they do not  want  Jesus to forgive their sins. Either they turn their back on God so defiantly that they refuse to return to Jesus, or they never seek forgiveness because they imagine God approves of their sin. An example of the latter might be someone so caught up in sexual immorality or damnable heresy that for the rest of their lives they believe that their sin is acceptable to God. There is a huge emphasis in Scripture that forgiveness is freely available to anyone who comes to Jesus in simple trust, willing to let go of their sin. Here’s a few examples. The Unchangeable Word of God 1 John 5:1 Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God . . . John 1:12 Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. John 3:15 that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. (16) For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. John 3:36 Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on him. John 5:24 I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life. John 6:40 For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. 1 John 1:9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. Romans 10:9 That if you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. Romans 10:11 As the Scripture says, ‘ Anyone who trusts in him will never be put to shame.’ And many other Scriptures. Moreover, the Bible indicates that it is not those who have done little wrong who most easily find salvation, but those who see themselves as among the worse sinners. Consider Paul, so mightily forgiven and blessed of God. He saw himself as the greatest sinner (1 Timothy 1:15-16)   Left Field A friend of mine suggested a very different approach to this subject. Suppose God were to declare someone totally unforgivable and that no matter what the person does he will end up in hell anyway. Such a person would probably conclude that he has no incentive to live righteously and that he might as well get his fill of sin, regardless of who else gets hurt.  Do you really think the Holy Lord would do anything that could encourage sin?  It is only in the interest of the Evil One to suggest to anyone that he is unforgivable.   Why most Christians have thought themselves guilty of the unpardonable sin It is normal for Christians to find themselves strongly tempted to think that they are beyond God’s forgiveness. This is so common because we all have the same spiritual enemy. Relative to the God who dwells in us, our enemy is such a weakling that he can do little else but tell us cunning lies in the hope of tricking us. The devil is like a school bully. He hates you furiously but he is powerless to hurt you because your best friend towers over him. As long as you and your friend remain inseparable, the bully can only fume in utter frustration at his helplessness. Your friend is faithful and will never desert you. The bully’s only hope is if you wander away from your friend. But why would you be so stupid? You would only do so if you imagined your friend no longer cared for you and would not defend you. The devil knows his options are limited. For as long as you cling to your friend Jesus, you are a thousand times more powerful than the devil. So he hatches a plan. Somehow he has to convince you that Jesus is no longer devoted to you. If you believe that lie you will wrongly imagine that prayer and staying close to Christ are pointless. You might therefore gradually drift from the only Person who can foil the Evil One’s plans to destroy you. If he can fool you into not calling upon the devil-crushing power of Christ when Satan attacks, he can turn you into his plaything. So the Accuser of the brethren feverishly tries his old con job on you, just like he does with every other Christian, hoping to trick you into thinking the loving Lord has rejected you. If this diabolical trickster could succeed in fooling you, he could twist you around his little finger, like someone ordering people around because they do not realize that what looks threatening is nothing but a toy gun. If you see through the devil’s trick, however, he is a goner. He’ll have to run for his life. No one on this planet deserves divine forgiveness. God offers forgiveness, not because of what you have or haven’t done, but because of what Jesus has done. In his extravagant love God wants to treat everyone as if he/she were sinless. What Justice requires is that you make it legal for him to pardon you. This happens when through faith you identify with Christ, believing that he died for every sin you have ever committed. A divine exchange then takes place whereby Christ receives your sin (that’s what killed him) and you receive his sinlessness (that’s what gives you spiritual life). Remember that when Jesus was tempted, the devil quoted from the Bible. Jesus exposed the devil’s lies, proving that the devil had distorted God’s Word, by quoting Scripture back at him. That is what I have done in this webpage and in the next, and indeed in this whole series of pages. Don’t let the Deceiver mess with your mind by quoting certain Scriptures as if the rest of the Bible were non-existent. Instead, resist the Evil One’s powerfully persuasive brainwashing by continually immersing yourself in the truth of these webpages. Don’t dwell on his lies, thereby giving him license to deceive. For effective medical treatment one must take identical pills day after day. Likewise, you need to absorb these truths by reading them over and over. Jesus overcame the devil’s lies by quoting Scripture  from memory.  And he was so conversant with the full teaching of Scripture and with the heart of God that despite the deceiver’s powerful intellect, Jesus saw through every cunning attempt to distort God’s Word.   Forgiven people whom one might guess had committed the unpardonable sin Who was the greatest first century Christian? Some would say Peter. Some would say Paul. And yet both committed sins so grievous as to seem unforgivable. Despite having already examined some of their sin, we should probe even deeper. To gloss over the gravity of their sin could cause us to miss something very significant about the extent of God’s forgiveness. It was not false modesty that moved Paul to label himself the ‘chief of sinners’. Though his mind had been saturated with Scriptures that told him the opposite, he sought to murder powerful Christians like Stephen who, if allowed to live, could have saved thousands of souls from eternal torment. Even worse, he tried not just to end their precious lives, but to torture Christians in the hope that they would blaspheme and reject their only possible means of salvation. Even mass murderers and violent, hate-crazed rapists rarely try to violate their victims’ eternal destiny. Some people have tried to banish Christianity from their country, but few people in history have tried like Paul to obliterate every trace of Christianity  from the entire planet . Above all men, Paul was most worthy of destruction, yet God was so eager to forgive him that the Lord dramatically took the initiative by powerfully intervening on the Damascus Road. And consider Peter, the other contender for the title of greatest First Century Christian. When he first came to Jesus he was so overwhelmed by his sinfulness that he fell at Jesus’ knees, begging the holy Lord to leave him (Luke 5:8). Jesus welcomed Peter not only as a beloved follower, but as an apostle, and not only an apostle, but one of the inner circle of three (Peter, James and John). And yes, even among these three, Peter’s name regularly topped the list. Yet we find Peter committing one of the most grievous sins imaginable – being used as a tool of Satan to tempt the holy Son of God. And this was no minor temptation. He sought to use his special friendship with Jesus to entice the Lord to reject the way of the cross – the only means whereby anyone on this planet could be saved. Had Peter succeeded, we would all have been spiritually doomed! And coming from someone so close to Jesus’ heart, and from someone who had just delighted Jesus by his sensitivity to the Spirit, Peter hurled at Jesus a most enticing temptation. ‘Get behind me Satan!’ Jesus was forced to retort.  Still later, Peter disowned his Lord, not once or twice but three times, using oaths and everything he could think of to totally disassociate himself from his only Hope of salvation. In the original Scriptures, the very same word is used in each of these verses: Matthew 26:70  But he  [Peter]  denied it before them all. . . . Matthew 26:72  He denied it again, with an oath: ‘I don’t know the man!’ Matthew 10:33  But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven.  (KJV) Years later, Paul had to confront this powerful church leader, compelled to publicly accuse Peter of hypocrisy, lest he lead many astray. It was through Peter that God had given the entire church the monumental revelation not to call the Gentiles unclean (Acts 10:28; 11:1-18). Despite his three-fold vision from God on the matter and having once boldly championed his Spirit-led decision to eat with Gentiles, Peter ended up caving into fear and backsliding into not eating with Gentiles (Galatians 2:11-14). Yet Peter was fully forgiven and showered with spiritual blessings. And that same offer of divine forgiveness – that same extravagant love – is eagerly extended to you. Very many people write to me, terrified that they have committed the unforgivable sin. Usually it is for one or more of the following reasons: *  There was a time when they deliberately swore at the Holy Spirit or said something foul about him and now they are riddled with guilt over it. *  Like troublesome flies, thoughts they do not want and are not what they truly believe, keep buzzing around in their minds despite their every attempt to shoo them away. *  Knowing that Satan masquerades as an angel of light, they were once so anxious not to fall into the deceiver’s trap that they mistakenly confused an act of God for a trick of the devil. The Lord has now graciously opened their spiritual eyes and they are filled with remorse for being overzealous in their desire to reject the devil’s trickery. Seriously, how does such behavior stack up against the sins of Peter and Paul? Consider all the grave offenses they committed despite having a deep knowledge of God’s Word. Does it make the slightest sense that God would freely forgive them – and not only powerfully bless and anoint these men but present them as role models for every subsequent generation of Christians – and then refuse to forgive someone’s overzealousness, or a past failure to control an unruly tongue, or unwanted, often uncontrollable, thoughts? King David, at the height of his spiritual maturity, committed atrocious sins. Before Christ even offered his sacrifice for the sins of the world, however, God so fully forgave David of those grievous offenses that David not only continued as anointed king, he remained so Spirit-filled as to write divinely inspired Scripture (see Psalm 51, title) as did Peter and Paul. Could a just God forgive David of adultery and the premeditated, cold-blooded murder of the innocent husband, and not forgive  anyone  filled with remorse over past offenses and trusting Christ as Savior?   Seal it with a prayer Here’s a prayer I suggest you read to God. Lord,I am overwhelmingly aware that I have nothing to boast of in your presence. And yet this realization is bringing me into line with exactly the attitude you say we should have. ‘For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast’ (Ephesians 2:8-9). And again you say you deliberately choose those who are lowly and despised by this world so that no one may boast (1 Corinthians 1:28-29). So here I am, finding myself utterly unlike the Pharisee Jesus spoke of, who could boast, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men – robbers, evildoers, adulterers – or even like this tax collector.’ Whether I like it or not, I am the opposite of this man, who saw no need to ask forgiveness. Instead, I find myself like that despised tax collector of whom you said, ‘He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” ’ And yet you said of this tax collector, ‘This man, rather than the other, went home justified before God’ (Luke 18:10-14). You say, ‘If we claim we have not sinned, we make him [you] out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives’ (1 John 1:10). I am certainly in no danger of that. I am overwhelmed by my sin, and yet you say, ‘If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness’ (1 John 1:9). I might think myself the greatest of sinners, but the apostle Paul was certain that title belonged to him (1 Timothy 1:15) and you clearly accepted him. You say repeatedly in your Word that the basis of salvation is our faith in you – faith that you are so loving and so powerful as to purchase through Christ our forgiveness despite the magnitude of our sin. Since faith is critical to salvation, it is obvious that the one you call the Father of lies would focus his deceptive powers on trying to undermine my faith in your forgiveness. I determine with your help not to dishonor you by surrendering to satanic lies about your power and willingness to forgive those who seek your forgiveness. I regret everything I have ever done to dishonor you, and I refuse to continue to dishonor you by disbelieving your willingness to forgive me. I exalt you, Lord Jesus, as the sinless Son of God who chose to die and rise again, thereby enabling me to live with you forever. I choose to believe you, not satanic attempts to twist your words against you. I choose to believe you when you said, ‘I am with you always, to the very end of the age’ (Matthew 28:20) and, ‘Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you’ (Hebrews 13:5). You say your relationship with Christians is like that of a husband and wife, and you say you hate divorce (Malachi 2:16). If a husband will not leave his wife, the only way they could possibly split up is if the wife refuses to live with her husband. That’s not me, Lord. I long to live with you. Obviously, it would delight the Deceiver if I were to doubt your love and shrink from you in despair. So I choose to draw near you, conscious of your promise that you will draw near to those who draw near to you (James 4:8) and that whoever comes to you, you will never drive away (John 6:37). So I put my faith in your faithfulness. I trust not my righteousness, but your righteousness. I refuse to accept the Liar’s attempt to slander you as being a liar. I praise you that because you are righteous you will keep your word. And because you keep your word about forgiving those who repent and put their faith in Jesus, I am one of the millions who enjoy your undeserved forgiveness. Thank you, Faithful One that I can say, ‘Rejoice not against me, O my enemy: when I fall, I shall arise; when I sit in darkness, the Lord shall be a light unto me’ (Micah 7:8). I delight in the fact that you never start something you cannot finish. You are no quitter. You have begun a good work in me and as I yield to you, you will persist until your work in me is perfected and I am ready to enjoy eternity with you. Thank you that your love is boundless and that my salvation depends on you.   Conclusion Over and over and over God has made such promises as ‘God so loved  the world  [no exceptions] that he gave his only begotten Son that  whosoever  [no exceptions] believes in him shall not perish’ (John 3:16, KJV). A list of very many more such Scriptures can be found in the links at the end of this page. There is no sin that can turn into a liar the God of Truth who made these promises. Neither is it a case of God reluctantly having to keep his word. He  longs  to forgive everyone of every sin because that is the very nature of true love. But the Holy Lord cannot let sin go unpunished. God went to the extreme of the Eternal Son of God being punished for the sins of the entire world ( every  sin you have ever committed) because there is no other way by which anyone can be saved. If we refuse to accept Jesus’ sacrifice as punishment for our sins, it breaks God’s heart but there is no alternative: we must bear the punishment ourselves. Those who blaspheme against the Spirit are not those who cuss the Holy Spirit. They are those who render themselves unforgivable by rejecting as a Satanic hoax their only means of gaining forgiveness. To remain permanently unforgivable, however, they must keep rejecting Jesus’ forgiveness for the rest of their lives. The book of Hebrews, which also contains stern warnings, was written to Jewish Christians who were in danger of rejecting Jesus as their Savior and turning back to their former Jewish beliefs. We can reject Jesus a thousand times and still find salvation by changing our minds and accepting Jesus’ salvation. But for as long as someone is continually rejecting Jesus as his means of salvation, he is unable to be forgiven. There is no sin so great that it cannot be forgiven when God’s