249. Christian Perfectionism with MarkDeJesus

Carrie: All right. Welcome, everyone, back to Christian Faith and OCD. I have a special guest with us today that some of you may be familiar with. Mark DeJesus has been in ministry for quite some time, probably over 30 years. And Mark and his wife, Melissa, founded Turning Hearts Ministry International. And Mark is the author of many books, but to name a few, The OCD Healing Journey, and we’re actually gonna be talking about his latest book, which is Freedom From Just Right But Never Enough.

Carrie: I think The Christian Perfectionist Healing Journey, I think that’s a great title, that resonates with a lot of people. And Mark, you’re really about helping people experience mental, emotional, and relational health from a biblical perspective. Is there anything else that we should add to that?

Mark: No, that’s great.

Mark: That’s great. That’s my heart Yeah… to help people, to help believers experience healing and freedom, and experience mental, emotional, relationship health. It’s something that rings very deep in my heart. And from, from my standpoint, I feel that a lot of what the scriptures communicate involves that.

Mark: And so I love helping people to see that, and gain insight, and gain help in that. Yeah. So yeah, right on.

Carrie: Yeah, I think it’s… When we’re talking about Christian perfectionism, like there’s this picture that I have, I think, of checking all the right boxes, like going to church, and reading your Bible, and praying, and then you know, analyzing your heart at some level.

Carrie: Like, “Are my motives pure?” and, “Am I doing this for the right reasons?” Like, you can go down all of these different rumination cycles that we see in OCD a lot. Like, how, how would you define, just at a basic level, like Christian perfectionism?

Mark: I would define it as a performance-based mindset that is, is the modern-day version of law influence.

Mark: Now, when we talk about like law influence, sometimes people go too well on not, not necessarily like sacrificing animals. Sure… doing certain ceremonial things. But there is an influence that the apostles had to address of this kind of leaven that would creep in, where people would go back to trying to establish a sense of feeling right, or their standing with God, or where they’re at in their journey based on a bunch of metrics that get compiled.

Mark: So yeah, the checklist you’re talking about is really, really good. And what I discovered was… First I had to discover it in my own life, because, it was there for as long as I can remember, and I didn’t realize it. So there’s a lot of, denial about the perfectionistic mentality that is at play in many of our lives.

Mark: But, what what was helpful for me as I began to recognize it, and in my coaching, I found myself saying, “Yeah, you just keep you keep trying under this pressure to get things just right, but it’s never enough.” And I, and I found over and over again, we just kind of kept saying that, and saying that, and saying that.

Mark: It’s just this cycle that never repeats- And it’s kind of what OCD does, scrupulosity does, is it creates a disturbance. You chase it down, you’re trying to fix it, get it just right, and then you’re back at it again or another version of it. And so I, I first… Everything I teach, it’s things I’ve discovered in myself, really, a lot of it.

Mark: And then I went about going, “Hey, this is what I’ve learned about me.” So I even remember back in days in my pastoring where I would, even in sermons and teachings, go, “Here’s some things I’m discovering. I’m growing through. Anybody else got this going on?” Mm-hmm. And people would say to me, “, did you, did you give this teaching about me?”

Mark: And I was like, “Well, to be honest, it’s really about me. But if it helps, hey, we’re all on this kind of journey, in some way that we’re trying to, we’re trying to get ourselves to feel okay before God,” to put it in simple terms. And but there’s a, there’s a pressure. There’s a, a performance kind of hamster wheel that’s there, and there’s like a disturbance- Yeah

Mark: that’s, that’s, that, that we feel we gotta keep fixing, but it becomes a trap. And, so I, I love both through mental health observations and also, also through the word of God and really rooted in the word of God of like, okay, this thing’s been around, and we can, we can recognize this. We can get unburdened from it because you don’t have to live under that weight.

Mark: You don’t have to live under that. Yeah. But it, it does get tricky in trying to understand it, see it, navigate through the healing journey of it.

