13: Do You Have a Fear Bond with God?

[00:00] Stephanie: Season 3, episode 13. Today we are wrapping up our Joy Bonds series. Hello, Father.

[00:07] Marcus: Hello, Daughter.

[00:08] Stephanie: Good to be with you.

[00:09] Marcus: It is – makes it easy to do a Joy Bond series. It’s very nice.

[00:14] Stephanie: Yeah, it’s good. I’ve been enjoying our talks and obviously we could just talk all the time about this, and we do. We’ve lots of other episodes where we unpack some of this, but today I’m excited. We’ve covered brain stuff and attachment theory, and today we’re gonna be putting our focus on our attachment with God and pulling it all together. Looking at some of the Bible stuff, looking at some of our just personal walk and what it looks like to have an attachment with God.

We were talking about joy and fear, last episode especially. Let’s start there. Let’s put it into context. I know you’ve talked before about praying and almost seeing the theater masks of comedy and tragedy, but the idea of a smiling face and a not smiling face while you’re praying with God. Yeah, take it from there.

[01:14] Marcus: Yes, I do remember that very clearly. I was in seminary and closed my eyes to pray and that’s when I saw only the tragedy mask looked a little more angry, and realizing that one of the things that happens when you grow up in a very legalistic kind of system. Different people come from different forms of legalism.

There’s a charismatic form, there’s a Baptist form, there’s a Mennonite form. There are all kinds of different forms of this, but what tends to happen is it teaches you to motivate your walk with God in fear. And that is, you’re constantly like, “I ought to, I should, I better _________. If I don’t, God will be upset.”

You can’t avoid all of that all of the time, but if that’s your only motivation for doing this, it can really lead to problems. I talked to one pastor who said he ended up with a complete meltdown and ended up in a psych ward, and he said, “You know what the triggering event was?” And I’m like, no idea. He said, “I missed doing my devotions one day.” He had such a fear bonded walk with God that the idea that God would be so disappointed with him, he had failed so badly, he was such a hypocrite, all the negative things because he missed his devotions one day.

It reminds me of another guy I talked to who was convinced, like when the toast burned, it’s because God was mad at him. It’s like, “God, why are you so mad at me? Why couldn’t you just let the toast turn out okay?”

There are some really severe fear bonding things that happen with God, and so it helps us put our own fear bonding in perspective. And that is, to the extent that I only motivate myself in my walk with God is, “I better do this or else,” then I need to re-examine and see how I can insert more joy into my motivation for connecting with him.

[03:25] Stephanie: From that end, would you say that our natural inclinations in our attachment styles and how we view life, how we attach to other people, or joy map versus fear map the world, is generally going to be how we also interact with God too? So if we recognize it in one area, it’s probably happening in the other area as well?

[03:47] Marcus: It’s very unlikely that you have a fear bond in all your other relationships but a joy bond with God. That doesn’t happen very often. So yes, what happens is, generally speaking, the way we have learned to attach to other people, we bring that into our walk with God. And so it’s something we have to be aware of and look at.

[04:11] Stephanie: So, maybe what are some less severe examples of a fear bond and maybe how somebody could address it?

[04:21] Marcus: Well, again, it’s that self-talk that goes into things like, you get up in the morning and you’re like, “I don’t feel like doing this, but I really ought to, and the only reason I’m doing it is, I don’t want to feel bad about this, I don’t want to feel bad about that.”

It can be real subtle. And it’s not that it’s wrong to have those thoughts. But if that’s the only thing, and it’s over and over and over again, it’s going to be very difficult to be consistent, because what happens is you actually begin to form a bit of bitterness towards God. Like, “Why does this have to be so hard? Why does he not make this easier? Why doesn’t he just show himself to me? Why doesn’t he talk more clearly? Why doesn’t he ________.” And so you could start spiraling into this dark place that makes you just want to quit and avoid everything altogether.

[05:18] Stephanie: Can we quickly address duty versus legalism?

[05:22] Marcus: Sure. So if I have a duty, it means it’s my job to do something. It’s my job to show up. I have to do this. A duty means I do have to do something. I still need to find out ways to motivate myself to do the things that are my duty with joy and not just with fear. People who hate their jobs and they’re just doing it because, “Well, I have to,” they get to be very miserable and they get to burn out very quickly, because we are wired to find things to enjoy.