forgiveness is sought through Jesus, but there is no sin so small that it can be forgiven if we refuse to ask God’s forgiveness through Jesus. The size of our sin is of no consequence whatsoever. The one thing that matters is whether we accept Jesus as our Savior. What matters is not our past sin but our present belief in Jesus’ power to forgive. We dare not dishonor God by taking his warnings lightly, but it is even more vital not to dishonor him by continuing to suppose he is unable or unwilling to forgive every sin of everyone who seeks forgiveness through Christ’s shed blood. Ironically, it is precisely because God’s warnings are terrifyingly serious that we must not think we are damned. Supposing that we are beyond forgiveness undermines faith in Christ’s power to forgive, and/or our motivation to repent, which are the very things that will protect us from the danger he is lovingly warning us about. More than any other sin, it is refusing to believe Christ’s power to forgive us that we must particularly strive to avoid. Nevertheless, every sin, including this one, will be forgiven once we recognize our error and seek forgiveness through faith in Christ. Simple logic is all it takes to prove that if anyone is filled to overflowing with the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22) it is the Spirit of God himself. He is love, kindness, gentleness, patience and self-control  personified . He is not fickle, nor does he hold grudges. He is not offended by thoughts you do not firmly believe or by anything you now regret. What offends God is continually rejecting Christ dying for you; rendering his sacrifice for you an agonizing waste by refusing to put your faith in the fact that his suffering on your behalf is sufficient to spiritually cleanse you from  every  sin. Fear distorts our view of everything and fear is not from God (2 Timothy 1:7). God’s antidote for fear is faith, and especially faith in the power of Christ’s sacrifice to forgive every sin. Delight him by continually believing it.   Final Thought Upon finding this webpage, a friend of mine e-mailed me, saying: Why would someone curse the Holy Spirit? Answer: Simply because they are trying to be bad. They are at the end of their rope, feel helpless or hopeless, and actually  try  to commit the unpardonable, sort of like a mini-spiritual-suicide. I am reminded of one time when my 16 year old daughter in frustration shouted at the family, “I worship Satan!” similar to how she used to say, “Once I’m out of here, I’ll never speak to any of you again!” Of course, now that she’s grown and living on her own she still speaks to us, and the week following that outburst she was the one who wanted most to go to church. I stopped reading Eric’s e-mail and replied: What you say is true for most people. Surprisingly, however, it is more complicated than that for some. Many sincere Christians become terrified of blaspheming the Holy Spirit and by a trick of the mind this terror drives them to think the very thoughts they fear. This is explained in detail in such webpages as . I have been forced to devote so many webpages to this – and a huge portion of my counseling time – because the torment these dear people suffer is horrific and they are almost inconsolable. I then returned to the rest of Eric’s e-mail and read the following about those who deliberately curse the Holy Spirit. I like the way he expressed it: The thing is, it’s a failed attempt at spiritual suicide. They  think  they are committing the unpardonable, but perhaps God in wisdom placed that tripwire, sort of like leaving harmless pills in a bottle marked  poison  where you know your at-risk teenager might try it [rather than finding something that truly is deadly].

The Bible & Multiple Personalities   God, the Bible, & Christian Factors In Healing Dissociative Identity Disorder It is tempting to suppose it is Christian to fight or suppress one’s ungodly parts, but is this really the Spirit-led, Bible-based way to heal Dissociative Identity Disorder (Multiple Personality Disorder)? Is Jesus into burying problems or healing? What is the pinnacle of biblical revelation and the hallmark of an authentically Christian move: suppression or spiritual transformation; human effort or bringing Jesus into an impossible situation? Did our Savior sacrifice his all to usher in force and oppression, or love and grace? To heal from Dissociative Identity Disorder, even those not Christian must do as the Bible teaches about being kind to oneself. The God of the Bible neither condemns people who are hurting, nor supports being harsh with oneself. We will see that any Christian who thinks otherwise needs to read the Bible deeper. Healing also requires facing the truth of one’s past. This seems scary but, as the Bible declares, it sets us free. The critical importance of this aspect of biblical revelation is explained in a link at the end of this page. We will start, however, with the Bible’s emphasis on the other fundamental aspect of healing from Dissociative Identity Disorder: forgiving oneself and being kind to oneself. Ably supported by the enemy of our souls, we Christians have a tendency to unintentionally distort biblical revelation in a way that perpetuates our problems. The goal of this webpage is to explore relevant Bible truths to gently cut through spiritual misconceptions that could be hindering healing from Dissociative Identity Disorder.     Since some form of child abuse is usually at the heart of Dissociative Identity Disorder, let’s briefly consider what even mild child abuse does to a person and how Christians are tempted to react to it. Childhood is too short for little children to question everything adults tell them and the danger is simply too great for them to refuse to accept as truth whatever they are told until they have proved it for themselves. It is vital for their safety and development that children be virtually prewired to accept as gospel whatever respected adults in their lives tell them. This works beautifully when children are nurtured by kind-hearted people as God intended. It makes them alarmingly vulnerable, however, when an adult they accept as a source of truth and a role model, instead of manifesting the heart of God, repeatedly puts them down. Moreover, child abusers do not want to be caught. They have a vested interest in throwing everyone off the scent by acting very differently in public and establishing a high degree of respectability in the community. The result is highly confusing to young victims because not only does it make any reporting of the abuse likely to fall on deaf ears, observing the high regard other people have for the abuser reinforces a child’s conclusion that what the abuser says must be true. So even without anything physical, simply being subjected to repeated verbal putdowns during one’s most formative and impressionable years is devastating. It mutilates one’s self-image so profoundly that the damage will last a lifetime unless a determined and prolonged effort of almost herculean proportions is made later in life to counteract the negative effects. No matter how well-respected a person might be in the community, it remains ungodly to put people down or be harsh or unkind. No Christian wants to take on the values of an ungodly person and yet this is what we inadvertently do when we fall into the habit of verbally abusing ourselves or treating ourselves with the harshness of our childhood abusers. Tragically, however, the habit becomes as strong as heroin. As astonishing as it seems, rather than facing the devastating conclusion that we have taken on board the values of an abuser and are even addicted to it, we Christians are easily seduced into letting ourselves off the hook by actually convincing ourselves that we are pleasing God by acting like the devil in how we treat ourselves. It is frighteningly easy to re-label as humility or dying to self or fighting the flesh, what is actually a deeply engrained addiction to perpetuating in our lives the ungodly way our abusers treated us. If we verbally abuse ourselves or think lowly of ourselves as our abusers did, let’s at least not pretend we are being godly by modeling ourselves on them. Even more confusing, some abusers claim to be close to God. This adds spiritual abuse to their crimes but the perpetrators’ approval rating among those they gather around themselves makes it harder than ever to realize that this person’s behavior is actually spiritual abuse. We might