ReceiveHealing.com

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Rejection comes to each of us, but we can take steps to heal and move forward with the productive life we deserve and desire.

Many readers have asked for help in dealing with rejection from parents and other relationships. Whether rejection comes from a family member, friend, co-worker, or even a mere stranger, it leaves us with a wide variety of emotions, such as pain and guilt, and questions as to why would someone feel that way about us. Let’s cover several steps that help us to heal and move forward to a happier life.

First, don’t spend a great deal of time questioning why.

Unless the person broke the relationship due to a major personality flaw on your part which they directly communicated to you as the cause of the rejection–and you already know you need to work on that aspect–quit questioning why. If there was no such communication on the offender’s part, speculation will not help you for the following reason. If the cause was a personality flaw on your part and they were not willing to communicate in such as way as to allow for healing and reconciliation in the relationship, the offender is not presently, and may never be, in a mental/emotional state to have a long-term, healthy relationship. As it is, it is much more likely, since they were unwilling to communicate in a way as to provide for reconciliation, that the major emotional issues are on their part.

Second, quit being too hard on yourself.

If you are aware of certain mistakes you made that contributed to the rejection, you can always work on changing those behaviors, even getting profession help if needed. However, you must be realistic in accessing your failures. Immerse Yourself in the Full Healing Contemplation Here »

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A misunderstanding of forgiveness can keep you from receiving the desired resolution to the hurts you have suffered.

Some people continue to allow others to harm them because they wrongly believe that, to be loving and forgiving, they must keep giving in to the other person’s demands or lifestyle. Other people avoid forgiveness due to the fear that it requires a lowering their boundaries and allowing the person to hurt them again.

Such misconceptions takes place due to not understanding the difference between forgiveness and reconciliation. God is clear that we always need to forgive, but He is also clear that you cannot always reconcile with the person who hurt you. You may recall my mentioning in another post God’s instructions in Matthew 18 on dealing with someone who harms you. In verse 15, He says that we are to confront those who harm us, clearly letting them know how they wronged us so that they will have a definite opportunity to change and make things right. However, in verse 17, God describes that, after a process of varying attempts to allow the harmful person to make a life change, it is spiritually and morally correct to distance yourself from a person who continues to harm you. When you have a clear understanding of this resolution process, and of the definitions of forgiveness and reconciliation, it (1) frees you from the past to move forward and (2) releases you from the guilt one usually feels from breaking off a relationship.

Learning to have a voice and speak of how you were wronged to those you trust as well as to the person who harmed you is an important part of personal growth and establishing boundaries.

Let’s take a slight detour and focus on why you need to be able to express your personal boundaries as well as violations to them. Immerse Yourself in the Full Healing Contemplation Here »

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Whether a criticism is intended to be harmful or helpful, you can still choose to be in control of how it affects you.

Criticism is similar to many other events in our lives in that we can choose both the extent to which it affects us, as well as the type of outcome it has upon us. Most of us remember the old saying, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.” Yet, many people carry hurt their entire lives as a result of critical words spoken to them during childhood. While there is some truth to the old saying, the error in it is that words can “never” hurt; yes, they can hurt if we are unaware of the fact that we can choose not to allow them to harm us. This is especially the case during childhood when we are supposed to be in a loving, nurturing environment in which we shouldn’t need to protect ourselves and, hence, haven’t learned how to do so. Once we begin growing and stepping out of our protected environment, we must learn to evaluate critical statements as to whether they have any value and use the situation as an opportunity for personal growth.

A reader asked specifically about dealing with unfounded criticism, so we will also cover that in the process of this post.

First of all, consider the source of the criticism and what you perceive the person’s intent to be.

Did the criticism come from someone that is usually a harmful person by nature? If that is the case, it is most likely something that needs to be discarded. Also, if the person is harmful by nature, realize that the hostility of the words they spoke also needs to be discarded from your thought life. Their words only have power over you if you continue to think on them. Whatever you think on will alter your emotions and influence your decisions. Immerse Yourself in the Full Healing Contemplation Here »

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Time spent with God creates in you the healing qualities that exist in God Himself.

