Day 170 - Stranger in a Strange Land

📖Daily Reading

Jeremiah 28-31 

🎥 Video  

Join me on my morning walk as we rise and shine together by walking through the Bible daily and learn a practical applicable coaching nugget from the ultimate life coach - our creator (whatever that means to you). No judgement zone here, all are welcome, we are all on a spiritual journey because we are after all spiritual beings having a human experience.

 

📝 Reflection 

 Jeremiah 29: 4-8

  This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, the God of Israel, says to all the captives he has exiled to Babylon from Jerusalem. “Build homes, and plan to stay. Plant gardens, and eat the food they produces. Marry and have children. Then find spouses for them so that you many have many grandchildren. Multiply! Do not dwindle away! And work for the peace and prosperity of the city where I sent you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, for its welfare will determine your welfare.”

 

Ok, put on your thinking caps for today’s ‘lesson’. We are going to continue talking about the exile and the verses above about the further instructions of how to live while in exile. There is a lot of brain science here.  Stick with me, we are going on a metaphorical ride. 

If Jerusalem and it’s people are the overall ‘you’ that wants to make a big life change. It takes a period of voluntary exile, that will feel like you are two separate people for a time. One aspect of ‘you’ will feel like it is being exiled to live as a stranger in a strange land. I will use myself as an example. Several years ago, I was in a place where I was doing something’s that at one time I really enjoyed and didn’t seem like a problem. I was happily being destructive my self (Jerusalem). I was drinking 2-4 drinks nearly on a nightly basis, I looked forward to it, I enjoyed it. I was also waking up nearly every morning thinking, that is probably not a great idea, I think I might have more energy and motivation if I cut back or quit. So I lived in this land for a while of being divided in my own flesh and mind. 

Eventually I decided that I needed to either accept this is the way it is and just stay in ‘Jerusalem’ and just keep living in my unhealthy but fairly comfortable, happy and good enough land, or voluntarily enter my own land of exile and feeling really strange and uncomfortable for awhile, while I learned to live a new way.  I thank God that I chose to learn to live a new way. While it did feel like exile at times and like I was a stranger in a strange land, I also have felt God’s provision and protection even though it has been hard and uncomfortable. 

When you have lived one way for a long time and it is part of your identity and you make a conscious choice to change, it doesn’t mean that it will be easy.  When creating new neural pathways in the brain it takes a lot of effort and time. You also have to try to live as ‘normally’ as possible while doing this new thing so it will be integrated in your identity. For a while it needs to feel like you are almost 2 separate people, the old way of doing things needs time for those neural pathways to be ‘deactivated’, for those trails and pathways to be grown over etc..

The thing about the brain and that we really have to realize, respect and accept; while we can learn new ways of being, the old ways are still there. Even if those ‘paths have been overgrown’ they are still there, and can be easily reactivated and rediscovered. The new identity needs to be cultivated separately but also in a like minded community and while carrying on ‘normal’ activities to an extent. So that the old way of being can be cleaned up before the exiles can be brought back and reintegrated fully back as one people and one ‘land’, no longer a stranger. 

This is a lot to unpack in a short post. That is one reason why analogies told in the form of stories are so powerful when we can understand some of what God is really trying to tell us. The really cool thing about God’s word is that the same metaphors can also be looked at in multiple ways to tell multiple truths and be applied in practical ways even in modern times.

If you have tried making a change, but have not been able to have it ‘stick’ long term. You might be rushing the process, trying to make too many changes at once and you might not know how uncomfortable it is going to feel for a loooongg time. You have to be willing to be a stranger in a strange land living as if you are part of this new land. You also have to have a joyful and positive attitude about it. You will not prosper without it. Your welfare depends on the welfare of the new life and land you are creating. You also, still need to stay connected with your people and stay true to God’s purpose for you and honor him as your creator. 

By God’s grace and the help of understanding brain science and habit change I am nearly four years now without any alcohol. It isn’t hard, I don’t even want it. I never desire it, you couldn’t pay me to have a drink now. It took a long time. I feel better without it, I also keep guardrails and community of like minded people in my life now. It is an alcohol centric world we live in, where it is even hard to go to a baby shower now without being expected to have ‘mommy’ juice. Another topic for another day. 

I now try to accept reality and all of its challenges as they come, and find ways to support my new way of living and being. I still can feel like a stranger in a strange land at times as I continue to grow and make other changes on my health journey, I am willingly put myself into feeling like an outcast, even internally. It is part of the process. I trust the process and I have learned to do it with self love and patience. God loves me, there I need to also love me. How can I hate and punish something and disrespect something that God cared enough about to create. It doesn’t even make sense, but many of us live that way.

✍🏼Daily Journal Prompt 

What changes have you tried and tried to make but just can't seem to make 'stick'? Are you divided internally about something in your life? What are you willing to do about it?

📖Tomorrows Reading

Jeremiah 32-33 

Coaching Opportunity

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