One Choice Away From Change: Breaking Unhealthy Cyclesਨਮੂਨਾ

Finding Freedom from Repeated Cycles

Do you ever wonder why you have difficulty finding and maintaining healthy relationships? Or why, no matter how hard you try, you still lose your temper with those you love the most? Have you experienced the same financial problems year after year, regardless of how much money you make? Do you repeat the same mistakes even though you know the consequences?

What is the solution? Do you simply need to try harder? Do you need to be more disciplined? Over the last four years, we’ve done deep work—individually and as a couple—to identify, excavate, and heal repetitive mindsets, choices, and cycles in our marriage and family. As marriage coaches, we’ve worked with hundreds of couples who bring cyclical issues into our office looking for a road map to change and transformation.

We have learned a universal truth for every relationship: what isn’t healed is often repeated. We repeat cycles of behavior in all aspects of our lives that bring hurt, disappointment, discouragement, and exhaustion.

Most often, we don’t struggle with new sins; we struggle with the same sins over and over again. We don’t disagree over new issues in our relationships; we argue over the same problems over and over again. When faced with issues at work, we can change jobs, but we often experience the same difficulty in our new jobs. You can likely look back at failed dating relationships or a former marriage and see a pattern of behavior that ended those relationships. Hard as it can be to come to grips with the truth, in all your destructive choices, the common denominator is you.

If you are feeling stuck in a relationship, if you are feeling hopeless that anything will change in your relationships, if you believe that you will never become the person God is calling you to be, this reading plan (and our book by the same name) is for you.

There is so much at stake in finding freedom from these repeated cycles. Your struggles and repeated choices didn’t start with you, and unless addressed, won’t end with you. What you’ve inherited doesn’t have to be passed on, and what you’ve chosen in the past out of habit, heartbreak, or hurt doesn’t have to define who you become in the future.

How can we break the cycles that leave us wounded and broken? How can we break free from choices that bring hurt and make new choices that bring healing? Change is possible. Restoration is available. A new beginning can be one choice away.

Reflection: What cycle do I want to break free from?

Cycle-Breaking Prayer: Lord Jesus, I believe you have provided a way for destructive cycles in my life to be broken and for me to be restored. I want to find freedom from repeated cycles that hinder me from your purpose in my life. Lead me to the right choices and empower me to follow through with them wholeheartedly. I look to you as my healer, deliverer, and restorer. In Jesus’ name, amen.