Tag Archives: hurt

Where Everybody Knows Your Name

When I think back to the time in my life when I was hurting inside deeply, I think back to what I did, where I went who I hung out with. I was reeling from a wife who left me for another man, a business that was failing and the possibility of having to file bankruptcy. Instead of finding my strength and help in the church, I turned away. I was ashamed of everything that was happening in my life and I didn’t want to admit to those who knew me what was going on. I was embarrassed at what was happening so I disappeared.

I found myself in a bar each night trying to numb the pain. I found new friends who wouldn’t know who I was and could accept me for who I was just forced to become. People from the church tried to reach out, but I ignored them because now I was floating further from the person I was supposed to be. After a while the calls slowed from the church and they picked up from my bar friends. I sat in the bar each night feeling sorry for myself and for who I was becoming.

There was a plaque on the wall behind the bar that read, “In times of trouble, friends are recognized.” I remembered thinking, these are my real friends. They’re the ones who are here during my time of trouble. I blamed the church for not helping me when I’m the one who left. I’m the one who didn’t return the calls of the few who did try to reach out. I felt like I had been abandoned by the church and embraced by the people in the bar, but I wasn’t being me. I was being the person who was letting my circumstances define me.

I knew life there was hallow and would be temporary, but I enjoyed the anonymity and lack of expectations. The while time, I knew that wasn’t who I was, however I was changing slowly into that person without realizing it. One afternoon, a co-workers husband asked me, “When was the last time you were in church?” I let him know it had been a while. He looked me in the eye and said, “Boy, you need to be where people really love you and can help you. Your church doesn’t care what’s happened. They will love you anyway. You need to be around them so they can help nurse you back to health.”

For those of you who are in the position I was in, my church did accept me back. They loved me no matter what. The fears that people would talk about me or reject me were unfounded. Those thoughts were used to keep me away from where I needed to be. The truth is that only those who knew the real me had the ability to truly love me. They are the ones who had the power to bring healing. If you’re tired of running, hiding and pretending to be someone you’re not, it’s time to go back to church for healing.

For those of you in the church, when you see those who have left come back, they need your love and acceptance more than you know. They need your unconditional love to nurse them through the pain. Be like the father in the parable of the Prodigal Son. Instead of asking where they’ve been or what they’ve done, open your arms, run to them, wrap them in love and make them feel welcome. It’s harder than you think to walk back through those doors and face people you think you’ve disappointed. Don’t make it more difficult on them by shunning them or ignoring them. They need a friend, not a judge.

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A Life In Limbo

I have a friend who recently mentioned that they were struggling with all the outside forces in their life. All of their external circumstances seemed bent on crushing them. They didn’t want to give up or go back to a past that’s gone, but didn’t really know how to move forward either. They were stuck in this limbo of life with no good alternatives. It’s a scary place to be when today’s problems are so consuming that you can’t see a future for yourself. It’s hard to know where to go or what to do when you don’t know which way is forward. I can only share some of the things that helped me.

The first advice I give is to fill yourself with God’s Word. When the outside forces are greater than what’s in you, you’ve got to put something more powerful in you. Greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world. The way to get more of God in your life is to spend time in His word. You have to make it a priority to read it. Mark Batterson says, “Reading is how you get through the Bible. Meditating is the way to get the Bible through you.” You’re not only going to have to read it, you’re going to have to think about it, chew it up and talk through it in order for it to fully strengthen you.

The second advice I give is to pray. God is not intimidated by your honesty in how you feel. In fact, I think it’s refreshing to Him when we are honest with our struggles, fears and thoughts. He gets enough surface level prayers every day. The ones where we cry out in desperation get His attention. The ones where we seek Him honestly draw Him in. The ones where we admit we can’t do it on our own cause Him to rush to our side. God knows we can’t make it through storms on our own. We weren’t created to. They’re meant to cause us to draw on His strength instead of being stubborn and trying to stand on our own. Prayer is how we communicate that need for God.