even be so bewildered that the very thought seems blasphemous and presume that the person must be reflecting the heart of God and allow his/her rants to drown out the Spirit’s whispers. These whispers will seem disturbingly foreign and unbelievable because they are gentle, encouraging and uplifting – the exact opposite of what we have been taught. God has faith in us and has great plans for us, and if this is contrary to what key humans have told us, we are preconditioned to conclude that the Spirit’s promptings must be nothing but our own misguided wishful thinking. In short, even without deliberately intending to, abusers can so corrupt their position of trust and power that they browbeat and brainwash and undermine their victim’s confidence so appallingly as to render them unable to think for themselves or even believe God when he speaks to them. Just as there was much that was right and Bible-based about the beliefs and preaching of the spiritual leaders who crucified their Messiah, so it is with the wolves in sheep’s clothing that enter the very church of God ( Scriptures ). “Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’ :” warned Jesus (Matthew 7:22-23). Of course, we must never passively accept less than God’s best in our lives. There is no room for acting like spoilt brats, irresponsibly demanding that God do all the work while we laze around, content with mediocrity. We must cooperate with our Savior in passionately wanting change and not only praying for it but exerting every effort to persuade, encourage, inspire and urge every part of us to surrender to our Lord so that he may reign supreme in every aspect of our lives, as he does in heaven. This is neither cold-hearted indifference and sloth, nor is it imitating the devil by condemning ourselves and beating ourselves up like some hate-filled tyrant. Let’s get this right: Satan is the accuser (Revelation 12:10); God is the forgiver. Suppression and oppression come not from the heart of God but from his enemy. Refusing to join forces with the devil means refusing to slander, ridicule or belittle ourselves or anyone else. Neither demeaning self-talk nor being cruel to oneself is in heaven’s spiritual armory.   We are not meant to turn the Holy Spirit on or off according to the situation. God’s Spirit, the divine source of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, and so on, is meant to be a continuous spring, flowing like rivers of living water from our inner most being (John 7:38). It is unthinkable that sweet water and bitter water should flow from the same spring. Likewise, points out James 3:9-11, cursing anyone made in God’s likeness should never spring from the same heart from which praises to God flow. (This Scripture allows no loopholes for cursing oneself. Since you are as much in God’s image as anyone else, it is still God’s image that is at stake.)   So the Spirit’s flow springing from within should be both consistent and continual. We are to “ever be filled” with the Spirit (Ephesians 5:18, Amplified Bible). Just as we are to love everyone (even enemies) and “Be joyful  always  (1 Thessalonians 5:16, emphasis mine) and “Make every effort to live in peace with  all ” people (Hebrews 12:14, emphasis mine), so we are meant to always be operating in every fruit of the Spirit – not being Godlike in how we think of others and devil-like in how we think of ourselves.   The Lord wants you to demonstrate how filled you are with the fruit of the Spirit by being good, kind, gentle, patient, peaceable and loving not just to enemies but to ungodly parts of you that frustrate, annoy and embarrass you. As much as your loving Lord wants you to cooperate with him in bringing about changes within you, he does not want you to attempt this by resorting to such carnal ways as hate, anger, violence, impatience, unforgiveness or slander. Such behavior grieves your Savior, regardless of whether the hostility is directed towards yourself or other people. Hating yourself and having Jesus as your Savior are trains headed in the opposite direction.   My dilemma is that it is vital for you to fully grasp the truth just explained, but I do not want to labor this so much as to risk boring you. So at whatever point in the text you become so convinced that you could not possibly become more convinced, that’s when I suggest you interrupt your reading and scroll down to the next heading:  Christian Healing . How we treat ourselves is so critical to our spiritual well-being, however, that in case it takes a lot for you to become that certain, I will continue to serve you by examining this issue from different angles, piling up confirmation after confirmation.   We can easily fall into the delusion of supposing we are fighting the flesh – our ungodly nature – by being hard on ourselves, when often, through the very act of being hard on ourselves, we are actually manifesting the flesh. It is striving to attain holiness not by the only acceptable spiritual way of faith in the power of the sacrificial death of our Lord, but through our own (fleshly) efforts.   Galatians 3:1,3   You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. . . .  After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort?   Philippians 3:3-9   For it is we who are the circumcision, we who worship by the Spirit of God, who glory in Christ Jesus, and who  put no confidence in the flesh  . . . If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: . . . as for legalistic righteousness, faultless. But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss . . . I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ – the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.   Colossians 2:20-3:1   Since you died with Christ to the basic principles of this world, why, as though you still belonged to it, do you submit to its rules: “Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!”? . . . Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their  false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value  in restraining sensual indulgence. Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. (Emphasis mine.)   This is of immense significance to Christians with Dissociative Identity Disorder because they are often tempted to see their alters as manifestations of their ungodly nature and to suppose that by oppressing and suppressing them they are being Christlike.   Many good people think that by despising themselves and treating themselves harshly – especially when they slip up – that it is being godly. It is not. To be godly is to think and act like God. The Bible is emphatic that God is loving and forgiving. So we cannot be godly – we cannot display God’s heart – unless we are filled with love and forgiveness towards those who have hurt us,  including ourselves .   Consider also the implications that the key feature of Dissociative Identity Disorder is having not mere urges but alters (short for alternate  personalities ) all of whom have a will of their own.   We should win alters to Christ the same way we seek to win over anyone else who has a will of his/her own. We know that it would be repulsive to God to try to make converts by using force to compel people to submit to God’s ways. If compulsion were the Almighty’s plan, he would immediately force the entire human race to submit to him. The God of love seeks not our domination but our cooperation. God’s way is always to bring about spiritual transformation by wooing people with his love and truth until they  willingly  surrender to his love and wisdom. To quote from Romans 2:4, “God’s kindness leads you toward repentance.” Consider also these Scriptures:   Acts 14:16-17   In the past, he let all nations go their own way. Yet he has not left himself without testimony: He has shown kindness by giving you [pagans] rain from heaven and crops in their seasons; he provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy.   2 Peter 3:9  The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.   2 Peter 3:15  Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him.   All these Scripture reveal that God’s way of bringing rebellious people to himself is through love, kindness and patience. We are to follow God’s lead. In the inspired words of Scripture, we must “overcome evil with good,” (Romans 12:21). As Jesus pointed out, the Holy Lord makes the sun rise on those who are evil and unrighteous. He opens the heavens and waters their land and keeps blessing those who curse him, and doing good to those who grieve him. To be his children we must do likewise (Matthew 5:45). If parts of us act like our enemy, we must take seriously God’s insistence that we love our enemies and “pray for those who persecute you.”   