Do you truly love me by Do You Truly Love Me

Do You Truly Love Me? Enhancing Good Marriages, Healing Wounded Marriages, Restoring Shattered Marriages - by Tom Fonseca DoYouTrulyLoveMe.com

Do You Truly Love Me

Table of Contents Preface .......................................................................................................................................................... 2 Forward ......................................................................................................................................................... 3 Game Changers ......................................................................................................................................... 4 Love God - Love One Another – We are unaware that we probably don’t truly love God & we need to want to be made aware of how little we trust or love God. ........................................................................ 9 Repentance-Victory Over Temptation – We always have a very good reason why we do what we do. We are often unaware that we need to change. .............................................................................................. 20 Called by Jesus To Be a Disciple - What are the external things we think that will bring us happiness? Why is being God’s child not enough?........................................................................................................ 33 Don't waste the Pain – Don’t ask why; Instead ask what is the lesson God wants me to learn? Learn from the consequences. ....................................................................................................................................... 51 Speak Life - Transformation from the Inside Out – We see how selfish we are & how defensive & argumentative we are. ............................................................................................................................... 61 Hurt People Hurt People – Our story that we tell ourselves sees pain & hurt as crippling & in God’s story it is the best part of us ...................................................................................................................... 73 Faith – Can we move forward when we don’t understand or don’t see or “get it”. ............................... 88 Communication Problems – The biggest communication problem we have is the one we have with ourselves ..................................................................................................................................................... 95 Seeing the Good, Seeing Hope – We see with a new eyes & a renewed mind & transformed being .. 107 Game Changers ..................................................................................................................................... 112

Do You Truly Love Me

Preface The apostle Paul was a tentmaker the Bible tells us. His vocation was tentmaker, his passion was spreading the Gospel. I am a Realtor and have been for 27 years. My passion is to comfort others as I have been comforted. Luke 4:18 is my life verse. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind. As a small group leader and Biblical counselor for 17 years, God has shown me how many people after coming to know Lord are still broken hearted. Many Christians still remain captive to sins that destroy relationships. Many Christians have eyes and do not see and have ears and do not hear. The sadness of divorce, separation and adultery in the Church is too close to that of those in the world. My vision is a church without divorce, separation or adultery. My mission is to provide step by step practical knowledge so Christians can truly love God and love others. I believe that Godâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s church is in desperate need of heart connected, vulnerable discipling relationships one with another. I believe this can be done in the small group setting. I believe that the current model of trying to minister to the congregation via the pulpit is inefficient. I believe that Godâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s church has a need for one alongside another relationships for ministering with each other. This would mean that there can not only be an infinitesimal amount of competent ministers in a congregation. Do You Truly Love Me lays out in a practical manner just how to accomplish the relationships necessary to radically reduce divorces, separations and adultery.

In Him.

Do You Truly Love Me

Forward Before we can answer the question from God whether or not we truly love Him we will have to take a journey out from the land of imagination between our ears. We will have to go the land of reality. We will have to take a journey out from the land of the abstract and journey to the land of the concrete. In the land of concrete reality, intentions and feelings have no place. In the land of concrete reality people aren't moved by our excuses, our rationalizations, our intentions or feelings. They only care how we make them feel. In the land outside of our mind God wants us to be others focused. The fruit of our actions, words, body language and our priorities affects others. That fruit (our actions and the feelings of others) is what God says is important. God tells us that He can tell if we are His disciples by our fruit. It is the fruit of the closest relationships that God is interested in. Here is a dose of reality. Christians are often not a whole lot different than the world. In God’s church there is way too much selfishness and self-centeredness. Too much pridefulness and arrogance. Too much divorce, drug abuse, drunkenness, lust, pornography, harshness, bitterness and unforgiveness. Discipleship is often non-existent. Why? Why does this happen? We go to church, we listen to sermons, and we read the Bible. In the land of concrete reality there is either doing or not doing. Ok you probably just said, wait a minute that is a works based theology. It would be if my heart is to earn love. It isn't, if I hate what God hates and love what God loves. It is not works based if am convinced down to my innermost being that certain behavior can never be repeated again. Will I repeat it? Yes, probably. However my heart should be to be convinced and that I should not continue to hurt others. So why do our relationships suffer so much? Because we have eyes that don't see and ears that don't hear and our hearts have gotten hard. We see mostly what the enemy wants us to see and hear mostly what the enemy wants us to hear ( mostly our story, the story we tell ourselves on why we can’t trust, obey, submit, stop our arguing, demanding, controlling, manipulation, invalidating, harshness, meanness, and anger). We don't hear what God wants us to hear because we don't ask others how we make them feel. If we do ask them, we mostly invalidate their feelings, and just keep doing what we always do, and we keep getting what we always get. We don't see because we only look at our intentions, feelings, rationalizations and justifications. Our hearts get hard because we only see and hear our story and we don't see and hear God’s story. In our story we don't see the good that comes from suffering and pain. In our story we set our eyes on comfort and getting what we want. In God’s story we are being made more holy and we can seek and save what is lost. We can heal the broken hearted and free prisoners from their iron chains. Please come with us on this journey of awareness of the reality of our relationships.

Do You Truly Love Me

Game Changers Here are the 20 game changers that will give you the heart connected relationships that you are hardwired for from birth: Our lack of awareness generally fits into the following 20 categories. We believe they are game changers for people and their understanding of relationships: 1. The fruit in our closest relationships show how much we love God: 1 Jn 4:20 tells us that if we don’t love the people in our lives then we can’t love God, that we are liars if we say we love God and don’t love the people in our lives. It is all about the fruit. The fruit of the Spirit in Gal 5:22 starts with love. What love is, is described in 1 Cor 13:4-8. We can’t earn God’s love. God already loves us 100%. We can however love God more and more. The fruit of our closest relationships tells that. We should take a “fruit test” to know the truth of how others view our relationship with them. Gal 5:22-23 and 1 Cor 13:4-8 is the fruit that our relationships should be measured by. In Mt 13:13-15 Jesus says that we have eyes and do not see and ears and do not hear. If we asked ourselves, we would say on a scale from 1 to 10, (10 being Jesus) that we were 8 or 9’s on the fruit of the Spirit and on 1 Cor 13:4-8. However generally just the opposite is often true. Try it and see! 2. Sanctification is God’s will for us, it is what makes fruit: I Thess 4:3 tells me that God’s will for me is to be sanctified. We don’t have to pray for the revelation for what God’s will is in our lives. This is God’s will. God’s will isn’t for me to be comfortable, or for God to be my servant, to give me all the “sensible” things that I want or need. Sanctification is the process of making us more holy, to be ready for that last day. Sanctification is the transformation and renewal of our mind. It is the transformation we undergo to become the person that has much fruit in their lives. God does this in God’s timing not ours. He transforms us. He renews our minds and we allow Him to work in us. The sanctification process is painful. It removes our “self” and then what is the result is repentance and fruit. Our individuality is not removed, just our selfishness. 3. We are called to be disciples of Jesus: We are all called to be disciples. Jesus said that we can tell if we are disciples by our fruit (Jn 15:8) and by our love (Jn 13:35). Jesus calls us to deny ourselves and pick up our cross daily (Lk 9:23). Our relationship with God and with our spouses should be measured as 100% them and 0% me. (this does not mean our individuality is lost or that we become codependent or enmeshed with our spouse) Most of us are on the PLUS PLAN in our relationship with God. Our love for God should be unconditional. The cross and our adoption as children of God should be enough. However we often want the cross and adoption PLUS – a spouse that does what I want, children that do what I want, and many other external things like, health, money, retirement plan, home, cars, status, notoriety, etc. We think to ourselves, after all I only want the bare minimum or that what we want is reasonable. As a disciple I should submit to God’s will. God’s will for me is one thing. 1 Thess 4:3 reads that it is to be sanctified. God uses the relationships closest to us to sanctify us. The relationships closest to us are very daily. Just like Jesus commands us to do, deny ourselves daily and carry our cross daily.

4. Renewal of the mind: The sanctification process is a transformation process. The transformation process begins with a renewal of the mind. How we see the events in our past, present and future 4

Do You Truly Love Me is determined by our thoughts about those events. Once God puts someone in our lives who comes alongside us and shows us what God sees about my relationship with him, we can then come to the knowledge that we really aren’t loving God. We can beg God to give us new capabilities that we don’t have now. We can beg God for a new mind. Ro 12:3, Col 3:10 and Eph 4:17 talk of the renewal of the mind and that without it we cannot get the knowledge on how to love God. God tells us that our old thinking is futile. We need our thinking renewed so that we see our life as a life of sanctification and transformation instead of a life of gimme, gimme, gimme. Instead of a life where we want to be in charge of God and have Him serve us. A life on the PLUS PLAN. 5. How to help/give advice to your spouse or anyone: We must go to where the person is. We must come alongside them. We must put out our hand, then once they take our hand we gently and patiently lead them where God wants them to go. This is rarely done correctly. Most people (Christians can be quite ineffective as well) are not effective. They do not go to where the helpee is. The land the helpee is in is fear, faithlessness, doubt, sorrow, pity, worry, anger, remorse, etc. Helpers attempt to “talk at” the helpee from the land the helper is in, not from the land the helpee is in. Helpers talk from a land of security, assuredness, strength, faithfulness, etc., and therefore are not alongside the helpee. Because of this the helpee does not take the hand of the helper. Helpers often interpret this as the helpee not wanting help, or that the helpee is simply not repentant. However I believe God wants us to connect and come alongside instead of tell and judge. It seems logical that knowledge of the Bible should be sufficient. However God wants us to be good shepherds (Jn 10). Sheep only follow shepherds if the shepherd “knows” the sheep and the sheep “know” the shepherd. Relationship is more important than bible knowledge when we are trying to minister. We must develop deep heartfelt connections with others. 6. Forgiveness – Reconciliation – Restoration: Forgiveness is one thing, reconciliation and restoration is another thing altogether different. Forgiveness takes one, reconciliation and restoration take two people working together equally to process and complete. Over the 17 years of us coaching marriages and discipling hundreds and hundreds of couples a common complaint we hear (mostly from men) is: She hasn’t forgiven me or she is keeping a record of wrongs. She is not obeying God. She is not forgiving me. The mix-up comes with equating forgiveness and the restoration of the relationship in that area. The restoration moves at 1% increments. The offender often wants the restoration to happen 100% and in 5 minutes. Ok I exaggerated, 1 hour. This concept is important because Satan often uses this misconception. The offendee has not had the relationship restored enough, quickly enough and the offender internalizes that as the offendee has not forgiven them and that she is not respecting me, and she is keeping of record of wrongs, etc, etc. God can restore us 100% instantly, however, often times He leaves in the consequences. He leaves in the long time it takes to restore relationship, to train us and to make us more holy.

Do You Truly Love Me 7. Start at the end. Ask for what you want: We should empower others to say no when we begin conversations or dialogues. We can clarify to people that we don’t want anything to change, or what the objective of the conversation or dialogue is. We should ask for us to be able to just talk or vent without the other person fixing, judging, correcting or spiritualizing our statements, thoughts or feelings. If what we are feeling or wanting to discuss has no basis in fact we should say honey I would like tell you what I’m feeling however I know that what I am about to say is ugly or not really based on facts, however this is how I feel…. 8. Vulnerability is the only way to true heart connection: Being vulnerable means learning to identify what I am feeling. It means to discuss my feelings and what I want. Being vulnerable means sharing something, letting you know something about me. That’s a risk. It could make me look badly. It might make me look incompetent, weak or inept. In other words it could be a source of shame. True heart connection can only come if God takes away from the enemy all the sources of shame. Heart connected relationships can only come when God has developed in me a viewpoint of that what used to cause me shame now is a great part of me. It is the part that connects me to others. To be vulnerable means I have to take risks and ask for what I want, and risk that you will say no. Vulnerability means that I have to share my innermost being and my most intimate thoughts, the real, real, truth of what I think, of what I want to do, of how I feel. This is a rare thing even amongst Christians. We are not transparent or ready to bare our souls to others. This happens because the great majority of Christians are not good ministers as described in # 4. Most people invalidate, minimize, judge, critique or worse they use the information shared against the person or gossip. Most people communicate by their actions - I’m smart, you’re dumb, I’m right, you’re wrong, I’m spiritual, you’re not. 9. My Story vs God’s Story: I have a story I tell myself about my life, my relationship with God, my relationships with others. It often has nothing to do with facts or reality. It is my story. It is my story I tell myself. My story makes me to be a good person, doing the best I can. My story tells me I have no other options than what I have been doing. My life and relationships are as good as it gets for me. The enemy has a lot influence in my story. My story limits me, my story limits God. My story has a major flaw. It’s my paradigm that my life on earth is about my comfort and me getting what I want. The flaw includes thinking like I only ask for reasonable things that makes sense and should always be answered in the affirmative. My story keeps me from being congruent, genuine and authentic. God’s story for me is limitless. God’s story has a lesson for me to have learned from all of life’s events. The lessons that God has given to me give me limitless ability to have a passionate heart connected love relationship with God and others. We are unaware of how much we don’t trust or believe what God says. 10. Be very careful we are all fragile: There are many “be careful” passages in the bible. Mt 12:36 tells us that we will have to give an account for every careless word. People in our lives may put up a “tough” exterior however we are all fragile. We all care about what people think. Showing disappointment and disapproval and/or speaking to others about a disappointment or disapproval can be catastrophic. God isn’t disappointed with us. Talking of separation or divorce in marriage or when talking to children telling them that there can be an end to a relationship is not what God does with us. We can say sorry and be “truly” sorry. However the consequences 6

Do You Truly Love Me often last a lot longer than we would like. God is the only one that can repair that brokenness and He often takes quite a while. 11. Do what doesn’t make sense: Faith is being certain of what we do not see. We don’t see because it doesn’t make sense to us. We don’t see because we have never seen it. We have seen our past experiences and we have seen our upbringing and family life. Satan wants us to only believe in what we have seen, and Satan tells us that what we have seen is the only thing that will be in the future. The enemy wants us to only do things or move forward when we truly understand something. If we don’t understand it then we label it as wrong. Consider this. No one sets out to get divorced or to be unfulfilled. People give it much thought and consideration. However for around 50% of their best thinking gets them divorced. That’s because they only did or do what makes sense to them. 12. I’m right you’re wrong, Validate & Invalidate: In my story I know what is right. In my story past experiences dictate the future. In my story hurts, failures, rejection, shame and fear guide my thinking and actions. When I’m right and you’re wrong I don’t come on the same side of the table and come along side to team up with you to have victory over the enemy. I bulldoze over your thoughts and I try to prove you wrong and prove myself to be right. In other words I attempt to invalidate your thinking and actions and I attempt to validate or prove correct my own thoughts and actions. 13. Respect: What is important to you is important to me. Your way of thinking is equally as important and valid as my way of thinking. We don’t have to think alike to move forward and be alongside one another on the same side of the table. No one has to change the other’s mind to be alike to move forward. United does not mean uniformity. 14. No is a complete sentence: Whenever we ask a question the answer should be able to be no. If we ask a question and we really only want a yes answer then we are trying to control or manipulate the other person or God. If we are loving unconditionally then the no answer to a question or prayer should not affect the relationship at all. We should empower all of the people we ask questions to, to be able to say no if they like. We must be purposeful in not getting entangled in someone’s tantrum, anger, cold shoulder, etc. If someone won’t stop or they keep demanding that we explain ourselves we can simply say I thought you asked a question and I thought the answer could be no. I do not want to continue this discussion if you are going to only accept the answer of yes. If you don’t stop persisting I will have to remove myself until you are ready to accept the answer of no. Be purposeful in not letting Satan get a foothold by letting the interaction occupy your brain while you run the scenario again and again in her head. 15. Abstract vs. Concrete: Abstract are things that cannot be measured, seen, touched or felt, like our feelings. Our intentions are also abstract. Concrete are things we can see, touch, feel and measure. Agape love is action. It is fruit and can be measured. God measures fruit in several passages of scripture. In Mt 13:23 He says that the seed that falls on good soil produces fruit 100 times what was sown.

Do You Truly Love Me 16. Blind Spots: We are unaware of the many blind spots we have. We have eyes and don’t see, ears and don’t hear. Our story, our paradigm keeps us unaware. Many people would change if they could see their lack of fruit. If they could see the pain and anguish caused by their excuses and blame shifting a/k/a calling evil good and good evil. We tell ourselves our story, and why we can’t trust God, or trust others to guide us through our blind spots. 17. How We Call Good Evil and Evil Good: We have become numb, blind and unaware of how we justify and rationalize our behavior and decisions. We call good evil, and evil good. We call evil good because we give the reasons why. We are unware of how much we have lost clarity on what is good and evil. We are unaware how much we believe Satan over God. 18. Supernatural & Natural Capabilities: I try and do things only naturally. I am unaware that God has limitless supernatural power to give me capabilities that I don’t have. Once my eyes can see and my ears can hear how my incapability to have the fruit that God wants me to have I must go to the Holy Spirit to get it. Capabilities that I have never had and that I thought I would never have. I am unware of God’s supernatural power so when I do become aware of my lack of capability then I become sad and depressed. I become sad and depressed because I simply can’t do that, or have never been able to do ……… Instead of going to the God that provides, I attempt to do all things in my strength alone. We are unaware of how much we ignore God, spurn Him, and don’t trust Him. God can and will make me capable to have all of the fruit of the Spirit in huge portions even though nothing or no one ever changes around me. God want’s my love for Him to be unconditional and not based on the external things I get or based on the behavior of others. 19. Mutually Exclusive Paradigm – Multiple Truths: In a mutually exclusive paradigm I am unaware that I view the world from a point of view that tells me if this is one thing is true, then that must mean that all other things are untrue. The fact is there can be multiple truths. Two or more things can be true at the same time. Example: should I forgive when you yelled at me, yes. It is also true that you should be contrite about yelling at me and not justifying your sinful behavior. However it doesn’t mean that I should only forgive when you’re contrite. It doesn’t mean that I should only stop doing the behavior if when I do something you always forgive me instantly for the behavior. Matters of opinions that differ from our own are not necessarily sin. We must understand that in a healthy adult relationship two people can have completely different points of view without having one person “bulldoze” over the other person in order to have the same opinion or viewpoint or belief. 20. It’s Not Personal: We take things personally when they are not personal. We think our spouse is doing something on purpose to us when, in reality the spouse is not capable of doing it another way yet or it is the enemy using the other person to get us aggravated. When we take things personally we make the other person the adversary. Our spouses or family are not the adversary. The battle is against Satan. We have a blind spot. We simply don’t see that Satan is at work doing what he does best. Author Tom Fonseca http://DoYouTrulyLoveMe.com

Do You Truly Love Me

Love God - Love One Another – We are unaware that we probably don’t truly love God & we need to want to be made aware of how little we trust or love God. Part 1 -The Principle - Love God, Love One Another God wants us to be in a truly loving and trusting relationship with Him. It is our love relationship with Him that He wants to be sanctified and transformed. The litmus test for how we love God is our relationships with one another. So often our lack of awareness of our repelling nature keeps us bound up in a life and in relationships that are unfulfilling. The enemy wants us to be “blind & deaf” so as to keep us unaware. We have powerful emotions that we call love. However that love often does not match what God calls love. The results of our actions, priorities and communication often does not match our intentions. We desire to be authentic and genuine, however the results are often not congruent with our intentions to love God and to love others. God’s word tells us that the results (fruit) do in fact match what is inside of us. Our words, our priorities our actions if they are evil, match or are congruent with what is inside of us. Our actions really do match our intentions inside us. Ouch, that hurts right? So clearly the transformative process that God wants us on is an intentional process that begins on the inside and then goes outward to our actions, words and priorities. That way we can be congruent, genuine and authentic to our intention to love God truly and love others truly as Jesus has first loved us. God’s word tells us that the results (fruit) do in fact match what is inside of us. Our words, our priorities our actions if they are evil, match or are congruent with what is inside of us. Our actions really do match our intentions inside us. Ouch, that hurts right?

We must freely and intentionally seek awareness so we can have clarity regarding our relationship with God. We cannot base the most important relationships we have on feelings and intentions. Inside all of us is a desire to be authentic and genuine. Inside all of us is a desire to have people around us, to be attracted to us and not repelled away from us.

Definition: Attraction that we speak about in this book does not refer to beauty or sexuality. It is referring to a heart level connection or disconnection. A repelling nature keeps people from trusting us and sensing they can reveal their genuine thoughts and fears. A repelling nature makes us so we cannot minister or guide others.

Do You Truly Love Me In 1 John 4:20 God tells us that we cannot love God without loving others. That means how I love my spouse, children or family is how I love God. We are Jesus to others. When we are not patient with our spouse we are not patient with God. When we don’t trust our spouse’s thinking (in matters of opinion, not sin) then we don’t trust God. We can’t truly understand forgiveness until we have been forgiven by a human. We can't truly understand grace until our past doesn't mean anything to another human, etc., etc.

Concept: The Concrete vs the Abstract. Concrete is fruit. It can be measured. It can grow to be more and more. Abstract is our feelings and our intentions. They can't be seen, touched, or measured. John 21:15-17 New International Version (NIV) Jesus Reinstates Peter 15 When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you truly love me more than these?” “Yes, Lord,” he said, “you know that I love you. ”Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.”16 Again Jesus said, “Simon son of John, do you truly love me? ”He answered, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you. ”Jesus said, “Take care of my sheep.”17 The third time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me? ”Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, “Do you love me?” He said, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you. ”Jesus said, “Feed my sheep. God asks us as well do we truly love Him. Like Peter most of us are stunned by the question. In our hearts we feel that we truly love God. We are “on fire” for Him. We say that we lead Christ centered lives. Some of us read the Bible daily and go to lots of church services and volunteer in the church. Many of us would be surprised to hear from Jesus “away from me you evildoer, I never knew you.” Many of us would be stunned to know that in our relationship with God, God says we don’t even know Him. Many of us would be surprised to hear that God says we do not truly love Him. God tells us that if we don’t love others then we don’t love Him. God tells us that how we love others, our neighbors is how He will know if we truly love Him. So if we don’t have a heart connected, love relationship with our spouses and our children, then we simply do not love God. This doesn’t mean that we are not saved. Nothing we do or say can get God to love us one teeny tiny bit more. However we can love God more and more. We can tell how much, by our fruit.

Many of us would be surprised to hear from Jesus “away from me you evildoer, I never knew you.” Many of us would be stunned to know that in our relationship with God, God says we don’t even know Him. Many of us would be surprised to hear that God says we do not truly love Him. God tells us that if we don’t love others that we don’t love Him.

God wants a heart connection with us. A love relationship that truly trusts Him so that we do what He says. Partial obedience is really not obedience. Some things come really natural to certain people. Reading 10

Do You Truly Love Me for example, they have lots of energy or they are naturally “people” type of people. Some of us do our jobs/work really well. So we have to be careful when we try and prove our love to others by how we provide or by how much we go to church or read the bible. Love is all relationship. The only measuring stick or as God calls it in Amos “plumb-line” is God’s word, is our fruit. God wants relationship and so do our spouses and our children. Heart connected relationship. Relationships that are trusting. Relationships that truly “know” the other person. Good, better and best is a concept that we can use in our relationships. It is good to obey God so we don’t get punished, it is better to obey God so we reap blessings. It is best that we obey God because we “know” and love Him. It is best if we know God through and through and trust Him completely, and “know” that He only wants the best for us, to “know” that everything that he says is for our good. We will talk often of fruit. We will talk often of reaping and sowing. Only bad fruit comes from a bad tree, and only good fruit comes from a good tree. So if we bear bad fruit, guess what, we are a bad tree in that area of our life. We will reap what we sow. If we want others to respect us, then we must plant respect so that we can harvest respect. If we are harvesting disrespect, then we must look first at ourselves and our sin or disrespect. If we want to reap trust we must plant trust, etc., etc. Concept: Capabilities - Each of us goes through seasons, and in certain seasons our capabilities can be limited, severely limited to the point where we are simply incapable. God’s Holy Spirit can provide capability however barring that some people are just incapable to do or say certain things. We wouldn’t get angry with someone for not running a mile in one minute! Most of us rely on ourselves much too much. We have been deceived. We have eyes and don’t see. We think we have planted righteousness however we have not. We can’t plant righteousness and get evil from people who are capable of righteousness. We get evil because we planted evil. We get that because we rely on our own thinking. God wants us in a place of humility. The humility that says, my “best thinking” got me here. God wants us in a place that stops relying on our own sight and our own thinking. God wants us to understand that there is much that we do not see, and that we need others in our lives to see what we do not see. The easiest way is to simply ask others how we are doing with our relationships. We just need to ask others do they see us as “attractive”. Do they see us as someone that attracts, pulls others closer with the way I act or do I repel others from me? Do I “know” them or not. Do I respect them or not.

Definition: Respect- Your thinking is as good as my thinking and what is important to you is important to me.

God wants us to stop going by our feelings and go by the facts. We must move from the abstract to the concrete. We must move from feelings to fruit.

Matt 7:21-23, John 13:34-35, John 15:5-8, 1 John 4:20, Galatians 6:7-8, John 14:23-24, Colossians 3:17 11

Do You Truly Love Me

Part 2- How do we apply the principle in our Relationships, What does God want to reveal to me?

God wants us to receive awareness and clarity. God wants us freely and intentionally to enter into an active process of awareness brought on by the humility and vulnerability of asking others in our lives to be authentic and genuine, even though it may risk a relationship and cause a problem in a relationship. God wants us to receive what is being revealed to us from close relationships around us. God wants us to intentionally enter into a painful, transformative and restorative journey. The journey will take us to a land we have never known or imagined.

We begin by asking others to check our fruit for us. In humility we accept the answers we get without being defensive or argumentative. We stop making excuses for what we do or don’t do. We stop blame shifting, justifying and rationalizing our behavior. We stop blame shifting, justifying and rationalizing the good we ought to do and don’t. We stop only trusting ourselves and we trust others. We know and trust that our spouses have our blind side. We apologize and ask for forgiveness for hurting others. We become purposed and aware of what we sow. We now must be purposed in sowing biblical love. Using biblical love as our model we sow patience, kindness, no envy, no boasting, no pride, we honor others, we live in self-denial, we are not easily angered, we keep no records of wrongs, we do not delight in evil, we rejoice in the truth, we protect, trust, hope and persevere with the purpose of sowing what Jesus wants us to sow, so that we can reap the fruit of unfailing love. If we do not love this way, then Jesus says we really don’t truly love Him. The fruit of Spirit is in our lives. The fruit of 1 Cor 13:4-8 and the fruit of the Spirit is NOT abstract. It is concrete. It can be counted and measured and be increased. We build relationships in the church so we can have meaningful fellowship and accountability with one another. God wants us to have transparent, vulnerable sharing of our lives so we can have relationships that build one another up, and edify God. We have to decide if we are going to serve God or ourselves. Are we Lord of our lives, of our families of our world, or is God the Sovereign Lord of all. Do we want to bow down to other gods, mainly us, alcohol, drugs, money, sex, pornography, affection or possessions? Will we follow what we believe? Will we follow our excuses and justifications? Will we follow the evil we call good? We all have responsibilities. God has His and we have ours. We are only responsible for us. Our spouses and our children belong to God and are God’s responsibilities. We are responsible only for our relationship with Jesus and our actions, words, and body language to others. We are not responsible for their actions. We must keep in mind that the people around us, including us, may have restricted or no capability in certain areas yet. We must wait patiently for God to do His work is us and in them. We must bear much 12

Do You Truly Love Me fruit in that relationship. It is that vertical relationship that is in our control. We can definitely love God more and more. We have to decide how long we will stay in the land of low capability to love; that many of us have experienced in the relationships we have and have had. Sanctification is God’s will for us, it is what makes fruit. When see the lack of fruit and the pain caused, when we can hear the cries of anguish, then we can cry out to God, he then he causes us to repent. He transforms us. He renews our minds and we allow Him to work in us. The sanctification process is painful. It removes our “self” and then what is the result is repentance and fruit.