In my last post, I used a quote contrasting human love and Divine love, showing the differing effects on our relationships. The more time one spends seeking God, the more His character becomes evident in your relationships with others, just the same as spending time in the presence of evil people adversely affects your character. With life’s busyness, it is easy to miss otherwise clear opportunities to bring healing to people’s broken hearts via the aspects of God’s nature that He has poured into us through our time spent with Him. I wanted to share with you a personal experience for the purpose of encouraging you to be aware of those opportunities.

During a particular year, there was a great deal of additional stress due to my parents having been in a severe auto accident. A couple of weeks into that accident, while they were still hospitalized, God spoke this verse to me while in prayer one morning, “You will be called, ‘Repairer of Broken Walls.’ (Is.58:12)” I didn’t even remember where the quote was located at the time. It was only vaguely familiar, so I looked it up in a software search so I could meditate on the meaning. I didn’t even have much time to meditate as we were about to leave again for the hospital. Immerse Yourself in the Full Healing Contemplation Here »

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By the most basic definition, a compliant person melts into the demands and needs of other people to avoid the conflicts that would arise if he stood up for his own needs and desires.

We had a post a few weeks ago in answer to readers’ questions called, “Recognizing a Controlling Person.” Since then, readers have asked for clarification on the opposite personality type/boundary problem called compliant personality/compliance. There are obviously more than 2 personality types in the world, but among family, friends, and acquaintances, these 2 types seem to be very apparent, especially since opposites attract.

A compliant personality often leaves a person feeling defenseless against the demands of others and frustrated by the lack of fulfilling his own desires. A compliant person is unable to say “No” when a controlling person’s demands are unreasonable, against his own conscience, or hindering the progress of his own goals and the fulfillment of his own needs. Controlling people recognize a compliant person and easily manipulate him to conform to whatever the controller’s demands are by the use of guilt, manipulating circumstances, or even verbal or physical abuse.

When a compliant needs to say “No” to someone, a large number of fears typically make him incapable of doing so. Immerse Yourself in the Full Healing Contemplation Here »

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Knowledge alone is not enough to break you out of the rut of ineffective daily structure or of harmful habits.

Though I wrote on this a while back, so many people have been asking for info on this topic that I decided to do a brief follow-up. Many people fill themselves with knowledge from a wide variety of self-help guides, but still fail in implementing the majority of the good knowledge that they’ve learned. It is true that old habits are hard to break. If the habits are rooted in spiritual or emotional issues or addictions, obviously there is rarely an instant route to change; you will need outside support and input.

However, especially for breaking out of the rut of the typically daily habits that create an ineffective life, consistency is the key.

In both the religious and secular realms, people often quote Jesus words, “The truth will set you free.” Yes, it can, but the all important element to truth setting you free which Jesus revealed in the same conversation is rarely mentioned. In that conversation, Jesus said, “If you remain constant to my Message, you are truly my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free (TCNT),” or another translation, “If you continue in my Word…(RSV).” Constancy, consistency is the key to effectively implementing any truth and breaking out of the ruts in your life! Immerse Yourself in the Full Healing Contemplation Here »

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In most realms of religion, there seems to be a prevalent concept that poverty makes a person more pious.

The added deduction from this concept is that God sends poverty on His people to teach them or purify them. There are several possible reasons for the development of this line of thought. First, difficulty does often cause a person to reach out to God, to someone greater than himself, resulting in character growth. Hence, people assume God sent it. Scripture actually says that God works to bring good out of evil done to us (Gen. 50:20; Deut. 23:5; Rom. 8:28). A second possible reason for the development of this poverty concept is the misquoting of the Scripture about money. Scripture actually says that the “love” of money leads to all kinds of evil, not wealth itself.

God expresses that poverty is destructive to people, a trait contrary to God’s nature.

Though more examples could be given, these two make it clear that poverty is not a type of “learning tool” sent by God. God says,

• Poverty is the ruin of the poor (NIV). [Another translation-] The destruction of the poor is their poverty (NKJV Pr. 10:15).
• [The context of this quote is speaking about laziness...] and poverty will come on you like a bandit and scarcity like an armed man making you helpless (AMP).

In contrast to the idea of poverty being from God, the traits of ruin, destruction, and other harm are listed in Scripture as having their origin in satan. Pay particular attention to Jesus’ description of the contrasting life God gives. Immerse Yourself in the Full Healing Contemplation Here »

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We all want to achieve the purpose(s) for our existence, but how do we overcome the apparent roadblocks?

