Speaker 1: 0:02

Hi and welcome to our podcast Revelation Within On the Go. I'm Heidi Biles-Maepperson, one of your hosts and the owner and lead coach of the RevelationWithinorg ministry.

Speaker 2: 0:14

And I'm Christina Motley, your other host, also a Revelation Within coach and Heidi's partner in all things Revelation Within, and we're so happy to invite you to join us for this episode of Revelation Within on the go.

Speaker 1: 0:36

Oh well, welcome, welcome. We're so glad you are with us.

Speaker 2: 0:39

We are so glad.

Speaker 1: 0:42

Well, today's episode is personal.

Speaker 2: 0:46

Did you say personal? Personal, oh my gosh, it's raw. Raw Whoa.

Speaker 1: 0:52

We're talking about why we turn to what we at Revelation Within call counterfeit comforts. You know things like overeating, over-controlling, over-scrolling, overspending and so much more yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:09

Oh, my goodness. This is a topic that both Heidi and I know intimately, and we have talked about it together. We've talked to the world about it. Our classes and our coaching. This is near and dear to our hearts for sure. So our hope is that, as we unpack this, you'll see that you're not alone in this struggle and, most important of all, you'll see that there is hope.

Speaker 1: 1:38

Yes, and this is actually part one of two. We're going to do two episodes on this topic. Today, though, let's just dive in by talking about okay, so what is a counterfeit comfort? Really, a counterfeit comfort can be anything, but it's a temporary, false solution that we might turn to in order to numb discomfort or avoid pain. I don't want to feel the way I feel, so I turn to what we call a counterfeit comfort, and, of course, you can think of your own examples. I mean like overeating, restricting social media, scrolling, like we mentioned, overspending, overexercising perfectionism. That's one, too. Do you have any others to add to the list, christina?

Speaker 2: 2:32

Oh boy, you know, it's really, it's really just over anything. It can even be good things. It can be overworking, you know, spending too much time at the office, it could be all kinds of things it could be too much ministry work.

Speaker 1: 2:40

Yes, it can. I know that from experience Too much watching sports, playing video games.

Speaker 2: 2:47

It can be things that are not at all actually bad. It's just the reason that we go and then it's like our time is just gone. It's like falling into a black hole of where did the day go? Where did the hour go? You know what's happened. I don't have time for this, and yeah, so it really can be over anything.

Speaker 1: 3:12

Yeah, that made me go back in time to when my mom died in 2012 and I hadn't played video games in a really long time and I always loved video games and I went and bought a video game and I spent hours and hours not thinking about my mom, not thinking about my grief, and yeah, anyway.

Speaker 1: 3:35

So here's the thing, though, that it's not just an obvious, overt discomfort that we're avoiding or trying to numb ourselves to. It might even just be the thoughts that we have discomfort in our own headspace, and we want to escape that inner turmoil, like the way I felt with my mom when she passed away. It was, there was so much left unsaid and so many regrets that I knew she had, and certainly that I did as well. So for me that's, I wanted to escape thinking about it. It wasn't like I had a discomfort in an actual situation that I wanted to avoid, but, wow, definitely in my head. Yes.

Speaker 2: 4:18

Well, I'm going to throw another one out there too, that I've heard a lot recently, and that is when you're in pain or physical discomfort. That's another reason to you know that many of us are like just give me something to distract me from this, right, get me out of this place of thinking about my own pain, whether it's emotional but also physical physical.

Speaker 1: 4:41

You're right, definitely.

Speaker 2: 4:43

Yeah, so second Corinthians one, verses three and four, says praise be to the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.

Speaker 1: 5:07

Yeah, this is such a great verse. You know, if I really knew God as the God of all comfort, if I knew the Lord that way. Wow, you know he comforts me. I'm going to personalize this the God of all comfort comforts me in all my troubles. Yes, Whoa, Wouldn't that be amazing? I mean, I know it's true with my head, but do I live like I believe it? So, Christina, what are some of your most common counterfeit comforts and how do they show up in sneaky ways, even now?

Speaker 2: 5:45

Well, the biggest one, of course, that I've talked about many, many, many times is food and eating. That's the one that really has kind of owned me for so many years. It does not own me anymore, hallelujah, yes, definitely, but that is one that will still pull me, especially when circumstances are really difficult. That will come up again. So, really just in the last few days I've really been struggling with some pretty severe symptoms with the chronic Lyme disease, and what's the first thing that came up in my mind was I need to go get something to eat, and it should be this or that or this, you know, like I. Just that does come up again, although I know what to do about it now.