Sanctification is God’s will for us, it is what makes fruit. When see the lack of fruit and the pain caused, when we can hear the cries of anguish, then we can cry out to God, he then he causes us to repent. He transforms us. He renews our minds and we allow Him to work in us. The sanctification process is painful. It removes our “self” and then what is the result is repentance and fruit.

Isaiah 5:20-21, Deuteronomy 30:11-20, Joshua 24:14-15, Deuteronomy 30:18, 1 Thess 4:1-3

Part 3- What it looks like when we begin doing it: We produce fruit in keeping with repentance. We stop making excuses, blame shifting, rationalizing and we take responsibility. In humility we say we are sorry and ask for forgiveness. We are eager to make the wrong right. We battle with evil and call it good and then we have to battle to call evil, evil. We battle with the enemy as he keeps in the front of our minds the bad choices, the bad decisions, the bad actions that everyone has had in our lives that have affected us, have hurt us, and still affect us today. We battle with how vulnerable and open to hurt and attack we become if we do things God's way. The enemy has convinced us that conditional love is the only way. Love the ones that love us, that don't hurt us, that "understand" how much their actions hurt. Love only the ones that have completely changed and repented. Luke 19:1-10, 2 Corinthians 7:10-11

Do You Truly Love Me Part 3- What it feels like when we begin doing it: OUCH!!!!! But, but, but, but .................... I just can't cuz ................... I have trust issues ......., I have abandonment issues........., I have been emotionally brutalized............

Part 3- What it looks like when we are doing it well: We are transformed by the work of the Holy Spirit. We don't think what would Jesus do, we just do what Jesus would do. We and others are amazed at the transformation as our actions and reactions to things that have had us in bondage for so long no longer have us in bondage. Psalm 107:1-22, 1 Peter 5:7-9 We see the enemy from far away and avoid the tricks he has used in our lives for so long. We also trust others to help us see the enemy. We trust that our spouses can see things that we donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t see. We trust that our spouses can see our blind side. Part 3- What it feels like when we are doing it well: We are convinced that our very, very best thinking has gotten us far off of the mark, and that I must now surrender to God. We are convinced there is no system, or self-talk, or life coach that can save me, only God. We are convinced that our God is mighty, more mighty than us. We are convinced that our God is big, bigger than us. We know that we know that we know that God can change and lift up the valley of dry bones and that He can do the same with me. That He can breathe life into me and He can change my heart. Ezekiel 37:1-17, Matthew 7:7-12, 1 Peter 5:7-9 We have peace knowing that if I pray for God to remove the way I am unloving, that He will not spurn my righteous prayer.

Do You Truly Love Me

Love God, Love One Another Worksheet Part 4- Love God, Love One Another Worksheet The following are the fruits of the Spirit from Galatians 5:22-23, and fruit from 1Cor 13:4-8. Each of the fruits are listed and then it has four sub-headings. The fruit test should first be done by you and about how you would rate yourself. Then second, by yourself to rate your spouse. Afterwards then get together with your spouse and share your responses. For example under the fruit of the Spirit, love, there is a column for love and another for fruit that is not loving. So the first choice is do I love unconditionally or conditionally. This worksheet along with all the other worksheets for all the other nine chapters should be saved and archived for future reference.

WARNING: the enemy wants you to be discouraged by the results of this worksheet and the results of the other worksheets. God and the angels are celebrating. They celebrate because for many, it will be the first time they will see. They will see what God wants them to see and hear what God wants them to hear.

You will see your strengths or natural capabilities. God wants you to see what you don't have or will never have naturally. God wants you to see what you must get supernaturally from Him. You must keep going back to God and God alone to increase your capabilities in these fruit areas, you will see your capabilities increase and increase. God wants you to be hopeful, now you will see and hear, you will go to Him, and He will provide abundantly.

Love

Not loving

Unconditional Love

Conditional Love

Validate others

Invalidate others

Repent from Hurting Others

Don't Repent from Hurting Otherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Continue Making Excuses

Understand the Hurt I Cause Others

Minimize how much I Hurt Others

Do You Truly Love Me

Joy

Not Joyful

Happy when spouse is happy

Invalidate or Minimize spouseâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s happiness

Always encouraging word

Scowling

Smile on face

Negative comments, Cutting comments

Calm exterior

coarse joking

Peace

Not Peaceful

Does Not have to Retaliate

Retaliates

Errors and Inaccuracies Don't Matter

Correcting Inaccuracies

Not Argumentative

Argumentative

Doesn't have to have the Last Word

Defensive

Patience

Not Patient

Willingness to Repeat Themselves

Respond Harshly

Will Try Different Ways so spouse will hear

Rude

Nothing Rattles you- No Tenseness

Purposefully Discouraging

Unswerving Calmness

Killjoy

Kindness

Mean

Constantly Meeting needs

Angry

Thinking of Others

Being Harsh

Viewing everyone as God's children

Not Thinking the Best of Each Other

Being Considerate

Wants to Control Emotions

Goodness

Badness

Generous with time and money

Verbally Abusive

Always Thinking the Best

Physically Abusive

Always Doing What is Right

Drugs, Alcohol, Gambling

Wanting to Know God's Word

Porn, Affairs, Impurity

Faithfulness

Worried

Constantly Seeing the Good

Constantly Seeing the Bad

It will all Work Out

Disaster in Every Situation 16

Do You Truly Love Me Knowing God is in Control

God does Not See this Situation

Surrendered

Wants to Control

Gentleness

Harsh

Soft Tone

Harsh Tone

Calm Spirit

Agitated

Light Touch

Wants to Grab and Take Control

Gently Instructing with God's Word

Hitting People Over the Head with the Bible

Self-Control

Self-Indulgent

Does not

Gets Drunk over .08 BAL

No Drugs

Drugs

Pharmaceuticals only exactly as prescribed

Pharmaceuticals Over the Prescribed Level

Pure

Impurity, Porn, Etc.

Does Not Envy

Envies

Satisfied with God's Portion

Wishes for a different childhood or life

Has the Perfect Spouse for me

Thinks they made a mistake or God made a mistake

Knows their function in the "body"

Wants the Spotlight and Notoriety

Looks at their life as the best

Constantly Wants More

Does Not Boast

Boasts

Your Walk with God is great

Thinking my Walk with God is Better than my spouseâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s

Your Thinking is as Good as mine

My thinking is Better than Yourâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s

Your Discernment is a Good as mine

My Discernment is Better

The Way you Do Things is as Good as me

The Way I Do things is Better

Is Not Proud

Prideful

Let's Other Take Credit

Claims the Credit

Other Opinions Valid

I'm Right You're Wrong

Gives God the Glory

Takes Credit

Humble & Teachable

Know it All

Is Not Rude Doesn't 2nd guess

Rude 2nd guesser 17

Do You Truly Love Me Validates

Invalidates

Listens Patiently

Cuts Off when Speaking

No Raising Voice

Raises Voice

Is Not Self Seeking

Selfish

Servant

My way not your way

Just Does It

Has to “Understand” Why

Does things "In Your Stead"

Argues why Your Wrong & I'm right

Seeks to Serve, Heal & Breath Life

Wants My Way, Doesn't have time for others, Apathetic

Is not easily angered

Easily Angered

When people make mistake I am their refuge

Brings in 20 Yrs. Into this Experience

It’s Not Personal, Calmly Ask for what I want

Verbally or Physically Abusive

It’s not personal, God Is In Control

People Think I Am Defensive and Argumentative

Asks for what they want they want No Records of Wrongs

Gives out of Compulsion then Doesn't Ask for what Unforgiving

Responding as if this was the 1st time

Responds with 20 yrs. of history

Forgives

Does Not Forgive

Economy of Grace

No Grace

5,000 Mistakes

1 Mistake only then u Must Apologize Profusely

No Delight in Evil

Calls Evil Good

Is Not Happy When I Fail

Says I Told You So

Does Not Blame Shift

Blame Shifts

No Excuses

Excuses For My Behavior

Stays Far from Satan

Plays Too Close with Satan and Evil

Always Protects

Throws Under the Bus

People Feel Confident There will Be Forgiveness

I am Right You are Wrong

People Feel Confident There Will Be Validation

My Way or The Highway 18

Do You Truly Love Me Economy of Grace

No Grace

Know you Have My Back

Ready to Abandon

Always Trusts

Cynical/Skeptical

Give the Benefit of the Doubt

Things Are Working Against Me

Confident God Can work in this Situation

Not Sure if God Knows

To the Pure All Things are Pure

To the Skeptical all Things Are Iffy

Assumes the Best

Assumes the Worst

Always Hopes

Despairs

Being Confident that Change Will Happen

God is Not Aware

Confident God is for you

God is Punishing Me, Satan will Win

No one is not trying to get 1 over on you

Working for the Good

God Will Transform me to be Content

Things are Out of Control

Always Perseveres

Gives up

Never Gives Up on me

Body Language and Words Say I Don't Believe

Never Gives Up on our relationship

Communicates things could End if u Don't Shape Up

Never Says its Over

Says It 's Over

Faithful Change comes after 5k mistakes

Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll Never Change

Do You Truly Love Me

Repentance-Victory Over Temptation – We always have a very good reason why we do what we do. We are often unaware that we need to change. Part 1 -The Principle - Repentance -Victory of Temptation: I was delivered from 14 years of alcohol and drug abuse by God over 25 years ago. When I left home at 18 with a college scholarship for golf I was never going to return and never, ever forgive my parents, I was mad and bitter for many different reasons. I tell you these things about me so that when I tell you that I had lots of reasons for my behavior, you would have some background. I also tell you these things so that you know, that "I know". I don't just know because I saw it in others or that I read it in a book. I "know" it, because I lived it, I struggled through it. God has brought me through it only with the grace, mercy and Holy Spirit from Jesus my Lord and Savior. I will speak in the terms of the world for a moment. I had trust issues, low self-esteem issues, selfhatred issues, insecurity issues, abandonment issues, betrayal issues, anger issues, forgiveness issues, holiday issues, anxiety issues, stomach ulcers, nightmares, sadness, bitterness, hatred, connection with others issues, I was a liar, and untrustworthy, and on and on. I only trusted me, I became a strong type A personality, with arrogance and pride, that covered over, just under the surface, an insecure person that was afraid to love or trust or allow anyone to hurt me emotionally again. For many years I led a life of selfishness, debauchery, and impurity. I was married before and I had extramarital affairs on many occasions. I was arrested for DUI on multiple occasions, in my estimation I drove in a "black-out" over a 1,000 times.

We develop our story. We have a story we tell ourselves over and over. Our story is developed between us and Satan. Our story limits us. Our story lacks hope. Our story makes excuses. Our story justifies and rationalizes why things can’t or won’t change. Our story leaves out God and His promises. Our story leaves out our identity in Christ. Our story leaves out God’s supernatural power to provide change, hope and a wonderful future.

Satan is constantly telling us that we are good people. That what we do does not really hurt others, and if they are hurt, they are simply too "emotional and touchy". Satan tells us that what we do is understandable and justified. Satan tells us that if God really knew our unique situation that God would understand and give us a special dispensation. As soon as we can start talking and thinking we start blame shifting, justifying and rationalizing what we do. We convince ourselves that we are doing the right things and that really was the only choices we had. We develop our story. We have a story we tell ourselves over and over. Our story is developed between us and Satan. Our story limits us. Our story lacks hope. Our story makes excuses. Our story justifies and rationalizes why things can’t or won’t change. Our story leaves out God and His promises. Our story leaves out our identity in Christ. Our story leaves out God’s supernatural power to provide change, hope and a wonderful future. We try and convince others, we try 20

Do You Truly Love Me and convince God that all the choices we make are the best choices given the circumstances. The people around us and the circumstances were the issues, not us. It is just the way we are, or just the way we were raised, or we are just the product of our environment, or if you grew up where I grew up, or if you had my past, or if you had the family I had, etc., etc. We are "good people" that make "good choices". Yes we do hurt others sometimes, but they deserved it. They deserved it, or it was the best for them, or they were simply were too touchy or too emotional or too dumb to know and understand. We were right and that we were simply getting them to do the best thing. There is always a very good reason for what we do. Our reasons. Our reasons are always good and understandable to us. They make perfect sense. Most of all our reasons, justifications and rationalizations smooth things over for us, and always end up making us a "good person." The enemy is There is always a very good reason for what we do. Our reasons. Our reasons are always good and understandable to us. They make perfect sense. constantly getting our eyes so they don't see how we hurt people with our actions, words, deeds and things we ought to do and don't. Our eyes when we are young children can see when people are mad, sad, glad, afraid or embarrassed. Once we start hurting others and then explaining away the hurt our eyes turn more and more blind. The same happens also with our ears. Our ears become deaf to people crying, crying out, screams of pain and anguish. Our ears become deaf to pleas of the people around us calling out for us to change our behaviors. Our hearts become hard. We stop feeling the pain of others. We become more and more unaware. Satan's most effective and important work isn't telling us how we are bad people, or that we don't deserve The enemy tells us that we don't need to change, that our circumstances need to change, that the people around us need to change and that we are doing the very best we can do. love, redemption, forgiveness, grace or mercy, etc. (this is considerable work of the enemy). His most important and effective work is telling us that we are good people. The enemy tells us that we are "good people", that we are humble, submissive, surrendered, compassionate, kind, caring, understanding, Satan's most effective and important work isn't telling us how we are bad people, or that we don't deserve love, redemption, forgiveness, grace or mercy, etc. (this is considerable work of the enemy) His most important and effective work is telling us that we are good people. cooperative, encouraging and loving. The enemy tells us that we don't need to change, that our circumstances need to change, that the people around us need to change and that we are doing the very best we can do. By telling us that we are good people the enemy gets our eyes so they don't see, and our ears so they don't hear. The enemy keeps telling us that we are good people so that we get to a point that we cannot detect evil or recognize sin in our lives. We get to the point that we call evil good and we call good evil.

Do You Truly Love Me Satan trains us to keep things in the abstract. The enemy wants us to keep things in our feelings and intentions. Satan does not want us to be bothered with the facts. The last thing we think to do is ask others how we affect them. We would never sit around get our "fruit" checked or rated. (This was the worksheet in module 1 lesson 3. If you have not done the worksheet you need to go back and do it. Its purpose is invaluable for this class) We want to stay in the abstract, in our feelings and intentions. We believe that we are doing great and that we are good people. After all we are smart people. We learn that people are the way people are. We just give up on many aspects of relationships. We become "realists". Satan wants to take our past, our experiences, and he wants us to use those experiences to extrapolate all future experiences. The realist in us, now wants to not trust, not expect change, not to have hope. Our realism then tells us there is no use in walking in faith. The future will equal the past. We say and think things like:          

I'm numb. I'm tired and exhausted. You never listen. Some things will never change. You just don't want to stop your drinking, drugging, pornography, affairs, etc. You just can't stop that behavior that drives me crazy. I just have to find a way to cope. I will just not say anything because it is not worth it or it is not worth the hassle and emotional outcome. We just can't have a conversation about certain things. We don't argue. We don't argue because I just "shut down". You don't listen or understand me or know me and you never will.

When things get a little too uncomfortable we move away from whatever or whomever is making our sin uncomfortable. It could be our spouse, could be our friends, could be our family, could be the preacher, it could be God's word. We get too busy, we just don't want to be hassled. We are certain that we are doing the very best we can do with our situation. My sin is ok. I am a good person we say to ourselves. We simply don't want to hear correction, or truth. We keep sinning and sinning. We don't see the hurt we cause others. We don't see the devastation around us. We are dull to it, and unaffected by it. In 2 Samuel 24:1-15 David commits a “small sin” (of course the bible teaches us that all sin is equal). David goes ahead and wants to count the size of his army. As a result of his pride God tells him that he must suffer consequences. David’s consequences were that of 70,000 people around him, in his kingdom, that died as a result of his sin. This event is after he had an extramarital affair. This is after he committed murder. Those events also had consequences where innocent people suffered. Somewhere along the line, someone will get through to us. God uses people. He uses preachers and ministers. He uses His word. Then we begin to see and hear. We begin by seeing what God wants to use to teach us. God uses His word to teach us. He also uses the pain and suffering of others to get us to begin to see.

Do You Truly Love Me God wants us to repent. It is not a matter of a person just deciding to make a decision to repent. Then we would not be grateful. We would be “puffed up” because we thought we did the repenting. It is not our self-discipline. It is not “tough love”, it is not someone laying down the law. God causes us to repent in Eze 36:24-27 and in 2 Timothy 2:22-24 God tells that he is the one that causes us to repent. In 1 Thess 4:3 God tells us that His will for us is to sanctify us. To sanctify us is to make us more and more holy. God’s How often do we pray to have the consequences removed or omitted from our lives? How often do we pray to have the consequences to be removed from the lives of our loved ones? Is it truly loving if we remove the consequences from God’s transformative love? Is it selfish or prideful for us to think that we know better than God? Is it truly loving to step in and attempt to control or alter God’s active process of developing the capabilities of the people around us? Holy Spirit is what gives us the capability to repent. We are blind and don’t see and we are deaf and don’t hear that we actually need God’s help to transform us. The enemy tricks us into not calling on God to change us by thinking we don’t need to change. God wants us to have a radical, supernatural heart change. God give us His grace and mercy. He sent His son so that we don’t have to pay the ultimate price of death. The cross has made it so we can spend eternity with God. However God mostly leaves behind consequences so we can change. God leaves pain and anguish to transform us. The sanctification process is a painful process itself. Even without any of the consequences hurting us. The simple process of putting our sin on the cross is painful. Lk 9:23 tells us deny ourselves and take up our cross daily. Denying ourselves daily and picking up our cross daily is painful. God’s love is a purifying love, a sanctifying love, getting us ready for that last day. How often do we pray to have comfort and a pain free life? How often do we pray for God’s will in our lives? 1 Thess 4:3 tells us what God’s will is for us. How often do we pray to have the consequences removed or omitted from our lives? How often do we pray to have the consequences to be removed from the lives of our loved ones? Is it truly loving if we remove the consequences from God’s transformative love? Is it selfish or prideful for us to think that we know better than God? Is it truly loving to step in and attempt to control or alter God’s active process of developing the capabilities of the people around us? God loves us and just keeps trying to get through to our hearts. He keeps trying and trying. He keeps sending people and events into our lives to get our attention so that He can work. It is not our selfdiscipline or us making a decision to repent that causes repentance. It is us seeing and hearing the pain we cause others. It is us knowing that our capability is limited and that on our own power we can not repent. God has it this way so that we can have true gratitude for God. Once we see that only His Holy Spirit can help us to repent then we are so grateful that God chose us to help. God leaves situations in our lives to repeat so that we can learn the lesson. Remember God’s will for us is to sanctify us. God’s will is that we learn the lessons, that we cry out to Him for His help and that way our “self” dies more and more. We serve more, we deny self more. There is a popular movie from around 15 years ago. The lead character in the movie is selfish. He then in the movie lives the same day over and over again. He runs his car over a cliff, he still wakes up again in the morning and it is the same day. He lives the same day trying to have sex with his female boss in the movie. He focuses his repeated days on how to do that. Then finally when he learns to be selfless, to help others all day long, to not try to have sex, but to want a real relationship with the boss that the day ends. The day ends only when he learns the

Do You Truly Love Me lessons about selflessness and service that he needs to learn. God is that way with us. We pray to know God’s will, why is this happening? God loves us and wants us to be more holy! Psalm 36:1-4 NIV, Isaiah 30:10-11, 2 Timothy 4:3, Matthew 13:13-15, Isaiah 5:20-21, Isaiah 30:19-21

Part 2- How do we apply the Principle in our Relationships? What does God want to reveal to me? Here is how the repentance process works: 1. Eyes that didn’t see the lack of fruit, the damage, and the hurt now see. Ears that did not hear the lack of fruit, the damage, and the hurt now hear. Eyes and ears that did not see or hear God’s story for my life now do. Mt 13:13-15,Ps 36:1-4, Isa 42:16 2. Realize the futility of my thinking. That my “best thinking” got me here. Eph 4:17, Ro 1:22-23 My best thinking had me assessing or evaluating my relationship with God by my feelings. I would say I love God on a scale of 1 to 10 as a 10. I would say I live a Christ centered life. I would evaluate my relationship by how often I served the church or read my Bible or by how many Bible verses I had memorized. Instead of by the fruit of my closest relationships. 1 John 4:20. The futility of my thinking didn’t ask others about my fruit. My futility didn’t know that Jesus said he would know if I am His disciple by my fruit, John 15:8, not by my feelings or intentions. The futility of my thinking didn’t have me understanding that if I did not have an abundance of fruit in my closest relationships that I did not love God. That I was a liar if I said I loved God and I didn’t love the closest relationships around me in the way that God calls me to love. 3. Realize the futility of the thinking that I can change, I can decide, and that my self-discipline is what changes me. I realize the futility of relying on my flesh, my mind, my strength, my determination to change me, instead of relying on the Holy Spirit to change me. Ro 8:5-7 4. Realize that God causes repentance, not my love for someone, or my respect for someone. God causes repentance not my mind, my strength or my determination. 2 Tim 2:24-26, 1 Ki 8:57-58, Eze 36: 24-27 5. My renewed mind understands that God’s will for me is sanctification, not getting what I want, not getting the people around me to behave like I want, not God giving the reasonable things that I want from my spouse, children, family, my job, my bank account, my 401K, my health or my home. 1 Thess 4:3 6. My renewed mind understands that God’s plan is rarely my plan. I realize that I have been on the PLUS PLAN with God. Being adopted into God’s family and the Jesus’ suffering on the cross should be more than enough for me, and for my happiness and security. The PLUS PLAN doesn’t mean we can’t or shouldn’t pray for or set as goals the following. It simply means having the following as condition to my happiness or my security is not what God wants for us. My renewed mind sees how I wanted the PLUS PLAN. The adoption and the cross PLUS – a wonderful loving caring spouse, my children that do what I want, a understanding reasonable boss, a great job, a full bank account, a fully funded 401K, health, great home, great family, great friends, a great Christ centered government, Phil 2:14 7. My renewed mind understands that sanctification is painful and exhausting. Sanctification often causes me to say I’m tired, I can’t, I won’t, I’m exhausted, this is too much. My renewed my goes to God’s Holy Spirit to make me capable and strong enough to submit myself to God’s sanctifying and purifying love. 1 Cor 1:8-10, Isa 40:29-31, 1 Cor 4:8-12, 1 cor 4:16-18, Ps 68:35 24

Do You Truly Love Me 8. My renewed mind understands that Satan wants to keep me in the abstract of my feelings, in my understanding, in my paradigm. Instead of the concrete of the fruit in my life. The enemy wants me stay in the abstract instead of the concrete. My renewed mind understands that the fruit of life, my actions is all that matters. I now in humility without trying to earn God’s love live my life by constantly checking my fruit. The fruit of Gal 5:22-23 and the fruit of 1 Cor 13: 4-8. My renewed mind asks questions to others to see how my fruit is, and welcomes the answers with humility instead of complaining or arguing. Phil 2:14 9. Sanctification transforms me. I no longer have to hypothesize, guess or think what would Jesus do? I now do what Jesus would do! Ro 12:2, Col 3:10 10. God’s repentance that he granted me, makes me grateful. There is now much fruit in my life. I stay in the concrete of the fruit not the abstract of my feelings and thinking. I ask others how my fruit is. They now rate me highly on a scale of 1 to 10 on Gal 5:22-23 and 1 Cor 13:4-8. My changed life enhances the life of others instead of making their life worse. I heal instead of hurt, damage or inflict myself on others. I empower others to say no, to set boundaries, to be confident, to be themselves. I now stop trying to make others change to be like me. I no longer live in the futility of thinking that I am right and others are wrong on matters of opinion. I allow different ways of thinking and understanding to flourish instead of attempting to snuff it out. (this does not apply to condoning sinful behavior). My transformed life now makes me the best minister to my spouse and children. I now spend lots of time knowing and understanding others. I am now vulnerable and the enemy no longer has me afraid of sharing my thinking, my heart, my feelings or my past. Satan no longer has the power of shame and regret over me. The “worst” parts of my thinking or past are now my “best”. God uses that in His story for my life to attract others to me so that I can comfort. I am the salt, I bring out the best in people.

We need to stop making excuses, rationalizations, justifications, living in our feelings and only be aware of the Facts, the Fruit and the Fallacies. Facts Fact: Know that the fact is that I can't see myself without distortion. Ask others what they see in my life. Let others know that they can take me aside and let me know what they see in my life that is sinful. Ask my spouse and children how they feel around me. Ask them to let me know what I can change. The fact is when someone says that I hurt them there is only one response. I'm sorry. If I get hurt by someone the fact is I should say "Ouch". The fact is that if I keep secrets Satan will use that to cause pain. The fact is that the sin I do in secret still hurts others even if they don't know about it. The fact is that I need to set boundaries in my life and accountability in my life. The fact is that I must be open and vulnerable. I must be willing to show the real me, my real thoughts, my real motivations. The fact is that vulnerability and accountability are the keys to a heart connection with God and with others. It builds a true sense of belonging and trust. Fact: Humility is a big key to my repentance. I need to know that I don't know. That God will illuminate my path and will teach me new ways to live. God will turn my blindness and the darkness that I have been in and put me into a lighted path. 25

Do You Truly Love Me Fact: I must keep my eyes on Jesus alone. I cannot set my eyes on my spouse or my children. I cannot set my eyes on my circumstances. I cannot set my eyes on my story. I cannot set my eyes on the wind and the waves. I must set my eyes and keep my eyes on Jesus. Fact: I should only do things for God. We should not do anything to please others. We should not do things to get things. We should not love conditionally. We should love unconditionally. We should only do things because we want to be obedient to God. Fruit Fruit: We become aware that we keep telling our story to ourselves and we stop. We stop believing Satanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s lies and become aware of how the enemy limits our growth, our happiness and our desire to love God truly. Fruit: Others see change in us. Fruit: The way that God wants us to become aware of the reality of the fruit in our lives is to ask other people that are in our lives to look and see if they see the fruit of repentance, the fruit of the Spirit and the fruit of biblical love. I should do this on a regular basis with my spouse and children. Also with my accountability group or partner(s).

Fallacy: What people don't know doesn't hurt them. The fallacy is that we can do battle with Satan by ourselves. Fallacy: Partial obedience is obedience. Fallacy: Repentance only comes swiftly and completely. Something is wrong with me or God is not answering my prayer because I keep going back to my sin. That if I had the right heart my repentance would be complete and swift. The reality is that our steadfastness and perseverance is very important. The parable of the sower can also be used to depict areas of our character or areas of our hearts. Some areas of our character or our sin are like the good soil. When we hear the word, once we see something is sin God delivers us immediately from that sin and that struggle and we don't "fall" into that sin anymore. Some areas of our hearts/sin are like the thorny area or the rocky area. We hear the word, however, we keep falling into that sin. God's deliverance is longer. I read a book a long time ago by James Michener named Space. In it the German scientists have to decide who to surrender to. They are scientists and only want to continue making rockets and go to the moon. They decide to surrender to the Americans. The leader of the German scientists discussed a topic: It takes 5,000 mistakes to get a rocket to fly. (I don't really remember or not if it is 5,000 or what number). In the book Outliers by Malcom Gladwell he quotes scientific studies that it takes 10,000 hours to become proficient at anything.