We are to have the same heart as the exalted Son of God, who came not to serve but to serve and to pour out his life for ungodly (Mark 10:45; Philippians 2:5-8).     Do you suppose you would receive God’s approving smile if you heartlessly abandoned a deeply hurting child who was solely your responsibility and you let that little one suffer endlessly, not only refusing to comfort him/her but also preventing anyone else from emotionally supporting the child? Would you be able to stand before your eternal Judge and brazenly excuse your mistreatment by claiming the child is yours and therefore you can treat him/her however you wish? Of course not. Being your own child would merely magnify, not diminish, your responsibility. If this is true for your offspring – someone whose genes are only fifty percent yours – your responsibility would, if anything, be even graver if the child you let languish in needless pain and ignorance is your inner child. To close your heart, defiantly saying, “It’s part of me, so I can do anything I like with it,” is highly offensive to the God to whom we must all one day give account.   You and your alters might share the same body but this fact in no way gives you license to be less than loving towards them, any more than a husband and wife being one flesh (Mark 10:7-8) gives anyone permission to mistreat his wife. On the contrary, sharing the same body increases your responsibility to be kind to your alters, just as being physically one increases a husband’s obligation to be tenderly compassionate towards his partner. In fact, the Bible insists that for a man to ride roughshod over the feelings of the woman he is one with will threaten his relationship with God.   1 Peter 3:7  Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect . . . so that nothing will hinder your prayers.   Scripture gives a powerful example but before mentioning it I must point out that it is  not  saying people should force themselves, or be forced, to do anything they find distasteful. It is referring to something both parties find enjoyable but one of them, solely for spiritual reasons, (nothing to do with past trauma) wants to fast from physical pleasure. In this specific situation, the Bible even goes to the extreme of declaring that if you want to devote yourself to prayer, and the person you are one flesh with wants physical pleasure instead, you must let your partner’s fleshly desires take precedence over your spiritual desires. 1 Corinthians 7:3-5 The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. The wife’s body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband’s body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife. Do not deprive each other except by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again . . .     No matter how much we might hate ourselves, we are stuck with the fact that each of us is made in the image of the God we claim to love. We have already noted James observing how twisted it is to bless God using the same lips that curse someone made in God’s image. Add to this what John says:   1 John 4:20  If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.   1 John 5:1  Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well.   Jesus declared that people “will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken,”  (Matthew 12:36)  and that “anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell,”  (Matthew 5:22) . Again I ask, where is the loophole that allows us to insult ourselves?   “Words from a wise man’s mouth are gracious . . .” says Ecclesiastes 10:12 . Paul added, “Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt . . .”  (Colossians 4:6)  and to the Ephesians he wrote, “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen,”  (Ephesians 4:29) . What gives us the right to reject this when it comes to how we speak to ourselves?    The Lord who gave his very life for you is worthy of our slavish devotion. Nevertheless, everyone who dies to self and lives for Christ benefits immensely because, without it we remain self-obsessed fools who ruin our lives, like junkies focused on their next fix instead of really living. As our Creator and Savior only the good Lord, not us, truly has our best interests at heart. The One who gave his all for us is so passionately and selflessly devoted to our well-being that the smartest thing we could ever do is to obey him relentlessly. Often, however, we are so blinded by self-hatred or infatuated by short-term illusions or tormented by past failures that our view of life gets so murky that to live the best possible, regret-free life we need to abandon our own whims and focus exclusively on pleasing our wonderful Lord.   True Christians have relinquished all pretense of having the right to treat themselves however they wish. Do you not know that your very body is part of Christ himself? asks Paul  (1 Corinthians 6:15) . We “belong to the Lord,”  (1 Corinthians 15:23; Romans 14:8) . In the Bible’s sobering words, “You are not your own; you were bought at a price,”  (1 Corinthians 6:19) .   “For we are God’s workmanship,” says Ephesians 2:10 . Dare we criticize the work of the divine Craftsman?   Through Christ, you are a child of the King of kings. Dare you treat God’s child as dirt?   Of course we should refuse to indulge sinful desires but there is a big difference between that and treating yourself in a way that you would not dare treat someone else’s child, let alone treat divine royalty.    You might know the Scripture, “the joy of the LORD is your strength,” but how familiar are you with the context in which these profound words were uttered?   God’s people had rejected the true God and, despite warning after warning after warning, kept breaking his heart and hurting themselves by falling so deeply into paganism that the only way to shake them out of it was for God’s holy nation to be overrun by enemy soldiers who not only took over their land but captured the people and took many of them as prisoners of war to a foreign country where they languished in defeat and despite for decades. It is noteworthy that this drastic action was so effective that whereas their previous history was besmirched by countless incidents of falling into idolatry, it never happened again. Finally, the captives were released and allowed to return to Jerusalem. They celebrated their first holy feast (that could only be properly held in Jerusalem). During this sacred event, the Scriptures were read and explained to the large crowd. Such conviction fell on them that they wept profusely.   Nehemiah 8:9-12  Then Nehemiah the governor, Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who were instructing the people said to them all, “This day is sacred to the LORD your God. Do not mourn or weep.” For all the people had been weeping as they listened to the words of the Law. Nehemiah said, “Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks, and send some to those who have nothing prepared. This day is sacred to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the LORD is your strength.” The Levites calmed all the people, saying, “Be still, for this is a sacred day. Do not grieve.” Then all the people went away to eat and drink, to send portions of food and to celebrate with great joy, because they now understood the words that had been made known to them.   This tells us two things:   1.   Although we need to recognize the gravity of our sins, it is not acting holy or pleasing to God to keep being miserable and beating ourselves up over our sins. Forgiveness and holiness comes through faith, not by being hard on ourselves.   2.   Reveling in God’s joy strengthens us; staying miserable keeps us weak. If we have fallen because of weakness, the last thing we need is anything that will keep us weak.       The fruit of the Spirit – the very essence of God and product of your union with him – is not criticism or harshness but kindness, gentleness and patience. These qualities should so saturate our lives that they are the way we respond to every situation, including times we dislike ourselves. Just as we must free ourselves from the hypocrisy of the double standard of judging others more harshly than ourselves, so we must rid ourselves of the double standard of slandering ourselves and treating ourselves with a harshness and contempt that we would never treat others with.     