My Self-Help Plan

If there’s a thread that has been weaving through all of my readings lately, and therefore what I think God is trying to tell me is this: I have no idea what I’m doing, my thoughts are all messed up and I have no control over anything.  Thanks, God. I get it.  You’re God and I’m not.

Our culture, of which I am a product, is obsessed with self-help.  How to get skinnier, how to have a better marriage, how to succeed at work, how to get along with your kids, how to make better friendships, how to keep your friends.  The list goes on. The magazine titles and self-help book section will confirm.  We want all the steps to all the things to improve our lives.

In the meantime, I’ve seen only one thing have a long-lasting impact in my life: the power of change through Jesus’s healing of my mind, body and soul.

I am a better mother, sister, daughter, worker, servant, person when Jesus comes in and changes me from the inside out.  My heart changes and then my words, actions, habits and outlook changes.

Yeah, that’s a Sunday School answer, but it doesn’t mean it’s easy.  Because it means that we really can’t step our way into any change.  We simply have to believe that the answer lies with him and then make ourselves available to that power.

It’s sounds sort of mystical. But really, I think it is.  I experienced more healing and life change lying on my daughter’s bed crying in prayer and release in 20 minutes than I ever have on any self-help plan.

And so, I’ve come to believe this: the best self-help plan is to help myself to Jesus.

And I don’t mean in the same way of helping myself to another plate of dinner.

I mean, helping myself get to those moments with Jesus.  For this, I need to ask myself two questions.

First, what is distracting me from Jesus?

What are the things that are keeping me from Jesus? Is it TV, is it too many commitments, is it simple preoccupation of my mind?  Of course, we have to live life and we can’t be in prayer 100% of the time, but as I talked about last week and grocery shopping, all of life can be centered around him while we do life.  It’s a matter of our mind being focused.  But sometimes, yes, our DVRs are too full and we’ve stretched ourselves too thin and we blame busyness for why we can’t get to Jesus.

So, find your distractions and get rid of them as much as possible.

For me, it was TV.  I was spending hours and hours every night watching it. Now, I don’t.  It’s pretty fabulous.

The second question we have to ask is how do I experience Jesus?

It’s fine to rid yourself of distractions, but if you only replace it with other distractions you’re not helping yourself to Jesus at all. We have to find out how we experience Jesus best.  Do you hike? Do you paint? Do you serve?  Do you sing? Do you write?  What are the moments where you experience him?  Find those and do those more in place of your distractions.

I’ve found I experience more of him when I’m reading and writing.  So, I do more of that in the place of TV.

When I do this, he teaches me all the things I need to have a better marriage, be a better worker, how to parent, how to have a better body image, how to keep my friends.

The best self-help is helping myself to Jesus.

It is simply this: what distractions do you have keeping you from Jesus and how do you need to replace them?