Change Space

Will I grow up? Will you grow up? Wisdom calls to you and I to allow her to grow us up in the love the Jesus and live in the way of life, drawing others into life as we grow. Will we grow up? Jesus has made the way and walks all the way from beginning to end with us. So let us say "yes" to Jesus, accept the invitation extended to us by His wisdom and grow up together in love with Him.

We need the Holy Spirit to live in right relationships with God, ourselves and each other. Saul's story tells us where we end up in life when we desire what we want from our own understanding instead of trusting God's good will for us. When we embrace the Holy Spirit, He fills us with love that we share with others like David did with Saul. When we reject the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit sends others filled with Him to rescue the lost one. That's the good will and good heart of God for each one of us!

We all need help! Turning to Jesus is the first step in admitting our need for help. Jesus helps us directly with His very presence AND He brings us into relationship with each other so we can help each other too along with Him. King David's story starts with him working as a shepherd for his father, being excluded from a party for his father's sons and shows that God saw it all. God saw David's heart seeking His own and together they grew a relationship that defied human storylines. Like David, when we seek God for help, the stories we write for ourselves transform over time into His story for us. His story always includes Him! With God comes goodness of growing in love with Jesus. Best thing to happen to us ever!

I wanted to fill you in on the status of Change Space.

Lies we learn about Jesus and mistrust we grow from trauma toward Jesus keep us from the truth of His love. We experience His love when the pain of sin in our lives forces a question: keep going our own way or start going toward Jesus. Letting go of our way makes room for us to experience being loved by Jesus and that changes us! It starts us on the journey toward wholeness and maturity that Jesus made possible for us on the cross. The companion on this journey: the Holy Spirit.

Jesus walked through and worked through the unique pain in each one of our lives! Every single bit of pain in your life, Jesus already walked through and worked through that pain into a pathway to life. That was the work He did on the cross for us. Now we can walk where He leads us, no matter how dark it looks to us because He already walked and marked the path to life in our stories with His story.

There are parts of of us that trust Jesus and there are parts of us that don't. God brings to our awareness the parts of us that need us love and are missing out so we can with our attention, learn to sustain enough attention on Jesus to bring those parts of us to Him. Trusting Jesus as He works on integrating us grows us whole, complete in Him! This is His work of freedom for us!

Giving God attention with our time is a good start to growing relationship with Him. Attention starts the process and sustaining attention is what grows us in the process. Moses learned to sustain his attention on God. The freed people of Israel did not, missed out on entering God's promised land because they didn't trust Him enough to believe His promise to them. So the opportunity to give and sustain attention to God and learn to trust Him moved to the next generation. We can be the generation that trusts God, learns to rest in Him with that growing trust because we give God attention with our time and allow Him to train us to sustain attention on Him.

Attention directs our cells to start firing and wiring together. Who and what we pay attention to shapes our identity. Attention directs the neuroplasticity God gave us for change. Attention, neuroplasticity, even time are all things with potential for growing maturity and growing stagnation. The direction of our attention with our time is what determines which type of growth we choose. The story of Moses illustrates what grows when we direct our attention to doing things in our own power, our way, even if we think our own way serves God. His story also illustrates what grows when we give our attention to God. He grows and matures into someone we didn't even know we were but who we become when our attention in on Him.

God's compassion is what we need but we often reject because His compassion feels too unfamiliar compared to what we are used to as part of relational traumas caused by sin in our lives. We face the paradox of what we need feeling dysregulating in some ways when in fact God's compassion enters into the spaces that cause our dysregulation and start to create order and safety for our self-regulation. The work of change while uncomfortable becomes more transformative as we persist with the Holy Spirit in abiding with Jesus.

Walking outdoors, listening to birds sing, these are just two of the things that can help us face ourselves honestly and regulate the feelings and thoughts inside of us that we typically avoid facing. However, our feelings operate within us whether we face them or not. The Holy Spirit brings us to truth, helps us face them honestly because He also brings us Jesus' compassion. In many ways, Jesus' compassion frees us from the bondage of lies and shame that create chaos and pain in our lives. Compassion strengthens us with the courage to address our feelings and start regulating them so we master our feelings instead of our feelings mastering us.

