Lets know the relation between self-knowledge and attachments

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Sometimes the little things we cling to don’t allow us to see ourselves as we are, which are our attachments. This human condition leads us to create Attachments. Without realizing it, we become attached to people, children, ideas, routines, and plans that separate us from God’s heart because we are attached to passing things.

Self-knowledge and attachments

Self-knowledge implies the opportunity of describing ourselves in the most real and objective way possible in the essential aspects of our being: our attachments. The process of self-knowledge must be linked to the conscious, intentional plane so that we do not fall into an idealization of who we are. On the other hand, it also happens that we meet people who know their partners, their children, and their parents more than they know themselves. The lack of personal knowledge is extended to every area of our life.

Self-knowledge is a tool to address self-esteem issues, personal growth, and self-realization. When it comes to the desire to achieve important things in life, the lack of self-knowledge hinders the process of future generations, which can present in several ways. An example of this fact is when a father clings to the idea that his son must inherit his selfish ideals, and this heritage separates the son from his self-realization.

How do you start knowing yourself?

Take time for self-knowledge exercises. A very powerful one is emotional writing. Writing a diary for weeks and months can lead to a deep understanding of the direction you are leading your life in. Writing a diary is a way to make the inner self emerge. This act provides the dialogue between the ideal personal image and the one you have at the moment. It is a quiet activity through which you can focus and write what you are not ready to express out loud.

Some questions to be answered when writing the diary and can be helpful when performing introspection are: Who am I? What do I love? And, what would I say to my future “me”?

Growing up as a person is a lifelong process. If your thoughts about the future are dark, negative, or limiting, be aware that you can change them. How? By giving an important meaning to your life experiences. Just because you have lived traumatizing experiences does not mean you must stay anchored to them.

Life does not give you what you want, but what you need to move forward. That is why it is recommended to create a lifeline with experiences and learning. Experience teaches us that we do not always take the appropriate path. And that we can find ourselves in a situation where we feel far from our essence. This leads us to live on autopilot, distanced from our dreams, our aspirations, and our needs.

The absurd part of the attachments

Other things that illustrate an absurd part of attachments are all those daily inclinations that become imperfections without us even realizing it. They take us away from loving others, such as when we stick to little things. Sometimes, it is as silly as a preferred object like a pen that writes perfectly, or a new car. We are unable to tolerate seeing it deteriorating. And we even complain about people who have the misfortune of sharing it.

And finally, the most painful attachment, without a doubt, is mourning due to the loss of a loved one. When the “someone” who is already gone can keep us angry, even with God. Why be angry with God? He is the Lord of the universe. When we go through a similar situation of pain and anguish, we must trust in God. We must believe that everything that happens in our life is in perfect harmony with his plan for us. It is a necessary conviction to elevate our spirit and reach self-knowledge.

So, if we want to see each other clearly, we need to ask the Holy Spirit to guide us to the whole truth. Including the deepest truths about ourselves, which are hidden in our subconscious. Otherwise, we will not be able to see ourselves with greater enlightenment.

Now, take advantage of this reading and introduce a new idea to your mind. This idea can help you understand a little more about the subject: our imperfections separate our hearts from God’s love. What are the imperfections that keep you clinging to them daily and do not allow you to know yourself?

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Self-Awareness -When I Don’t Like What I See Inside of Me

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A young woman came to my practice and told me she was afraid because she was sure God was mad at her. Her self-awareness accused her. She had an abortion a long time ago and was sexually involved with multiple partners in her life. At that time, she was thinking that God was preoccupied with her sins and shortcomings, and she felt that God was seeing her with anger and reproach. Was she right? ​

I am also thinking about a young man who came to me seeking professional help. He could no longer believe that God takes a personal interest in his life. He said he had suffered so much that he could not conceive God having any interest in him. Furthermore, he also said he never experienced the caring hand of God, and if God loves someone, for sure, it was not him. Was he right? Both cases show the lack of understanding of who God could be in our lives.

Begin practicing self-awareness

In this post, I want to show you how to begin practicing self-awareness, which must be anchored in an understanding of God’s love. Genuine self-awareness begins with an understanding of God’s love in your life. This love needs to become the foundation of your identity.

