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This post is part 2 of a series on A New Way of Seeing. As a reminder, it’s hard to know what’s real. When you’re confused by anxiety, OCD, or the voices of your past controlling religion, it’s hard to know whom to trust. You don’t have to trust your OCD and anxiety, but you can learn to trust your healthy intuition, the word of God, and your faithful guides. The next element of healthy knowing that we are going to discuss is humility. In her book, Humble Roots, Hannah Anderson uses the analogy of tomatoes to help us understand the importance of humility. Many tomato farmers gas their tomatoes with ethylene so they develop faster. Why? Because consumers want the certainty that tomatoes will always be available, summer or winter, rain or shine. OCD wants answers right away. Today. Controlling religions are also uncomfortable with uncertainty. They want absolute truth, unchanging answers to slap onto every problem. Our minds often want the certainty that answers will be available, day and night, rain or shine. Sound familiar? We often allow our anxiety, our church leaders, or our OCD to give us “prepackaged answers,” instant solutions. No matter how unappetizing and fake they are. But real life is complicated. God is complicated because he is a real person in relationship with us. It’s difficult to tolerate the uncertainty… to just let it linger… But that’s exactly what we need to do if we want our knowledge and understanding to mature. We need to stop trying to figure it out today. We must let “knowledge ripen on the vine.” Life is complicated; it’s difficult to come up with quick solutions. “Instead of seeking certainty, we must… follow Jesus in the midst of uncertainty.” We need to allow the discomfort to stick around. Hannah Anderson says we must "wait for answers that, in God’s own wisdom, may never come. … " As you humbly experiment with testing God's perfect will (Romans 12:2-3), you’ll see that you won’t stay in the dark forever. As the voice of OCD or controlling religion quiets, reality will start filtering back into your consciousness. Jesus is comfortable allowing his followers to have partial knowledge, not knowing everything (John 16:12-14). You can take the risk of moving forward with the knowledge that you do have, knowing that Jesus is watching over you every step of the way. "Humility …. teaches us that we don’t need to know everything as long as we know the one who does know.”--Hannah Anderson[1] “You are safe, you can stop fighting. Not because your own mind has made you safe, but because Jesus—the wisdom from above—has made you safe.” --Hannah Anderson[2] How can you cultivate humility as you learn to make contact with reality? To learn more about OCD and faith, visit Justin K. Hughes' excellent blog series. [1] All quotes from Hannah Anderson, Humble Roots, pg. 130-133 https://www.amazon.com/Humble-Roots-Humility-Grounds-Nourishes/dp/0802414591/ [2] Hannah Anderson, Humble Roots, pg. 127 https://www.amazon.com/Humble-Roots-Humility-Grounds-Nourishes/dp/0802414591/ The concept of humility as an ingredient to healthy knowing comes from Loving to Know by Esther Lightcap Meek

What is knowledge? Is it a dry, mechanical, one-to-one correspondence between a statement and the reality it represents? If you have OCD or have recently left a controlling religion, you may be wondering, "Can anything be known?" In her book, Longing to Know, Esther Lightcap Meek explores the possibility that knowledge is more than propositional facts that match reality. Perhaps knowledge is more like a 3-D stereogram puzzle of the 1990s. As a child, I often patiently stared at Magic Eye puzzles, a collection of lines and dots that supposedly contained a 3-D picture. To see the image, I had to follow the words of an authoritative guide, the puzzle directions. Over time, these words taught me how recognize the body sensations and miniscule eye muscle focus changes that would lead seeing the picture. Finally, I succeeded in encountering a reality greater than words can describe, a 3-D picture. Eventually, my eyes learned how to follow the instructions naturally and to access the knowledge more quickly and automatically. The puzzle’s dots and patterns are absolutely integral to the image itself. Preserving