Discovering Who I Am

I am codependent. Every day I realize more how codependent I am. Codependency is generally defined as looking to others to meet a need that they could never possibly meet. Most of the conflicts in my relationship with my wife and others is a result of my codependency. When I stop to think about it, most everything I do in life is motivated by a driving need to fill an elusive void in my heart; a strong sense of lack. Some would describe the sense of lack as low self-worth. Others may use the word emptiness. Still others would call it loneliness. Thousands of phobias and destructive emotional patterns, when reduced to their most basic feeling, are rooted in the sense of lack.

The most frustrating thing about this feeling of lack and the unhealthy life patterns that result is that the harder I try to be a better person, the more lack I experience and the more of a failure I feel. I have spent my life trying to break free. I have gone to church consistently, striving to be a good Christian. I have prayed, read my Bible, confessed my sins and made myself accountable to others.

But recently I have been learning a new perspective. Religion makes rules and laws designed to lead us to perfection but instead take us deeper into the feeling of lack. We ignore the truth that says that laws can only make us more aware of our failures and can in no way give us power over sin.

Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin. –Romans 3:20

…the strength of sin is the law. –1 Cor 15:56

In his book, Breaking the Cycle, Dr. James Richards says:

The sense of lack comes from not knowing, believing, and experiencing all that we have been freely given in Jesus. The church has been systematically trained to ask the wrong questions. Most of our questions are based on the presumption of lack. We do not really believe in the promises that come to us through the finished work of Jesus. When my beliefs are not based on the completed work of Jesus, I do not connect with the fact that I am complete in Jesus. Once I accept the idea that there is something God has not done for me, I abandon the promises and the power that makes it possible for me to live a victorious life.

My beliefs drive my emotions and my emotions drive my actions and I begin to be driven by fear rather than faith. What I focus on most is reproduced in my life and my feelings are validated and I begin to trust my feelings more than the realities of God and thus the cycle begins.

Dr. Richards insists that when my sense of wholeness and completeness (my feeling of righteousness) is based on the finished work of Jesus (His death, burial and resurrection and all that it purchased), I become free from the power of lack. True completeness comes from the sense of who I am, not what I have or what I do. When I believe that I am a new creation in Jesus I cease pursuing the destructive process of becoming. I focus on who I already am and by focusing on that truth, emotions follow, and I begin acting according to that truth rather than according to lack. Lack makes me the center of every equation. Faith, on the other hand, makes Jesus the center.

The more I understand God’s love for me and His desire to meet my needs, the less lack I will feel and less codependency will surface in my relationships. I am approved by God and He has already given me all I need for life and Godliness.