I am attending a course at church called Freedom Session. I have seen the material before and thought it was excellent, now is my time to try it out and see what I think about it as a participant. So far (4 weeks in) I have found it to be an excellent and helpful life tool.

I went on a road trip to Prince George and was doing my usual talking to God in the car and He showed me the above illustration, the concept is from Freedom Session. The course explains that if you are in the middle, the “Zero” point, you are in the frozen position emotionally – stuck. Cannot go forward or backwards. The +5 explains the “highs” in life, the joys, the fun, the rewards. The -5 explains the lows, the pain, the hurt, the sadness. The course explains that only to the degree you are willing to feel the pain (negatives) will you be able to feel joy and happiness (positives). For example: I recognize that I am currently willing to feel to about -2 pain, I do not want anymore, I figure that is what I can handle right now so I am solidly camped there but…. that means that I am only willing to feel joy and happiness to a +2 as well.

The 2 sides are balanced.

I think that most of us want to feel the Plus’s but no negatives however if I want to feel “life”, joy, laughter and happiness, then I must be willing to feel -5 pain as well. The 2 sides are balanced. I had never heard this concept before but this made total sense to me when I started analyzing where I was at emotionally. I had a couple of things happen a few months ago that should have elated me, they should have given me amazing amounts of joy, but I could not feel it. I was happy about the events, and very thankful, but I could not figure out why I did not have the true “high of joy” that I had been looking for. I recognized and evaluated that I was probably stuck at a –2 and a +2.

On my drive I asked God what He wanted to show me about the above illustration and boy did He pour out some stuff.

The diagram above He took so much farther than in Freedom Session and our emotions, He called it the “Scale of Life” and like it or not, it applies to every single person.

Now I have not gone on ahead in the course to know if it brings the following points into the course or not, I am simply sharing what God downloaded to me on my drive that day.

The degree to which we feel, live, interact with God, interact with others, interact with our self, our job, our ministries, our families, our body, our mind, our spirit, our money, our forgiveness, our faith, our prayers, our thinking: all of it, is interdependent on the above scale.

The Scale of Life.

For me, if I am willing to stay at a -2/+2 that is the degree which I will interact with all of life. If I want to spend or save money, I will do it at a +2/-2 level. If I want to have “fun” I will do it to a degree of +2. I get to decide what level I want to go to, no one else. But the choice is also mine to settle and stay content at -2/+2. I make the choice to limit God’s work in my life if I settle and stay stuck.

There are all kinds of reasons why we get stuck and freeze or shut down and almost all of them, have something to do with another person and a hurt is involved. A big hurt or a little hurt as Freedom session describes it – if you have been hit by a truck 1 time or 15 times – you have still been hit by a truck. A hurt is a hurt and it leaves scars.

God operates at -5 and +5 all the time, He is super invested in life. His offer to us is LIFE – complete and unhindered. The Father operates on the full scale, Jesus operates on the full scale and the Holy Spirit operates on the full scale.

“I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” KJV John 10:10

Just because I do not reach out and take life to the fullest, does not mean that God is not waiting right there to give it to me. I, me, stop myself from living to the highest degree, because I do not wish to feel the pain of the negative side.

I then got another picture, in this one Jesus is the Zero, with His arms stretched out, except in my mental picture, His arms covered up the numbers, He overlaps the entire scale. He has it covered, if we would come to Him and His offer has never gone away, He is still offering us life today.

(I was not technical savy to overlap my picture on top of the numbers, but you get it)

I started to wonder who else in the Bible was living at a -5/+5 and I came up with a list, certainly not the total list, but a list: David when he fought Goliath, Daniel when they were taken captives and in the lions den, Shadrach, Meshack and Abednego in the fiery furnace, Saul who turned into the apostle Paul, Job, Joseph sold as a slave (-5) and then put into prison (-5) when he became the Prime Minister of Egypt (+5). All of these men had lived in desperate, horrible situations but they lived: -5/+5.

If we are living life to the fullest, other people notice. We are free and that freedom is contagious and catchy – other people want what we have. Why does the Bible say faith as small as a mustard seed can move mountains? If the faith belongs to a person operating at a -5/+5. They are all in, invested, faith included.

I stated that this scale is for everyone, believer or not a believer. But the thing of it is, to get past a hurt you have to be willing to feel the pain. What do we do with that pain? We have already probably tried the following: forgetting it, ignoring it, counseling it, revenging it. But the only thing that can help push us past it, is to “heal it” and there is no person who can do that, it takes a supernatural touch from our Creator to actually heal a wound. So while we all live on this scale, only the brave ones who will approach their pain and ask Jesus to actually heal it, will push to the -5/+5 and fully embrace living. Jesus is in the healing business.

I have decided that I don’t want to settle for a -2/+2 life, I want it all! So I am pushing forward to becoming a -5/+5 type of gal, I do not want to be content and settle.

Where are you on the scale?