Speaker 2: 6:32

Another one you mentioned a sneaky one. A sneaky one for me is surrounding myself with people and activity. That's a sneaky one, and it's a little bit trickier right now because it's just my husband and I in the house. Last night he got home and he said where are all the cookies that you made yesterday? And I said, yeah, there's no one else I can blame. I ain't them, it's like just the two of us. But that's okay. I mean, I can tell him that and he understands. But surrounding myself with people, distraction activity. That's one of my favorite ways to favorite ways and it's a good thing. It's not a bad thing. But if I'm doing that to comfort myself when what I really need to do is go to the Lord and talk with him and share with him and hear what he has to say about things happening in my life, I don't want to miss that. I don't want to miss that by being so quote unquote busy with other people, other things.

Speaker 2: 7:45

That's kind of a sneaky one, I think, for me.

Speaker 1: 7:48

Yeah, that's a really good point. You know, having been in ministry to primarily women Christian women, who primarily struggle with food and eating as their primary counterfeit comfort for so many years, I know that many times there's been a sense of frustration why can't I get this right? And in a lot of the research and training and whatnot that I just exposure to people and their stories, I have found that there is a lot of family of origin influence that has impacted us and I want to make this clear to anybody who hears me when I speak of this. I'm not interested and I do not believe it's a godly answer in blaming anybody for whatever it is I struggle with, it doesn't matter what I struggle with in this particular instance.

Speaker 1: 8:39

I do not believe we look at these things so that we can blame. We are grown women and men of God who have the Holy Spirit of God living in us. God has given us everything we need for life and godliness and we just don't appropriate it much of the time. But we are influenced deeply. So it doesn't define me that I was born and raised a certain way, but it does affect me. I want to bring that to God in an ongoing, sometimes hourly basis.

Speaker 1: 9:12

I was a child who grew up raised by two older parents and they had a lot of issues the way they coped with their own discomfort and they had lots of counterfeit comforts and they were very deep. My parents were both alcoholics. They physically mistreated each other and me and they also watch TV constantly. Back in the day we didn't have cable or computer or anything like that, but they modeled dysfunction and I grew up in that. I mean talk about a Petri dish for dysfunction of my own. That became my normal. This is how we handle things is by excess of something that we wouldn't ordinarily turn to, maybe, but in my case a lot of things. I turned to food and eating and drinking soda nonstop, like my parents did alcohol.

Speaker 2: 10:10

Diet soda, by the way.

Speaker 1: 10:13

Still, you know, I have thought about that, I've thought there's another beverage in my hand. How similar that is to my parents. So what I saw of them. Now, I don't blame them for me choosing now to do these things to cope and there's nothing wrong with diet soda, necessarily there's nothing wrong with a lot of the things but it's why, why do I turn to these things? And yes, there's family of origin influence, but I now can do something about that.

Speaker 1: 10:44

But I have to be willing to look at it in order to even know and ask God, god, walk with me through this and let's do this together. How about you, christina? Do you have anything like that that you know came from an earlier influence?

Speaker 2: 10:59

Yeah Well, I was raised with a mom who had had a childhood of trauma. It's a little different, but it's kind of interesting that way, and really I haven't. I'm still working this out, I think, with the Lord. In just a few weeks our family's going on a trip to where she grew up and we're going to be there with family in Europe and Germany and I don't know, I feel like maybe God's going to use that for some healing for me, with my mom and some of what happened. So my mom grew up during World War II in Germany. Her city was actually bombed. Her family starved for years. It was like trauma with a really big T at the front of it right.

Speaker 1: 11:44

I remember hearing her story. It was shocking the things she experienced.

Speaker 2: 11:48

Yes, I mean it is. It really? Her life could be like a you know a TV drama, or could write a book about it. I didn't, you know, think about any of that. Of course, while I was being raised, not until even just the last several years but as a child and then as a teenager, I watched her kind of act out as a person who had never processed or dealt with or really allowed herself to feel or talk about any of what happened to her growing up and even into her 20s and early 30ies before she came to the United States. And so I watched. I watched her and was part of her very dysfunctional way of kind of exploding emotionally or going away and being completely unavailable one extreme or the other. Our house was, you know, oftentimes it was just kind of chaotic emotionally and I was very angry with her for a long time about that.

Speaker 1: 12:51

I hated the way she was.

Speaker 2: 12:53

Yeah, I felt very unsafe around her. Now I have to say my mom was an amazing woman. She was, and I loved her with my whole heart and she loved me with her whole heart. So all of that is true, but it was hard and and and so that nothing is negated.

