Essential Steps in the Journey

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Have you heard this proverb before? I first heard it when I was a kid, and through the years it has helped me time and again, especially when facing a new challenge or chapter in life where I’m tempted to be overwhelmed by the magnitude or scope of the journey. I just have to start with one step, then take the next, and so on. Soon enough, what once seemed impossible feels more manageable.

Here at The Journey Home, we believe that life is a journey filled with highs and lows, joys and sorrows, victories and defeats. While we do not believe there are always easy answers to life’s challenges, we have found that there are four essentials steps that anyone must take if they are to have a successful journey. These steps aren’t necessarily sequential, the progression through them is not linear, and they all overlap one another. We will be growing in our understanding of all four throughout our entire lives. The steps are:

1.    Gain a healthy understanding of God

2.    Gain a healthy understanding of self

3.    Gain a healthy understanding of others

4.    Become a light in the darkness and bring healing to a hurting world

Sounds simple right?  

As with many things in life, what sounds simple on paper is not as easy as it appears. But don’t lose heart! Growth and greater understanding in all of these steps is possible. Let’s unpack each one briefly:

Step 1: Gain a healthy understanding of God

Everyone has a belief about God, even if that belief is that there is no God. For better or worse, our beliefs about God will dramatically shape the course of our lives, so much so that pastor and author A.W. Tozer once wrote “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” Yet in my experience, when you ask most people what they believe about God, they end up speaking mostly about their experiences in church or with Christian people and leaders rather than about God himself. While those things can inform our understanding of God, they can, and often do, provide quite the imperfect view of God, to say the least.

I recently turned forty-three, and while I still have much to learn, I’ve lived long enough to know:

·     Not everything I believed abut God when I was younger is true

·     Sometimes you need to unlearn a few things in order to arrive at the truth

·     Bible knowledge does not always equal knowledge of God

·      I used to think my beliefs were mostly shaped by facts, reason, and intellect. I had no idea how much of a factor childhood experiences and emotional pain were in shaping my theology.

·     The God I know today is very different than the one I thought and assumed I knew in the past. 

What about you? How accurate is your understanding of God? 

Step 2: Gain a healthy understanding of self

Even if we have a perfect understanding of God (spoiler alert: none of us do), we can still be tripped up in our journey if we don’t have a right or healthy understanding of ourselves. For most, this is the most difficult and least obvious of all the steps. Ask people what the cause of their problems is, and I’ll bet the majority will answer along the lines of something related to God or other people, without even pausing to consider the possibility that they had a part to play.

To be clear, I am aware that there are many people who take on too much personal responsibility for the problems in their lives. There are pitfalls on both sides of the spectrum. But whether your tendency is to blame everyone else for your problems or to blame yourself, the reality is that neither option is the solution.

Having worked in ministry for almost twenty years, I can tell you that no matter their age, background, ethnicity, or culture, the overwhelming majority of people:

·     Can barely identify their emotions, let alone understand how they are affected by them

·     Are blissfully unaware of how their actions affect others

·     Are mostly thinking of themselves, even when they appear selfless and altruistic

·     Are driven by shame, fear, or guilt more than they know or want to admit

The good news is that growth is possible. But it starts with a willingness to stop making excuses and get radically honest with ourselves.

Ironically, the thing we need most to grow in understanding of self is the input of others. In other words, true self-knowledge doesn’t come just from endless meditation, journaling, and introspection. As important as those are, we all have blind spots and a propensity for self-deception. No matter how self-aware you think you are, there are things you can only learn by seeing yourself from the perspective of another person. This input doesn’t necessarily have to come from a coach or counselor, but everyone needs someone who can offer an outside perspective and challenge them when needed.

Step 3: Gain a healthy understanding of others

In an ideal world, relationships would always be blessing and a place where we find meaningful connection, empathy, understanding, and friendship. You don’t have to live long to figure out that we’ve fallen a long way from paradise. Yet I still believe that relationships can be a blessing, but only if we put them in their proper place and have right expectations about them. 

Some go the cynical route and dismiss all relationships, having concluded “You can’t trust anyone. People will always let you down.” They might even put a spiritual twist on it: “God is the only one you can trust. Only God will never let you down.” There is truth to these sentiments, but as a side note, did you know that every good lie is 99% true? Others go the co-dependent route, leaning on others in ways that God never intended. 

Healthy relationships only occur when we realize that our ultimate sense of love, identity, and security comes from God alone. When this is in place, only then can we rightly understand ourselves and those around us. When we’re not looking to people for our ultimate validation, we can relate rightly to them as the imperfect but still worthy-of-love beings that they are. And we can give and receive from them without placing the demand on them to be perfect.

Step 4: Become a light in the darkness and bring healing to a hurting world

This step might be the most self-explanatory, but I think most people jump to this step without working on the other three. 

Don’t get me wrong - I believe you are meant to be a light in the darkness and a healing agent in this world. And there are plenty of people out there who don’t know much about God, themselves, or others and yet are doing amazing things for humanity.

But here’s the deal. No matter how hard we try to hide or run from our “stuff”, inevitably, hurt people hurt people. I’ve seen this over and over again.

In other words, if we have a warped view of God, we will not love others the way we should. If we don’t deal with our unhealed wounds or grow in understanding of why we do the weird things we do, we will not be a blessing to others. How many leaders and ministers start out with great intentions, but years later end up leaving people in their wake feeling hurt, used, or even abused?

I believe God has more for us than this. I believe you were made for more. There is victory and breakthrough available for you, but in order to find it, you must take a path that many do not have the courage to travel. It is the path of humility and the willingness to face even your greatest darkness. 

Conclusion

Here at The Journey Home Ministries, all of our coaching, teaching, and tools will aim to help you grow in these four realities. Specifically, we aim to teach people how to dig beneath the surface, past the typical or obvious answers, in order to find out what is really getting in the way. Only then will we find true freedom and live in the fullness of what God intended for our lives. 

Interested in learning more? Check out our other blogs, or contact us to schedule a coaching appointment or speaking engagement.