the pattern is critical, since changing the pattern of the dots changes my ability to see the image. At the same time, reducing knowledge to the dots themselves shortchanges the viewer. A theory of knowledge that eliminates the possibility of knowing God in anything but a verbal way shortchanges the believer. Scripture is essential to understanding Jesus. But if all you know of God is a logical, literal reading of the morphemes and graphemes, you have lost a large part of reality. Words are critically important, and we must maintain accurate words of doctrine in order to be faithful to who Jesus is. But Jesus himself acknowledged that the words of Scripture point toward a living reality. In John 5:39-40, Jesus rebuked the leaders who reduced reality to words on a page: “You search the Scriptures because you think they give you eternal life. But the Scriptures point to me! Yet you refuse to come to me to receive this life.” NLT Jesus wants us to use the words of Scripture to encounter His Reality. The word for “knowledge” in Colossians 2:2 indicates a rich synthesis of varied factors of our lives. Jesus supports us as we reach across the range of our varied experiences, emotions, facts, and Scriptural truths, seeking to synthesize them into a coherent and understandable whole. In the process, we approach reality and knowledge like a 3-D Puzzle. Jesus is our wise guide. We need wise guides to help us interpret reality. Esther explains that an X-Ray technician teaches us how to interpret splotches of light and darkness, and an experienced music teacher helps us learn how to move our muscles to produce a clear tone. Without these guides, we would be left to our own devices. At best, we’d be like a toddler trying to spot shapes in the clouds. We would not truly know the meaning of what we see, hear, feel, or read. Trust grows as our guides consistently interpret knowledge in helpful ways. Ultrasound technicians who know how to treat our symptoms generate confidence. Auto mechanics who repeatedly fix our cars help us believe that they are interpreting reality correctly. In the same way, God’s track record over history shows that he is a trustworthy guide. His view of reality has safely guided many saints to fulfillment and success (see Hebrews 11). He has been accurate in his predictions throughout Biblical history. We can trust that when we struggle to interpret life, our Wise Guide can provide accurate answers about reality. He trains our senses to interpret reality. Like an X-Ray technician who trains the medical intern to understand what she’s seeing, God trains our feelings, senses, and minds to understand and access truth. Some branches of Christianity repeatedly discard feelings as a valid reflection of sensed reality, and others dismiss the mind as a valid tool for accessing truth. In reality, both need to be trained by Christ to accurately perceive the world. The poetry of Scripture demonstrates that logic alone is not enough to convey a 3-D view of God’s reality. God uses words as powerful tools that work in concert with emotions and feelings to truly depict reality. In Leo Tolstoy’s philosophical experiment, “A History of Yesterday,” the author attempted to write down every single thing that happened the previous day. But he soon discovered that it was impossible. In the process of describing a single 24-hour period, he got waylaid. He tried to give context, explain relevant facts, and detail each event that happened to him. After twenty-four hours of writing, he had only recorded the events of yesterday morning. Eventually, he gave up the endeavor. A dry, blow-by-blow account of a day’s detailed events can’t truly convey what it was like to live through that day. It’s philosophically impossible to create a comprehensive account of even one hour. Even a blow-by-blow, unedited video can’t truly replicate lived experience. True artists use videography, words, painting, and poetry to capture the thoughts, feelings, body sensations, aromas, memories, and embodied reality of a lived moment. Words can evoke reality, and artistic words do the best job of communicating a 3-D reality. When writing the Bible, God employed artistic forms to communicate his reality. Poetry and song are featured into God’s self-expression. Knowledge is more than