Carrie: Yeah. In this level, I, I love what you’re talking about, about how people… Christians have been wrestling with this for a long time. You know, and we look, like, the, the background of Galatians and Correct

Carrie: Paul was, like, correcting some theology of, of people who were saying, “Oh yeah, that’s nice that you have Jesus, but you also have to go be circumcised over here-” Right… you know, in order to be, like, a true follower. And, you know, Paul said, “No, that, that is incorrect. You know, we have, we have freedom in Christ.”

Carrie: And, I think that I, I love that book for Christians that struggle with OCD. I think it’s a really great one to, to take a deep dive into. Do you, do you feel like sometimes, I think, the, the church, I don’t think it means to, but I think sometimes it can subtly reinforce this narrative that you have to do more?

Mark: Yes. Yes. It, it, it can be, it can be unknowingly in the sense of just what we’re used to. And many times it can come in great intensity. It can even get to aspects where it gets even, abusive we could call. But I think that we’re so used to a, a culture in life of metrics based on performance, you know, of checking the boxes off.

Mark: We’ve been living a culture that appeals to, give me the three steps, give me the three things, give me… Because we’re, we’re trying to figure this journey out, but it’s a heart journey. It’s, it’s a relationship journey. Yeah. It’s a love journey. And so we get lost in a lot of the metrics that we’re trying to chase down, so we do become vulnerable to it.

Mark: And I think that there are aspects, I look back in, especially in the early days of, of, of teaching and preaching in ministry, where you’re trying to get a point across and you feel like you need to, like, get this emphatic kind of thing and, and, and it can oftentimes take that line of adding a pressure on people.

Mark: You know, “You gotta be doing this.” And so it gets into, like, giving. It gets into serving. It gets into your, your routines, your devotional life. How, how active you look or how passionate you look in your journey, and those are the metrics we need to look for. And so it’s, it’s created oftentimes these standards that, that are actually woven within perfectionism, these unrealistic standards and expectations that we create.

Mark: I gotta be like this in order to, to live that way. And, meanwhile, we’re, like, under a lot of stress and a lot of burden, anxious, even angry, depressed, disillusioned, exhausted, you know?, I think I said exhausted twice, and that’s, that’s worth saying., you know, it’s, it’s just we get bogged down by all these extra things.

Mark: For me, I had to get back to the fundamentals. I had to get back… And I think that the Christian life is not only getting back to the fundamentals, but staying in them, you know? The love of God and the grace of God are not things of, like, arrival. Like, I got it. I got it. These are things that we continually grow in, but they’re not these check boxes we’re, we’re, we’re hitting off.

Mark: They’re relational things we’re growing in in a journey as we’re learning how the nature of Christ that is at work within us is, is, is, is happening and taking place. But, when I’m up against these standards and metrics, I’m constantly defeated, I’m constantly striving, and I’m reacting to myself with hostility because, right, we, we fall back just like the church in Galatians that you mentioned.

Mark: They, they’re, they’re going back to, like, okay, so if I do this, check. All right, circumcised, check. Oh, that holiday, check. And Paul had to be very emphatic. He’s like, “This is bewitchment. This is like this is like putting a spell on people. Like, this is not what we were meant to live in.” And so, his heart was to bring freedom to that, and which I appreciate so much ’cause he did a lot of work in his writings in helping people to get.

Mark: What’s this rooting- it’s really founded in. You know? How, how this whole journey happened. And what makes it tricky, Carrie, is that I’m basing my whole life on something somebody else did for me, right?

Carrie: Yes. Yeah.

Mark: That’s true. And there’s this temptation within us from our brokenness, from just how we live, that like I gotta even the score.

Mark: I gotta Mm. You know? It’s like if somebody- Yeah… you know, all of a sudden gave you $10 million. You know? you’re like, “, a thank you card isn’t enough.” Like, what do I gotta do here? Do I… You know? And then we’ve like in the illustration of money, it’s like, well, I hope that person doesn’t see me on a bad day ’cause then maybe they’ll regret giving me the money.

