We all need help! Turning to Jesus is the first step in admitting our need for help. Jesus helps us directly with His very presence AND He brings us into relationship with each other so we can help each other too along with Him.

King David's story starts with him working as a shepherd for his father, being excluded from a party for his father's sons and shows that God saw it all. God saw David's heart seeking His own and together they grew a relationship that defied human storylines. Like David, when we seek God for help, the stories we write for ourselves transform over time into His story for us. His story always includes Him! With God comes goodness of growing in love with Jesus.

Best thing to happen to us ever!

Lies we learn about Jesus and mistrust we grow from trauma toward Jesus keep us from the truth of His love. We experience His love when the pain of sin in our lives forces a question: keep going our own way or start going toward Jesus. Letting go of our way makes room for us to experience being loved by Jesus and that changes us! It starts us on the journey toward wholeness and maturity that Jesus made possible for us on the cross. The companion on this journey: the Holy Spirit.

Jesus walked through and worked through the unique pain in each one of our lives! Every single bit of pain in your life, Jesus already walked through and worked through that pain into a pathway to life. That was the work He did on the cross for us. Now we can walk where He leads us, no matter how dark it looks to us because He already walked and marked the path to life in our stories with His story.

Attention directs our cells to start firing and wiring together. Who and what we pay attention to shapes our identity. Attention directs the neuroplasticity God gave us for change. Attention, neuroplasticity, even time are all things with potential for growing maturity and growing stagnation. The direction of our attention with our time is what determines which type of growth we choose.

The story of Moses illustrates what grows when we direct our attention to doing things in our own power, our way, even if we think our own way serves God. His story also illustrates what grows when we give our attention to God. He grows and matures into someone we didn't even know we were but who we become when our attention in on Him.

God's compassion is what we need but we often reject because His compassion feels too unfamiliar compared to what we are used to as part of relational traumas caused by sin in our lives. We face the paradox of what we need feeling dysregulating in some ways when in fact God's compassion enters into the spaces that cause our dysregulation and start to create order and safety for our self-regulation. The work of change while uncomfortable becomes more transformative as we persist with the Holy Spirit in abiding with Jesus.