Do You Truly Love Me Many of us don't see victory over temptation because we don't understand that it takes 5,000 mistakes and 10,000 hours to be proficient and to see our capabilities improve dramatically. We suffer the first setback and then quit. We make excuses and doubt God's sovereignty and His trustworthiness. It is often that the people around us don't give us the gift of time and patience to allow us to get the skill to do by doing. There is definitely a process to our learning to be capable of doing what God wants us to do. Yes God can deliver us immediately. Yes it could be radical and immediate and permanent. However for most of us and for most of our sin it takes us learning and persevering.

Many of us don't see victory over temptation because we don't understand that it takes 5,000 mistakes and 10,000 hours to be proficient and to see our capabilities improve dramatically. We suffer the first setback and then quit. We will now get into what we believe is the process that God wants us to use to have victory over temptation. How God wants us to repent and have victory over sin. We call this concept the â&#x20AC;&#x153;knowinglovingâ&#x20AC;? process. Concept: The knowing-loving process. 2 Peter 1: 5-9

Attention, Attention, Attention What comes next is very important! 2 Peter 1:5-9 New International Version (NIV) 5 For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; 6 and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; 7 and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. 8 For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 But whoever does not have them is nearsighted and blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their past sins. Faith. I have faith. I believe in the word, I believe in God, and I believe I can be transformed. I believe that God has power over the enemy. I believe that God is the source and provider of all that I will ever need to lead a congruent, authentic and genuine life that truly loves God. I have faith that God causes repentance.

Do You Truly Love Me Goodness. The opposite of badness. I stop doing bad things, sin. I am intentional in seeking the awareness of my sin. I become more and more aware of how the enemy has worked in my life. Knowledge. I begin to see and hear. I get the knowledge of how my sin affects others and hurts others. I get the knowledge that it takes 5,000 mistakes and 10,000 hours to become proficient. I get the knowledge of how I call evil good and good evil. I get the knowledge of how much I attempt to control God and others. I get the knowledge of how my selfishness manifests itself in my life. I get the knowledge of how I invalidate the feelings of others. I get the knowledge of what is respect and how little I respect others. I get the knowledge of reaping and sowing. I get the knowledge of much I manipulate God and others. I get the knowledge of what is attractive and what is repelling. I get the knowledge of what is true biblical love. I get the knowledge of abstract to concrete. I now know how repentance happens. Self-control - I begin to exercise self-control in my life. I get tempted. I struggle with the sin, however I resist the temptation. I also add in boundaries and accountability. I stop listening to Satan’s story that limits my life. I stop telling myself my story. I know the knowledge that God is the source of the supernatural power that I need to replace my natural incapability. Perseverance - 10,000 hours, 5,000 mistakes. I now know that God's deliverance is going to take longer. I stop listening to the enemy’s limiting story for my life. I listen to what God says about me. I listen to how God tells me that he gives me strength and that He gives me all that I will need. I listen to God when he tells me that all things work for the good. I now am aware that God has many lessons to teach me in my life and I stop searching for comfort and what I want. I now persevere through things and don’t give simply give up because I didn’t get what I wanted, when I wanted it. Godliness - My transformation is really beginning to take hold. I am stopping hurting people. Brotherly kindness - now I not only stop hurting others, now I help others, teach others, have compassion for others, and I meet the needs God presents in my life. Love - I serve others in agape love. Selflessly. My selfishness is now much less present in my life. My selfdenial is strong and I am others focused. My love is shown by my fruit. I now stop being ineffective and unproductive. I am now effective and productive in serving my Lord and Savior. I have been transformed from not seeing being blind and nearsighted. I can now see Satan the lion prowling from far away. Satan now can't come really close to me, I don't let him into my home or my heart. I see him from far away and I stay far away from him. As the enemy moves closer to me, I move away. I see the enemy in the bushes and the grass and I move away from him. The cross and the sacrifice Jesus paid to forgive my sins is ever present in my heart, mind and life.

Thank you, for your added attention

Do You Truly Love Me Proverbs 28:13, Proverbs 27:12, James 5:16, Isaiah 42:16, Psalm 16:5-8, Colossians 3:17, Matthew 3:8, Galatians 5:22-23, 1 Corinthians 13:4-8, 2 Corinthians 1:9-11, 1 Samuel 15:13-34, Matthew 13:18-23,

Part 3- What it looks like when we begin doing it: When our eyes begin to see and our ears begin to hear our lives begin changing. We begin to become proficient at keeping our eyes on Jesus instead of on others, our spouse, our children, our circumstances. We find ourselves asking for forgiveness often. We frequently have others "checking" our fruit of repentance, our fruit of the Spirit and the fruit of biblical love. We know now that our words mean nothing, that only our actions count. We know that love is an action word. 1 John 3:18 We are convinced that the fruit we do not have can only come from God and from prayer and fasting. Our newly found sight should convince us that there is much fruit that I do not have, and maybe never had. However I desperately need to have. We begin to have a heart that is getting much softer. Our tolerance for pain that we create around is greatly decreased. We begin to eliminate the bad habits that caused the people around us to emotionally withdraw from us, or caused people to be angry with us, or that we begin to see abuse as abuse.

Part 3- What it feels like when we begin doing it: We feel grateful. We are so much more aware of the blessing God has given us. We are grateful that we can see and hear. We are grateful that God gave us the opportunity to repent. We feel refreshed! We feel like we are the only ones changing. We wonder often, when are the other people around me going to change. We feel like people are not recognizing the immensity of our changes! Acts 3:19 Part 3- What it looks like when we are doing it well: We call sin sin. However we call matters of opinions matters of opinion. We understand that in a healthy adult relationship two people can have completely different points of view without having to “bulldoze” over the other person to have the same opinion or viewpoint or belief. We have accountability in our lives. We have no more secrets. People know that they can talk to us and we will listen. We are fervent spiritually and faithful in prayer. Romans 12:11-13 Our spiritual fervor is not feelings. We are frequent with our "fruit checks". Our spiritual fervor is not intangible or abstract, it is concrete. It can be measured. Our fruit of our repentance is piling up. We call sin sin. However we call matters of opinions matters of opinion. We understand that a healthy adult relationships two people can have completely different points of view without having to “bulldoze” over the other person to have the same opinion or viewpoint or belief. 29

Do You Truly Love Me Part 3- What it feels like when we are doing it well: We have repented and we have kept our focus on our relationship with God. We know that we know that we know that the only thing that matters is my love relationship with my Lord and Savior. We yearn to have a heart connection with God. While we know that our salvation is unconditional, and that nothing we do or don't do will cause God to love us less or more we can love God more. We can have more and more fruit and we know that the only way God can tell if we are truly his disciples is by our love, which are actions not feelings. John 13:35

Do You Truly Love Me

Repentance- Victory Over Temptation – Worksheet Part 4- Repentance-Victory over Temptation Worksheet

The 1st three questions are for you to ask to yourself and for you to answer. These 1st three are not a ranking type of questions. So the answer is not a ranking.

1. How many Christians know your story, know you and can minister to you? 2. What secrets are you keeping? 3. Do you have an accountability group? Now for these next set of questions. The set below are in fact ranking type of questions. Each item should have four numbers written down at the end. The 1st number is a ranking of 1-10 of how much that item causes pain to you. 1: Being no pain 10: Most pain. The 2nd number is for how much pain that item causes to others around you, spouse, parents, children, neighbors and/or coworkers. Then after you have completed the entire set of questions by you for you, give the worksheet to your spouse. Have your spouse then answer the same questions and rank what they think the rankings should be. So after you and your spouse have answered the following set of items you should have 4 numbers after each item.                 

Ignoring time with God Ignoring prayer time with God Ignoring prayer time with family Not trusting God Drunkenness Illegal drugs Prescription medication at higher doses than prescribed Pornography Lust Extramarital affairs Emotional affairs Lying Family is a low priority Spouse is a low priority What my spouse values is not valued highly Breaking your word/promises Keeping secrets from spouse 31

Do You Truly Love Me                             

Invalidating others Minimizing Controlling 2nd guessing Exasperating to others Belittling others Ordering people around I'm right you're wrong Worry Blame shifting Argumentative Defensiveness Calling evil good, good evil (justifying & rationalizing) what we do & don't do Selfishness (taking things personal that are not personal) Selfishness ( not serving in the home) Arrogance Untrusting Faithlessness Idolatry (children, money, cars, clothes, homes, jobs, food, alcohol, drugs) Knowing the good we ought to do and not doing it (daily bible study, church attendance, serving in the church, helping others) Harshness Anger Unforgiveness Pride (not learning everyday), I'm right you’re wrong, my understanding is the only thing I can count on. Manipulation Disrespect (minimizing & invalidation) Disrespect (what is important to you is not important to me) Seeing the bad mostly ( complainer) Bitterness

Do You Truly Love Me

Called by Jesus To Be a Disciple - What are the external things we think that will bring us happiness? Why is being God’s child not enough? Part 1 -The Principle - Called to be a Disciple A disciple of Jesus is content to be a child of God. A disciple doesn’t look to external things to get their happiness i.e. health, a job, money, a 401k, happy well-adjusted children, a home, a loving spouse, a loving family. A disciple submits to God’s sanctification. A disciple is content to be ministered to and to minister to others, to bring sight to the blind, to heal the broken-hearted, and free the captives. All disciples should strive daily to carry their cross and deny themselves daily so they can be the incarnation of grace, holiness, discipleship and being Spirit led. The call to discipleship comes directly from Jesus in Mathew 28:18-20. Sometimes the very things we pray for are the things that take us away from God. We are often so focused on us, that we forget that we are called to care for others. We are unaware of how much our selfishness runs our lives. Mark 8:34-36 God's Word Translation: 34Then Jesus called the crowd to himself along with his disciples. He said to them, "Those who want to follow me must say no to the things they want, pick up their crosses, and follow me.35Those who want to save their lives will lose them. But those who lose their lives for me and for the Good News will save them.36What good does it do for people to win the whole world yet lose their lives? The Message Bible: 34Calling the crowd to join his disciples, he said, "Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You're not in the driver's seat; I am. Don't run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I'll show you how.35Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to saving yourself, your true self.36What good would it do to get everything you want and lose you, the real you? If we intend to go with Jesus, we have to let Him lead us. Satan tries to keep us unaware of much we lead our lives. We start with the intention to let Jesus lead. However the evil inside us comes out and we take the lead ourselves. We want to be in the driver’s seat. We are unaware of how little we trust God. How little we trust Jesus. We are blinded to the fact that when we take control we are not trusting God. We do not remain congruent to the original intention. We often lead lives that are not authentically a disciple.

Do You Truly Love Me Instead of embracing the suffering that comes with God’s will for us, sanctification, we do in fact run from it. We “steer the wheel” of our lives to comfort and security. We tell ourselves our story 50,000 times a day. In that story we tell ourselves we know what’s best. We don’t look for the lessons God is teaching us. We tell ourselves we already know the answer. We drown out God’s story. We strive daily Instead of embracing suffering the suffering that comes with God’s will for us, sanctification, we do in fact run from it. We “steer the wheel” of our lives to comfort and security. We tell ourselves our story 50,000 times a day. In that story we tell ourselves we know what’s best. We don’t look for the lessons God is teaching us. We tell ourselves we already know the answer. We drown out God’s story. We strive daily to save our life. to save our life. In God’s story we embrace the lessons God has given us and our happiness comes from being an adopted child of God. In God’s story we die to self. In God’s story we submit to God’s will for us, sanctification, and the transforming love of Jesus. In God’s story we give Him all the glory. In God’s story we see the benefits of the trials in our past and embrace them. In God’s story when we share with others our trials in a way that gives God the glory, in a way that is vulnerable and transparent, God uses that to connect with another person’s heart. When we connect at a heart level with someone then we can allow God to use us to minister to others. We can help heal the broken-hearted, give sight to the blind, bind up the wounded and free captives from iron chains. When we get out of our story and into God’s story for our lives then we can minister to others. We can be used by God for His glory and His purposes. We can build up His church. The following is the key to ministry: We have to be approachable and attractive, so we can come alongside someone and they are attracted and not repelled. We have to go to where the person is, to their land, if they trust us they will allow us to come alongside them. We can then put out our hand and they will take our hand. Then we can slowly, gently & patiently lead them where God wants them to go. No one will allow us to minister to them if they view us as an adversary. They won’t allow us to minister to them if they think we are judging them or if they think we don’t “know” them or if we don’t “know” the land they are in. Definition: The key to ministry. We have to be approachable and attractive, so we can come alongside someone and they are attracted and not repelled. We have to go to where the person is, to their land, if they trust us they will allow us to come alongside them. We can then put out our hand and they will take our hand. Then we can slowly, gently & patiently lead them where God wants them to go. No one will allow us to minister to them if they view us as an adversary. They won’t allow us to minister to them if they think we are judging them or if they think we don’t “know” them or if we don’t “know” the land they are in.

A disciple of Jesus lives a life that has as a central part of their life, a personal ministry. We must be able to minister to others. We don’t do this by telling others what to do. Effective ministry comes from being alongside others. Effective ministry comes from “knowing” others. We must go to their land. That means that if they are in the land of confusion we must leave our land of certainty and faithfulness and go to 34

Do You Truly Love Me their land. However a common ineffective method is to quote scripture and tell them not to be that way. “I’m scared and confused”. Don’t be scared and confused. You have lost sight of your identity in Christ or forgotten what you have learned about the gospel. This is not coming alongside or going to their land. This is the opposite. It is standing across from the person and attempting to show them how they should not be afraid or confused. This can be done even by asking questions trying to lead them to same conclusion, don’t be confused or afraid. Ministry was modeled to us by Jesus. It takes years not minutes. It takes “knowing” people not just knowing the bible. People have to know that we know the land they are in. We need to show them we are not lost (not in a salvation standpoint, like to be lost when trying to find an office) and we know the way. We must show them we know the way from the land they are in to the land God wants them to be in. Vulnerability and coming from a place of weakness is what draws people close to us so we can come alongside them. It seems logical to us that knowing the bible should be enough to help and heal others. The bible tells us that it is useful for helping others. It is. However relationship is more important than

knowledge. The bible has many one another passages. Love one another, live in harmony, be devoted, honor, encourage, serve, etc. Jesus modeled it for us. Relationship is vitally important. Jesus did not heal others by quoting scripture, he met their needs. Many go to others for help or counsel and their need is to be consoled, understood, to be connected with. What most people do when God presents this opportunity is try to get them to understand us or to understand God. If they understood God or remembered the gospel they wouldn’t be in the situation they are in. It is more important that they know that we understand them. It is important to validate what they think and feel. Validate means it is understandable. Something can be understandable, it may also be unrighteous and sinful. We can agree with an emotion or thought process without condoning sin. Let us all commit to minister to others effectively. Philippians 2:1-5, Luke 9:23-25, Ephesians 3:14-21, Luke 17:11-17

Part 2- How do we apply the principle in our Relationships, What does God want to reveal to me? Mark 8:34 GWT - Then Jesus called the crowd to himself along with his disciples. He said to them, "Those who want to follow me must say no to the things they want, pick up their crosses, and follow me. Mark 8:34 Message Bible - Calling the crowd to join his disciples, he said, "Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You're not in the driver's seat; I am. Don't run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I'll show you how. As disciples we are called to say NO to the things we want. We are called to deny ourselves and let God lead our lives and follow. God wants us to let our life unfold as we follow God’s lead. God wants us to be God wants us to be happy with what we get, with our portion, instead of trying to get what we want so we will be happy. 35

Do You Truly Love Me happy with what we get, with our portion, instead of trying to get what we want so we will be happy. God wants us to give Him the steering wheel. God wants us to be peaceful and go along for the ride and for us to look for the lessons God gives us along the way. We are called to say no to the things that we want, that we have deemed will give us joy, contentment, satisfaction, peace. External things. In our story, we lead and God follows. In our story God follows the instructions we give Him through our prayers and desires of our heart. In our story a truly loving father always gives us what we want when we pray for “reasonable things” or “understandable things”. In

In our story, we lead and God follows. In our story God follows the instructions we give Him through our prayers and desires of our heart. In our story a truly loving father always gives us what we want when we pray for “reasonable things” or “understandable things”.

God’s story He leads, we follow. In God’s story we do our best for God with what He sets before us to do, for the jobs He gives us, for the spouses He gives us, for the children He gives us, for amount of money He gives us and for the health He gives us. In God’s story we seek only internal things like the Holy Spirit, or a truly loving heart connected relationship with God and with others. In our story we have lots of reasons why we can’t follow what God wants us to do. In our story we are “just the way we are”. In our story “it’s just the way I was raised” or “if you had my past and you walked in my shoes you would understand that what you are asking is just not possible.” We are called to Say No to changing the way people act around us. In our story, we strive for comfort and security. In our story a big part of our security comes from the behavior of others around us. We want our children to behave a certain way, we want our neighbors and coworkers to behave a certain way, and we want our spouses to behave a certain way. In our story we consider the source of our love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness and self-control to come externally from our situations and from the behavior of others. In God’s story His love is enough. In God’s story His In our story a big part of our security comes from the behavior of others around us. We want our children to behave a certain way, we want our neighbors and coworkers to behave a certain way, and we want our spouses to behave a certain way. In our story we consider the source of our love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness and self-control to come externally from our situations and from the behavior of others. redeeming grace and mercy are enough. In God’s story we love and trust Him enough to look for the lessons. In God’s story we stop condemning His decisions and we look for the lessons that He wants us to learn. In God’s story we stop running from pain and we embrace it as a way that God uses to get us to the point where the love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness & self-control is provided to us internally from us being changed, transformed and sanctified. 36

Do You Truly Love Me We are called to Say No to changing our circumstances, jobs, where we live, our past, our family, our parents, and our childhood. In our story we have lots of reasons why we do what we do. In our story we have lots of reasons why we can’t follow what God wants us to do. In our story we are “just the way we We totally believe Satan’s limiting beliefs that he has put in our heads and hearts. are”. In our story “it’s just the way I was raised” or “if you had my past and you walked in my shoes you would understand that what you are asking is just not possible.” Satan has lied to us and we believe him not God. We totally believe Satan’s limiting beliefs that he has put in our heads and hearts. In our story In God’s story we stop condemning His decisions and we look for the lessons that He wants us to learn. In God’s story we stop running from pain and we embrace it as a way that God uses to get us to the point where the love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness & self-control is provided to us internally from us being changed, transformed and sanctified. we look at the people, places and things that betrayed us, that hurt us, that caused us physical and emotional trauma, crimes committed against us, lies, cheating, anger, malice, physical and emotional abuse as the limiting factors that have and will continue to steal away our love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Satan uses our past often as a source of shame and regret. In God’s story we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love In God’s story Jesus could walk up to us, tell us that He would let us have a “life do over” and that He would in fact give us our life over again. We could have the family we want, live where we want, get the job and spouse we want. In God’s story we would say no thank you. You God have made my life perfectly. I do not want to change a thing. It was all of the relationships and anguish that you had put in my life that has made me who I am today. I am a person that can reflect on my past and articulate as my God story and when others hear it, they are pulled in emotionally and they listen, they connect, they trust in someone other than themselves. In God’s story those people can now be ministered to. Him. In God’s story we look for the lessons that we can learn. In God’s story we look for the things that we were not given to us by our past and we get it from God, and the family of God. (Even if the family of God has been the source of the hurt) In God’s story we see where we don’t have certain natural capabilities and we go the Holy Spirit to provide us with it. In God’s story Jesus could walk up to us, tell us that He would let us have a “life do over” and that He would in fact give us our life over again. We could have the family we want, live where we want, get the job and spouse we want. In God’s story we would say no thank you. You God have made my life perfectly. I do not want to change a thing. It was all of the relationships and anguish that you had put in my life that has made me who I am today. I am a person that can reflect on my past and articulate as my God story and when others hear it, they are pulled in emotionally and they listen, they connect, they trust in someone other than themselves. In God’s story those people can now be ministered to. Jesus looks back to the crowd in Mk 8:34-36 and says basically that if we were to in fact to get the things we want, the external things in our world. That we would lose the real us, our souls. He is saying that if we got the children we wanted, the children's behavior and accomplishments that we wanted, the jobs, 37

Do You Truly Love Me the bank account, the spouse, the past, the parents, and the change in behavior of the people in our lives that we could lose our souls. Jesus wants us to know that God's refining love, changes us internally so that even if nothing changes at all in our circumstances or in the behavior of others, that we can in fact be joyful, peaceful, surrendered and content in any and all situations and relationships. Our relationship with God and with our spouses should be 100% them 0% me. (this does not mean our individuality is lost or that we become codependent or enmeshed with our spouse) Most of us are on the PLUS PLAN in our relationship with God. Our love for God should be unconditional. The cross and our adoption as children of God should be enough. However we often want the cross, adoption PLUS – a spouse that does what I want, children that do what I want, and many other external things like, health, money, retirement plan, home, cars, status, notoriety, etc. After all I only want the bare minimum or things that are reasonable. As a disciple I should submit to God’s will. God’s will for me is one thing 1 Thess 4:3 to be sanctified. God uses the relationships closest to us to sanctify us. The relationships closest to us are very daily. Just like Jesus commands us to do, deny ourselves daily and carry our cross daily. The sanctification process is a transformation process. The transformation process begins with a renewal of the mind. How we see the events in our past, present and future is determined by our thoughts about those events. Once God puts someone who comes alongside us and shows us what God sees about my relationship with him we can then come to the knowledge that we really aren’t loving God. We can beg God to give us new capabilities that we don’t have now. We can beg God for a new mind. Ro 12:3, Col 3:10 and Eph 4:17 talk of the renewal of the mind and that without it we cannot get the knowledge on how to love God. God tells us that our old thinking is futile. We need our thinking renewed so that we see our life as a life of sanctification and transformation instead of a life of gimme, gimme, gimme. Instead of a life where we want to be in charge of God and have Him serve us. A life on the PLUS PLAN.

Our relationship with God and with our spouses should be 100% them 0% me. (this does not mean our individuality is lost or that we become codependent or enmeshed with our spouse) Most of us are on the PLUS PLAN in our relationship with God. Our love for God should be unconditional. The cross and our adoption as children of God should be enough. However we often want the cross, adoption PLUS – a spouse that does what I want, children that do what I want, and many other external things like, health, money, retirement plan, home, cars, status, notoriety, etc.

To envy - a feeling of discontent, covet - to long after. If we wish for a life, past or present that is different, or that it was better in the ways we define as better, if we got more or less of certain things that would have made our life better, or our portion better, then that cripples our ability to love God and to Love others. Because love does not envy. We are called to deny ourselves. Yet our “self” is the biggest hindrance to all of our relationships. 3 things I must be convinced I need: 38

Do You Truly Love Me 1. Convinced my mind betrays me and my mind must be renewed 2. Convinced that I am the only one that needs changing 3. Transformation through sanctification is what brings me joy & peace and how to love We must put to death on the cross daily much of the external things that we ask God to change in our lives so that we can be happy, joyful, peaceful, and content. We must hunger and thirst for the Holy Spirit to show us how we justify and rationalize how we are not asking for much, we say to ourselves, that we are asking only for the bare minimum. Prayerfully we can see how much we avoid the internal heart changes that the Holy Spirit can make in us so we can be content in any situation. "Happiness is not getting what we want, it is wanting what we get." We must look to others, and to "family" relationships (accountability relationships) in God's kingdom to make it through.

3 things I must be convinced I need: 1. Convinced my mind betrays me and my mind must be renewed 2. Convinced that I am the only one that needs changing 3. Transformation in what brings me joy & peace and how to love

Romans 12:2, Romans 7:15-25, Ephesians 4:17-18, James 3:13-16, Luke 9:23-25, James 1:2, John 15:11, Psalm 16:5-6, 1 Thessalonians 2:8, Psalm 16:5-6, Proverbs 14:30, Jas 3:13-16, Lk 9:23-25

Part 3- What it looks like when we begin doing it: Wait a minute! Stop! God wants to give me the desires of my heart! Of course he does. He will give us the desires of our heart that are NOT sinful. The enemy gets us those things that are sinful, and that help us to lose our soul. The enemy's plan is get us more and more selfish. God's desire is to get us more and more selfless. How in the world can having a good job, or loving caring spouse, or kids that are safe and happy be envy!! There is no way that I will agree with that! Is our love for God conditional? Do we change to stop getting bad things or change to start getting blessings, if so that is conditional love? Love should be free of all of that. Love trusts, and if we trust God is in control, then let us show it by our being content with what he has assigned us. We begin to identify the externals: people, places, ongoing events, past events, worries, anxieties, tragedies, abuses that we have been praying for God to change, and then we begin to pray for God to give us contentment, peace, gratitude and joy with where we live, who we are in relationship with, with our past, etc. It usually is pretty difficult to take this approach, and there is a general reluctance to identify anything, and to accept and surrender to what God has planned for us. 39

Do You Truly Love Me Part 3- What it feels like when we begin doing it: but... but... but...... It's not fair! Why don't they have to change!!!! There is no way I am going to be a doormat! Get me the black highlighter for these passages!!! Part 3- What it looks like when we are doing it well: We are at peace. We are full of Joy. The fruits of the Spirit are evident and abundant in our lives. We trust God. We know that He is in control and that God's love is a refining love that is transforming me to be more Holy. We are not defensive or argumentative. We operate in an economy of grace. We have forgiven everyone for everything, all debts have been cleared off of the books no one owes me an apology, or time back, or situations back.

Part 3- What it feels like when we are doing it well: We see that no one changed in our lives, none of our situations have changed and we have peace and joy. We are full of contentment and gratitude for whatever we have. We have an "attitude of gratitude" we are happy with our portion that God has given. Ps 16: 5-6

Do You Truly Love Me

Called by Jesus to be a Disciple worksheet Part 4- Called to be a Disciple Worksheet

Phil 2:3 Mentions do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit What are the things you do or ask for that are your selfish ambition? What are the things you do or ask for that are your vain conceit? Things that you are so certain are "right" "good" "reasonable" How about the things you say and do, the way you do things that you are for sure the "right" way, the "best" way. Mark 8:34-36 Jesus commands us to say no to the external things we wants as a condition for our happiness. Jesus warns us that those are things that can cause us to lose our soul. Lk 17:11-17 Identify the external things that you "feel" are "reasonable", "good", "bare-minimum", not excessive or opulent that you want changed in your life so that it would make it so you would then be able to be content, peaceful, joyful, and happy. Include things like spouses, family members, your past, your present, your future, your job, your home, your children, your bank account, your retirement account, your health, etc.

Do You Truly Love Me

God is in control? No is a complete sentence. Do we think in a mutually exclusive paradigm? Part 1 -The Principle - God is in Control An essential element to being in a relationship is understanding who is in control. In our relationship with God, God is the one in control. He is God we are not. In our relationships with all humans neither one is in control. There are several relationships where certain people are called to lead. To lead is to go first, to be the first to model behaviors and to be the first to exemplify the fruit mentioned in the 1st lesson. Husbands are called to lead wives, parents are called to lead children, and bosses are called to lead employees. It is essential that we understand that in our relationships with God and humans, that we are often battling our desire for control. We often model a conditional love relationship where if we don't get the answers we want and or the behavior or results that we want our relationship is negatively affected. In all our relationships we must surrender our desire for control. The more unsurrendered we are, the more untrusting we are, the more controlling we are, the more prideful and arrogant we are, then the less fruit of the Spirit we will bear. We all have responsibilities, God has His and we have ours. We are only responsible for us. Our spouses and our children belong to God and are God’s responsibilities. We are responsible only for our relationship with Jesus. We must bear much fruit in that relationship. It is that vertical relationship that is in our control. We can definitely love God more and more.

