Author: Resa Pearson

There’s a good reason why we do what we do. Despite how it might appear, our behavior isn’t random. The challenges of life and our desire to be affirmed can bring us down broken paths that have been hidden from us. We may land on what we think is the reason for our questionable behavior, but we usually need to go deeper.  Often, what we are concluding can be A problem, but not THE problem.  As Paul confesses in Romans, “What I do, I do not understand. For I do not do what I want, but I do what I hate.”

We may not understand our actions very well. But Jesus does. And he wants to help us get underneath what we think is causing our struggles to find the real wound that is the true source. For example, my impatience to have my view heard causes me to sometimes talk over others despite my desire not to. I could chalk this up to just being an impatient person or perhaps it’s related to not being adequately heard as a child and that need has chosen now to come forward. As they say, “We bury our feelings alive.” They don’t vanish, they wait for us to deal with them.

And Jesus wants to be the Divine Medic on our route. He wants to come to every facet of our heart to set us free from the things that have hurt us, or which hold us back.  He wants us to let him lead us so we can get out of our own way when we bungle the exploration. As one of my teachers said, “Are you allowing the Lord to love you in your poverty or are you making it worse in your self-condemnation?” I have a refrigerator magnet that says, “Don’t believe everything you think.” Who says what we think is true? Sometimes we compound the problem by the things we think God is asking us to do. We must allow the actual truth of God’s abiding love to form our expectations. This will free us and shift our perspective to understand that things don’t happen to us, but for us.