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Have you ever looked at a situation you’re facing in utter disbelief and thought, "How will I ever get over this?" Lysa TerKeurst understands. After years of heartbreak and emotional trauma, she realized it’s not about just getting over hard circumstances but learning how to work through what she has walked through. Now, she wants to help you do the same. That’s why Lysa teamed up with her personal, licensed professional counselor, Jim Cress, alongside the Director of Theological Research at Proverbs 31 Ministries, Dr. Joel Muddamalle, to bring you "Therapy & Theology." While Lysa, Jim and Joel do tackle some really hard topics, you’ll soon find they're just three friends having a great conversation and learning from each other along the way.
Lysa TerKeurst:
This is Lysa TerKeurst, and you're listening to Therapy & Theology. Before we get into today's conversation, I'd like to thank the American Association of Christian Counselors for sponsoring Season 7 of Therapy & Theology. I love the work that my friends and I get to do through this podcast that allows for therapeutic wisdom and deep theological insights to be accessible to anyone from anywhere. But we're really only able to scratch the surface.
I know there are thousands of individual needs represented in our listeners as they navigate their own life and relationships. And that's why I always love recommending the American Association of Christian Counselors. They know asking for help is hard, but finding help shouldn't be. They created the Mental Health Coach training program to equip you to know how to respond when a friend comes to you for help.
Featuring some of the world's leading mental health and ministry leaders, this online, video-based Mental Health Coach training program teaches you how to talk through the tough issues, like what we talk about here on Therapy & Theology, and how to respond to them. Visit mentalhealthcoach.org to learn how you can sign up for their Mental Health Coach program, or visit the link in the show notes to learn more.
When talking about broken trust, I think one of the hardest things to process is, what do I do when it feels like the person who hurt me just got away with it? And even more so, how do I continue to trust God when it feels like He allowed the person who hurt me to get away with it? I want to go there today because I think this is really important.
OK, Joel, we're going to turn to you first today. I remember this moment where I was sitting on the beach and I was processing the long road of hurt and heartbreak that I had gone through. And I was just having a moment, maybe even a little bit of a pity party, but just a real moment of asking God some really hard questions.
And it was all around the fact that I thought it was incredibly unfair that the person who hurt me, the one who left the marriage that I very much wanted to stay together, it just seemed like he was out there living his best life. And it was being allowed for him to just continue to ... on the outside at least look like everything was so yippy-skippy, fun. And I was left at home picking up the pieces of a broken family. I was carrying a really heavy heart, not just heaviness for me but also looking at the landscape of my family. And because I had a front-row [seat] to the hurt that my kids had experienced, I was seeing the ramifications of his choices. And it was being played out in all of our lives, and it was so excruciatingly painful for me.
And I just remember sitting there, and I was watching the tide come in and the waves come in and ebb and flow and go out. And because of the tide, the water was getting closer and closer and closer. And I knew if I don't get up and if I don't move my chair and my bag, then everything that I have is going to get wet. And if I continue not to move it, it's going to get washed out to sea. And I remember having this moment where I legitimately said, “Fine, wash it all out to sea.”
Because I was just at that level of hopelessness, and I was overwhelmed with just the feeling of unfairness. And that feeling of unfairness was just giving me hit after hit after hit, opportunity after opportunity after opportunity for feeling incredibly bitter. And even though I was trying really hard to forgive the facts of what happened, recognizing that trauma is always two parts. We've talked about this many times: fact and impact. So forgiveness needs to be two parts: fact and impact. We can forgive in a moment the fact of what happened, and that meets the requirement by God to forgive, and it's a command to forgive.
But the impact part, walking through the much longer process of forgiving for all that this cost me, that's where it's going to be quite a process. And the bitterness was rolling in as consistently as those waves were rolling in, and I was trying so hard to fight it, but in that moment on the beach where I just said, “Wash it all away,” I just thought, This is never going to get better. It's always going to hurt this much, and it feels so unfair, and I don't understand, God. I just don't understand.