Searching for your inner world without the love of God is like walking in complete darkness without light. I look into my inner being and try to comprehend my vulnerabilities, failures, and sinful actions. Then, what I see inside of me is detrimental and depressive. I see the roots of a shameful mentality crying, “you are not good enough, you are a failure, and death is your destiny.”

God’s love and self-awareness

For this reason, self-awareness must begin from the perspective that your identity must be engraved in God’s love, and the false self you have lived in the past does not matter. God continues to care for you with everlasting love.

Until we dare to believe that nothing can separate us from God’s love, nothing that we could do, or fail to do, will make God change His love for us (Romans 8:31-38). We will not practice genuine self-awareness because we will be afraid of what we will find. And in addition, we will remain in kindergarten in the school of Christian spiritual transformation.

Meeting God in the vulnerability of my sins and shame is strengthening. That is why I know that whatever I find unopened in my inner rooms will not stop God from saying, “This is my son, whom I love with all my heart.”

I remember when I was a child, I was scared of darkness. If I had to go to a dark room alone, I would rather die than enter that room. However, my dad was accessible to me. Every time I called him, he was available to enter a dark room and found the switch to turn on the lights.

Your heavenly Father is next to you. And he wants to assure you that He loves you and longs to go inside your innermost dark rooms as you begin to know yourself and transform your life.

Reflect on your knowing of God’s love

I challenge you today to not go alone to search your inner dark rooms. What you find could be very depressing and scary. Invite God to come with you as you practice self-awareness. Reflect on your knowing of God’s love by asking these questions:

  • To what extent does this knowing build the foundation of who you are as a person?
  • In what ways do you experience divine love?
  • And how do you know it to be true even when you are not experiencing it?

If by any chance you do not like your answers, tell God how much you long to know His perfect love for you. Pray that God will lead you to someone with whom you can share this desire. Someone with the spiritual maturity to journey with you as you seek to know God’s love.

Today, you are embarking on a transformation journey. And anchoring it in the love of God will help you believe that “nothing is impossible for those who believe”. (Mark 9:23). When you do not like what you see inside yourself, remember that God loves you and accepts you as you are. God bless you.

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Emotional intelligence during the pandemic

So, the coronavirus pandemic has been a source of great stress for many people. emotional intelligence is key to keeping going. The fear and anxiety produced by this new disease is overwhelming and scary, and so is the ability this disease has to destroy families, from the poorest to the richest.

Much has been written about how to handle the crisis and how to improve our mental health. But today, more than ever, we need something more than the mere fact of practicing social distancing and using masks. We need to grow in our emotional intelligence. Being someone who behaves with high emotional intelligence has never been as important as it is in this unprecedented time.

Emotional intelligence is the ability to perceive, express, understand, and manage emotions. And, it is important, since the more we understand these aspects about ourselves, the better our spiritual and mental health, and social development will be during the pandemic.

Let me ask you today, are the decisions you make as a parent, spouse, son or daughter, employee or leader, generated by fear or despair, or by a person who has emotional intelligence? The way you answer this question will determine where you are going to be at the end of this pandemic.

Many studies by several universities from around the world have shown that a person’s success in many levels of life, such as intrapersonal, interpersonal, and, social, is determined by the level of emotional intelligence that person has. These studies reveal that 80 percent of a person’s success is determined by emotional intelligence and only 20 percent is determined by rational intelligence or his/her intelligence quotient.

What is the origin of the term emotional intelligence?

Many people attribute the concept of Emotional Intelligence to Daniel Goleman, but actually, this concept had been already elaborated on by other authors before Goleman made it popular in his book Emotional Intelligence in 1995.

It is believed that the first person to develop this line of thought about emotional intelligence was Edward L. Thorndike in 1920. Back then, he used the term social intelligence to describe the ability to understand or motivate other people.

In 1940, David WeshslerWechsler described the influence that human behavioral factors that were not determined by intellect had, and he made it clear that intelligence tests would not be complete until the factors influencing human beings that were beyond intellect and people’s relationships could be properly described.

Howard Gardner and its tribute to emotional intelligence

Unfortunately, these authors’ works went unnoticed for many years, until 1983, when Howard Gardner, in his book Multiple Intelligences: the practical theory, introduced the idea that intelligence indicators, such as intelligence quotient, do not fully explain cognitive ability, since they do not consider “interpersonal intelligence” (the ability to understand intentions, motivations, or other people’s desires), nor the “intrapersonal intelligence” (the ability to understand oneself, appreciate feelings, fears, and self-motivations).

