In our human condition, we seem to find ourselves here, trying to get there. Then, when we finally get there, it becomes here, and a new there looms on the horizon.
We are not made to be static or immobile. We are made to move. We are designed to set goals and achieve them. We are passionate about progress and driven by ambition. However, we are often annoyed by the process.
Waiting is exhausting. Waiting is painful. Waiting is a violation of our sense of urgency. Waiting disrespects the value of our time.
When we pull away from relationships because the emotional cost is too great, we feel like a bad person. We want to follow the leadership of Jesus. We want to be the kind of person who turns the other cheek and goes the extra mile. But being that person takes its toll on our sense of well-being. Our trust turns into suspicion. Our self-sacrifice turns into self-defense and self-preservation. We become discouraged and frustrated. Our personal investments don’t always pay off and it seems pointless to throw any more emotional currency toward relationships that are bankrupting us.
With our emotional center depleted, it is easy to just shut down and go dark. For some of us, the darkness is called depression, and we struggle with thoughts of self-harm. For some of us, the darkness is shoved aside with distractions. We bury ourselves in work, entertainment, shopping, or anything else that will keep us from dealing with our unmet emotional needs.
These needs keep us running from one relationship to another; one career path to another; one church to another; one substance to another. We play the blame game, accusing our parents, our partners, or our culture. We know we have unmet emotional needs, so we are naturally drawn toward people and situations that promise to meet them. Of course, it is only a matter of time before they fail us. No human can fully meet our deep emotional needs. It is a painful lesson we have to learn time and time again, until we begin to understand what it means to level up.
We must accept the fact that no human being is equipped to completely fulfill another human being’s emotional, spiritual, and psychological needs. It is just not possible. And it is not their fault.
To level up, we must set aside our petty resentments about how others fail us. We must admit, we are foolish to think they won’t. They are human too!
From this new perspective, we begin to see Philippians 4:19 much differently. God promises to meet all our needs. Not just physical and spiritual, but emotional as well…
Although introspection is important to growth, it is not the main purpose of our spiritual awakening. We are moving into a new position of authority in Christ. We are leveling up. We are no longer human beings having a spiritual awakening. We are awakened spiritual beings affecting the realm of human existence.
Admittedly, human nature can often get in the way, so we frequently ask the Holy Spirit to show us where we need to improve. We ask for help in making the necessary changes. We believe we receive that help and start thanking God for the results even before we see them. We use the words of Christ, “It is finished!” (Tetelestai) to call an end to our obsession over shortcomings and our continual dialogue of negative self-talk.
Empowered by the Spirit of God, and emboldened by the words of Christ, we let go of the things that trip us up. We release our grip on perfectionism. We dismiss that internal committee in our heads who sit in judgement of our every motive, thought, behavior, or attitude. We stop auditioning for the lead role and find our proper place in the supporting cast. With the spotlight on Jesus and what He is doing, we take our eyes off ourselves and are relieved of self-consciousness.
Pastor Marc explores the powerful story from Mark 9:14-24, where a desperate father cries out to Jesus, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!”
It’s a reminder that belief and faith aren’t the same — belief acknowledges truth, but faith acts on it.
When doubt creeps in, we’re invited to turn that uncertainty into trust, one prayer and one step at a time. No matter what you face, God’s power still works miracles. Pray it today: “Lord, help my unbelief.”
We are damaged humans who have been damaged by other humans. Our only hope of recovery is to submit our claims to God and wait for Him to reimburse us for our loss.
We finally understand that when Jesus instructs us to forgive, He is not telling us we must sustain damage and accept it as okay. He also isn’t telling us that we don’t have a valid claim. In fact, He is stating the exact opposite.
The fact that forgiveness is necessary, means an injury or loss has occurred. Jesus is not denying our claims. He is validating our losses and confirming their legitimacy.
He doesn’t suggest we just get over it. He doesn’t instruct us to ignore it and congratulate ourselves on taking the high road.
He instructs us to forgive because he wants us to gain access to His full coverage comprehensive plan. Jesus is telling us, “Submit your claim to me, and I will take care of all repairs and injuries.” He knows that the process is too exhausting and emotionally charged for us to deal with on our own. He also knows that when two humans try to settle up, they rarely get it right and they seldom get it done.
