I read recently about certain ants that have a passion for the sweet glandular substance given off by the caterpillar of a large blue butterfly. According to the article, the ants can become so enthralled by the substance they carry the supplier into their nest with great delight. What they don’t realize is that the caterpillar gorges himself on the ant larva.

Usually such a threat would be attacked by an army of ants and destroyed or repelled. However, because they enjoy the caterpillar’s tasty secretions so much, they become “addicted” to it. In so doing they are oblivious to the fact that their young are being destroyed!

In reality many of us are addicted to something. It may not be drugs or alcohol, but anything we habitually or compulsively use or do to avoid facing our inner unresolved problems (such as fears, hurts, losses, anger, guilt, inadequacies, etc.), is an addiction. It may be work, religion, gambling, spending, eating, smoking, relationships, sex or any of a score of other things—some of which may be very enjoyable.

Of one thing we can be sure, when our life is being controlled by addictions, we don’t grow and we can damage and even destroy our children, our closest relationships, and our physical, emotional or spiritual health. Besides, an addiction is often a counterfeit of the real thing and when we settle for the counterfeit we can stop ourselves finding the genuine.

Only when we are ruthlessly honest with ourselves and admit to God and at least one other safe person that we are addicted can we get God’s help to face the causes behind our addictions and seek the help we need to overcome them.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, if there is anything I am doing or using to medicate or deaden any unresolved problems in my life, please deliver me from the sin of denial, and give me the courage to admit my problems and find the help I need to face and resolve them. Thank You for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully in Jesus’s name. Amen.”

1. Matthew 26:41 (NIV).

Imagine living in a world without emotions. It would be like living in a world without color—a world without blue skies, white fluffy clouds, red roses, or beautiful rainbows and sunsets. Everything would be a dull monotonous gray. Life would be deadly dull and boring—as it is when emotions are repressed.

Like many others, especially men, I grew up being taught that feelings weren’t important and that you couldn’t trust them.”

Thank God it isn’t so. Feelings are God-given. They are an inner monitor letting us know what is going on inside of us. The more we are in touch with our true emotions, the more they can inform us when our life is out of harmony and we need an emotional tune up, caution us of impending danger, warn us when we are around unsafe people, affirm us when we are with safe people, guide us when we have major decisions to make, keep us in tune with God’s leading, and assure us when our life is in harmony with others and God. Admittedly, if we don’t understand them, they can confuse us and get us tied in knots!

Feelings are a gift from God. To deny and repress them we now know can be disastrous, physically, emotionally and spiritually. The first three fruits of God’s Spirit—love, joy, and peace—are emotions. Thus, if our emotion of love is repressed, how can God’s love flow through us? It can’t.

Yes, it may take a while but we can learn to trust our feelings. What we can’t always trust is how to interpret them correctly. It can be like learning a new language, but a language well worth learning, without which there can be no true intimacy either with my loved ones or with God.

Another way of describing emotions could be E-Motions or Energy in Motion! One thing is sure. Without emotions we are characteristically bored with life and lose our energy and our drive. Thank God for emotions.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, as you desire truth in the innermost being,² please deliver me from the ‘sin of denying my true emotions,’ help me to get in touch with my true feelings and inner self, and learn how to understand them and express them creatively when such is needed. Thank You for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’s name, amen.”

1. Galatians 5:22 (NIV).

2. Psalm 51:6.

There’s an old joke about the Australian aborigine who was given a brand new boomerang for his birthday. Unfortunately he couldn’t throw his old one away—it kept coming back.

Life’s kind of like that. Have you ever tried to throw away an old bad habit … or a self-defeating addiction?

Someone said that the best way to break a bad habit is to drop it. Sure would be great if it were that easy. It isn’t. However, if we don’t break the habit or addiction, it will have a way of breaking us.

So how do we break a bad habit and/or a self-defeating addiction?

First, we need to admit that we have a problem and that it has us beaten. The only person God or anyone else can ever help is the one who admits, “I have a problem. I need help”—and genuinely means it and is prepared to do something about it. Bad habits and addictions rarely, if ever, leave us without a battle.

Second, we need to avoid playing the blame-game at all costs and accept full responsibility for our actions and our recovery.

Third, we need to realize that bad habits and especially addictions are a means to medicate some inner problem or pain that we have never faced, dealt with and resolved. Bad habits and addictions are almost always the “fruit of a deeper root.”

