3 EXAMPLES OF GOD THE GREAT PSYCHOLOGIST
Renewing your mind and fulfilling your destiny in a time of great anxiety
Nearly half of Americans report the coronavirus crisis is harming their mental health, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll. The unfortunate great predecessor and close bedfellow to stress is depression. A federal emergency hotline for people in emotional distress registered a more than 1,000 percent increase in April with 20,000 people texted that hotline, run by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
My great aim in life is to help people overcome the many mental hurdles that can keep us from reaching our God-given potential and achieving our ultimate purposes. We are set in the process of being and becoming. Right now – you are the sum total of what you’ve experienced, thought, said, felt, done, and what’s been said about you. You’re not fully conscious of it, but it’s true. The first 50% is our history. This is what has been programmed in from day 1; eliciting a set of mental processes and patterns governing your life right now.
The bigger part, however, the other half is your potential. This is everything you’re capable of, can ask, or imagine. The challenging part is that what you can imagine can be hindered by your view of life now based on that first 50%. Therefore, you need to recalibrate or as the Bible calls it “renewal.” (“Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing your mind.”)
God often put His people through mind renewal Himself in order to assure they’d fulfill their destiny. The Bible gives many incredible examples showing God as the ultimate psychotherapist and life coach. Look at Abram, Jacob, and Peter. God uses the crisis, chaos, and volatility of their lives to take them from where they were to where God called them to be. What appeared to be overwhelming stress, God utilized as a catalyst to transform them. They just had to supply the courage to conform no longer so that they could make the metamorphosis from caterpillars to butterflies that are still impacting the world thousands of years later.
In the Bible, the meaning of your name was directly associated with your identity and therefore the potential you believed that you had in life. Abram was at one time the father of none. If you asked him or his wife what their self-view was, they would have said, “We can’t have kids.” And they were right. God told Abram to look at himself differently. He gave him a new name, Abraham, which means “Father of many” and told him, “Your descendants will be as many as the stars in the sky.” Abram believed his Father was in control, accepted his new identity, and became Abraham, patriarch to all the children of God.
Jacob came out of the womb holding onto his brother’s heal. The name Jacob literally means “heal grabber,” “supplanter,” “deceiver,” and “second-class citizen.” All of those meanings proved to be true. He felt inferior to his brother, Esau, older by a couple of minutes. Jacob’s origin story is him deceiving Esau, his father Isaac, and his Uncle Laban. In order to transform him, God took Jacob through a fierce wilderness and even came down to wrestle him. Jacob persevered—he hung on, he weathered the storm, and he won. God changed his name from “Jacob the Deceiver” to “Israel,” which means “God prevails” or “he who wrestled with God.” Jacob was not a second-class citizen anymore. He was a victor and the father of the nation of God.
The name “Simon” means “weed.” A weed lacks the internal integrity to stand firm. A weed sways with the wind. We see the same actions throughout Simon’s life, including when he denied his beloved Jesus three times before the cock crowed, as Jesus had said He would (Matthew 26:34–75). After much trial and growth, Jesus said to Simon, “Simon bar Jonah,” which was the same as saying, “Weed, son of a fisherman.” Then He said, “I now call you Peter.” Peter means rock. Peter, no longer a weed, but a man who stands firm in his conviction is then able to be used by God to bring the gospel to the world (Matthew 16:17–18).
With a new identity, you’ll expand your vision and goals and believe you’re capable of achieving them. When you see yourself as a world-changer you see your ability and your future in a whole new light. With your authentic, ultimate identity, God can really use you! You’ll go from being a victim of your environment, just making it by, or just making a living to creating a whole new world and making a world of difference.
Remember, with God – all things are possible,
Dr. Ben