Mark: You know?

Carrie: Right. Yeah.

Mark: There’s all these things we go into that we put on God instead of realizing, yeah, this thing is way beyond what you could ever imagine. It really is that amazing. And, but it’s something that is just meant to be received and lived from, rather than I spent most of my early Christian life living for it, living for His love, living for a sense of approval, living for a sense of trying to land into appeasing Him somehow.

Carrie: Yeah.

Mark: And that was a major shift in my journey, is like I have to learn how to receive this beautiful grace, to acknowledge it, to, connect to the beauty of it, and live from it. That’s a whole different kind of journey that, that God’s leading- Yeah… us all into. Yeah.

Carrie: And, and I think,… You know, I resonate with so much of that.

Carrie: in my 20s and early 30s, really just a lot of striving, a lot of wanting to be good enough for God. Yeah. Or am I doing this enough, and am I serving enough? Those, those types of things. Am I, you know, praying enough? What is, what is a spiritual practice? I know I have… I’m supposed to do these spiritual disciplines, and what does that, what does that even mean to, to have a quiet time and, Right

Carrie: connect with God? And now, you know, my relationship with God through, through some tragedies has changed so much. And, I think what you’re saying about people- We’re always graded essentially, right? Like, when we’re in school, we’re graded. When we have a job, we have a performance evaluation. Even as a, you know, entrepreneurs, they’re like, “Oh, well, you know, how much money did you make last month or last year?”

Carrie: Right. You know, like, there’s always some type of metric that people are examining you by. And what I find, I was just writing about this recently, like, the transformational process of the Holy Spirit, it’s so… It’s somewhat mysterious and unseen, and I don’t really know all of that is how that all of that is happening.

Carrie: I just know that I’m showing up and, you know, like, doing my part to show up and engage with God and with the Holy Spirit, and He’s doing something inside of me that I can’t really explain or understand. And I think that’s what people have a hard time with. They’re like, “Well, what do you mean? I just have to basically, like, show up?”

Carrie: Like you were saying. Mm-hmm. Show up, be loved, accept grace. Right. Connect, like, with your heart, not just with your head. Yeah. Connect with your heart.

Mark: Yep. Yeah, and it’s, it’s really about what’s in front of you. Like, that showing up is a great term because it’s a sense of showing up to the day., I’m, I’m tuning into what…

Mark: ‘Cause when we’re tuned into grace, we’re tuned into the, the theme of growth on our life, because grace is, is, is the empowerment of Christ at work, right? Yeah. The perfectionists get lost in what’s not happening, what is disturbing them, what seems wrong. We get lost in all that. Grace is pointing us to what’s right in him that’s at work within us, but yet growing in that.

Mark: And so as I’m, as I’m growing in that, it’s, it’s a simple one step in front of the other. Mm-hmm… like you said, you said, something about, tragedy or trials that you went through, right? Those, those, those moments of resistance, they create moments to, opportunities to connect to our heart in a deeper way.

Mark: ‘Cause a lot of us can, we can be heady, right? We go, “Well, I took this Bible study class, and I got, and I learned this. I took this class on this, on the end times. I took a class on this,” right? We think of theology as something we gotta have figured out. Then stuff happens in our life.

Carrie: Right.

Mark: And we go, “Oh, woo, God, I need you.”

Mark: Okay, boom. Mm-hmm. Now we’re entering into heart, right? We’re moving past just, like… ‘Cause the mind is like a world of data and just a world of information. The, the the life of the heart is now, it’s relational. It’s it, it’s connecting to emotion. It’s connecting to journey. It’s slower, right? That’s a bigger part, too, is just, like, that slowing down.

