Change Space: Recent Episodes
Change Space
Discover how God’s story changes our story. God’s love for us grows us healthier in our relationships with Him, ourselves and each other. The story He tells us in the Bible contains so much about good mental health that science is just now discovering. Let’s explore scripture telling us how God grows sound minds for us.
Will I grow up? Will you grow up? Wisdom calls to you and I to allow her to grow us up in the love the Jesus and live in the way of life, drawing others into life as we grow. Will we grow up? Jesus has made the way and walks all the way from beginning to end with us. So let us say "yes" to Jesus, accept the invitation extended to us by His wisdom and grow up together in love with Him.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/ruth-stephen-koilpillai/message
We need the Holy Spirit to live in right relationships with God, ourselves and each other. Saul's story tells us where we end up in life when we desire what we want from our own understanding instead of trusting God's good will for us.
When we embrace the Holy Spirit, He fills us with love that we share with others like David did with Saul. When we reject the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit sends others filled with Him to rescue the lost one.
That's the good will and good heart of God for each one of us!
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We all need help! Turning to Jesus is the first step in admitting our need for help. Jesus helps us directly with His very presence AND He brings us into relationship with each other so we can help each other too along with Him.
King David's story starts with him working as a shepherd for his father, being excluded from a party for his father's sons and shows that God saw it all. God saw David's heart seeking His own and together they grew a relationship that defied human storylines. Like David, when we seek God for help, the stories we write for ourselves transform over time into His story for us. His story always includes Him! With God comes goodness of growing in love with Jesus.
Best thing to happen to us ever!
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I wanted to fill you in on the status of Change Space.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/ruth-stephen-koilpillai/message
Lies we learn about Jesus and mistrust we grow from trauma toward Jesus keep us from the truth of His love. We experience His love when the pain of sin in our lives forces a question: keep going our own way or start going toward Jesus. Letting go of our way makes room for us to experience being loved by Jesus and that changes us! It starts us on the journey toward wholeness and maturity that Jesus made possible for us on the cross. The companion on this journey: the Holy Spirit.
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Jesus walked through and worked through the unique pain in each one of our lives! Every single bit of pain in your life, Jesus already walked through and worked through that pain into a pathway to life. That was the work He did on the cross for us. Now we can walk where He leads us, no matter how dark it looks to us because He already walked and marked the path to life in our stories with His story.
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There are parts of of us that trust Jesus and there are parts of us that don't. God brings to our awareness the parts of us that need us love and are missing out so we can with our attention, learn to sustain enough attention on Jesus to bring those parts of us to Him. Trusting Jesus as He works on integrating us grows us whole, complete in Him! This is His work of freedom for us! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/ruth-stephen-koilpillai/message
Giving God attention with our time is a good start to growing relationship with Him. Attention starts the process and sustaining attention is what grows us in the process. Moses learned to sustain his attention on God. The freed people of Israel did not, missed out on entering God's promised land because they didn't trust Him enough to believe His promise to them. So the opportunity to give and sustain attention to God and learn to trust Him moved to the next generation. We can be the generation that trusts God, learns to rest in Him with that growing trust because we give God attention with our time and allow Him to train us to sustain attention on Him.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/ruth-stephen-koilpillai/message
Attention directs our cells to start firing and wiring together. Who and what we pay attention to shapes our identity. Attention directs the neuroplasticity God gave us for change. Attention, neuroplasticity, even time are all things with potential for growing maturity and growing stagnation. The direction of our attention with our time is what determines which type of growth we choose.
The story of Moses illustrates what grows when we direct our attention to doing things in our own power, our way, even if we think our own way serves God. His story also illustrates what grows when we give our attention to God. He grows and matures into someone we didn't even know we were but who we become when our attention in on Him.
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God's compassion is what we need but we often reject because His compassion feels too unfamiliar compared to what we are used to as part of relational traumas caused by sin in our lives. We face the paradox of what we need feeling dysregulating in some ways when in fact God's compassion enters into the spaces that cause our dysregulation and start to create order and safety for our self-regulation. The work of change while uncomfortable becomes more transformative as we persist with the Holy Spirit in abiding with Jesus.