verbal, mental assent. Just as emotions factor into God’s expression of knowledge, they also factor into our reception of knowledge. Our mind, will, and emotions work together to create a rich, 3-D understanding of reality. We need God to train our emotional sensors, just like we need a music teacher to train our perception of pitch and timbre. We don’t throw out our mind as an avenue of knowledge, just because we made a mistake with our minds. We don’t eliminate the will just because we made an error in judgment. In the same way, we don’t need to eliminate emotions just because they sometimes lead us astray. Instead, God needs to inform our mind, will, and emotions so that we can sense a rich understanding of reality. We embody his words. As we obey Jesus’ commands, we repeatedly live out his words. As we do, we sense how real they are. Living in his commands, we perceive that they truly align with reality. Jesus himself said, “Anyone who wants to do the will of God will know whether my teaching is from God or is merely my own.” (John 7:17, NLT) If we live in and embody his commands, we will sense that they are true. Doing God’s word “works” in a deeply satisfying way. Arrive at a knowledge even greater than words can describe. However, knowing God doesn’t stop at dry, methodical adherence to his commands. Playing the piano does not stop at plunking out each note correctly. And learning a language is more than parsing every word accurately. I remember a Biblical Greek course that I took in college. The instructor was ruthless in requiring memorization of every verb tense and every definition of a word—in order. We learned to define every word in a text. Yet we came away with no synthesized view of how to speak or understand a Greek friend. Our knowledge was limited to rote knowledge, not a flowing, 3-D understanding of the language. We could look at the words, but we couldn’t look through them to a holistic familiarity with the language itself or the people who spoke it. We’ve all experienced times when we forget the big picture as we focus on details. A pianist whose body knows the essence of the music freezes up when their mind hyper-focused on the notes in the middle of a concert. Google Translate can understand every word in a string of foreign words without understanding the sentence. In the same way, knowing God is more than reciting every doctrine about him. Details are important, but they’re not the whole picture. Like seeing a 3-D puzzle, knowing a language, or learning an instrument, we must see through the particulars to the reality beyond them. As we do, we will see the beauty of a powerful, patient Father who loves us more than words can tell.

by Kathrine Snyder In this series, we’ve talked about opening our eyes, getting rid of our narrow focus, and letting the colors filter back into our lives. We’re learning to hear God’s voice and trace his presence. But sometimes, we need a little extra help with the nuanced, difficult, and complex situations of daily life. We need to zero in and address specific challenges we face as we leave controlling religion and root out anxiety. God asks us to be “faithful stewards of the many-colored tapestry of God’s grace.” (1 Peter 4:10 TPT) Sometimes, the individual situations and many-colored situations can be overwhelming. That’s why it’s helpful to zoom in on specific topics we encounter as we leave controlling religion and anxiety. Here are just a few we’ll be addressing. · Anxiety and OCD. How can I let go of anxiety? How can I gain freedom to know God instead of living in the grasp of Scrupulosity OCD? · PGAD. How can I understand this complex condition and regain my peace? · Sexuality. How can I fight against the distortions of purity culture? How can I overcome my fears related to sexuality? · Parenting. How do I parent a child in areas I don’t have a firm foundation in myself? How do I deal with my religious triggers and still introduce my child to God? How can I learn to appreciate the beauty of sexuality so I’m not fearful when I talk to my kid about sexuality? Welcome to this journey! Check back frequently and subscribe to be the first to hear about new topics that are posted. If you have a topic you’d like to hear more about, email me and let me know. I'd love to hear from you!

