Some time ago I remember reading a simple but profound statement by Cecil Osborne. He said, “When we are hiding a deeper sin or fault, we tend to confess a lesser one all the more vigorously.”

A friend of mine, for example, had been trying to overcome his smoking addiction for 20 years without success. No matter how hard he tried, he just couldn’t break the addictive habit.

When he shared his struggle with me, I simply asked, “Why do you need to smoke?”

He looked at me with a blank stare as if to say, “Are you crazy, what are you talking about? I don’t need to smoke.” He then mumbled a few incoherent sentences, turned around, and walked away. He died a few years later of cancer!

True, my friend’s smoking addiction was a problem, but it wasn’t the real problem. It was the fruit of a deeper root—the symptom of some unresolved issue he was either afraid or unwilling to examine. He was confessing the wrong sin/problem; that is, he was confessing just the symptom, not the deeper cause.

The same principle is true of all addictive behaviors and many of our negative and sinful actions. To overcome we need to be ruthlessly honest with ourselves, with at least one safe person who won’t judge or put us down, and with God. We need to admit and confess not only the symptoms but the causes behind them. We may need to ask God to give us the courage to face these causes and to lead us to the help, support, and recovery program we need to overcome them.

This is the kind of praying God loves to hear and answer. As his word says, he “is near to all who call on him in truth.”

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please give me the courage to admit all of my sins and failures, and to face the causes behind them, whether they be behavioral, physical, emotional or spiritual. And give me the courage to confess all of these to at least one trusted friend or counselor as well as to you. And please lead me to the help I need to overcome them. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Psalm 145:18 (NIV).

“Laughter may not be the best medicine, but it is surprisingly effective. While the idea has been around for a while, more studies are confirming the anecdotal evidence. In a study published in Diabetes Care, researchers reported that people with type II diabetes had a smaller rise in blood glucose when they watched a comedy program versus a boring lecture on television. A team at the University of Maryland found that people who laughed often and were able to see the humor in situations were less likely to develop heart disease.

“Researchers say people who laugh tend to be healthier people. In study after study, hostility and anger are associated with disease, and humor with health. This is especially true when you’re laughing it up with friends. Research on support groups has shown that the effects of laughter are magnified when it takes place in a social setting.”²

Amazing isn’t it? It’s taken modern science to discover, or at least, to confirm, what God’s Word taught 3,000 years ago—that laughter/cheerfulness is a good medicine.

Interesting, too, until the time of Christopher Columbus so many believed the world was flat, and yet Isaiah, one of the Old Testament prophets wrote over 2,000 years ago: “He [God] sits enthroned above the circle of the earth.”³

And over 3,000 years ago God gave the ancient Israelites strict laws by which to live, many of which had to do with good health and hygiene. God promised that if they obeyed these laws, they would be protected from diseases that afflicted the Egyptians.⁴

If we also live according to the principles found in God’s Word, the Bible, we too can have a much happier, healthier life. Naturally, we need to know what God’s Word teaches if we are to live by it.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please give me a deep love for and a great appreciation of your Word and, like David, write it on my heart, so that it will help me to live in harmony with your will, knowing that my life will be all the richer for it. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.

1. Proverbs 17:22 (NIV).

2. Paul Perry, “Seven Resolutions to Keep This Year, Part 6,” AH About Health, Winter 2004. Page 9. Published by McMurry publishers and South Coast Medical Center, Laguna Beach, CA. © by www.mcmurry.com.

3. Isaiah 40:22 (NIV).

4. See Exodus 15:26.

A Daily Encounter subscriber writes, “Dear ACTS, I have a relationship problem. My second relationship turns out to be a man of many personalities with a hidden secret to his life. What should I do? Move on or help out as a friend? Please help.”

Hello Jean (name changed), chances are that you may not like what I have to say but the fact is that the kind of persons we are attracted to—especially romantically—says a lot about ourselves. Thus, it is very important that you understand what it is in you that attracted you to this type of person and they to you. As I have often said, we are as sick (or as healthy) as the person/s we are attracted to.

It is one thing to help a person if you are a counselor and they admit that they have a problem and need help. It is a totally different thing if you are romantically interested in a person who is in need of help and you want to “fix” him. Not good. Chances are you are a co-dependent person who needs to be needed in order to feel loved. The problem is that this is not love—it is need. Furthermore, being the helper/fixer of someone else is a way to avoid facing and resolving your own issues. Keep in mind, too, that codependent people are attracted to over-dependent, needy persons.

The only way anyone of us can find and have healthy relationships is to become healthy and whole ourselves. For only to the degree that we are made whole will our lifestyle, our attitudes, our behaviors, and our relationships be wholesome.

So whatever you do, before you make a commitment and get involved romantically with any man be absolutely sure you are emotionally healthy and ready for a healthy relationship. Let this be a wake-up call for you to get into a recovery program and work on your own growth and well-being.