It is essential that we understand that in our relationships with God and humans, that we are often battling our desire for control. We often model a conditional love relationship where if we don't get the answers we want and or the behavior or results that we want our relationship is negatively affected. An essential part to seeking God with all heart is to completely surrender to His control, to His plan for our lives, to His distribution of our portion and trust him completely with our heart. Our eyes are blinded by the enemy’s lies. We are often unaware that our selfishness wants everything our way. Our blind eyes only see how our point of view of the world is right, and it tells us that we are always right and that our point of view is the best. We are unaware that our prayers are mostly about our desire to control God. From our point of view we condemn God if He doesn’t give us what we want. We are certain that what we pray for is reasonable and not selfish. Our point of view doesn’t want to consider that God may be right, or that we should try and see God’s point of view. The way we see things, our paradigm, is certain that we are right and that others are wrong. That we are right and God is wrong when He doesn’t answer our prayers in the affirmative. Our point of view has been formed by countless events in our past. We often become certain that our past will equal our future, and that we must protect ourselves. 42

Do You Truly Love Me We call sin sin. However we call matters of opinions matters of opinion. We understand that a healthy adult relationships two people can have completely different points of view without having to “bulldoze” over the other person to have the same opinion or viewpoint or belief.

We call sin sin. However we call matters of opinions matters of opinion. We understand that a healthy adult relationships two people can have completely different points of view without having to “bulldoze” over the other person to have the same opinion or viewpoint or belief.

Jeremiah 29:11-13, Part 2- How do we apply the principle in our Relationships, What does God want to reveal to me? We have a difficult time surrendering because we are unaware of things that keep us untrusting, that keep us trying to control, that immediately "shut us down" or immediately get us defensive & argumentative. We are often unaware of how we “turn off” our hearing when things don’t make sense to us. We are unaware that our love is often conditional and based on whether we understand or not. In our view when God doesn’t make sense to use, we pull back our love or withdraw completely. The reality is that God will have many mysteries to show us on that day we go see in heaven. Jesus asks “will He find faith” will He find disciples that follow even if they don’t understand. In our relationships with our spouses we often repeat the same thing. We often don’t understand why our spouses or children do what they do. We often respond with a desire to control others. There are going to be many things about our spouses we don’t understand. Many things we will never understand. The same is true about God. Instead of trying to spend a lifetime trying to understand, just surrender and acknowledge that you will probably never understand, so stop trying.

There are going to be many things about our spouses we don’t understand. Many things we will never understand. The same is true about God. Instead of trying to spend a lifetime trying to understand, just surrender and acknowledge that you will probably never understand, so stop trying.

Concerning God, just follow, surrender and know that He is God. Know that He will have mysteries and know that He only wants the best for us. When we are in pain, don’t waste the pain. Learn the lesson that God wants us to learn so that we become more holy. Instead praying in manner that boils down to us trying to control God, let’s seek to have His kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. Yes our father wants to hear what we want, however He wants us to learn to want what He wants. He wants us to respect Him. He wants what is important to Him to be important to us. 43

Do You Truly Love Me Concerning our spouses, stop trying to understand. Just ask questions on how they like things done, or how they would like to see the day unfold, or how they would do this or that. Deny ourselves. When we ask questions then we will know, and we can do the things that are important to them. This is important, God wants us to model humility to our spouses and children. A humble person considers the needs of others, considers others better than themselves and doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t consider their point of view as the only correct one. A way to understand that God is control is to start with the premise that at a heart level most of us truly believe our point of view, our understanding, our way of doing things is the right way, the best way. So letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s start there. There can more than one way to do something or accomplish something and both can be equally correct. It is hard to surrender control to God or others when we think in a mutually exclusive paradigm. In other words if we believe one way to be right, then all others must be wrong. When we view the bible that way then it would appear that there are contradictions in the bible. Forgive seven times seventy-seven or put a spear through the heart. God hates divorce or you can get a divorce if you spouse cheats on you. Shake the dirt from you sandals or be patient and persevering. Both ways can be true at the same time. Our righteous acts are both perfume and filthy rags to God. A concept we will speak about throughout the book: Multiple truths We are unaware to the reality that there can be multiple simultaneous truths that are mutually inclusive of each other. Most of us are stuck in paradigm that immediately goes to the thought that if one thing is true then everything else is untrue. We think in a "mutually exclusive" paradigm. If I share an opinion and it is different than yours, then you would internalize that I am saying I am right and you are wrong. What follows is a battle for control. I want to be right and make them wrong. The fact is that there can be separate truths that are simultaneously true and can be mutually inclusive not mutually exclusive. For example Jesus was fully man. He was also fully God. If I live in a paradigm of mutual exclusivity I invalidate what they are saying/thinking. I have to invalidate what they are saying, so that way I am right and they are wrong, hence I try and get control back. This kind of thinking keeps me from giving approval and/or validation to other points of view, other interpretations of what is going on. Another way we are ignorant is how controlling, invalidating and manipulative we are when we respond to "yeses" and "nos" ( plural of yes and no).

The word no IS a complete sentence. Don't ask a question or pray for anything UNLESS the answer can be NO, otherwise you are trying to control or manipulate the other person.

If we are unconditional in our love, and not trying to control others, then whenever we ask a question the answer should be able to be no. It does not have any effect whatsoever on the relationship. If we ask a question and the answer is no, and we ask why, or we try and convince the other person then we are being conditional in our love, controlling and manipulative. We are really manipulative when we 44

Do You Truly Love Me withhold affection, conversation, or give the "silent treatment" or the "cold shoulder" when we get a no answer. This especially includes our relationship with God. We can ask anything to our Father in heaven. If the answer is no, then it should not affect our passion, love, or relationship with God. However if we ask why Lord. Then we are trying control God. If our investment in time to God, to God's people, or worship changes, and all of sudden we have so many excuses and we get "lukewarm", then we are being conditional in our love. If we are unhappy at our portion that He has given us, then we are being conditional in our love. We are in effect trying to control God. Often we get a yes answer and we still try and control, we invalidate and manipulate. This happens when people say yes and then we "add" to their answer to "just to make it clear" or to "improve" or "clarify". This sends the message, nothing is good enough. We can ask a question, get a yes, and then complain how it was implemented or given. This is a good example of invalidation, and control We really try and control when we don't allow the single word "no", to be a complete sentence. The word no IS a complete sentence. Don't ask a question or pray for anything UNLESS the answer can be NO, otherwise you are trying to control or manipulate the other person. To live in harmony with one another (not controlling) we must be surrendered, humble, and able to honor one another, show approval and validation to other ways of doing things and to other ways of thinking that are not like ours. We need to be able to allow for simultaneous multiple truths that are not mutually exclusive, that are in fact mutually inclusive. This would include even avoiding condemnation of others even when engaged in sinful behavior in many cases. We produce lots of good fruit when we understand and allow others the gift of time to learn and to be convinced by the Holy Spirit, instead of forcing and controlling others. We gain a lot in a relationship when we understand the weakness and bind it up. Instead of controlling and repelling those around us, God wants us to be attracting others to us. Not with sweet words that call evil good or good evil. God wants us to be attractive to others by showing others we understand, we "hear them, they don't feel "judged" by us. All people want to feel the following:  believed in  allowed to learn for themselves  validated  trusted  invested in  approved of  that they are equally right  that their thoughts and ways of doing things are honored and respected God wants us to help the blind see, to free the captives and to heal the broken hearted. God wants us surrendered to His will. God wants us to help Him strengthen His Kingdom. When we allow God to be in control, we ask Him to give us eyes to see the brokenhearted, we ask Him to give us wisdom on how to free the captives, and to set at liberty the oppressed. When we let God control our lives we deny ourselves and we put aside our plans and allow Him to guide us in His plans. We seek to see our gifts that He has given us, so that He can use us in His kingdom. 45

Do You Truly Love Me The only true way to help the blind see, to free the captives and to heal the broken hearted is stop trying to control people and to bring people into the presence of the living God. However we have to be attractive rather than repelling. Control and conditional love is repelling. The key to our personal ministry is to be attractive. We have to be able to approach someone (spouses, children, family, etc) and have them allow us to get closer and not "keep their distance" by moving farther away as I approach them. People won't allow me to minister to them if they think I am their adversary, if they think I am right and they are wrong, if they think that I "judge" them, if they think that I cannot "relate" to them, if they think that I won't "hear" them. There is a saying â&#x20AC;&#x153;People don't remember what you tell them, they only remember how you make them feel." I can't do this by controlling, or forcing or my repeated dogmatic assaults on their behavior or thinking. It must be done with patience, gentleness and humility. We must know that the only way to truly help others is to bring them into the presence of the living God and have Him and the Holy Spirit give them the illumination that they need so that they can see the riches God has in store for all of us when we humbly surrender to Him. God does not want us to control others and He does not want to control us. He wants us to see what we did not always see. God wants us to know the concept of good, better and best. He wants us to know that is good to pray for us to "endure" the relationships around us. He knows it is much better for us to "see" the enemy attacking, and for us to avoid the enemy and to not let him "batter & pummel" us. God knows that it is best for us to allow Him to sanctify us in way that we are peaceful in all situations. That we don't have to think of what would Jesus do, that we would just do what Jesus would do, because of the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit completely transforming us from the inside out. God does not want us trying to control external things, other people's behavior, our bank accounts, our jobs, our children our parents. He wants transformed at a heart level so that no one else has to change at all, that we are completely peaceful with the portion He has given us, our past, our parents, our childhoods, our spouses, our jobs, and our children. An important thing to remember is that we must be alert to the enemy and how he can get us to look at activities, actions, and works and have us forget that God only wants our heart. Our spouses only want our heart. Our children only want our hearts. Please be careful of the following: How much I read the bible to prove how much I love God. I must be careful to look at the fruit as the proof that my heart really is in this and am I connecting at a heart level. If my spouse, children or family can't see the fruit of Gal 5:22 and 1 Cor 13: 4-8, then I am trying to control & manipulate. How much I serve at church to prove how much I love God. I must be careful to look at the fruit as the proof that my heart really is in this and am I connecting at a heart level. If my spouse, children or family can't see the fruit of Gal 5:22 and 1 Cor 13: 4-8, then I am trying to control & manipulate. How well I know the bible to prove how much I love God. I must be careful to look at the fruit as the proof that my heart really is in this and am I connecting at a heart level. If my spouse, children or family can't see the fruit of Gal 5:22 and 1 Cor 13: 4-8, then I am trying to control & manipulate. How hard I work for the family. I must be careful to look at the fruit as the proof that my heart really is in this and am I connecting at a heart level. If my spouse, children or family can't see the fruit of Gal 5:22 and 1 Cor 13: 4-8, then I am trying to control & manipulate.

Do You Truly Love Me Quantity time is what works. I must be careful to look at the fruit as the proof that my heart really is in this and am I connecting at a heart level. If my spouse, children or family can't see the fruit of Gal 5:22 and 1 Cor 13: 4-8, then I am trying to control & manipulate. God wants our hearts. God wants us to connect with Him and others at a heart level. Love is spelled " t i m e" Relationships want quantity time not quality time. Relationships want to spend time with you. That means with you, with you being really there and in only the moment when you are with them. Relationships want to feel invested in, to feel honored, cherished, and listened to. I like to say, My wife, or my children are my most important client! It is essential that our Savior, our Redeemer is also our Lord. In the end it doesn't pay to resist, we will lose the battle. We must surrender and give God control of our lives and make Him Lord. Luke 14:31-33 New International Version (NIV) 31 â&#x20AC;&#x153;Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t he first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? 32 If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace. 33 In the same way, those of you who do not give up everything you have cannot be my disciples. FYI we are the king with 10,000. We will lose. We must give up EVERYTHING and surrender. 1 John 4:20, Ephesians 4:17-18, Ecclesiastes 11:6, Isaiah 64:6, Romans 14:18, Romans 12:15-16, 1 Thessalonians 5:13-14, Luke 4:18

Part 3- What it looks like when we begin doing it: I pray and beg God to reveal to me how much I control I am aware of what I ask God for I am aware that the external things will not bring me peace or happiness I am aware that only God can heal me and give me victory over my sin of idolatry I am aware that only God can heal me and give me victory over my faithlessness I am aware that only God can rid me of selfishness I notice when I control and I apologize and ask forgiveness I notice when I minimize and I apologize and ask forgiveness I notice when I invalidate and I apologize and ask forgiveness I notice when I manipulate and I apologize and ask forgiveness I am aware of my sin and I allow no to be a complete sentence

Do You Truly Love Me I stop asking why and stop wanting to understand everyone. I just ask them questions and accept the answers to how they want things. If they say they want rocks in the corn flakes, then I give them rocks in their corn flakes I stop resisting I am aware that I am the only person in the world that needs to change Part 3- What it feels like when we begin doing it: OUCH!!!!! but, but, but, but .................... I just can't cuz ................... I have trust issues ......., I have abandonment issues........., I have been emotionally brutalized............ but... but... but...... It's not fair! Why don't they have to change!!!! There is no way I am going to be a doormat! Get me the black highlighter for these passages!!!

Part 3- What it looks like when we are doing it well: People around me enjoy having conversations with me People around me feel that I respect them People around me feel like "I hear them" People around me feel like "I get it" People around me tell me the can talk to me because they don't feel judged by me People enjoy being around me People around me smile a lot People tell me stuff that they have never told anyone People say that I am peaceful and gentle People say I am a "velvet hammer" with God's word I much more worshipful in prayer life I pray for God to give me the eyes to see the brokenhearted and to see the captives I pray for God to give me the wisdom to guide people to the Living God 48

Do You Truly Love Me I pray for revelation and illumination by the Holy Spirit on how to best use my gifts I am open and vulnerable with my relationships and open to have others rate my fruit Part 3- What it feels like when we are doing it well: I look back at my entire life and if God gave me the chance to change it, I would not change one single solitary thing. That's because I see that God uses those challenges to connect me with people. I am content with the portion that the Lord has assigned to me to steward I know, that I know, that I know, that God is in control and that I can trust him I am at peace and am not defensive or argumentative with other around me.

God is control worksheet Part 4- God is in Control Worksheet

1 is a rarely, or poorest or no way, 10 is I do this almost always, best, or sure thing How proficient am I at accepting no for answer? 1-10 Would I be allowed to just say no and have that be the entire sentence? 1-10 1 is no way 10 is sure thing How proficient am I at accepting yes as an answer and just leaving it alone just how it was given or answered? 1-10 How proficient am I at accepting other thoughts and other ways of doing things? 1-10 Do people around me say " I get them"? 1-10 49

Do You Truly Love Me Do people around me say "I get it"? 1-10 Do people around me say I am flexible? 1-10 Do people around me say I beat them over the head with my way? 1-10 Do people around me say I beat them over the head with the bible? 1-10 Do people around me say that I think I more spiritual than they are? 1-10 Do people around me say that I am argumentative? 1-10 Do people around me say that I am argumentative and defensive? 1-10 Do people around me say that I am "cold and unfeeling or uncaring"? 1-10 Do I try and control God in my prayer life? 1-10 Do I whine, pout, complain, ask why me, am envious of others, when God answers no? 1= almost always and 10 = rarely if ever Am I content with the portion God has given me? 1-10 Do I withhold affection when I get a no answer? 1-10 1= almost always 10= rarely if ever Do I give the cold shoulder when I get a no answer? 1-10 1= almost always 10= rarely if ever Do the people around me feel that what is important to them is equally as important to me? 1-10 10 being the best Do the people around me think I make fun of them? 1-10 1= almost always 10= rarely if ever Do the people around me think I ignore them? 1-10 Do the people around me think I am prideful? 1-10 1= extremely prideful 10= very humble Do the people around me think I trust them? 1-10 1= no trust Do the people around me think I have enough conversation with them? 1-10 1=no 10= yes a lot Do the people around me think I believe in them? 1-10 1=no 10= a lot Do the people around me think that I make them feel equally as right as me? 1=no 10= yes a lot How proficient am I at my personal ministry with my closest relationships? 1=very little 10= excellent Do my closest relationships feel that I give them quantity time? 1=very little 10= a lot

Do You Truly Love Me

Don't waste the Pain – Don’t ask why; Instead ask what is the lesson God wants me to learn? Learn from the consequences. Part 1 -The Principle - Don't waste the Pain God wants us to learn that we need to leave behind the paradigm that we live by our feelings, our thinking, and by our own conscience. In other words, God wants us to leave the abstract and remain in the concrete. We utter words like, “I love God”. We use the word love to describe our “feelings” for God, for our spouses, our family, and for God's kingdom. However, in chapter one, we learned that we must remain in Him and bear fruit. We learned that God wants a true biblical love as described by Him. Most importantly, He wants us to know that there is a "plumb-line" and that we need to ask others about the fruit in our lives, not necessarily about our feelings. It is only by the fruit in our lives that people will know that we are His disciples. In the second chapter, we saw that repentance is a big part of truly loving God. In the third chapter we learned in order to follow Jesus, and be a disciple, we need to deny ourselves. Hopefully, we’ve learned a lot about how selfish we are and how we try and control God and others. In chapter four we learned that God is in control. We dug in more, and prayerfully uncovered more of our desire to control; which God calls the sin of idolatry. If we live in a way that we control, manipulate, or are conditional in our love; invalidating, not respecting or honoring others, then we are showing, by our fruit, that the answer to the question; "Do you truly love me" is no. Many people find out by the end of the chapter that they really don't love God much, or others for that matter. Often when people come to us for Biblical Counseling and we say to them that it does not appear that you really love God or your spouse, they get pretty mad. However, by the end of chapter 4 they understand that by God's definition, they really don't truly love Him. We like to tell people to make up another word for what you are doing because it is not love. You might was well say I "Omaha" God. I would like to take this time to make it clear that this is not meant to be a self-help methodology. It is not a system or way to work our way into loving God. Remember, God's love for us in unconditional. We can do nothing, nor can we radically change our hearts, that would result in God loving us more. However, we often find out that it is us who can love God more abundantly. Our goal is to learn to rely on our Rock, our Redeemer, and our Provider. We have to allow God to provide for us with what we cannot provide for ourselves; the ability to wipe away our ignorance, and for Him to make us completely capable to bear the fruit of the Spirit. God has knocked at the door of our hearts to let Him in. He wants us to actually see what He sees. He wants us to see the pain we cause Him, to see the devastation we cause others, and to see the consequences of our sin that we cause to ourselves. God wants us to hear Him whispering to us when He is trying to guide us. He wants us to hear him when He is trying to get us to yield to the Holy Spirit; instead of yielding to the "self" we have inside us that battles with the Holy Spirit. God wants us to hear the cries of anguish and pain that we cause others in our lives. He wants us to hear the broken hearted and the cries for help from the oppressed that are crying out for liberty from their captivity. We can't hear any of that when we listen to the "self" inside us that drowns out all of the good we ought to do because all we focus on is the “my’s”.

Do You Truly Love Me My story, my limits, my problems, my worries, my past, my "issues", my lousy portion that God has given me, my prayers that don't get answered, my people in my life that have not begged for forgiveness, my list of people that I have not forgiven, my resentments, my bitterness, my ingratitude, my life, my spouse, my job, my money, my bank account, my retirement account, my home, my car, my children. All sin causes pain. Sin causes pain to God. Sin causes pain to others. Sin causes pain to us. God wrote everything down for us. He did that so we would not have to learn the hard way. He knocks on the door to our hearts and for so many reasons we don't let Him in. Many reasons we are ignorant of. Many reasons we are blind to. We say that we love God, that we trust God, however if we take a look at our hearts and our actions, the answer often to the question, "Do you truly love me", is “No”. As a result of the “No” answer, we cause pain to God, to others, and to ourselves. The enemy has kept us blinded to many things for a long time. One of the things is being able to see the differences between: 

Trial and/or testing from God - Trials from God and are not founded in our actions or inaction. Trials from God are what God uses to refine us. He uses trials to make us more holy and to produce the fruit of the Spirit. Trials can come in parents that make decisions and actions that hurt us, parents or people who abuse us or assault us. Disease that is not founded in our eating habits, smoking, drinking & drug abuse. Calamities of nature or acts of war or terrorism. Financial strife from economic downturns. A note here at this point. Many of us did not save properly, we over spent, obtained too much debt, refinanced our homes too much, purchased too much home, neglected wise savings habits and wise spending thresholds. So many us are paying the price now.  Temptation from the enemy - temptation is only from Satan. The enemy is prowling around each day, trying to use past hurts, or our paradigms to trap us and ensnare us in sin.  Consequences - bad fruit, from our decisions, actions and inaction - for most of us, a large percentage of what we go through are the consequences of our sin, of our decisions, actions and inaction. This can come in common ways that the enemy uses to ensnare us: sexual activity, drugs, alcohol, poor work habits, education that was neglected, our blame shifting, our selfishness, arrogance, anger and our pride. God would rather us learn from His blessings. He would rather for us to read His word and learn. As a result from our lack of knowledge, our blindness, our ignorance, and our calling evil good and good evil, we end up having to learn things the hard way. Once we stray from God's plan for us then we are left to learn the hard lessons. I like to say “There is only one way to learn the hard lessons and that is the hard way". I am not sure who said it or where I heard it. That hard way causes us pain.

As a result from our lack of knowledge, our blindness, our ignorance, and our calling evil good and good evil we end up having to learn things the hard way.

Do You Truly Love Me The good thing is, God takes that mess we created and uses it. For many people it is when we find God. When we have nothing and we finally, finally after much pain caused to God, others and ourselves, we finally come to our senses and go to our Father in Heaven. One thing we can count on in our lives is that seasons change. We may not have endured any difficult seasons yet, but just know this, that season always comes. There is rarely a life that does not experience some "dungeon time". That time of darkness and times of suffering from the consequences of our sin, and even from trials from God. Below is an example of Samson. His "dungeon time" came as a result of pride and arrogance and direct disobedience to God. He was captured and was sent to the dungeon to grind grain. Samson learned his lesson, went to God, and begged God to use him for His glory. Samson repented, he wanted only to serve God and kill more of God's enemies than he had already killed in his lifetime. Samson let God use the pain to cause him to repent. God can take the pain of something evil and turn it to good. He can turn that pain into love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. If we suffer and endure the pain and it does not produce the fruit of the spirit, then God loves us enough to repeat the process again and again. So if we waste the pain we don't repent, we don't change, we don’t learn, we keep hurting others then God keeps teaching us the lesson. So if we waste the pain we don't repent, we don't change, we don’t learn, we keep hurting others and God keeps teaching us the lesson. God gives us a target or a mark that we can in fact hit. He never gives us a mark that cannot be hit. That would be an act of a cruel God not a loving God. When we sin we "miss the mark". The mark is the fruit of the Spirit. The mark is truly loving God. Jesus is not the mark. Perfection is not the mark. Truly loving God is the mark. The fruit of the Spirit is the mark. The fruit in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 is the mark.

When we sin we "miss the mark". The mark is the fruit of the Spirit. The mark is truly loving God. Jesus is not the mark. Perfection is not the mark. Truly loving God is the mark, the fruit of the Spirit is the mark, the fruit in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 is the mark. 1 Corinthians 4:4, Matthew 13:13-17, Deuteronomy 30:19-20, Luke 15:11-20, Judges 16:21-30, John 21:16 Part 2- How do we apply the principle in our Relationships? What does God want to reveal to me? We want to remember at this point that the “how” involves other people. Hopefully by this time we can see that often times our best thinking keeps us entangled, enslaved and ignorant. Once we realize that we don't see and hear, we beg God to give us eyes that see and ears that hear. We beg God to take the pain we have caused others and to make that pain & anguish evident to us so that we can come out refined by His love, and bearing the fruit of the Spirit.

Do You Truly Love Me We ask others around us and we petition God to help us to stay the course and persevere through the path that is set out before us. We want to be given the desire to persevere so that we stay away from the temptation to take a short cut; to skip the steps of refinement that God wants to use to refine us Once we see our lack of fruit we beg God to give us the capability to bear the fruit of the Spirit and to be able to truly love Him and others as described by God in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8. We need to make time regularly with our spouses (if we are married or someone close to us if we are not married) to discuss the worksheets in the lessons and make it a priority to be a part of a small group. This will allow open and transparent relations to be built that creates a discussion about the fruit, or lack thereof, in our lives. We need to remember that our feelings do not determine if we truly love God, our spouses, or our children. If we are a having a difficult time "connecting" or "getting it" then we can use a journal to help us to recall, see, and hear the consequences of our sin in the relationships in our lives. The journal can lead to God speaking to our hearts so that He can cause us to, grieve, mourn & wail. So that He turns our laughter to mourning and our joy to gloom. That way God can turn a hardened heart to a soft heart that can truly love Him. Once we begin becoming aware of how much we are blind and deaf. Once we see how far off the mark we are. We often can be overwhelmed with just how wretched we are. Once are eyes are opened we can be quite disgusted with how hypocritical we have been. The enemy would like for us to quit. The enemy would like for us to stay in our feelings and for us to stay incapacitated. To combat this, our new awareness should be to be patient with ourselves and with others. Our new awareness should include a viewpoint that we were once incapable, and now we are slowly becoming capable. We will move through seasons or stages of transformation. Gods’ transformative love can be instantaneous, however more often than not it is a slow process that happens in stages. Our new awareness should include a viewpoint that we were once incapable, and now we are slowly becoming capable. We will move through seasons or stages of transformation. Gods’ transformative love can be instantaneous, however more often than not it is a slow process that happens in stages.

Stages of Trust      

I trust no one. I think that maybe I need to change things; that my way is not working. I think that I should begin to surrender. I share my feelings, thoughts, dreams, fears, regrets, shame and see if you judge me. I share my feelings, thoughts, dreams, fears, regrets, shame and see if you if you think they are valid. If you invalidate me, ridicule me, if you look down on me, if you are angry with me, if you are disappointed with me then I stop. I withdraw. 54

Do You Truly Love Me 

Once I feel like you don't judge me, that you understand me, that you "get me", that you make me feel that my actions were valid/understandable, then I will share more with you and ask for your advice.  I must feel that you are "attractive" not "repelling".  I look and listen for repelling attributes, I'm right, you’re wrong - that my thoughts are invalid, we are not in harmony.  I look and listen for attracting attributes, you're devoted to me, you unconditionally love me, you "get me", you don't judge me, you make feel good even though it is clear that I am not as capable as you to do want God wants me to do.  I will ask for your advice, however I won't take it or I will take it partially, the parts that make sense to me.  Once I see that you are patient that you won't give up on me, that you are gentle and kind then I will begin to slowly do things that I do not understand or see.  I begin to see your devotion to God and to me.  My surrender is much more complete.  Once I know that you expect me to make mistakes and not be perfect, once I know that you will patiently wait and teach me to be more and more capable to do what God wants for me to do, then I can give my heart completely.  I then ask your advice and views, I see clearly that it matches what God wants, I do things I don't understand, that I don't see, that I have never seen ever, that I can't imagine why anyone would ever do. Stages of Love   

 

I love to get what I want. To fulfill my needs, desires. I love to fulfill your needs, as long as mine are met as well - 50/50 give & take - conditional love I love and I am aware of unconditional love, however I still invalidate, control, manipulate, minimize and devalue you, I don't yet speak life into you (Proverbs 18:21) often enough. 1 Corinthians 13: 4-8, I do some of them sometimes and several very little of the time. I move through the 5,000 mistakes and each time I make a mistake I apologize and ask for forgiveness. My spouse, child, or parent can rate me a 9 or 10 on fruits of the spirit and 1 Corinthians 13:4-8.

