Learn from Lysa TerKeurst, Dr. Joel Muddamalle and Jim Cress in the final episode of this six-part series of Therapy & Theology titled “I Want To Be More Self-Aware.” Each week, we’ll hear conversations providing tools for how we can live as the most healthy versions of ourselves.

Well, I’m really excited about this last episode of the series that we’ve been doing on self awareness.
And Part of the reason I’m so excited about this last episode is because we’ve been talking a lot about tools, tools of self examination, and self discovery.
And as we dive more into these tools, the goal and hope is that it pushes us more toward god and not away from god.
He is the god that made us and knows us better than we could ever know ourselves.
So walking in step with him is crucial. It’s the crucial ingredient, I think, for self awareness to really flourish.
So today, we are talking about attachment to god. Why do I believe what I believe?
And how does it impact my attachment? To god. Yeah. So, Joel, we’re gonna really lean into you today.
You know, in our last last episode, we talked about attachment style with people.
Yeah.
And so he felt like it would be really wonderful to talk about our attachment to god.
Yeah. I think it’s so good. I wanna start.
So when we do theology study in Germany, so you know this, uh, my area of specialty that I studied for a long time is biblical theology.
The unraveling the story of god from Genesis all the way through revelation, patterns, themes, and things like that, there’s another, section of theology.
It’s called systematic theology. And systematic theology takes a look at particular, uh, topics or ideas or themes that are present and tries to see how those topics are worked out throughout scripture.
And, um, so I’m gonna say something now that’s gonna might put you a little bit off, but I’m gonna I’m gonna back into it a little bit.
Okay? So here’s here’s this thought that god actually is attached to himself.
God is attached to and you’re I know, Lisa, you’re like, wait a minute, Joel, or we’re gonna have to pause and reconsider.
Just listen to this. God the father, god the son, and god the Holy Spirit are a perfect triune community.
That they are preexistent. They are pre eternal.
They are, um, they are in beautiful love and communion with each other. Out of Baba College professor once.
Um, and he was trying to help all of us kinda make sense of the trinity, this idea of the godhead, the god is one in essence and yet, uh, present, 3 distinct persons.
So what does that look like?
This is how he would say, if you went to god the father, and you’re like, god, the father, you are crushing it.
You created the entire world through, like, in the universe, through the breath of your existence, and God, the father would respond and say, yeah, but did you know in John one that it actually points to the son that god, the son, is actually sustaining all things.
And and and god the sun actually gave up his own life to, uh, on the cross.
And then if you went to god the sun, like, god the sun, that’s incredible to cross.
Like, that was you. God that someone would be like, yeah, but did you pay attention to god the Holy Spirit?
God, the Holy Spirit in, uh, Luke chapter 4 is the one who anointed me.
This is what Jesus says in Luke 4 18, the spirit of the lord is on me.
Because he has anointed me to preach the good news to the poor.
He sent me to proclaim and release the captives and recover, uh, sites of the blind to set free the press, the to proclaim the year of the lord’s favor.
Uh, and, I mean, this is what what Jesus would say.
And then if you went to god the Holy Spirit, You’re like, God, the Holy Spirit.
Like, you must be it. Like, you are crushing it and all all friends.
And God, the Holy Spirit would be like, yeah.
But, mean, how incredible god the son and god the father and and and how much they love him.
Like, you know, we get this sense that in the godhead, that god, the father, god, the son, god, the Holy Spirit, have perfect attachment, have perfect relationship in and of themselves.
And so when we think about attachment theories and self attachment and all these other things, I think it’s a profound concept and a consideration for us to actually know and realize that the god himself is together in perfect relationship And then Jesus and I don’t know, Jim, you’ve got some thoughts on this one.
Jesus and the high priestly prayer, his goal, and he says, I long for you.
He’s talking to his disciples, along for you to be one as I and the father are 1. Right?
So there’s Jesus’ language. I’m talking about his attachment to god the father, Jim.
Alright. First thing I thought, honestly, is, yeah, in that attachment statement Jesus made is what got him killed.
Yeah. That’s true. That’s true.