Joel Muddamalle:
Yeah, I think one, it's really important for us to just acknowledge that everything that you just described is so honest, and God welcomes it all. And I want to be careful. We've talked before about spiritual bypass. I want to be careful about how I try to even approach this subject or this topic, because I think sometimes it's like we've heard the ... I'm going to say phrases. It even makes me feel uncomfortable saying it like this. But the religious responses: “Well, just trust God.” “Well, just believe He's got His best for you.” It's all these phrases.
And one of the things I think we've lost as we've read the Scriptures is that ... the fact is that the Bible is written in story. How many times, if you just read through the psalms ... For the first time this year, I'm reading the Bible chronologically. It's been such a joy. And one of the things that is so fascinating is that the way the psalms are interspersed inside of the narrative story of David's rise and fall, the kingdom's rise and fall. We normally go to the psalms. It's like read chapter, read chapter, read chapter. But so many of what David writes is his wrestling with his trust with God. That's really what it is, right? God, You anointed me, You appointed me, You've put the kingdom supposedly in my hands, and yet I'm running for my life in the wilderness?
Lysa TerKeurst:
And my enemies are just constantly nipping at me and threatening me. I mean, that's a tough way to live.
Joel Muddamalle:
That's a tough way to live. So we have two ways of reading this. One is like we read that psalm or the many psalms of David's, just flip the page, and get to the next one. The resolve is here.
Jim Cress:
Oh, there we go.
Joel Muddamalle:
Right?
Jim Cress:
Yeah.
Joel Muddamalle:
That wasn't the way it was written. There could have been days, years, that passed while David was sitting in the tension of what he probably felt like was incredible injustice and his honest emotions that he's dealing with God. So I want to give us just a theological principle to consider as we're thinking about this issue that is honest and true. And here's the question: What does it mean to God when we have been sinned against? We typically think that when we've been sinned against, it's an issue of me, myself and I. I'm the one left holding this. I'm the one left dealing with these issues. I'm the one who's doing the consequences of the fallout.
Lysa TerKeurst:
And that is exactly where I was sitting in that moment.
Joel Muddamalle:
OK.
Lysa TerKeurst:
So I give you permission to speak theology and Truth.
Jim Cress:
Let's go.
Lysa TerKeurst:
The Truth that will set me free.
Joel Muddamalle:
Lys and Jim, of all of created order, what is the one unique thing that is said that humanity is created? They're created in the —
Lysa TerKeurst:
Image of God.
Jim Cress:
Image of God.
Joel Muddamalle:
The specific words are “likeness” and “image.” They're created in the likeness ... Genesis 1:26-27: They're created in the likeness and image of God. Well, I might've talked about this before in different Therapy & Theology episodes, but those two Hebrew words — demut [and] tselem is spelled T-S-E-L-E-M, and Demut is spelled D-E-M-U-T — were words used in the Ancient Near Eastern world exclusively of children of royalty, right?
Jim Cress:
Well, yeah.
Joel Muddamalle:
I've got four kids; Liam, Levi, [and] Lucas are my boys. I used to say they're little. And now Liam the other day was putting on my shoes trying to convince me that he can fit into them. And I was like, dude ... He's 13. What happened? But I still have MJ, and MJ is 4 years old, and she's our little princess. And she came home one day, and she came ... she was crying, sobbing. I remember she came up, and she's like, "Daddy, hold me."
I was like, "Yes, baby, I’ll hold you." And I held her. She went on to tell me this long story of how one of her friends said that her curly hair was ugly, and it just devastated her. She's sitting there sobbing, and she's crying, and she's like ... I could tell this personally, deeply hurt her. And you know what I felt? I was so angry.
Jim Cress:
How bad?
Joel Muddamalle:
I was so frustrated, and I'm like, “God gave you that curly hair, and that curly hair is actually exactly what my mom's hair used to look like when she was a little girl.” And if you put pictures up of MJ and my mom, they look almost identical. And here I am, her dad, and I've got this a righteous anger in this moment. OK, we were made in the likeness, image of God. And if we are sinned against and if we bear the image of God, how does God feel?