You may find some very helpful articles on our website at

https://learning.actsweb.org/articles/Recovery.php

Also, every day pray and commit and trust your life and way to God asking him to help you become a whole and healthy person—the kind of person he wants each one of us to be.

Suggested prayer: Dear God, please reveal to me any areas in my life—any areas of immaturity and weaknesses—that I need to face and resolve so that I will become whole and healthy and so that all my relationships will be wholesome and healthy, and bring glory to you. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Proverbs 19:19 (NIV).

A Daily Encounter reader writes, “My husband is a heavy beer drinker. He averages 12 to 18 beers a day. He is not convicted about his drinking habit. He feels that only ‘drunkenness’ is a sin. We are new Christians and I thought he would discontinue his drinking once he was closer to God. We have only been married a short time, but this is distressing me. I don’t want to come across as holier than thou. He knows how I feel about his habit, and sometimes it is very difficult to keep from complaining. Please help.”

Dear Anita (name changed): If your husband has twelve to eighteen beers a day, I’d say he’s an alcoholic. Unfortunately, most alcoholics deny their problem and continually rationalize their behavior; that is, until there is some kind of crisis intervention. So what can you do?

First, while your husband is obviously in denial, it is imperative that you face reality or you will become a part of and reinforce his sickness. There is a reason why you were attracted to an over-dependent personality. Chances are you may have had an alcoholic father and are repeating a family pattern. Or you may be codependent with a need to be needed in order to feel loved. Whatever the reason, you need to see your part in the problem. You can’t change your husband but you can change you. As you change, your husband is almost forced to change, but, in all probability, not without rocking the boat. He wants you to be there to take care of him and to put up with his drinking. If you decide you are not going to be his “savior” any longer, trust me, he won’t like it.

Second, you need to exercise tough love and confront your husband with reality. This is the most loving thing you can do. True, tough love is tough—really tough. There’s no guarantee that it will work, but if you don’t exercise tough love, you are both headed for disaster. You need to lovingly explain to your husband that his heavy drinking has you deeply concerned, that it is affecting your relationship, that he needs to see that his drinking is a problem, and that he needs to get help.

Third, before you do this, however, you need to have a good support system in place. Don’t even try to go it alone. Get help for yourself. Get into a twelve-step Al-Anon support group and I urge you to see a qualified Christian counselor who can help you grow and guide you through this rocky process.

If your husband refuses to face reality (which he is bound to do at first) and continues his heavy drinking, at some point you may have to tell him that unless he faces reality and gets into a recovery program, you will have to separate yourself from him until he admits he has a problem and gets help to overcome. If you don’t make a stand now, you are heading for far greater problems ahead.

Fourth, and most important of all, seek God’s help. Ask God every day to help you to be as Christ to your husband in everything you do and say, and pray that your husband will see Jesus in you and want the same for himself.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, in every distressing situation I am in please help me to see what I am contributing to the problem, admit what it is, and get the help I need to overcome. Also help me to always be ‘as Jesus’ to anyone I am in conflict with, and exercise tough love where tough love is needed. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Romans 13:13-14 (NIV).

Most of us will be familiar with the children’s fable of the ugly duckling how a mother hen had six beautiful golden yellow chicks and one ugly gray one. The ugly one was picked on by all the other chicks, rejected, made fun of, and made to feel terrible because he was so different. You can imagine how he felt. Some time later when all the chicks were grown, along came a flock of beautiful swans. How the ugly duckling adored them and lo and behold, he looked into the water and saw his own reflection and came to the profound realization that he wasn’t an ugly duckling but a beautiful swan! His life was forever changed.

Did you ever feel like you were an “ugly duckling” misfit? Many of us have. Many still do. I’ve known beautiful people who felt and believed they were ugly. In younger days I had a “girl friend” who told me I was ugly. Tragically I believed her! She wasn’t my girl friend very long but the image she planted in my mind took a long time to erase. When we define ourselves as ugly and believe it, it can be devastating to our self-image and behavior and how well we do in life.

When parents or peers repeatedly tell us we are ugly, clumsy, stupid or whatever, and we believe what they say and define ourselves that way, we tend to act accordingly because we always act consistently with what we believe deep down—no matter what we may profess.

I know it is easier said than done, but there is only one way to truly define ourselves, and that is how God sees us. And when we see ourselves this way, our life can be forever changed too!

Certainly God sees our wounded-ness, our brokenness, our sins, and our failures, but he separates our person from our actions and sees beyond these. He sees us as his creation and loves us with an everlasting love. He sees the person in us that he envisions us to be . . . our potential and what, with his help, we can become.

As Michelangelo said, “I saw the angel in the marble and chiseled until I set it free.” That’s how God sees you and me. He looks beyond the rugged exterior and sees the “angel” within each of us.

