As a church our vision is to see people encounter Jesus and follow his way.  One of the most strategic ways we see this vision coming to fruition is through leaders being raised up in our church and sent back out into the calling that God has placed in his/her life.   These leaders take the form of stay-at-home moms, business owners, contractors, bankers, teachers, and university students (to name a few).  One of those leaders in our church is Trisha Sanford who recently retired from nursing and is now redeeming her time by working on a counselling certification.  We asked her what God has been teaching her through this new endeavour in her life.

Since March of this year, I have had the great privilege of taking counselling courses from the Christian Counselling Education Foundation located in Pennsylvania, USA. Despite only taking two courses so far (Dynamics of Biblical Counselling and Helping Relationships), the Lord has greatly used these courses in my life. Both courses have been intensive, heart revealing and transformative.

My life and walk with Christ has changed as well as my relationships with others. I now have working tools to sort out my emotions and untangle them to get to the root problem. I am no longer stuck with insecurities that rule me and blockages to my growth in Christ. This has not taken place because of my doing but because I have learned to identify sin in my life and then to run to Christ for forgiveness and to the powerful Holy Spirit, the only Change Agent for us as sinners, the only One powerful enough to change our hard hearts.

Let me share four areas of enlightenment that have helped me in this process of sanctification in my life:

First, I have seen how my everyday responses to life are directly connected to my heart condition before the Lord. Throughout Scripture, our hearts are spoken of as the command centre of our souls, our minds, wills, and affections. For example, in Luke 6:45 it says “the good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of the evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.” 

In other words, the condition of my heart towards God determines my actions, my thoughts, beliefs, words, idols and affection. My responses to life tell me everything about what I really love, what I functionally believe, who really is Lord of my Life and if I really care about others or if I in fact care only about myself. 

Needless to say, this self examination was hard to face, but at the same time the most liberating and transforming for my life. The Holy Spirit showed me many sins in my life that I never knew existed - sins like craving man’s approval, bowing down to the idol of need for love and acceptance, and trying to get my identity from others. The acknowledgement and confession of these sins and others brought great freedom and I am no longer stuck in bondage to these things in my life. This of course had a ripple effect on my relationships, no longer expecting them to meet my needs but knowing Christ alone satisfies my deepest longings.

Secondly, I learned that everything is spiritual. Our spiritual battles are happening daily in small and big ways. The way I respond to injustice and hurt from others, my complaining and grumbling, the way I respond when my day doesn’t go the way I want it to. All of these are spiritual responses to God and show me my heart attitude. They show me exactly what I functionally believe, not what I think I believe. 

This is sad but when you grasp it, it is transformative as it gives me hope that when I see these things and ask the Holy Spirit to change me, He will. It gives hope to all of us in our marriages, relationships, trauma and in all the areas we are stuck in life.

Thirdly, I see how increasingly sufficient the Lord and His Word is for my life. We often compartmentalise God in our lives and treat our Christian life like a religion we put on and take off. Christ has the solution to every aspect of our lives; He has a principle to follow; He has a way of escape in every temptation. We often view God as a very small helpless god and we don’t bring everything that affects us to Him. He is a personal God who wants a personal relationship with us. Psalm 62:8 says “Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your heart before him; God is a refuge for us.”

Fourthly, I realise how much I am the centre of my own problems. No one swindles me more than I do. No one deceives me more than I do. Scripture says our hearts are deceitful and desperately wicked. I recast my sins by another name so they seem more plausible.

I have learned I am very influential in my own life because I am constantly in an evaluative, interpretative conversation with myself.

Self deception is my way of trying to save myself. You see, we are constantly preaching the gospel to ourselves - either the gospel of ability, righteousness or self-atonement or the Gospel of deep abiding need, and a celebration of Jesus.  

May the Lord rescue us from self-centeredness, self-sufficiency and self-righteousness. This way of life is exhausting. But living in this deep abiding awareness of our great need is the way of life and freedom. May the Lord bless each one of us with this freedom and transformation for His glory. 

Trisha Sanford