S9.3 | Taking Action for Healing: Why Preparation Isn't Enough
In this episode, Carla delves into the critical importance of action in our spiritual, mental, and emotional healing journeys. Drawing from her extensive experience as a Christian mental health coach and examples from the Bible, Carla challenges us to move beyond preparation and embrace the transformative power of consistent, faith-driven action. Don't miss this insightful discussion designed to encourage and equip you to take the necessary steps toward true healing and growth!
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Key Takeaways
Preparation vs. Procrastination:
Carla highlights how preparation can morph into procrastination, hindering us from actual change. Understanding this distinction is vital to overcome inertia and start implementing real changes in your life.
Healing Through Action:
Carla explains the difference between productive action and the distracting nature of mere busyness, often exploited by the enemy to keep us stagnant.
Invitation to Action:
She proposes actionable steps supported by the Holy Spirit to confront and move through personal wounds and trauma
Affirming Truth
"I will take action in faith towards my healing."
**Special Offer:**
Deepen your healing journey *Renewing Hope*.. Use code **RENEWAL100** for $100 off. This course is designed with actionable steps, making it a true catalyst for change. Find the link in the show notes to take advantage of this offer and start your proactive healing journey today!
Connect With Carla:
Inquire about 1:1 coaching ---> carlaagreswellness@gmail.com
Join In His Image Wellness Collective ---> carlaargeswellness@gmail.com
Come hangout on IG with me @carlaarges
Check out the blog
Resources:
5 Steps to Building Resiliency
Affirming Truths Facebook Community
TRANSCRIPT
Carla Arges [00:00:08]:
Hey friends, welcome to affirming truths. I'm your friend and host, Carla Arges. This show is a safe place to share our struggles, grow in faith, and root our identity in Christ. My hope is that you will leave each episode feeling encouraged in your journey. Subscribe so you don't miss an episode and it would mean the world to me if you would leave a review. I am so glad you're here. Let's get started. Hello friends.
Carla Arges [00:00:36]:
Welcome to this episode of affirming Truth. I just want to first say thank you so much for letting me into your life, letting me into your ear. I appreciate you being here and my prayer and my hope, like I say in my intro, is that you leave feeling encouraged, that you leave feeling challenged. And I'm going to do a little bit of both in this episode. Today I was working with one of my one on one clients. If you don't know, I do one on one coaching in the area of christian mental health and trauma healing. And I was working with one of my clients and we had been talking about change and she had done all the things in looking into what she wanted to change. She'd done all the research and how she wanted to change.
Carla Arges [00:01:29]:
She had done all the strategizing on how to implement the change, and she kept herself busy in the realm of researching change. And it became apparent that all this preparation she was doing for change was actually becoming her procrastination for implementing change. Did you catch that? Her preparation was becoming her procrastination. And I want to remind you that nothing changes without action. Healing requires action. Faith requires action. Change requires action. Transformation requires action.
Carla Arges [00:02:20]:
And we see this time and time again demonstrated in the Bible. In one John 318, it says, my little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue, but in deed. In truth, right? There needs to be action. We can't just talk about doing something. We can't just plan doing something. We have to actually do it. And Luke, Jesus says, ask and it will be given. Seek and you will find.
Carla Arges [00:02:55]:
Knock and the door will be open. Those are action words. We need action before the change. We need action before the results. God even demonstrated this through Jesus in his healing. Sometimes he would have. There was an example in the Bible where he healed a man and he said, go into the river and dip yourself in seven times. That man had to go and take action in faith for his healing.
Carla Arges [00:03:26]:
He dumped himself one time, two times. He could have started doubting, is my healing going to come on the 7th time? But he kept taking action. Jesus asked him to act in faith in order to get his healing. And so I want to ask you today, where are you using your preparation, your research, you doing all the things to actually make yourself feel good about your busyness, but you're not actually confronting the scary hard work of change. You're not actually confronting the scary hard work of healing and taking action in that, you know, you can go and talk to a personal trainer and research and see their methodology and really enjoy what they're saying, but unless you actually start working out, you're not going to reap the benefit of that research. I often see on Instagram that people will save some of my posts with the information, the tips and tools that I'm sharing. But we know statistically that all these posts that get saved on Instagram, people don't go back to them. Right? Okay.