Yeah. Just, I mean, it’s like, you know, did you just really say that? You you didn’t. Jesus said that.
I I love that. The idea that we are not just the imago day that we’re in the image of god, but we are trinitarian.
Mhmm. And the bearing that, and and we should be in an old theological word as Pericoretic can Google it, but the neighborhood, the very nature of god, that perfect relationship that we can be in that.
And then we come to the human side and often I have found people on the more anecdotal clinical side that they will have these glasses right here.
Lisa said before on the I have to have these all the time.
She said in the last taping we did. She said, do I put the glasses on or not?
And it’s the the reason I’m using that is is people will pick up these glasses and say, I will put them on, but this will be mama and daddy.
And I will then look at god as a heavenly version without even trying of my mother or my father’s we do this family of origin work back there.
And I am transferring stuff onto god and not giving him his face, Paul Young, uh, who wrote the shack, and that’s not a commentary on that.
It’s just the fact. He said I had to continue to unmask god time and time again before I could say, god, this is who you really are.
And so this deconstruction word, don’t worry. I won’t go too far.
Is I think there’s a healthy deconstruction of sentencing. Hey, wait a minute.
You might have been, I went to Dallas Seminary that I was in more of a reformed camp and And I like where I am now.
Right. But the idea of just continuing to grow and learn and say, god, who who are you really?
That was asked too much of the Bible.
It’s there’s a deconstruction I can do there of saying, maybe I’ve just been in this denomination, and I believe this and believe that, or I believe sometimes unhealthy things from, quote, the faith of my childhood or the lack of faith.
People who have all kinds of religions, um, that that I’ve been with and saying who what is it that you believe?
Uh, who do men say that I am?
Sun say John the baptist, some say a lie, just some say one of the prophets Who do you say that I am?
You know, I like that because Jesus did not ask Peter. It’s it’s in the, uh, you know this.
It is in the plural. Who do you all say that I am? Plural.
Yeah.
And that’s the question today for the god attachment is, hey. As you’re watching today, I don’t know.
Who who who do you say god is? Who is god to you?
I’ll admit when I hear that word deconstruction. We talked about this before. We did.
I’m like, push the brake because so many times, I think that word equates for people reconstruction to the destruction of their faith.
Mhmm.
And that’s not what we’re talking about.
We’re talking about taking apart maybe things that we have believed that we’re maybe put on us that actually cause us to be resistant to god and taking that stuff off of a though that we can come back to having a better relationship with god.
Well, if I use yours, if those are readers or use Mindwitt as a try focal here.
I’m legally blind in my left eye. True. So there’s, you know, but I have this lens here.
If you did this and there have been people with a trifocal in here that could literally fall downstairs watching it because this lens was not meant for you.
And to get my lenses right and say, god, I wanna search and say, show me thy glory, show me who you are, who are you god, and not again the deconstruction.
It just deconstructs down to nothing. I’m just mad. Yeah. And the religious and church hurt that we all see.
People like, yeah, but the church did this. I go, yeah. Look what they did to Jesus. Yeah.
If the idea of to say, where do you wanna sit and meet with god and and and start at the beginning wherever that is?
Well, that’s so good, Jim. And I would just I would say this that, for the sake of the lens, right, for the sake of a clear picture of god attachment, I think it is incredibly important that we go back to the reality that god creates.
Think about this. God doesn’t create Adam and E first and then create everything. What does he do?
He creates everything.
Yeah.
He creates the systems, the solar systems, the land, the animals, the fruit, the ground, the grass, the wreck, all of these things are created first.
And then, and this is really interesting, that the text says that god creates Adam and Eve, and then he puts them in Eden, the holy man.
Now the Hebrew word for put is not the normal Hebrew word for put.
It’s actually, uh, the Hebrew word, which actually means rest. And so what’s actually happening, this is wild.
I know, Jake. Oh, hold on. No. No. No. No. I’m like,
you don’t answer my screen.
What’s actually this is so I think interesting.
What god actually does is he takes Adam and Eve and he puts them.
He puts humanity in Eden, not in a position to work for rest.
But in a posture of rest from which they are to work from.
Now why is this so important to the concept of god attachment when god places Adam and Eve in Eden.