Lysa TerKeurst:
As hurt as we do.
Joel Muddamalle:
Oh, my goodness, as pained and as broken as we do. And there's a tension. And the tension is there's the heart of God that is compassionate and loving, that desires to see humanity come into repentance. That desires to see that the ones who sin against others would experience a contrite heart and an understanding of the devastation that they've caused, that they might turn away from their sin and turn toward God. And if that doesn't happen, there's going to be consequence for that.
Lysa TerKeurst:
Yeah, I love that thought. It rarely occurs to me to put the word “broken” and God together, like brokenhearted or broken ... You know what I'm saying? Because I always picture God as like He's steady; He's calm.
Joel Muddamalle:
Yeah.
Lysa TerKeurst:
And so it's hard for me to wrap my brain around that.
Joel Muddamalle:
Yeah. OK, so this is called anthropomorphic language. So I want to be careful in how I describe this, but if Jesus is the exact embodiment of God Himself in the flesh, think about the iconic scene as Jesus is coming off of the Mount of Olives, and as He looks over to Jerusalem, what does He do?
Lysa TerKeurst:
He weeps.
Joel Muddamalle:
Oh, my gosh, He weeps. Why does He weep? All kinds of New Testament scholars debate why He weeps. I think it's actually quite simple, but as my brilliant theologian and therapeutic scholar friend Jim Cress says
—
Jim Cress:
Say who?
Joel Muddamalle:
— things can be simple but far from being simplistic.
Jim Cress:
Simplistic, yeah.
Joel Muddamalle:
Jesus weeps. Why? I don't think it has anything to do necessarily with the cross and all this other stuff that's coming. There's a part of it. I actually think the connection to the cross is actually the impact of sin upon humanity. Jesus is here, and He's seeing the devastation that sin has wreaked. You can just go through the entire Old Testament. How many times does it say that God is grieved by the sin of Israel?
Why is God so adamant of the holiness of Israel that they're set apart for a purpose? Why is He so adamant against idols and false gods that the people ... God can be grieved. He can be brokenhearted in the sense of which that if He wasn't, then we would have to logically ask this question then is He actually good?
Jim Cress:
May I ask in the middle of this ... I've never asked this. And so ADD moment maybe, but maybe not. Ananias and Sapphira, when the statement is made, “You have not lied to man but to God.” (Acts 5:4, ESV). And I do believe this is not a news flash for me. I don't go here too quickly with people, but there is a line just like in this Bible, this red ribbon, there's a line that goes through for all of us, and it is all of us at some level who have been betrayed that runs right through me and how I have been betrayed, I believe. And it goes to the real one who has been sinned against, ultimately God; you don't have a problem with that, right?
So the idea of just to get that vision of going ... they've betrayed me, no doubt. And standing behind me bigger, the God of the universe, the great holy Trinity is who has ultimately, really been sinned against. And I can echo and hear David saying people like, that's terrible that he would say, “Against you, [and] you only, have I sinned” (Psalm 51:4, ESV). And that's where I hear the echo of that, that certainly it is about me, and it hurts. But as I grow in my Christian life and I have been betrayed too, not by my spouse but by others, and I want to sit and say they've betrayed me, but far bigger is they've sinned against God. That has helped me at times not to just be so myopically focused on the abuse and betrayal and trauma that has happened to me, and it surely has happened. But to get a bigger picture and say they have not sinned against just me but also against God.
Joel Muddamalle:
And I think it's actually even bigger than that because it's like, OK, even if you and I had the human power to enact the vengeance or the just ... See, I think a lot of times we call it “justice.” We don't mean justice. What we're actually talking about is a vengeance.
Jim Cress:
Can I get a word? Please.
Joel Muddamalle:
Right? Like who said, oh, it wasn't justice.
Jim Cress:
Hands raised.