The presence of unwanted feelings such as insecurity, inadequacy, fear, anger, and other social phobias, coupled with our inability to manage or control them, unleashed within us a desperation for relief at any cost. We soon learned of a temporary reprieve that occurred when our brain chemistry became altered. We didn’t care that the relief would be short lived or cause irreparable damage. The long-awaited relief of rightness, contrasted against the life-long agony of wrongness, offered such an enchanting embrace, we surrendered without a fight.
When our minds were not altered, we fell into total despair. Sadly, these moments of disparity began to seep into every moment, and the relief withdrew as quickly as it came.
We became slaves to our feelings. We tested the quality of our product by the way it made us feel. We watched for warning signs of overdose by the way our bodies felt. We discovered ways to get out of responsibilities by saying, “I don’t feel well.” We made all sorts of excuses to ourselves and to others, based on our feelings. We accused our dealer of cutting because his product didn’t make us feel the way we wanted, or the way it used to. We sank into despair when the supply ran out. We drove through blizzards, walked through storms, and did whatever necessary to get the substance that would make us feel right. We went without sleep, food, and basic necessities. We lost relationships and emptied bank accounts in a mad pursuit of a feeling we wanted to feel.
We were caught in a cycle of frenzied flight. Running from feelings we couldn’t stand. Searching for a feeling we thought we knew. We didn’t like to feel wrong, and we didn’t know how to feel right…
We realized we were no longer addicted, damaged, and dysfunctional. We sensed that our bodies, souls, and spirits were coming into harmony with our divine destiny. As the light seeped into where darkness had been, we saw things we’d never seen before. We understood spiritual concepts that had seemed confusing in the past.
As we opened our minds to sacred text, the revolution began. We discovered new parameters for our belief system.
I Corinthians 2:16 stated, “We understand these things, for we have the mind of Christ,” so we released our mental constraints and became aware of our new understanding.
2 Corinthians 5:17 told us that “anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!”
Therefore, we resisted the temptation to dwell on the past. We had become a new creation in Christ, so there was no past to lament.
We know that our emotions can be a powerful force that affects us, body, mind, and soul. We also know that Jesus has made a way to escape being controlled by our feelings, which can range from pesky to obsessive or even frightening. We are told in the Word that we have been made the righteousness of God in Christ. This flies in the face of feelings that indicate something is wrong with us. Our feelings are no match for the Word of God. If the Creator of the Universe says we are righteous, then our emotions have no right to dispute it.
We have been made right by the blood of Christ which was donated as a divine transfusion to heal us from the inside out. The emotions we feel, the sounds we hear, the words we say, and the images we see, must all defer to the words of our King who has decreed tetelestai over all that is wrong with us…
When we discovered the power of Jesus’ declaration, “It is finished,” we claimed tetelestai over our misaligned compass comprised of human emotion.
We stopped worshipping at the feet of our feelings and ditched them at the foot of the cross. We learned that our feelings were an unpredictable deity. We saw that exalting our feelings to a place of devotion, was nothing short of idolatry.
We made a firm decision to discover God’s thoughts of us, rather than our own thoughts of ourselves.
We didn’t feel like believing in our rightness, but the Word stated we were the righteousness (right-ness) of God. We were much more comfortable feeling wrong and running from it. We were unsure how to settle into knowing, rather than feeling.
It didn’t feel right to believe right, but once we got a revelation of grace, and stopped relying on how bad we felt, we discovered a sense of stability we’d never known before.
We noticed that Jesus’ final word tetelestai, translated into the English phrase, it is finished, seemed to imply a sense of giving up. We found this to be an unfortunate language barrier. As it turns out, in the original Greek language of the New Testament, this word tetelestai is a declaration of victory, completion, and success.
Tetelestai is the comment an artist might whisper after completing his final brush stroke on a masterpiece.
Tetelestai is the report a soldier would bring to his commanding officer when a battle was over, and victory had been secured.
We believe our Savior used His final breath on the cross to declare for all time, to all creation, in every dimension, that there is nothing left undone: It is finished; Tetelestai.
There is no more drudgery to sobriety and no more anguish to recovery. There is no self-effort which must be added to what has been declared, Tetelestai.
Finding Total Recovery in the Words of Christ, "It is Finished!" 