The very first things that they’re seeing is the province have got all around them.
They’re seeing the trees that are good, for their shade. Like, they’re seeing the fruit that comes from.
They’re seeing animals that are not trying to destroy and kill them. They’re seeing the good pleasure Yeah.
Of god, the kindness of god, the mercy of god, the, like, evidence of god and the good vision of god.
Of god. Everywhere around them. And so what why would, like, what better origin story of god attachment could you ask for than Adam and Eve?
And then notice what the enemy does.
What the enemy does is goes after the attachment that we have to god. Did god really say?
What if you actually could be more than you ought to be?
And then we could do I was having a fantastic conversation about this with I’ve already mentioned her one time, our French, uh, Shea um, Tate Hill.
I gotta slow down every time I do it. Shay, Tate Hill. Yes. You just got married.
Because she just got married. And then medi Greenfield uh, and they helped me think through this, but this is so fascinating when the enemy takes Jesus in, uh, it actually, this is actually even more wild.
The spirit of god leads Jesus into the desert. Actually in Luke 4.
So the spirit of god leads Jesus into lord wilderness to be tempted by the enemy.
And so when the enemy temps Jesus what the enemy is trying to do is detach Jesus from the perfect communion with the godhead that he’s already in.
It is a it is a echo of the Adam story.
It really is.
That’s not something. Fail, and they become detached what Jesus does on the cross.
Is actually provide a way for you and I or humanity to be retached to god.
I love that. And
he mediates that retachment. He’s our faithful that makes it possible.
So good, Joel. And, you know, what Jesus says over and over and over in the resistance of the enemy and the continued continued attachment to god, it is written.
It is written.
It is written. Yep. And I think this is such a big point because if we wanna attach to god and make it a more secure attachment rather than an avoidant attachment with god or an anxious attachment with god I feel like we’ve got to make peace with the goodness of god.
And so many times, we want the goodness of god to be our definition of good.
We want the goodness of god to be the outcome that we want.
We want the goodness of god, uh, to we wanna attach it to, like, Will god do what I assume a good god should do?
Like, will he really address the wrongs.
Will he really make sure that the people that have hurt me, like, will he really protect me?
You know, will he really make good from wrong?
And I think so many times we’re looking at our circumstances so much and saying, do my circumstances line up to equal to the goodness of god?
And that’s really hard because if that’s the lens we’re looking through, then we want to attach to god based on him doing the good things we assume he should be doing for
That’s where I spell god, by the way, right here with you.
G o d doesn’t stand for god on demand. We’re an on demand society. You better do it.
God, will you do this? It’s more, I think, the demand of you better do this. Mhmm. You owe it.
So I heard this statement. Yes, today in a focus group that I was working with, and it’s actually Amanda Bacon’s sister.
And, um, she’s in a group where they’re all going through a very similar hard thing. Mhmm.
And each week, they come together and they’re supporting one another. They’re encouraging one another.
They’re studying scripture together, but here’s what’s hard about the group.
They’re all going through a similar struggle, but they’re all having different outcomes.
So sometimes it can seem like, wow. God is really being good to her because he fixed that.
God’s really being good to her because, wow. Look the miracle there.
God’s been good to her because, wow, look how he provided for her, protected her.
And it can be easy in a group like that to go, yeah, but why didn’t god do that for me?
Sure. And so then it can make you shaky with the goodness of god. But here’s what Amanda’s sister said.
She manages that internally by simply saying, wow. Her pathway to god’s glory is different than mine.
Right.
Like, we are all headed. If we know god, believe god, and we have a right relationship with Jesus Christ, then we are all headed to god’s glory.
It’s just our pathway may be different, but if we wanna say on the pathway to god’s glory, then we’ve got to learn to stay properly attached to god, not based on his activity, but based on who he is.
Yeah. And this is so important that um, god’s glory, you and I, humanity, was never designed to be absorbers of god’s glory.
We cannot absorb the glory of god. Reflect it.
We are designed to be reflectors, agents of reflection of god’s glory that it would come and shine through us onto others.
And, yeah, I think that’s a that’s a powerful example.
