Author: Neil McLamb

This past weekend, I watched a movie trilogy that I had not seen in a long time. As I watched the Matrix, Matrix Reloaded, and Matrix Revolutions, I noticed that I had forgotten many of the scenes in them. I caught myself on the edge of my seat at times, as if I was watching them for the first time. The truth is, although I had forgotten many of the scenes, I knew exactly how it all ended. Spoiler alert…the good guys win. At one point, I wondered to myself, why am I tense while watching all of these action scenes, as if the good guys might actually lose? I know what happens. In the end, Neo (the hero of the movie series) defeats the enemy and wins freedom for all of humanity. When I would remind myself of the ending, I just sat back and relaxed.

The ending of the Matrix trilogy was spoiled for me, because I had seen it all before. However, I watched it anyway, and I enjoyed it! I pondered the way this experience of knowing the ending could help me with my own everyday struggles. As I face rejection, failure,  hurt, and loss, I rarely see them coming. They blindside me like the forgotten scenes in the movies where the bad guys seemed to have the upper hand. These valleys of life are hard and we often have no idea how in the world we will possibly make it through them.

If we could only “know the ending” and know that it turns out okay, maybe we could at least hold onto the hope we need to carry us through the parts of our story that catch us off guard. Perhaps that’s why God focuses so much on telling us certain details of who He is, who we are, and what some of His ultimate plan is. Knowing, remembering, and residing in some of those core truths just might give us the ability to sit back in our seats a little when our life seems to be going the wrong way, rather than being completely overcome with anxiety, anger, and feelings of hopelessness.

The promise of God’s unconditional love and His desire to give us good things are good examples. Love without conditions is a love that lasts forever. It is not reliant upon our efforts to earn favor. He does not withhold His love when we fail. He does not stop offering good things to us just because we have done something bad. The rejection by others is never an indication of how our Heavenly Father feels about us. Our very identity (who we are) is wrapped up in this unconditional love. We are loved. Period. Because of His love, He gave his Son to free us, and He continues to meet our needs. That is the beginning, middle, and definitely the end of the story. Nothing we experience will change that, even though in some of life’s moments it will certainly FEEL like nothing good will ever come to fruition.

In the end, God’s perfect will is done. As His children, we get to experience all that comes with having a relationship with God through Christ. Nothing will change the fact that, after all is said and done, there is a happy ending in which all that God has promised will be realized and fulfilled. Evil, brokenness, hurt, rejection, and failure will not triumph in the end. Love, restoration, peace, healing, and all that is deeply significant will win. And we can trust in that truth because God loves us and always keeps His word. He never fails.

-Neil

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Melissa and I married and became parents at a very young age. We had no clue what we were getting into with marriage, and adding a child on top of that…we were utterly lost! Thankfully, I think we were just ignorant enough of how much we didn’t know that we didn’t completely panic. With a lot of help from family and friends, we were able to find our way through a maze of relationships, school, work, and everything else that we encountered.

Our goal early on was to give our son freedom.

I knew early on that I wanted to give my son freedom to figure out who he was and BE who he was. As parents of a young boy that was absolutely full of life, we got some pushback at times from others. He has always been energetic and has not met a stranger yet. Of course, there were times that others just wanted him to settle down. With needed discipline, of course, we allowed him to live out his excitement for life and his love for others.

My goal changed due to fear.

Something happened in high school that changed my perspective, and it led to the darkest days in my relationship with my son. I realized he was not doing some of the things I truly felt he should have been doing. At first, I could let it go. However, as I saw him going further down a path that I disapproved of, I became more and more anxious. Fear took over, but I’m not sure I realized that at the time. I feared what would happen if I didn’t do something to change his direction. That’s when it happened.

Fear leads to control issues.

I went into full-on control mode. I began checking up on him constantly. I made sure that I did not miss an opportunity to hash something out with him until I felt he would do what I wanted him to do. I told myself (and others) that I was doing this for his own good. I said I was “protecting him”. I think I may have called it “tough love”.

Attempting to control others costs us the most valuable thing we can have in relationships.

I lost something during that time that was invaluable, but I didn’t realize it until later. I thought I was pursuing what I really needed to be a good parent: my son’s compliance. It took me a very long time to reacquire the precious thing that I exchanged for the pursuit of compliance.

What I lost was my son’s trust. Before I went bat crap crazy trying to get him to do what I felt was best, he would come to me with questions about life. He trusted me with struggles he was having. He knew I would listen and respond with direction. However, after fear took over in my life as a father, he knew he couldn’t trust me with himself anymore. If he told me something that was not in line with my new goal of compliance, instead of listening until I understood, I might would flip out on him with an hour long lecture. Whether he realized it or not, my love for him was stifled by my drive to control him. My view of him had changed from me being able to see who I knew he really was at heart to an opponent to tackle and force into submission. That may sound harsh, and I did not see it that way at the time, but it’s sadly true.