If you've recently left a controlling religion, you may feel like your world is spinning. You’ve realized some of the rules you built your life on… are just manmade. Some of the teaching you embraced… were just created by authorities to maintain their power. You still want to believe in God, but your faith is feeling really shaky. The same is true if you have anxiety or OCD. Your therapist is telling you to accept uncertainty. You can’t always trust what your mind is telling you. So how can you know who to trust? How do you know what is true? What lens should you view God through? Who can you trust? In her book, Loving to Know, Esther Lightcap Meek shows us a new way of knowing. Rather than just focusing on our reasoning and logic (a big no-no for OCD!), we must focus on creative knowing that lines up with reality. You don’t have to trust your OCD, but you can learn to trust your healthy intuition, the word of God, and your faithful guides. The first element of creative knowing is surrounding ourselves with people who see us for who we really are. People who look at us with eyes of delight. Esther Lightcap Meek calls this “noticing regard,” and she says it “invites the real” to make an appearance.[i] Have you ever seen a grandmother´s face light up when seeing her grandchild? Or a child’s face light up to see a new puppy? This kind of loving gaze makes us feel confident, secure, and treasured. It’s easy to learn, explore, and grow when we are noticed and loved. On the other hand, everything looks grim when we feel rejected. Life takes on a twisted, distorted look. We’re not sure what’s real after all. We’re tempted to hide. Surround yourself with people whose love brings out the beauty in you. If you’re feeling lonely and isolated and don’t have those friends in your life, ask God to show you how to bask in his loving gaze. The Bible tells us that God’s face lights up when he thinks of his children.[1] (Numbers 6:25, Psalms 4:6-7, Psalm 31:16, 44:3, 67:1, 80:3, and Daniel 9:17). · God noticed Hagar when she was alone, rejected, and sad. He named her the mother of great nations. (Genesis 16) · God saw Gideon as a strong warrior and inspired him to become just that (Judges 6-8) · God saw Abraham as a man of faith, even though he constantly doubted. (Romans 4:20, Genesis 17:17) When you understand that you are deeply noticed and seen by God, you will understand reality more accurately. How does God see you? How does this help you gain confidence in knowing? Who can you invite into your life that sees you accurately and helps you gain a better grasp on reality? [1] Jim Wilder, Other Half of Church, 55 https://www.amazon.com/Other-Half-Church-Overcoming-Stagnation/dp/0802419631/ [i] Esther Lightcap Meek, Loving to Know, 454 https://www.amazon.com/Loving-Know-Esther-Lightcap-Meek/dp/1608999289/

Photographers love to travel to Victoria Falls on the Zambia-Zimbabwe border and Cumberland Falls near Corbin, Kentucky.[1] Why? To capture a rare phenomenon: a moonbow. These lunar rainbows are just what they sound like: a rainbow in moonlight. Moonbows look white to the naked eye. But photographers know that when they open their camera lenses and wait, they will see the colors that were there all along.[1] If you’ve recently left a controlling religion or face daily anxiety and OCD, your spiritual life may have lost its color. You try to read the Bible, but you only hear the voices of anxiety or religious oppression. You remember God’s presence in the past, but you wonder if you were just making it up. Did you ever really hear from God? Or was it just the voice of OCD, the voice of delusion, the voice of fear? Did you just imagine him? How can you know? Maybe your religious experience used to be a beautiful rainbow in your life. When times were good, you thought you heard God’s voice. But now that your life has darkened, you’re confused. Everything looks the same now. The joy is gone. You’re not sure where the color went. Was it ever there at all? Was God ever real in the first place? In this series, we’re going to talk about how to hear God's voice amidst the noise of anxiety and controlling religion and how to trace his presence in everyday life. When you’re not sure that you can hear his voice, or that you know him, remember that he knows you. “My sheep listen to my voice; I know them…” John 10:27 NIV It starts with opening your heart and learning to listen. We’ll learn to hear his gentle voice speaking through the din of fear. We’ll trace the presence of God through the darkest night. He’s been there all along. You may be interested in: Finding God... in Your Curiosity Finding God... In Your Past Pain Finding God... Change the Soundtrack Finding God... In Your Anger How to Develop your God-given intuition Finding God... in your present Ready to explore more? Learn how to open your lens. How to open your eyes against the closed-mindedness of fear or controlling religion. How to open your heart for a new way of knowing. Subscribe for more updates to the series! [1] What In The World Is A ‘Moonbow’ And Where Can You Actually See One? https://news.theearthsite.greatergood.com/lunar-rainbows/#:~:text=Currently%2C%20there%20are%20only%20two,Cumberland%20Falls%20near%20Corbin%2C%20Kentucky. [2] Julia Baird, Phosphorescence pg. 32 https://www.amazon.com/Phosphorescence-Memoir-Finding-When-World/dp/B08M4D1QRS