There are things we say "no" to that God knows we need. For example, I said "no" to dogs for our family for years. Now we have two who were sitting with me as I taped this episode. God knew I needed them to get me out on to the nature trail when I was really depressed. It's His saving grace that provides for our truest, deepest needs. As we journeyed together through trust, sanctuary and rest for seasons one through three, we grew in Jesus. In season four, we focus on growing up in Jesus. It is all about connections, belonging and becoming one with each other and God. God is in the business of growing unity amidst the diversity of life He creates. Let's grow together in oneness with God.

God transcends time and transforms us over time. Learning to abide in His love grows and matures us. Then God's love connects us into more love with Him and each other.

Our stories tell us what shapes our identities. So let me tell you a little bit about my story and how God’s story is changing my story. He is growing me into a healthier, whole human being whose identity rests in Him. He wants this for each one of us! Join me in discovering how God's story can change your story too!

Rest in Jesus grows you and me identity as His beloved. We experience more completely how well-loved we are by Him. Jesus put a promise into time itself on the seventh day of the first creation account. He fulfilled that promise on the cross so you and I could have new life living in love through the Holy Spirit. The gospels fulfill the promise of Genesis 2:2-3 of seventh day rest. Rest in Jesus isn't just an abstract idea, an intellectual thought, a construct to admire and ponder. This fulfilled promise is our rest in Jesus that is lived out from His completed work to overcome darkness in each of us. As the light of Jesus grows over time more bright in us as we give Him more attention with our time, the whole earth will be filled with the light of His love. Because of the love of God grows. Love grows in us, through out, to others until we live together with Jesus in love. Together at rest in relationship with Him. This is the good work He promised to complete in us so we could completely rest in Him. This is how Jesus is growing His family members into His family.

You and I have our original identity as God's beloved. Sin shifted our sense of identity onto a foundation of shame and selfishness/narcissism. Love didn't leave us there though. Love meets us right where we are but love doesn't leave us unchanged. We exercise our freedom to choose at those crossroads. We can choose to allow love in to soften our hearts and minds toward God's way or harden against love by going our own way. Going God's way brings us into truth, reality and relationships that grow in love to grow more love over time. Being restored as God's beloved fulfills our original identity God describes in the first creation account. It is a maturing process as we give God more and more of our attention with our time so He can change our heart and mind space.

Jesus promised rescue from sin for us into time and space itself when He began creating our world. Then Jesus brought Himself in human form to live within the constraints of this time and space that He Himself had made to fulfill His promise to us. Jesus experienced the pain of sin, committed to trusting His Father and Spirit to overcome the pain of sin and was powered by the Spirit to overcome darkness with His light. Light shines in the darkness and darkness cannot overcome the light. Jesus is trustworthy. We can rest in trust because we are completely loved by God.

Small moments of attention on Jesus can add up! They start to create focus on Him. The more attention we give to Jesus, the more we experience being loved by Him, the more we begin to be freed from lies that create our pain, the more we repent of those lies leading to our self-righteousness. There's joy in repentance, turning from our own way, our own understanding and choosing Jesus.

It's messy work allowing Jesus to overcome darkness in us with His light. It's necessary work allowing Jesus to overcome darkness in us with His light. We need Jesus to do this work in us! We need His light in our darkness so we can repent. Repentance repairs damage from our darkness and the darkness around us. Repentance begins transforming us into people of light and love. Repentance is a work of love Jesus is doing for us. The right to repentance is a fight He fought and won for us on the cross. Repair with repentance is the work He is doing through His Spirit for us today. Today, let's choose light. Today let's allow Jesus to repair pain through repentance. Today, let’s repent and rest in Jesus.

