We often feel the pressure to have it together. This can lead to external performance and the temptation to hide our ingrained patterns of sin. Do you struggle with shame and self-contempt due to habitual sin cycles in your life? This month, we will discover how to uncover the root causes of our sin and move toward experiencing freedom in the context of community.
OBJECTIVE
Learn how to explore root issues of destructive and sinful behaviors and attitudes using the Needs Cycle as a tool. Over the course of this lesson, you will…
- Explore the need and pain beneath our destructive behaviors.
- Personally process the Needs Cycle.
- Talk about your process with a growth partner.
- Think about how you might find freedom as you process with God your cycles of sin.
“If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Rivers of living water will brim and spill out of the depths of anyone who believes in me this way, just as the Scripture says.” JOHN 7:37 (MSG)
UNDERSTAND | What is going on inside of me?
Where do you turn to for baseline security, emotional connectedness, and core identity?
There are things that we intellectually know are true about God and our relationship with Him, but we know all too well that a different reality gets lived out more than not in our everyday lives.
We all have internal drivers that take over and make us forget the gospel. We all have broken cisterns we seek for sources of satisfaction, instead of drinking deeply from the Living Water as our Source (Jeremiah 2:12-13). We have default patterns and false beliefs around which we unknowingly construct our world.
If we desire to be leaders (both now and in the future) who have the security and self-awareness to lead with faith-filled courage, we must identify and know well the internal battles that will surface because of our stories. It’s not enough to polish the surface of our lives and allow our leadership development to be about adding skills that are merely external bells and whistles. We must take a look “underneath the hood” of our lives to diagnose the engine of our interior world and what the core issues are that really drive us.
PRACTICE | The Needs Cycle
What do I turn to in an attempt to meet core needs in my life?
Examine the Needs Cycle:
Ask the Lord to bring to light several recurring or recent behaviors or attitudes and make a list of what comes to mind.
Make note of themes. Choose one or two behaviors and/or attitudes, and walk through the “Needs Cycle” making notes of what God surfaces that may be underneath that behavior or attitude.
What is a core need or pain, and a coinciding false belief, that is behind a recurring or recent sinful behavior or attitude?
“Shame needs three things to grow exponentially in our lives: secrecy, silence, and judgment.”
B R E N E B R O W N
PROCESS
Meet with and share with your process partner at least one specific thing that surfaced for you with the “Needs Cycle” assignment.
Ask questions into each other’s interior world. Discuss possible ways to address not just the behaviors and attitudes, but the needs, pain, and false beliefs behind them.
Pray for God’s healing in the places that would really matter and affect your character and interior world.
ACT
Embracing and sharing our brokenness allows for a deep connection with God and others. This next month, commit to praying through and journaling the needs cycle each time you recognize a habitual sin surfacing.
- How does secrecy add to shame? How have you experienced that personally?
- How can you invite Jesus into your needs cycle?
- Bonus challenge: Explain the needs cycle to a friend.
“All of Jesus’ teaching on prayer in the Gospels can be summarized with one word: ask. His greatest concern is that our failure or reluctance to ask
keeps us distant from God.”
PAUL E. MILLER
WANT MORE?
Vocation is a part of the Leadership Development Guide.