How Curiousity Can Lead to Freedom

When you see you are not living your faith the way you want to do you judge and condemn yourself or do you get curious?

Condemnation is never from the Lord.

Listen to this week’s podcast about how curiosity can help you see what is really in your way.

00:00 Curiosity Or Condemnation
01:26 Why Shame Feels Normal
02:04 Curiosity Finds The Need
02:57 Example Sharing Your Faith
06:01 Conviction Not Condemnation
06:46 Tracing Fear Beneath Behavior
09:00 When Reactions Feel Childlike
11:12 Ask God What You Need
11:50 Compassion Leads To Change
12:20 Choose Curiosity And Heal 

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Transcript

Curiosity Or Condemnation

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Can you meet it with curiosity or do you meet it with condemnation?

SPEAKER_01 0:11

When you see that you're not doing something the way Jesus wants you to, the way you see it in Scripture, whether that's boldly sharing your faith, believing for God to provide, casting your cares on Him, any of the things that you clearly see in Scripture that God calls you to do, and you see that you're not doing it, do you meet that like, why am I not doing that? Is that question asked in curiosity, or is it asked in condemnation? If it's asked in condemnation, like, why am I not doing that? And it might even, if you listen really closely, might even be, why are you not doing that? The voice of the enemy condemning and accusing you. So whether it's the enemy accusing you or whether you're accusing and being judgmental towards yourself, like, why am I not doing this thing? It's not a helpful question to ask. It just reinforces the unworthiness or whatever it is that you're struggling with. It makes sense that that's a natural response, particularly if you kind of grew up in that critical type of environment that was always striving for excellence. The way to push you towards excellence was like the shame on you for not doing better. It makes sense that that's how you would respond to yourself when you're not performing how you feel you should be performing.

SPEAKER_00 1:56

That's how you were brought up. A much more it is far more helpful to meet those observations with curiosity.

SPEAKER_01 2:10

Why am I not sharing my faith wholly? Why am I not believing for healing, believing for provision? Why am I not casting this particular tear on the Lord? Why do I keep taking it back and holding the anxiety and the stress about it instead of giving it to the Lord? Because that curiosity helps you see what you need. And when you know what you need, then you have a clear direction to move in to make something change, have something happen. So say you notice that you're not sharing your faith wholly, and you're curious, why am I not doing that? It can generally be curious and open. You might see that you're afraid of rejection.

Fear Beneath Avoiding Your Faith

SPEAKER_01 3:12

You might see that you're intimidated by the idea of somebody asking questions you can't answer. You might uncover the lie that like you have to have all the answers for someone. And you feel like you're unworthy or inadequate, whatever. When you see that you're intimidated by not having the right answers, then you can say, well, what difference does it make if I don't have the right answers? What's that fear coming from? Wouldn't it be okay to just say, I don't know, but we could find out? Or I don't know, I haven't studied all that. I just can tell you what Jesus has done for me and what having a relationship with him has done in my life. And you just share my story. And can trust that my story is enough to encourage someone to pique their interest and can trust that God will fill my mouth if I'm faithful to open it to speak and share. As you look at why you're not sharing more boldly, it might uncover that insecurity that you have to have all the answers for it might uncover a fear that God wouldn't show up for you and you'd make a fool of yourself, and then people would reject you, and that would be hurtful. So getting to those underlying thoughts and emotions helps you see what do you need? Do you feel like the Lord is saying that you need to study some more so that you can answer some certain questions? Or is he saying, trust me, you'll be okay even if they reject you? The whole world rejected me. A very small portion of the population, of even his own people, received him. And he's okay. And since he's always with us, we'll be okay, even if everybody rejects us. Like, is that do you need some healing in that place to be able to trust that him being with you is enough.

SPEAKER_00 6:01

Condemnation is the Lord.

SPEAKER_01 6:04

We're told in Romans 8 verse 1 that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. So if you are in Christ Jesus and you are feeling condemned,

Conviction Without Shame

SPEAKER_01 6:16

it's not from the Lord. The Lord will convict you because he does care about our behaviors and our thoughts and how we treat people and how we treat ourselves. He wants us to be in alignment with his ways because he knows that's what's best for us. But he does that through conviction and invitation, not through condemnation and shame. I encourage you to develop curiosity, whether you're hearing condemnation and accusations and shame or not, the more you can develop that creativity to say, why am I doing what I'm doing? And allow the Lord to lead you to looking at those emotions, looking at those thoughts. Of what am I afraid is gonna happen if I do this thing? Or why am I not doing it? I feel like if it's a good thing to be doing, it's always at least almost always going to come back to a fear of some kind. A fear of rejection, a fear of being misunderstood, which leads to rejection, like a lot of the fear of man in some way, or the fear of God not coming through for you, of somehow you disqualifying yourself, or somehow being unworthy, even though God has called you worthy, so you can't be unworthy. But that doesn't mean there aren't parts of your soul, there aren't places in your thinking that have a hard time believing and fully embracing. So the curiosity is really helps to be able to go, huh? I wonder, what does this make me think of? What does this make me feel? What am I afraid is gonna happen? And sometimes in that curiosity, you'll come across things that aren't logical and don't they don't really make sense. And that can be tempting to just dismiss those things and be like, whatever, that doesn't even make any sense. I don't see how that fits. But I encourage you to use curiosity there as well. And if you're having a thought process or an emotion that you're like, that just doesn't make sense. It's way too big of an emotion or a reaction for this situation, or like it's just completely irrational. Ask yourself how old you feel when you're having those thoughts and feeling that way, and see if that thought pattern or those emotions would make sense for someone that's that

When Your Reaction Feels Too Big

SPEAKER_01 9:24

age. Because a lot of these deep fears that kind of run subconsciously, we don't even notice them because they're so familiar, because they've been there so much of our lives. If it's a childlike way of thinking, then like whatever age you feel when you're thinking that or when you're feeling that way, see if the Lord shows you anything from when you were that age where you started thinking that way. Because as children, we don't think like adults, our brains aren't developed enough to think abstractly and say things from someone else's point of view, and children are egocentric that the world revolves around them as the way their brain is wired, and so they draw illogical conclusions. They also are gonna have bigger emotions than make sense as adults because they haven't yet developed the emotional skills, the emotional regulation, the awareness, all of that, to be able to gauge the appropriate emotions for different situations. Like, oh my goodness, I'm acting just like my nine-year-old or my three-year-old or whatever. Like, we need to stop and reset here and go, okay, what do I need? Let your curiosity bring me before the Lord and like, Lord, what do I need? Do I need some healing? Do I need a perspective shift? Do I need to repent for something? Do I need to forgive someone? Do I just need someone to understand? And that someone can be yourself. Like you can have understanding for yourself. That like, oh, yeah. If I think about how old I feel when I'm thinking this way and feeling this way, I think about what home life was like, or I think about this thing that happened, it makes sense. We're not gonna live out of that anymore when we see it. But I can say that it makes sense and have compassion for myself who had those experiences and learned to behave and seal and think in the way that I am. And meeting that need then makes it so much easier to change and to mature and show up in the way that you want to show up. So I'm encouraging you to embrace curiosity over condemnation.

SPEAKER_00 12:30

And remember that your healing heals generations.

What You Need And Generational Healing

SPEAKER_00 12:34

I'll talk to you next time.