Stages of Obedience  Obey because I said so.  Obey because I get consequences if I don't.  Obey because I get good stuff when I do.  Obey because I love unconditionally. Stages of Seeing     

Blind. I see mostly the things that feed my arrogance, vanity, greed, jealously, un-forgiveness. I am aware there is Satan & God. I start looking for Satan & God. I see mostly my past, I see it as my future, I believe only what I have seen. 55

Do You Truly Love Me  

I see my failures, shame, and regret. I see how people hurt me. I see the good things others have received. I see their good lives. I see how they have a lot of things better than me. I see how they have better childhoods, spouses, parents, children, jobs, and finances. I see only the blessings God has given them and not me.  I see God, however I see a person that does not understand me, does not fully understand my situation and how I got to where I am. I see a God that is not Lord of my life. I still have lots of "my’s"- my wife, my children, my career, my money, my feelings, my time.  I employ a new regimen & training. I train myself to see the good, to see & catch people doing things right. I train myself to see the good in me, to see how Jesus understands me.  Seeing the mix of trial and consequences that are in my situations.  I see the pain, destruction and sadness caused by the sin I commit and omit.  I begin to see how I am a steward over what God gives me.  I see how my life is just perfect the way that it is and the way that it was. I see how God can use my specific path in life too. (Luke 4:18-19).  I have faith in what I do not see, what I have never seen, or what I do not understand.  I see God as my loving father that knows all and is always right. I see a God that knows what is best for me and only wants the best for me and wants me to stop doing all the things that hold me back from being my best. I see a God that has big plans for me to help Him help others. Luke 4:18-19  I can see the grace, mercy, and forgiveness, unconditional love that Jesus shows to others as He walks through His ministry in the Gospels. I can see it and point it out and write about what I see.  Once I truly see how Jesus shows grace, mercy, forgiveness, and unconditional love, then I can "know" Jesus. Stages of Hearing      

  

I hear the things that feed my vanity, greed, envy, jealousy, un-forgiveness, and “big shotism”. I hear how everyone is wrong and I am right. I hear the whispers of Satan frequently and I don't take them captive 2 Corinthians 10:5. I hear how Satan tells me that evil is good, and that good is evil. I hear how Satan tells me that I am a good person, even though I call good evil and evil good. I hear how Satan convinces me that people don't deserve my forgiveness. I start a new training and a new regimen. I begin to learn to take my thoughts captive and make them obedient to Christ. I start calling behaviors and actions what God calls them. I purpose to hear things that give me the knowledge and wisdom that God wants me to hear. I put into my ears God's word, bible studies on audio, thoughts that follow Philipians 4:8-9. I begin to hear the anguish and pain that results from my sin as it impacts others around me. I begin to hear the cries of help from people who are brokenhearted and imprisoned. I hear God's loving fatherly voice that has no error or misunderstanding. I hear His whispers, I hear His guidance, and I hear God directing me to do His will.

Do You Truly Love Me

Stages of Knowledge     

We begin to see Satan and his temptations; we begin to see God, to see what God sees. We now have a new regimen; we must go into a new training. We move away from the old man and the old life. I must have a new regimen, a new training. I need new friends, new atmosphere, and new coaches. . Then the new regimen is something that I want to do, and then it creates new wants, new aspirations and cravings. Then it changes me and I get joy and satisfaction from the new life and the new me.

James 4:8-10

Part 3- What it looks like when we begin doing it:

Concept: 5,000 mistakes. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Mistakes are a part of learning. It takes 5,000 mistakes to be a good father, husband, disciple, etc. We give others the gift of time and provide an economy of grace by letting them make 5,000 mistakes. The mistakes are part of the process of transformation and of learning. The mistakes are part of the process of making us more capable to carry out God's will in our lives. God, of course, can deliver us immediately, however most often he allows us to learn slowly. There are many studies and books that state it takes 10,000 hours of training to become proficient at anything. We see lots and lots of sin. We want to make sure we look to see the good in us as well. We want to make sure to remember that it takes 5,000 mistakes and 10,000 hours to become proficient at anything. God, of course, can deliver us from anything and He can do it in an instant; however, for must of us it takes the 10,000 hours. Each time we make a mistake we apologize and ask for forgiveness. God wants to take us to places we have never been, He wants to take us to the unplowed ground of our lives and to shower His righteousness on us. (Hosea 20:12).

Do You Truly Love Me Part 3- What it feels like when we begin doing it: 2 Corinthians 4:17 New International Version (NIV) 17 For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. James 1:2 New International Version (NIV) 2 Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 2 Corinthians 4:7-9 New International Version (NIV) 7 But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. 8 We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; 9 persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.

Part 3- What it looks like when we are doing it well:

Below is a repeat of the knowing loving process.

2 Peter 1:5-9 New International Version (NIV) 5 For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; 6 and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; 7 and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. 8 For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure; they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 But whoever does not have them is nearsighted and blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their past sins. Below is what we call the “knowing-loving process” that God wants us to use so that we can we know Him. The same process would be used in all relationships. It would be the same way on how to “know” our spouses. Jesus wants a heart connected love relationship that knows Him. He does not want us to waste the pain and consequences we have received in our past. He does not want us to be ineffective or unproductive in knowing Him. He wants our eyes to see and for us to healed of our blindness.

Do You Truly Love Me Faith - Faith in Jesus; that faith saves us. Goodness - Add to that goodness. We begin the journey to loving God by doing the good things we know to do, however limited that may be. However we don't know what we don't know. We don't realize how ignorant we are and we don't have an accurate assessment of our capabilities or incapabilities. Knowledge - So we now have to add to that knowledge. So we can know the things we didn't know. So we can know how much fruit we are bearing by asking the people in our lives. We begin to know our capabilities and in-capabilities. We gain knowledge of our pride, selfishness, idolatry, envy, and conditional love, lack of love, desire to control, invalidate, minimize, & manipulate. Self-control - Once we begin to see what we did not see and hear what we did not hear we then use our new knowledge and now we know we need to use our self-control to turn away from old behavior. Perseverance - Since there is so much damage and bad fruit from our old behaviors it can be a long time in many cases to be able to move forward. The consequences of our choices, decisions and behaviors can be overwhelming at times. We are sometimes sure that there is no way we change. That it is too hard. That it will never make a difference. That's exactly the time when we learn that only God can change us, sanctify us, and transform us. Only He can bring the peace we desire. Godliness - as we move through the other phases we now begin to produce the good fruit God wants for us if we remain in Him. We produce the Fruit of the Spirit Mutual affection - once we are producing the Fruit of the Spirit we can coexist with others. We can be at peace and affectionate with the people we could never forgive, with the people that have never changed, that have never said they were sorry, the people that made lots of bad decisions and took a lot of actions that hurt us greatly. We can that have mutual affection for all. God has transformed from the inside out. Our hearts are actually different; we are actually different. Love - We can now truly love God. We can love as God has designed in 1 Corinthians 13: 4-8. Part 3- What it feels like when we are doing it well: God has a lot prepared for those of us who truly love Him; for those of us who call Him Savior, Redeemer and Provider. For those who make Him Lord of their lives and who truly love Him at a heart level. We don't want to hear the following: Matthew 7:21-23 New International Version (NIV) 21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 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 in your name perform many miracles?’ 23 Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’

God has a great plan for us and great rewards if we don't waste the pain! James 1:12, 1 Corinthians 2:9 59

Do You Truly Love Me

Don't Waste the Pain Worksheet

Sit with someone you love, and/or your accountability group and go over worksheets 1-4. Ask: What are the items on these worksheets that I simply What idols do I still worship? What evil do I call good or am ok with? Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t see at all Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t get That I am out of touch with That I don't see the damage caused That I don't see the hurt caused

Do You Truly Love Me

Speak Life - Transformation from the Inside Out – We see how selfish we are & how defensive & argumentative we are. Part 1 -The Principle- Speak Life Proverbs 18:21 New International Version (NIV) 21 The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit. By this time we should be aware now that we are evil on the inside in several areas of our life. We should now see that the story we tell ourselves “our story” keeps us evil in those particular areas. In God’s story we become aware of our “lack” and go to the source, the Holy Spirit, to provide us with transformation we need on the inside, to transform the evil to goodness. We should be convinced that by our natural power we cannot rid ourselves of that evil. We need to go to God for the supernatural power that only comes from the Holy Spirit to transform us. So we can be transformed into people that don’t have to think “what would Jesus do, we just do what Jesus would do”. We all probably have words ringing in our head 10, 20, 30+ years after they have been said. Those words are powerful words to us. We all have words that at one time lifted us up and gave us joy, and some words that gave us tremendous hurt and sadness. Those words had the power to guide us to the path we took in our lives or they had the power to get us off the ungodly path we were on.

We should be convinced that by our natural power we cannot rid ourselves of that evil. We need to go to God for the supernatural power that only comes from the Holy Spirit to transform us. So we can be transformed into people that don’t have to think “what would Jesus do, we just do what Jesus would do”.

Some of us had words to motivate us and encourage us on to love and good deeds. Those words set us onto a path that was beneficial to us. It helped spur us on to education that would better our job outlook. For some of us those words directed us to our spouse. We might have had someone to encourage us to leave a life of sin behind. The greatest words we can say to anyone are the words that invite them to a life with God. A life that accepts Jesus as Lord and Savior. Words that invite someone to look at God's word, or to look at God's plan for their lives. Words that encourage us to stay on the path when we want to give up. Words that spur us to defeat the temptations of the enemy in our lives. Words that implore us to see what God sees, to hear what God hears, and to call things as God would call them. Words that help us to stop using words like the word love, when what we are not doing is love. Words that encourage us to stop using words that make evil good and good evil.

Do You Truly Love Me When we learn to love as God intended, once we can deny ourselves, once we can give up control to God, and when we let the pain of our consequences refine us. Then we can begin to look at the needs of others. God’s story is where He shows us that all the pain and the mistakes are used to bring peace and joy. Our story is the story we tell ourselves on why we give into our selfishness and tell ourselves why we can’t do what God wants us to do. Our story tells we know everything, that we see everything. Our story tells us that if it doesn’t make sense to me, then it is wrong. Our story tells us that we understand is right and all other things are wrong.

God’s story is where He shows us that all the pain and the mistakes are used to bring peace and joy. Our story is the story we tell ourselves on why we give into our selfishness and tell ourselves why we can’t do what God wants us to do. We are in God’s story for our lives when we can see and hear the needs of our church brothers and sisters and we can help bring sight to the blind and heal the broken hearted, or when we can also speak life into the unsaved around us. We are in God’s story when we believe that we have a blind side and that we need others in our lives to see what we can’t see or hear what we can’t hear.

Definition: Blind Side – the things we can’t see, may never ever see. This can be things we can see or understand or detect like, feelings, emotions, fears, capabilities, lack of capabilities, etc.

We can begin to speak to people to build the relationship that can open the door to the real life changing conversations that God ultimately wants us to have with the unsaved. God wants our words to heal, revive, restore and encourage our brothers and sisters. He wants our words to make disciples and to be tools in His hands to guide the unsaved to salvation. Sadly to say we each have had many careless words said to us. Those words of anger, retaliation, humiliation, and belittlement were sometimes meant to hurt us, sometimes the intention was not to hurt us, however it wounded us anyway. We have learned in the previous lessons that God must change us from the inside out. He and only He can change us at our innermost being at our soul. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. After our eyes have seen the truth, the truth can set us free. Our eyes need to see that we in fact are not loving as God calls us and we must see how our "self" does not produce the fruit of the Spirit. Once we see the truth and hear the truth from others in our lives then we can "Go to back to our Father" as in Luke 15 and ask Him to transform us. In the passage below God wants us to know that "out of the evil" inside us is where the words of impatience, greed, selfishness, control, manipulation, invalidation, anger, bitterness, rage and malice come from. They don't come from not implementing a great system of communication. They don't come from exterior things like our situations or the people in our lives not behaving correctly. They 62

Do You Truly Love Me don't come from God not answering our prayers. They come from within us. Once we are changed, transformed, renewed. Then from the good inside us comes the new words that speak life. Matthew 12:35-37 New International Version (NIV) 35 A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him. 36 But I tell you that everyone will have to give account on the Day of Judgment for every careless word they have spoken. 37 For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned.”

It is important to note at this time the following. A person in love with God in the true sense that God has revealed in the previous lessons will look like the following:        

what is important to God is important to him invests lots of time with God's family commits to a church family serves in ministries at church is in God's word daily invites people to church is involved with outreach to the unsaved is involved with outreach to the poor and needy

However why I am mentioning it at this point is that many people do these things, however it is not done at a heart level. They may look the part. They often use their deeds to prove to others they are right and the others are wrong and need to repent and change. How do we know how their lives affect others? Ask the people closest to them, spouse, children, coworkers and see if there is an abundance of fruit. I have run across many people that from the outside look like a person the truly loves God however they do not pass the "fruit test" by their family. Hence they are not truly loving God. Out of the evil stored up inside us, we can turn something inherently good like the word of God, and turn it into a stumbling block, we can turn it into "spoiled, rotten bread" instead of the bread of life, and we can turn God's words in to words that bring injury and harm, instead of bringing life. How do we know? BY THE FRUIT!!!!

Out of the evil stored up inside us, we can turn something inherently good like the word of God, and turn it into a stumbling block, we can turn it into "spoiled, rotten bread" instead of the bread of life, and we can turn God's words in to words that bring injury and harm, instead of bringing life. How do we know? Hebrews 10:24, Matthew 28:18-20, Isaiah 28:13

Do You Truly Love Me Part 2- How do we apply the principle in our Relationships, What does God want to reveal to me? Part of the evil inside us is the selfishness and the desire for us to control and manipulate the relationships we have with God and others so that we get what we want, to get what we hope for, what we desire. To speak life one ingredient is to be a source of hope & awareness for all the people we speak to. Certainly for our spouses and our children. If we consider others better than ourselves, then we will consider to leave people with hope when we speak to them. When we speak life to each other, when we spur one another on, we will be talking about what God hopes for. We will be talking about what God wants, what God desires, what God sees and what God's wisdom is. We will also see the need to eradicate the selfishness inside us. Here is how we apply the principle to our lives, we see and hear how far off the mark we are and we get humble and talk to others around us.          

We see how selfish & controlling we are We get convinced that we are selfish and controlling We ask others about the fruit in our lives We see a tremendous need for God to transform us We start denying ourselves We start speaking in a way that encourages others and is attracting rather than repelling We begin to submit to others We begin to meet the needs of others We ask people what they want, what they desire, what they hope for We ask people what does God want, what does God desire, what does God hope for in our relationship, in what we are about to undertake, what we are attempting to do.

God's word and the Spirit should convince us that we have missed the mark. The mark being the fruit of the Spirit. We need for the Spirit to renew our minds, to transform our minds. We need God to change our minds. You might like the word "convict" us that the words that come out of our mouths do match the evil inside us. We need to know that we need supernatural power to change the inside of us so that what comes out of our mouths speaks life into people.

God's word and the Spirit should convince us that we have missed the mark. The mark being the fruit of the Spirit. We need for the Spirit to renew our minds, to transform our minds. We desperately need God to convince us that when we repay evil with evil that it comes from the evil inside us. We should be begging the Spirit to give us eyes to see that "hurt people, hurt people". That God must heal those hurts (more on those in the next lesson, Hurt people, hurt people) in us, and turn the evil inside of us to good. We want to start speaking in a way that is encouraging to others and that is attracting and not repelling. Yes and no are words that can go a long way in breathing life into a relationship.

Do You Truly Love Me When we say yes to:               

making God's priorities my priorities talking about what God hopes for, wants, expects and desires to spending time in God's word to spending time with God in prayer and worship telling you the real real truth about what I think telling you the truth about how I have sinned against you letting you ask me about my behaviors that you think are sinful stopping sinful behavior investing time with a person listening to someone tell me the story of who they are what they want to do making what is important to you important to me being a source of hope & awareness to others taking time to talk about my fruit or lack of fruit taken time to listen to how I have insulted or hurt you

When we say no to:            

Satan's temptations calling evil good and good evil making my hopes more important that God's hopes making my desires more important that God's desires making my comfort, and lack of conflict and disruption more important that serving God and seeking His kingdom first coarse joking or ridiculing others harsh tones and harsh critical words words of invalidation words of minimizing your thoughts and feelings words of control words of manipulation anything verbal or nonverbal that demonstrates conditional love

When the good inside us is in us, then we respond in peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. When we have been changed at a heart level, we make sure that what is important to God is important us. We do what is pleasing to God. When we have been changed at a heart level. When we are truly loving God, and have entered in that trusting love relationship with Him, then we do not have to think things like "what would Jesus do" we just do what Jesus would do. Why because we have the fruit of the Holy Spirit. Because the good inside comes out of us in our words of encouragement and help. Those words breathe life into our relationships. They are attractive to others. Those words of life even receive human approval. When the good inside us is in us, then we respond in peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. When we have been changed at a heart level, we make sure that what is important to God is important us. 65

Do You Truly Love Me When we are changed at a heart level and our innermost being has been sanctified then our words:                    

sound like they could have come from Jesus show that I truly love and trust God let you know that what is important to God is important to me Build up, they do not tear down Are mutually edifying are attracting to others call evil evil call good good call what is not love by another name other than love validate are compassionate send the message that your thoughts and actions are as good as mine in areas of opinion let you know that what is important to you is important to me speak of whatever is noble (according to God, not my opinion from my paradigm) speak of whatever is right (according to God, not my opinion from my paradigm) speak of whatever is pure (according to God, not my opinion from my paradigm) speak of whatever is lovely (according to God, not my opinion from my paradigm) speak of whatever is admirable (according to God, not my opinion from my paradigm) speak of whatever is excellent (according to God, not my opinion from my paradigm) speak of whatever is praiseworthy (according to God, not my opinion from my paradigm)

When we have been changed at a heart level, we make sure that what is important to God is important us.

Romans 12:17, Romans 14:17-19, Philippians 4:8

Part 3- What it looks like when we begin doing it: We understand that only God can change the evil inside us. We hunger and thirst for righteousness. We fill our minds and heart with God's word, with songs of praise and worship. We fill our minds with scripture verses and songs of worship to set into our memory. We remember how much grace and mercy we have been shown by God and we extend that economy of grace to others around us that are repenting as well. We remember that it takes 5,000 mistakes and 10,000 hours to become proficient in our capabilities to carry out God's will and to be God's ambassadors in fallen world.

Do You Truly Love Me We listen to God's voice and God's whisper as He encourages us to listen to Him as He tells us that out story is just a story we tell ourselves and is just a lie from the enemy. We allow God to free us from the shackles and bondage that we have been in. The shackles that the enemy wants to use to keep us in bondage. One the biggest jobs Satan has is to keep us faithless. Satan wants us to believe that our futures will equal our past. That your spouse won't change, that you won't change, and that God can't work in your case. The enemy wants us to not persevere, not keep walking, to just give up. One the biggest jobs Satan has is to keep us faithless. Satan wants us to believe that our futures will equal our past.

However Our Lord has great plans for us. With His help we can become capable to love Him truly, as He describes in 1 Cor 13:4-8. We must be convinced to stop looking at the past. To stop remembering how we were and look forward to what is ahead. We must be faithful that the Spirit can come upon us and radically change us, so that our lives are full of the fruits of the Spirit. We must set our minds on the following:             

surrender and stop manipulating God to ask God what does He hope for, what does He desire, What does He think is best give much grace as we God teaches us to more capable to become experts at seeing the good in others to catch others doing things right (2 things per day per person that we are in regular contact with) to become experts at seeing the good in me to agree with things I don't understand from people I trust in matters of opinion that people don't remember what we say, they remember how we make them feel validate others - what is important you is important to me to become the best listener to bring out the best in people surrender and stop manipulating others to be faithful that God can work miracles in peoples lives, and my own life.

We start a faith filled love relationship with God that knows that our Father is in control and will give us what we need to be capable to trust Him completely and for us to speak life into our relationships. We get more and more faith filled and we know, that we know, that we know that God can make something from nothing, that He and He alone can give capability to those of us who had no capability, no faith, no fruit to walk victoriously with Him.

Psalm 107:10-16, ,Philippians 3:13,Ezekiel 36:26-27 ,Ezekiel 37:1-10

Do You Truly Love Me Part 3- What it feels like when we begin doing it: We have spent so long controlling and manipulating others. We have spent so much time worrying and full of anxiety. That just the thought of saying no. Or the thought of accepting just a no answer is pretty tough to imagine. We now understand that it is the evil inside that comes out of us in cruel, mean, defensive, argumentative, controlling, vindictive & invalidating words. We are pretty certain that if we don't fight for ourselves then people will just run all over us. In our paradigms being peaceful, kind, gentle and kind will just get us hurt even more. Truly loving God, truly trusting Him, surrendering to Jesus and no longer controlling, manipulating, and being at war with everyone in our lives is pretty scary to many of us. We are certain it will hurt, and we are certain that it will get much worse before it gets better. Luke 8:26-29 Part 3- What it looks like when we are doing it well: We start at the end. When we have discussions, disagreements or differences of opinion, we start with the end in mind. Instead of going through a heated back and forth. Instead of getting tense, we start at the end of the discussion. What the heck does that mean you ask?

We start at the end. When we have discussions, disagreements or differences of opinion, we start with the end in mind. Instead of going through a heated back and forth. Instead of getting tense, we start at the end of the discussion Take a moment to think through what you want to discuss first. Instead of reacting and going quickly to a rebuttal or conversation. Think about what is it that you would like to have happen at end of the discussion and ask for it in the beginning of the conversation. Here is a list of new capabilities you now have:  

     

You know and have become capable of saying no You now are capable of not giving anything under compulsion. Be a cheerful giver. You now know that you should not give your yes, your time, your money under compulsion. No is a complete sentence You ask for what you want You empower others to know that is ok to respond with a no answer You allow others to say no. You are peaceful and joyful with their answer and you do not attempt to control or manipulate I am known as a person that empowers people to say no to my questions/requests. I am aware of others and their needs. You allow others to have “take-backs” and “do-overs”.

When someone does something that offends me, bothers me, hurts or is not what I wanted. I start at the end of the conversation and I speak with gentleness and patience and say: 68

Do You Truly Love Me        

I would like for you to apologize because ...... I would like for you to speak much more softly because.... I understand this is important to you and it is important to me as well, I would be happy to talk about this at _____________ time I am sorry for offending you. Please forgive me (note that what is missing was I didn't intend to, leave it out) When you speak as loudly as you are.... When you say that... When you do that... when you make that face...

Then follow it with It makes me feel.....    

like you are trying to force me like you are trying to manipulate me invalidated my _____ is not as important to you as it is to me

What are missing are words that jump to a conclusion and make a statement about the other person's character. Statements of declaration of "how they are", for example:      

you are critical you are mean you are controlling you are manipulative you are invalidating you are harsh

We are speaking live well when we invest lots of time in our relationships. We invest time in conversation. We acknowledge that what is important to them is important to me. My words match this. I understand that unconditional love, means safety and security. I am aware that safety and security is vital in a relationship so that people feel empowered to make mistakes, and to know that the relationship won't ebb and flow, that the relationship is stable and anchored. So my words and actions match that. We are speaking life well when we make sure that you know that what is important to you is important to me. I do this by doing the thing "in your stead". Which means it does not have to make sense to me. However I know that it makes sense to you, and that is important to you, so I do things just as you would do them, instead of you, "in your stead". My words and actions speak life into our relationship. We are speaking live well when we make sure that you know that what is important to you is important to me.

Do You Truly Love Me I speak about my God story often so people know my weaknesses. I am confident and trust that God uses our weaknesses to draw others to us. When I stop telling myself the lies of my story and I listen to God and His story for my life, then I understand that the key to my personal ministry is to be attractive. When I speak about my weaknesses, and when I am being vulnerable it makes me more attractive. I have to be able to approach someone (spouses, children, family, etc) and have them allow me to get closer and not "keep their distance" by moving farther away as I approach them. People won't allow me to minister to them if they think I am their adversary, if they think I am right and they are wrong, if they think that I "judge" them, if they think that I cannot "relate" to them, if they think that I won't "hear" them. When I share my weaknesses people can feel safe and secure that I do understand them. There is a saying " People don't remember what you tell them, they only remember how you make them feel." People feel that I am worthy of their trust when I share my weaknesses. People won't allow me to minister to them if they think I am their adversary, if they think I am right and they are wrong, if they think that I "judge" them, if they think that I cannot "relate" to them, if they think that I won't "hear" them.

God’s story has shown me that part of His plan is that by me speaking from vulnerability, transparency and weakness that He can use me as tool to "connect" with people. Once I connect with people " they take my hand" and allow me to lead them where they need to go. They need to go to God. Also God has shown me that how His plan works is that He turns something evil into something good. He transformed the hurts and issues I had with people in my past into peace and contentment.

Definition: Vulnerability – when I take a chance on getting embarrassed, judged, turned-down, not selected, looked down on or rejected. When I put my heart out there to be smashed or hurt.

God’s story has had me hearing time and time again. "Tom I have been to see...... pastors, doctors, psychiatrists, I have read all the books..... and you are the one person that has been able to help me. I trust you, I feel like you understand and you don't judge me." I feel like you understand me Tom because you “know” what I am talking about. You have been there and God as brought you through it. I now have someone that I can see, touch and feel that is a true story of God’s redemption and His miraculous power. I have someone that I can take their hand and follow. Finally after the hundredth time hearing that, God laid on my heart that without my past, without those people in my past that were not capable, those people that made decisions and took actions that hurt me and/or criminal, that my unforgiveness, my bitterness, my wishing I had a different life, a different family all went away. God took away my envy for a different life and for different choices. He took way my regret & shame. He took my bitterness, my anxiety, my trust issues, my abandonment issues, my nightmares, and He gave me contentment & peace. He did that by my sharing and sharing, and by others in blindness, others in captivity, others in oppression being set free by my trust in Him. By me sharing my weaknesses. 70

Do You Truly Love Me 2 Corinthians 9:7, 2 Corinthians 12:9-10, 2 Corinthians 1:3-4

Part 3- What it feels like when we are doing it well: People walk away from us feeling hopeful. We have taken time to know their lives, we have listened and we can say things to them that leave them feeling hopeful. People enjoy talking to us. They leave conversations with us smiling. James 1:12, 1 Corinthians 2:9

Do You Truly Love Me

Speak Life Worksheet Part 4- Speak Life Worksheet

1. Remember a couple of the best words that were said to you, and how they guided you to the path you took in your life or how those words got you out of the path you were on. 2. Pray for the Holy Spirit to illuminate your mind and guide you or show you who needs your words of comfort. 3. Make a prayer list of the evil inside you that God and His Spirit need to remove in you. 4. Name the top 3 things you try and control 5. Name the top 3 things you try manipulate 6. Name the top 3 things you invalidate 7. What makes you impatient in your relationship with your spouse 8. What makes you angry in your relationship with your spouse 9. What the top 3 things you give under compulsion 10. Take the last event that you can remember and write a role play script that is similar to the section in 'what it looks like when you are doing it well" right after the scripture 2 Cor 9:7

Do You Truly Love Me

Hurt People Hurt People – Our story that we tell ourselves sees pain & hurt as crippling & in God’s story it is the best part of us Part 1 -The Principle Hurt People - Hurt People God’s story for our lives is a story of love, forgiveness, mercy, grace, redemption, restoration and reconciliation. In God’s story he prepares us for good works. In God’s story for our lives we play a part in the redemption and salvation of the unsaved, hurting, poor and needy. In God’s story all the pain and hurt is what is the best part of us and helps to connect with others. In our story, the story we tell ourselves in our head a million times a day it is often of story of conditional love, regret, sorrow, anger, retaliation and self-protection. The story we tell ourselves limits us, limits God, and limits others. In or story we are perpetually incapable, unworthy and inadequate. In our story we have many limitations here a few:                        

I am inadequate and simply can’t People don’t want me People don’t choose me There is no reason for people to choose me I never get chosen I never pick the short line I never win I’m sorry but I just don’t trust anyone I am the only trustworthy person I know It’s not me it’s everyone else If people would just do the right thing I just don’t understand why people do what they do Everyone else is so selfish, I always try to be a giver Everyone else is so rigid, I always try to be flexible Everyone else is so emotional & irrational, I always try to be rational & calm Everyone else are liars, I always try and tell the truth People around me just don’t get it I am the way I am I am just this way This is the way I was raised I have tried changing and can’t I have lots of issues You just don’t understand what I have been through I simply can’t trust because I have been betrayed, cheated on, abused, assaulted, etc.