Are you terrified of risk? Whether you’re moving into OCD treatment, leaving anxiety, or finding a more biblical church, there is risk involved. You have to commit yourself to the treatment your therapist recommends when it doesn’t feel true yet. You have to commit yourself to a good God who doesn’t seem real yet. You have to move forward with a dream or calling that doesn’t seem certain yet. Even though it's uncomfortable, risk is an important way we make contact with reality. As long as we hide in our own little huddles—“How can I be sure? What is real?”—we’ll never make progress. We need to learn to move forward, take a risk, and cooperate with things we haven’t yet fully understood. It’s easy to want to eliminate all risk. We want to wait until everything is completely clear. But you know what? That’s impossible. Sometimes, we have to move forward, even when we’re not 100% sure. Einstein moved forward before he was 100% sure that an electric lightbulb was a possibility. Isaac Newton moved forward before he knew what he was searching for. Scientists weren't sure what they would find, but they took the “risk of being transformed.”[1] When I started my journey of healing from OCD, I was afraid of doing exposure and response prevention. I was afraid my therapist didn’t know what he was talking about. Then he reminded me that the only way to find out God's will is to test it: "By testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” Romans 12:2 Hebrews 5:14 “The mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.” Neither of these verses say, “Hide in your room until you are 100% sure what God wants you to do.” They tell us to test God’s will and train our powers of discernment by practicing. God doesn't fault us for the discovery process. You’ll never learn to discern good and evil if you never get out there and try it out. You can't hide forever. Trust. Trust is opening the door in welcome, not knowing who is standing on the other side.[2] Trust is moving forward in anticipation of what you will find. Bob Goff says, "We're all waiting for more information, more clarity, more certainty... Here's the deal: All those deep urgings you feel to step toward the beautiful, courageous thing you're afraid to do--you probably won't always have the chance. Now is the time. Your life, your experiences, and your faith are your green lights. Make your move."[3] Perhaps you're not sure you're hearing God’s voice. You're not sure if you correctly understood your intuition. After so many years of doubting, how can you be sure you’re seeing accurately? One way we can remedy that is by moving forward and finding out. If it's a mirage, the only way to find out is to go closer. When we move forward, we often find out whether our hunch was accurate—or not. Trust your therapist sees you more accurately than you see yourself. Trust your healthy intuition. Trust God and the gentle guides that help you understand him. Open the door to a new way of seeing the world. What are you afraid to do because you don’t know what you will find? Will you take the risk of being transformed? [1] Esther Lightcap Meek, Loving to Know [2] Esther Lightcap Meek, Loving to Know [3] Bob Goff, Everybody, Always, pg 92

You've heard it in churches: “Don’t live another moment in your sin!” “You may not have another chance… today is the day!” The Christian community is good at applying pressure. The message is "Now or never! You need to grow up... instantly!" OCD pressures us with the same demanding, urgent tone. I have to understand God now... Know if I’m saved now... Research this topic now... These are telltale signs that OCD is showing up. When you research and learn out of fun and curiosity, it's not OCD. But if your research becomes demanding and urgent, you know you're in an OCD compulsion. But we need to break free from urgency and learn the way of patience. Instead of seeking instant answers, Hannah Anderson says we must learn to wait. We must let “to let knowledge ripen on the vine.”[1] Life is complicated; it’s difficult to come up with quick solutions. The parable of the sower is a prime example. The seeds that sprang up quickly were not the seeds that brought lasting growth and change. (see Luke 8) Hannah Anderson reminds us that Jesus was not in a hurry with his disciples. He did not demand they understand right away or grow up instantly (see John 16:12-14). Jesus is comfortable with the developmental process. He was comfortable with the disciples not knowing everything right away. He told them that His Holy Spirit would guide them into all truth. He didn’t say, “If you don’t understand everything today, you cannot be my disciple.” Instead, he said, “I have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.” Esther Lightcap Meek says we need to become comfortable