SIMPLY GRACE Now Spring 2024
Transformation Starts Here
In a perfect and predictable world, one could have a healthy belief system that would fully support them throughout their entire life. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Conscious, intentional steps need to be taken in order to have a personal belief system that supports our ever changing life. The reason behind this is clear; for example:
Would you trust that a personal belief system of a 10 year old would be able to fully support a 30 year old who is under a season of heavy stress and pressure?
Would you trust that a personal belief system of a traumatized 10 year old would be able to fully support a 30 year old who is under a season of heavy stress and pressure?
The answer to both questions is no; yet, most of us have or are doing this very thing. We believe gathering or updating our minds with facts and knowledge will somehow automatically update our personal belief system(s). It may change it to a small degree; however, one needs to displace and replace old beliefs. Old core beliefs must be dislodged from their default position. In order to have a healthy, supportive and responsive personal belief system one needs to understand that intentional, periodic updates need to take place as they navigate through life.
“Truly transformational knowledge is always personal, never merely objective. It involves knowing of, not merely knowing about. And it is always relational. It grows out of a relationship to the object that is known; whether this is God or one’s self.
Objective knowing can occur in relation to anything that we examine at a distance. It is a knowing that is independent of us. For example, you may know that Earth orbits around the sun or that Columbus arrived in the Americas in 1492 without direct personal experience of either, provided you are willing to accept the testimony of others.
Personal knowing, on the other hand, is based on experience. It is subjective. I know that my wife loves me because of my experience of her. While I can describe her love to someone else, I cannot prove it. I cannot make it objective. Yet this does not detract from the validity of my knowing.
Because personal knowing is based on experience, it requires that we be open to the experience. Knowing God’s love demands that we receive God’s love experientially, not simply as a theory. Personal knowledge is never simply a matter of the head. Because it is rooted in experience, it is grounded in deep places in our being. The things we know from experience we know beyond belief. Such knowing is not compatible with belief, but it is not dependent on it.
People who have never developed a deep personal knowing of God will be limited in the depth of their personal knowing of themselves. Failing to know God, they will be unable to know themselves, as God is the only context in which their being makes sense. Similarly, people who are afraid to look deeply at themselves will of course be equally afraid to look deeply at God. For such persons, ideas about God provide a substitute for direct experience of God.
Knowing God and knowing self are therefore interdependent. Neither can proceed very far without the other. Paradoxically, we come to know God best not by looking at God exclusively, but by looking at God and then looking at ourselves—then looking at God, and then again looking at ourselves. This is also the way we best come to know our selves. Both God and self are mostly fully known in relationship to each other.”
David G. Benner,
The Gift of Being Yourself: The Sacred Call to Self-Discovery
We at Simply Grace Holistic Counseling & Coaching in Alpharetta, GA, are assisting and watching God transform knowledge and experience into the fullest expression of life in our clients.
Thank you to those who are partnering with us. Others, will you help us with a financial gift to the Simply Grace Scholarship Fund today?
Blessings!
Ken & Debbie