In our story, we have our plan and our desires and when we don’t get them we get hurt. In our story we have only reasonable requests and desires, and we don’t get them. We pray and pray for them and don’t get them so we get hurt.

Do You Truly Love Me In our story we just want the people around us to “get it”. We just want people to behave decently and righteously. In our story we just want people to behave the great way we have treated them. In God’s story for our lives we embrace all of the hurts, trials and tribulation. In God’s story for our lives we share our weaknesses and what others may call shameful. We share our lives so our vulnerability and as transparency draws others in. In God’s story we finally see, we finally become aware of the major flaw in our way that we see our life and relationship with God. The major flaw is that we believe our time here on earth is for our comfort. That flaw includes getting what I want, instead wanting what I get. In God’s story He is making us more holy so that we can hit the mark instead of missing the mark. The mark is not perfection, the mark is to continually grow more capable in our repentance, and in truly loving God and others. That flaw generally keeps us hurt and not healed, therefore we keep hurting others. The major flaw is that we believe our time here on earth is for our comfort. That flaw includes getting what I want, instead wanting what I get. In God’s story He is making us more holy so that we can hit the mark instead of missing the mark. The mark is not perfection, the mark is to continually grow more capable in our repentance, and in truly loving God and others.

In our story we tell ourselves the truly ungodly, criminal, hurtful things that are done to us cause hurt. We attempt to “stuff” them or not mention them. We attempt to let time heal all wounds. It doesn’t. Often the people that have hurt us grievously don’t even acknowledge that it happened so they never apologize. Even if they do apologize the apology doesn’t heal the hurt. We get hurt by God, our parents, our siblings, our children, our jobs, criminals, etc. When we don’t get healed the way God wants us to be healed then we stay hurt. In our hurt we hurt others. We have been learning about a true Biblical love. A love relationship that always trusts. A love relationship that is not selfish. A love relationship that is absent of lies, control, manipulation, invalidation & rudeness. A love relationship with the fruit from 1 Cor 13: 4-8 & Gal 5:22. You have been reading about capabilities now for six lessons. We all are born with and without certain capabilities and we then we are all taught by action and inaction by the people around us as we grow up to have other capabilities. The capabilities we have are formed in us by the relationships we have. Some of the relationships train us to have wonderful capabilities others not so much. The capabilities I am speaking about are love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Also of patience, kindness, no envy, no boasting, no pride, no dishonoring others, no self-seeking, not easily angered, no record of wrongs, no delight in evil but rejoices with the truth, always protecting, always trusting, always hoping, always persevering. When our lives show these fruits then we have lives that deny self, deny our self-will, deny our knowledge of how things are or ought to be. Then we will have lives that are not limited by what we understand, what we have experienced, what see or what we have seen, our pasts and our sin. We have lives of limitless freedom in Christ and the Holy Spirit. When our lives show this fruit and are defined by these fruits then our lives show that we truly love God and that we truly trust in Him and His Holy Spirit. Our lives show

Do You Truly Love Me that we have surrendered and we have stopped going by our own strength, our own will, and we have learned to rely on, call on the Holy Spirit. God's word tells us that the natural man, the person we are without yielding to the Holy Spirit is not even capable to love God. In our nature, in our self, we will not be able to truly love God. We will fall woefully short, some of us much shorter than others, however all will fall short. So if we don't have it, where does it come from? We must be shown it, we must have it modeled to us, and we must have it explained to us. God gives us His plan on how to learn it. In our lives we encounter many people with a low capacity to live good charactered lives. We encounter people, in drunkenness, in drug abuse, psychically abusive, sexually abusive, mean, abrasive, verbally abusive, thieves, physically assaulting, frauds, absent, abandoning, & liars. These people hurt us in obvious ways. We encounter people with a low capacity to yield to the Holy Spirit as Christians, and they do a lot of the behaviors mentioned above. We encounter lots and lots of people that call evil good and good evil. We encounter people that justify and rationalize their behavior, and we encounter many people that completely base their lives on their intentions and have little or no regard to the concrete "bad fruit" that their good intentions produce. There are people that lie so much to themselves and to others that they believe the lies as truth. There are many people that minimize their actions and invalidate our feelings to a large extent.

We encounter lots and lots of people that call evil good and good evil. We encounter people that justify and rationalize their behavior, and we encounter many people that completely base their lives on their intentions and have little or no regard to the concrete "bad fruit" that their good intentions produce.

The statistics are staggering for the amount of women sexually abused, assaulted, raped and brutalized. The same staggering statistics exist for how many people as Christians break their marriages vows and are unfaithful, people that partake in pornography, and lewd behavior. We can also have many encounters with well-meaning good intentioned people, parents, family members that are good charactered people for the most part, however they are controlling, manipulative, conditional in their love, invalidating, selfish, self-focused, idolatrous, call good evil, and evil good, they can even twist the word of God to suit their needs. There are those that totally live double lives, church attendance and participation are simply a cover up for their "secret life". We are on the receiving end of many bad decisions that include us and that hurt us physically and emotionally. People around us make choices that cause us hurt, anxiety and regret. Of course lest we forget that we are included with "those people". In our low capacity we do much harm to others and ourselves.

Do You Truly Love Me The biggest "hurt" we receive in our formative years is from coming out of our young life without having been taught how to proficiently go through the "love process". (explained in the next section) A big hurt to us is to not have seen the "love process" modeled to us by people we trust.

The biggest "hurt" we receive in our formative years is from coming out of our young life without having been taught how to proficiently go through the "love process".

We can come from a family that was a very nice family, or we can come from a family of abuse and addiction. If in the end we are not taught and modeled the "love process" then the resulting hurt renders us with low capability or lower capability then if were in fact taught, to produce the fruits of the Spirit and the fruit of 1 Cor 13:4-8. In a biblically healthy love relationship:       

when I am selfish I apologize and ask for forgiveness when I lack humility and I am prideful I apologize and ask for forgiveness when I insult/hurt someone we don't say "if I hurt you" I apologize, we take responsibility and say I hurt you and I am sorry please forgive me When I invalidate, manipulate, minimize, attempt to control, or love conditionally I apologize and ask for forgiveness If I don't follow through on a promise given, I apologize and ask for forgiveness When in my dullness I don't make your priority my priority (if it is not unwise or sinful not in my point of view but others) I apologize and ask for forgiveness When I blame shift, or when I call evil good and good evil I apologize and ask for forgiveness

Whether we get "hurt" by nice people, well meaning people or by mean, abusive, controlling people we still get hurt when we are not taught and modeled the "love process". Then we do pretty much the opposite of the bullet points above. When we are "hurt", and we live out of the hurt, the end result is we don't truly love God, or truly love others. We end up missing out on a very big component to every relationship: TRUST. When we trust we "take a helping outstretched hand" and :         

we trust God, we trust His decisions, we trust His timing, we trust His path for our lives we trust God that He has a plan to redeem our lives and heal the hurt, pain, shame & regret we trust that God is in control and it is perfect we trust that when God says no to our prayers that it was in our best interest for Him to say no we trust God and are constantly looking to see what He sees, we want to call things as He calls them, we trust that He knows our situations we accept forgiveness and give forgiveness we accept grace and give grace we accept mercy and give mercy we do things we don't understand 76

Do You Truly Love Me          

we leave out the "why" and go forward on trust we consider others thinking as better than our own ( in matters of opinion, or if it's God's) we are able to move forward even though we "don't see" it we are able to move forward even though we have never seen it we are able to move forward even though we are pretty certain we will never "see" it. we understand that our spouse is not the enemy, Satan is. we let God do God's job and we trust that He will punish those that need punishing we let God do God's job and we trust that He will change the character of people that need changing in His time we let God change our situations, when He deems they should change we let God in God's time give the people in our lives currently or in our past the capability to stop their toxic behavior and let them gain the capability to love

When we are untrusting we can't love biblically. We usually end up one of two ways: We only trust ourselves. We ignore anyone else's point of view, even God's. We think we overcame by ourselves and that we "pulled ourselves up by our boot straps" and expect everybody else to do the same. Build a bridge and get over it, we say! We are always right. We give in on occasion to "keep the peace" but we are always right. We are harsh, critical, argumentative and defensive. We have to have the last word. We lack compassion and empathy.

We only trust ourselves. We ignore anyone else's point of view, even God's. We think we overcame by ourselves and that we "pulled ourselves up by our boot straps" and expect everybody else to do the same. Build a bridge and get over it, we say! We are always right. We give in on occasion to "keep the peace" but we are always right. We are harsh, critical, argumentative and defensive. We have to have the last word. We lack compassion and empathy.

We don't trust anyone, not even ourselves. (Please hear the following as lovingly as possible, I myself came from an abusive tormenting home. I have been delivered from drunkenness, and I had lots of issues in my life, abandonment, trust issues, fear of people yelling, etc.) We don't trust ourselves, we have many regrets, we have many issues, we have many things we wish we could do over again. We also don't believe what God says, we won't accept His grace, or His mercy or His forgiveness. We are so prideful as to think we are beneath Him, that our sin is too big and that we are unlovable and unworthy. We can't possibly understand how God could forgive us. We stay in "pity parties". Our hurts define us. Our hurts and issues become our identity. We even bounce back and forth between the two, even on the same day! When we don't trust, we don't love, we give under compulsion. We give our time, we give our affection, we give our money, we give bodies under compulsion. Then after a while it just all blows up. When we don't trust or love we can't minister to others all we do is argue. Crazy long arguments often over nothing, making mountains out of mole hills.

Do You Truly Love Me If we just ask God to give us the capabilities to love Him truly He will give it to us in His time, unless our motives are wrong, namely selfish or controlling. As "hurt" people we often are not aware of who we are following. Our eyes are often set on the "hurts" or the "hurters". The story we tell ourselves keeps our eyes get set on our past, instead of the present. Our eyes can’t see, we have enormous blind sides. We often are not aware of what we are filling our hearts with. From the last lesson we learned that from the evil inside us our mouths speak and we often act in a careless manner that spends our days filling the inside of us with evil. We often are not aware, we have eyes and do not see how we spend our time doing the enemy's work for him. We fill the inside of us with evil, anger, worry, sadness, despair, envy, regret, shame, revenge, punishment and unforgiveness. Our identity, our "name", is determined by “our story”. The story we tell ourselves so that we can give reasons why we call evil good and good evil. Our story focuses on all the things that keep us from truly loving God. Our blind side keeps us unaware of God’s story. God’s story heals all the hurts. Those healed hurts give us great capabilities to connect with the hearts of others once we embrace them.

Our identity, our "name", is determined by “our story”. The story we tell ourselves so that we can give reasons why we call evil good and good evil. Our story focuses on all the things that keep us from truly loving God. Our blind side keeps us unaware of God’s story. God’s story heals all the hurts. Those healed hurts give us great capabilities to connect with the hearts of others once we embrace them.

Ruth 1:19-21 So the two women went on until they came to Bethlehem. When they arrived in Bethlehem, the whole town was stirred because of them, and the women exclaimed, “Can this be Naomi?”20 “Don’t call me Naomi,” she told them. “Call me Mara, because the Almighty has made my life very bitter. 21 I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi? The Lord has afflicted me; the Almighty has brought misfortune upon me.” Naomi had a story she told herself in her mind, over and over again. It wasn’t true, it wasn’t God’s story. In her story she had so many other plans for her life. She wanted things to turn out completely differently than they turned out. In her story she was a “good person” and didn’t deserve what she had received. In the story she told herself she blames God, she blames God probably because she prayer fervently and often for reasonable things and changes and she didn’t get them. In her story she had received a raw deal from God. In her story this was all bad and was never going to change so she changed her name to Mara & acted out on her name "bitterness".

Do You Truly Love Me Luke 8:26-30 26 They sailed to the region of the Gerasenes, which is across the lake from Galilee.27 When Jesus stepped ashore, he was met by a demon-possessed man from the town. For a long time this man had not worn clothes or lived in a house, but had lived in the tombs.28 When he saw Jesus, he cried out and fell at his feet, shouting at the top of his voice, “What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, don’t torture me!”29 For Jesus had commanded the impure spirit to come out of the man. Many times it had seized him, and though he was chained hand and foot and kept under guard, he had broken his chains and had been driven by the demon into solitary places.30 Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” “Legion,” he replied, because many demons had gone into him. The man in the story listened to only his story. In the story he told himself in his head, literally a million times a day, he was beyond help. In his story he had tried to stop the behavior on his own strength and could not, so in his story it could never be changed. Satan filled his head with his story. In the story he told himself not even Jesus could help. In the story he told himself not even supernatural help could help. In the story he told himself going to Jesus would only make it worse, and it would hurt! In today's parlance the story he told himself over and over again goes like this; I have lots of issues and my life is so bad, you just have to understand how much I was abused, neglected, my parents were so bad. No one wants to be with me. No one will ever want to be with me. I’m useless. I have tried changing and just can’t stop. Church can’t help me, the bible can’t help me, and there is no such thing as miracles or deliverance. God’s story is different, God delivers us from the evil, and He gives us the supernatural power that is needed to the things we have never done, or never be taught to do. Genesis 32:24 -28 24 So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. 25 When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob's hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. 26 Then the man said, "Let me go, for it is daybreak." But Jacob replied, "I will not let you go unless you bless me." 27 The man asked him, "What is your name?" "Jacob," he answered. 28 Then the man said, "Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome." Jacob lived his life out of his name "deceiver" in today's parlance. Liar. God asks him his name and he says liar. He answers out of the story he tells himself about his life. He answers from the name liar, his past sin of lying to his father, to his brother, causing strife in his family and he answers God my name is liar. In “his story” Jacob answers to the name liar because he thinks he can’t ever be forgiven or that he is just too bad. However God gives him a new name. Father of many nations. God gives us a new name, and a new life. God’s story for Jacob’s life is to use all of the strife and agony in his life to be the great father of many nations. He redeems us at our moment of salvation. He wipes away all. That is an indisputable fact. However God does a continual job of sanctification and making us more holy. Since we do such a thorough job of doing the enemies work, we ignore that. For many of us we just don't have the capability to "see" it, or "hear" it, or "get it". We just can't take our eyes off of our past. We didn't get shown how to biblically love, and therefore to trust. Or if we were shown, the "hurts" have taken our eyes of what we know or knew, and we have forgotten how to trust. Since we are not 79

Do You Truly Love Me aware of our new capabilities, and since we have not developed or redeveloped those capabilities, we don't trust God. We can't seem to turn away from those "hurts" and/or "hurters". We keep our eyes on them and "follow them" and not God. We are not trusting, so we don't take the gentle outstretched hand of God and follow Him to a new name, a new land, we stay in the old land. We don't take God's hand, we don't follow with Him. We don't go to that new land that He has for us. Many of us have "our story". That is another way of saying our identity or our name. We tell "our story" over and over again. We can tell a lot about a person and their story, their name, their identity by what is in the story and just as importantly what is not in the story. Our stories are often quite self-focused. They ramble on about our situations. Our stories often show how much our situations define us. When "life is good" comes from the job I have, my weight, my looks, my finances, my cash flow, my possessions. My life is good when I get what I want, when I get certain things, buy certain things, have certain things. Our stories tell a lot about what we are and have been hurt by, or controlled by. Mostly our stories are out stories. We must learn to get out of "our story" and into God's story for us. Our story often has all the "mys" mentioned before. It has a lot of I did this, I did that, I decided, I focused, I overcame, I made the changes, I made my life what it is. My hard work, my goal setting, my expectations. Our stories, our names, our lives speak volumes of where are eyes are focused, on who we give credit to, on our identity. While goal setting and hard work can be righteous it is always the heart in which we do things and in the story does it say, God gave me stamina, God put on my heart to persevere, God put on my heart to go and not stop, etc. Our story should focus on what God has done, what God has revealed, what God has redeemed, what God has restored, what God has protected, how trustworthy God is. Our actions and words should show how we are called to heal, called to be ambassadors for Christ. Our stories, our actions, our hearts should show how humble and teachable we are, and how we yield to the Holy Spirit and let Him guide our decisions, our thoughts, our cares, our concerns, our lives, our jobs, our finances. Our stories should tell of how we are applying what God has shown us and what we are learning, and how we are persevering in the learning. Our story should tell of the story of my sin and what God did. How He took me and rescued me. A story that calls evil good, is a story that shows that we are still lacking the vision that God wants us to have. We might be saying how things worked out well for us, or this or that was the best thing to ever happen to me. However if our story isn't detailed in our pride, self-will, idolatry, calling evil good and good evil, then we are missing the revelation and illumination that God wants to give us. We need to listen carefully to our story and have others tell us what they think of our story. We should have trusted people in our lives that tells us what our words our name, our story our identity. Genesis 50:19-20 NIV 19 But Joseph said to them, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? 20 You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. 1 Corinthians 2:14, Romans 8:5-8, 2 Timothy 2:14-16, James 4:1-4, Matthew 12:35-37, Deuteronomy 30:11-18, 80

Do You Truly Love Me Part 2- How do we apply the principle in our Relationships, What does God want to reveal to me? God wants us to get out of our story and get into God's story for our lives. Our story focuses on the past. God's story focuses on the here and now. In our story our eyes are fixed on the people and the events of the past. In God's story our eyes on fixed on God, and on our new life, and new identity with Christ. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God is what God tells us. When we have a pure heart and share our painful experiences in our past and let God use them to produce trust in someone else that needs comforting then God uses that to remove part of the shame, regret, pain, sadness, envy, anger, and unforgiveness. When we are pure in heart and we deny ourselves we answer God's calling for our lives. He wants us to follow Christ. He wants us to follow Christ and His calling. His calling in Lk 4 and here in Isaiah 61 is bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for captives, to release from darkness the prisoners. When we take our eyes off of us, our past, and the people in our past and set our eyes on the here and now, God can use us. When our ears stop hearing our story, and start hearing God's story, and we hear the cries of pain and anguish from prisoners suffering in iron chains. Then God can use us. When we deny our "self" and serve others, God uses these deeds done in humility to wipe away our past. God wants us to tell our God story. Our God story should include something like: "When I started helping others God used that to deliver me from distress. When we allow God he uses us. When we are pure in heart and know that our past can be used to help someone else trust us just enough to take our outstretched hand so we can lead them out of the desert wastelands. Then we will be able to proclaim how God delivered us as well. In God's time, not in our time, God ends up wiping away all of the past hurts, pain, unforgiveness, and takes us from the "crippled person" that has low capabilities to a healthy Christian with boundless capabilities. As we share our past, our hurts then God slowly takes a part of it away. When we share our past not for the purpose of calling good evil, or evil good. When I share my story to show Gods redemptive power and mercy instead of making excuses for me not doing what I know is right, that is when God slowly wipes away the pain, the anguish and hurt. Once we hear from one person, "Wow, thank you Tom, I never felt judged by you, I felt that you are the first person that can truly understand me". Then we keep faithfully allowing God to use us and we hear that more and more. Until finally one day, it is wiped clean. We realized that God used my past, as bad as it was, to connect with others. When I denied myself and I allowed God to put me to use doing my purpose, then God used me to bring comfort to others. Of course in God's story those who bring comfort, get comforted and they all live happily ever after.

Do You Truly Love Me 2 Peter 1:5-7 New International Version (NIV) 5 For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge;6 and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness;7 and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. Let's call the scripture 2 Peter 1:5-7 the "Knowing -Loving Process". The "knowing-loving process" is what we should be attempting over and over again. We must know, in our hearts that God is faithful and His word wants us to be faithful to the process so that we can truly love Him. Faith that God's word is inerrant, and that He can be trusted The goodness of knowing that I should do what God's word says Then comes the knowledge part:    



             

That God can redeem any story, and put to good use any experience I need to listen to my story as I tell it, perhaps write it down, and check if we are calling evil good, and good evil. Check if we are rationalizing why I don't forgive. Does it give God the glory? My story needs to be God's story That when I "share" my version of God's story for the purpose of giving someone else hope, or for the purpose of telling how great God is, or telling of His redemption, then as I "share" I give part of it away. If I do it enough times God's plan is that I end up giving it completely away When I "share" my version of God's story to connect to someone, to become "attractive", to build trust, then once they have taken my hand, once they have had the "scales come off of their eyes" and once their hearers can now hear as a result of me showing my weakness, then God takes away the shame, the regret, the envy, the hate, the hurt, the unforgiveness of the people in my story. Know that God can be trusted. I am truly a disciple by my fruit, by my love I am called to deny myself daily and carry my cross daily That God is in control That love relationships are refining, refining to me I need to get out of my feelings, out of my understanding, out of how I think I am and ask the closest relationships in my life about my fruit Gal 5:22, 1 Cor 13:4-8 Know that I have eyes and don't see and that I have ears and I don't hear Know that I should be asking what does God hope for in this situation Know that I should be asking what does God see going on Know that I should be asking what would God call this Know that I should be asking what does God hear Know that I don't know what I don't know Know that I need to do things I don't understand Know that I am the only person that needs to change inside. Know that if I am refined and transformed by God none of of "externals" in my life need to change for me to show the fruits of the Spirit 82

Do You Truly Love Me  

Stop resisting and be humble and faithful My words and actions should be speaking life into others

Then comes the self-control part:                         

Trust God, and His plan. Share my story for His good, and the glory of the Kingdom Stop sharing my story to defend why my life doesn't match my doctrine. Stop sharing my story to let you know why I call good evil and evil good. When I see that I can't or that I am not yet capable, beg God's Holy Spirit to transform me so that I am capable to have the self-control Take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ Deny myself and pick up my cross daily Love as Christ loved the church See the evil that is inside me and ask God to remove it as I faithfully do my part Whatever is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent or praiseworthy think of those things Stop looking at things from my perspective, attempt to see what God sees Stop calling things what I call them and call them what God calls them if it is not love the way God says it should be, then it is not love, I should call it something else. Stop wearing my feelings on my sleeve and get an excellent "poker face" When I see that I can't or that I am not yet capable, beg God's Holy Spirit to transform me so that I am capable to have the self-control See the good in people, in my life, catch people doing things right Give my "mys" to God Stop invalidating Stop controlling Stop minimizing Stop manipulating Stop loving conditionally When I see that I can't or that I am not yet capable, beg God's Holy Spirit to transform me so that I am capable to have the self-control Stop calling good evil and evil good Stop justifying and rationalizing what I do Stop blame shifting When I see that I can't or that I am not yet capable, beg God's Holy Spirit to transform me so that I am capable to have the self-control

Then comes the perseverance. We listen to God's whispers and His voice as He administers the process of changing our minds and convincing us that He will in fact, take care of the vengeance. We must beg God to convince us and to change our minds, so we can keep our eyes on what is unseen, not what we have seen in our past, not what the enemy wants us to see. We beg God to convince us and to change our minds so instead of running, instead avoiding the pain, We persevere in the attempts to do the faith, goodness, knowledge and self-control parts. Regardless if nothing else changes around us. God wants us to trust Him. 83

Do You Truly Love Me Our natural self does not have the knowledge. We must gain the knowledge and then all of the following attributes to get to the end product of love. If we want to truly love God we need to go through the process. We must be taught, helped, coaxed, encouraged, coached, discipled to keep repeating the process over and over again. We must keep persisting in begging God to give us the capability to attempt to do things we are learning. It is about the attempt, not the result we receive. Trust that the attempt is what God wants us to do. God wants us to do our part and God will do His part. Trust that God is right. Keeping doing the attempt over and over and over. Sooner or later you will see the results that God wants you to see in His time, in His way. We must also remember that it takes 5,000 mistakes and 10,000 hours to become proficient at anything. The fruit of the Spirit inf Gal 5:22 and 1 Cor 13:4-8 does not come to us because of the results we get. The fruit comes because us because we died to self, we trusted God, we begged God to transform us, and the fruit comes from self-control to take thoughts captive and make them obedient to Christ & through perseverance. Not from the results. The results should not matter at all. The results do not produce the fruit that God wants. The results of the attempts do produce the love relationships that God wants. When I am talking about a results I am talking about the actions and inactions of the people in our lives. I am talking about the externals: bank accounts, jobs, behavior of spouses, behavior of family members, whether or not people "get it", etc, etc. We should not be yielding to the Holy Spirit to something from God, that is conditional love. We should be yielding to God because we love Him, because we trust Him. When we are in our "self" this seems like foolishness. Why in the world would I want to do any of those things if I am not going to get something in return??? We do get something. A true love relationship with God. Matthew 5:3-8, Isaiah 61:1-3, Psalm 107:1-9, Revelation 12:11, Psalm 27:7-14, 1 Kings 8:56, Romans 8:28, James 3:13-18, James 1:22

Part 3- What it looks like when we begin doing it: We become more and more aware of our story and we stop saying it. We start sharing our story not to complain, or to have an audience, we do it to help comfort others and to build a trusting relationship with others through our weakness. We begin to catch ourselves when we live out of our old name, old story and we start living out of our new name and new story.

Do You Truly Love Me Part 3- What it feels like when we begin doing it: We still want to resist. We still want to ask why. We still want to understand why God allowed it to happen, why the people in my story did what they did. I feel like I can't move forward unless I understand and get an answer to why. We resist that God wants us to faithfully trust Him and He wants us to take many steps in our lives that don't make sense us, that may never make sense to us. We feel like the Gerasene Demoniac in Luke 8 mentioned earlier this lesson. We are certain that doing things Jesus' way will hurt us. In the land we are in, in the land where our story takes place, there is only shame, regret, anger, pain, making justifications and rationalizations for why our life does not match our doctrine, unforgiveness and lots of unhappiness. Our land is isolated, it is dark, it is the caves, we are bound and shackled by our story, and for some odd reason we don't want to leave until we get our answers and explanations that will satisfy us. Jesus wants us to follow Him out of that land out of that story and into His story. He wants us to do things even though we don't understand them. He has given us promises, He is asking us to trust Him and we say NO. Even though He went first and he suffered a gruesome death on a cross. Our actions, our lack of spiritual action, our not following Him out of our land say that the Cross was not enough to get me to trust you. Part 3- What it looks like when we are doing it well: Our story is God's story for us. We have an active ministry helping others and being used by God to heal others and comfort others, and help others gain much more capability to love God.

Part 3- What it feels like when we are doing it well: If God gave me a complete do over. If He said Tom, since you have been such a wonderfully faithful servant and since you have allowed me to use you to heal so many, I will give a complete do over in your life. You can have any parents you like, any childhood you like, you can get any education you want, you can have whatever job you want, you can have any wife, and any kids. If He said that to me my answer would be I would not change one single thing. All I ever wanted was to have a life that had meaning. All I ever wanted was to have life that I was used to help others. I give thanks to God.