And so we’ve got to find things to enjoy in this. Yes, we do have sort of a duty as Christians, right? To be good people, we have a duty as Christians to invest in our walk with God. But how do I motivate myself to do that duty? Legalism basically always produces a fear/shame motivation.

[06:28] Stephanie: As you’re talking, I’m thinking about a really lovely book that I just read by Asheritah Ciuciu called Delighting in Jesus. She talks about recovering that sparkle and the joy with God. And she gives a shout out to your book too in there, I was very delighted to see.

[06:50] Marcus: I just had a meeting last week. We decided we were going to have you reach out to her. So hey, good mention! Asheritah.

[06:58] Stephanie: I love her. Anyway, this idea of our walk with God is meant to not be a trudge. Like when we’re walking through the darkness, he’s with us. I’m a firm believer in duty, that it is a good thing, but a lot of times it gets misconstrued as legalism. God delights in us and he delights in spending time with us and we are meant to find delight in pursuing him in those duties.

[07:39] Marcus: And I would say too that what I had to say about legalism was very truncated. I kind of reduced it to motivation. There are some other core issues with legalism, and one of them is that our worth becomes based on our performance. And that’s really at the heart of it. If you only have value if you’re performing well, then that’s legalism.

And so I understand the confusion, but I do think that you’re right, that duty is a good thing and is part of character to be somebody that is reliable and does their duty. And if you add to that, not to only do that, but I find ways to motivate myself where I understand the honor in what I am doing and not just the fear in what I’m doing. That’s a good thing.

[08:31] Stephanie: Yeah. I think part of why I was thinking about Asheritah, not only because Delighting in Jesus was in my mind, but that this idea, what this duty looks like, your relationship with God doesn’t have to be this formulaic thing that looks like the same thing every time. You can walk with God. What does walking with God look like in this season right now? How are you being intentional in this season? And that can change.

It’s not like, “Oh, I have to choose joy and find joy,” which of course, I think, I’m spinning us off into another conversation, but we’re in joy, which a lot of times you and other people will come after this idea of choosing joy, that you can’t choose joy because joy is a relational emotion. But you can choose to walk the path that would lead you to joy. You can choose to follow, you can choose to dwell on what is good and noble and true, and you can choose…

[09:35] Marcus: That’s because choice falls into the category of problem solving. And so if the problem is that I can’t find any joy right now, then I now have a problem to solve. And so that does take me over into the choice part of my brain and at that point, I can’t simply choose to feel joy.

But you’re right. I can choose to find something to appreciate. I can choose to take the time to think of what I like about things. Those things aren’t guaranteed to make me feel a certain way. There are choices that I can make, and that’s all part of the problem solving process when I’m not at where I want to be.

[10:11] Stephanie: Well, let’s talk about attachment in the Bible. Where do we see, how is this biblical, this idea of attaching with God and walking with God?

[10:21] Marcus: My default setting on this is John 15, the vine and the branches. Jesus said, “I am the vine, you are the branches, and apart from me, you can do nothing.” That’s a pretty strong attachment metaphor, right? “You’ve got to be attached to me for my life to flow through you.” The whole idea of abiding in Christ is essentially an attachment analogy.

There are also words along the way that have to do with glue, being glued to God, being bonded to God. I would also say that probably two of the most common words about our walk with God are love and trust, and both of those are attachment words. Love is more than, “I’m going to choose to be good to you.” If I say I love you and all I ever do is choose to do good things for you even though I don’t feel like it, that’s not really love. Love has to include an attachment.

It’s the same thing with trust. Trust is an expression that says, “I trust the attachment that I have with you. I feel safe with you, and I feel safe enough to trust doing this with you.” And so my levels of trust are going to be directly related to my attachment with somebody.

[11:39] Stephanie: I think that we see a lot – I’m thinking about things in the Old Testament especially – but a lot where God introduces himself to people and you think, why don’t you just lead with the big guns? You know, okay, maybe that’s a bad metaphor. Why don’t you just lead with, “Here is the exact thing you need right now.” But it’s because he’s like, “Hey, will you trust me to provide you this food? Will you trust me to provide you this land? Would you trust me to provide you with this baby?” And he’s building things because it is a walk, it is a journey, and trust is built over time. You can’t just say, “You know what, I need to trust more,” and all of a sudden you do. It’s established in a relationship, which is why it’s relational.

