Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect. Rom. 12:2 NLT

We continue looking at the neuroscience of the brain and how it validates and aligns with what the Bible teaches in the process of transforming the way we think. Keep in mind, it is God who does this transforming work. We simply, and humbly open ourselves to God to change the way we think. This sounds easy, but for many people the idea of opening our lives to God, or even having an intimate relationship with Him is something beyond their ability.

Review from last week. 

• A healthy brain forms around good attachments early in life. If these attachments aren’t good it affects all of our relationships. 
• What the brain feeds on is: Joy, defined as “relational happiness”. Dr. Allan Schore
• Trauma early in life can affect our ability to have secure attachments. Two types of trauma… 
• B trauma is the bad things that happens to us. 
• A trauma is what was absent in our lives. 
• Which is harder to recover from? A Trauma. Neglect creates more trauma than abuse.
• “Personality and ability to bond throughout life are set in place by age 3, maybe sooner.” – Dr. Allan Schore – UCLA

Last week we looked at how important it is to be closely bond with a parent or significant care-giver in our life in our early developmental years. We must be shown unconditional love. This will help you have strong relationships throughout your lives.  We call the bond between parents and their children attachment.   

This matters because our brain sees God as an attachment.  If our relationship with our parents or primary caregivers is not good then our relationship with God will not be good or it will be limited. If we can’t trust others who are supposed to love us then we struggle trusting God.

The Bible uses this language to describe our relationship with God.

For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh. Gen. 2:24

Join is the Hebrew dabaq – glue together, attach, cling, stick to, join to, overtake. ‘to cleave’. This word occurs in the Bible 52 times.

My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me. Ps 63:8

Let’s take a look at how we develop as humans and what is important to us at each stage of early life.

Erik Erikson’s 8 Stages of Psycho-social Development.

If we don’t answer these questions we don’t ignore or just pass them up, by avoiding them we move them with us into adulthood.  They must be answered. This can seem overwhelming. The truth is that our attachment to God is the answer to each one. God can be trusted. He creates our value because we are valuable to Him. He gives us significance. He makes us attractive and capable of loving others, even unconditionally.

If we are insecure and unsure of who we are we will struggle with facing  these questions and other big issues of life. All of this goes back to our early attachments.

Signs of blocked Maturity or why adults act like children. 

a. Inability to regulate or control their emotions 

b. Inconsistent behavior, always battling same stuff

c. Fear-based guidance, live guarded lives, affects worldview

d. Low satisfaction, just not happy, serious, cautious

Yet you are he who took me from the womb; you made me trust you at my mother’s breasts. Psa. 22:9 ESV

As Jesus grew, so did his wisdom and maturity. The favor of men increased upon his life, for he was loved greatly by God. Luke 2:52 TPT

Types of Attachment

John Bowlby in 1950’s and Mary Ainsworth in the 1970’s, observed the way a child behaves during the separation and upon the mother’s return. They discovered this revealed important information about attachment.

To do this, they let the child play with their mothers for a few minutes inside a room. Then the child is left alone. The key moment is the child’s reaction when her mother returns. Securely attached children first usually hug their mother, then can calm down and eventually get back to playing. Insecurely attached children can be ambivalent (back and forth, unsure, unstable) and avoidant (nervous and fearful) . Some can’t stop crying or refuse to continue playing. 

There is one type of secure attachment and there are 3 types of insecure attachments: Most children are going to be upset when their mother leaves, the room, but how quickly they recover determines how secure they are. 

• Anxious/Ambivalent (fear loss of connection) Anakin Skywalker or Darth Vader (moved away from mom)

• Anxious/Avoidant (fearful of connection) Tony Stark as Ironman, jokes to avoid intimacy. No connection with parents never learned how to give and receive love and affection. They cannot look you in the eye and express emotion.