Joel Muddamalle:
Right? But it's really what I want. What my human heart wants is to execute vengeance.
Lysa TerKeurst:
Like I want you to hurt in the ways that I've hurt.
Joel Muddamalle:
100%. And let's just be honest: I kind of want you to hurt a little bit more.
Lysa TerKeurst:
Yeah.
Joel Muddamalle:
Because I was innocent —
Jim Cress:
What the Old Testament people seem to be able to do. I mean, I'm reading back through the Old Testament third time in a year, and I'm going, OK, I mean, there was some eye for eye, and God, He seemed to bless it. Go in there and just ... I mean, kick [inaudible]. And take names. I'm like, OK, I want some of that. And yet —
Joel Muddamalle:
And yeah, we actually don't.
Jim Cress:
Yeah, deeper in me is I don't, because that's just again harming myself.
Joel Muddamalle:
This is spiritual maturity. And this is becoming Christ-like, because for a moment, just take a step back and think, OK, if we could enact human justice vengeance, it's limited, right? It's finite because our brains are finite. And there's an infinite God who is truly just and truly righteous. And if He's going to actually deal with sin at the full capacity that He needs to deal with it, [inaudible] them, that will experience the justice of God. Now, if I reframe my thinking along these lines, it actually shifts my perspective on how I think of these folks that have sinned against me.
Jim Cress:
That is so good. That's therapeutically accurate too.
Joel Muddamalle:
Right?
Jim Cress:
Totally.
Joel Muddamalle:
And hopefully, I'm not just theorizing here. Let me take us to a text. Romans 12 in verse 19, Paul says, "Friends, do not avenge yourselves; instead, leave room for God's wrath, because it is written, Vengeance belongs to me; I will repay, says the Lord" (CSB). And then there's a but. “But” — This is the paradoxical upside-down nature of the Kingdom of God — “If your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him something to drink. For in so doing you will be heaping fiery coals on his head. Do not be conquered by evil, but conquer evil with good” (Romans 12:20-21). Now, I want to just preface that this is a principle, not a policy, because in verse 18, it says, “If possible,” which means sometimes it's not possible, “as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.”
So what's being played out here, I think is this principle that our proper response in these moments ought to enact the ethics of God's Kingdom, which is compassion and grace and love appropriately. What do I mean by appropriately? You might not be able to feed that person. It actually might be incredibly dangerous and inappropriate and unhealthy for you emotionally, spiritually and physically for you to be in relationship with that person. That's what 18 is saying, “if possible, as far as it depends on you,” pursue peace, right? So what can you do?
Lysa TerKeurst:
And sometimes it's not possible.
Joel Muddamalle:
Sometimes not possible. What can you do? You can always pray for them.
Jim Cress:
Not like that's a consolation prize.
Joel Muddamalle:
No, but you know what? It is a cost.
Jim Cress:
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Joel Muddamalle:
It is a cost to your heart to pray for your enemy.
Jim Cress:
Because I don't want to pray for that [inaudible] person.
Joel Muddamalle:
And if you can't pray for them, again, I'm stepping into dangerous territory, because I'm acting like a therapist now.
Jim Cress:
You are one [inaudible].
Joel Muddamalle:
If you can't pray for them, maybe you prayed that. That's the starting spot.
Jim Cress:
David did it in the imprecatory psalms, all —
Joel Muddamalle:
100%. God, I can't. This is too hard. I don't want to, and yet I want you to give me the grace to be able to someday.
Lysa TerKeurst:
Joel, I have sat with that before, and I have thought to myself, No, thanks. I’ve got a lot to pray about, but I ain't praying for them. You know what I mean?
Joel Muddamalle:
Right, right, right, right.
Lysa TerKeurst:
But then one day I have this thought that occurred, anytime someone sins, they experience the pleasure of getting what they want no matter the cost to other people, OK? So there is a pleasure side to sin usually. But sin always comes as a package deal. It always comes as a package deal. Sin comes with the pleasure of getting what we want, but it also comes with the pain of the consequences that are naturally built into that sin.