Speaker 2: 13:14

That was said before. And it was hard. And my dad would just come to me and say, christina, can't you just make peace with your mom, can't you do? Just do what she says, just figure this out so that it's not so bad for her. And I just I was like no, I'm going to. You know cause I'm this and I'm right and I'm going to.

Speaker 2: 13:36

I mean I was feisty as a teenager, so we had a lot of fights. Anyway, I watched her cope with food, I watched her cope with, like I said, kind of disappearing so going away, like being completely unavailable, shutting down, and I watched her try to cope with emotional outbursts that were very painful and hurtful my whole life. So, yeah, definitely, I mean there were a lot of things there that I took right into my adulthood. You just can't help it. And it wasn't her fault that she grew up during World War II. I mean, again, like you said, heidi, I'm not blaming her at all and she's in heaven now and all is well and healed, and I can't wait to see her again. Anyway, there's just no question. We just can't ignore the fact that, when we look back, there are reasons for what's happening with what we're struggling with now. You know some of the people that have come to our classes, some of the people that I've coached one-on-one. They might begin by saying I don't have anything. You know, my childhood was perfectly wonderful.

Speaker 1: 14:51

I had such loving and compassionate parents and that's great.

Speaker 2: 14:53

That's yes, Well, it is great, except that nobody's perfect. No, parents are perfect, right, and so it's okay to. It's not only okay, it's really important to be able to look back, you know, look back with the Lord and say you know what? What? Show me some things that can help me. Now, why am I? Why am I stuck in this pattern, or this pattern? Where did that come from? It might not be your parents, maybe it was some other influence when you were younger. But everything comes from something.

Speaker 1: 15:27

Right Absolutely. But everything comes from something Right Absolutely. And it's interesting to me how what we experienced as young could be young kids could be as we got older and on into high school and maybe even college years. All of those things kind of form and shape us, especially if we don't know any better, if we don't know oh wait, red alert. You know this is going to impact me in how I choose food over running to God. We don't have those kind of alarms.

Speaker 1: 15:56

So those heartaches and those disappointments, oftentimes what we have seen and learned and experienced as kids and young adults kind of teach us to grab it, something that numbs before we even realize what's happening. And what I have found over the course of my life is I have to believe that this is true and I think that science even bears this out. Is that well? And I think the scripture does too. But is that I taught myself, inadvertently taught myself, that survival required overeating? That sounds crazy, because obviously physically it doesn't sound crazy, but it's like I am uncomfortable, I am scared or I am depressed or I am, and I can't handle these emotions and you know what it's like to feel like I just can't handle anymore, I am beyond my capacity and food from early age was attached to that, sneaking was attached to that for me. And so now, as I hate to tell you, I'm 62. Am I 62 or am I 63?

Speaker 1: 16:59

I'm 63 this year because you're seven years older than me, Anyway it's really something to realize that now, this many years later, it's like my body has been trained. My nervous system thinks that survival requires overeating, and it doesn't. And it's a lie, and I have to. This is why we teach renewing of our minds, because we want to establish new neural pathways, right yeah.

Speaker 2: 17:29

You know, the other thing that I was just thinking about as you were talking, heidi, is that the world sends us a message too, that we, we deserve to numb and check out and over this and over that, because life is too hard and we can't handle it. And so here's your reward, the world, at least here in our nation I can't speak for all the nations, certainly. I think that here in America we really have trouble with that. There is a strong message, and I hear it from everyone, I know, and that's okay. I mean, I don't like blame them, but do you hear this all the time?

Speaker 2: 18:11

Oh, christina, you're having such a hard week, you know, let me bring you this to eat, or why don't you go get yourself a fancy coffee? It's like culturally normal right now in our world, here where we live, to reward yourself with over something you know. Yeah, and that's that's hard sometimes. I think it feels very normal for us, not just food, but all kinds of things. Oh, let's go get a drink so that you can calm down, you know, or whatever it is. There is a real, a really strong message.

Speaker 1: 18:46

Well, there's a standard, this expectation that discomfort doesn't need to be, we don't need to deal with it. We can, you know, jettison it. We don't have to feel uncomfortable in our own skin, we don't have to do that. And I really keep coming back to I think a lot of times it was modeled to us and then the culture, of course, contributes to that.