Good. So Joel answered this for me. Let’s say we love the lord. We believe the lord.
We are falling hard after the lord.
And yet, sometimes in the quietness of our heart, we feel pretty distant from god.
And it’s not because we have some big plan b. Like, I’m gonna run away from god.
It’s simply because We cannot make sense of what he allows.
We cannot make sense of what’s going on in our life, and we read the scriptures and it feels like god has such big promises in the scripture.
So why does it feel like he’s not keeping those promises? To me.
So I’m gonna say something. I wanna say it with with kindness and with sensitivity because it’s a little bit difficult, but just because something is hard to hear doesn’t mean that it’s not true that we need to hear.
Um, I think of the Israelites in Egypt, They had been waiting for years for for deliverance.
They’re waiting for years years years for got a problem. So I’m a get you out.
I’m a get you out. And they’re not out. And then one day, god makes a way.
And there’s a whole new generation of Israelites that are about to walk into canaan into the promised land.
And for them, they’re living in the reality of the promise of god, and yet there were generations passed of Israelites that did not even experience that goodness.
So what the principle here that is at play is sometimes when we’re thinking of these things, we’re thinking in the context of me myself and I.
We’re thinking about my immediate future. We’re thinking about my immediate context.
When god is thinking about good for you and I, He’s thinking about good in the context of his perfect vision of past, present, and future.
And so what might feel like the best good for us and our limited understanding might have unknown tragic consequences for us in the future.
Well, you and I can’t see that. But you know who does see that? God. He sees it.
And he looks and so this is the faithfulness and the kindness of god where we go, okay.
Whatever I’m walking through and enduring through right now, the distance that I might feel from god, that that distance It is not evidence, uh, of god’s negligence or his abandonment What this could be is a pause, uh, a moment while we’re waiting for his goodness to play out in the future.
I was talking to some friends the other day. And I think people get really frustrated when they’re in delays.
You know? Mhmm. And so I’ve I had just this thought, like, delays are not evidence of god’s denial in our lives.
Delays are actually divine redirections wrapped up in a peculiar package of grace, and the peculiarness of the delay is what makes the god thing because it looks and feels and seems so unexpected, and that’s how god works.
I think sometimes we have greater faith in our fears coming true than in god coming through.
Yes.
And that has I remember I wrote that in my journal, and I was like, oh, I don’t really wanna admit that.
Right? Mhmm. But sometimes I’m more certain that something terrible is gonna happen to
me,
then that I’ll experience god’s goodness.
Yeah.
And I like that you brought up, you know, the children of Israel being delivered because recently I was looking at Instagram and, um, Nikki Coziar did something that was so fascinating being.
It was this little clip where she said, do you know what mama actually means?
If you translate the word mama, because, of course, Mana is when the children of 0 in the desert
Mhmm.
And they needed to eat, god gave them Mana like, reigned down from heaven.
And she said, mama actually means, what is this? And I was so fascinating.
I think I have thought about that pretty much every day because, you know, sometimes, like you said, god’s goodness is wrapped in a very cure your package.
Mhmm. And I wonder how many times I have attempted to detach from god because his provision doesn’t look at all.
And so, like, I thought it would.
And so it’s almost like, this is god’s provision, and I’m like, what is this?
And yet, I think as I walk forward in my life, some of those things, maybe not all, but some of those things, I’ll look back and go, wow.
That was god’s perfect provision.
Yeah.
And so what I need to do, I think, in my life, is I I wanna have a cure attachment with the lord is I need to trace his hand of faithfulness going backwards in my life because I can’t see into the future.
But what are those things today that in those years, I looked at and said, what is this?
How could this be god’s goodness? How could this be god’s provision? How could this be what I need?
And yet, as it’s played out over the years, there are certain things, I look back and go, god was exactly right.
He knew exactly what I needed, and I’ll give you an example of that.
During a really, really hard season, um, that my marriage was falling apart, and I was just emotionally devastated by what was happening.
Um, I decided to take some months off for ministry.
And because I have a hard time sitting with myself, I’m just gonna go ahead and admit that.
I decided much better. Yes. I am doing much better on that. But back then, I was like, okay.