Sometimes we get things backwards. We focus on loving others while struggling to love each other well with our own efforts. When we read in the Bible that Jesus tells us to love each other the way He loves us in the Bible, we often skip the most important step in this development - first being loved by Jesus! Attachment theory provides an explanation for our backwards ways. Three styles of insecure attachment point to lack of attunement from parents and caregivers. Insecure attachments get us stuck developmentally, keeping us from giving Jesus attention with our time. Inviting the Holy Spirit to help us experience Jesus' love changes our insecure attachment to one that is secure in Jesus. His Spirit grows our eyes to see, ears to hear, heart & mind to perceive Jesus' attunement toward us. As we grow real safety with Jesus, our identity as His beloved grows too. It is from this identity that we genuinely love each other as we mature in character.

The choices we make with our attention reveal who and what shapes our identity, who and what we worship. Attention on Jesus helps us experience being loved by Him...this is at the heart of starting to pray to Him. Praying with attention on Jesus, His loving us, motivates us to choose His love, His way at a crossroad. Each time we choose Jesus, our identity from selfish moves closer to God's beloved. Our busy lives challenge attention shifting to God. So we ask Him to help us! He wants to help us pay attention to Love! When we shift attention to Him, our praying changes. Instead of attention on our pain, problems and what we want from God, our attention focuses on His presence. Focusing on God's presence during prayer gets us experiencing being loved. Being loved is what changes our identity because our attention on God begins worship. When we look with attention on Jesus, we can face truth about Him and ourselves more honestly as we are being loved by Him. This closer movement toward God helps us choose His way for us. God's way brings us to life, love, and truth...moment by moment over time as we as we talk with Him. Then how can we want anything more than to choose His way for us more and more. Rest at the crossroads praying with attention on Jesus. Rest praying is life changing! Moment by moment, be transformed by Love.

Pain is a crossroad each one of us faces, moment by moment, every day. Pain is operating no matter which decision we make. The familiar road in the limbic system part of our brains that avoids pain, runs, hides or pretends pain away, leads to death. The unfamiliar road of facing and walking through pain with Jesus leads to life. The truth is, there is no easy way. Pain ignored grows more pain. Pain faced is an endurance work. Walking through pain with Jesus is hard work. But it's also the work that brings us to rest. Rest is the trust we grow in Jesus as we let Him transform our pain for us.

Coming to Jesus honestly, even about what is uncomfortable and painful, allows the Holy Spirit to start creating healthier brain connections, expanding our sense of self toward the image bearers of God we are created to become. God does all this work for us. He helps bring rest for our pain. He is with us so we can rest with the pain. He works with rest to free us of the lies of sin so we live in love.

So many small moments take place during a day that give us opportunity to grow more trust in Jesus. If we don't let those moments grow trust in Jesus, we stay stuck in the familiar space of trusting ourselves. While the big moments get our attention, it is often in small moments, easily overlooked, that we discover the power of the Holy Spirit focusing us on Jesus. When we start looking and listening for Jesus, the Holy Spirit helps us grow trust in Him. Jesus is our rest and source of a healing that is transformational for our pain...starting with our small moments.

The Bible tells us each of us has a darkness in us that Jesus wants to transform for us with His light. Changing our darkness into His light is a developmental process. He wants to go into the far reaches of deeper, darker spaces to free parts of our mind stuck in pain. He won't stop until He completely frees us! Jesus love grows love in us so that we can love Him back, love ourselves and love each other.

God wants to grow our minds more healthy, mature, integrated and whole. Genesis 1 tells us the Holy Spirit is ready and willing to do this transformative work for us, with us, in us. Encountering God, learning to to trust Him strengthens the prefrontal cortex part of our brains. As this frontal lobe grows stronger, the brain starts to integrate into a more healthy, whole functioning.

Genesis 3 tells us the origin story of pain for the human race. It started with mistrust of God's goodness. Pain ignored just grows more pain. Pain directs us to live our lives based on lies instead of truth. We can change this by inviting the Holy Spirit to bring us to truth. He can free us from our bondage lies that manufacture into busyness. We choose busyness as one of our “go to” methods to avoid our pain. We can be freed to rest from these lies producing pain and start living in truth with the Spirit.