As God said to the ancient Israelites, he also says to you and me: “For I know the plans I have for you . . . plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

May God help each of us to see ourselves as God sees us, to see our God-given potential, and with God’s help become that person. (If you haven’t already done this, it begins with accepting God’s Son, Jesus Christ, as your personal Lord and Savior. For help, click on the article, “How to Be Sure You’re a Real Christian” at: http://tinyurl.com/real-christian.)

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, thank you that you know and see me exactly as I am—and love and accept me totally as I am. Thank you, too, that you have a wonderful plan and purpose for my life. Please help me to see this, believe it, and define myself as you see me—and with your help, become that person. Gratefully in Jesus’ name. Amen.”

1. Jeremiah 29:11 (NIV)

Someone else said with tongue-in-cheek, “Heaven help your neighbor if you hate yourself!” They were right.

Every normal person wants and needs loving relationships, but if we hate ourselves we are not going to experience loving relationships. We will unconsciously project our self-hatred onto others and set them up to reject us, for what we project is what we get back!

Actually, only to the degree that I have learned to love and accept myself in a healthy sense am I able to love and accept others in a healthy sense. What I hate and have rejected in myself, I will also hate and reject in others. My relationships will only ever be as healthy as I am.

Healthy self-love and acceptance isn’t a prideful thing, but rather, it is learning to know and accept ourselves as we are—dark side and all. Only then are we able to change and keep growing to become healthier and more loving persons.

To grow in self-love we need to be fully known by at least one other loving and accepting person—a person who will not put us down, judge or criticize us, tell us what we should or shouldn’t do, try to fix us, give unsolicited advice, or preach at us, but accept us just as we are. It is through their knowing, accepting, and loving us as we are that, little by little, we learn to love and accept ourselves. This truth cannot be over-emphasized for we can only feel loved to the degree that we are known, accepted, and loved by at least one loving, trusted person. This is not to imply that this person approves of any negative or destructive behavior. Not at all.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please give me at least one safe, loving and accepting person whom I can trust with my total life—dark side and all—and through their loving acceptance of me, help me to learn to love and accept myself as you love and accept me, so I can truly love you with all my heart, soul, and mind, and love my neighbor as you want me to. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Matthew 22:36-40 (NIV).

I recall teaching a group where I said that it was okay to be angry. One lady was absolutely amazed. She told me that she had been taught all her life that Christians never get angry. So she had reasoned in her mind: “Christians never get angry. I’m always angry. Therefore I can never be a Christian!”

That night she was freed from 20 years of anguish and received assurance of her salvation. She was indeed a Christian because she had received Jesus as her Savior.

Anger is amoral; that is, of itself it is neither right nor wrong. It’s what we do with it and how we handle it that matters. The Bible actually says, “In your anger do not sin,”1 or as an older translation says, “Be angry—sin not.”

Anger itself (not rage, hostility or bitterness) is a God-given emotion. Its purpose is to fight evil and right wrongs. This is how Florence Nightingale used her anger. She was angry at the way wounded soldiers were being badly mistreated, so she did something about it. We, too, are meant to use our anger in creative ways.

The reality is that everybody gets angry at some time or another. Some people bury and deny theirs, while others lash out and hurt others. Neither of these is healthy nor Christian.

When expressing anger we need to own it as our own, and remember that the biblical principle is to speak the truth in love. One way to do this is to say something like, “I know my feelings are my responsibility, but I feel angry and need to talk to you about such and such.”

Never say to a person, “You make me angry.” This is because nobody can make us angry without our permission. All they do is trigger our anger but the anger is always ours.

Unfortunately, when we have a lot of bottled up anger or anger from the past that has never been resolved, our anger button can get triggered real easy and we overreact. As I’ve said many times, what the other person does to me is their issue. How I feel and react is always my responsibility—but to the degree that I overreact, that is totally my problem.

For healthy, intimate relationships it is imperative that we learn to identify our feelings—positive and negative—to be honest about them, and learn how to handle them in creative, rather than destructive, ways.

As the Bible teaches, “If you are angry, don’t sin by nursing your grudge. Don’t let the sun go down with you still angry—get over it quickly, for when you are angry [and don't resolve it] you give a mighty foothold to the devil.”²

For more information on anger and how to handling it creatively, click on “Taming Your Anger” at: http://tinyurl.com/tame-anger.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, thank you for the gift of feelings. Please help me to be in touch with all of mine, be honest with them and, when expressing them, help me to always speak the truth in love. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Ephesians 4:26 (NIV).

2. Ephesians 4:25-27 (TLB) (NLT).

Michael Josephson of Character Counts was addressing a group of journalists regarding journalistic ethics. He “posed the question, ‘When is it proper for a journalist to report about the private life of a public official?’