When we lose sight of who our children really are, we treat them as if they are someone else.

Looking back, my perspective was very warped by fear. I was scared of what would happen if I didn’t jump in and control things. I no longer trusted who I knew my son to be…that loving, spirited boy who could light up a room…that boy who truly cared for others…that boy who could break from routine in order to enjoy life in the moment. Yeah, he wasn’t acting like himself at the time, but instead of remembering who he really was, and coming along beside him in order to invite him into that identity, I treated him like he was none of those things. I treated him like he needed all the bad strained out of him in order to force something good back in.

Trust is the basis for all that is good in relationships.

I eventually realized the error in my approach to my son. Like I said before, it took a long while to build back the trust I had lost. Now that it is reestablished, I would take NOTHING for it. There is nothing more valuable than trust in a relationship. There is nothing better than trusting my son with me, and inviting him to trust me with him. From trust, everything good about relationships begins to flow naturally.

If my son has an issue, he can trust his father to listen and understand before responding. I might mess that up sometimes, but I can trust him with me by owning it and talking out how my own fear gets in the way sometimes. That trust maintains and strengthens what we both cherish more than anything…loving each other.

God’s reflection can be seen in our relationship with our children.

I believe the parent-child relationship to be a wonderful illustration of God’s relationship with His children (us!). Nothing is more important than trust. He wants no part of us being coldly compliant, or fearfully obedient in order to keep Him off our back. What He desires is for us to trust Him with ourselves so that we can experience the love He has for us. We especially need to trust Him when we are NOT acting like ourselves and getting ourselves into trouble. He puts much effort into cultivating that trust by offering endless grace and love to us. He guides us into the opportunities in life to be who He created us to be. He doesn’t want us to be anything else, and trusting who He says we are is key. He wants us to trust that we are loved, accepted, significant, and secure in Him. If we don’t trust these characteristics of who we are as His child, we will try to do things in order to be loved, accepted, significant, and secure…which are things that we already are in Christ!

-Neil

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I had the opportunity to revisit my favorite passage of Scripture with a friend this week. I love it when God helps me to strip away all the extra “stuff” in life that seems to confuse and bog me down, as He holds me at a certain place in order for me to calm down and remember what’s most important. Here is the passage:

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. (Ephesians 2:8-10, ESV)

It’s all about grace. God’s amazing grace.

It is by grace…nothing other than grace that we are saved. By His grace, we are set free from the bondage of sin. Sin does so much damage. We commit sin, hurt others, and then experience the horrid guilt and eventual shame that comes with it. Other people in our lives commit sins that hurt us, leading to disappointment, broken relationships, and…again…more shame. It is by His grace that sin and all the issues it causes for us are resolved. Our relationship with Him and others thrives on grace alone. Gifts of grace, such as forgiveness, repentance, and love allow the opportunity for the hurt, guilt, and shame to be washed away.

We get to experience His grace when we trust Him.  

His awesome grace is always there. He woos us into it by his expressions of love…the biggest having been Christ coming to earth, living on earth, dying, and then being resurrected. But to experience His grace, we must trust Him. Without trust, we fail to engage the relationship He has created with us through Christ. He doesn’t move or go anywhere, but it feels like we are miles away from Him when we aren’t trusting Him. Humility, true humility, is trusting Him and others around us with who we really are. If we allow our shame to cause us to hold back anything, we begin hiding from Him…just like Adam and Eve did in the garden.

Our hard work and striving does not result in us having changed hearts.

It is tempting for us to get into the pattern of trying to earn our way into a deeper relationship with God. We might think, “I really messed up and that is why I am stuck right now. God is waiting for me to get some things right in my life before He is okay with me.” Nothing could be farther from the truth. It saddens Him when we take control of our lives and attempt to earn our way back to Him. He knows  we will wind up frustrated, anxious, and perhaps even feeling hopeless. That’s not how relationship works with Him, or anyone. Genuine relationship is about trust, not striving to follow rules to impress someone. We cannot fix not one sin or even the effects of that sin in our lives. When we trust Him, we essentially say, “God, I know I cannot handle this. I need you and the unconditional love you have for me to cover, heal, and resolve this. I need you to remind me that what sin and shame tells me is a lie. There is not something inherently wrong with me, although I may feel that way. I am in Christ, and He is in me. I am what I am because of you. I am loved, accepted, significant, and secure in your grace and love.” By His grace, NOT our works, we are set free to live out of who He created us to be. Grace through faith changes, restores, and matures us.

Living by grace through faith leads us into what God has destined for us.     