Speaker 2: 19:06

It's not only that. There's almost a message that says you can't be uncomfortable, like you need to escape your discomfort as fast as possible. I feel like there's a message like that more and more and that so many of us our lives are busy and difficult and this happens, that's hard and this and the world says don't go there, don't feel it, get something else going. You know, do something else or ingest something else so that you don't have to deal with those feelings Like run away. I feel like the world is often telling us run away, don't deal with it, it's too hard, you can't. I mean, we've got the world. We've got our past, our families, our upbringing. In Proverbs 22, 6, we read start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old, they will not turn from it.

Speaker 1: 20:04

The trick is what happens when we were trained in unhealthy ways. This proverb is still true. My parents taught me the way I should go. According to them, you know, use substance to numb your pain. And now I'm not turning from it as rapidly and consistently and committedly as I would like.

Speaker 2: 20:31

But I mean, really isn't that freeing in a way, just to be able to say? It feels like sometimes it helps me to just say what's happening, just say what's true, it's like bring it out in the light. Oh, yeah definitely there's no condemnation in Christ. Not at all. There's no shame. You know, we all come from challenges. We all have these things in our lives that have happened, not all the same exactly, but yeah, I mean, let's just talk about it. Let's have the courage to talk about it instead of running away. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 21:09

I know for me because chaos was associated with basically abuse. As a child growing up, I went crazy with control at one point in my life in the nineties, 1990s and the two thousands I yes, I used control and dieting and exercise to prove that I had control of my life and the world and my kids' lives and my husband's life.

Speaker 2: 21:39

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 21:40

And you know what? It's so interesting how that kind of restriction actually felt righteous but, it's really still a different side of the same coin.

Speaker 1: 21:54

It's still a way to not deal with reality. It's still a way to numb discomfort, because if I were to not numb discomfort, I would have to look at it, hopefully with the Lord. That's always what we recommend invite God in. But I would have to look at it with him and say what am I not willing to process? Right now, I want to slap all these band-aids over it. I want to run another hour and a half on the treadmill, or I want to do another set of Stairmaster exercise, whatever it might be, or write down all of the things that I am not eating, whatever it might be, or write down all of the things that I am not eating, whatever it might be. I mean and that's where, again, you mentioned it earlier, christina even good things can become counterfeit when they're driven by this sense of fear or avoidance. Or I can't sit in it. I just can't sit in it.

Speaker 2: 22:47

Yeah, you know, that makes me think about you know, think back to kind of being newly married and having young kids and kind of way back then I did. I felt this kind of pressure to put all of these things into our lives. That would make it right somehow. Oh, yeah, yeah. For example, we have to be in a small group at church. We have to be that's one of the things we have to do and we have to sit down at the table together and eat, and the kids should be in an activity at least one each and I should be getting up in the morning and having a quiet time, and I should do this with work and this with my husband, and the list goes on and on. I'm getting exhausted listening to you.

Speaker 2: 23:34

I know Well. That's why, when you and I started coaching Heidi, which was 11 years ago, one of the things that you had me do was write out all of those things.

Speaker 1: 23:46

I remember.

Speaker 2: 23:47

Do you remember? And I thought, well, I mean, what is the big deal here? This is what I'm supposed to do, and going to the gym and exercising was part of that, and eating a certain way was part of that. And, oh my gosh, there were so many things and you had me write them all out and take them to the Lord and ask him which ones of these are you calling me to and which ones am I calling myself to? Basically from pressures, from beliefs and lies, maybe from the past or culture, whatever it is. And you know what? There was a very small percentage, very small, that I felt like God was calling me to after I brought it to him and, wow, that was freeing. Heidi. I've told that story so many times. I'll never forget it, because I was causing myself to be living a life of stress, stress yeah.

Speaker 2: 24:48

And overwork and over busy and over activity, and so you know what that did. It caused me to be a person that needed to be comforted all the time.

Speaker 1: 25:01

Right, oh goodness.

Speaker 2: 25:02

Because I was so stressed and putting so much pressure on myself, and also to look a certain way. Certainly, you know, to dress a certain way, to have a house that looked a certain way. I am grateful because, boy, I felt like I was carrying the weight of the world.

Speaker 1: 25:18

You know, it's interesting you mentioning all of the different things that you were trying to put into place, because that's what you do when you're married and you want to have a family that's happy and godly, and all of that stuff. I did similar things. I created binders and I made forms that I would check off boxes and it's like, wow, you know, it makes me think of Colossians 2.23. That says such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom. Yeah, they look wild. Wow, she's got her act together. Look at her goat. Yeah, they look quiet. Wow, she's got her act together. Look at her goat. Yes, but the verse goes on to say they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence. They don't change my heart, they don't change my neural pathways either.