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Walking outdoors, listening to birds sing, these are just two of the things that can help us face ourselves honestly and regulate the feelings and thoughts inside of us that we typically avoid facing. However, our feelings operate within us whether we face them or not. The Holy Spirit brings us to truth, helps us face them honestly because He also brings us Jesus' compassion.
In many ways, Jesus' compassion frees us from the bondage of lies and shame that create chaos and pain in our lives. Compassion strengthens us with the courage to address our feelings and start regulating them so we master our feelings instead of our feelings mastering us.
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There are things we say "no" to that God knows we need. For example, I said "no" to dogs for our family for years. Now we have two who were sitting with me as I taped this episode. God knew I needed them to get me out on to the nature trail when I was really depressed. It's His saving grace that provides for our truest, deepest needs.As we journeyed together through trust, sanctuary and rest for seasons one through three, we grew in Jesus. In season four, we focus on growing up in Jesus. It is all about connections, belonging and becoming one with each other and God. God is in the business of growing unity amidst the diversity of life He creates. Let's grow together in oneness with God.
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God transcends time and transforms us over time. Learning to abide in His love grows and matures us. Then God's love connects us into more love with Him and each other.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/ruth-stephen-koilpillai/message
Jesus invites each on of us to live in love with Him! Saying "yes" to His invitation brings us out of the darkness inside us, the very darkness that keeps us disconnected from ourselves, God and each other. He does this gently, kindly, with compassion over time.
As God brings us into His light, we discover what honest, loving relationships can really look like with Him, ourselves and each other. Let the Holy Spirit grow your trust in Jesus, develop you into wholeness, transform you as you live in sanctuary.
Life with Jesus frees us from the darkness inside us so we can live in love. Let's say "yes" to love.
Thank you for joining me as we conclude season 2 of ChangeSpace!
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Who and what we give our attention to with our time becomes our source of wisdom. If it's not God, it leads to death. God's wisdom brings us to life with Him in sanctuary. We see how Eve and Adam decided to trust their own wisdom over God's wisdom. It brought them fear, shame, blame, hiding and pretending. God didn't lie to them when He found them hiding. He let them know what would happen from their choice to use their freedom to determine right and wrong for themselves. They would worship themselves, creating pain, sorrow, disconnection and finally, death. But God's compassion didn't leave them there. He covered them with love again, walked with them out into the wilderness outside of sanctuary. He stayed close to them, inviting them to relearn from His wisdom, to guide them back to truth, to life, back home to sanctuary.
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Relationship with Jesus is powerful. When we allow the Holy Spirit to bring us to Jesus, when we experience being loved by Jesus, His love changes you and me. As we change, our relationships with others start changing too. Discomfort, disruptions might emerge from growing pains of learning new relationship boundaries with Jesus. Just look at the story of Mary, sister of Martha and Lazarus. Being with Jesus changed her relationship boundaries to where her identity in Jesus grew strong roots to hold steady during dark times.
Hold fast to Jesus. Hold fast to Jesus through these changes because all our relationships need Him for them to grow in love. When Jesus invites us to live in sanctuary with Him, He is rescuing us from sin and death. He also works through us to rescue all our loved ones and beyond. The love of God is abundantly powerful in blessing you and me in this way.
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Every one of us experiences pain. We typically try to avoid our pain, hide from or run away from the pain. The problem with pain is that when ignored, shoved aside, hidden, it grows and gains space in our minds, producing darkness in us that disrupts all our relationships.
Jesus is light for the darkness in each of us from our pain. His light exposes the truth about the darkness, that it is made up of lies, destructive lies. It is a developmental process playing a role in us getting stuck in lies over time as we grow up. It is a developmental process by which Jesus seeks to heal us from the pain created by these lies. He heals us with the truth of His love.
Jesus is re-creating us as He moves us from darkness to light.
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For many of us, Revelation, the last book of the Bible, is the most challenging to read, understand and see Jesus. Yet, in reality, the revelation of Jesus doesn't start with that book. It starts from the very beginning with Genesis. The whole story of Jesus that culminates in Revelation is a story of His compassionate, loyal, kind, honest love for us that in turn creates a safe space for us to face ourselves honestly. This safe space makes change possible with repentance of what we see of ourselves that comes from the pain of sin in our lives. We receive God's forgiveness with repentance, draw closer to Jesus, become more reconciled to Him, giving Him room to repair the damage of sin's lies in us so we live more and more in the reality of His love.