Joel Muddamalle:
That's right.
Lysa TerKeurst:
Sin is not void of natural consequences. Sin has built within it the consequences. And depending on what those consequences are, there could be a serious level of severity to those consequences. And maybe they haven't unleashed. Maybe you haven't seen the consequences of those unleashed in that person's life that day or that week or that year or even five years. But here's what Scripture says, Proverbs 1:31, "They will eat the fruit of their ways and be filled with the fruit of their schemes" (NIV). So I almost wonder if it's the reality that God will not be mocked and the consequences of sin ... the minute we sin, that starts the process of unleashing those consequences, even if we don't see it right then. Even if they don't experience it right then.
But eventually, they will eat the fruit of their schemes, right? And so I wonder if praying for them is recognizing, yes, they have hurt me, but they have also unleashed in their life the pain of consequences that this sin will eventually catch up to them?
Joel Muddamalle:
Yeah. In the absence of repentance.
Lysa TerKeurst:
In the absence of repentance. And I almost wonder if the prayer is more like God, help them. Just God, help them.
Joel Muddamalle:
OK, so I'm going to tell a story. And I don't want to tell the story right now because I'm like the theologian and I'm supposed to be calm, cool and collected at all times.
Jim Cress:
But you could practice humility, right. Now is your book on that and tell the story.
Joel Muddamalle:
This was some months ago. I love going to the gym and working out, playing basketball. That's like a jam. One of the things that is the most therapeutic for me is actually sitting in the sauna. And the sauna is my safe place, and I'll put my headphones on, and it's steamy in there, so people can't really see me, and I can just be by myself with my own thoughts, listening to nerdy podcasts about the history of Rome. So I get in there, and there's these stools that are there to put your stuff on. And I wear glasses, and I've got my phone, and I can't bring my glasses into the steam room because they're going to crack. So I really put my glasses and my phone there when I walk in. And I walked in, and there're towels. Dirty towels, wet towels all over the place. And y'all, I'm not even joking with you. There are hooks, like hangers, all over the walls of this gym for you to put your towels on, right?
I'm not saying what I did was appropriate or good, but I am going to confess what I did. I got a little annoyed, and I don't want to touch it because it all wet. So I picked up my foot ... And the place was kind of empty. There was a person who's sitting in the corner but far away. And I was like, Surely that can't be this person's towels. And I had picked up my foot, and I knocked them off. And then I realized my water bottle was empty and I need my water to be ... So I walked back in to fill up my water jug really quick, and then I came back out, and the towels were back on the stool.
At which point I'm like, What is happening? And I've got my headphones in, [inaudible]. I walk out, and there was a gentleman, older gentleman, and he looked at me, and he said, "Why would you do that?" And I looked at him, and I have my headphones on, and I clicked the thing off, and I said, "Excuse me, sorry." And there was another guy who was an innocent bystander right there, and he was kind of looking at me being like, Don't. And I was like, "Sorry, excuse me. What'd you say?"
He says, "Why would you do that? So rude."
And I was like, "Oh, the towels?"
"Yeah, why would you do that?"
Jim Cress:
Here comes.
Joel Muddamalle:
And I said, "Well, actually, those stools ..."
I'm trying to be very calm and collected, "Actually, those stools are for you to put your phone or your glasses on. There's a lot of hooks here that you could put your towels on."
He goes, "Yeah, but there's no sign up there. There's no sign up there that says the towels have to go on the hooks." And I responded, and this was not right of me.
Jim Cress:
Or reacted, which was it?
Joel Muddamalle:
I reacted.
Jim Cress:
Just checking.
Joel Muddamalle:
And I said, "You don't need a sign. It's common sense."
Jim Cress:
So you got hooked by his lack of using the hooks?
Joel Muddamalle:
Listen, he got heated. He then said, "I'm much older than you. That's so disrespectful. Don't disrespect me."
