Stephen Arterburn - 5 Blind Spots: Blocking Gods Work in You

BLIND
SPOTS

BLOCKING GODS WORK IN YOU

Stephen Arterburn

Copyright 2014 by Stephen Arterburn

Published by Worthy Publishing, a division of Worthy Media, Inc.,
134 Franklin Road, Suite 200, Brentwood, TN 37027.

Worthy is a registered trademark of Worthy Media, Inc.

HELPING PEOPLE EXPERIENCE THE HEART OF GOD

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Unless otherwise designated, Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture quotations marked NASB are taken from the New American Standard Bible. Copyright 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, IL 60188. All rights reserved.

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Portions of this book have been published as Walking into Walls (Nashville: Worthy, 2011).

ISBN: 978-1-61795-323-1

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011931409

Cover Design: Christopher Tobias, Tobias Outerware for Books
Interior Design and Typesetting: Inside Out Design

Printed in the United States of America

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To Daryn,

who has been helping people see their blind spots
and move beyond them.

A huge thanks to Byron Williamson, who made thismy favorite bookpossible. And to Tom Williams, who did a masterful job of editing and restructuring this book; youre the best.

Too many people live needlessly in defeat, immobilized by their own mistakes or the mistakes of others. They stumble around in life with blind spots blocking the work God wants to do in them. It does not have to be this way! No matter how broken or hurt, every person can discover the way to healing, hope, and a joyful new way of living.

Take a look around you. Can you see everything in your surroundings? Most of us would say yes. But the truth is, whether your vision is 20/20 or corrected by lenses, the answer is the same: no matter how hard you try, you cannot see everything around you.

The human eye has a blind spota small area on the retina, about the size of a pencil eraser, without photoreceptors. We usually arent aware of this blind spot because our brain fills in this blank area with the surrounding images, making our visual field appear seamless. But this is an optical illusion. With one eye closed, any object passing through this small area will disappear momentarily.

In addition to our visual blind spot, we also all have what psychologists call cognitive blind spotsgaps in our perception that blind us from seeing the truth about ourselves and others. These blind spots block our minds from seeing reality and blind us to other possibilities, even when they are right in front of us. Because we are blinded to reality, we are immobilized and crippled by guilt and shame, anger and bitterness, worry and regret, and fear and anxiety.

I have developed relationships in business, ministry, and my personal life that felt like prison walls. Some of those relational prisons were optional, but I chose to live with them. In my personal life, sometimes others chose to end their relationships with me, leaving me isolated. My blind spots blocked me from clearly seeing the path to spiritual and emotional freedom.

I could have changed, but I kept myself locked up with beliefs that barred me from doing so. Ever said any of these things to yourself?

This is not my fault.

My parents just didnt get it.

Nobody can help me but me.

I know how to deal with this on my own.

I am not the one with the problem here.

How could this person hurt me, knowing what a victim of others I have been?

You have to be crazy to see a counselor.

Anyone would feel this way if he or she knew what I have been through.

Im so guilty that God can never forgive me, so Im now on my own.

When the person who hurt me makes a move toward resolution, I am prepared to respond, but not until then.

I had a lot of other erroneous beliefs rolling around in my head that were blind spots blocking me from a life of freedom, purpose, and meaning. Yet I kept these beliefs in front of me, encountering them again and again. Each encounter became more painful than the pain that would have been involved in moving beyond those blind spots into freedom. While in college I thought I had made so much progress with myself that I should make a career out of helping others. The real truth was, I had no idea how little progress I had made, how far I had to go, and how much more pain I would have to endure.

In 1977 I began my studies in counseling at a seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. For the first time I looked forward to every day of school. Very quickly I was involved in doctoral courses and providing counseling under the supervision of doctoral students. I loved it and believed, as I still do, that I had found my purpose: to help people with emotional and mental problems. As I progressed, I wanted to gain experience with those struggling with the worst of psychiatric diagnoses. The only job I could find was as an attendant on a psychiatric ward, and I took it with great excitement and dedication. My job description was to help in any way needed. That meant counseling a newly admitted patient or cleaning toilets. In my ascent from custodian to chief therapist, I saw nearly every kind of emotional and mental damage. Much of it was inflicted by cruel and heartless perpetrators who ripped normalcy out of patients lives and left them with scarred souls.

At first I could not understand the depths of evil committed against the innocent. One mans moment of sexual gratification often destroyed the healthy and happy life of another. I dont have research figures, but I would guess that one moment of illicit sexual gratification produces ten thousand moments of pain and suffering during the lifetime of a victim. It wasnt just men who wreaked havoc on the lives of the young. Mothers did it too. Some emotionally smothered, even trapped their children to always be there for them throughout their entire lives. Never free to become independent adults, these tethered people collapsed into psychiatric care, not understanding why life was so unmanageable or their minds so filled with conflict. Unexpressed rage and ungrieved loss piled on top of confusion and disappointment.

Every patient I counseled was a mystery. Was his problem perpetrated upon him, or was he born with a genetic predisposition to experience the downside of life? Had she had a harder life than others, or had she simply been less equipped to deal with lifes realities? The mysteries of the causes of emotional and mental dysfunction were just the beginning. Beyond those was the mystery of how some made their way out of the morass of despair into fully functional lives.