with “being on the way to knowing.” Knowing is a process… grappling with clues, finding answers. Along the journey, we have “partial knowledge." She points to Copernicus, who discovered the orbit of the earth around the sun; but he thought the orbit was round instead of oval. Do we need to discount his entire process of discovery, just because he’s “not quite right?” No. We must be patient with the process. Evangelicals often struggle with partial knowledge. They discount the discovery process. Evangelicals slap labels on someone's quest for clues. They'll look at someone grappling authentically with reality and say, "He's twisting the truth," "Truth with a bit of error is 100% wrong," "She's so close but so far." But what if that person is "on the way to knowing"? What if they are finding key clues that will lead to God? What if they’ve found a key clue and are grappling authentically with reality, which they will soon discover if we don’t "chop at the root" of their understanding? We need to learn to be patient with the process of coming to know. Your safety doesn’t come from knowing the answers. Your safety comes from Jesus. Hannah Anderson explains, “When you are safe, suddenly you can open yourself up to the possibility that you might not know everything. You can open yourself up to the possibility that you never will. And then you can finally rest.”[1] [1] Hannah Anderson, Humble Roots, pg. 130

If you’ve lived with OCD or any type of religious anxiety, you're used to seeing through the lens of fear. The question “How do I Know” has not been far from your mind. And that's a terrifying question. “How do I know if I’m really saved?” “How do I know if this is sin?” “How do I know if I’m getting close to God?” The problem is that fear smothers an important tool that we need for knowledge. That tool is passionate love. Esther Lightcap Meek says that in order to deeply know someone or something, we have to deeply love that person or thing.[1] Let's look at an example. I love reading and writing and all forms of literature. I’m passionate about learning about craft, lyrical writing, and poetry. I can spend hours and hardly notice. It comes easily to me because of my passionate love. You may have a different love. Perhaps you love airplane engineering or bird migration or cellular machinery. You're passionate about it. You study it because you love it. Maybe you love the excitement of a football game, the adventure of camping, the way playing the violin engrosses your whole being. You can't wait to learn more statistics about football, find new skills for tying knots or building fires, or new ways to do trills on your violin. Learning about the thing you love doesn’t seem like a burden. It feeds the fire inside you. It’s a constant quest. Now think about the way you research your OCD themes or your fundamentalist religious beliefs. It feels different, doesn’t it? When you investigate something out of fear, you can sense a difference. “What are the signs of melanoma?” “What is flirting?” “How do I know if my partner is right for me?” “How do I know if I’m sinning or not?” Is your heart pounding yet? Can you tell a difference? “Love” is not a word you would use when talking about researching your OCD themes. The word “hate” may be a better descriptor. Because you hate and fear it, it's impossible to deeply know and understand that topic. You get stuck in an endless cycle of research, but you never find the answers. Compulsive research will never get you anywhere. My topic of OCD research was sexuality. I spent hours Googling topics of sexuality, flirting, and sexual orientation. I often muttered, “I hate sexuality.” No matter how much I researched, I never felt like I understood it. And I certainly didn’t love it! Esther Lightcap Meek says we can’t know about something without loving it. This standard will help you instantly tell the difference between researching as a compulsion and innocent researching as a hobby. Do you love the thing you’re researching? If not, it might be OCD. Instead of focusing on “figuring out” your OCD themes, you can focus on cultivating a heartfelt appreciation for the things you're truly passionate about. What are your values? What are your goals? What truly interests you? What sparks a genuine sense of joy? How can you continue to pursue those dreams? Can you research the things you love instead of your OCD themes? But sometimes, are OCD themes and our passions are closely related. What if the thing you love is the thing you obsessively fear? Is there a way to revive the love? Remember, some OCD themes don’t need to be loved. You don’t need to love melanoma, fire, or abuse. But what if your fears are related to something inherently good, such as your partner or your faith? Then you might long for the love to come back and replace the fear. You might long for the days when you could learn to know your spouse, your hobby, or your God because you love them... not because you fear them. When you stay up enjoying your partner instead of ruminating on their quirks. Or enjoying the presence of God instead of researching about sin and judgment. There are ways to cultivate your love for the good things, even if they seem to be corrupted through your panicked research. As you consult with your professional OCD therapist, you can work on finding ways to revive the love. Do you long to learn about God out of love and not out of fear? Biola's Advent Project can help you rediscover God through art and poetry. Curt Thompson’s Reflections can help you stay present while you meditate on religious art. Try Safe Place Prayer to feel safe with God again. Try Life Model Works to connect with God and other people through JOY rather than through fear. “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.” 