The next piece of advice I give is to surround yourself with other believers, especially those who know you and love you. Yes, some of your circumstances may be embarrassing, but trusting your family of God is what you need. Their prayers will be more passionate because they have a relationship with you. They won’t forget to lift you up in prayer. They’ll follow up with you and check on you. They’ll be that safety net you need in case you fall. They’re not there to condemn you. They’re there to help you. God placed them in your life to be a support. Let them be that for you.

If life has you in limbo or is pushing you down to see how low you can go, doing these three things will help you. If you’re life is going great and the sun is shining, these three things will help you. We never outgrow our need for God or to have His strength in our lives. We all need the inner strength that comes from a relationship with God. If we don’t need it to keep us from getting crushed, we need it so we can help someone else who is getting crushed. If you’re not in limbo right now, look for someone who is. They need your help more than you know.

What advice do you give to someone like I described?

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Free From Shame

It’s Free Friday! What are you going to be free from today? The choice is yours to let it go. To celebrate Free Friday, I’m giving away a free copy of “The Shack: Reflections for Every Day of the Year” by William Paul Young. Keep reading to find out how.

Shame is defined by dictionary.com as “the painful feeling arising from the consciousness of something dishonorable, improper, ridiculous, etc., done by oneself or another.” There’s not a single person who ever lived, besides Jesus, who didn’t do one of those things. The problem with shame is that it can imprison us and keep us from moving forward even after we’ve been forgiven. It can dominate our thoughts and make us feel worthless. The sad part is that we don’t just have to do the action ourselves. Sometimes what someone else does to us can make us feel shame too.

If we’re not careful we can end up in a prison of shame through no fault of our own. An action that was done to us by someone we trusted can create those feelings of worthlessness, pain and embarrassment. If we’re not careful, those feelings of shame can turn into bitterness. Bitterness can then turn into hatred. Hatred can keep us from forgiving. If we can’t forgive even the worst offenses done to us, we ourselves can’t be forgiven by God. We have to learn to forgive the ones who have brought shame on us. When we forgive them, we release ourselves from the mental bondage we were held in.

I’m not saying the pain will go away. I still feel the pain years later, but I’m not held in a prison of hatred and shame anymore. Instead of being in bondage, I use that pain to speak to others who have been shamed by someone else. It is possible to forgive the unforgivable. It is possible to move forward after you’ve been seriously wronged. I know it’s a tough mental battle to get rid of the feelings of shame and to be able to find forgiveness for them and yourself. It’s not something that happens overnight. It’s a process that takes time, but it starts with one choice, forgiveness, and only you can make that choice.

It took me years to get to that point. I held on to the pain and those thoughts weighed me down. They kept me from reaching my potential. They kept me from an intimate relationship with God. They affected every other relationship I had. Those thoughts are so harmful and are designed to isolate you from the people who do love you and truly care for you. You must make the choice to release yourself from something you’ve done or someone else for what they’ve done if you truly want to get rid of shame. You must find a way to forgive them if you want God to forgive you. Today, make the choice to start down the road of being free from shame.

If you’d like to win “The Shack: Reflections for Every Day of the Year” by William Paul Young which is collection of highlights from the book “The Shack”, you have three ways to enter today. The first way you can get your name in the drawing is by signing up to receive Devotions by Chris in your email. The second way is to go to www.facebook.com/devotionsbychris and like my page. The third way you can enter is by going to that Facebook page and liking one of today’s statuses. Anyone who does any of those three things today, December 7, 2013, will be entered. I’ll draw tomorrow morning and announce the winner on my Facebook page. If you win, send me a private message with the address you’d like the book shipped to.

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Opening Closed Curtains

When my first wife left me, I went into a deep depression. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat. I didn’t want to do anything. I just wanted to lay down and not have to worry about getting up. I was ready to quit everything: my business, my friendships, my obligations and my life. I couldn’t find the strength I needed to face each new day. I couldn’t stand to see the sun come up and remind me that another day had begun in this new life. I bought thick curtains so I could block the light from coming in.

