Treating Symptoms

Far too often in life the truth is we’re so focused on what we can see that we neglect to see all there is to be seen. This happens when we allow the physical, mental, and circumstantial realities to dictate our direction. This truth can affect our spiritual life, prayer life, and even dictate our beliefs. As a result, the situation you may be in, or the relationships you have, or even ourselves can remain unhealthy, stuck, and circumstantially bound.

    A lot of people today are living in a GREAT deal of misery, simply because they refuse to seek coaching or counsel to discover the spiritual root of what is keeping them unhealthy, stuck, and circumstantially bound. Almost every physical, mental, or circumstantial reality that is affecting people today has a spiritual cause behind it. Because God has said in Ephesians 6:12: “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” This being true a Christian Coach can ask the right questions and guide you into the Presence of the Great Physician, in order to help you learn, how to do battle in the spiritual realm.

    Yet, what a lot of people do is try to treat the symptoms, not the cause that has them living unhealthy, stuck, and circumstantially bound. People do this through a variety of ways: self-medication, alcohol, drugs, sex, entertainment, spending, eating, the Internet and social media. Yet, none of those things provides the answers people need to break free from living unhealthy, stuck, and circumstantially bound lives. All those things do is serve to mask their misery, their pain. None of those things will bring about the healing they need or move them forward enabling them to become unstuck and no longer circumstantially bound.

Establishing the Need

Are you living an unhealthy life?

Are you stuck, not knowing what your next step is or what direction to take?

Do you feel as if your circumstances are about to overwhelm you?  

Are you tired of treating symptoms?

Would you like to discover the root of why you are doing what you’re doing?

Is it time for you to have a conversation with a Christian Coach?

Some things you may want to consider:

What would your future look like if you invested in yourself instead of in treating symptoms?

What would be different from today if you were to do so?

What would it mean for you to say hello to the new and goodbye to the old?

And if you were to say no to seeking answers, then, what are you saying yes to?  


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Are You Paying Attention?

Coaches Corner      

 

Are You Paying Attention?

 

 

 

Whenever we act on our world, whether intentionally or automatically, we employ the function of the mind called attention.  Attention can be considered the ignition key of the mind. A vast array of our mental and physical actions follows what we attend to. There tends to be a continuum between our voluntary and involuntary ways of attending to things as the following two examples prove.

    

Brock was inattentive to how his role as a technology executive was taking him away from life at home and, as a result, of deeply sad he was over missing many events in his daughter’s life. Although he knew this to be a fact, he would not permit himself to sense that sadness for long because it led to additional feelings of guilt. And these emotions so frightened and overwhelmed him that he just kept them locked away in some distant mental storage trunk, safely protected from his conscious awareness.

    

What did God feel or think about the circumstances, and how did that affect Him? Was Brock aware of how God was affected by him?

    

Brock’s answers were instructive. It was clear that when he considered what God thought of him, none of it was very good. Guilt was the dominant theme, reflected in the fleeting images, sensations, and thoughts of God’s displeasure and disappointment with him. These impressions didn’t leave much room in his mind for the image of a God who loved him. And the likelihood of that changing was not very great if Brock wasn’t even aware that this perceived disappointment was what he was paying attention to. In their family, having a relationship with God meant following a set of rules and regulations set down by the church. Brock had no idea that the way he had developed emotionally in his family continued to influence his experience of God. Brock was oblivious to the many things that were influencing his experience of God and life. Ignoring these aspects resulted in his missing ways that God was attempting to capture his attention. Ignoring his brain was the equivalent of ignoring God.

 

The way we attend to various elements of our mind’s activity also greatly influences our relationship with God. On the surface this may not be hard to accept. What is difficult to contemplate is just how much we are not paying attention to, especially spiritually. Despite the fact that we believe that paying attention is important, the truth is, we live much of our lives inattentively. Thus, the question can be asked: How well am I paying attention to what I am paying attention to? 

 

It was the simple act of paying attention to something, something unusual in an otherwise bland landscape, that would change the life of Moses forever. Only on the far side of the desert was his attention awakened to things within and without him. There at the edge of the world he paid attention to the Voice that spoke to him in a dialect like none he had ever heard. His life likely would have remained the same had he not paid attention. Had he not paid attention, he would have missed the opportunity to “go over and see this strange sight.” Exodus 3:3

    

The way the biblical characters chose to pay attention had significant, sometimes life-threatening consequences. What they paid attention to, affected their lives. If you haven’t read the accounts of some of these heroes of the faith lately, it would be good to review them. Consider how and to what they paid attention.

 

The biblical account reveals that Moses actually regarded the bush. After he had attended to this natural phenomenon, he pondered his response. His action was not automatic, it was considered. Holy Scripture teaches that God speaks with Moses after He sees that Moses is willing to pay attention to Him.

 

The degree to which we pay attention to Him affects not only us it affects Him. God was pleased. So, God decided to talk with Moses. When God talks and we attentively listen, wonderful, beautiful, awesome things happen.

 

What are you paying attention to?

What are you not paying attention to?

Of the two examples, whom do you more closely identify with?

 

Perhaps you’ve wondered at few of these questions:

In a world that is more connected than ever before, why do I so often feel so alone?

Why do I find it so hard to change?

Why can’t I get past my past?

How does Jesus make a way for me to be freed from the grip of sin here and now, not just in the new heaven and earth?

 

One last question: What might a coaching conversation do for you?


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