Christian Healing   Why God Requires Christians with Multiple Personalities to Focus on Healing   We always suspected God would be concerned about how we treat other people, but many of us used to think that if we were to treat ourselves badly it would somehow be less heart-breaking to him. That logic crumbles, however, when we consider that for God to be less concerned about how you treat yourself would only make sense if, to God, other people were more important than you. Tragically, that might very well be the way you have come to think of yourself but it is not remotely how Almighty God thinks of you.   The Perfect Lord is no hypocrite. He does not ask you to love him with  all  your heart  (Mark 12:30)  unless this is precisely how devoted he is to loving you. As I have explained in greater depth elsewhere, since it is logically impossible to go beyond  all , for God not to be half-hearted but to love you with all his heart (which he does) it is impossible for him to love anyone in the universe more than you. This, as staggering as it seems, makes it impossible for anyone to be more precious, or more important, to the Almighty than you are.   That’s why how you treat yourself matters so much. It is also why it is so important to God that you heal from everything holding you back from truly thriving and reaching your full potential. So for the rest of this webpage we will explore the depth of God’s yearning for you to cooperate with him in healing.   First, we need to crack the fallacy that if your healing is so important to the Almighty then he will bring it about without your cooperation. To expect that, is to expect God to have the heart of an abuser.   As you know, Dissociative Identity Disorder is a reaction to childhood trauma, and almost always that trauma was the result of an abuser’s actions. So you most likely have had bitter, first-hand experience with someone who abused his/her power. For this to keep happening during one’s most impressionable years, predisposes a person to expect that anyone with great power will abuse it. As hard as it is to break out of that mentality, however, you need to do so when it comes to how you think of the God who is not only all-powerful but all-loving. Even the word  love  can be terrifying in the mouth of an abuser but, for God, love means utter selflessness and tenderly treating everyone with the highest respect and kindness.   I hope you don’t find triggering my attempt to ram this home in this brief quote from what I have written elsewhere:   You cannot fervently love someone without aching for that person to love you – especially if you know that person desperately needs you in his/her life. To deeply love someone means you could have everything else in the universe, and yet without that person’s love you would still be heartbroken. To love is to make oneself so vulnerable that even having unlimited power could not help. Omnipotence could easily force someone to obey you. Or it could produce something like a ‘love’ potion, causing a person to be under the illusion of loving you. But genuine love can never be compelled. If it involves force or chemicals or deceit or bribery it is a sham, and can never satisfy your yearning for that person’s love.   There are things that not even omnipotence can achieve. It cannot, for example, produce a square circle. It can easily turn a circle into a two dimensional square, but the instant it has straight sides it is not a circle. Likewise, if someone is forced to act in love, it is not genuine love. Even with unlimited power, there is little anyone could do to induce genuine love in a person, other than be loving and wait for a response.   We would be appalled if a man kidnapped a woman and raped and enslaved her because he claims he loves her, wants her as his wife and is convinced he can make her happy. It would be an immoral abuse of power, regardless of whether he used physical force or threats – in which case she would be conscious of the violation of her rights – or if he used drugs or hypnotism so that she is unaware that what is happening is against her will. Real love respects the desires of the beloved, no matter how much it clashes with the lover’s personal longings, and no matter how certain he is that the person would benefit from a lifelong intimacy with him.   So real love not only wants the best for you, it will not violate your wishes by forcing it upon you. As already mentioned, real love is about cooperation, not domination.   I’ve mentioned elsewhere that, as a Christian, healing should be a higher priority to you than your marriage, your children, your job, your ministry and even your relationship with God. Why? Precisely because each of those other responsibilities are so important, and each of them is profoundly impacted by how harmoniously and effectively your alters pull together. Every aspect of your life and future will suffer if you are disorganized inside, and everything you touch will thrive if you are exquisitely functioning within.   None of us has any good thing we created ourselves:   1 Chronicles 29:11,14   Yours, O LORD, is the greatness . . . for everything in heaven and earth is yours. . . . Everything comes from you, and we have given you only what comes from your hand.   John 3:27    . . . A man can receive only what is given him from heaven.   1 Corinthians 4:7  For who makes you different from anyone else? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?   Everything we have has been entrusted to us by God and, as Jesus so emphatically taught, God holds us responsible for how we develop it. Consider the parable of the man who buried his talent. If you have a moment, it’s worth re-reading Matthew 25:13-30. Matthew 25:13-30 - Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour. Again, it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted his property to them. To one he gave five talents of money, to another two talents, and to another one talent, each according to his ability. Then he went on his journey. . . . But the man who had received the one talent went off, dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money. After a long time the master of those servants returned and settled accounts with them. The man who had received the five talents brought the other five. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with five talents. See, I have gained five more.’ His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’ . . . Then the man who had received the one talent came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed. So I was afraid and went out and hid your talent in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.’ His master replied, ‘You wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed? Well then, you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest. Take the talent from him and give it to the one who has the ten talents. For everyone who has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’   No matter how much we might convince ourselves that we can put our feet up and expect God to do everything for us, Jesus’ powerful teaching demolishes that fallacy and screams that God expects us to put in the effort.   In Jesus’ parable, the servant who failed did not blow his talent on an orgy of self-indulgence. He did not spend a cent of the master’s money on himself, nor misuse it in any way. Additionally, he kept the master’s money safe and returned it the instant the master wanted it. In all these ways this cautious, clean-living man was faithful, trustworthy and honorable. What made him a “wicked, lazy servant,” thrown “into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth,” is that he left undeveloped the potential of what had been given to him.   People with Dissociative Identity Disorder are living on a goldmine. They have within them huge reservoirs of undeveloped potential. It was originally outside their control that they found themselves in this situation but now the issue is whether they will leave that potential buried within them or resolve to do all they can to dig it up and develop it.   Every part of you that you know might be a model of devotion to God and have impeccable moral standards, but what about parts of you that you know nothing of – parts that you could be aware of and help them develop a living relationship with Christ, if only you had bothered?   