Do You Truly Love Me

Hurt People Hurt People - Worksheet Part 4- Hurt People, Hurt People Worksheet

I realize there is a lot here in this worksheet. Please go down this list. Rate yourself 1-10 1= I don't really know this to be true, my actions, my story show I really don't trust God 10= I know, that I know, that I know. I truly love and trust God. I truly realized that I am God's and that His story, His viewpoint needs to be mine. That God can redeem any story, and put to good use any experience I need to listen to my story as I tell it, perhaps write it down, and check if we are calling evil good, and good evil. Check if we are rationalizing why I don't forgive. Does it give God the glory? My story needs to be God's story That when I "share" my version of God's story for the purpose of giving someone else hope, or for the purpose of telling how great God is, or telling of His redemption, then as I "share" I give part of it away. If I do it enough times God's plan is that I end up giving it completely away When I "share" my version of God's story to connect to someone, to become "attractive", to build trust, then once they have taken my hand, once they have had the "scales come off of their eyes" and once their hearers can now hear as a result of me showing my weakness, then God takes away the shame, the regret, the envy, the hate, the hurt, the unforgiveness of the people in my story. Know that God can be trusted., I am truly a disciple by my fruit, by my love I am called to deny myself daily and carry my cross daily That God is in control That love relationships are refining, refining to me I need to get out of my feelings, out of my understanding, out of how I think I am and ask the closest relationships in my life about my fruit Gal 5:22, 1 Cor 13:4-8 Know that I have eyes and don't see and that I have ears and I don't hear Know that I should be asking what does God hope for in this situation Know that I should be asking what does God see going on

Do You Truly Love Me Know that I should be asking what would God call this Know that I should be asking what does God hear Know that I don't know what I don't know Know that I need to do things I don't understand Know that I am the only person that needs to change inside. Know that if I am refined and transformed by God none of of "externals" in my life need to change for me to show the fruits of the Spirit Stop resisting and be humble and faithful My words and actions should be speaking life into others

Do You Truly Love Me

Faith – Can we move forward when we don’t understand or don’t see or “get it”. Part 1 - The Principle - Faith: Faith requires us to have strong heart connected love relationship. Faith requires trust. We often don’t trust what we don’t understand. If we have not gotten what we have determined as reasonable in our minds we interpret that as rejection. We at some point become realists and stop being faithful. We interpreted being rejected too many times to mean that I am not worth enough or good enough or valued enough. Unanswered dreams and prayers are interpreted as rejection and that we are not valued or loved. We all want to be included. We are all fragile. Our hearts get crushed. We see only who we are not and what we didn’t get. We wanted to be a certain person and to have certain things and it didn’t turn out as we planned it.

We interpreted being rejected too many times to mean that I am not worth enough or good enough or valued enough.

Faith is believing something we have never seen. Faith is when we move forward when we do not understand something completely. Faith often requires us to move forward when we don’t understand at all, or moving forward when we have never seen something before or even heard of it. In the story we tell ourselves in our head we make requirements to understand something completely for us to give it the stamp of approval. There are many who can’t love God when there are things about God that they don’t understand. We determine that there can be no mysteries. We demand to know now, to understand all things about God now. We do the same in relationships with God and with others. We tell ourselves that what other people do or think must make sense to use. There can be no mysteries. We label and judge things as unreasonable or even dumb or stupid if they don’t make sense to us. Faith is often linked to our vulnerability. When we are vulnerable we take a chance that the other person will say no, or that the other person will not respond in the affirmative. Vulnerability includes us putting our heart out on a platter to get hurt and stomped on. Faith often takes a complete renewing of the mind. In our mind is our story. The story we tell ourselves remembers all of the no answers, and how the no answers included, shame, embarrassment or heartbreak. So we become faithless. We conclude that if God loved me He would not let the things that happened to me happen to me. The renewing of our mind needs to remove our flawed paradigm of comfort and getting what we want. The renewing of our mind needs to include wanting what we get, and understanding it was not personal, it was for our good.

Do You Truly Love Me Our story includes the flawed paradigm that if I am good, and I am loved by God then I get good things. So when I see who I am not, and what I don’t have and didn’t get, we conclude we are not loved by God. Once we reach the conclusion we aren’t loved, we go into self-protection mode. We stop asking. We don’t care. We say fine, I won’t ask anymore, I will then go to self-will mode. We now conclude it is up to us and us alone, that we must try harder and harder to get what we want. After all we don’t want much, we only want what is reasonable and sensible.

The story we tell ourselves remembers all of the no answers, and how the no answers included, shame, embarrassment or heartbreak. So we become faithless. We conclude that if God loved me He would not let the things that happened to me happen to me.

Our story often includes lots of conditional love from people in our lives. Our story often includes lots of uncomforted hurts and pain. Many of the hurts and pain have come from people letting us down, not being there for us, not having our backs, stealing from us, breaking our trust, and being unfaithful to our wedding vows. Our story often includes lots of prayers that were answered with a no. We often did not get what we planned on, what we worked hard for. Our story includes betrayals and other let downs that keep us from our plans and goals. Our story often includes thoughts like: I don't get blessed like others, I don't get prayers answered like others, I just don't pray for things because I am just gonna get what I am gonna get. In the story we tell ourselves in our heads we spend a lot of time on who we are not, and who we can’t be. In the story we tell ourselves over and over again we take everything personally when it is not personal at all. In our story we simply don't have the faith to believe that all of what God has promised will come to pass. Our faith is weak and needs to be increased so that we can trust in God to take care of us and comfort us. There simply has been so much let down, so many nos, so many dreams crashed, so many hopes deflated. It just seems like to us that so many "bad" people get away with so much. In the story we tell ourselves over and over again we take everything personally when it is not personal at all. God wants us to trust Him, to faithfully allow Him to work in our lives. God wants us to allow Him into our hearts and to yield to His Holy Spirit. God wants us to allow Him to change our minds and convince us that He will administer the justice. God wants us to live by faith. Not just talk about it or aspire to it. He wants to trust in what we do not see. What we have never seen. To trust in what we are convinced that we will never ever see. God wants us to trust in things we do not understand. What we are sure that we will never ever understand. Yet He still wants us to live by faith and to trust in what we have never seen or heard. We have been talking for 7 previous lessons of the fruits of the Spirit. One of those fruits is faithfulness. Faithfulness is the fruit of the Spirit. Not the fruit of our accomplishments, dreams or goals. 89

Do You Truly Love Me Our story is often filled with thoughts or actions that include how my situation is different and here is why I can't do this or can't do that. Or why this person or that person simply can't change. We sometimes feel that God can't or that He won't because of how different I am, or how my situation is different. Our story is a story of self will, our excellent thinking ruined by other people. We have spent so much of life relying on our own thinking and our own strength. (see Hosea 10:12-13) We only trust ourselves if anyone, and try harder and harder to control and manipulate to get what we want. We have had so many no answers and we are certain that God won't step in. So we worry and worry. We worry and we call evil good. We explain to anyone that will listen why evil is good. Why in our case that we should worry, or that we simply can't stop worrying. We focus on the negatives in our past and in our present. We are rarely grateful, and we rarely sing God's praises. Our story is not God's story. Our story is a story of self will, our excellent thinking ruined by other people. Matthew 7:7, Matthew 21:21, 1 Kings 8:56, Luke 18:7-8, Romans 1:17, Hebrews 11:1, Galatians 5:22, Matthew 15:21-28, Luke 18:40-42, Luke 17:11-17, Matthew 9:20-22, Matthew 9:27-30

Part 2- How do we apply the principle in our Relationships, What does God want to reveal to me? Allow God to change our minds and convince us that He truly loves us so we can increase our faith. Allow God to change our minds and convince us that He has everything under control so we can increase our faith. Allow God to change our minds and convince us that He wants to give us all the good things a loving father wants to give to His children so we can increase our faith. Allow God to have us remember all the prayers He has answered, all the good things He has given us so we can increase our faith. Allow God to change our minds and turn our hearts toward Him so we can increase our faith. Allow God to change our minds so that we allow Him to remove the evil inside us. So we can increase our faith. Allow God to change our minds so that we obediently do what we need to do so that He can finish the miracles we need in our lives to have the gifts of the Spirit Gal 5:22 so we can increase our faith. Allow God to change our minds and convince us that we are poor in Spirit and that we lack the gifts of the Spirit. That without them we can't truly love God so we can increase our faith. Allow God to change our minds so that we are convinced that we should not waste any of the pain from our decisions, consequences, or our past, instead of running away from the pain and persevering so that the pain completes it's work in us. God wants us to mourn and go to Him, and to Him alone for comfort so we can increase our faith.

Do You Truly Love Me Humble ourselves and deny ourselves so we can see that meekness is what God wants from us. He does not want us avenging the past, or being angry, frustrated, defensive or argumentative so we can increase our faith. Allow God to change our minds and convince us that we should hunger and thirst for righteousness, to hunger and thirst for His word, for His Kingdom so we can increase our faith. Once we have allowed God to turn our hearts to follow Him and through our meekness and thirst for righteousness that we can allow God to handle His responsibilities, the responsibility to to turn others to Him, to punish, to condemn so we can increase our faith. Allow God to change our mind and convince us that we should show mercy to all who have hurt us so we can increase our faith. Allow God to change our mind and convince us that we should show that same mercy to ourselves so we can increase our faith. Allow God to change our mind and convince us that we are content with the decisions He has made in our lives, so we can increase our faith. Allow God to change our minds so that we can see Him so we can increase our faith. Once we have realized how much evil is inside us and that we need His Spirit, & we don't waste the pain of mourning and allow God to comfort us, when we become meek & thirst for righteousness then we can be merciful. Once we are truly merciful towards others, ourselves and God, then we can see God. We can see His presence, we can see His love, we can see His miracles, we can see His protection so we can increase our faith. Once we can see God, when we have allowed God to eliminate much of the evil inside us, then we can see Him, see His goodness, see His desire for the best for us, see how much He has already done, to see the miracles already done in our lives so we can increase our faith. Allow God to give us the faithfulness He wants us to have in Gal 5:22 so we can increase our faith. Allow God to change our mind and convince us that Faithfulness is not an all or nothing proposition so we can increase our faith. Allow God to show us the different areas of faith that we have. Some areas of our relationship with God we have faith that is like the good soil, and some areas of our faith are the like the path so we can increase our faith. Allow God to show us how many of the areas in our faithfulness or lack of faith are directly related to "our story", to "our name" to our identity that we operate from, see through, and hear through so we can increase our faith. Allow God to use others in our lives to listen to our story, to allow others to remind us of the great things God has done so we can increase our faith. Allow God to use others in our lives to hear how we focus on the negatives, how we remember one no and forget 20 yeses so we can increase our faith. 91

Do You Truly Love Me Allow God to use others in our lives to listen to our stories and how we focus on the desert wastelands in our lives, and actively choose to forget or choose not to go to the lush green pastures by the riverside so we can increase our faith. Allow God to take us to faithfulness that we can't even imagine, that we don't know exists in us so we can increase our faith.

1 Kings 8:58, 2 Timothy 2:25-26, Matthew 5:3-8, Matthew 13:13-23, Hosea 10:12-13 Part 3- What it looks like when we begin doing it: We have people that we are talking to regularly and are sharing meaningfully with We are sharing about our story and how that affects my faith We have people in our lives that know us and that are praying for us to grow We get more and more capable to keep every thought captive and making it obedient to Christ Make a journal of remembrance. It should have all the prayers that have been answered. The times that He has rescued you. The times He has protected you. All the things He has delivered you from. All the gifts He has given you. All the mercy you have received, the grace and the unconditional love. Part 3- What it feels like when we begin doing it: I am really worried about what people will think when they see how faithless I cam I am concerned how faithless I am Part 3- What it looks like when we are doing it well: You are regularly looking at you journal of remembrance We are capable and proficient and keeping every thought captive and making it obedient to Christ We think of whatever is true, whatever is noble.... we think of the journal of remembrance Matthew 9:27-30 Part 3- What it feels like when we are doing it well: Luke 17:15 New International Version (NIV) 15 One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. 16 He threw himself at Jesusâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; feet and thanked him

Do You Truly Love Me

Faith Worksheet Part 4- Faith Worksheet

God wants us to trust Him, and to continue asking. In faith we know that God is the source of all things that are good. Can we trust again? Here are some key questions to ask ourselves to get us going in our faith again:            

        

Do we ask for things for our children in faith? Do we go and follow Jesus? Do we know the heart of Jesus so that when He asks us a question we can answer? Do we stay faithful even when the first answer is not a positive one or a no answer answer? Do we truly expect Jesus to say yes? Are we listening for Jesus? Do we have the confidence to ask Jesus to heal the biggest hurt, or issue that renders us incapable of "seeing" Him, His glory, His mercy, His love for us? Can we even imagine Jesus saying to us our faith has healed us? Are we willing to do our part in allowing Jesus to work miracles in our lives? When Jesus gives us our part to do in the miracle do we immediately go? In other words when Jesus says go, do we keep it simple or do we complicate it to the point that we don't do it? When the process works do we give the glory to Jesus? Do we say/think things like it's about time, I deserve this, I will thank Jesus later, I have a lot of things to do now, and I am really busy now, when I get some time I will go to church, or I will thank Jesus in a quick rote prayer at night. Does my story change to God's story. Do I sing the praises of Jesus. Is it clear to everyone that Jesus delivered me, healed me, comforted me. I am so grateful. Jesus is so merciful to me. Do I believe Jesus can stop the problems I have had for years and years? Do I believe and have faith that Jesus could speak to me and say my faith has healed my fear? Do I believe and have faith that Jesus could speak to me and say my faith has healed my worry? Do I believe and have faith that Jesus could speak to me and say my faith has healed my anxiety? Do I believe and have faith that Jesus could speak to me and say my faith has healed my hopelessness? Do I believe and have faith that Jesus could speak to me and say my faith has healed my hurts? Do I believe and have faith that Jesus could speak to me and say my faith has healed my betrayals? Do I believe and have faith that Jesus could speak to me and say my faith has healed my issues?

Do You Truly Love Me   

Do I believe and have faith that Jesus could speak to me and say my faith has healed the pain from the abuse, the assault, the violence, the rape? Do I believe and have faith that Jesus could speak to me and say my faith has healed my anger, lust, drunkenness, greed, envy, malice or idolatry? How many times has Jesus asked us "do you believe I can do this..... " and our answer was no you cannot or maybe you say, of course you are God theoretically you can, however I know you won't, not for me.

Make a journal of remembrance. It should have all the prayers that have been answered. The times that He has rescued you. The times He has protected you. All the things He has delivered you from. All the gifts He has given you. All the mercy you have received, the grace and the unconditional love.

Do You Truly Love Me

Communication Problems – The biggest communication problem we have is the one we have with ourselves Part 1 -The Principle - Communication Problems: The biggest communication problem is the one we have with ourselves. In the story we tell ourselves we take things personally that aren’t personal. In our story we are selfish, we want things our way. We are convinced that our selfishness is not really being selfish. Our selfishness comes out in many ways. Here are my top 10: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

I am the boss of you - I'm right you're wrong - My thinking is best You are my adversary I do for you and then you don't do for me. That you should think like me & understand me I think I should understand something before I agree to do it If you loved me you would know what to do If you loved me you would agree to do it -all I'm asking for is .... My intention is all that matters You have too many feelings and cry too much You're dense and just don't get it, you are callous & insensitive.

The dictionary defines communication as:    

something imparted, interchanged, or transmitted imparted - to make known interchange - to give and receive reciprocally, exchange transmit- to pass or spread

In each of the items in the definition of communication above let's review first how my communication with God has problems. Then we will look at how my communication with others has problems. Communication with God: God imparts and makes known to us His unconditional love for us my His actions/ intercessions past & present. The interchange, the reciprocal giving & receiving happens when God redeems us, heals us, delivers us, breaks the chains, comforts, gives us sight when were blind, and gives us the ability to hear when we could not. It is reciprocal when we then do it back by doing it with others. When we comfort with what have been comforted, when we free the captives, comfort the brokenhearted, give sight to others and help others break free from captivity. God transmits and spreads the gospel by His word and by using others to speak for Him. Either with preachers or others that minister to us. We pass or spread or make know to God our desires and hopes by prayer.

Do You Truly Love Me

Communication with others: Our words, impart and make known our hearts. Luke 6:45 New International Version (NIV) 45 A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of. We give an receive reciprocally, we exchange with our actions, inactions, time we spend or don't spend, our priorities, facial expressions, our body language, our tonality, presence & absence. We transmit, we pass or spread either true biblical love that is in 1 Cor 13:4-8 or the fruit of the Spirit in Gal 5:22 or we are transmitting something else that is not love. We can tell by the fruit. At the heart of all of the following 10 issues is my selfishness. The root cause of all the following 10 issues is that my world and my story is the center and that my life and my desires are and should be the center of attention. What should be the center is God. What should be the center is what is God's story, what are God's desires, what does God want to have happen. The root is a life that is centered on me, and my my's, instead of God and His kingdom. At the center of the issue is that my feelings are my feelings and they are correct and can always be trusted. We think or say the following to ourselves in the story we tell ourselves all day long over a million times a day.         

my fear can be trusted NOT God my worries can be trusted NOT God my anxiety can be trusted NOT God my life has been messed up and can't be fixed my past has been messed up and can't be used for good so I will ignore it and keep it secret I am the best judge of what is best for me period. My way or the highway my my's are off limits back off my ways are the best ways, because well.... they are my ways & I am always right.

1. I am the boss of you. - I'm right you're wrong - My thinking is best. A boss is someone that gives commands. There isn't the ability to say no to the boss's command. In mutually respectful and trusting relationship if I ask a question or ask you for something the answer can be no. In a mutually respectful relationship we both could be right, we both could be wrong. I am listening and respectful. In a healthy relationship pride is absent. The thoughts of my thinking is for sure right is absent. In mutually respectful and trusting relationship if I ask a question or ask you for something the answer can be no. 96

Do You Truly Love Me Let's now look at our relationship with God. Few people would say they are the boss of God. However if we pray and the answer is no and we have an attitude then aren't we really thinking that God should do things our way. Isn't that being a boss? When our present does not match what we think it should be and we believe it is unfair or not right, then we want to try and tell God what to do. Isn't that being a boss. Same for our relationships with our spouses. When we think our way is the right way and we think yours is the wrong way. When we ask a question and the answer can't be no, then we really want to be the boss, not in a mutually respectful relationship. So there is a communication problem. In the story we tell ourselves we are always right and people should just know that. When God or our spouse talks to us we simply don't or won't listen. We have already decided my way is right, and what you propose is wrong. I have already decided and it is my way or the highway. Unless the God or our spouse is doing exactly what we want, love can not be communicated. 2. You are my adversary We are wary of someone that is our adversary. We don't trust someone that is our adversary. We believe that our adversary is not going to help us or do anything beneficial for us. When I have a problem, I have to handle it myself, my adversary won't help me. They could help me if they wanted, however since they are not my comfort and they are my adversary then they won't. God is either our friend or our adversary. Satan is either our friend or our adversary. When God is our adversary then Satan is our friend & vice versa. Are we aware of how we make others feel that we are their adversary? Are we aware of the communication we send out that makes others feel like we are their adversaries. Do we attempt to comfort others? We would people say that we are comforting. Do we allow others to comfort us? When we believe that God could but won't help me, then we are looking at him as our adversary. When we don't consider God as our comfort then we look at Him as our adversary, not as our friend. A friend is there when we need them, a friend is there to comfort us. When we have only one thing in our minds that will comfort us, and we simply don't want to hear anything else or want to accept anything else as our comfort and we don't get it from God we are repelled by Him, not attracted to Him. When we are moving away from God we are moving toward Satan. When we think our past is going to equal our future, when we fail to see Satan as the enemy instead of our spouses, we then see our spouses as the enemy as our adversary. Often the adversary viewpoint comes from many hurts, many let downs, many instances where we just simply couldn't count on our spouses to create safety & security. We couldn't count on them to comfort us & they inflicted themselves on us. We were repelled and we withdrew emotionally. However when we run out of grace and mercy, then we simply form an alliance with the enemy, and we do the enemy's work for him. So there is a communication problem. In the story we tell ourselves no answers mean we am not worth enough, valued enough, good enough, rich enough, handsome enough, pretty enough, skinny enough, smart enough, etc. So our story tells me to protect myself and not ask and not care. In the story we tell ourselves the past always will equal the future. WE don't want to ask for anything. We have already determined that they will just say no, or we don't ask because wefeel that they should just know. Since 97

Do You Truly Love Me most of act as bosses and the answer can't be no, we have the records of the nos etched in stone. We believe that there is no way that we were wrong in asking for what we asked for, after all it was just ...... Since you are not my comfort, love cannot be communicated. 3. I do for you then you don't do for me. So many of us view relationships from a conditional love viewpoint. We keep score of what we have given, all we have done. When the return on investment doesn't meet our standards we are upset, hurt, we withdraw. We all have to fight the desire to minimize what others do, and we of exaggerate the value of what we do. We simply just don't give the correct amount of credit to what God or others have done for us. We are not satisfied, we are not content with what we have already received. We want more, when we don't get it we withdraw, get angry or just stop doing anything. We view all things we have done, the sacrifices we have made, the time, energy & emotion that we have invested as much more than what our spouse or God as done for us. So there is a communication problem. In the story we tell ourselves we tell ourselves that conditional love is the only thing that makes sense, it is what is true. We are stuck in yesterday. We cannot view today as a fresh start. We had many no answers to our requests. We have idea in our heads that we have sacrificed so much and that little has been done in return. We are tired of asking, we can't live in the moment, so love cannot be communicated.

4. That you should think like me & understand me. My story I tell is so important to me. It gives you the reasons why I do what I do. You need to understand my hurts, how I have worked hard to get over them, or why they aren't healed and how it affects why I can't do what you are asking me to do. In my story you are wrong and I am right. In my story I have lots of adversaries. So many of us fight the desire to be king, to be on the throne. Our thinking is right and all others is wrong including God's. I desire to be king over all people. I want my way, my thinking, my way of doing things. I want everything in my time. My timing makes perfect sense. After all it is only sensible. We withdraw or get angry when God tries to get us to take another path, try another option, wait a little longer, wait. We see the world only from the eyes of my story, my name, my paradigm. So since I know I am right, I don't even attempt to communicate in a way that makes sense to you, it only needs to make sense to me. So there is a communication problem. In the story we tell ourselves our viewpoint is the only viewpoint that is right. When we hear other viewpoints we immediately go to condemn it rather that consider itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s validity. Our story and our name are how we live. We set our eyes on the past and our story and don't have our eyes on Jesus. We don't consider other points of view as possibly correct with God or others.

Do You Truly Love Me 5. I think I should understand something before I agree to do it Somehow someone got it our minds that we should understand our spouses. Somehow we should understand God. After all isn't that the biggest gripe against God. I could never follow a God that allows..... So in other words if we don't understand all aspects of God we can't follow Him. In a similar way we are predisposed to thinking that we should understand our spouses. We ask why...., we say things like, how could you do that ...... Instead of going on the possibility that there is very little that I will understand about my spouse or about God. Faith is a foreign concept to most of us. In relationships and with God. If it doesn't make perfect sense to me, if I don't completely understand it, if I don't have a complete understanding of the downside and the upside, then I don't want to do it or agree to do it. If we went under the assumption that we won't understand anything about our spouses, then we simply would ask questions like: how do you like this.... or that ...., how would make you happy.... etc. Then we would just do it. We would submit to one another and take our thoughts on how it should be out of the picture. We would that with God and our spouse. So we do have a communication problem. In the story we tell ourselves we call evil good. We tell ourselves that doing something we donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t understand is good. We tell ourselves that not trusting anyone else including God is good. We go around and around, with questions of why, and how come, rather than with questions like how can I serve you my queen, my job is to enhance your life. So often we don't enhance we embitter, repel and distance our spouses. God does not move away from us. However since we spend lots of energy trying to wrap our minds around what God wants for us, we spend so much time praying and praying, asking and asking for God to change the decisions He has made for us. 6. If you loved me you would know what to do. I think you should completely understand me, even though I don't understand you at all. Then I actually believe that should know what to without me asking you. We believe this about God and our spouses. If God truly loved me He would answer all of prayers in the affirmative. Ok, not all, but 98% is reasonable, right? We stop asking our spouses after so many let downs, and so many negative responses. We stop asking God as well. We have had so many no answers, we just stop believing that God hears us, or that He loves us, or that we will ever get a yes. So we have a communication problem. In our story you should be a mind reader. I don't necessarily want to keep asking over and over. I'm tired. I don't want to gain knowledge or insight into my pride or selfishness. I just want what I want when I want it. 7. If you loved me you would agree to do it Back to the boss scenario. We want to be king, we want to be the boss. We only want yes answers to all our requests. We equate love with someone that will do what I ask when I ask, that can read my mind and does not ask questions. Most of us don't want a spouse we want a hostage. Ok that's harsh, how about a genie. Most of us are extraordinary controllers and manipulators. We spend a large percentage of our lives in trying to control our spouses, our jobs, our neighbors, our family our children, and God. It does not take us long to show you our disappointment (manipulation) with actions, inactions or dissension from our way of doing things. 99

Do You Truly Love Me So we have a communication problem. In our story no answers are interpreted as not loving or that I don’t have enough value or worth to you. Unless you are agreeing with me and/or succumbing to my control over you then I am not happy. I simply cannot hear anything that is not agreement.

In our story no answers are interpreted as not loving or that I don’t have enough value or worth to you. 8. My intention is all that matters Most of us spend our life in our story. We don't attempt to see or know God's story. We are content to spend our lives in the land of imagination between our ears. We have eyes and don't see and ears and don't hear. We go by our intentions only. We don't ask others if we are producing good fruit, and we don't see the fruit that we do produce. We are blinded by our intentions and our story. So we do have a communication problem. In the story we tell ourselves people should only go by our intentions. We can't understand why people can't understand how much we love them. However when it comes to others, we only go by our responses to what they say or do, and then through our story our name we interpret what their intentions really were. We do this with our spouses and we do it with God. We invalidate and minimize the cross, grace and mercy. We interpret our current situations, and the lack of answers to our prayers and we determine God's intentions. We completely invalidate what He says, or what He has done. 9. You have too many feelings and you cry too much. This is a typical answer from men to women. Instead of having compassion or empathy. Instead of asking how we can help, or what we need to change, or if our spouses even want help, our impatience kicks in. We do so many things that repel our spouses from us. This is certainly one of them. So we do have a communication problem in our story we stay in the abstract and not the concrete. We refuse to look at the fruit. In our story, things we don’t understand are just plain wrong. 10. You're dense and just don't get it, you are callous & insensitive. This is a typical response from women to men. This plays into the fallacy that many of us believe. That my spouse should understand me. Instead of asking for what we want, (not commanding, not being a boss) there is just frustration. So we do have a communication problem. We have a communication problem with ourselves because we listen way too much to our story instead of God’s story. Our story is based on abstract things not concrete. Our story is based on feeling and intentions. Most of all our story is selfish, it calls evil good and good evil. James 4:2-3, Luke 6:43

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Do You Truly Love Me Part 2- How do we apply the principle in our Relationships, What does God want to reveal to me? Review these 10 things again. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

I am the boss of you - I'm right you're wrong - My thinking is best You are my adversary I do for you and then you don't do for me. That you should think like me & understand me I think I should understand something before I agree to do it If you loved me you would know what to do If you loved me you would agree to do it - all I'm asking for is .... My intention is all that matters You have too many feelings and cry too much You're dense and just don't get it, you are callous & insensitive.

Begin by asking your spouse:   

Do I communicate these things to you? How do I communicate these things to you? Ask yourself how do you communicate these things to God

The dictionary defines the word intimate as very private; closely personal. So the question is how closely personal are you with your spouse?            

how many secrets do you have? how many things are still unsaid? are you trying to be someone’s comfort? are you enhancing someone’s life? are you allowing others to be your comfort? do you allow others to provide you with another idea on what would comfort you? do you ask for what you want? or do you expect them to just know, or do you think that if they loved you they would just do it? how do you handle the answer no? are you offended when your spouse thinks another way is better? do you spend an hour a day just talking? can you explain your feelings without getting upset or without making judgments

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Attention, Attention, Attention What comes next is very important! Now let's think about how closely personal you are with God.          