You know what helped me see all this about Jesus? The children's book series by C. S. Lewis called The Chronicles of Narnia helped me see Jesus.
Information we take in from other sources play a role in how we perceive God. God helped me see Him in a children's story that shaped how I see Him now.
Revelation begins with Jesus, continues as He recreates us into His image from us allowing the truth of His love revealing the truth of ourselves. Seeking God's revelation enables us to live in the reality of love with Him.
This is change space, embracing our need for His love in the face of His love and letting love grow sanctuary for us.
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Living in reality is living in truth. To live in truth is trusting God and His love for us. We can then live within sanctuary boundaries of truth over lies. When we aren’t trusting God, we enter into shame that takes us into hiding from ourselves, each other as well as God. Because Jesus came to set us free from the lies that produce shame, we can now receive revelation of truth and return to living in reality and love.
Between the stimulus and response there is a space - space from which we have freedom and power to choose. Our choices take us toward life or death. Our ability to tolerate truth plays a big role in our capacity to choose life. Dealing with reality engages us to seek and give forgiveness, work toward reconciliation whenever possible, repair damage done by sin, even our unintentional sins. These sins can be the hardest to address because we are so good at making excuses for ourselves. But God's Word shows us He desires for us to forgive, reconcile, and repair. Restitution is what the Holy Spirit provides for us to give to those who we hurt from our sins, both intentional and unintentional. This is how we grow in sanctuary as loved, loving people of God.
Allowing God to love us, experiencing being loved helps truth defeat lies. Sanctuary is founded on truth. Living in sanctuary is abiding in love. Sanctuary living develops us into obedience of Spirit's promptings and convictions that grow love, shine light more bright for ourselves and others.
Knowing about God and experiencing being loved by God aren't the same things. Each one of us holds darkness inside of us that needs the love of God to transform into His light. Knowing about Him doesn't overcome darkness for us. Experiencing being loved transforms our darkness into light. Many of us who see ourselves as Christian are discovering that we know more about God than we experience being loved by Him. The boundaries of darkness function around lies, many of which we tell ourselves to protect ourselves. Allowing ourselves to be loved by Jesus changes us. His boundaries of light operate from truth, grow love from experiences of being loved and form us into loving people. The Holy Spirit calls to each one of us to let love transform us.
Jesus reconciles us to Himself, starting with His gift of forgiveness. When we allow the Holy Spirit to show us the truth of who Jesus really is, who we really are, we have the choice to repent. Repentance produces joy as we let go of sin and embrace Jesus more closely. And from there, we start to experience the peace of Jesus that comes from being forgiven. This is the process of reconciliation. When two people who love Jesus willingly do this with Jesus, they grow in capacity to do this with each other. We can be truthful about the part we play in breaking the relationship. We can ask for forgiveness and we can give forgiveness. When two or more people truthfully forgive and seek forgiveness, reconciliation space gets created: genuine, honest, healing repairing of fractured relationships. This is how God creates sanctuary, bringing heaven to earth, all from forgiveness and reconciliation making transformation.
When we give Jesus our attention with our time, He changes our space to grow sanctuary for us. In sanctuary living, love rule in our lives so we bear good fruit of God's image. We seek to live in truth with love, building healthier relationships with God, ourselves and others. Something essential is necessary for such healthy relationships: forgiveness. Both giving and asking for forgiveness takes out sin over time as more room for the Holy Spirit grows in us. In the safety of being loved and forgiven by Jesus, we find joy in repentance, peace from receiving forgiveness, live more and more in abiding relationship with Jesus, one that provides us with strength and courage to seek forgiveness from others when we wrong them, to give forgiveness to others when we are wronged. Living with accountability, responsibility, grows more love, joy and peace in us.
Welcome to E1S2! We celebrate how Jesus grows us to completion! He is our sanctuary built from time and space. When we give Jesus our attention with our time, His Spirit changes our space so we start living in sanctuary, bearing good fruit of Jesus' character. His Word is part of the sanctuary building process in us.