1 John 4:18 [1] Esther Lightcap Meek, Loving to Know [2] Justin K Hughes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82L_fHOKxzk&t=5912s&ab_channel=JustinK.Hughes%2CMA%2CLicensedProfessionalCounselor

“Most people want to grow, but the price of growth is pain.” Dan Allender [1] We all want to be confident about life. To know for sure what is true. To understand where we are going and how to get there. But few of us want to accept a hard truth: a key ingredient to clear-eyed seeing is experiencing pain. In C.S. Lewis’ book, The Silver Chair, Puddleglum and his friends were lost in an underground world. They were being slowly lulled into believing that there was no overworld. When Puddleglum’s foot caught fire, something mysterious happened. When he smelled burning flesh, his thinking became clearer. He remembered the world he’d always known. The illusion faded, and the pain brought him back to reality. In her book, Phosphorescence, Julia Baird, says pain has a way of opening us up to reality. It makes us sensitive, clears our mind of unnecessary clutter and fluff, and points us back to what is of ultimate worth. She would know; she herself has suffered deeply in her battle with cancer. Esther Lightcap Meek says that pain is an important way to “invite the real.” During her own extended period of pain, she discovered many new insights about herself and her world. Pain clears our senses, sweeps away illusions, and reminds us of what’s lasting. We can get in touch with what's real when we open ourselves to the necessary pain of life. In my own life, deep emotional pain was the catalyst to growth. Through it, I discovered bodily awareness, self-calming, and sensory poetry. Pain reunited me with my innocent, creative childhood self. Dan Allender said, “Pain enables us to discover ourselves."[2] As long as we are stuck in the patterns and merry-go-rounds of everyday hustle, fear, and perfectionism, our minds are often lost in a fog of illusion. But when pain breaks through that fog, we realize things about ourselves and our world that resonate with reality. Pain is often the catalyst that makes growth and change unavoidable. It may seem easier to deny our desires than to open ourselves to the beauty and pain of unfulfilled longings. But when we do, we realize that pain helps us access reality. The illusion that “everything is fine” and “I’m doing great!” never opens our eyes to the true range of feelings. When we embrace the necessary pain in our lives, new worlds open up to us. How could accepting pain be a catalyst for growth in your life? [1] Dan Allender [2] Allender, The Healing Path, pg. 37

Recent years have highlighted our yearning to know the difference between reality and fakes. Conspiracy theories surged as friends and acquaintances came to radically different interpretations of reality. Deep fakes such as the viral TikTok videos of Tom Cruise intentionally highlighted the existence of deeply disturbing frauds. Teens claim their own share of epistemological challenges, believing they can shift to alternate realities and experience other worlds just as real as the one we all share. It’s easy to laugh off our teens’ absurd pseudo-science. We’re tempted to dismiss any idea that doesn’t fit our preconceived view of the world. But in our most honest moments, we still feel a tingle of fear. When you're the one who's been duped by a power-hungry leader--or by your own anxiety and OCD--it's easy to start asking those questions. Is anything knowable? How can we really prove that the world and all our memories weren’t created last Tuesday? And how can we be sure we have actually come in contact with reality? Logic serves us to a point, but it has its limits. If knowledge is nothing but a stiff, dry correspondence between truth statements and reality, it easily shatters under pressure. The most basic of truth propositions—for example, "The apple is red"— can be doubted by a skeptic who wonders if we both define color in the same way. Skeptics explain away history by citing fabrications and frauds. Historical documents could be fake. Videos could be falsified. Evidence could be twisted. When almost anything can be doubted, reality must be boiled down to what we trust the most: our five senses. Yet even our eyes can play tricks on us. Our senses can be deceived. How can we prove that life is not just one big