The first use of the term emotional intelligence is generally attributed to Wayne Payne in his doctoral thesis: “A study about emotions: the development of emotional intelligence” (1985). However, this expression had already appeared before in texts written by Beldoch (1964) and Leuner (1966). Stanley Greenspan also proposed an emotional intelligence model in 1989, as well as Peter Salovey and John D. Mayer. But, of all these authors, the one who popularized the concept was Daniel Goleman in his above-mentioned book.

Now, let us leave this concept’s historical background behind. LetsLet’s talk about the importance to have high emotional intelligence in the midst of amid the pandemic.

According to Daniel Goleman, emotional intelligence entails five practical skills that must developed by someone who wants to grow in managing his/her emotions. Each of these 5 Practical Skills of Emotional Intelligence was also subdivided into different competencies. Let’s look at these abilities applied to the context of the pandemic.

1)Self-awareness 

This means acknowledging one’s state of mind, resources, and intuition. This skill is key while we navigate through this pandemic, since without self-awareness, we cannot understand the emotions we are experiencing amid the crisis, the resources we are counting on to face the crisis, and, we will not have the necessary intuition to t make wise decisions.

Emotional competencies that depend on self-awareness

The emotional competencies that depend on self-awareness are:

  • Emotional awareness: to identify our own emotions and the effects they may have on us and those around us. For example, the parent who does not have emotional awareness will not know how to identify the emotions his/her child is experiencing. In the end, he/she will not be able to teach his/her child how to manage emotions.
  • Self-evaluation: to know our own strengths and limitations. Every human being has strengths and limitations. Many times, we focusefocus on the limitations we have that we neglect the strengths that have led us to where we are now. In the pandemic, it is imperative to assess our strengths and limitations and focus our energy on depending on our strengths and let ourselves be influenced by others who can help us with our limitations.
  • Self-confidence: a strong feeling of self-worth and ability. The way you perceive and value yourself will allow you to navigate through troubled waters. If you do not trust yourself, no one will trust you either.

2) Self-regulation

the second skill relates to self-regulation. There may be no more essential psychological skill than the ability to resist an impulse. How many poor decisions have you made due to your lack of self-regulation? Unnecessary purchases, angry and bad moments that might have been avoided.

Besides, there are days in the midst of amid the crisis in which you get up with no motivation to do things, you want to stay in bed. But, self-regulation is what moves you to manage your state of mind and it pushes you to reach the goals you have set for that day.

The emotional competencies that depend on self-regulatio

Self-control: to stay vigilant about disturbing emotions and impulses. There are toxic emotions we have to keep an eye on. Resisting the impulse to lose control is the basis for emotional self-control, since each emotion is a desire to act in the face of the problem and that desire is not always the right response.

Trustworthiness: to keep adequate standards of honesty and integrity.

Awareness: to take responsibility for our work performance. Many blame the economy or social distancing for their family crisis. Awareness helps you take responsibility for what you have to do when facing the crisis and stop blaming others for the things you do not have in your life.

Adaptability: flexibility in managing changing situations. Everyone who has found a way to thrive during this pandemic has had to adapt themselves to changes. Adapting to Zoom meetings, to having to live with a family member that you use to seeing for only a few hours. Flexibility and adaptability are two elements that successful people have.

– Innovation: to be comfortable with new information, new ideas, and situations. While many companies have ended in bankruptcy, many others have grown in the middle of the crisis. What is the difference? The people in charge and the innovation competency. Ask yourself, how much innovation have you brought to your family in order to improve your emotional connection with your loved ones?

3) Motivation

It refers to the emotional tendencies that guide or facilitate meeting established goals.

  • Impulse of achievement: the effort to improve or reach a standard of excellency in your family.
  • Commitment: Developing a commitment to your family’s goals.
  • Initiative: the availability to react to opportunities. Opportunities cannot be wasted. Your motivation will lead you to be aware of initiatives that might change your life or your family’s.
  • Optimism: the persistence in chasing the goals despite obstacles and setbacks. This pandemic may have affected your family in several ways, but your optimism is what will allow you to rise from the ruins of despair and to continue towards the goals you have set for yourself.