I had, like, 2 days where I was like, okay.
I’m taking a break, but what good is this gonna do for me?
And so I decided to just go ahead and make all these appointments that I needed to make.
The appointments that sometimes we put off, you know, like health checkups and stuff.
Yeah.
And so one of those was I made an appointment for mammogram. I was not due for my mammogram.
Yeah. I could have stretched it out much further. You know?
And I have no history of breast cancer in my family. None of that.
But because I had time, I went and they saw something abnormal.
And then I went back, and they saw something abnormal again.
And I went back, and I was diagnosed with breast cancer.
And they caught it really early, and I was able to have a double stectomy and praise God.
I’m healthy today, but here’s what I know.
This is perfect example of me looking back and saying, I was so angry and almost detached by god.
Like, why in the world is this happening? And now I have to take a break from ministry.
Why in the world? With I mean, it’s good for me to do ministry.
It was good for this relationship to be together. Like, why in the world?
And I’m not saying god caused it, but I’m saying god allowed it.
And as I look back now, back then, when I said, what is this? Now I say, wow.
That break that I had to take because my marriage was falling apart is the very thing that got me to the doctor and is very that actually saved my life.
I’ve got 11 as well, Lisa. Um, almost a decade ago. I think it’s gonna be a decade ago.
Uh, I thought I was crushing it in my career.
Uh, worked for a bubble software company and got to do a lot of amazing things traveling and insane amount.
And I got to present at women of faith in these arena events. And, um, it’s going awesome.
And again, to the back around lunchtime and all these incredible bible teachers are there, and there’s this one gal who just kept watching my presentation, just each week, each week, and finally came to me and just said, hey.
When are you gonna stop selling Bible software and start actually teaching the Bible.
And I was like, and that set a trajectory. And by the way, her name was Lisa Turcurst.
And that’s at a trajectory where I didn’t know at the time that, um, the travel was incredibly difficult on my wife.
We had three little boys, and my marriage was not in a great spot.
And so it was a really powerful moment for, um, where I look back on the faithfulness of god and go, man, what would have happened if I just kept grinding away because that was the thing I was supposed to do.
And the beauty of his faithfulness in the future, um, and the obedience of a woman who just said, hey.
I’m gonna do, um, what is right and see something that maybe he didn’t see himself.
So I wanna thank you for that, Lisa, but that was uh, a moment that I look back and I go, wow.
And then here, 10 years later, being able to sit and do therapy and theology with y’all.
And a theology of remembrance thinking back then, um, of god’s faithfulness and provision.
Yeah. Didn’t it we say it.
It touched something in you, yay, 10 years ago, and it touched something in you 10 seconds ago to recall that, right, and to remember this I call to mind so much in scripture and to say, god, you’ve always been faithful to me.
And like he’s surprised if I’m ticked at him, Oswell Chambers who wrote my utmost for as high and said sin is the suspicion that god is not good.
Yeah. And
to start with, again, Jeremiah, 213. God said my people have committed to sins.
They’ve said, you’re not an f god. He said, you’re the fountain of living. He’s the fountain of living water.
We forsake that and get broken cisterns in the ground. We can hold it can only hold muddy water.
And maybe you’re tired today of digging uh, broken cisterns and you haven’t come to god, just god I am angry with you.
It’s not he’ll never have breaking news to god. Can you believe this? The Trinity’s everyone’s, hey.
Let me go what Crest just did. There’s no breaking news there. It says it’s good to hear from you.
It’s good to hear from you. I think that’s a sailing at point.
I am always reminded of me, Am I right?
If you’ve been away from god, and he says, but if you return, though you’d be dispersed into the far of the skies, I’ll bring you to a place I’ve chosen to make my name do it.
We talk about the attachment attached, detach, re attach, maybe a whole lot of times to say the old him, I’ve wandered far away from god, but now I’m coming home.
The pads have sinned too long. I’ve tried. Now I’m coming home.
And I just say, god says, good to see you. Look fifteen product.
I mean, all these attachment things are, come on home. Just wanna see you. Come hang out with me.
Step up into your calling. There’s the attachment, I think.
Yep.