Jim Cress:
He went biblical on you.
Joel Muddamalle:
He did. And he's going at it. And something happened, and I can't explain it other than I heard my mom.
Jim Cress:
Oh, I thought it was going to be the Holy Spirit, but no. Mom, OK.
Joel Muddamalle:
And my mom had instilled into me from the moment I can remember, “You always respect your elders. It does not matter. You always respect your elders.” And when he said, "I'm older than you, and you disrespected me," I was like ... and I said, "Sir, sir, sir, sir, sir."
I said, "I'm sorry. Man, I disrespected you. And my mom raised me better than that."
And I ended the conversation. I took my glass, [and] I found a different spot to put it in. I went into the steam room, right? And I'm in the steam room, and I am having a war with myself in my brain.
Jim Cress:
Steam it up in the steam room.
Joel Muddamalle:
I'm like, I can't believe I let him off the hook like that. That was the most ridiculous thing, and then simultaneously I'm like, ooh. And then right then the door opened up.
Jim Cress:
Guess who came in.
Joel Muddamalle:
The guy came in, and he came in, and he went right next to me, and he said, "Excuse me, young man." And I'm like ... Can't really see. I got my glasses off. And then I was like, Oh, my gosh, this is the same guy. Is he going to start to fight with me inside of the ...
And he said, "I apologize too."
And I was like, Huh? And he was like, "It shows what kind of man you are to have apologized the way that you did. And your mother raised —"
Jim Cress:
You repaired a rip.
Joel Muddamalle:
Yeah. And I was just like ... But I mean, that's that Roman's passage, right? Like don't repay vengeance with vengeance, repay with forgiveness and kindness, and it'll be like heaping coals, right? And so simultaneously this interaction took place and the thing that I didn't think I want ... And then it's like, man, that's the goal.
Lysa TerKeurst:
Yeah.
Joel Muddamalle:
The goal, but sometimes that doesn't happen.
Lysa TerKeurst:
That's right. I was going to say I love that story because I feel like it's such a beautiful example of you humbling yourself, and we reap what we sow. And so you sowed peace and humility, and you were able to reap then the peace and humility, and it affected him too. But the same is true if he would've never come back and said anything to you. See, I think it's also a really beautiful principle that if we want peace in our life, then we have to set up ourselves to experience peace. We have to walk into a room bringing peace, and if we walk into a room and we bring bitterness and we bring resentments and we bring this sense that God's never going to address their issues, and so it's better for me just to retaliate with my words, with my thoughts, with my actions, whatever.
Then all of that breeds such chaos. And I want more than seeing that other person punished for what they did. I want peace in my life because even if I were to see the punishment, even if I were to see "the justice," even if I were to see how God addresses the vengeance with equal measures of justice and mercy, I may not like it. I may not agree with it, but just seeing that is not going to give me the satisfaction and ultimately the peace that I want in my life. What will give me the peace is for me to, yes, be responsible. If someone has abused me, I need to bring it to the attention of the right people.
I need to make my therapist aware. I need to make other people aware. There are responsible things that you can do. But in terms of making sure that person learned the lesson and in terms of trying to control the situation so that person never does it again, those are things that are so outside of my control. And so I have to realize that God will address this with equal measures of mercy and justice. God will not be mocked. I don't have to see it to know that it is true because like I said, sin comes as a package deal, and the consequences for that sin are built in. Sometimes you’ve just got to give it a little bit of time.
But I know that even if I saw this other person getting punished, it's not going to give me the peaceful satisfaction that I'm really longing for. I have to make sure that the hurt that person unleashed upon me doesn't then become multiplied by me now taking that hurt and unleashing it onto other people. And so it's almost this thought of like, OK, I'm not going to give the power of self-control ... I'm not going to give that away to the person who hurt me. I'm going to exercise the power of self-control so that the hurt stops with me. So that the abuse stops with me. So that the pain stops with me. And also in so many times throughout the Bible, the very choices that the other person is making are the very choices that will eventually be the consequences.
