pdave.me

Today I want to give you a place to start your week. It’s Monday and in the wake of a great weekend and a workweek ahead, sometimes you just need a “kickstart” to get focused.  So grab some coffee let’s start a great week together.

Sunday, we continued our series at Kfirst. Last year, we took 6 weeks to bring a focus on something that far too many people do not understand: our emotions. It’s our emotional state that people can go into one of two extremes. On one hand, people can live completely in the wake of their emotions. They’ll operate not at a state of truth but in the pace of their passion for that day. On the other hand, there are those that completely disregard their emotions as if they were a curse or a weakness. It is as if emotions are something to endure in this life on earth instead of seeing them for which God sees them.

What I see in scripture is that our emotions are, first, a gift from God. They are part of our humanity. Second, if they are a gift, then we have a responsibility to steward (manage) them. This takes emotional discipleship; growing what we have deeper in the knowledge and passion for Christ.

Sunday, we looked at Matthew 6:1-18 and dealt with VALIDATION. There is this emotional response to desire to feed off the approval of others to find our validation. Validation is really about three things:

• Attention met by being “present” (listening, engaging)
• Affection need is met both physically and verbally.
• Affirmation need is met by emotional support.

Jesus received all at His baptism. Matt. 3:17, The Father and the Holy Spirit showed up [attention]“This is My beloved Son [affection] in whom I am well pleased [affirmation]”

Unhealthy, dysfunctional behavior stems from striving to find your validation (attention, affection, and affirmation), not from Jesus, but from others. And instead of living FROM His approval, we live for it from people.

Check out the message here:

Other thoughts from Sunday:

• The more I fill myself with God’s truth, the less I need to chase the opinion of others.
• Start living FROM approval instead of living FOR approval.
• Your value was never meant to be found in the opinion of others, but the person of Jesus.
• Christ accepts you where you are at and loves you too much to leave you that way.
• “The lie of approval is if the “right” people like you, you will feel loved. You won’t. You’ll just feel the long hell of winning their approval again and again.” – Sammy Rhoads

Love you all. Have an amazing week.