Fourth, we need to seek qualified help, be it a support/recovery group and/or that of a qualified counselor/therapist. We need this support in order to keep us accountable and to help us stop acting out our addiction and thereby medicating (deadening) the pain. To heal it we need to feel it. Medicating it stops us from facing and resolving it.

Fifth, we need to pray the right prayer. Many people beg God to deliver them from their destructive symptoms but never think to realize that they need to pray that God will confront them with the reality of the cause/s that drives them to act out in destructive habits and/or addictions. It is only as we face and confront the truth—the real cause/s—behind our destructive habits that we have any chance of recovery.

As Dr. Cecil Osborne used to day, “When we are hiding a deeper sin or fault we tend to confess a lesser one all the more vigorously.” That is; instead of confessing the cause/causes of our behavior we get obsessed with and confess only the symptom. This tends to reinforce the addiction rather than overcome it because “whatever the mind dwells on, the body acts on.”

When we pray for truth and genuinely mean it, God always answers. Once we see the truth (cause) of our problem, we usually know what we need to do about resolving it. As God’s Word says, “The LORD is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth.”²

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, no matter what problems I struggle with, please help me to see the real cause/s behind them and, with Your help, accept full responsibility for dealing with them. Also, please lead me to the help I need to overcome. Thank You for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’s name, amen.”

NOTE: For helpful recovery and counseling resources go to http://tinyurl.com/85cel

1. James 4:3 (NIV).
2. Psalm 145:18 (NIV).

The following story has been around on the email for a while but it isn’t true. It does make for a good parable however. “Once upon a time” there was a radio conversation between two ships off the coast of Neverland.

Ship One: Please divert your course 15 degrees to the North to avoid a collision.

Ship Two: Recommend you divert YOUR course 15 degrees to the South to avoid a collision.

Ship One: This is the Captain of a navy ship. I say again, divert YOUR course.

Ship Two: No, I say again, you divert YOUR course.

Ship One: This is an AIRCRAFT CARRIER and we are accompanied by numerous support vessels. I demand that YOU change YOUR course 15 degrees north, that’s one five degrees north, or counter measures will be taken to ensure the safety of this ship.

Ship Two: This is a lighthouse. Your call.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please help me not to be carried away with my own importance, never blame others for my problems, and always be open to correction and guidance. Thank You for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’s name, amen.”

1. 2 Timothy 4:2 (NIV).

I believe it was Ernest Hemingway who coined the phrase “growing strong in the broken places.” When a bone is broken, for example, the calcium buildup that “welds” the bone together makes that the strongest part of the bone.

When our life is committed to God and we bring our broken parts to him for healing, we, too, become strong in the broken places.

Another aspect on being broken is in the words of Vance Havner who said, “God uses broken things. It takes broken soil to produce a crop, broken clouds to give rain, broken grain to give bread, broken bread to give strength. It is the broken alabaster box that gives forth perfume . . . it is Peter, weeping bitterly [after his failure of denying Jesus], who returns to greater power than ever.”

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please give me the courage to face every ‘broken part’ in my life and bring these to You for Your healing and lead me to the help I need for full recovery. Grant that I, too, will grow strong in the broken places and be used by You to be a blessing and encouragement to others. Thank You for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’s name, amen.”

1. Jesus (Luke 4:18).

As kids, if we were called names we used to retort in reply: “Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me.” Unfortunately this is far from the truth. Name calling can hurt a whole lot more than sticks or stones.

I can still recall as an insecure youth how a girl I was dating at the time told me that while there was nothing wrong with my features, I was ugly. Unfortunately for me I believed her. True, it was because of my already feeling insecure that I believed her. Nevertheless it took me many years to overcome that painful remark. This is one reason I wrote the following poem a few years ago:

Unsung Songs

How many songs never sung,
poems never written,
pictures never painted,
risks never taken,
bridges never crossed,
romantic words never spoken…
locked inside a lonely heart
the prison of another’s making…
are left unexpressed
because somebody
shamed us, abandoned us,
or perhaps silenced us
with a cruel word,
a thoughtless deed,
and said or just implied
we were not good enough,
and tragically
we believed them?
Let this be the moment
we choose to believe them no more…
and sing, sing, sing.²

– Dick Innes
© Copyright

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, help me never to speak a cruel word to anyone and even when I need to disagree, help me always to speak the truth in love—never in bitterness or hostility. Thank You for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’s name, amen.”

1. Colossians 4:6 (The Message).
2. See: http://tinyurl.com/ylrpmx

Excuses. I guess there is never a shortage of them. The following notes from parents excusing their children from attending school have been around a while but if you haven’t seen them, I’m sure you will get a kick out of them:

“Please excuse Freddie from being away yesterday because he had the fuel.”

