In my work as a therapist, I am grateful for the daily opportunities I have to walk with clients through their most challenging seasons of life. For some, these trials arise from circumstances that spiral out of control or past trauma that has influenced their response. Or their struggles are caused by their own mistakes or actions, which is particularly true in the case of addiction.
When we face the challenges of addiction, tense marriages, attachment issues, trauma, depression, or anxiety, it’s easy to get caught up in hopelessness. You may fear that nothing will ever change. That’s usually what pushes people into therapy – understanding that you’re at the end of your rope.
Normally you’ll understand the what – what you would like to see change. But the difficulty comes when you ask how: how do I experience freedom from this addictive pattern? How do I cope with the loneliness that seems ever present? How do I calm my mind when it’s keeping me up at night racing with anxiety? How can I find hope in my marriage that feels like it’s on its last legs?
For Christians, these questions can be especially challenging, particularly if you’ve heard messages from the church that the solution to these issues is to “have more faith” or “trust God more.” Some faith traditions are wary of psychology and therapy, saying that the Bible is all you need for a solution. While there’s always room to grow for every Christian in the areas of faith and trust, and the Bible contains much truth that can be encouraging and challenging, these messages can oversimplify or minimize the process of growth. There are certainly more steps that can be taken in faith to address the question of how to change.
How People Grow
Henry Cloud and John Townsend address the foundations of this how question in their book, How People Grow: What the Bible Reveals About Personal Growth. They take a Christian, Biblical approach to understanding the mechanisms behind change. They emphasize that spiritual growth and emotional/relational growth are essentially the same process. In their words, they state that spiritual growth can and should affect your “real life.”
This book integrates the concepts of Biblical theology and psychology together in a way that offers hope and help for those who feel lost in the quagmire of their current challenges. They focus on specific components of theology that have a direct bearing on our daily lives or response to life’s struggles.
In reading this book, I found several of the principles helpful for bridging the gap between Christian teaching and concepts involved in counseling. At the end of each chapter, the authors offer reflection questions, both for personal growth and for growth as a leader. If you challenge yourself to work through this book, I’d recommend journaling through these questions or discussing them with a group. You can also purchase their companion workbook to have more space for reflection.
Addressing the How
The authors seek to answer the question, “How does a Christ-following person experience change?” Below are a few areas they point out as essential to facilitate change.
The Role of the Trinity
With three distinct chapters that address all three members of the Triune God, the authors remind us of the place of God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit in the process of healing.
The Father God offers grace through revealing the law, which illustrates that we cannot be perfect and that we need Him and His grace.
Jesus provides an example for life because He has experienced suffering, temptation, and pain in ways that allow him to relate more deeply to us.
The Holy Spirit offers empowerment, guidance, strength, and wisdom to change within us through transforming our hearts.
Acceptance
In 12 Step groups, the most important, foundational step (Step One) requires accepting your own powerlessness. We need to recognize that only when we are at the end of ourselves can we begin to change, truly accepting and experiencing God’s grace. Experiencing those rock-bottom moments actually lead us to good, in that they point us toward God and away from prideful independence and attempting to fix ourselves on our own.
Acceptance involves recognizing our sin and knowing that we have been given a new standing before God. If we can’t see our own failures and shortcomings, we can’t receive God’s grace through the love of Christ. We need to accept the reality of our pain and our own role in it so we can experience hope. Yet because we are already loved by God, we do not need to prove ourselves or make ourselves good enough through sheer willpower.
Practicing acceptance is necessary for patience with the process of change. We often try to rush change, wanting it to happen on our timeline and within our control. But patience involves waiting on God’s timing for healing. This doesn’t mean, however, that you are passive in the healing process: rather, you often take an active role of participating in what God is already doing.
The Importance of Support
I appreciated the authors highlighting the reality that God often works through people to push along the process of change. In relationships, we can experience grace in practice through forgiveness, and we can be encouraged and validated. In grief or hurt, we often don’t feel we have courage or strength, but we can draw upon that of others to help us along. Others can offer mentorship, modeling the life you desire, such as a 12 Step sponsor who is further along in the recovery process. Choosing transparency and honesty with friends offers accountability and structure outside of your own faulty self-discipline. Good friends can challenge you toward growth.
Find people in your life who can offer some or all of these components with a mindset of both truth and grace. You need people who will encourage and build you up, but you also need people who can help you to grow in discipline. If you’re part of a Bible study or small group, seek to make that group a context for growth. Within recovery, social support like this is key to achieving sobriety and living a recovered life.
Guilt vs. Conviction
Have you ever been in a relationship with someone where you express feelings of hurt, but they feel so guilty about how they’ve wronged you that they shut down, become consumed by their grief, and then withdraw from relationship with you? Or perhaps you see yourself here. This has the opposite effect of what the hurt partner truly desires: reconciliation and connection.
“If you have ever been in a relationship with someone who fails you and is overly concerned with how bad she feels as opposed to how she is affecting you, you understand how God feels.”
Cloud and Townsend make an interesting argument that the feeling of guilt as we understand it tends to lead to more selfishness and hopelessness than it does to change. It quickly becomes tied to shame, or negative beliefs about our identity. This shame and self-pity leads us to feel bad about ourselves or the rejection we experience from others, keeping us caught in our own heads. We miss the opportunity for grace here, that we are already forgiven for those mistakes.
They suggest, first, to recognize the areas where you tend toward guilt feelings. These could be “shoulds”, family background and influence, cognitive distortions, harshness with self, or masking a deeper hurt or responsibility. Then, instead of descending into a pit of shame or self-pity, imagine a response of grace and love from God in that area, knowing that He has already forgiven you and will do the work of transforming you if you let Him.
Taking Action
I appreciate the author’s choice to address some of the limiting messages that can be portrayed by churches by reminding us of the importance of taking action in response to these truths. Reading the Bible is good, but without taking action in response to what is being taught, you cannot expect to see miracles of change. James 1:22-25 says, “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.”
With the support of others, practice responses of obedience to the Holy Spirit’s leading. Read Scripture and reflect on how it can influence your actions and lead you toward healing. Recognize the ways God might be calling you to change your behavior. Incorporating both reflection and action is an essential component of change.