Ever take one of those personality tests?
I took one today, only this was a test that gives you information about who you are and what your role is in our world. Fascinating stuff. I’ll boil down 11 pages of my results to this one phrase:
“You produce ingenious solutions to complex problems.”
That got me thinking. What problems am I working on? Then I realized I’ve been obsessed with solving three complex problems for many years.
Here’s the first:
#1 Internal junk
All of us walk around with a certain amount of internal junk—feelings and inner messages that keep us from experiencing life to the fullest. This is the stuff we seldom share, the inner self we hide when we go out in public. We like to deny that this part of us even exists. But it does, and it holds us back; it dampens how we experience life.
For the last 30 to 40 years I’ve been focused on this question: How do you get rid of this internal junk? More specifically, does our Christian faith offer us any tools that allow us to get rid of this junk?
Here’s what I’ve found: Most of the tools out there don’t work. Most of the Christian tools out there don’t work. Or they work like this: We try them. They don’t make a difference. But we don’t want to tell anybody they didn’t work. So we lie. We lie and say we’re fine.
I don’t like that.
I have a strong distaste for religious pretending disguised as faith. “I’m fine in Jesus’ name.” Yeah. Sure.
Denial is not the same as faith. Faith is first of all honest. Honest with ourselves, honest with God. Read the Psalms.
So anyway, I found something 19 years ago that works for me. I’ve seen it work for others. It really does clear out internal junk. It really does leave you feeling lighter, happier, stronger, more at peace, healthier. It changes how you experience life.
I’ve been trying to cut through the clutter and convey that for much of the last 17 years. I’ve been trying to shout from the rooftops: “Hey, this isn’t another form of religious denial. This is the real thing.”
Sometimes people listen. Sometimes they don’t. But, anyway, if you want to read what I’ve written, if you want to learn how to clear out that internal junk, I’ll recommend my books, The Gift of Transformation, Spiritual Self Defense, What It Means to Follow Jesus.
Thanks!
Dwight
PS. I’ll post the other two, Lord willing, sometime soon.