“Please accuse Michael from being absent on January 30 because he was aleing.”

“George was absent yesterday because of a sore trout.”

“Please excuse Betsey from being absent. She was sick and I had her shot.”

“Joseph has been absent ‘becuz’ he had two teeth taken off his face.”

“My son is under doctor’s care and should not take fisical education. Please execute him.”

“Please excuse Ralph from school on Friday. He had very loose vowels.”

And how did Adam excuse and justify himself when he sinned and disobeyed God? Many say he blamed Eve. But he really blamed God. “It was the woman you gave me that made me do it,” he said to God! And then the woman blamed the serpent!

I often wonder how many of us blame either God or the devil for the things that have gone wrong in our lives, things which were the direct result of the choices we made all by ourselves. Sometimes, to blame God, the devil, or anybody else for our problems is a handy excuse to hang on to if we don’t want to face reality, accept responsibility, and grow up!

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, help me always to be honest with myself and face reality, and always accept responsibility for the things I say, the things I do, the feelings I feel, and the motives behind all of these. Thank You for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’s name, amen.”

1. Luke 10:29.

A Daily Encounter subscriber shares his struggle saying, “My life is trapped in a pile of mud … down under the ocean.”

“Dear Friend,” I replied, “I am saddened to hear that you feel so downcast. You are certainly not alone in your struggle. For many, life is a struggle, a disappointment; or depressing. Speaking personally, I came from a very dysfunctional family background, felt rejected by my father, was extremely insecure in younger days, plus, because of my unresolved personal issues (damaged emotions), my first marriage was a disaster. Furthermore, because of my family background where love for me in my subconscious mind meant feeling rejected and being hurt, I was afraid to love and knew that if I didn’t get the help I needed, I would be running from love for the rest of my life.

“However, with the support of good friends, in-depth professional counseling, and by the grace God, I have survived, and life for me these days has never been more fulfilling. My recovery, however, didn’t happen overnight. It took determination, a steadfast commitment to “being made well,” and lots of help. Note that Jesus didn’t say to the crippled man, “Do you wish to be made well? It was, “Do you want to be made well?” To be made well, we need to want it badly enough to take full responsibility and do everything we need to do in order to be made well. The half-hearted never make it.

“Once you work through and resolve your pain, one of the most important things you can do is to ‘invest your pain‘ as it were; by learning how to overcome, and then by becoming a wounded healer to support others in their recovery. I am quick to admit that if there is any quality and depth in the ministry that has been entrusted to me today, most of it has come out of my years of personal struggle and learning how to overcome.

“I encourage you to pray that God will reveal to you the pathway for your healing and recovery; that He will lead you to find the help you need to fully recover, and that He will then use you to become a fellow wounded healer. To find a highly qualified Christian professional counselor, if you live in the U.S. or Canada, I suggest that you call the office of the Narramore Christian Foundation at 1-800-477-5893, and press ’1′ for Dianne, and she should be able to give you the contact information for a counselor or two in your area.

“True, counseling can be expensive, but in many ways some of us can’t afford not to receive it. For many months I worked two jobs at once—one in the daytime and the other at night—to pay for the counseling I needed.

“For today’s suggested prayer I encourage you pray the following simple prayer at the beginning of every day for the rest of your life: ‘Dear God, again today I commit and trust my life and way to You. Please help me to become the person you want me to be, and please use me to be ‘as Jesus’ in some way to every life I have contact with today. Thank You for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’s name, amen.’

“I have prayed this prayer every day since my youth and plan to keep praying it every day for the rest of my life. I hope that you will too. Given time and asking God to help you find the help you need to ‘get out of the mud,’ you will find that it will help you tremendously as long as you pray it consistently and sincerely.

“Furthermore, for a starting point, if you have never accepted Jesus Christ as your Savior knowing that your sins are forgiven by God, be sure to read the article, ‘How to Be Sure You’re a Real Christian’ at: www.actsweb.org/christian. I’m sure, too, that some of the articles online at: www.actsweb.org/articles/Solutions.php will be a help. And I suggest that you read the book, You Can’t Fly With a Broken Wing. This book was written out of my overcoming life’s struggles, and can be purchased on sale at: http://actscom.com/store.”

1. John 5:6 (NKJV).

If I were to ask you if you want to be made whole, I’m sure you would say yes. But what does it mean to be whole? Simply put, it means to become a whole person especially in mind and spirit; that is, to become emotionally well, and spiritually well. Quite a challenge to be sure.