4) Empathy

It is the other ability that will take you down a path to hope in the middle of the crisis. There are so many people who are in need around you right now, people who are looking for someone who can feel empathy for them. Empathy means being aware of other people’s feelings, needs, and concerns. It does not mean that the other person must think like us, but understand the way other people think and respect it. If we do the opposite, it could lead us to be self-centered.

Emotional competences that depend on empathy

Thus, the emotional competences that depend on empathy are:

  • Understanding other people: to understand the feelings and perspectives of the family members. Maybe your children are exhausted from having online classes. A smart parent understands his/her children and will take advantage of this opportunity to teach them how to manage their emotions.
  • To help others to blossom: being aware of the developmental needs of others and helping them strengthen their skills. In marriage and family therapy, we emphasize this aspect. We talk about discovering the needs the children and spouses have so we can help them grow. In the end, we all need the person we have beside us in order to survive.
  • Orientation service: to anticipate, acknowledge, and satisfy your family’s real needs.
  • Enhancing diversity: to cultivate opportunities to bring diversity to your family. Not everyone has to be like you. Accept diversity of opinions and ideas, and you will have a healthy family. 
  • Political awareness: to be able to read your family’s emotional currents and the power of the relationships they have among them.

5) Social skills

The last skill relates to the social field. It means being an expert in providing the desired answers to other family members. This goal depends on the following emotional skills:

  • Influence: to come up with effective persuasion tactics. 
  • Communication: to know how to listen openly to others and to provide convincing messages.
  • Conflict management: to know how to negotiate and solve disagreements within your marital and family relationships.
  • Leadership: the ability to inspire and guide your family members.
  • A catalyst for change: being a starter or administrator of new situations.
  • A bond builder: to nurture and strengthen interpersonal relationships among family members.
  • Collaboration and cooperation: to work with other family members in order to achieve shared goals.
  • Team abilities: to be able to create synergy in the pursuit of collective goals in your family.

How have you put emotional intelligence into practice in the midst of the pandemic? Maybe you feel disappointed with yourself because you have not managed your emotions well. But remember, it is never too late to start.

Start today by developing each one of these skills so you can manage stress and distress in the midst of the pandemic. Remember that a fool gives full vent to his spirit, but a wise man quietly holds it back (Pro. 29:11).

Mental illness: an invisible enemy

Many people with mental illness are suffering discrimination in our churches because we are not prepared to deal with the silent disease.

A few years ago, when I was returning from Tennessee from my daughter Jasmin’s graduation, Samuel’s (my youngest son) car had a noise in one of the tires. That noise had already been there for several weeks now, and he said that the noise was coming from one of the half-loose fenders.

Samuel would try to adjust it a bit, and then the noise would be quieter. As we were heading back to Miami, it was late, around 10:00 P.M. we were driving down the deserted road of I75 when we suddenly heard a high-pitched noise and the rear tire blew out.

I quickly managed to pull the car to the side of the road and, to my surprise, we discovered that the fender was not the problem. When we removed the wheel to put the spare on, we understood what the source of the noise was: the rear tire was damaged, and we did not know it. It looked fine from our point of view.

What’s more, it had only been a year since I had put four new tires on the car.  The problem was in a non-visible area. We had been driving a time bomb, thinking that the noise we were hearing was coming from another source.

The problem that I had with my tire is an example of how many problems human beings have behaved. Conflicts are a time bomb because we are not aware of the magnitude of the situation. Unless you discover the source, you cannot be safe from the repercussions of that problem.

Mental illness is a growing problem

Today, I want to talk to you about something that is making noise in our society. And many do not know where that sound is coming from or how to approach the problem. I have called this noise the invisible disease. Invisible, because it is not talked about, and it is not seen with the naked eye.

There is a stigma around this disease, which has led many people to hide their heads like ostrich in the sand. We will not know how to deal with it, either. I am talking about mental illnesses: this week we will be discussing crisis, mental health, and Christ on this blog. My goal with this week’s posts is to raise awareness of these diseases. I want to provide practical tools to address the invisible disease in your community.

