COUNSEL

Dealing with Change

Saul

Sometimes when things change unexpectedly for us, we lose our sense of direction. Like being thrown out into the water when you thought you were in the middle of a field. You weren’t ready, you don’t even know what you need next.

Some psychologists describe events like this an existential crisis. The past and future are now uncertain, the life you had wasn’t what you thought it was. And now you don’t have a clear path forward.

If Christ is not our foundation, when the trouble comes we will fall. It has always been and always will be that way. The foundation of our lives is His Word.

This happened twice in my life so far, the first time, I didn’t handle it correctly and instead of focusing on Christ, I looked to the world for a quick solution. When things are bad, unless the Word is your foundation, you will fall. The proper and best thing to do is spend time in GODs Word, that is the only thing that will set things right.

The 2nd crisis happened because of a perfect storm. But this time I had a conviction that I didn’t want my way but His. His salvation, not mine. How is it I can go through life relying on my works but say I trust Him. If I don’t trust Him with my life, how is it that I trust Him with my salvation. Far be it from me to be at that place.

There is a psychologist who explains a bit about existential crisis, Jordan Peterson. He has a lot of Youtube videos on various psychology subjects but you have to be very careful with insight from sources outside of scripture. I only bring it up because at those times in my life when I experienced it, it was traumatic and then when I heard him describing what I felt, it was very insightful. Nevertheless, as I said earlier, people like him, Tony Robbins etc, usually aren’t coming from a Biblically sound position. And that can be very dangerous. If you are not careful with their advice, you won’t know you are drinking the poison until right before the end.

Sometimes it helps knowing what might be ahead of you are in an existential crisis. Generally I think it’s probably a good idea to slow things down, as much as possible. Even when there isn’t a crisis. As a born again believer in Christ, we are to come out of Babylon. Everybody wants things now. In some cases people expect you to be accessible at any hour of the day and always checking messages. That definitely isn’t healthy. When our life is moving at 100 miles an hour we can’t make sense of the world around us.

Taking away distractions in our life, commitments that aren’t Christ or family related needs to be a top priority. Expectations that come in conflict with that should be adjusted.