Those curtains were very symbolic of what I was trying to do to everything else in my life. I wanted to block out everything good around me. Other’s happiness just made me more miserable. In fact, it made me bitter and angry. I didn’t want to see others who were happily married or in a fulfilling relationship. If I knew someone in my life like that, I closed the curtains on them. If someone was happy and bubbly, I shut the curtains on them. If someone tried to reach out to me to cheer me up, I slammed them shut on them.

Slowly I began to isolate myself from the positive things in my life. My world grew darker and darker. My brother took me to a doctor who put me on anti-depressants. The thought that I had to take a pill to cope with things made me upset. All they did to me were to numb the pain I was feeling. I felt like a zombie as I went through the motions of life. I still wanted the curtains shut and worked at pushing others away. Thank God I had friends and family who wouldn’t let me keep the curtains closed.

Every time I shut the curtains, they would open them. Every time I pushed away, they came closer. One friend would come to my house each morning at 9:30, knock on my door and tell me to get up because people needed me. Day after day she would knock on my door and throw the curtains of my life open. If I didn’t show up to work soon after that, she’d call and throw them open again. Soon I began to get up on my own. I began to find purpose in my life.

Just because the person who was supposed to love me through thick and thin, through sickness and health, through riches and poverty until death had rejected me it didn’t mean that others had. Because she didn’t need me in her life, it didn’t mean that others didn’t. As I began to slowly open the curtains and to allow light back into my life, I quit taking the medicine with my doctor’s approval. Each day, I opened the curtains a little more, even when I didn’t want to. I had to force myself to get back to the person I knew I could be. I had to quit pushing everyone away. It was a long, hard road, but one that was worth struggling down.

I wonder what part of this story speaks to you. Where are you today? Are you the one holed up in your world with the curtains closed trying to keep the light out? Are you the one who just wants to quit at everything and let the world pass you by? Have you found yourself letting the light in a little at a time? Are you a friend who has been pushed away by someone you love or care about? Or are you the friend who keeps knocking and opening the curtains for those who close them? I think we find ourselves in one of these places at some point.

If you are in a deep depression, seek help from your doctor, church, family and friends. It’s not weak to admit you need help. In fact, it’s one of the strongest things you can do. If you know someone struggling, don’t let them push you away. Keep knocking on their door. Don’t have thin skin. They need you more than you know. You can’t quit on them even if they’ve quit on you and everything else. Pray for them. Pray that you will have wisdom and favor when trying to reach them. Pray that God will show you how to open their curtains and let His light in.

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Learning From Others

I want to start off today by saying thank you to my friends who wrote guest posts for me this week while I took some time to disconnect, relax and refresh. I hope you enjoyed reading their work. All of them have spent time in the darkest of valleys. Some of them wrote to you this week from the valley. They are in that place where they haven’t seen the sun from the side or top of a mountain in their lives for months. Yet they still cling to hope in the One who will guide them through.

I found inspiration in each of their works. Nathan pointed out that both good times and difficult times are temporary. When we are in a season of either, we tend to feel like they’ll last forever. We think either, “I don’t ever want to give up this mountain top experience” or “Will I ever see the sun again in my life?” We have to learn that a well balanced life means we’re going to have times of joy and pain in our lives. Ecclesiastes 3:1 tells us, “To everything there is a time and a season for everything under heaven.”

Shelly then pointed out that the direct route is not always God’s route. He likes detours and He has a purpose for them. When I talk to young people, I let them know that it’s great to make plans for your life, but be prepared for detours. God may have called you to do something or to go to a certain place, but don’t expect His route to be the same as yours. You’ll still end up where He told you He’d take you, but He needs to take you through detours in order to get you ready for the future He’s planned for you. By the way, detours make the best stories!

Next Mike reminded me to be brave enough to give correction to others when needed and humble enough to accept it when I need it. I used to work with a lady who would say, “God only had one perfect son and you’re not it!” I laugh when I think about it, but thank God she had the courage to correct me when I needed it. I don’t like being the one giving it or receiving it, but I know that both are a necessary part of being a Christian. Proverbs 27:17 says, “As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.” Those clashes hurt and make a lot of noise, but in the end, we’re better for it.