Growing in Jesus brings us to rest...rest in His work. We are made to produce from His work, not our own. Episode 12 celebrates the good work He has been doing for me to experience this truth, grow in trust, develop more safety and find myself changing in His presence. I pray you are experiencing some of that same good change in you as the Holy Spirit is taking us on this journey of living more fully loved and free in Jesus. He has done all the work of rescue! We rest in His work as we grow in Him!
Our bodies tell a story of the very beginning of our identities. Those early moments absorb a lot of pain caused by sin. Sin causes relational hurts, harms, and even traumas. God’s compassion moves Him to care for us, all aspects of us that include our bodies.
The Bible tells us each of us has a darkness in us that the light of Jesus wants to transform. Changing our darkness into light is a developmental process going into the far reaches of deeper, darker spaces to free parts of our mind stuck in pain. Jesus won't stop until He completely frees us! His love grows love in us so that we can love Him back, love ourselves and love each other.
Offering my time to Jesus allows Him to change my space. This practices abiding with Him. This practices living free and safe in Jesus. It takes practice because true freedom is unfamiliar and doesn’t feel safe. When you and I practice abiding, learning what it means to be truly safe, the Holy Spirit grows strength and courage in us.
Relationship with Jesus begins with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the one who helps us connect with and grow a safe, loving, trusting, freeing relationship with Jesus. He does this in part by helping us to give Jesus our attention, time and focus. He joyfully brings us into the completed work of Jesus that brings us into rest. In Day 2 of the Creation story, God calls the space He creates for us to dwell together “heaven.” The Kingdom of Heaven is here and the Holy Spirit enters us in relationship with Jesus so we can abide together, nothing and no one separating us from love when we say “yes” to relationship with Jesus.
God made time with His light. He uses time to grow trust for Him in us when we start surrendering our time to Him. When we allow the light of God's Word to overcome the darkness in and around us, we find ourselves becoming free to rest in Jesus' completed work for us. We are beloved. We can choose light over darkness because Jesus created us free. Let's choose light. Let's choose love. Take time and abide free and loved.
Our limbic systems write out for us stories of fear, mistrust, shame and blame that leave us disconnected and self-deceived. God meets us in the dark, deep, chaotic places in our minds and loves us. His love offers us a choice: stay in the chaotic dark or allow God’s love to begin transforming us into His Light. You and I are made free, free to stay in the dark or allow God to use the time He created on Day 1 of creation to move us toward light. The more we trust Him with our time, the stronger the prefrontal cortex grows. This part of our minds grows compassion, trust building, truth, connectedness, patience, forgiveness and empathy. All these grow more light from God’s love in our minds. Rejoice with me that God takes whatever time we give Him in trust and grows light to battle and defeat the darkness in us.
Vulnerability, what so many of us mistakenly think of as weakness is actually strength. Vulnerability strengthens us to take the risks necessary to grow love and trustworthiness. It’s recounted best in the four Gospels and confirmed in research done across multiple disciplines of science. If you want more information on the research about vulnerability, a good place to start is listening to Dr. Brene Brown's TedTalk on the power of vulnerabilty: https://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_the_power_of_vulnerability/c
Growing trust requires taking risks by learning new ways as we unlearn old ways. Each step of trust you and I risk taking with God takes us one step deeper into freedom from lies and fears and mistrust. Letting God’s love into our lives is an adventure of trust-building that strengthens us to be loved well.
God wants to grow our minds more healthy, mature, integrated and whole. Genesis 1 tells us the Holy Spirit is ready and willing to do this transformative work for us, with us, in us. God helps us strengthen our prefrontal cortex part of our brains to integrate the whole brain toward health and maturity,
God tells us a lot about Himself and us in the introduction to the creation story in Genesis 1. He is moving us from what is chaotic, without healthy boundaries into purposeful, ordered, healthy boundaries with Him, with ourselves and others. The Spirit, there from the beginning is ready and wanting to help us grow in love. He is just waiting for our invitations.
Life is messy! God knows this which is why He tells us in His story that His love for us grows trust. Trust is an essential building block for relationships, for learning and for neuroplasticity, the ability of our brains to unlearn and relearn new, healthier things. Start God’s story in the Bible and let His story grow trust for you.
Our stories tell us what shapes our identities. So let me tell you a little bit about my story and how God’s story is changing my story, growing me into a healthier, integrated human being whose identity rests in Him.