“Jack Anderson, a well-known investigative columnist, replied: ‘I don’t think we should report on the private behavior of a politician unless it’s relevant to his job.’ Then he added, ‘but we don’t always follow our own tests.’

“I asked him to explain and he said: ‘A few years ago, a woman came into my office and gave me an airtight affidavit that the mayor of Tucson had bit her on the thigh. Now, I didn’t think this was too relevant to his job, but some stories are too good to pass up.’”²

In this political mayhem going on in the U.S. at this time, between competing politicians attacking each other, and considerable biased media, there are many times when I feel like throwing up. One wonders if there are any ethics.

I think there ought to be a strict rule that governs all media that says, “No politician or journalist (or anybody else) is allowed to confess anybody else’s sins and failures publicly, before confessing his or her own publicly.” Zero chance of this ever happening.

Sad to say, far too many of those who call ourselves Christians don’t do too much better. We can be quick to confess others’ sins while hiding our own. The Bible tells us to confess our sins to each other . . . not to confess others’ sins to each other. There’s another name for this. It’s gossip. The Bible condemns it.

When it comes to Christian growth groups, rule number one is, “Confess nobody’s sins but your own. Period.” True, in life there are times when a leader’s behavior needs to be confronted, but before we do it, let’s make sure our own life is squeaky clean, that our own sins are confessed and resolved, and that our life is right with God.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please deliver me from the sin of gossip. Help me to see my own sins and faults, confess these to a trusted friend and to you, and with your help overcome these. And help me always to live and abide by Christian ethics. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. James 5:16 (NIV).

2. Josephson, Michael, Character Counts, 553.1, http://charactercounts.org/michael/the_nature_of_character/.

A Daily Encounter reader wrote, “I read your Daily Encounter on ‘Overcoming Addictions,’ and it hit home. I too am desperate and have prayed for years and looked for help but nothing has happened. I am the wife of an alcoholic. We are now separated…. After years of promises and disappointments, it is hard to believe that he can change, but I do keep praying for him and working on strengthening my faith…. I hope you can help me.”

Dear Shirley (name changed), I’m sorry to hear of your struggle. Unfortunately, there are far too many people living with an alcoholic and their pain is excruciating. I believe you did the right thing in physically separating from your alcoholic husband for as long as he refuses to get help to overcome his addiction. Tough love is the most loving thing to do in your situation. As stated in today’s Scripture there are some problems that we each need to accept responsibility for.

Not to be unkind, but it is very likely that you may be codependent, and while physically distancing yourself from your alcoholic husband is a step of growth for you, you will need help to overcome your “addiction.” That is, codependents, more often than not, are addicted to the addict. In other words, their need is to feel needed in order to feel loved. However, this is isn’t love at all. It’s need. That’s why it is never fulfilling nor can it be. It ends up leaving one lonely, frustrated, hurt and angry.

It is good that you recognize your need for help. You will need counseling for yourself because rarely can we resolve these problems alone. Ask your minister or doctor if he/she can recommend a qualified Christian counselor in your area.

Getting help for yourself is the most loving thing you can do for you, for your husband, and for your children. Unless you get the help you need for you, you won’t be able to help the rest of your family.

Also, be sure to pray for truth. Ask God to reveal to you the truth about you and to show you how you may have contributed in any way to the situation you are in. There are always reasons within ourselves why we are attracted to the person we marry. Once we know the truth about our self, we know what the right thing is for us to do. Remember, too, we can’t change anybody but our self. And the healthier and stronger we become, the better able we are to deal with our situation.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, no matter what problem I find myself facing, help me always to see what I am contributing to the situation, and please help me make the changes I need to make before ever expecting anyone else to change. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Galatians 6:5 (NKJV).

I live at the top of a mile-long very steep hill and for exercise I like to ride my mountain bike down and up our hill at least three times a week. It’s great fun riding down but riding up is another story … and it never seems to get easier. “Do you enjoy riding?” someone asks. My answer? “I love having ridden.”

True, I don’t enjoy riding up our hill. It’s hard work, but I love having ridden because of the benefits gained. There is an immediate benefit in that it’s a great stress reliever, offsetting some of the adverse affects of stress. It also produces endorphins in the brain that helps me feel much better emotionally than when I don’t exercise regularly. Plus it helps keep my body in shape; is great for the circulatory system, and helps to keep fit physically. Furthermore, as Paul suggests, discipline of the body helps to maintain discipline in other areas of life.

Self-discipline in every area of life is a never-ending challenge but the dividends of living a disciplined life are well worth every effort put forth. Discipline never happens by chance. It is a choice—a fresh choice every day!

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, help me to realize the importance, not only of physical discipline, but discipline in every area of life. And give me the courage to face and confront every barrier in my life that fights against self-discipline. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. 1 Corinthians 9:27 (NKJV).