Studies about mental illness

Recently, there has been more awareness in our society about the importance of helping people suffering from mental illnesses. Many are advocating for this condition, especially authors Fuller Torrey and Judy Miller. In their book, “The Invisible Plague,” they say:

Imagine an epidemic that does not quickly kill a large percentage of those affected, but slowly kills 15% by suicide. Besides, imagine an epidemic so insidious and insinuating that two centuries after it began, it is hardly noticeable, mixed in the fabric of people’s lives, that a few intelligent people even deny that the disease exists. Imagine an epidemic that affects more than 4 million Americans, most of them in their prime of life, and that will continue to affect more than one in every 100 people born, but is not recognized as a major public health problem and it is largely ignored by officials who oversee the nation’s health. This is the epidemic of mental illnesses” (Pages 2-3).

This was written in 2001. If they saw mental illnesses as a growing social epidemic in this country at that time, then this crisis is currently at astronomical proportions. You have no idea what statistics we have today. The problem is that if this plague is increasing in our society, it will also increase in our religious circles.

Statistics of mental illness

The church is the first place where people with problems go seeking refuge. But, when they arrive, many times the leaders do not know how to deal with these problems due to the stigmas and the lack of information. Let us look at some statistics:

  • Every year, 1 in 5 people in America suffers from a mental illness (NAMI).
  • Between 15-25% of the population will suffer from a mental illness at some point in their life.
  • 59% of pastors have counseled someone who has experienced a mental illness at some point.
  • 27% of people who attend church on Saturday are dealing with mental illnesses, either themselves or their family members (Rogers, Stanford, Garland. Mental Health, Religion & Culture, 2011).
  • 22% of pastors are reluctant to get involved with those with acute mental illnesses, due to previous experiences wasting their time and resources.
  • 23% of pastors indicate that they have personally been struggling with some kind of mental illness.
  • 49% of pastors rarely speak of mental illnesses in their sermons.
  • 90% of pastors, 74% of individuals with an acute mental illness, and 85% of their family members agree that local churches have the responsibility to provide resources and support to people with mental illnesses and their families (LifeWay Research, 2014).

These statistics reflect a stigma that exists in our church. We can talk without any trouble about cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, cancer, and, hepatitis. But when diseases of the brain come up, we remain silent because of the taboo that exists around this topic.

Mental illness is Taboo

I recently spoke with a friend I made at a conference. And he told me that at one point in his life, he experienced a very acute trauma. He sought professional help and was diagnosed with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. With tears in his eyes, he told me he could not continue with his treatment. Because the administrators of my organization and his co-workers were going to find out about his diagnosis. He did not want his image to be affected and decided to suffer in silence.

A brother from church came to me and said: “I want to divorce my wife because she has a mental illness and. Due to the life that I have lived with her, I believe that I have the right to divorce her and marry someone else.”

“If your wife had cancer instead of a brain disease, would you have divorced her?” I asked him.

And he said “no,” that mental illnesses are different, and that there is no one who can stand a person with this type of mental condition.

As Christians, we are called to accept marginalized or stigmatized people. But many people find this a difficult task to do, especially when it involves people who are mentally ill.

The silence disease

Many people with emotional problems are suffering discrimination in our churches because, as pastors and leaders, we are not prepared to deal with the silent disease. That reaction is often the product of fear and lack of knowledge about it. God calls us to love our neighbor the same way we love ourselves (Mt. 22:36-40). That neighbor may be a church brother or sister. Maybe, he sits next to us and secretly suffers from a silent illness.

I ask you, have you ever felt marginalized or discriminated against due to a mental disorder that you have experienced? I invite you to share your experience with me. Write it in the comments section and help me eliminate the stigma that exists around mental illnesses.

You are directed by your subconscious mind

We have been studying the power of the subconscious mind and why it is so difficult for us to grow emotionally. And we discovered that it is very important to understand how the brain and mind work. If we do not know how they work, we cannot grow emotionally or have healthy relationships. Today we will study the subconscious mind.

It is proven that the brain is the organ that God gave us so that we can have healthy relationships and be able to connect with other human beings. We have already studied that the mind has two dimensions: the conscious and the subconscious mind.

Subconscious mind

Your subconscious mind directs you. What does this mean? Neuroscience has proven that 95 percent of all your everyday decisions come from your subconscious mind, not the conscious part of your mind. This means that you are not aware of the decisions you are making. Since their origins lie in the subconscious. It is impressive, since the subconscious is linked to all the programming and experiences you have had in your life.