Welcome to Season 3 of Change Space. In the time between Season 2 and 3, I've had a chance to rest, rest from pain. We don't like pain and put a lot of work into running from pain, hiding from pain and pretending pain away. The problem with this approach is that it just adds more pain to existing pain, increasing our workload! God wants to give us rest from this work but helping us face pain, walk through the pain and look and listen to the story our pain is wanting to tell us. This walks us into freedom from all that running, hiding and pretending we were doing. Now we find rest for our pain so we can experience rest from our pain.

Jesus invites each on of us to live in love with Him! Saying "yes" to His invitation brings us out of the darkness inside us, the very darkness that keeps us disconnected from ourselves, God and each other. He does this gently, kindly, with compassion over time. As God brings us into His light, we discover what honest, loving relationships can really look like with Him, ourselves and each other. Let the Holy Spirit grow your trust in Jesus, develop you into wholeness, transform you as you live in sanctuary. Life with Jesus frees us from the darkness inside us so we can live in love. Let's say "yes" to love. Thank you for joining me as we conclude season 2 of ChangeSpace!

Who and what we give our attention to with our time becomes our source of wisdom. If it's not God, it leads to death. God's wisdom brings us to life with Him in sanctuary. We see how Eve and Adam decided to trust their own wisdom over God's wisdom. It brought them fear, shame, blame, hiding and pretending. God didn't lie to them when He found them hiding. He let them know what would happen from their choice to use their freedom to determine right and wrong for themselves. They would worship themselves, creating pain, sorrow, disconnection and finally, death. But God's compassion didn't leave them there. He covered them with love again, walked with them out into the wilderness outside of sanctuary. He stayed close to them, inviting them to relearn from His wisdom, to guide them back to truth, to life, back home to sanctuary. Here’s a link to The Bible Project classroom clip on Genesis 3:16 discussing more in-depth what Strong’s concordance helped me see: https://youtu.be/h_zIJt0Kpes

Relationship with Jesus is powerful. When we allow the Holy Spirit to bring us to Jesus, when we experience being loved by Jesus, His love changes you and me. As we change, our relationships with others start changing too. Discomfort, disruptions might emerge from growing pains of learning new relationship boundaries with Jesus. Just look at the story of Mary, sister of Martha and Lazarus. Being with Jesus changed her relationship boundaries to where her identity in Jesus grew strong roots to hold steady during dark times. Hold fast to Jesus. Hold fast to Jesus through these changes because all our relationships need Him for them to grow in love. When Jesus invites us to live in sanctuary with Him, He is rescuing us from sin and death. He also works through us to rescue all our loved ones and beyond. The love of God is abundantly powerful in blessing you and me in this way.

Every one of us experiences pain. We typically try to avoid our pain, hide from or run away from the pain. The problem with pain is that when ignored, shoved aside, or hidden, it grows and gains space in our minds. Pain in us disrupts us and our relationships. It is described as darkness in the Bible. Jesus is light for the darkness in each of us from our pain. His light exposes the truth about the darkness. His light reveals all the destructive lies making up the darkness. These lies get us stuck developmentally as we grow up, often keeping us stuck even as adults. Mercifully, Jesus seeks to heal us from the pain created by these lies, not all at once but, over time, freeing us one lie at a time. Truth of His love heals us when we allow ourselves to experience being loved by Him. Jesus is re-creating us as He moves us from darkness to light, enslaved to free.

You know what helped me see Jesus? The children's book series by C. S. Lewis called The Chronicles of Narnia revealed Jesus for me. Everything we take in plays a role in how we perceive God, can reveal Jesus for us. God gave me revelation over time using a children's story. Revelation begins with Jesus. He shows the truth of His love to us first. His love creates the safety for us to face the truth of ourselves. Seeking God's revelation enables us to live in the reality of love with Him. This is change space, embracing our need for His love in the face of His love and letting love grow sanctuary for us. Sanctuary is what He wants to create for each one of us. For many of us, Revelation, the last book of the Bible, is the most challenging to read, understand and see Jesus. Yet, in reality, the revelation of Jesus doesn't start with that book. It starts from the very beginning with Genesis. The whole story of Jesus that culminates in Revelation is a story of His compassionate, loyal, kind, honest love for us that in turn creates a safe space for us to face ourselves honestly. This safe space makes change possible with repentance of what we see of ourselves that comes from the pain of sin in our lives. We receive God's forgiveness with repentance, draw closer to Jesus, become more reconciled to Him, giving Him room to repair the damage of sin's lies in us so we live more and more in the reality of His love.

