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Following Jesus means that you’ve signed up for a life-long journey of change. It’s a relationship that will directly confront your character, conduct and calling for the rest of your life.

We all go through different seasons of our lives where change comes easy and the outcomes are seamless and painless. It runs in parallel with who we are, what we desire to do and we are able to live happily with it. But other seasons of change are hard to endure under the weight and pressure it places on our life. The confrontation of change can be harsh, debilitating and deadly, especially when it comes to the issues that lie deep in our soul.

I’ve been dealing with a season of change as of late, not because I’ve been confronted by it, but because I sought it out first. My wife and I have been going to counseling for a few months. We’re going, not because we have a bad marriage, but because we want our good marriage to be even better. The longing of our hearts is to have uninhibited intimacy and are willing to fight for the heart of each other and fight for our own heart to be free and full so that we can love each other the way God intended with full acceptance, full emotion for each other and with full trust. But the freedom we desire comes at a price we must be willing to pay.

Every relationship needs an “outside voice” to help it gain clarity through the fog, see hope in the dark times and offer guidance when the direction is lost. For Jenny and I, our marriage counselor has been a great “outside voice” for us. Her gifts and training has helped us see beliefs and patterns in each of us that have actually kept us from the things we so strongly desire for our marriage and for our individual lives. The moment she began helping us find freedom, the more we find ourselves longing to trust her to take us deeper into the places that need light, love and hope. The ability to have a trusted voice to speak into our hearts has made all the difference in the world.

Most of us don’t realize our hearts are on lock down. We’ve learned to cope with hurt, wounds and low expectations in our relationships, even with God and those whom we say we love. Throughout our childhood, we’ve experience a wide variety of things that have influenced the size of lock and chain we have strapped around our soul. It’s not what God intended and it’s not what will ultimately help us find what we are really looking for.

During a recent counseling session, our counselor asked me who I trusted. Without hesitation, I began describing my life-long mentor, Steve. He has been the ultimate example of what a pastor should be and what a follower of Jesus looks like, feels like and acts like. As the exuberant descriptive words of passion flowed from my heart, so did the tears. It shocked me. What began as a joyful description suddenly became a weeping expression.

I’ve led dozens, if not hundreds of counseling sessions with teenagers and adults alive, having experienced their wounds, but this was the first time I had experienced mine in such extravagant fashion. I couldn’t stop weeping. I mean I really couldn’t stop. I had to grab a flippin tissue for crying out loud. Because I was!

I tried to joke about my being in the “other” chair for once, but it did absolutely nothing to help put the lock back on this mysterious door in my soul that I knew God had gently leveraged open. My incredible wife just held my hand and wept with me, even if she didn’t know what was wrong. She just loved me and, as she described it, cherished the privilege of being in the moment with me, not just to be a witness to it, but to walk with me blindly and lovingly through it.

It took me a while to finally talk and wrap words around the swirling emotions I was experiencing inside. But the fog lifted for a brief moment, long enough for me to get a little clarity about what was causing the surge of emotion. The realization that I had been wounded by various people in various times in my life was a huge epiphany. It was becoming apparent to me that so much trust I had placed in others, even pastors, had been abused and broken, especially over these past twenty years of being a follower of Jesus. I have always been sensitive to the hurt I have caused others throughout my life with deep regret and overwhelming remorse, but this was possibly the first time that I understood the impact of how much pain I had deep in my soul and how many wounds that had gone unaddressed and unhealed.

Since that day, I’ve spent a good bit of time being introspective and learning to pay attention to what’s going on inside me. God has been doing a new work in my heart, bringing healing, transformation and change, all because I was willing to go “there.”

Chains on doors are good for keeping things locked out, but they also keep things locked in. It’s trust that unlocks the door so change can take place, from the inside out. So many times we come into our relationships with the expectation that we’ll wait until the other person changes first, and then we’ll join in. But, most often, it’s just another excuse to keep pretending and living behind the facade that all things are great when they’re not.

I shared in a sermon a few weeks back about Jenny and I participating in counseling. Many of our people were shocked to hear that kind of transparency from a pastor. Even from my experience of being on staff for almost two decades, I can fully understand why. But Jenny and I realized that being honest, transparent and authentic in our marriage as well in our journey with Jesus Christ has made us have less to hide, has led us to experience more freedom and has brought hope to so many others in our situation.

It’s been amazing to have dozens of couples come to us, both publicly and in secrecy, having been encouraged in their heart to do something about their marriage, all because we were willing to open the door to our lives. It took trust to get us there and now, our desire to keep growing keeps us there.

From Adam and Eve to this very day, God has been that “outside voice” in the hearts of His people. It’s was God’s original design that ultimate life from Him would be fostered by intimate relationship with Him and others built on love, hope and trust. Love is the motivation. Hope is the promise. Trust is what will get us there. It doesn’t mean that we will never be hurt again, but it does help us pursue a deeper intimacy that God designed for us to experience with Him and with others.

I hope you will be willing to go “there” where trust leads to change your heart desires most.