Becoming Well With Liz Tafadzwa

Hello BW Tribe. How has been your week so far? Has it been great? Hard? Overwhelming? Exciting? If it’s hard I want to remind you that this too shall pass and if it’s going great, be fully present for all of it. To my new readers, welcome to the Becoming Well Community! You are already loved here and to my regular readers what’s good fam. Last week I opened up, “Can We Be Honest.” A 16 part series about a child of God awakened to the reality of God’s unconditional love and the permission and possibility for healing and wholeness. Only made possible by deciding to walk into what was already made available for them. I know that was a mouthful , but I assure you that you are in for a transformative journey. There is no way at the end of these 4 months you will remain the same if you put into practice what you will learn. I don’t promise feel-good statements or poetic lines. However, I guarantee you truth in love, practicality and a plethora of life and spiritual principles sourced directly from the Creator’s manual. I want your life to be transformed, and not just informed.

Last week, I left you with the task of asking yourself what is the first and main priority in your life. I emphasized not saying what you think someone else or God wants to hear, but your honest truth. Some of us may have struggled to admit the truth because we were groomed and lived in a culture of dishonesty for so long. We may have been raised in a home where phoniness and pretense was the norm and admitting the truth was strongly discouraged. In your quest to belong, you may have paired up with friends that required pretense for you to be a part of the group and you sacrificed authenticity for belonging. But here is one thing I know for sure to be true: the habit of honesty is something that is better learned through modeling than lecturing.

While it would be easier for me to excuse those who never saw honesty modeled, it would be ignorant and unwise of me to do that because we still do have a model we can learn from if we spend consistent time with him. That name is Jesus. He was perfect and never sinned yet he interacted with sinners and was often put in positions that pressured him to lie or deceive people. He was also incredibly secure and bold enough to call out ignorance and deception in people and did not give in to the manipulation of broken and religious people. Wouldn’t you want to learn from someone like that? You have probably heard the saying that goes “you become like the people you spend the most time with” and boy is that not true. I am sure you have noticed that after sometime you start to repeat the same statements that those you hang out with the most say. You never liked pink, but all of a sudden you like it because “the girlies love pink,” you used to tithe but because you hang out with stingy people you start to entertain the thought that maybe I don’t need to continue doing that, you used to take daily walks and it’s been a couple of months since you took a walk because you have been hanging out with people who don’t prioritize physical health. The good news is, this principle proves true when the opposite is applied.

If that principle is true that you become most like the people you spend large doses of time with, I highly suggest you make room and space for Jesus. He has to become the person you spend the most time with. It may initially feel unnatural to be spending time with a person you can’t physically see, but his life was so impactful and influential that you didn’t have been alive while he was on earth to experience and learn from him. It’s been more than 2000 years since Christ left the earth yet we still feel his impact and learn from him 33 years of life. That my friend is what real impact looks like. It’s not the length of one’s life that is most important, but the contribution of it( Rick Warren, Purpose Driven Life). You spend time with Jesus by reading the Bible and studying his life, how he interacted with God, his disciples, the alienated, religious people, children, widows and all other kinds of people. A good book to start with is the book of John which is one of the four gospels and from there read the other three (Matthew, Mark & Luke) and work your way through the New Testament. You also spend worthy time when you study and observe how he responded to the devil’s temptations because the same tactics Satan used with Jesus he certainly will use with you too. Listening to music that is rooted in scripture, regularly attending your local church services and being locked in with a small group where you break bread together are also ways of spending time with Jesus. But the deepest level of intimacy with Jesus is when you do what he modeled when he was vulnerable, weak and in need of the Father’s embrace. He was honest about how he felt because he knew that Father loved him and would never fail or abandon him as a result of his honesty. We see that on Mount Gethsemane with his closest 3 disciples as well as on the cross before he breathed his last.

“It’s not the length of life that is most important, but the contribution of it”- Rick Warren

If that were not enough for you, Jesus invited you to himself so you could find rest for your exhausted soul in Mathew 11:28-30. “ Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.”  I love the part that says “let me teach you for I am humble and gentle at heart.” Now you may be thinking, what has the verse got to do with honesty? For many of us, our struggle with opening up and being honest about what we think or feel is often rooted in the fear of being judged, rejected, disapproved or misunderstood. Every human behind has inherent needs to belong, be accepted and feel understood. So it’s not abnormal to desire to have those needs met, but if you don’t allow Jesus to meet all those needs first, I guarantee you that you malfunction at some point( emotionally, mentally, physically, relationally or financially). If you refuse to believe that Jesus accepts you as you are, no one and no possessions will feel that void to feel fully accepted. Living in that kind of perpetual fear negatively affects your soul and it gets worse when you encounter a person who is both proud and aggressive. The opposite of Christ’s nature. That’s why in that verse, Jesus said “let me teach for I am humble and gentle at heart.” It’s easier to learn and receive from someone who is humble and gentle than a proud and aggressive individual. The latter traits shut instead of open you up. This is what makes this portion of Scripture relevant. For your walk with Jesus to be effective and work for you not against you, honesty is a habit you have to cultivate. Lay down the burden of trying to maintain an image of your love for Jesus when you can’t be transparent with him and are being weighed down by things he freely wants to take off you.

What I have observed in my walk with Jesus is that the more time I spend with Jesus, the more it reflects in how I think, talk, feel, and behave. When I go more than two weeks( which is quite long, but I  want to be honest that it has happened a few times before) without reading my Bible I am less patient, easily stressed out, feel more insecure, and prone to getting into people-pleasing mode. I have seen this to be true in a lot of other devoted Christians. Their emotions and behavior may not be similar to mine but their weaknesses tend to start controlling them. You have a short temper? You struggle with uncontrolled anger? Gossip is your battle? You wrestle with comparison and envy? These things will start intoxicating your soul if you don’t cultivate honesty in your walk with Jesus. What good is it to have a relationship with Jesus that is not working for you. It is not selfish to think that way because Christ wants to work through not against you. He was perfect but he doesn’t need or expect you to be perfect because he knows you can’t be perfect.

“The more time you spend with Jesus, the more it’s reflected in how you think, feel, talk and behave.”

So this week, I want you to think about areas in your life where you are not being fully honest with Jesus. Last week we were learning how to be honest with ourselves. This week I want you to extend that to your relationship with Jesus. Maybe it is a secret addiction, a mental struggle, an intense, but destructive emotion, fear of the present or future, or explosive pride. Whatever it is, he wants you to come with all those things to him. He won’t judge, belittle or condemn you. Instead, he will embrace you with humility and gentleness before he teaches you truths that will ultimately set you free and revive your soul back to life. I got tired of resisting what Jesus wanted to freely offer me because I expected humans to give me what he only can give. No one could offer me true rest for my soul except for Jesus and the same is true for you if you are currently nursing a sick or exhausted soul. If your schedule is packed, it is time to reevaluate what you need to remove so you can make room in your day to spend focused time with him. You don’t need to add another thing to your schedule. What you really need is actual rest for your mind, regulation of your emotions, and restoration of your violated will. That all starts with creating time to start with Jesus. We will talk about therapy and other supplemental healing tools, but I’m fully convinced that permanent healing cannot happen independent of the intervention of Jesus. Over time you will become best friends and you will freely talk to him throughout the day but in the beginning, you need to build the discipline to spend daily time with him.

Process and apply what you have just learned, and go out and live in honesty. I love you tribe and come ready for next week because we are switching gears to tackle Identity!!