Speaker 2: 26:01

Right, yes, yes, and not that there's anything wrong with a list and those kinds of things. Right and cleaning, and and all of that being a part of a small group, I mean there's nothing wrong oh, we love those things yeah.

Speaker 2: 26:13

Yeah, what's not right is that pressure, living in that place of stress where it's like we've created this storm that we're living in. And I mean some storms come along and we don't create them at all and they are just life Right, right and it happens and it's hard. But I'm just going to challenge myself and anybody who's listening is your storm partly self-created?

Speaker 2: 26:40

You know, I think we do that to ourselves sometimes in an effort to grab some control, because life is messy and chaotic and it sure would be nice to put our ducks in a row. I can't even find mine at this point.

Speaker 1: 26:58

Ducky, ducky. Where are they? They're not even out front.

Speaker 1: 27:03

Well, and it's so interesting because, depending upon you know what church tradition or whatever you're a part of, you might have seen control actually be played out as a counterfeit comfort in your Christian circles. I know I have. Oh my gosh. I mean I, I raised my kids, I homeschooled them. Talk about a bunch of control freaks no offense, anybody, I was one too. But man alive, oh my gosh. And it's like I remember coming out of homeschooling and I was going to write an article for homeschoolers magazine but I knew they would hate it because I was going to outline why you should not program your kids to have Bible time as part of their schoolwork and all kinds of other things that were going to blow the lid. I mean, I had done all of the things. I had done all of the things and I felt like this is the way I am, honor God, this is the way I bless my family. You know, I think I just stressed everybody out and then we all needed to comfort ourselves.

Speaker 2: 28:10

Yes, and then there was me at the same time I didn't know you at the same time with all my kids in public school, thinking have I screwed this whole thing up? Should I be homeschooling? And it's like ah, thing up, should I be homeschooling? And it's like ah, we put so much pressure on ourselves and all the while God is just like. Here I am.

Speaker 1: 28:31

Fix your eyes on me.

Speaker 2: 28:33

I am the God of all comfort. I have the wisdom, I have your strength. You know it's like oh my gosh, and we're just spinning around like the Tasmanian devil. Do you remember that guy? Remember how he looked when he slowed down and you could see his face? Yeah, that's exactly the way that we do sometimes. We just do.

Speaker 1: 28:59

Yeah, have you ever known someone who seems to thrive on stress? They?

Speaker 2: 29:03

actually seem to create it, oh yeah.

Speaker 1: 29:06

Intentionally almost. Yeah, well, it can be a counterfeit comfort. It is, it definitely is.

Speaker 2: 29:12

Yeah, I mean, it's crazy to think that's true. And usually that person would say are you kidding me? No way, Like that's not what I do. But it's like yeah, you created your own storms. Yeah, it is pouring rain because of you.

Speaker 1: 29:29

Yeah, no, kidding. Well, and we're not going to go a lot into the healing part of this discussion until next episode. But the one thing we'll say is healing is really not linear, it doesn't just go steadily, it's like anything. You know, I know Christina has has dealt with Lyme disease now for 10 years or more 11 years, yeah and she's had seasons of feeling better and look, I'm getting better, I'm getting well and then had major setbacks.

Speaker 1: 30:01

And I was the same way with my healing from my health crisis in 2014, where I thought I was getting the use of my legs back in a way that was more familiar to me as an athlete, and then no, it stopped at one point for me. And the same is true of our healing from the trauma or experiences we've had that have been disappointing. People have disappointed us. That's just the. I mean, we live in a Genesis three world. We are all interacting all day, every day, with a bunch of sinners, and we're doing the same, you know, and so I hate to put it so bluntly, but there is no way we are unscathed. And here's another thing just going back in time to what is it? 2021 or whatever it was, if you live through the COVID crisis in the world. You have been through trauma.

Speaker 1: 30:52

You just have, unless you were on an island in the middle of nowhere or hiding under a rock. So we have to have compassion towards ourselves in this process of feeling that sometimes it's going to feel like oh man, I did all that work and now where am I? I'm back to the beginning, or worse, right, you know.

Speaker 2: 31:15

Yeah, I think one of the things that we say a lot, I think, to people who come to Revelation Within and we say it to ourselves as well is don't rush. You know what, what's the rush? Slow down, let's take our time, embrace the journey, otherwise we won't get there. Yeah, you know, because we've all been in such a rush for so many years and we don't seem to be getting there.