You might never dream of being sexually unfaithful to your marriage. In fact, sex might repulse you. That does not negate the possibility, however, of there being a part of you that has not only successfully blocked out your revulsion to sex but also has blocked out your awareness of God and commitment to his standards and is actually having multiple affairs while you remain totally oblivious to any of it. No matter how inconceivable this seems to you, I know couples who eventually discovered to their horror and bewilderment that this has been happening for years, until their marriage partner finally uncovered it. Likewise, I know of people who would never contemplate sexually abusing a child, let alone their own children, and yet this is exactly what has happened for years while the moral part of them was asleep or somehow lost awareness of a few moments from time to time. Clearly, this is of stupendous importance to God. I do not wish to alarm you but the stakes are simply too high not to get to thoroughly know every part of you.   What keeps people trapped in addictions that destroy not only their own lives but that of their loved ones (such as alcoholism or the financial ruin of a gambling addiction) are the same two things that cause people to keep letting Dissociative Identity Disorder devastate their lives and loved ones.   The first of these things is living in denial – refusing to admit to oneself that one has a serious problem. This grave mistake stymies everything God longs to achieve in and through us. Our entire spiritual well-being hinges on facing head-on problems in our lives. The God of truth never honors denial:   Proverbs 28:13  He who conceals [or covers] his sins does not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy.   Psalms 32:3-6  When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. . . . Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity . . . and you forgave the guilt of my sin. Therefore let everyone who is godly pray to you while you may be found; surely when the mighty waters rise, they will not reach him.   Psalms 139:23   Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.   James 5:16  Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. . . .   This divine principle extends beyond sin:   Psalms 26:2  Test me, O LORD, and try me, examine my heart and my mind.   Deuteronomy 8:2  Remember how the LORD your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart . . .   You are not to ignore issues but “in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God,”  (Philippians 4:6) . God is truth, and this is what he honors. More than once, Jesus asked sick people what they wanted before healing them. He required them to admit their need.   Those who blast through the roadblock of denial, face only one more major obstacle: being unwilling to pay the temporary but considerable cost of a lifestyle change. What would you think of an alcoholic who terrorizes his family, beating them up every time he comes home drunk, and then excuses his atrocious behavior by saying, “If God wanted me to change, he’d give me an instant and effortless deliverance from alcohol”? Would our gracious Lord be impressed by such an attitude?   Similarly, though torturously long and painful, healing from Dissociative Identity Disorder is supremely important spiritually. Occasionally, the Almighty gives a painless, effortless deliverance from a life-controlling problem but I carefully explain in a link at the end of this webpage why it is rare and why it is actually in our best interest for our struggle to be long and hard. The very battle builds Christlikeness into our lives in a way that miracles can never achieve.   Whereas my writings usually frolic in the wonderful benefits of healing, the sober fact is that genuine followers of Jesus have a serious spiritual obligation to do everything it takes to determine whether they have Dissociative Identity Disorder. And when confirmed, God requires them to face this reality, resist doubt and give healing top priority, no matter how much prolonged, painful effort this demands.   If we neglect healing we Christians will be held divinely accountable. I would prefer to bypass this side of the truth but, as loath as I am to mention it, I feel obligated before God to inform of the dire consequences for those tempted to let healing slip in their priorities. We cannot change past mistakes but now that we know better we can receive divine forgiveness and stop repeating those mistakes. The dilemma is that the very truths that will spur some of us to desperately needed breakthroughs and achievement could crush some who are already doing their utmost.   In  Accountability   I provide still more Scriptures about God holding Christians accountable for how much we avail ourselves of healing opportunities and so on, but if you are currently highly motivated to endure the hard, painful slog that healing demands, you have no need of it. Visit it only if your enthusiasm droops.   It is obvious that to hate someone God loves is to put oneself on a collision course with God. So consider the implications of these three words: God loves you.   We have seen that to think it acceptable to treat yourself worse than you would treat a stranger is as appalling as mistreating someone and trying to excuse your offense by saying it is your child or the person with whom you are physically one.   No matter how much you try to drown it, the truth keeps bobbing up again: the way you treat yourself matters immensely because you matter immensely to the most important Person in the cosmos. You might find that as believable as a bikini-clad talking elephant but if the eternal Son of God gave his life for you, it means the Almighty has invested his everything in you. There is no escaping the fact that this makes you stupendously important to him.   The Infallible One declares you lovable. Dare you sneer at his assessment? The Holy One forgives and pronounces you clean. Dare you arrogantly accuse him of not being holy enough and insist, by the way you think of yourself, that his impeccable standards are too low?   Despite dying to self being divinely required and ultimately in our best interest and richly rewarding, the cold truth is that we initially find it painful. Since love is the very heart of God, a significant part of denying ourselves and yielding to God is loving and forgiving as God does. Obviously, this poses little problem with people we like and respect. Or, as Jesus put it, “Even ‘sinners’ love those who love them,”  (Luke 6:32) . The make-or-break challenge is having a Christlike attitude towards those we resent and despise and blame. Your personal nemesis – the one who stands between you and your willingness to obey God and be Christlike – probably won’t be Hitler or Stalin, but someone who has personally impacted your life. It is the person you are most sorely tempted not to love but instead vent your wrath on as the scapegoat for something significant that has gone wrong in your life. I use the word  scapegoat  with care. Like  Judas , it is actually a term that has entered our language via the Bible. The scapegoat is a key animal used on the Day of Atonement  (Leviticus 16:5-10;20-22)  and it points to Jesus, who has literally offered himself as your scapegoat – the innocent One who took upon himself all the blame for your bungles and catastrophes and has removed your sins from you. Whether it be our own failings or other people’s, and whether it be deliberate evil or unintentional blunders, human failings wreak havoc in our lives. Will we spurn the Holy One’s sacrifice and, instead of accepting what he did as our scapegoat, substitute the satisfaction it gives us to treat the person we most hate as our scapegoat for things that have messed up our lives? Whether the sinner we make our scapegoat is ourselves or someone else, makes no difference to the fact that to let someone other than our sinless Savior take the blame, is to deny the adequacy of Jesus’ atonement. Though we do not intend it as such, it ends up being the ultimate insult to our crucified Lord and a rejection of what he has done for us. As sin is the opposite of loving God, so is hating oneself.   The One who bore our punishment as he hung on the cross dredged up his last fragment of strength to gasp with his dying breath, “It is finished!” Will we pronounce him a liar? Dare, by the way we continue to treat ourselves as blameworthy, we keep insisting he is wrong? Dare we accuse him of not suffering enough for us? Was the torment he suffered for us so ‘little’ that we must keep putting ourselves down to make up for his ‘failure’ to bear in his body, soul and spirit the full consequences of our foul-ups?   