A close friend of mine is an executive coach and I recently had the pleasure of sitting and listening to her talk about what coaching is and how it can benefit one’s life. She described coaching as a partnership (coming alongside and walking) with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximise their professional and personal potentials (ICF).
She said one thing that really stuck with me, “Sometimes our minds want to be happy with the bad things that people say to us…”
You see, each of us lives life and see the world through the filter of our past experiences and a worldview built on something and sometimes we need to step back, think and take a look at stuff going on in our lives.
Jesus gave us the ultimate coach and helper, the Holy Spirit, who comes alongside us and helps us along the way happy to share our burdens and lead and guide us. In John 14:26-27 (THE VOICE), Jesus says to his disciples, “The Father is sending a great Helper, the Holy Spirit, in my name to teach you everything and to remind you of all I have said to you. My peace is the legacy I leave to you. I don’t give gifts like those of this world. Don’t let you heart be troubled.”
PERSONAL ‘FAITH’ CULTURE
Now, one of the concepts that have been riding around on my train of thought for a while is the use of language within a culture, particularly the cultures we cultivate within and around us. Because you see, even with the awesome gift of the Holy Spirit, we can carry on living powerless and tormented, emotionally draining lives if we haven’t cultivated a daily relationship with him where we allow him to coach us… I call this developing one’s personal ‘faith’ culture.
WHAT IS CULTURE?
To grow in a special preparation (i.e. to culture something, e.g. a plant)
The tastes in art and manners that are favoured by a social group;
All the knowledge and values shared by a society;
The attitudes and behaviour that are characteristic of a particular social group or organisation.
I’d like to think that sometimes we’d like to accept and believe the bad things that people say to us about us because of the culture that we’ve cultivated inside and around us, and that culture is cultivated by HOW WE SPEAK or the language we use on the daily.
Language forms the parameters of any particular culture. The use of language (i.e. vocabulary found) describes and indicates what is valuable, of interest, and/or of concern within every culture – humans basically learn their culture through their language and transmit their culture through their language as well – and it’s important to note that every single time a language becomes extinct, an entire way of thinking becomes extinct along with it.
This got me thinking…
… Jesus (God’s son) offers us a new way of life – along with His helper, Holy Spirit, he gives us his peace and guidance through his word. Peace is definitely not cultivated through the cultures that we’ve cultivated in our lives from birth: i.e. we live in the world where personal cultures of insecurity, depression, fear, anger and other things are cultivated.
I think that the reason that Christians sometimes fail to be successful in life is because they want to still hold on to the language of their previous inner cultures and that thinking/talking is depraved. That’s why we sometimes really want to believe the bad things that people say about us or to us because we still ‘use that language’ to speak to ourselves.
But, like I said above, if no one uses a language or it dies off, then it becomes extinct, and if a language becomes extinct, then a whole way of thinking becomes extinct along with it. So, if we’ve cultivated a culture that is formed by a biblical worldview and live our lives speaking in the language that is taught to us by Jesus through the Holy Spirit, that negative stuff won’t even register with us when it’s thrown at us.
Romans 15:13 (THE VOICE), “I pray that God, the source of all hope will infuse your lives with an abundance of joy and peace in the midst of your faith so that your hope will overflow through the power of the Holy Spirit”
If you’ve read this whole blog and realised that your way of thinking and believing has been all wrong and because you have not accepted Jesus as your Lord and Saviour and have not accepted his gift to us and our personal life coach, The Holy Spirit, won’t you take the next step by clicking on the black banner below!