[12:23] Marcus: Right?

[12:24] Stephanie: Yeah.

[12:24] Marcus: So, yeah, in that sense, trust is part of the fruit of being on a walk with God and learning that he really is trustworthy. At some point, there are times when we just have to make choices and go, “I can either choose to rely on myself or I can choose to rely on God.” But the idea is, once again, in the same way that you don’t want love to be nothing more than choosing to do that, you don’t want trust to be nothing more than choosing to do that. You want trust to be this security in the attachment that makes that choice reasonable and logical.

[13:02] Stephanie: You make choices to affirm and strengthen and grow the attachment. But the attachment, there is a relationalness that you are then building on top of.

[13:13] Marcus: Right. So, you know, the word you hear a lot at Life Model is hesed. It’s one of the core characteristics of God and hesed is this idea that you and I are attached, we belong, and because you belong to me, I’m going to take care of you.

[13:34] Stephanie: It has a covenantal aspect to it oftentimes.

[13:36] Marcus: Yeah, often has a covenant aspect to it, but not always.

[13:39] Stephanie: Yeah, not always.

[13:40] Marcus: Sometimes it’s got a family aspect to it, “Because you and I are family, I will take care of it.” That’s not necessarily a covenant, but one of the purposes of covenant is to form an attachment that says , “You and I are connected, we are a people. And because we are a people, we look out for each other.” And so chesed is this idea that you can trust God to do right by you because it’s his character to do right by those who belong to him.

[14:06] Stephanie: In some ways, it’s like a lovely pairing of love and duty.

[14:09] Marcus: Yes, it’s a lovely pairing of love and duty.

[14:12] Stephanie: Right, yes, very good.

I feel like we haven’t talked about this very often, and I think it’s a really interesting facet, a very interesting angle of looking at our attachment with God, which is from the negative side, and that is idolatry. And even in Breakthrough, the book, you did have a little section there and I wanted us to unpack that a little bit. Would you talk about what you see, how idolatry is an obstacle, or a counterfeit?

[14:43] Marcus: That’s true. So it’s like when you read the Old Testament and you say, “What is the biggest bad thing?” It’s not – this just sounds weird – but it’s not murder, it’s not sexual morality. The biggest, number one, bad thing is idolatry. The Israelites go into exile because of idolatry. Now they also have murder, injustice, and sexual immorality, not treating the poor properly, but those things tend to flow out of it. And so the idea with idolatry is that, one, I am bonding to and attaching to someone other than God to be the source of the good things that I’m looking for. And so because I don’t trust God to be the source of the good that I need, I bond to something else. And thus, in a sense, an addiction is a similar way, instead of bonding to someone and finding the joy there, I bond to this experience to try to get the good thing that I need.

And so God, one of the reasons he hated idolatry was that it was bonding to a different being other than him and saying, “I trust that other being to do good to me and to do what is right by me more than I trust you.” It’s the ultimate affront. We see it in the Hosea/Gomer story where she says, “It is my lovers who give me my wine and my oil and my good things in life, not my husband.”

That’s the essence of idolatry, where it says, “I need someone to deliver me. I need somebody to come through for me. I don’t trust you to do it, God. So I’m going to look to this other thing to be my savior.” And that’s the essence of idolatry. It leads to bonding and attaching to something that isn’t God and giving the level of trust to that being instead of to him.

[16:37] Stephanie: So idolatry is replacing God in the position of savior, of ultimate attachment, of ultimate provider. And it also, especially the idolatry of the Old Testament, but even today, can lead to involvement in the occult or bad things, so it’s got its multiple layers of just bad…

[17:03] Marcus: There’s multiple layers of bad in idolatry. Right. It starts with this idea that only one person deserves that level of trust from us, and that’s the Creator. And then it goes onto all these other things.

[17:19] Stephanie: I was just also going to add with the idea of the occult, power is always personal, even if you’re thinking about it in a Star Wars way of  just tapping into the force, or whatever, in the true mythology of the world.

[17:42] Marcus: I thought you were gonna say the true mythology of Star Wars, but go ahead. Just like in the way the world actually works.