Jim Cress:
I love that.
Lysa TerKeurst:
So again, the story of Esther. The story of Esther is fascinating, but Haman was going to come after the Jewish people, and he built gallows —
Joel Muddamalle:
For Mordecai.
Lysa TerKeurst:
— to murder Mordecai, one of the Jewish leaders. And the way that the story plays out is layered and nuanced and everything, but eventually, Haman hung on the very gallows that he built to hang Mordecai on. God will not be mocked, and only God can address their sin with equal measures of justice and mercy. And if we want the mercy of God when He exercises the justice against us, we can't ask God to then have no mercy when He exercises justice against someone else, right?
Joel Muddamalle:
And the unique part of that Esther story is that when you're studying the book of Esther, the irony of it is that God's name is never mentioned in that entire book. So here we are thinking, Where's God? Where's God? Where's God? He's kind of hiding in plain sight.
Lysa TerKeurst:
Yeah. And sometimes God does His best work in the unseen places. And the last thing I'll say is this. Now enough time has gone by, and time doesn't heal all wounds. It's what we plant in the soil of time that determines whether we are headed toward healing or toward bitterness, right? But what time does allow is you to see how things play out.
Jim Cress:
That's so good.
Lysa TerKeurst:
And truly, I have seen that what we plant, it will grow something. And so what we sow, we do eventually reap. I choose to sow wise choices. I choose to sow forgiveness. I choose to sow responsibility. I choose to sow love for my family. Those are the things that I choose and I have chosen for many, many years, and I am reaping the beautiful fruit of all of that. Another person has chosen very differently. And as time goes on, the crop does grow, and it may grow slowly, but eventually the crop reveals a lot, and you will reap whatever it is that you sow. You don't have to know or hope that that's true. You can know it because it is true.
Jim Cress:
Amen. [Inaudible].
Lysa TerKeurst:
And that is something that you can count on. Joel, thank you for your wisdom today. And the reminder that we do need to pray for our enemies. And sometimes I think if we pray even as far as praying blessings into our enemy's life, that's us asking God to position them to receive blessings. And often it's in that positioning that if they're going to receive a blessing and they have to be positioned for it, that that's really asking God, Take their life; shape it in a different direction. And that's not saying what they did was right. That's not making excuses. That's not even being in agreement with how they live and what they do now. But it is saying, “You already hurt me once. You're not going to hurt me again by turning me into someone I was never meant to be.”
Joel Muddamalle:
Yeah.
Shae Hill:
I'm so thankful for conversations like today, and here's why. As a Christian, it can be embarrassing or honestly a little controversial to admit that you're struggling with trusting God, but not one of us is alone in these struggles. As I hope you discovered today, there is real scriptural and therapeutic hope for us as we sift through our own doubts and disappointments. Before we wrap up, I want to make sure you know about a couple of things. First, there is a free resource by Lysa TerKeurst that I want to make sure you know about. It's called, When The Person Who Hurt You Got Away With It, Three Days to Moving Forward. Through this resource, Lysa will help you identify doubts you have about the Lord and make progress in trusting him through biblical truths that will never change. You can visit the link in our show notes to download your copy.
Next, you know we're talking all about trust on this season of the podcast, so if you're enjoying these conversations, you're going to absolutely love diving into Lysa's new book. It's called, I Want to Trust You, but I Don't, Moving Forward When You're Skeptical of Others, Afraid of What God Will Allow, and Doubtful of Your Own Discernment. You can get your copy from the P31 bookstore by clicking the link in our show notes. Lastly, I have to give a shoutout to our friends at the American Association of Christian Counselors for sponsoring today's episode. Make sure you check out our show notes to learn more about them and what they're doing. Well, I think that covers it for today friends. Be sure you come back next week for another episode of this series with Lysa, Jim and Joel.
Therapy and Theology is brought to you by Proverbs 31 Ministries, where we believe when you know the truth and live the truth, it changes everything.