Speaker 2: 31:43

What we need to do is slow down, embrace the journey, normalize being on a journey rather than rushing to the destination, whatever that might be Right.

Speaker 1: 31:57

And really having a different perspective, and we talk about this in our classes as well. What is God's view of so-called failure when we have these three step back moments or years, or whatever it might be, where all the growth we thought we had is seems to be gone? You know we hate that, don't we? We hate that God allows it to happen so that he can show us what it means to truly be dependent on him. It's not a failure that defines us. It is something that can teach us. Our healing path is a path filled with opportunities to grow and learn not just be healed, but to grow and learn and it really, when push comes to shove, it's God's pace and not ours.

Speaker 2: 32:47

It is and it's valuable. It has value, the stumbles getting up learning. I mean, that's one of my favorite things about what we teach at Revelation Within is what do I do with messing up, with stumbling, with failing, with what I feel like is going backwards? But I'm really not going backwards.

Speaker 1: 33:07

No no.

Speaker 2: 33:07

Every time I'm going forwards and that is so incredibly freeing. It's a relief because pretty much everywhere everyone else says oh, you know, you were almost there and you failed again. Go back and start over. No, no, no, and that is not at all the way God designed us to live. So I love that idea of embracing the journey and not being afraid to stumble, to trip, to mess up, because those are learning opportunities, like you said, Heidi, and I mean, I think, of some of the greatest milestones in my journey. They came after hard things. They came after the kind of stumble where you really scrape your knee and it's like bleeding all the way down. I'm thinking back to when I was roller skating as a girl. I roller skated so much and some of the falls were just a little bruise and others were like blood everywhere. But it's like those are valuable.

Speaker 2: 34:12

God has purpose for all those hard times. He won't waste anything.

Speaker 1: 34:18

I love that God looks to our future and he is the one that holds responsibility for us becoming what he's calling us to be. We don't have to put that pressure on ourselves. We don't need our binder with our graphs and our charts. Philippians 1.6 says he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion. If I was to do scripture, word focus, one of our mind renewal tools. He who? Who is that? He who it is God.

Speaker 1: 34:48

He who became a good work in you will he will carry it on, and not just carry it on and on, and on, but to completion.

Speaker 2: 34:58

He really will, he will, he will, yeah. So, just as we close, we want to just leave you with this thought Counterfeit comforts are deeply rooted, but Christ offers real comfort, and not just comfort, but actual healing. He is doing something new in us all the time.

Speaker 2: 35:22

There is hope in him to be free of old patterns and old lies and the old, all the old. There is hope here. So just a couple of questions for you to think about as we go. What counterfeit comforts am I turning to right now, when I'm feeling uncomfortable, when I'm stressed, when I'm exhausted, what do I go to? What is my go-to and what would it look like to invite God into that space, even for just a minute or two, before going to the counterfeit? That won't really satisfy you, it won't really fill you at all. It'll fall short. What would it look like to go to God instead?

Speaker 1: 36:07

You know, and something we've talked about with our participants, a lot is. You know God is there in your counterfeit comfort.

Speaker 2: 36:16

He's there.

Speaker 1: 36:18

So what would it look like to invite God into that space also? So like if you are finding yourself diving into a counterfeit comfort? Grab that moment as a sacred one, where you're recognizing his presence. He doesn't shun you or reject you. Christ took all of that on himself when he went to the cross, and the father turned his face away from Jesus, so that we would never experience the rejection from God.

Speaker 1: 36:49

the father so, recognizing that God is here, he is with me in this counterfeit comfort. Right now I can have a sacred moment right now. I mean, that's crazy to think about.

Speaker 2: 37:02

Yeah right.

Speaker 1: 37:03

But isn't it true, don't you think?

Speaker 2: 37:05

Absolutely. It's so true, and this is something that so many of us have a hard time with. But when you are in the middle of that counterfeit, ask God to be in it with you. That is really the best first step that we can think of. The first step, whether you're overeating step that we can think of.

Speaker 2: 37:21

The first step whether you're overeating, over drinking, over exercising, over controlling, over scrolling, whatever you're doing, overworking, invite God in and just let him be there with you, sense his presence with you. He loves you. He loves you. All he wants to do is be in relationship with you, and so that is the beginning, is inviting him into the counterfeit, don't be afraid to do that. He is so ready to show you compassion.

Speaker 1: 37:55

Yes, and next time we're going to talk more about counterfeit comforts left behind as we move towards christ-centered confidence and that healing I'm looking forward to that coming to us and we'll see you next time at revelation within on the go bye for now, thanks, bye, see you next time.