Finally, my friend Bill reminded us that when we ask God, “Why me” in a trial, it reveals how we view Him. Either we think we don’t deserve it and that He should have given this burden to one of the other billions of people on the planet or that He has a purpose in our trials and wants us to learn something. We all eventually ask Him that question when the trial seems to have no end. The difference is our motive in asking it. Job even broke down and asked God with the wrong motive. Check out Job 38 to see God’s reply. It’s particularly convicting to me in the Message.

I hope that each of you gained new perspective from people that I follow and read. Take the time today to check out their other works as well as to say a prayer for them. Each of them could use a touch from God today in their situations. I’ve found that even when I’m going through the darkest of nights, someone else always has it worse than I do and it’s still my responsibility to lift others up in prayer even when I need it too. That said, I’ll be lifting you up in prayer today because God knows what you need better than I do.

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Fixing Your Life

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As I was pulling out of the parking lot at work yesterday, I felt God tell me to go the opposite direction that I should have. So I turned left instead of right. About a block away I saw a young lady trying to change her tire. I pulled up beside her and asked if she needed help. She was clearly frustrated and said, “At this point, I don’t think I can turn down help.” She had been trying to place the jack under the car in order to raise it up. She had it in position, but was having trouble turning the knob that lifted the jack.

I looked over at the styrofoam block that contained her jack and noticed there was an empty hole where the jack bar was supposed to be. I asked her where that was, but she didn’t know. I tried once or twice turning the knob by hand, but didn’t have the required strength to do it. I went to my car, got the jack out of it, slid it under her car and quickly raised it. In no time her spare was on and we were both able to head out. Having the right tool made all the difference.

I started thinking that’s how life is. When we get stranded on the side of life’s road broken down, we get frustrated trying to fix it without the right tools. We don’t try to flag anyone down to help us until we’re at the end of our rope. This lady had tried to call family members, but no one answered when she called. She didn’t know what else to do, but to keep trying even though it didn’t make sense. In the end, she was tired, worn out, upset and ready to give up.

I’ve been there in life. I lacked the strength and tools to make the changes necessary to get my life back on the road and moving again. I laid down in my living room and cried out to God, “I can’t do it! I don’t know how!” He met me there and said, “Finally.” I thought it was a strange response. He said, “Finally you’ve given up trying to do this in your own strength. Now try doing it in my strength. My strength is made perfect in your weakness.” I had to come to the realization that we weren’t made to handle all the troubles and cares of this life on our own. He told us over and over in His Word to cast our cares and burdens on Him, but we don’t get it.

He has the tools necessary to fix your life when you don’t. He has the strength needed to pick you up when you don’t. He has always given us the choice to continue struggling on our own or to rely on His strength. It’s just a matter of when each one of us makes the realization for ourselves that we need Him to help us. It took a while for me to learn how to walk in His strength. I’m still learning, but I’m getting better at calling out to Him sooner for help. What will it take to get you to the point where you can’t turn down His help?

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Out Of The Hole

It’s hard for me to believe that next week I will be celebrating the 10th anniversary of the lowest point of my life. I know it seems odd to celebrate such an event, but for me, it was a turning point in my life. It was the moment when I refused to go any lower than I was and made the decision that I would claw my way out of the hole that I was in no matter how much effort it took and no matter how long it took. I’m still clawing my way out of that hole, but now I’m starting to see daylight.

Ten years ago, there was no light at the end of the tunnel. There was no hope of ever recovering from what I had been through. I was hurt, embarrassed and alone. Sure I had a few friends around me, but no one truly knew the depth of my pain or what I was struggling with. I made a conscious effort to never think about that time in my life. I felt that if I could pretend it was a bad dream, the pain would go away. I thought that if I never spoke of it again, then I could put it behind me.

I moved on with my life pretending that I hadn’t gone through a painful divorce, filed for bankruptcy, lost my business or ran away from those who cared most about me. I figured that the best way out was to start my life over fresh and new as if none of it never happened. The problem was it did happen. Underneath everything I was still a mess inside. I was still hurt to the core. I was mad at God for letting me walk through that. I was mad at others thinking my failures were somehow their fault. It all boiled down to bad decision making by me.