Living in reality is living in truth. To live in truth is trusting God and His love for us. We can then live within sanctuary boundaries of truth over lies. When we aren’t trusting God, we enter into shame that takes us into hiding from ourselves, each other as well as God. Because Jesus came to set us free from the lies that produce shame, we can now receive revelation of truth and return to living in reality and love.

Between the stimulus and response there is a space - space from which we have freedom and power to choose. Our choices take us toward life or death. Our ability to tolerate truth plays a big role in our capacity to choose life. Dealing with reality engages us to seek and give forgiveness, work toward reconciliation whenever possible, repair damage done by sin, even our unintentional sins. These sins can be the hardest to address because we are so good at making excuses for ourselves. But God's Word shows us He desires for us to forgive, reconcile, and repair. Restitution is what the Holy Spirit provides for us to give to those who we hurt from our sins, both intentional and unintentional. This is how we grow in sanctuary as loved, loving people of God.

Allowing God to love us, experiencing being loved helps truth defeat lies. Sanctuary is founded on truth. Living in sanctuary is abiding in love. Sanctuary living develops us into obedience of the Spirit's promptings and convictions that grow love, shine light more bright for ourselves and others.

Knowing about God and experiencing being loved by God aren't the same things. Each one of us holds darkness inside of us that needs the love of God to transform into His light. Knowing about Him doesn't overcome darkness for us. Experiencing being loved transforms our darkness into light. Many of us who see ourselves as Christian are discovering that we know more about God than we experience being loved by Him. The boundaries of darkness function around lies, many of which we tell ourselves to protect ourselves. Allowing ourselves to be loved by Jesus changes us. His boundaries of light operate from truth, grow love from experiences of being loved and form us into loving people. The Holy Spirit calls to each one of us to let love transform us.

Jesus reconciles us to Himself, starting with His gift of forgiveness. When we allow the Holy Spirit to show us the truth of who Jesus really is, who we really are, we have the choice to repent. Repentance produces joy as we let go of sin and embrace Jesus more closely. And from there, we start to experience the peace of Jesus that comes from being forgiven. This is the process of reconciliation. When two people who love Jesus willingly do this with Jesus, they grow in capacity to do this with each other. We can be truthful about the part we play in breaking the relationship. We can ask for forgiveness and we can give forgiveness. When two or more people truthfully forgive and seek forgiveness, reconciliation space gets created: genuine, honest, healing repairing of fractured relationships. This is how God creates sanctuary, bringing heaven to earth, all from forgiveness and reconciliation making transformation.

When we give Jesus our attention with our time, He changes our space to grow sanctuary for us. In sanctuary living, love rule in our lives so we bear good fruit of God's image. We seek to live in truth with love, building healthier relationships with God, ourselves and others. Something essential is necessary for such healthy relationships: forgiveness. Both giving and asking for forgiveness takes out sin over time as more room for the Holy Spirit grows in us. In the safety of being loved and forgiven by Jesus, we find joy in repentance, peace from receiving forgiveness, live more and more in abiding relationship with Jesus, one that provides us with strength and courage to seek forgiveness from others when we wrong them, to give forgiveness to others when we are wronged. Living with accountability, responsibility, grows more love, joy and peace in us.

Welcome to E1S2! We celebrate how Jesus grows us to completion! He is our sanctuary built from time and space. When we give Jesus our attention with our time, His Spirit changes our space so we start living in sanctuary, bearing good fruit of Jesus' character. His Word is part of the sanctuary building process in us.

Growing in Jesus brings us to rest...rest in His work. We are made to produce from His work, not our own. Episode 12 celebrates the good work He has been doing for me to experience this truth, grow in trust, develop more safety and find myself changing in His presence. I pray you are experiencing some of that same good change in you as the Holy Spirit is taking us on this journey of living more fully loved and free in Jesus. He has done all the work of rescue! We rest in His work as we grow in Him!

