I am a homeless person, of sorts. Not in the sense that I don’t have a roof over my head or people who love me. I’m homeless in the sense that while I’ve called numerous places on this planet “home,” none are places I go back to as one would go “back home.” By the time I was forty, I had called five very different geographic locations “home,” and the place I live now has never truly felt like home.
Tag: Identity Page 1 of 3
What’s true about you is what God says about you. Created by God on purpose for a purpose! My identity is in Jesus Christ! How about yours?
Lucas Black
For the past 12 years, I’ve followed the blog of a retired gentleman who turned a cancer diagnosis into an adventure. On the day he finished his chemo treatments in 2003, he bought a motorhome and set out on an adventure that would last 15 more years. He started a blog to keep his family and friends informed of his whereabouts and adventures. It wasn’t long until others started following it, too. Over the course of his blogging life he gained a significant following.
I’ve always thought of boundaries in relationships as drawing a line to keep unhealthy behavior at bay. You know, such as needed for an abusive spouse or a friend who keeps infringing on your time and space.
So when I got to the “Boundaries and God” chapter in Cloud’s and Townsend’s book Boundaries, I was somewhat startled.
Why in the world would we need boundaries with God?
No one escapes criticism. All of us have experienced the hurt — ranging from slightly offensive to soul-crushing — when someone says something negative about us.
Sadly, we often take that criticism and allow it to define us. We let someone else’s judgment intimidate us and hold us back, becoming enslaved to a version of ourselves that we are not.
The truth is, we don’t have to give others the power to define us. We can turn criticism into affirmation by using it to identify our positive God-given characteristics.
Does the Christmas Grinch threaten to steal your joy during the Christmas season? If so, there is hope!
The signs that Christmas is coming soon are all around us now. Christmas music follows us everywhere we go. Decorations line the streets and cover homes and lawns. People scurry around in stores agonizing over what gifts to buy. And the mail carrier is getting later every day as the volume of Christmas mail grows more abundant.
You may be delighting in it all or trying to ignore it all. Either way, you aren’t alone.