As we trust Him and experience His grace in our lives and relationships with others, we begin to follow the path of good works He has planned for us. These good works are our destiny. It’s what God wanted for us all along! We get to discover and do the very things that fit who He created us to be. We do not conjure up these acts ourselves. He surprises us along the way, one step of faith at a time, with gifts/opportunities to act out of who we are in Christ. These gifts may include an opportunity to listen, help, serve, give, teach, encourage, or offer other acts of love. We can actually enjoy those things, instead of just striving to make a way for ourselves, doing day-to-day things that never satisfy us. By His grace, while we continually mature in loving and trusting others with ourselves, we get to embrace and experience more and more the acts of love God offers to us through others.

-Neil

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I can’t sleep. Well, that isn’t completely accurate. I go to sleep quite easily. I just don’t STAY asleep. I wake up several times during the night. Most of the time I will wake up one final time, around 3AM, and stay awake until I get out of bed to do my morning workout before work.

It’s been like this for a few weeks now. I’m not at all surprised. This has happened before. There have been several periods in my life that I would go through a phase of this exhausting and annoying sleep pattern.

What’s wrong with me?

We all have signs that pop up, like “check engine” lights on the dashboard of our cars, when something is wrong with us. I’m not talking about a disease or physical injury…although those show symptoms as well. I’m actually talking about something being wrong inside of me.

Dr. Charles Solomon teaches the interpretation of Scripture that we are made up of three parts: spirit, soul, and body. When something is wrong in our spirit (our interaction with God), it directly affects our soul (mind, emotions, and will)…and then the physical body. The physical manifestation of my inability to get a good night’s sleep is only a sign of something awry deeper inside of me. I can treat the insomnia directly, but without getting to the root, the problem persists. It WILL reveal itself in other ways until it is exposed and resolved.

Something is going on deep inside my soul.

Our souls are made up of mind, emotions, and our will (our ability to choose). When I take a closer look, the first symptom I noticed, insomnia, is not the only sign of a problem. This goes deeper than just a problem with my physical body. When I take time to think about it, there are soul problems as well. For instance, I have shown signs of emotional distress. I have experienced a sizable amount of anxiety lately. Also, I have noticed irritability (anger). When I dig a bit deeper, I notice fears are creeping up on me (the usual fears of failure, rejection, etc.). But these are all just feelings. They are what they are. I don’t need to suppress them (which will only make things worse down the line), but I cannot control them or change them.

Capturing thoughts is a must.

In 2 Corinthians 10:5, Paul encourages the readers of his letter to capture their thoughts, examine them closely, and see if they are true or false. Paul understood just how powerful our minds are. Our thoughts directly impact what we do and how we feel. If I am thinking negative thoughts, my emotions will eventually follow suit. However, Paul was not encouraging mere positive thinking. He was asking for us to exercise discernment to see if our thoughts agree with God’s Truth. Any thought that does not line up with Truth is a lie. If we are actively believing lies, what we do and what we feel is determined by lies…not truth! That is a sobering realization. My insomnia, anger, anxiety, and other symptoms are the product of faulty thinking. And what keeps this cycle going is the fact that it is all hidden.

Hiding is not the answer.

I can choose to keep it all hidden by ignoring it, denying it, trying to handle it myself, or blaming it on someone else. However, living with things hidden (or “living in darkness”, as it’s called in other parts of Scripture like 1 John 1), perpetuates problems in all aspects of our lives: mentally, emotionally, behavioral, relationally, and physically. To really take a step towards healing, we must take a step into the light. It’s scary to be exposed, but we must be willing to be vulnerable in order for our deep heart issues to be resolved.

We cannot handle our sin, and we cannot handle issues related to our sin.

We live in a broken world. Sin affects us all the time. We commit it ourselves. Others commit it towards us. We are left feeling guilty and hurt. The Enemy works through the brokenness to distort the Truth in order to hurt us even more. And we cannot handle any of it. We cannot resolve not one part of sin or any of its effects on us or others….not on our own, anyway.

The resolving of my issues comes through trust.

After much experience with my own struggles in life, including the symptom of insomnia, it seems clear to me that there is one word that is crucial to real healing and resolution of any issue that we may have. That word is “trust”. I rarely can examine myself enough to really see clearly what is going on. I need a mirror, but not a cold lifeless one. I need a person I am willing to trust that will listen to me and eventually speak to me about what they are seeing and experiencing with me. When I choose to trust another person with myself, I get to experience God’s presence. Through my vulnerability, which is a sign of humility, I get to experience His Truths that shine a light on the dark lies.

For example, insomnia shows up in my life. I fight it, but eventually realize I need to stop and let God free me from what’s really causing it. I choose to trust someone, usually my wife, with myself. I open up, tell her about my anger, my fears, and what is going through my head. We take time to examine those thoughts. This is what we discover going through my head: “Neil, you have to figure all of this out on your own. You cannot trust or depend on anyone. They will let you down. Do it yourself!! All of it!! You probably will fail, anyway, but if you work hard enough…maybe you won’t!”