Our bodies tell a story of the very beginning of our identities. Those early moments absorb a lot of pain caused by sin. Sin causes relational hurts, harms, and even traumas. God’s compassion moves Him to care for us, all aspects of us, including our bodies. Jesus is moving all of us as we seek Him from darkness to light.

Offering my time to Jesus allows Him to change my space. This practices abiding with Him. This practices living free and safe in Jesus. It takes practice because true freedom is unfamiliar and doesn’t feel safe. When you and I practice abiding, learning what it means to be truly safe, the Holy Spirit grows strength and courage in us.

Relationship with Jesus begins with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the one who helps us connect with and grow a safe, loving, trusting, freeing relationship with Jesus. He does this in part by helping us to give Jesus our attention, time and focus. He joyfully brings us into the completed work of Jesus that brings us into rest. In Day 2 of the Creation story, God calls the space He creates for us to dwell together “heaven.” The Kingdom of Heaven is here and the Holy Spirit enters us in relationship with Jesus so we can abide together, nothing and no one separating us from love when we say “yes” to relationship with Jesus. Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, changes us to live free. His way is a new way of living.

Episode 7 in this first season of Change Space continues exploring how God made time with His light on the first day of creation. He culminated time in creation week by putting into the seventh day a promise in time itself that He would complete the work of moving us from darkness to light. One way God frees us is through scripture’s words. The Holy Spirit speaks these words of life over our lives to free us over time as we spend our time with Him. God uses His Word to grow trust in us for Him when we start surrendering our time to Him. When we allow the light of God's Word to overcome the darkness in and around us, we find ourselves becoming free to rest in Jesus' completed work for us. We begin to believe we are His beloved and live as His beloved. God made us free to choose light or darkness. Let's choose light. Let's choose love. Take time and rest in Jesus. Abide free and loved.

God made time with His light on the first day of creation. His light strengthens our prefrontal cortex from the darkness of our limbic system. Our limbic systems write out for us stories of fear, mistrust, shame and blame that leave us disconnected and self-deceived. God meets us in the dark, deep, chaotic places in our minds and loves us. His love is free and creates space for a choice: stay in the chaotic dark or allow God’s love to begin transforming us into His Light. You and I are made free, free to stay in the dark or allow God to use the time He created on Day 1 of creation to move us toward light. The more we trust Him with our time, the stronger the prefrontal cortex grows. This part of our minds grows compassion, trust building, truth, connectedness, patience, forgiveness and empathy. All these grow more light from God’s love in our minds. Rejoice with me that God made time so He can take whatever time we give Him in trust to grow light to battle and defeat the darkness in us.

Vulnerability, what so many of us mistakenly think of as weakness is actually strength. Vulnerability strengthens us to take the risks necessary to grow love and trustworthiness. It’s recounted best in the four Gospels and confirmed in research done across multiple disciplines of science. If you want more information on the research about vulnerability, a good place to start is listening to Dr. Brene Brown's TedTalk on the power of vulnerabilty: https://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_the_power_of_vulnerability/c

Growing trust requires taking risks by learning new, healthier ways as we unlearn old ways. Each step of trust you and I risk taking with God takes us one step deeper into freedom from lies and mistrust. Letting God’s love into our lives is an adventure of trust-building that strengthens us to be loved well.

God tells us a lot about Himself and us in the introduction to the creation story in Genesis 1. He is moving us from what is chaotic, without healthy boundaries into purposeful, ordered, healthy boundaries with Him, with ourselves and others. The Spirit, there from the beginning is ready and wanting to help us grow in love. He is just waiting for the invitation.

Life is messy! God knows this which is why He tells us in His story that His love for us grows trust. Trust is an essential building block for relationships, for learning and for neuroplasticity, the ability of our brains to unlearn and relearn new, healthier things. Early psychology models of human development establish how necessary trust is for healthy growth. God's story in the Bible shows us how He created us with neuroplasticity so we could grow and mature as we learn to trust Him.