[17:48] Stephanie: Yes. In true reality, and the way things actually work, if you are not receiving and seeking God for the things, for everything, then you are seeking from a different source. And that source is still attached to a person, just not a good person.

[18:09] Marcus: Exactly. So it’s like even if you’re seeking this through an impersonal force, there’s not actually an impersonal force to connect to. This is a being that you’re connecting to and getting help from. In the Old Testament we see occasionally someone said, “Is there no God in Israel that you’re going to this pagan God for help with this or that?” And,  “Is there no prophet in Israel?” These kinds of sayings are getting at this idea of, why are you looking for a lesser replacement?

[18:36] Stephanie: Which is why the metaphor of adultery. Sorry, I was blending idolatry and adultery. Adultery is such a huge deal, because it’s not just, “Oh, you know what, I’m gonna throw away my wedding ring and go do my own thing.” The idea is,  “I’m gonna throw away my wedding ring and go off with someone else.

I’m going to break our attachment and attach to someone else and seek them for all my good.” So anyway, I’ve gone on a while.

[19:05] Marcus: Well, no, there’s a lot of things to this. Because one of the things that fear bonds characterize as is our relationships become transactional. And so our walk with God isn’t about connecting with him, it’s about transacting with him. “God, I need you to do this for me. So what do you want from me?” And it’s like, “If I have my devotions every day, will you do this good thing for me?” And we get very transactional. That’s a sign that I don’t really trust you and so what we find is, most idolatry and most paganism is profoundly transactional.

[19:40] Stephanie: Is that “do ut des?”  I give so you will give?

[19:43] Marcus: Yeah, that was Latin, for those of you not following at home do ut dés: do – as I give, ut – so that, dés – you give. Yeah, I give so that you give. That’s the ultimate transaction. I’ll give you something so that you give me something. What happens is, the more fear bonded I am to God, the more transactional my relationship with him becomes.

[20:07] Stephanie: All right, in our final moments, not necessarily final thoughts yet, but what are some simple strategies for building a joy bond with God?

[20:18] Marcus: So there are a few. One of them is practicing appreciation. One of the reasons we’re told to praise God and to give thanks to him is that those are the two most basic ways in which we build our joy bond with God. If I’m giving Him praise, I’m thinking about how good he is. If I’m giving Him thanks, I’m thinking about what good he has done. And that helps. So starting with gratitude and praise are the two most fundamental ways that we begin transforming our walk.

Now, what most of us good legalists do is we then turn that into, “I have failed. I didn’t give him adequate praise. I wasn’t grateful enough,”  and we can turn it into a performance thing against us. But the idea here of genuine praise and genuine gratitude is where I am getting my mind in a place of truly appreciating the good things that God has done for me. And that’s where we start.

[21:18] Stephanie: All right, I have good news for our listeners, which is that if you are feeling the need to practice, to really like “I know I need to grow more joy. I need to grow more intimacy with Jesus and my capacity for joy.” We, in partnership with our friends at Thrive Today, created a 28 Days to Joy challenge that you can sign up for at (Let me make sure I get the URL right.) 4habits.org 

I always have to check the last three digits there. 4habits.org will take you to this 28 Days to Joy challenge. We’ll send you a daily email with just a simple exercise for like, “Hey, what’s my joy exercise today?” And then you can also print out a calendar where you can keep track of the exercises, put it on your fridge, whatever. But it’s really simple, fun things that you can do for yourself, or with your family, or what have you, to increase your joy.

So next episode we are going to continue talking about our relationship with God, but we’re going to be moving into the next letter of our BUILD maturity acrostic, which is Listen to the Spirit.

So looking forward to that. Any quick final thoughts on this topic?

[22:38] Marcus: Well, you know, I have noticed in my own walk that I can get complacent. If I’m not in a joy place with God and I’m only in a fear place with God, then I tend to only go to him when I have something even more fearful going on in my life.

And so that’s why a lot of us fall into this pattern of, “My prayer life is awesome when I have problems, and it just kind of falls off when I don’t.” That’s usually a sign that I’m fear bonded, primarily fear bonded to God. And so it’s a sign that I need to take some steps to start building a new habit, which is where the duty idea comes in, that I want to really be more intentional about practicing the gratitude and the praise on a daily basis.

[23:27] Stephanie: Thank you.

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