dream? Even as we ask these questions, we know deep down that reality exists. In our practical everyday routines, we act as if knowing makes a difference. We have a deeply felt sense that something exists and that we can access this reality. Rather than limiting knowledge to dry logical propositions, we need a robust, living version of knowledge that can handle the complexity of everyday life. Esther Lightcap Meek’s book, Longing to Know, challenges the idea that knowledge is a lifeless, one-to-one correspondence between stated truth and the real world. She believes the traditional method of attaining certainty through verbal logical postulates falls far short of the way God meant the world to be experienced. Instead, she says that through trusting wise guides, we can learn to interpret what we see, shaping a 3-D understanding of reality that is even greater than words can describe. Know whom to trust. In our quest for knowledge, we must do more than accept verbal statements of truth. We must develop an active relationship with a wise guide whom we trust. For example, music is more than an assent to verbal facts and definitions. While it may be helpful to know that pitch is "the property of a... musical tone that is determined by the frequency of the waves producing it," the true value comes from a musical expert who can help us develop a felt sense of this truth, one we can replicate repeatedly. It may be beneficial to read an X-ray guide that instructs us on the "recognition of a pleural reflection or edge of a... mediastinal shift." But it's even better to have a skilled teacher who can show us repeatedly how to interpret what we're seeing. Our five senses aren't sufficient to guide us. Nor is mental understanding. We need a wise guide to help us synthesize all of life to come up with a coherent whole. As we act on the words of these guides, their trustworthiness is confirmed. We accept the treatment plan that our X-ray specialist recommends, even though we can't make heads or tails of the picture they show us. This is called faith. Completing the doctor's instructions, we feel better than we have in years. This is called obedience. Know how to interpret what you see and feel. As we repeatedly rely on our guides, we eventually develop a strong, internal sense that continues to steer us in the right direction. Not only do we form mental patterns through which we filter the world, but we also internalize the body sensations reinforced by our mentors. Through our teacher's repeated verbal corrections of our pitch, we learn to change our muscles ever so slightly to achieve harmonic tones. Even in the absence of direct instruction, we learn to automatically achieve the correct musical pitch, balance a bicycle, or gain an accurate gut feeling of what is going on in a social situation. These senses are beyond words, but they were shaped and formed by countless repetitions of words from our guides. The constant commands of our teachers have become embodied, creating internal guides that can propel us forward into the future. Relying on what our guides have taught us, we gain an intangible body sense that contributes to our felt awareness that we have truly and accurately accessed reality. Hebrews 5:14 says that through constant practice, wise people "have trained their senses to distinguish good from evil." (BSB) This is more than a mental assent to a fact. It's a lived sense that helps guide us in difficult, complex situations. This sense is not arbitrary; instead, it's developed in close communication with a reliable, expert guide. This is called wisdom. Encounter a reality that is greater than words can describe. As we rely on guides and train our senses for discernment, we arrive at a brilliant and breathtaking view of God and the world. This knowledge is mediated through words, but it also reaches into a holistic realm that words can only point to. Words have unfathomable power, and they are excellent tools to help us understand and experience reality. Without words, we would not be able to understand the life-giving truth of Jesus’ salvation. At the same time, Jesus explained that the words themselves are simply indicators that point towards a greater reality. In John 5:39-40, Jesus rebuked the leaders who reduced reality to words on a page: “You search the Scriptures because you think they give you eternal life. But the Scriptures point to me! Yet you refuse to come to me to receive this life.” NLT Jesus wants to know us personally, and he wants us to encounter his reality through the words of Scriptures. Rather than fixating on the words, he wants us to look through the words of Scripture and see Him. As we do, we will discover that Jesus is the best and wisest knowledge guide of all. When we trust Him as our wise guide, we will learn how to interpret Scripture alongside the complexity of lived feelings, emotions, and sensations. We will embrace logical proofs while also rejoicing in the loving God they point to. The world, and God’s word, will speak to each other as a coherent whole that gains our total confidence.