It is important to have a sense of destiny, of purpose for your life. For this post, we are assuming you already have your destiny in view. If you were to rate yourself between 1 and 10, how effective do you feel that you are in accomplishing the actions and goals necessary for fulfilling your destiny? Even when we have a clear destiny in mind, most of us feel that there are numerous roadblocks to either fulfilling your destiny at all or fulfilling it as effectively as you envision.

My spouse and I have been listening to a series for the past month on the blood covenant God made with Abraham in Genesis 15 and the significance of it in that culture and point in history. The man teaching the series has put out a new book on achieving your destiny, called, “8 Steps to Create the Life You Want.” In describing his book, he explains an 8 step process to achieving your destiny and how you can evaluate the roadblocks to your destiny by seeing where you are at in this 8 step process.

Here are the 8 Steps: Immerse Yourself in the Full Healing Contemplation Here »

Reading Level: Very Impassioned

How do we recognize controlling people to stop the infringement of personal boundaries?

This is in response to a reader’s question. People with compliant personalities ( basically a personality that feels guilty for standing up for itself) are often “run over” in life by people with controlling personalities. Often the compliant person doesn’t even realize why he, or she, struggles with so much guilt and resentment, guilt for not wanting to do what the controller says and resentment for giving in and doing what is against his own conscience or goals. Since a compliant personality feels compelled by guilt to give in to the aggression or manipulation of the controller, he doesn’t always even realize that the other person is creating these problems. Other times a compliant does realize it, but just doesn’t have the emotional strength to stand up to the person. A compliant person must learn to deal with his or her own weaknesses and the lack of determination to stand up for his boundaries; he must determine to be true to the person that he is and how he wants to live his life, making his own decisions and taking responsibility for them. I needed to give you that background on the compliant personality to understand the relationship between a controller and a compliant. However, since the reader question was on identifying controllers, that will be the focus today. My definitions of the 2 types of controlling people and other illustrations are taken from Cloud and Townsend’s “Boundaries” book, pp. 54-55. Full book information is at the end of the post.

Controllers are people who cannot hear a “No” answer.

The example Cloud and Townsend use is of the phrase common to sales training, “No” means “Maybe” and “Maybe” means “Yes.” This attitude can make an effective salesman, but it is quite harmful to personal relationships. The primary problem of a controller who refuses to accept another person telling him, “No,” is that he is refusing to take responsibility for his own life. He is continually controlling others in various ways to convince them to take care of responsibilities in life that he should be taking care of himself. Immerse Yourself in the Full Healing Contemplation Here »

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The characteristics of Father God are deeply moving once one begins to peruse them in their full scope.

This post today is in answer to readers’ questions regarding the characteristics or fatherly traits of God. Some of God’s fatherly traits are like those of a good earthly father; others, though similar, go far beyond an earthly father’s abilities. This lengthy list of God’s fatherly attributes is in no way complete as He describes Himself, for the list would probably be endless. Whether you have had mainly negative experiences with your earthly father, which in turn made it difficult for you to interact with God as your Father, or if you had positive paternal experiences as a child, these traits of Father God will be very healing, emotional, and fulfilling to your mind and spirit.

Loving Continually, Abundantly

God says,
How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! 1 Jn. 3:1
I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving-kindness. Jer. 31:3.

Just as a good earthly father, God delights in lavishing His love on us, pouring His love into our lives in generous, plentiful, and even extravagant ways.
As your Heavenly Father, God’s love goes far beyond the capabilities of a human father in that His love is everlasting, never-ending.

Compassionate, Comforting, and Loyal Immerse Yourself in the Full Healing Contemplation Here »

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This is the fifth article in our series in answer to Readers’ Questions.

First, since God is the source of love, focus on demonstrating His characteristics to those in crisis.

