Lesson 9
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Unhealthy thoughts & beliefs worksheet
Moving into Step 1 VIDEO LINK
Overview of Lesson 8
Big ideas:
Boundaries are a discipline of self control.
They help you decide what you will let into your life and what you will allow yourself to send out into the world.
You are responsible for your thoughts, emotions and behaviors.
You are NOT responsible for others thoughts, emotions and behaviors.
Jesus Modeled boundaries in His life and ministry.
Boundaries help steward your gifts.
Boundaries increase your capacity to love.
Boundaries display love, value of others and value of yourself.
Test the motivation behind your boundaries rethink any that are motivated by a desire to control or punish.
Lesson 9
Step 1
I admit I am powerless over my sin, addictions, and self defeating behaviors, and that my life is unmanageable APART from God.
Matthew 5:3. Blessed are the poor in spirit for they will inherit the kingdom of God.
I admit I am powerless over:
my programs for happiness,
my need to play God,
my need for security,
my anger,
my desire to always be right,
my desire to always win the fight,
my fear,
my inability to bond with others,
my drinking,
my shopping,
my jealousy,
my need to be in control,
my anxiety,
my depression,
my affairs,
my desire to watch porn,
my desire to overeat,
my inability to stop being judgmental,
my inability to stop criticizing my husband,
my lying,
my faking it,
my lack of grace,
my self loathing,
my_____________.
We all long for peace and joy but we just can’t quite get there without God.
Step one reminds us again that we have all been wounded in our life, those wounds cause discomfort and naturally we respond in ways that we believe will make us feel better.
We consciously or subconsciously have used these responses to cope best we know. We make overly rigid boundaries with friends for fear of being hurt and limit our relationships. We scream at our children to make them obey and they pull away from us. We drink to distract ourselves from stress. We shop when we feel sad. We operate in a works mentality thinking God’s love has to be earned and we are left worn out and depressed. These responses often inflict additional wounds to ourselves and others.
We call these unhealthy or damaging responses:
sin
addictions
idols
programs for happiness,
habitual destructive behaviors
destructive coping mechanisms
I am powerless to control my unhealthy responses to life (sin, addiction, idols, destructive coping mechanisms, ______________) and the damage done by them apart from God.
With each response we expect consciously or unconsciously a remedy to whatever situation in our life doesn’t sit well with us. We are searching for a cure so we feel “better”. All in a response to a need to fill the God sized hole in ourselves but these things that were never going to help long term. Going shopping might feel good for the moments it distracts you but the money spent causes a host of other problems.
What do we call it, sin or addiction? God plants seeds of desire within us, drawing us towards the fulfillment of the 2 great commandments, “Thou shalt love thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbor as thyself.” Connection with God and others. The programmed response we call sin happens when “our cure” causes us to attach ourselves to something that displaces love thus displacing our relationship with God, others and ourselves. Sin is a behavior that move us away from our God given design to love and be loved.
Addiction is a compulsive, habitual behavior that pushes aside our God given yearning for relationships, often our relationship with God and other people. We could simply be addicted to our own thinking, being right, being financial secure, what others think of us or we can be addicted to drugs, sex, alcohol or shopping. In church we also call these idols.
In step one, we come to understand and confess that in our human nature we are powerless to always do the right thing, the loving thing, the healthy thing, the selfless thing. We are powerless to fully control our sin, addictions, habitually destructive behaviors and thoughts.
These perceived cures, behaviors, thoughts and programs are so ingrained we have a hard time identifying them for what they are. They are our attempt at playing God, our attempt at controlling life. Have you ever heard the phrase you can not fix what you do not admit? This is where we admit to God that we are indeed wounded and we can’t work our way out of the mess left behind without Him and community.
Paul normalizes this by sharing his struggle as well in Romans.
Romans 7:15-17. I don’t really understand myself, for I want to do what is right, but I don’t do it. Instead, I do what I hate. 16 But if I know that what I am doing is wrong… It is because Paul couldn’t in his own strength and neither can we.
Here is reality, we all struggle to do the “right thing”, including some of the Bible’s best, Paul, Moses, Noah, David. They were as powerless as we are. We are ALL dealing sin, addiction and the decisions we have made that we have unsuccessfully managed our life. Apart from God they couldn’t do it and we can’t do it either. This is facing the truth about your story.
Digging deeper into Matthew 5:3 and it’s good news!!
Blessed are the poor in spirit (powerlessness) for they will inherit the kingdom of God.
Blessed = makarios, which literally means happy. God given joy, contentment regardless of circumstance.
Poor = ptosa, helpless or powerless
Spirit= pneuma, the power by which we feel, think and decide. The rational soul.
The first piece of good news, God promises unconditional joy to us if we admit that we are powerless to always think, feel and act like Jesus apart from God’s intervention.
Our second piece of good news is, God also tells us we will “inherit the kingdom of God”.
The kingdom of Heaven doesn’t just mean our salvation or the promise of heaven, it is not just referring to something that is to come. It also refers to something that is now, a reality which is already present. It is present in Christ and the Holy Spirit which is residing in us while we have become physically absent from Jesus.
Let’s look at what the kingdom of Heaven is.
Kingdom = bas·il·i·ah. The royal power and dignity given to Christians
Heaven = oo-ran-os´; by extens. heaven (as the abode of God); by impl. happiness, power, eternity; spec. the Gospel (Christianity):— air, heaven, sky. You could replace heaven with God. The reason we most often see heaven if because Jewish were uncomfortable saying God’s name.
The kingom of God is in His royal power, the power of Christ to overcome what is preventing us from living the life God has for us. It’s our weapon against the enemy inside and outside of us.
Our powerlessness gives us God’s power to overcome. Overcome our addiction, our hate, anger, lust, fear, jealousy and all the other defeating pieces of our life.
As I said above we can not heal what we do not see.
One way to see our powerlessness is to take a hard look at ourselves and our unhealthy behaviors & harmful thoughts.
Unhealthy behaviors are those things we do that we wish we could stop, but instead we keep doing it anyway. These can be a habits or tendencies we have. It’s the thing that even in the moment we might say, I want to stop, but we just can’t quite seem to make ourselves. They are things that causes us, or those around us, harm and suffering. Behaviors are something another person can see us do.
Harmful thoughts are those messages in our head that cut us down. The things we hear over and over again like a broken record. They are the obsessions, the fears, the doubts, and the negative self talk, the lies we have swimming around in our mind. People from the outside can’t see these.
Can we identify our powerlessness in each of these areas?
Do we recognize our brokenness?
Do we recognize how unmanageable things are currently in our lives, even when we put on the mask for the world to think the opposite?
Our admission of these things is the first step of the journey into finding Grace and Truth in our stories.
God’s program or prescription for success starts with a humble admission. These behaviors, thoughts, or addictions that we must identifying are humiliating. We automatically want to run. Humility is the posture each of us must assume in order to grow. But humility might be the very thing we have trouble entering into. This is a quality we are taught is “good” to have, but how comfortable are we with humility? Is there evidence of it in our lives?
Screen shots from the classroom