It does not matter if they are positive or negative, they are stored in your subconscious mind, in your memory and, through the amygdala of the brain, which regulates emotions, you express yourself, connect, and make decisions linked to the experiences you have had.

The subconscious mind, a real case

I illustrate this idea with the story of a patient who tells me:

“Pastor, you do not know my life. I will tell you about when I was five years old. My mother taught me how to make pupusas and when they got burned. My mother would beat me in the face with them. She said that I had to learn not to let them burn because we depended on them, to make a living by selling them. At five, I was already working as my mother’s maid. When I did something that she did not like, she would ask my two brothers to carry me over and put me on top of hot sticks on the floor. That was the kind of punishment and abuse that I received from my mother.”

A daughter, victim of the subconscious mind of her mother

We invited the mother to therapy. The mother tells me, “You do not know the whole story. The father of the girl told me that he loved me with his whole heart. He had sex with me, I got pregnant, and after the girl was born, he left me. He went to be with a younger girl. My daughter looked so similar to him. So, every time I saw her, hateful memories would come to me. The memories of that evil man who left me for that younger woman. And all I wanted to do was to blame it on her and do to her what I could not do to that evil man who left me.”

That girl was suffering due to the traumatic experience her mother had in the past and all that was there in the subconscious. The decisions she was making regarding her daughter were decisions based on the experience she had with the girl’s father. And the girl was not to blame. But, the subconscious, that autopilot system that was directing that mother’s life, led her to put all her hate, all her anger, on that unhappy girl.

The big power of the subconscious mind

The subconscious mind is something extraordinary because everything we have experienced is stored there. And maybe you are thinking: “the subconscious mind is annoying”. But no, God created the human being with a subconscious mind so that we can survive in life. Imagine that everything you have experienced, whether positive or negative, all the traumas and difficult situations, are in the conscious, in your present.

You could not survive with all that. God allows all difficult experiences to be in the subconscious and allows it to automate, regulate, to process all that automatically without us having to be aware of the reactions we are having. For example, learning to drive was difficult for me.

I told my father to let me drive, that I knew how to do it. But he told me to consider that it was not an automatic car, to push the clutch and slowly let it out so that the car could move forward. I was just a teenager, I thought I knew everything. So, I got in the car, started it, pushed the clutch, and when I let it go, the car jumped and stayed in the same place.

But, little by little, my dad taught me until I learned how to drive. It was not easy at first because I had to let the clutch go in one certain way, accelerate in a certain way, and stop with the right foot, to keep my eyes looking ahead. But how is it possible that today I can drive and do all those things, and not be aware of everything I am doing? Simply because all learning was registered in the subconscious. It is responsible for how I work and function, and what I have to do effectively because everything is done automatically.

How can we use the subconscious mind?

How can we apply this to our life? Perhaps you are a person who cannot control your anger due to difficult experiences you have lived in your past. Maybe you lived an experience of domestic violence and the behavior you learned. It was recorded in your subconscious. There you saw your father hitting, pushing, and mistreating your mother. It is the same behavior that you are showing today in your life, in your marriage, and with your children.

Why? Because it is a learned behavior. The experience that you have had and that is in your subconscious mind repeats the same unhealthy behavior that you learned in your childhood as though you were on autopilot.

Your life can be better

Maybe you are a sad, and shy person, and that is a result of some experience you lived. Your subconscious leads you to behave that way, and you are not aware that you are doing it. It is simply something you learned in the past. I encourage you to continue reading our posts. We will continue learning about:

  • how the subconscious works and how we can grow in our family relationships,
  • how to improve our relationships with friends, church brothers
  • and how to have emotional intelligence.

God calls you to love your neighbor as yourself. God calls you to learn how to love. It is a commandment. With us, you will learn how to grow emotionally so that you can reflect the relational image of the God who created you.

There is no spiritual growth without emotional transformation

Today, we will talk about emotional transformation and how can we experience spiritual growth. The most important task we have as human beings is to learn how to love God and our neighbors. There is nothing more important in this world than learning how to love.

We have been studying how the People of Israel. That generation that left Egypt, died in the desert, and only two men entered the Promised Land: Joshua and Caleb. This was because they did not allow God’s power to change their lives. And more specifically, they did not experience an emotional transformation.