For some of us this will be easier than others, depending on your knowledge of God’s character. If you grew up in a religious culture of misinformation that portrayed God as unforgiving, unkind, basically inhumane, you may not have as much knowledge in that area to draw from. You may want to read through or listen to some of my previous posts on that topic, such as, “Healing by an Understanding of God’s Love” and “A Love that Isn’t Earned.” God describes Himself as compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, having mercy (undeserved favor) that is everlasting, forgiving, patient, comforting, encouraging, protective; this is just a partial list. These characteristics of God are all traits that each of us need in our lives. We were created with the need to receive these emotional, spiritual, relational exchanges with God. In the same way, we were also created with the need to share or live out these character traits with each other. Usually, life is so busy that pouring these traits of God into each other’s lives gets set aside. It is worth mentioning that most all of us need to restructure our lives so as to have the time to consistently invest in this valuable and necessary exchange with each other, but we most certainly must focus on expressing God’s loving aspects with those who are in crisis. If you are already in the habit of living this way, it will be easier, but if your life has been too busy and you’ve neglected fine tuning these traits, God will still help you and honor your efforts to bless the person in crisis by living out His loving characteristics to them in their time of need. Immerse Yourself in the Full Healing Contemplation Here »

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A reader recently asked, “How does God desire for us to handle abusive relationships?” I already have some other posts related to this topic such as recognizing real love and how to move forward after getting out of the situation which I will reference below.

Let’s cover now 6 specific steps important for anyone in an abusive relationship or trying to recover after one.

Forgive Yourself- Admit any mistakes you made in the situation. There are always mistakes on both sides. You may need to forgive yourself for getting into that relationship to begin with, especially, if in retrospect, you realize you ignored all the warning signs. Or, you may now see that you should have not waited so long to confront or abandon the relationship. Also, people often feel the need to forgive themselves for the valuable time that was lost while devoted to an unhealthy relationship.

Forget - Leave the past in the past. We all make decisions that we later regret. They cannot be changed, but we can keep from living under their shadow the rest of our lives. Immerse Yourself in the Full Healing Contemplation Here »

Reading Level: Leisurely

On a scale of 1 to 10, implementing being 10, how often do you act on new, valuable knowledge that you hear compared to the number of times you let that knowledge merely slip away?

We all come across good input from time to time of things that would greatly improve our lives, quality input on one’s finances, relationships, or physical-emotional-spiritual health. Usually, we feel great excitement at the thought of the possible benefits from that new knowledge yet, all too often, the knowledge that comes our way is allowed to slip away because it is easier for life to stay in a rut.

Just as it is always easier to swim with the current than against it, just as it is definitely easier to go downhill than to a higher plain, it is undeniably easier to stay in a rut than drive over the bumps in the road to get out of the path you’ve been in. We can even be good listeners, eager learners, and have willing spirits with a desire to succeed, but all the right attitudes will still not cause one’s life to prosper if all we ever do is listen, and we never act on that knowledge. Immerse Yourself in the Full Healing Contemplation Here »

Ever imagined a life of perfect peace, free from anxiety or fear? How about a peace that transcends all understanding? This is exactly the type of peace God promises His people. Enjoy this brief flash video which shares some of God’s promises for your peace.

To view a related video, look at my blog, “God of Peace” in which God describes His nature to be in a covenant of peace with you.

References: Is. 26:3; Jn. 14:27; Jer. 33:6; Jer. 33:9; Jer. 46:27; Dan. 10:19; Jn. 16:33; Phil. 4:6,7; Rom. 15:13

Click Here to Open the Promises of Peace Flash Video

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It is astounding to realize how much lack in one’s life can be created by a deficiency in emotional and spiritual maturity.

If you survey your life and see lack or need in several areas, it may be worth your while to see if a lack of maturity in dealing with your life’s circumstances is the cause. Let’s take a look for a moment at how a lack of maturity creates lack in other areas of one’s life. For example, a person who lacks the maturity to stick with a job will not receive advancements in that career. A person who lack’s maturity hinders his interpersonal relationships; he keeps himself from developing effective conflict resolution as well as healthy relational skills. A lack of maturity in ones’ personal life may keep him surrounded by chaos as he doesn’t follow through with the myriad of adult responsibilities, such as maintenance to the house, yard, car, laundry, other possessions. The lack of maturity in one’s spending habits and goal planning is sure to create hindrances to his financial success.

How does maturity come?

God gives us a glimpse into a clear way to develop maturity. Immerse Yourself in the Full Healing Contemplation Here »