Do you feel you are valuable enough to God? Do you feel you are worth enough to God? Do you feel good enough for God to give you good things? Do you feel spiritual enough for God to look upon you favorably? do you ask God for what you want? or do you think God knows so I don't need to ask, or do you think that if God me He would just do it? how do you handle the answer no? are you offended when God thinks another way is better? do you spend an hour a day just talking? can you explain your feelings without getting upset or without making judgments

Thank you, for your added attention Part 3- What it looks like when we begin doing it: I begin to see how selfish I am, how much me is important to me, & how I want things to be we begin to realize how much our communication revolves around control and manipulation we give the throne back to Jesus we stop trying to control God we realize how conditional we are in our love we are asking more questions and making less statements on how others want things done we accept that there is a lot we are not going to understand we ask others what fruit we are producing with a our verbal and not verbal communication we are looking at today and communicating about today 102

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Part 3- What it feels like when we begin doing it: I feel a lot of pressure. I realize how much my communication repels I feel fear. Letting go of control scares me. I known for a while what I needed to do, I just didn't want to do it, it is uncomfortable If I don't take care of me, I don't go and get what I want, I won't get it God really hasn't really been there for me, I have to rely on me

Part 3- What it looks like when we are doing it well: My selfishness is mostly gone I am engaged with much communication with God, I read the Bible daily, I pray daily, I deny myself daily, I serve others daily, I worship God daily. I ask for things and when the answer is no I accept it and it does not affect my relationship at all I am aware of who and what I worship, of who and what my eyes are set on so my eyes are set on Jesus not my spouse, family, coworkers, or my past. I can have conversations - the monologues and diatribes are gone my verbal and non verbal communication is attracting not repelling people say I am a good listener

Part 3- What it feels like when we are doing it well: I know that God has always been there for me, that I can rely on His promises, and that He has never let me down and that I can count on Him. I am peaceful because I know that I know that God has only the best for me in mind and that He will change the people around when it in His time. I know that He will change my situations when it is the best time to do so. I am peaceful I am content with my portion

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Communication Worksheet Part 4- Communication Problems Worksheet

Do you communicate to God & to others any of the following:       

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I am the boss of you - I'm right you're wrong - My thinking is best you really want to be king you really know what's best that their thinking is not wrong that once you have picked a way to go, that it is the best way your desires, goal & future is absolutely the best for you that if you plan well enough, are committed enough, execute, visualize, persevere, adapt and overcome that whatever you set out to do that it will be done? or do you believe God's will be done? they are my adversary

Do you communicate to God & to others any of the following:                

my secrets are my secrets and that are not safe with you my past is messed up and can not be used for good I have areas in my heart that just are "off limits" just back off that I am your adversary that I am not your comfort that I am a source of discomfort to you my words tear down my words critical, judgmental, insensitive my words show often show disapproval my words & actions exasperate my words or actions communicate that nothing is every good enough that they aren't my comfort they don't give me what I want so I won't love you do you forget all that has already been done do you see the 100 good things already done or just the one thing not done I do for you and then you don't do for me.

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Do You Truly Love Me Do you communicate to God & to others any of the following:                

I love conditionally That when I do something I expect to get back in return That if I give up something I should get something in return That if I attend things, show up, do the checklist there should be rewards for me That you should think like me & understand me Do you communicate to God & to others that My thinking is always right. Well ok not always, 98% What's important to you is important to you, but not to me I have issues and you need to understand I was raised a certain way therefore..... I went through ....... therefore If you loved me you would understand Why can't you just understand me If you just ask me what to do I will get it correct Please put me in charge of the world and I will make it a much better place that what God has done I think I should understand something before I agree to do it

Do you communicate to God & to others any of the following:      

If I don't completely understand something, then I won't do it If it doesn't make complete sense to me, then I won't do it If it doesn't make complete sense to me then it is flat our wrong. Your thinking is not like my thinking, so you are wrong I will tolerate your wrong thinking and acquiesce in this instance to keep the peace If you loved me you would know what to do

Do you communicate to God & to others any of the following:     

the world revolves around me everyone should understand me and my needs I have heard no so many times that I just won't ask anymore I don't like to be disagreed with so I don't ask because I don't want to hear the no answer If you loved me you would agree to do it - all I'm asking for is ....

Do you communicate to God & to others that:       

my selfishness and my world are all that matters if I don't get what I want then you don't love me My intention is all that matters my selfishness and point of view is all that matters I invalidate your point of view and your feelings I disregard the fruit my communication produces I don't look for or ask about the fruit my communication produces 105

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You have too many feelings and cry too much Do you communicate to God & to others that my selfishness and point of view is all that matters I invalidate your point of view and your feelings I disregard the fruit my communication produces I don't look for or ask about the fruit my communication produces You're dense and just don't get it, you are callous & insensitive. my selfishness and point of view is all that matters I invalidate your point of view and your feelings I gave up asking for what I want, now I expect you to know When I express my feelings I communicate my frustration not a expression of unity and understanding

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Seeing the Good, Seeing Hope – We see with a new eyes & a renewed mind & transformed being Part 1 - The Principle Seeing the Good, Seeing Hope: We must first get the awareness of what we were seeing. When our eyes see and our ears hear what we were seeing was not true, then we can see good and see hope. We must see the concrete evidence of the fruit of the lives we were living and see the damage it was causing and see that we were not truly loving God very much at all. To see the good and to see hope we must see God’s story for our lives. We are not talking about a positive attitude or the power of positive thinking. We are talking about a transformation from the inside out. We need a renewing of the mind. This can comes supernaturally from the Holy Spirit. When our mind is renewed. It is made new again. When we are transformed at a heart level from the inside out we are different people. Our story is gone, God’s story is in. We must go through that “life changing” event and paradigm shift. Then will never see things the same way again. When we stop listening to Satan as he tells us our story and we instead listen to God tell us His story for our lives then we can see good and see hope. We stop seeing only what I want and we look for and see what God wants. We stop seeing our past as a mistake and punishment, and we see training and lessons learned. We mostly see that we now have a God story in which to connect with others effectively. It’s the God stories of our lives that connect at a heart level with others.

When we stop listening to Satan as he tells us our story and we instead listen to God tell us His story for our lives then we can see good and see hope.

When we can see that we are good enough to be loved by God just the way are then we see the good and see hope. Let’s be clear, we are good enough just the way we are for God to love us. There is probably lots to change for us to truly love God, and for us to truly love others. We must also see that we are worth His love just the way we are. Satan wants us to believe in our story that unanswered prayers, tough times, hardships, awards we didn’t win, jobs we didn’t get, money we don’t have, are all proof that God does not think we are worth such things. Satan wants us to see only what we are not, and what we do not have as proof that God loves others more. When we become aware of how much we trusted Satan and his lies and distrusted God and His truth then we can see good and see hope. Satan lies to us and tells us in the story we tell ourselves in our heads that the past will always equal the future. Satan tells us people don’t change. When we focus on God’s story in our lives we can now see that it is all about the fruit. The fruit is what will prove us to be disciples. When we are about God’s story we now know to stay in the concrete and away from the abstract, away from feelings and intentions.

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Do You Truly Love Me Our new focus on God’s story instead of our story allows us to keep our eyes on God, and stay focused on the mark. The mark, the target is the fruit, the fruit of the spirit and of 1 Cor 13:4-8, and the fruit of repentance.

Our eyes that can now see, see that the old way of living and looking through a mutually exclusive paradigm is staying in our story. We now see how much we called evil good and good evil. We also see that all things we took personally were not personal. Our new awareness will let us see how much we did not trust God. Satan tells us lies in our story that God does not really see what is going on. That we must control and manipulate our world and our story so that we get what we want. Our new awareness will let us see how evil and satanic our world is today. Not the wars, not the beheadings, not multiple mass killings. Satan is much too clever for that, everyone knows that is evil. We are talking about all of the online postings, and all of the coaches and books that tell us just try harder and we can all get what we want. Make a plan, focus, execute, adapt and overcome and you too can have all that want. They all throw in god and they all throw in family and spirituality. They are all teaching idolatry and self-reliance, and teach that God’s plan is not good enough. Our new awareness will now have us searching only for God’s story, God’s will for our lives. That His kingdom is on earth and in heaven, and we will now only search for God’s will in heaven and on earth for lives. We gladly accept God’s plan for us, and His very specific place where we should live and work. God’s plan is to heal the broken hearted and to free the captives. Our new awareness makes it so we can see that were blind, and that we will continue to have many blind spots. The knowledge that we will always have blind spots will create a need in us to trust others and allow others to minister to us. Our new awareness gives us a capability to see what we could not see before makes it so we can see who the enemy is. The enemy is Satan, not our spouses not our family, children, co-workers or neighbors. We also gain the capability to see Satan coming from far away so we can easily avoid him. Our lack of seeing made it so he could sneak right up on us. When our eyes can see God’s story in our lives then we have true respect for God and others. Respect is us thinking that the other person’s thinking is a good as mine, (even if I don’t understand it) and that what is important to them is important to me. Our new awareness keeps us aware of our growing capabilities our stagnant capabilities and our very low capabilities. Our new hope is the knowledge that God can and will provide those capabilities to us once we ask Him for them to be used for His good and His story.

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Do You Truly Love Me God's plan is a great and glorious plan. God's plan gets us first to know that we are lacking the gifts of the Holy Spirit. He then wants us to go through a few things and then go to Him for comfort. Not to sex, not people, places, things, money, drugs, alcohol or different geography. He wants to be our source of comfort. He then wants us to know that our strength is useless and that we can only rely on His strength to change our world around us according to His plan and His glory. He then wants us live by His ways, and to be servants in His kingdom, for the glory of His kingdom. Then the big one. We have to be merciful to all who have made decisions and those that have made choices to harm us, including ourselves. Remember Gen 50:20. People very well may have intended to hurt us, however His plan was to save many lives using our lives. Then we will be pure in heart then we can see God. 2 Corinthians 1:3-4, 2 Corinthians 1:8-10, Genesis 50:20, Romans 8:28, 2 Corinthians 4:8-10, 2 Corinthians 4:16-18, Matthew 5:3-8, 1 Timothy 4:8-10, Psalm 25:5, Colossians 1:5, Romans 8:24-25

Part 2- How do we apply the principle in our Relationships, What does God want to reveal to me? In your daily quiet time with God, read through any of the Gospels. As you read through stop at each portion or at the end of the chapter and look for the following: Look and see the unconditional love that Jesus shows to the people that He encounters. Look and see the mercy that Jesus shows to the people He encounters Look and see the grace that Jesus extends to the people He encounters Look and see the faith and/or hope that He gives the people that He encounters Save this work in a journal we will go over it when we get to part 4 the worksheet. Our journal of remembrance mentioned in the last lesson faith, should be a good start. That should help greatly with hope in God. As we have been moving through the lessons we have been learning about relationships. Relationship with God and relationship with others. The whole study is called do you truly love me? If we do truly love God then we would have much hope. We would be trusting God. We would understand that He is madly in love with us and that He is worthy of our trust. We would know that He always has our best interest at heart. We would constantly be reminded that God only wants the best for us.

Our journal of remembrance mentioned in the last lesson faith, should be a good start. That should help greatly with hope in God.

In our relationships we should want to be a source of hope for our spouse and children. Our words should speak hope and our actions should speak hope. Our patience will communicate hope. Us listening to others and making the priorities of others our priority will also communicate hope.

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Do You Truly Love Me Giving an abundance of grace and mercy will give hope. Certainly keeping no records of wrongs and giving someone the gift of a clean slate gives much hope as well. Understanding that capabilities of people can certainly increase and grow over time will give us the patience to communicate hope that people will gain capability to grow in the fruits of the Spirit and also grow in the capability to see Satan coming from farther and farther away. The fertilizer for the growth can come from us being a source of hope. Our speaking hope will keep others energized around us. Others around us can be energized to stay on the path God is illuminating for them, and also for them not to be so hard on themselves. To be a source of hope we need to be great listeners. We have to be able to remind others how much they have improved and much God has already changed in them. For us to be able to do this we must be in a relationship with God that we have much hope in. We cannot be a source of hope unless we ourselves are hopeful. In the 1 Cor 13:4-8 passage, love always hopes.

Part 3- What it looks like when we begin doing it: We communicate to others how they are improving, we communicate to others how they have moved to the next level or how it looks like they have what they need to move to the next level. People are encouraged by us, because they feel that we have been watching their efforts, that we have noticed their efforts and notice how they have improved and how their capability is getting better and better.

Part 3- What it feels like when we begin doing it: We are beginning to feel more joyful. We feel more trusting of God. We are more into worship music, and it worshiping God. We are aware of when we are not being hopeful. We are at least aware when we remember the past, and when we are focused on each other and not on God. Part 3- What it looks like when we are doing it well: We are proficient at allowing people their 5,000 mistakes. We are proficient at helping others to remember how far their capabilities have grown. We are capability to keep thoughts captive and making them obedient to Christ is high. We are not easily shaken off course, and are not easily or often fooled by the enemy into old behaviors that give a a foothold. We are know for catching people doing things right.

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Part 3- What it feels like when we are doing it well: We are joyful people we are people that see the good and our joy is evident to others. We are joyful because of our hope in our God. We are joyful and faithful that God always has our best interest at heart. We are often connected with God in worshipful manner.

Lesson 10 - Seeing the Good, Seeing Hope Worksheet Part 4- Seeing the Good, Seeing Hope Worksheet

1. Please take your journal writing and share with the group what you saw when you read the Gospels about Jesus' interactions with people regarding - Grace, mercy, unconditional love and faith/hope. Are you hopeful God will make your relationship with Him better and better? 2. Are you hopeful God will make your relationship with your spouse better and better? 3. What areas are you not hopeful in? 4. How does your unforgiveness and lack of mercy hold you back in being hopeful? 5. How can you communicate hope to your spouse? 6. How can you communicate hope to your children? 7. How hopeful are you with God? 1- 10 10 being the highest. 8. How hopeful are you with your spouse? 1- 10 10 being the highest. 9. How hopeful are you with your children? 1- 10 10 being the highest. 10. Do you give people their 5,000 mistakes? 11. How often to you catch people doing things right? 12. Are you know for catching people doing things right? 111

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Game Changers Here are the 20 game changers that will give you the heart connected relationships that you are hardwired for from birth: Our lack of awareness generally fits into the following 20 categories. We believe they are game changers for people and their understanding of relationships: 11. The fruit in our closest relationships show how much we love God: 1 Jn 4:20 tells us that if we don’t love the people in our lives then we can’t love God, that we are liars if we say we love God and don’t love the people in our lives. It is all about the fruit. The fruit of the Spirit in Gal 5:22 starts with love. What love is, is described in 1 Cor 13:4-8. We can’t earn God’s love. God already loves us 100%. We can however love God more and more. The fruit of our closest relationships tells that. We should take a “fruit test” to know the truth of how others view our relationship with them. Gal 5:22-23 and 1 Cor 13:4-8 is the fruit that our relationships should be measured by. In Mt 13:13-15 Jesus says that we have eyes and do not see and ears and do not hear. If we asked ourselves, we would say on a scale from 1 to 10, (10 being Jesus) that we were 8 or 9’s on the fruit of the Spirit and on 1 Cor 13:4-8. However generally just the opposite is often true. Try it and see! 12. Sanctification is God’s will for us, it is what makes fruit: I Thess 4:3 tells me that God’s will for me is to be sanctified. We don’t have to pray for the revelation for what God’s will is in our lives. This is God’s will. God’s will isn’t for me to be comfortable, or for God to be my servant, to give me all the “sensible” things that I want or need. Sanctification is the process of making us more holy, to be ready for that last day. Sanctification is the transformation and renewal of our mind. It is the transformation we undergo to become the person that has much fruit in their lives. God does this in God’s timing not ours. He transforms us. He renews our minds and we allow Him to work in us. The sanctification process is painful. It removes our “self” and then what is the result is repentance and fruit. Our individuality is not removed, just our selfishness. 13. We are called to be disciples of Jesus: We are all called to be disciples. Jesus said that we can tell if we are disciples by our fruit (Jn 15:8) and by our love (Jn 13:35). Jesus calls us to deny ourselves and pick up our cross daily (Lk 9:23). Our relationship with God and with our spouses should be measured as 100% them and 0% me. (this does not mean our individuality is lost or that we become codependent or enmeshed with our spouse) Most of us are on the PLUS PLAN in our relationship with God. Our love for God should be unconditional. The cross and our adoption as children of God should be enough. However we often want the cross and adoption PLUS – a spouse that does what I want, children that do what I want, and many other external things like, health, money, retirement plan, home, cars, status, notoriety, etc. We think to ourselves, after all I only want the bare minimum or that what we want is reasonable. As a disciple I should submit to God’s will. God’s will for me is one thing. 1 Thess 4:3 reads that it is to be sanctified. God uses the relationships closest to us to sanctify us. The relationships closest to us are very daily. Just like Jesus commands us to do, deny ourselves daily and carry our cross daily.

14. Renewal of the mind: The sanctification process is a transformation process. The transformation process begins with a renewal of the mind. How we see the events in our past, present and future 112

Do You Truly Love Me is determined by our thoughts about those events. Once God puts someone in our lives who comes alongside us and shows us what God sees about my relationship with him, we can then come to the knowledge that we really aren’t loving God. We can beg God to give us new capabilities that we don’t have now. We can beg God for a new mind. Ro 12:3, Col 3:10 and Eph 4:17 talk of the renewal of the mind and that without it we cannot get the knowledge on how to love God. God tells us that our old thinking is futile. We need our thinking renewed so that we see our life as a life of sanctification and transformation instead of a life of gimme, gimme, gimme. Instead of a life where we want to be in charge of God and have Him serve us. A life on the PLUS PLAN. 15. How to help/give advice to your spouse or anyone: We must go to where the person is. We must come alongside them. We must put out our hand, then once they take our hand we gently and patiently lead them where God wants them to go. This is rarely done correctly. Most people (Christians can be quite ineffective as well) are not effective. They do not go to where the helpee is. The land the helpee is in is fear, faithlessness, doubt, sorrow, pity, worry, anger, remorse, etc. Helpers attempt to “talk at” the helpee from the land the helper is in, not from the land the helpee is in. Helpers talk from a land of security, assuredness, strength, faithfulness, etc., and therefore are not alongside the helpee. Because of this the helpee does not take the hand of the helper. Helpers often interpret this as the helpee not wanting help, or that the helpee is simply not repentant. However I believe God wants us to connect and come alongside instead of tell and judge. It seems logical that knowledge of the Bible should be sufficient. However God wants us to be good shepherds (Jn 10). Sheep only follow shepherds if the shepherd “knows” the sheep and the sheep “know” the shepherd. Relationship is more important than bible knowledge when we are trying to minister. We must develop deep heartfelt connections with others. 16. Forgiveness – Reconciliation – Restoration: Forgiveness is one thing, reconciliation and restoration is another thing altogether different. Forgiveness takes one, reconciliation and restoration take two people working together equally to process and complete. Over the 17 years of us coaching marriages and discipling hundreds and hundreds of couples a common complaint we hear (mostly from men) is: She hasn’t forgiven me or she is keeping a record of wrongs. She is not obeying God. She is not forgiving me. The mix-up comes with equating forgiveness and the restoration of the relationship in that area. The restoration moves at 1% increments. The offender often wants the restoration to happen 100% and in 5 minutes. Ok I exaggerated, 1 hour. This concept is important because Satan often uses this misconception. The offendee has not had the relationship restored enough, quickly enough and the offender internalizes that as the offendee has not forgiven them and that she is not respecting me, and she is keeping of record of wrongs, etc, etc. God can restore us 100% instantly, however, often times He leaves in the consequences. He leaves in the long time it takes to restore relationship, to train us and to make us more holy.

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Do You Truly Love Me 17. Start at the end. Ask for what you want: We should empower others to say no when we begin conversations or dialogues. We can clarify to people that we don’t want anything to change, or what the objective of the conversation or dialogue is. We should ask for us to be able to just talk or vent without the other person fixing, judging, correcting or spiritualizing our statements, thoughts or feelings. If what we are feeling or wanting to discuss has no basis in fact we should say honey I would like tell you what I’m feeling however I know that what I am about to say is ugly or not really based on facts, however this is how I feel…. 18. Vulnerability is the only way to true heart connection: Being vulnerable means learning to identify what I am feeling. It means to discuss my feelings and what I want. Being vulnerable means sharing something, letting you know something about me. That’s a risk. It could make me look badly. It might make me look incompetent, weak or inept. In other words it could be a source of shame. True heart connection can only come if God takes away from the enemy all the sources of shame. Heart connected relationships can only come when God has developed in me a viewpoint of that what used to cause me shame now is a great part of me. It is the part that connects me to others. To be vulnerable means I have to take risks and ask for what I want, and risk that you will say no. Vulnerability means that I have to share my innermost being and my most intimate thoughts, the real, real, truth of what I think, of what I want to do, of how I feel. This is a rare thing even amongst Christians. We are not transparent or ready to bare our souls to others. This happens because the great majority of Christians are not good ministers as described in # 4. Most people invalidate, minimize, judge, critique or worse they use the information shared against the person or gossip. Most people communicate by their actions - I’m smart, you’re dumb, I’m right, you’re wrong, I’m spiritual, you’re not. 19. My Story vs God’s Story: I have a story I tell myself about my life, my relationship with God, my relationships with others. It often has nothing to do with facts or reality. It is my story. It is my story I tell myself. My story makes me to be a good person, doing the best I can. My story tells me I have no other options than what I have been doing. My life and relationships are as good as it gets for me. The enemy has a lot influence in my story. My story limits me, my story limits God. My story has a major flaw. It’s my paradigm that my life on earth is about my comfort and me getting what I want. The flaw includes thinking like I only ask for reasonable things that makes sense and should always be answered in the affirmative. My story keeps me from being congruent, genuine and authentic. God’s story for me is limitless. God’s story has a lesson for me to have learned from all of life’s events. The lessons that God has given to me give me limitless ability to have a passionate heart connected love relationship with God and others. We are unaware of how much we don’t trust or believe what God says. 20. Be very careful we are all fragile: There are many “be careful” passages in the bible. Mt 12:36 tells us that we will have to give an account for every careless word. People in our lives may put up a “tough” exterior however we are all fragile. We all care about what people think. Showing disappointment and disapproval and/or speaking to others about a disappointment or disapproval can be catastrophic. God isn’t disappointed with us. Talking of separation or divorce in marriage or when talking to children telling them that there can be an end to a relationship is not what God does with us. We can say sorry and be “truly” sorry. However the consequences 114

Do You Truly Love Me often last a lot longer than we would like. God is the only one that can repair that brokenness and He often takes quite a while. 21. Do what doesn’t make sense: Faith is being certain of what we do not see. We don’t see because it doesn’t make sense to us. We don’t see because we have never seen it. We have seen our past experiences and we have seen our upbringing and family life. Satan wants us to only believe in what we have seen, and Satan tells us that what we have seen is the only thing that will be in the future. The enemy wants us to only do things or move forward when we truly understand something. If we don’t understand it then we label it as wrong. Consider this. No one sets out to get divorced or to be unfulfilled. People give it much thought and consideration. However for around 50% of their best thinking gets them divorced. That’s because they only did or do what makes sense to them. 22. I’m right you’re wrong, Validate & Invalidate: In my story I know what is right. In my story past experiences dictate the future. In my story hurts, failures, rejection, shame and fear guide my thinking and actions. When I’m right and you’re wrong I don’t come on the same side of the table and come along side to team up with you to have victory over the enemy. I bulldoze over your thoughts and I try to prove you wrong and prove myself to be right. In other words I attempt to invalidate your thinking and actions and I attempt to validate or prove correct my own thoughts and actions. 23. Respect: What is important to you is important to me. Your way of thinking is equally as important and valid as my way of thinking. We don’t have to think alike to move forward and be alongside one another on the same side of the table. No one has to change the other’s mind to be alike to move forward. United does not mean uniformity. 24. No is a complete sentence: Whenever we ask a question the answer should be able to be no. If we ask a question and we really only want a yes answer then we are trying to control or manipulate the other person or God. If we are loving unconditionally then the no answer to a question or prayer should not affect the relationship at all. We should empower all of the people we ask questions to, to be able to say no if they like. We must be purposeful in not getting entangled in someone’s tantrum, anger, cold shoulder, etc. If someone won’t stop or they keep demanding that we explain ourselves we can simply say I thought you asked a question and I thought the answer could be no. I do not want to continue this discussion if you are going to only accept the answer of yes. If you don’t stop persisting I will have to remove myself until you are ready to accept the answer of no. Be purposeful in not letting Satan get a foothold by letting the interaction occupy your brain while you run the scenario again and again in her head. 25. Abstract vs. Concrete: Abstract are things that cannot be measured, seen, touched or felt, like our feelings. Our intentions are also abstract. Concrete are things we can see, touch, feel and measure. Agape love is action. It is fruit and can be measured. God measures fruit in several passages of scripture. In Mt 13:23 He says that the seed that falls on good soil produces fruit 100 times what was sown.

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Do You Truly Love Me 26. Blind Spots: We are unaware of the many blind spots we have. We have eyes and don’t see, ears and don’t hear. Our story, our paradigm keeps us unaware. Many people would change if they could see their lack of fruit. If they could see the pain and anguish caused by their excuses and blame shifting a/k/a calling evil good and good evil. We tell ourselves our story, and why we can’t trust God, or trust others to guide us through our blind spots. 27. How We Call Good Evil and Evil Good: We have become numb, blind and unaware of how we justify and rationalize our behavior and decisions. We call good evil, and evil good. We call evil good because we give the reasons why. We are unware of how much we have lost clarity on what is good and evil. We are unaware how much we believe Satan over God. 28. Supernatural & Natural Capabilities: I try and do things only naturally. I am unaware that God has limitless supernatural power to give me capabilities that I don’t have. Once my eyes can see and my ears can hear how my incapability to have the fruit that God wants me to have I must go to the Holy Spirit to get it. Capabilities that I have never had and that I thought I would never have. I am unware of God’s supernatural power so when I do become aware of my lack of capability then I become sad and depressed. I become sad and depressed because I simply can’t do that, or have never been able to do ……… Instead of going to the God that provides, I attempt to do all things in my strength alone. We are unaware of how much we ignore God, spurn Him, and don’t trust Him. God can and will make me capable to have all of the fruit of the Spirit in huge portions even though nothing or no one ever changes around me. God want’s my love for Him to be unconditional and not based on the external things I get or based on the behavior of others. 29. Mutually Exclusive Paradigm – Multiple Truths: In a mutually exclusive paradigm I am unaware that I view the world from a point of view that tells me if this is one thing is true, then that must mean that all other things are untrue. The fact is there can be multiple truths. Two or more things can be true at the same time. Example: should I forgive when you yelled at me, yes. It is also true that you should be contrite about yelling at me and not justifying your sinful behavior. However it doesn’t mean that I should only forgive when you’re contrite. It doesn’t mean that I should only stop doing the behavior if when I do something you always forgive me instantly for the behavior. Matters of opinions that differ from our own are not necessarily sin. We must understand that in a healthy adult relationship two people can have completely different points of view without having one person “bulldoze” over the other person in order to have the same opinion or viewpoint or belief. 30. It’s Not Personal: We take things personally when they are not personal. We think our spouse is doing something on purpose to us when, in reality the spouse is not capable of doing it another way yet or it is the enemy using the other person to get us aggravated. When we take things personally we make the other person the adversary. Our spouses or family are not the adversary. The battle is against Satan. We have a blind spot. We simply don’t see that Satan is at work doing what he does best. Author Tom Fonseca http://DoYouTrulyLoveMe.com

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