Our destiny teeters on whether we will trust the enormity of what Almighty God achieved by entering the human race and the Lord of Glory suffering the ultimate disgrace for the sins of the world. Will we rest in what the King of the universe achieved on the cross as sufficient to resolve all the blame issues for everything that has devastated us, or will we let doubt drive us to abandon faith in Jesus and attempt to take matters into our own hands? Will we accept the enormity of what Christ did, or scorn it as inadequate? We have been forgiven, restored and exalted by the One who on our behalf was tortured to death, rose to life again and triumphantly ascended to heaven’s throne. For us, the terrifyingly righteous wrath of the Almighty was poured out on the Lord of Glory instead of us, but to continue to get mad at ourselves is to defiantly refuse to acknowledge that what he did was enough.   If your life has been riddled with putdowns, I not only feel for you, I admire you. For you to still be staggering on is heroic. I would be devastated if my webpage were to end up making you hate yourself for hating yourself. On the contrary, my longing is to inspire you to see yourself through God’s loving eyes – through the rose-tinted window of the Forgiving Lord who pronounces you not guilty and sees you as his darling child. To him, you are irreplaceable and infinitely valuable. Instead of being at cross purposes with all of heaven, join forces with the divine by treating yourself with the tenderness and patience and graciousness of God. Cooperate with the Almighty in fulfilling his beautiful plans for you by doing all it takes to heal. To truly believe that the good Lord is not like those who mistreated you, however, is likely to be quite a battle. To help you with this I have written the following webpages. In addition, however, I have many more pages specifically to help you heal from Dissociative Identity Disorder.   Related Pages Living in Denial: A Christian Perspective To God, You Are Special! Why, in God’s Eyes, You are Irreplaceable   God Loves You means You Are God’s Favorite! Forgiving Yourself (And keep following the first link at the end of the text for as many pages as it takes to be convinced.) How to Change Your Self-Image & Boost Self-Esteem Life’s Mysteries Explained (The benefits of deliverance from sin being difficult.)

I’ve received the following heart-warming e-mail. After a name change or two to preserve anonymity, the writer is delighted to share his intriguing story with you. Grantley Morris NetBurst.Net I would like to express my gratitude for what your website has done for me in the past few weeks. My name is Peter, and I am the host of my “republic,” you might call it. I have a protector alter, Amelia. For the last four years, we have hated each other more than I ever imagined anyone being emotionally capable of. I grew up in a household that was rather rough, and was always told that men who showed their feelings were weaklings, and that if I ever did, no one would ever want to be my friend, much less even spend time with me at all. Growing up, I began to constantly find myself in abusive relationships because, theoretically, people that hated or used you seemed better than no one caring for your existence. Everything began to reach its pinnacle when my fiancée left. Before leaving, she decided to leave me with all the reasons why she despised me. I couldn’t believe it. The one person I had felt it was okay to love, and trust, was completely sickened by me. Amelia was completely exhausted by this point, and came forth with all the viciousness of a snarling pit-bull terrier; shouting my darkest thoughts as loud as she possibly could. Finding myself lying in glass, surrounded by cabinet doors torn off the walls and broken things everywhere in the house, I was understandably scared. My head was screaming in a voice that was not my own, and I had no idea what had happened to my house. Not knowing anything about D.I.D., I tried therapists and got every answer under the sun from “attention seeker” to “psychotic breaks”. After weeks of desperately trying to ignore this terrifying presence in my head, I finally broke and tried to speak with my mother in privacy. All the while, Amelia was telling me how no one could ever be trusted. It was a terrible mistake. My mother immediately told my father, and they had me committed to a home. “We can’t have you acting like this in public. Come home when you start acting like an adult.” Amelia has never been one to waste a good opportunity, and spent the duration of our stay in the home explaining why this validated her feelings about humanity. After a week of constant drugging (I was apparently put on suicide watch) and Amelia’s bitterness and pain as my only companion, I began to believe her. To this day, I still feel guilt about some of the things I did after being released. I met a now very close friend of mine, Jacob, who was disturbed by my behavior and vowed to help me return to God, if I ever wished to do so. I did just about everything but spit in his face, but he continued. Eventually the dam broke, and I ended up standing in the living room at 3 AM, crying my eyes out and confessing how disgusted I was with myself. I didn’t see how God could ever forgive me; much less care. Nevertheless, Jacob convinced me to try returning to the faith. I tried for a month or so, always sliding back into the same terrible habits of manipulating people for my own ends. Amelia and I were still enemies, and I was convinced she was some sort of horrible demonic presence. I adamantly refused to tell Jacob about her, as it would be showing weakness and I could not bear to lose my last friend. Things eventually reached the point of me lying in my bathtub with a pistol in my mouth, not wanting to go back to the home, and listening to Amelia’s jeering to “just hurry up and do it.” I just wanted to be free from her. It was a very dark time. Eventually, I had myself voluntarily admitted to a halfway house, where I met a wonderful older lady named Cathy. She had alters as well, whom she called “helpers”. I’d never met anyone before who shared my burden, and even Amelia seemed to quieten down when I spoke to Cathy. She recommended your website as a secondary to the therapy, and the things I read changed everything I thought about Multiple Personality Disorder. All of a sudden I realized I wasn’t insane, and there were other people out there who were like me. I will never forget the day I first tried to love my alter. I decided I would finally try to put some of your techniques into practice. So I focused on the doorway to Amelia. The moment I walked in, I could feel that suffocating bitterness twist around me like poisonous gas. Like an infected wound, Amelia had only gotten worse as she was continually abused and hated by me, the person she was created to protect. This time, however, I spoke to her with kindness and a soft tone. I told her I was sorry and that I couldn’t even begin to fathom how much she’d done for me, and how much I loved her. She refused to believe me at first; readying herself for another war with me. I simply walked up to her, put my arms around her and hugged her; continuing to tell her how we were going to be okay now, that I loved her and we were going to make it. Amelia – The Black Fox, as I had taken to calling her – completely broke character and started sobbing; begging me to forgive her for all the things she had said. Since then, things have never been more different between us. People tell me I seem so much happier and more confident. My grades are stellar, and I am now teaching a D.I.D. help class at the halfway house Cathy lives in. Amelia is cheerful, playful and is actually the motivator for us now; encouraging me and supporting me whenever I slip. She’s always telling me about the things she sees, and this new perspective on the world seems to make everything so much brighter. I want to thank you so much for making this website, and I pray that God bless you and keep you. I hope you continue for many happy years in leading people like me into the glorious light of heaven. Sincere regards, Peter and Amelia Related Pages The Spiritual & Practical Reasons Why One Must Love One’s Alters I Hate My Alters Bad, Mean Alters