Carla Arges [00:04:50]:
I've done my research. I see these actions I'm going to take. I'm going to save this, and then nothing happens. Right? I get people that want information about my course, and my course is all designed with action steps you have to take to healing and thriving. And then they don't put it into practice. They'll buy the course. Right? People will buy the course. And I can see on the back end how many people are actually doing it.
Carla Arges [00:05:24]:
There is a disconnect. Right. And I've been guilty of this myself. In fact, I have a course that I bought that's sitting in my inbox that I have yet to do. Right. We all do this. I'm not going to get the skills and the knowledge and the change that I want from buying that course unless I actually take the course and implement what the course teaches me. Right.
Carla Arges [00:05:48]:
You know, there's a saying that knowledge is power, but I think that saying has done so much of a disservice to us because the real power is in change. And change does not happen by knowledge. Change happens by action. We don't get saved. We don't get the gift of salvation unless we act to receive it. Right? We actually have to take action in our salvation. We have to act by saying, God, yes, I believe in you. Yes, I'm laying down my life.
Carla Arges [00:06:28]:
Yes, I accept you as my lord and savior. Thank you for what you did on the cross. We have to take that action, and then it doesn't stop there. Then we have to walk out our faith. It's faith in action. James talks about this a lot. It's not about earning salvation, but the evidence of salvation. The evidence of faith should come out in action.
Carla Arges [00:06:55]:
Right? All the research that you're doing, all the preparation work that you're doing to change those triggered behaviors, to change those behaviors that are coming out of trauma, all the research you're doing is not actually bringing a result. And so I want to challenge you today to get real with yourself. Why are you allowing yourself to get caught up in the busyness of really nothing versus acting, confronting the wound, confronting the pain, confronting the grief, and then doing the action steps to bring about healing? And God gives us a roadmap in his word, right? I do talk a lot about the science and neuroscience and the research. When I work with my clients, I do a lot of research based methodologies in their healing. But it is all. It is all rooted in scripture. God tells us that we have to take the action of forgiveness. Well, forgiveness is part of healing, right? God tells us that we have to take time to grieve, that there is a season for grieving.
Carla Arges [00:08:19]:
We know that actively participating in our grieving and allowing ourselves to process and move through it brings healing. Right. We have to accept what is and not live in the past. Doesn't mean that we, we say the past was right. It's not that we ignore justice. But if we're living in the past, then we're not pressing on towards the mark that God has called us to press towards. We're not running our race when we're stuck living in the past. So acceptance is another intersection of healing.
Carla Arges [00:08:58]:
And that's in the word renewing our mind. Guys, this is an action based step. When we're called to renew our mind, when we're called to take thoughts captive, when we're called to put them into obedience to Christ, these are action steps, right. This is why I tell my clients when we are renewing their, their mind, when we are doing the activity, when I give them practical steps on how to do it, it's not one and done. It is ongoing action in that area. It's not one and done. You know, I hate to tell you this, but the expression that time heals all wounds is not true. Action in healing is what brings healing.
Carla Arges [00:09:47]:
Time does not heal. Confronting the wound, inviting the Holy Spirit in with his healing balm, following the directions and the roadmap outlined in the Bible that bring emotional and mental healing. Right. Taking those action steps is what brings healing. It's not time. The same thing with establishing a new habit when you're actually doing a new habit, it's not time that reinforces the habit. I hear sometimes people have said it's 21 days to establish a new habit. Actually, it's not true.
Carla Arges [00:10:26]:
It's not time that establishes the habit. It's repetition. If you only do something once a week in those 21 days, you will have only repeated it three times. That is not enough to create strong new neural pathway of action, right? It's not enough time. Repetition is what actually brings healing, right? So it's no surprise that when we see and we go through the action of forgiveness, forgiveness is not one and done. We have to repeat it and repeat it and repeat it until we get that healing and we get that freedom, acceptance, grief. It's not one and done. We repeat it.
Carla Arges [00:11:12]:
We repeat it the same way that rejoicing in the Lord is not one and done. To get our heart in that posture of rejoicing in the Lord, even in the midst of challenging circumstances, it's repeating. It's repeating. Repetition is what brings habit, repetition, and not mindless repetition. When we're healing, we need to be intentional. I was talking to one of my clients, and we had created a list of affirmations that were based on scripture to talk back to the lies in her head, right? And this is a very practical way in which we renew our minds. And she was repeating it out of habit, lacking intention. And so they were only getting surface deep, right.
