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Like an old-school hammer, gratitude is not a complex tool. But when learned how to be used correctly, it can get a lot done in a short amount of time.

What To Listen For In This Episode

1. Specific Q&A from last week’s topic of being hurt by the church.
2. An experiential exercise in messages we tell ourselves
3. The reticular activating system
4. How gratitude changes the RAS

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When people are hurting, the church is often one of the first places they turn to find hope, comfort, and answers. Unfortunately, those things are not always readily available because of fallibility of leaders, pastors, and believers in general. Instead of finding comfort, pain in compounded.

There is still hope. There are ways to appropriately deal with the original hurt while working with an imperfect community of believers.

What To Listen For In This Episode

1. Specific stories of hurt and redemption
2. Shared responsibility in the relationship
3. The three roles people play in a church relationship
4. How to find resolution

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When things don’t go your way, it’s normal to be angry, frustrated, confused, or resentful. What you DO with those feelings either help you process through those feelings or get stuck in them longer. You may have learned that getting angry at ANYONE is not acceptable, especially God. Or you may never have learned HOW to process through your angry feelings. In this episode, we tackle both issues.

What To Listen For In This Episode

1. The three options available to us when we’re angry at God.
2. How parenting and being angry at God are connected.
3. A conversation with my daughter, Mychal, about maintaining and restoring relationship between fathers and daughters.
4. How to bring your anger towards God on six different levels.

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Trauma has a significant impact on how we see and understand the world. It affects your deeply held beliefs about what is safe and what is dangerous. To keep yourself feeling safe, it’s common to construct tight restrictions and self-protective strategies to mitigate any potential harm. While this works, it also keeps you stuck in a self-constructed prison.

What To Listen For In This Episode

1. The greatest impact of trauma is a deep erosion in trust.
2. Lack of trust in yourself, other people, and the world in general.
3. How trauma affects your view of God.
4. “A strong faith in a weak branch can be more fatal than a weak faith in a strong branch.” —Timothy Keller

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“It is because the meaning of life in the United States is the pursuit of pleasure and personal freedom that suffering is so traumatic for Americans.”—Dr. Paul Brand in The Gift of Pain

When happiness becomes your ultimate goal, you start to create expectations that will NEVER be able to be fulfilled. Finding comfort and security in things outside of personal and immediate happiness is a new concept to many, and one that challenges a postmodern approach to the world we live in.

What To Listen For In This Episode

1. How “love forgives the most, but condones the least.”
2. What it might look like to live with greater accountability to others.
3. How to provide confrontation tactfully and with kindness and grace.
4. A Sheryl Crow song.
5. The world’s formula for happiness vs. God’s formula for happiness.
6. Why it’s good to choose temporary pain for longterm happiness.

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If you want to get automatic updates to this podcast, you can subscribe at iTunes here.