Ultimately, this lie is revealed: “God is not doing anything, so it’s all up to you.” That sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? I know better. However, my insomnia…caused by anxiety and frustration, my fears, my busyness, and my being miserable all say that I believe that ridiculous lie. Once exposed, it begins to really lose its power over me.

The truth is…

God loves me. He is most definitely at work in and around me. I see and experience it best through relationships with trusted people in my life. The best example I can offer is how I have experienced grace from my wife. I can most assuredly tell you, I do not deserve her love. However, she gives it to me anyway, because she wants to. She sees something in me that I don’t even see much of the time. I get to experience this only when I trust her with all of me…even the stuff I feel the most ashamed about. Grace is what I experience, and that helps me connect with my Father. He is the ultimate source of it all.

I CAN trust Him. I CAN trust the Truth, which will cause me to act on it…eventually causing my emotional and physical problems to reside. I’ve been here before. I will probably be here again, but I will not be here as long as I was this time…or the time before that. God is maturing me. That’s how this relationship with Him works. I’m already saved, secure, loved, and accepted. He’s just helping me to experience that reality…one step of faith at a time.

-Neil

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For over a year, I have been bombarded with a truth that escaped me for much of my life. It’s not that I didn’t KNOW it was true. I just didn’t fully EXPERIENCE it in my life. Here is one way to describe this truth…

God desires that we not hide from Him…or each other. He wants us to live in the light rather than darkness (wordage used in 1 John 1).

Hiddenness is a disease that plagues most of us on a daily basis. It eats at our souls and skewers our relationships. Adam and Eve hid in the Garden of Eden when they put on the fig leaves and refused to take responsibility for what they had done. We hide when loved ones ask how we are, and we say “okay!” when we are anything but. We struggle with things we feel shame about and keep it all a secret, hoping no one ever finds out, only to find out over and over that we continually lose the battle we attempt to fight on our own. We get discouraged. We feel hopeless. But we keep on keeping on…with our “I’m okay” or “he made me do it!” masks on.

Another couple of verses popped up at me, suggesting that secrets are no good for us.

In Ephesians 4:25 (ESV), Paul says this: “Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another.”

It’s easy to misinterpret this line as a command to “tell others when they are doing wrong”. We tell ourselves we are “loving them” when we tell them about their bad behaviors and suggest that they do something about it. Some of us may even feel a little more righteous having done so. We couldn’t be further from the truth.

What if this verse was more about telling the truth ABOUT ME to others, rather than telling what I see as the truth about them? This would line up more with other passages such as 1 John 1 which tells us to live in the light (with nothing hidden), in order to have healthy relationships (fellowship).

What is visible can be resolved and transformed.

Ephesians 5:11-14 also speaks of the importance of exposing the things we keep in the dark to the light that “exposes” and makes it all “become visible” so that it can be transformed into light itself. I can work hard to keep my struggles a secret, and I can work hard to handle them myself. However, according to Bill Thrall, “Heart issues do not get resolved in isolation”. We need God’s power to handle what we cannot handle, and we cannot handle our own sin…let alone the sin of others!

Once our dark deeds are exposed to the light, which often means confiding in someone who loves and cares for us, the humility that it takes for us to do so becomes the avenue by which we experience God’s grace (James 4:6). This grace is what resolves sin issues, whether we’ve been hurt by others or whether we’ve done something to hurt others (which results in guilt that eats away at us if left in the dark). Gifts of grace such as forgiveness (that resolves hurt and shame) and repentance (that resolves guilty feelings and shame) are thrown around as common words in Christian circles, but we often fail at engaging them seriously in our relationships. If we are hiding stuff, we aren’t embracing these gifts of grace!

Tell your secrets and experience grace.

When I live out of who God says I am (a new identity in Christ, forgiven, accepted, and above all else…LOVED), I am able to step out of the darkness and into the light with God and others. I can share myself, the good and the bad….openly. I can be authentic!

Everyone does not get to share in our deepest struggles, but someone needs to. We need to trust someone. We do not even get to experience the act of being loved outside of trust, so this is very important stuff! If we leave an “I’m okay” mask on, the best others can do is love that stupid mask! We don’t need our masks to be loved. We need to be loved for who we are, even in our worst moments…not praised for who we pretend to be.

I’m engaging this truth myself.

I sense it is important for me to say this. I am fully engaged in this truth right now. I’m not perfect…just ask my wife or my son or my parents or anyone else that really knows the true Neil. However, refusing to hide anything about myself from those I trust and love is doing something in me. It is wonderful. Mind you, it is painful and difficult at times, but it is worth it. I can say I’ve personally experienced this and the freedom that comes from it. The authenticity it produces is amazing. God truly loves to work through humility (defined as “trusting Him and others with who we really are”).

-Neil

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