Once I was able to take responsibility for the things that happened, I began to move forward. It’s not easy to look in the mirror when you know the pain inside is caused by the person looking back at you. I know other people played roles in delivering the punches that knocked me down, but I made the decisions that put them there and put myself in that position. I left myself open for the gut shots that took the wind out of my desire to live or move on.

I hid the pain for over seven years as I moved on with life. It was then that God spoke to me through Dave Roever that I needed to expose the wounds and face them head on. Since that time, I have begun to share my story being open and honest about what happened. I have found healing for the wounds that were so deep. I still feel the pain like I did every time I open them up, but I know that through my wounds others can find help, hope and healing for theirs.

I don’t know what you’re facing today, but I know what it’s like to hit rock bottom and feel like there’s no way out. I know what it’s like to think that there’s only one way out of the pain and anger. I can tell you that there is another way out. I found it. It was through forgiving myself and others who hurt me. It was in finding forgiveness through Jesus for the unthinkable wrongs I’d committed. It was over the course of years, hard work, dedication and never giving up. If I can make it out of that hole, you can too.

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A Church Full of Hypocrites

Sometimes I think we all forget that the church is made up by people like you and me. It’s full of imperfect people who, despite being forgiven of their past, still struggle to escape it. There are people who go, not because they are Christians, but because they think it’s good to go. There are people who go only because they want their children to be exposed to it. There are people who go in order to find absolution for something they’ve done that they can’t forgive themselves of.

There is no one perfect in any church. Not the pastor, preacher, priest, rabbi or person sitting next to you in the pew. Somehow, we expect them to be because they are Christians. We expect them to always say the right things, do the right things and to drop everything to pay attention to us. When that doesn’t happen, we label them hypocrites. We say the church is full of people who are fake. Yet, we don’t go look in the mirror and hold ourselves to that same perfect standard.

If the church was truly full of perfect people, why would anyone want to go there? I’m glad the church has hypocrites, liars and cheaters in it. That means that there are people there who know they don’t have it all together, but they know the place where they can go to get help. They recognize they don’t have all the answers so they go to the place where they can find some of the answers to their questions. The person up front doesn’t have all the answers either. They’ve just chosen to be an imperfect person who has submitted to being the one whom God could speak through.

So many of us have left churches or church all together because we’ve held an imperfect person to a perfect standard. It’s a standard that not even we ourselves could ever live up to. I’ve been on churches all over the world and I’ve yet to meet a person in one of them who ever claimed to be perfect or had the ability to always say the right thing. I’ve learned to cut people a lot of slack for things they have said or done that have offended me because I need that same grace from them. I say and do things that offend others too because I’m not perfect. The fact that I go to church doesn’t somehow prevent me from doing that.

This Sunday is “Back to Church Sunday”. If you’ve ever left the church because you were offended or held an imperfect person to a perfect standard just because they were a Christian, I want to invite you to go back this weekend with a different set of lenses on. Go in with eyes that recognize the people in there are just like you. They don’t have it all figured out, they might be hypocrites, they might be liars, but know that they’re there in order to change from those ways. Put aside your pride and offer them the same grace you want them to offer you.

I look forward to seeing you in church this Sunday. If you’re looking for someone who is perfect, you won’t find them. But if you’re looking for a friendly face on an imperfect person, I’ll save you a seat next to me. I hope that you’ll give church a second chance this weekend.

Click here for a short video that I saw earlier this week about “Back to Church Sunday” that I think you’ll like.

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Helping The Hurting

One of my prayers each day is that God would allow me to be His hands and feet to someone else. I had the opportunity to do that last week on the flight home. There was a man beside me on the plane that was clearly anxious. When the crew began their pre-launch emergency speech, he looked at them intently. A few minutes into it, he looked at me and said, “I don’t understand. I don’t speak English.” He indicated he spoke Spanish, so I translated for him.

In flight, I asked where he was headed. He said he was going home to Mexico. I then asked if he knew how to navigate the Houston airport to get to his next flight. His anxiousness turned quickly into worry. I offered to walk him to his connecting flight. As we walked through the maze of corridors, took the tram to the other terminal and navigated our way to his gate, he stopped and said, “I would have never found this without you. There were too many barriers in my way.”