As long as we live in our human body we will be subject to sickness and disease. However, the more whole we become emotionally and spiritually, the healthier we are more likely to be physically. Unresolved spiritual and/or emotional issues make us much more susceptible to illnesses of all kinds.

For instance, a person whose life is riddled with guilt because of unconfessed sin, or is nursing a grudge and refusing to forgive someone who has hurt him or her is more than likely to get sick physically and/or mentally. Many an ulcer, for example, is caused not so much by what we are eating but by what is eating us on the inside. And when I repress super-charged negative emotions, as John Powell puts it, “My stomach keeps score.”

While the principle for being made well/whole is simple, the process is anything but simple. That is, if we want to be made well/whole, we need to resolve all past hurts, forgive anyone and everybody who has ever hurt us, face and resolve every buried negative emotion, deal with and resolve any unconfessed sin, and make our life right with God.

Remember, too, there is a world of difference between a want and a wish. To be made well/whole takes total commitment, personal honesty, and determination. The half-hearted never make it. They may wish to get well but they don’t want it badly enough to be willing to pay the price of doing what it takes to be made well/whole.

Jesus’ invitation is still available. Receiving the answer is up to each one of us. Do you truly want to be made whole/well? For only to the degree that we are made whole will our lifestyle, our behavior and actions, our manner of living, and our relationships be wholesome.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please help me to understand fully what it means and what it takes to be made whole, and give me the courage and will to do what I need to do in order to be made whole. Thank You for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’s name, amen.”

1. John 5:5-6 (NKJV).

One of the major problems Daily Encounter readers write to me about is relationship conflicts. When any close relationship is out of order, mental and emotional stress results. If continuing over a long period of time, this can cause major illnesses. No wonder that God’s Word, the Bible, instructs us to get rid of our feelings of hatred, jealousy, dishonesty and the like. In other words we need to resolve all negative emotions, stop repressing and denying feelings, and grow up in emotional as well as spiritual maturity. When we fail to do this, we pay the high price of relational conflict and run the risk of many physical and emotional illnesses.

Furthermore, when we fail to resolve super-charged, repressed negative emotions from the past, we have various “hot buttons” that get easily triggered and cause us to over-react. If for example, when growing up I had an angry father and was often in conflict with him, I am bound to have a “hot father-button.” And then, in my adult life whenever someone’s behavior towards me reminds me in any way of my father, my “hot father-button” will get triggered. I will then relate to this person in exactly the same way that I related to my father and overreact in my response towards that person. In my thinking I will automatically blame that person for my response. What this person did to me may or may not be a problem; however, my response to him/her is always my responsibility and to the degree that I overreact, that is always my problem! As long as I play the blame-game, I will “be lame”; that is, I will never resolve my relationship conflicts.

It is only as I become authentic (get real) and face the truth about why I overreact to people, will I ever be set free from and/or resolve my impaired relationships. As long as we are in denial, as John Powell so insightfully said, “We defend our dishonesty on the grounds that it may hurt another person; and then, having rationalized our phoniness into nobility, we settle for superficial relationships.”²

To resolve super-charged negative emotions from the past—even all the way back to childhood—often needs the help of a skilled professional counselor. If this is your situation, recovery begins with acknowledging your problem and admitting that you need help. Ask your minister or your family doctor if they can recommend a counselor who specializes in helping to resolve damaged emotions.* Above all, admit and confess your problem to God. One of the most powerful prayers anyone can ever pray is, “God I have a problem. I need help. Please be merciful to me a sinner and lead me to the help I need to overcome my problem.” (Be sure to name the problem. Call it what it is).

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, in every conflict situation in which I find myself, please confront me with the truth of what I am contributing to the conflict. Help me to recognize my ‘hot buttons’ and see when I am overreacting. Direct me to find the help I need to resolve my problem and overcome my ‘hot buttons.’ Thank You for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. 1 Peter 2:1-3 (TLB)(NLT).

2. John Powell, Why I Am Afraid to Tell You Who I Am, Argus Communications.

*For counseling help, if you live in the U.S. or Canada, call the Narramore Christian Foundation at 1-800-477-5893 and press “1″ for Dianne and she should be able to give you the name of a fine Christian counselor or two in your area.

NOTE: For further help see the article, “Resolving Conflict Creatively” at: https://learning.actsweb.org/articles/article.php?i=126&d=1&c=3&p=1.