Carla Arges [00:12:11]:
She was planting the seeds. That was good. But we need those seeds to go from the head to the heart. So when she put intention behind the action, when she gave focus to the action, when she gave time to the action, that repetition with intention went from head to heart. And that's healing. That's healing. Why are you procrastinating? Your healing? What are you afraid of? Are you afraid of doing it wrong? Because I can tell you imperfect action will still bring more change than sitting on the sidelines. I can tell you that making mistakes in your journey, in your action, so called failures along the way, will bring you more change than sitting on the sidelines.
Carla Arges [00:13:19]:
It's like what we say, we have to walk out our faith. We have to walk it out. That is action. We don't sit back and settle into faith. We walk at our faith every day with intention. Every day we put on the armor of God. That is action. God made us to be active in the work he wants to do in us.
Carla Arges [00:13:45]:
Right? When he created the Garden of Eden, he didn't set up Adam and Eve just to sit back and live a life of luxury. He made them guardians. He gave them work to do, to name the animals, to keep things in order. They had jobs. They were working. God created us to be active beings, active in our faith, active in our healing, active in our transformation, active in our sanctification. And active is not the same as busy. Busy is a distraction.
Carla Arges [00:14:27]:
Busy is what the enemy subtly inserts into our life to stop us from action. Busyness is what the enemy likes to get us caught up in, to think we're doing the thing, and meanwhile we're actually not getting the freedom that we want. Busyness is another chain that keeps us bound. Did you notice that? God is never busy. God is never in a hurry. God doesn't do busy work. God is slow. God is intentional.
Carla Arges [00:15:08]:
God calls us to wait. God calls us to rest, not to busyness. Action, yes. Action, that's intentional to bring about results and transformation, yes. Busyness, no. And you would need to sit back and do honest reflection. Are you keeping yourself busy and bound and avoiding the work that actually brings change? Is that what you're doing? Do you have no time to actually do the work because you're so busy doing everything else? Then you are being lied to by the enemy. You have to make time, you have to slow down in order to move forward.
Carla Arges [00:16:02]:
And that may sound counterintuitive, but how the enemy has us work is going in circles. Busyness keeps us going in circles, which means we're actually not moving forward in the plan and purposes that God has over our life. We're running in circles. The enemy operates in urgency, urgency that keeps driving this busyness. And can I tell you, urgency is actually a trauma response that I have to do this now, I have to do this now. I have to do this now. And all the while, it's not the important things that we're doing. The important thing would be to step back, slow down, look at what really needs to be changed, confronting it, and then doing those actions towards it.
Carla Arges [00:16:48]:
And so I want to challenge you today to reflect. Are you busy preparing versus intentionally acting? And I want to encourage you that you have the holy spirit to empower you to move into action. See, God wouldn't have called us to action. God wouldn't make us required to act if he was not going to equip us to go through those hard actions, right? So you can face the wound, you can face the bitterness, you can face the rage, you can face the trauma, because you do it with the power of the Holy Spirit and then the wisdom of God in taking action. My affirming truth for you today is I will take action in faith towards my healing and stop procrastinating through busyness and I want us to go to James 122. It says, but be doers of the word and not hearers only deceiving our own selves. You see, when we are not being doers, we are deceiving ourselves and thinking that we are bringing about change. You see, we are deceiving ourselves.
Carla Arges [00:18:21]:
When we keep ourselves busy, we are deceiving ourselves. If all we're doing is research, we have to be doers in our healing. We have to be doers in our faith. I want to invite you to check out renewing hope, which is my course that takes you through the action of healing. It takes you through some of the major intersections in healing. And it doesn't just give you knowledge, it calls you to act. You have homework coming out of renewing hope because it's only through the action that change comes. And I want to invite you to get it today at a $100 off using code renewal 100.
Carla Arges [00:19:09]:
I'll put this in the show notes. Renew 100 $100 off renewing hope, your action plan to start the process of healing. All right friends, be blessed and I'll talk to you next time. Thanks for joining me today. I hope we're already friends on social media, but if we're not, come find me on Instagram at Carla Arges or at affirming truth. Can't wait to see you back here next week. Bye friends.