I wonder how many people are on the pew beside us each Sunday who need help navigating this life. I wonder how many times they walk through the corridors of our church, through the maze of our services and classes and then walk out confused and lost. How many times have I gone to service just to sit in my seat, hear the message and then head out the door without helping someone? Too many I’m sure.

There are people placed in our path each day who don’t speak the language of the kingdom. They’re lost and anxious not knowing where to go for help. They don’t know how to navigate the troubles this life brings or who to turn to for help. We see them, but don’t take the time out of our day to help them because we’ve got other things to do. We pass on the other side like the priest in the parable of the good Samaritan. We look the other way and pretend not to see so it doesn’t cost us anything.

I love that my pastor says, “Our church isn’t a museum for the saints, but a hospital for the hurting.” If it is a hospital, we are the nurses and doctors who have the remedy. We are the ones with the prescription for pain. We shouldn’t pretend we have it all together. We need to be honest and let them know we’ve been where they are. We were once confused in this world, lost without hope, disease ridden with sin and were brought to life. There isn’t one of us who are perfect so we shouldn’t pretend to be. It’s in our imperfections that we’re able to empathize and help them.

Who has God placed in your path lately? Who sits on your pew each week that you ignore? Don’t worry about trying to be perfect or to say the right thing. Do the right thing and say hello. Ask how they are really doing. If it’s beyond your ability to help, get someone else involved who can help. Introduce them to others. Help them navigate the twists and turns of this life. You never know what an impact you can have on someone else just by being you. When the man and I parted ways, he said, “I believe God put you in my path today.” Whose path has God put you in today?

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Delayed

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When you travel as much as I do, you’re bound to have days like I had yesterday. I left Mobile, AL early to get to New Orleans, LA for a noon flight. When it was time to board the plane, they said there was a short delay. Twenty minutes later, the incoming flight landed and deplaned. As soon as the announcer said we had to wait due to weather, the pilot walked up and said to let us board. Once we were on board, plans changed. The weather got bad again in Atlanta, GA where we were heading. We had a 45 minute delay on the plane now.

When the 45 minute delay was up, they came on and said it would be longer. People, like me, started to wonder about our connecting flights. The flight attendant got on the intercom and addressed our concerns. Not only were flights not being let into Atlanta, flights weren’t being let out either. So most of us should make our connections. When we finally got to Atlanta, the airport was crazy. Crowds of people were packed around each gate. People were frantically running. People were on their phones explaining to others what was happening. Above all, they were upset.

Aside from getting to my intended destination several hours later than I planned, there were no real hiccups. It looked like most of us were in the same boat. We were going to get to our destination, just not at the time we had hoped for or anticipated. I’ve learned (am learning!) not to get worked up when things don’t happen according to my time table. God is in control and this is a reminder of that.

If God had intended for me to get to my destination at the time I had planned and prepared for, He would have made a way. Who knows what all is going on behind the scenes that I can’t see? God could cause a delay to make sure I crossed paths with someone, open a door of communication to share His love with someone that wouldn’t have been there otherwise or to save a life from a disaster that could have occurred. The truth is, we may never know why we are delayed by traffic, weather or whatever so there’s no sense in getting upset and angry over something out of our control.

Delays aren’t a surprise to God. He knew when I got up yesterday what time I would arrive at my destination. The delay was built into His plan for my life. Getting upset and angry over it could put me on the opposite side of the argument from God. That’s not where I want to be. I’m sure that’s not where you want to be either. Learning to trust God through delays is something we all have room to improve on. Trusting Him when His answers are delayed takes even more faith.

How do you respond when you are delayed? Is there room for improvement? How do you react when the “deadline” passes and God hasn’t answered yet? Do you feel angry? Disappointed? Hurt? We may not understand now why we are delayed or why God delays in answering us, but we can trust in the fact that He is in control and we are not. He knows what is best for us even when we can’t see it. Trust Him through your delays and watch your faith grow. You’ll be a happier person because of it.

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