Are You Stuck? Daily Steps to Break Freeনমুনা

Devotional

Living in community pulls you out of…your thoughts, your emotions, your problems…and helps you to refocus and shift your gaze from yourself to others. It helps you look out!

Community requires intentionality. The bible warns us not to develop a habit of avoiding other people; of “meeting together as some are in the habit of doing (Hebrews 10: 25)." The isolation of the pandemic caused a lot of us to retreat inwardly; so much so that we've developed a habit of secluding ourselves in our homes or our solitary activities.

God created you to live in community. Engaging with other believers helps pull you closer to him. Not only that, but serving others helps to flip the script by replacing your internal dialogue with others-focused communication.

Reflection Questions:

Have you allowed your misery to validate your negative thoughts and emotions?

Are you involved in a local church that challenges you to seek God's truth?

Are you spending time with people who draw you closer to God?

Transcript

Yesterday, I talked about a time when I felt STUCK by my own decisions. I needed someone to help me look at the situation from another perspective.

I can think of multiple times in my life when this has been true.

God designed us to do life with others. We see this in the life of the early church. In Acts 2 we see that the new believers did everything together and that the church grew exponentially as a result.

Feeling stuck often causes us to retreat inwardly. So much so, that we can begin to find comfort in our misery. Sounds strange, doesn’t it? But hear me out.

Our misery serves to validate our feelings and negative thoughts. By keeping the situation or circumstances the same, we essentially convince ourselves that we have a legitimate reason for acting the way we do or for why we lash out, clam up or shut down. And, it’s a lot easier to keep this cycle going if there’s no one around to question it.

Once a good friend of mine and I were listening to a speaker talk about the importance of connection and community. She talked about a social experiment that was done on monkeys. In the experiment monkeys were first subjected to a stressful stimuli while sharing a cage together. Then, the monkeys were separated and the same experiment was performed. The researchers found that the monkeys who underwent stress together with another monkey in the cage experienced considerably less anxiety.

I remember tapping her on the shoulder and telling her that she was my monkey.

Just because your circumstances have isolated you for a season; whether physically, emotionally or both, doesn’t mean you have to stay there.

How about you? Who's your monkey?

Romans 12:4-5 For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.

Living in community pulls you out… of your thoughts, your emotions, your problems…and helps you to refocus and shift your gaze from yourself to others. It helps you look out!