• Anxious/Disorganized, Fearful, unpredictable, self sabotage, always testing your love. NEBULA in the Avengers. 
• Will in Good Will Hunting rejects Skylar who tries to love him. We see his breakthrough with Robin Williams. 
  • Almost always trauma in their lives.  Will was beaten by his father, Nebula was taken apart and critiqued by her father. 
  • Vulnerability means pain in scene in Good Will Hunting, It’s not your fault.  In other words you are worthy of love and what you feel is wrong.
• Secure. Think Captain America. Consistent, integrity. He apologizes to Tony Stark first. We don’t see much of his family but he had a best friend who was always with him and helped him be grounded,  Bucky.

Disorganized doesn’t mean they are messy, it means they have no reference point. A person who did not attach to anyone in their early years is confused about how to attach to people later in life. Disorganized children in the study ignored the fact the mother left or came back in the room.  Super unhealthy. 

These are not hard and fast lines. We someones respond in various ways depending on who we are with and the setting. Some men for example are gregarious and confident at work but put them into social settings or bring them to church and they act like shy little boys. 

Think this is just psycho-babble? 

The University of Minnesota did a study of 3 year olds and their level of healthy attachment.  

For those who did not have healthy parents’ attachment, they could predict the effect into the future to the point where they predicted which student would drop out of high school. They were accurate in 77% of the cases.   https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2857405/

I know this creates some  anxiety in some of you and you start judging yourself as a parent. 

I have Good news.  Any attachment can be improved and healed. Children are very resilient. Their brains are very pliable and trauma can be reversed. 

I will give you back your health and heal your wounds,” says the Lord. “For you are called an outcast— ‘Jerusalem for whom no one cares.’” Jer. 30:17 NLT 

You can build a better relationship and restore or create a healthy attachment which they will carry forward into their adult lives and pass on to their kids.

It can only be reversed through unconditional love. Giving the child what they may have lacked earlier in their life. 

Question: How much love do I have to show?  

Answer: Enough to convince the child or person you really do love them unconditionally. This is how all relationships are restored. We just don’t want to make the investment. We’d rather attend to our own world and focus on our Facebook status, or binge watch Netflix. 

Many times it is your own insecurities you are seeing reflected back to you in your children.  Since you don’t know how to fix yourself you feel frustration in seeing it in them and you feel helpless because you don’t know how to help.

YES, it can take a lot of time. Yes and the investment, no matter how great, to show love to the people in your life will pay off in the future.  What you don’t help your children with now will be doubly painful later.

And he (Abijam) walked in all the sins that his father did before him, and his heart was not wholly true to the Lord his God, as the heart of David his father. 1 Kings 15:3 ESV

If you are grandparent you can also work in the role of showing unconditional love to your grandkids.  Teachers, youth workers, neighbors, KidCity volunteers, can all play a role in contributing to children growing up healthy and becoming securely attached adults to their spouses, children and GOD!

We often say, “hurt people hurt others” .  It is also true “healed people heal others”. 

God wants us to be a healing community.

He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. Psa. 147:3

Remember, Rom. 12:2, it is God who transforms us.

I know I have emphasized the problems. Be we need to understand the depth and source of our issues before we can understand how to and find motivation to fix them.

Here is the life Paul describes we can have with God… 

The mature children of God are those who are moved by the impulses of the Holy Spirit. 

It doesn’t take a burning bush or audible voice. Mature Christians recognize and immediately respond to the nudge or impulses of the Holy Spirit. 

15 And you did not receive the “spirit of religious duty,” leading you back into the fear of never being good enough. 

Paul says, what you got is real and lasting. Jesus doesn’t add religious baggage to your life he instead lifts our burdens. My yoke is easy, my burden is light (Matt. 11:30). 

By contrast, Paul says… 

But you have received the “Spirit of full acceptance,” enfolding you into the family of God. And you will never feel orphaned, for as he rises up within us, our spirits join him in saying the words of tender affection, “Beloved Father!” 

That is, one of the real tests of spiritual maturity, do you really see God as a beloved Father. 

That was the turning point for me. I had been in ministry for 10 years.  I could teach on God being a Father, but it was just words on a page. It was when I went through brokenness and healing and allowed God to push through all of the protective layers I had placed around my heart.  When I allowed Him to be my Father, my dad.

16 For the Holy Spirit makes God’s fatherhood real to us as he whispers into our innermost being, “You are God’s beloved child!” Rom. 8:15-16