We have already studied the different stages a person can be in emotionally. And today I want to continue with that topic. I want to start with the following approach: it is impossible to be spiritually mature while remaining emotionally immature. It is impossible. As I grow spiritually, I must grow emotionally. The Spirit that produces spiritual growth is the same Spirit that produces an emotional transformation.

The spiritual growth of Jesus’ disciples

Let’s study the life of Jesus’ disciples. He was with them for three years and if we analyze their lives, especially that of Peter, who was called the “Son of thunder,” they had problems with their emotional growth. They did not know how to express their emotions, despite being close to Jesus.

And I am talking to you, the leader, father of the family, who goes to church every Saturday, believes in God, and has experienced conversion. You may feel that you have experienced spiritual growth while not having it since it must be proportional to your emotional growth.

You cannot be in the church, praying, singing, praising the name of the Lord on Saturday mornings and then cursing with your lips, using your tongue to criticize and censor, and not knowing how to control your emotions in the afternoon because, then, where is the Spirit of God? The Spirit that helps you have a heart full of love for God is the same Spirit that helps you have a heart full of love for your neighbor. “A new commandment I give you, that you love one another” (John 13:34).

The process of the spiritual growth of Jesus’ disciples

Moments before His crucifixion, when Jesus was with His disciples in the garden of Gethsemane, and He was captured, Peter took his sword and cut off the ear of the high priest’s servant. This shows that Peter did not know how to manage his emotions, he had not grown emotionally.

Maybe that could be your case and that is your struggle. You are trying, you go to church, pray, you ask the Lord to help you change because your wife or husband tells you that the way you speak to her/him is not proper, you do not have a good relationship with your children, and you feel that your family is not healthy because you have not discovered this aspect that is so important in the life of every human being.

How I grow spiritually must be the same as how I grow emotionally. How I grow spiritually must be the same as how the Bible says in Ephesians 4:13-17: “until we all reach unity in the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.”

That is Paul telling the church of Ephesus: We need to reach maturity, a stature; Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming.

Our spiritual growth according to the Bible

That is, there was a stage in your life where you behaved like a child, spiritually and emotionally speaking, but you are expected to mature, to grow, to develop that mind of Christ that leads you to reflect the image of God in your relationships.

The verse culminates by saying that we grow by following the truth with love. Here is the word “grow” again. Let us grow spiritually and emotionally, in everything, towards the One who is the head, Christ. In verse 16, we find: “From him, the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.” God expects us to grow, to mature. And what does mature mean? Complete, whole, perfect, well-developed.

In 1 Corinthians 13:11, Paul, speaking about the excellence of love, says:

“When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I thought and reasoned as a child, but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”

Here is one of the problems we might be having. We are in the church and have been participating in Communion for years, praising the Lord, and going to church with our family. But we continue behaving like children, fighting.

We continue with the same unhealthy customs and habits we had when we lived outside God’s Kingdom. And Paul tells us: “there was a time in your life when you were a child, but when you meet Jesus Christ, when the Spirit of God takes control of your mind, growth and changes are expected, also that you reach Jesus’ stature, that you be transformed.”

Our spiritual transformation

That transformation that the Spirit comes to do in your mind is spiritual and emotional. Where He renews it, helps you think, handles your mind, and makes it like that of Jesus Christ. Where the Spirit of God is, hate, resentment, and negative emotions that lead you to sin and to destroy the lives of others by your side cannot exist.

Galatians 5: 22-23 tells us about the fruits of the Spirit you receive. When that Spirit comes to make the spiritual and emotional transformation in your life. Remember that these fruits are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, meekness, temperance, and self-control. That is, the control you need to reflect the emotional intelligence that God has given you is a part of the fruits of the Spirit.

If you are struggling in your life with a mind that has not been transformed; with emotions that you have not been able to control. If you feel that you do not have healthy relationships with your husband or wife, your children, or your community; it is time for you to stop and ask the Lord: Transform me, transform my mind. I want to have self-control.

It is time for you to invite Him to come and do special work in your heart. May God bless you. May these lines help you grow and help you stop acting like a child (emotionally speaking). And begin to reach maturity in Jesus Christ.