According to a recent Gallup poll, almost nine out of ten Americans believe in God or a “universal spirit.”[1] Alcoholics Anonymous uses the term “higher power.”  As a Christian, I have a world view that includes a compassionate and gracious God who loves me. Because of this worldview, I believe there is a spiritual side to addiction recovery.    I have value and worth. For some people, an addiction begins as running away from a feeling of worthlessness. The actions of addiction can numb that terrible “truth” of worthlessness in a way real life cannot. For others, addiction erod ..read more

Forgiveness can be like a flower, the benefits of which open to fullness over time.  You need to allow time to see the benefits of forgiveness, both psychological and physical.  A study, reported in the International Journal of Psychophysiology, showed an intriguing window into the benefits of forgiveness, which included improved physical symptoms such as heart rate and blood pressure, as well as decreased need for medication and reduced alcohol use.   In an abstract on the report, found on the National Institutes of Health website, it says, “These findings have important theoretical implicati ..read more

Over and over again, the Bible calls God sovereign, which means he has unlimited power and authority.  To move from relationship dependency to spiritual dependency, you must acknowledge who has true power or authority over you.   When you come to believe in and trust in God’s love for you, you are able to form a secure spiritual attachment.  This secure spiritual attachment is possible no matter what sort of attachment you’ve had in your Earthly relationships.   Let’s look at several important questions that speak to spiritual attachment. Am I worthy of being loved?  You are loved because God ..read more

Graham had a problem with God and the Heavenly Father thing. Graham’s father hadn’t been, in any way, heavenly. Graham figured it was best to give God a wide berth in case he was anything like his earthly father. Graham hoped God wasn’t, but he just wasn’t ready to take the risk. Over the years, I’ve struggled to help people cope with an image of God as a super father figure. People come to me with problems relating to their earthly fathers. Perhaps they were emotionally distant or unnecessarily harsh. They may have been unyielding or overindulgent.  When an earthly father is abusive, this cre ..read more

  In counseling, I have worked with both male and female adults who had a warped view of God because of dysfunctional parenting.  They had a parent who misused Scripture and spiritual concepts to belittle, demean, and criticize them as a child. These individuals took the difficult and damaging parent they lived with as a child and projected that image onto God. God’s image, then, was not his own but was overshadowed by that parental image.  When this happens, God does not speak with his own voice; the parental voice becomes God’s voice, with all its inherent authority.   When a child is told t ..read more

Did you ever play with wind-up toys as a kid? Remember how if you wound the toy too far, it broke? Well, you are the wind-up toy. You are the wind-up toy, and anxiety keeps winding and winding you up. At some point, anxiety could over-wind you, so you’ll break. You’ll break emotionally, you’ll break spiritually, and you’ll break physically. Ironically, when we wind up, we break down. Anxiety puts your body into high gear. When you’re supposed to be idling or even stopped, anxiety is revving your physical engine. When the light turns green, you’ve revved up so high that you shoot into the inter ..read more

In times of crisis, when well-meaning people advise you to “have faith,” they often make it sound simple, as if it’s possible to magically “have” something as elusive as faith on command. That’s nearly as unhelpful as telling someone who’s suffering from depression to simply “feel better.”  Every step on the path to depression recovery requires courage and commitment on your part, all summed up in one powerful word: choice. You must choose to seek help and choose to pursue the remedies you are offered before you can tap into their healing potential. Faith is no different. It’s not an ethereal ..read more

Children don’t seem to have any trouble talking to God.  This natural communication with God is called prayer, but it is really a conversation.  Like in any relationship, sometimes we do all the talking and sometimes we need to just be quiet and listen. Prayer is where their faith in God becomes personal.  First, a young child hears a parent praying about them and for them.  As they get older, the child begins to form his or her own prayers, usually yours as an example.  There will come a time when your child’s prayers will be exclusively between him or her and God. This is their individual re ..read more

The word is the seed of God. As a parent, you have a responsibility to not just expose your child to the word, but to prepare them to receive the Word. Some parents believe it is just enough to scatter the seed. They say to themselves, “I’ll just expose my children to religion and it is up to them whether or not to believe it.” These parents do nothing to prepare the soil, to enrich it, cultivate it with composition and nutrients to ensure the seed grows strong and healthy. Just because one scatters seed (in this example, exposing their children to the word), it doesn’t automatically result in ..read more

Every kid who grew up in Sunday school will reach a point in life where they question the very existence of God.  This is the point at which belief in God moves from the family column into the personal column. Your teenager questioning God is not a negative: questioning God is part of the natural faith journey every person needs to take.  If you’ve presented God as a “must do,” be prepared for your teenager to ask why and test those boundaries. Some kids will take longer during that spiritual quest than others.  Some kids will ask more questions and involve you in a vigorous debate, or punch ..read more