Mark: And so the, the thing about perfectionism is that it’s bringing this performance evaluation with great intensity. So it’s like, “I’m not growing. I’m stuck. Things aren’t happening.” We can’t see the bigger picture. Right. And so it’s like it’s even hard to read the Bible if you don’t have a big picture viewpoint.

Mark: You know, you’ll get stuck on one verse. You’ll get stuck on one passage- That’s true… and goes, “What does that mean? What just happened there?” Right? Meanwhile, God has this large landscape of what he’s working, both in the world, in the church, and the believers, but individually in each of us, that there’s this thing of growth that’s taking place.

Mark: But we can’t, we can’t see it in micro assessments, but you see it as, as, as time moves along. Like you even said, okay, I can look back at my 20s, and I see some mindsets that have changed, some ways that I’m seeing things differently. There’s a work happening, but if we’re in, living in that just right but never enough, it, the, the pressure’s, the pressure’s on.

Mark: And we’re easily accused. We’re easily disqualified. We’re, we’re, we’re, we’re, we’re nitpicking on what is, what is wrong, and then we’re chasing that constantly. And then we find ourselves just, just in that cycle over and over again.

Carrie: Yeah. So, yeah. So the focus is all off, I think is what you’re saying.

Carrie: Like, instead of focusing on Jesus, we’re focusing on Yep… imperfections, like our, “Oh, I gotta change this,” or, “Oh, I’ve gotta, you know, do Right… or, “Oh, I’ve got this sin I gotta deal with.”

Mark: Right. And so, and I, and I like to, I like to try to be practical in the sense of, like, looking at Jesus in the sense of I’m discovering that who He is, as I’m learning about who He is, I’m reading about who He is.

Mark: That is at work within me. I have that in my life, right? Yeah. That’s beautiful. ‘Cause sometimes Christians are gonna say, “I’m looking to Jesus,” and it can sound like a cliche. Like, what does that even mean? Well, it’s like these ways… And, and, and what I love is how Paul brings out the fruit of the Spirit. If you wanna see what the fruit of the Spirit is doing, look to these things that are, that are growing: love, joy, peace, long-suffering.

Mark: Those words are all relational. They’re all emotions, right? Yeah. Like, if I grow in love, my emotional world, my mental health, my relational capacity is going to grow. If I’m growing in joy, and, and, and with the rest of them. So it reveals to us that God’s heart is like it’s already been paid for. You’re living from it now.Mark: And, and, and remind yourself of that as, as you’re stepping in. Otherwise, you can very easily just get tripped back into, “Man, I’m not getting it right. I’m missing something. I’m doing something wrong.” And so that’s a common battle that Christians have. They have a struggle or a battle they’re dealing with or, or some kind of bondage that they’re, they’re dealing with, and they get, like, fixated on it.

Mark: “I gotta get this fixed.” And then they’re, through perfectionism, trying to get it just right. And, and, and they get on these tangents rather than going, “Okay, I’ve been given something in Christ. I wanna expand that in my life because that’s gonna displace many of the battles that I, that I struggle with.”, so I think that for me, dealing with perfectionism is…

Mark: it’s been the, the discovery of love, what that looks like, and how much He really loves me. But I have to apply that to myself, ’cause there’s a, there’s an underlying, like, self-hatred and shame, inner critic. There’s lots of words we use for it. It’s just nagging and just, and just, and just being a, a nuisance, right?

Mark: And also learning about this beautiful grace that is at work in my worst of days when I… like, I show up, but I barely show up. Yeah. Right? I’m

Carrie: limping in. I’m limping in.

Mark: yes. And but I, I learned to appreciate that because I, I tend to think like, “Okay, I’m doing okay today. Ah, right, me and you, God, doing okay today.”

Mark: And, and that had to get renovated because it’s like, “I’m not doing okay today, and God, you’re here.” thank, thank you for that, even though I’m not connecting to it very well. And I’m reminded these trials, these struggles, these bad days are reminder of your work within me. So yeah.

Carrie: Yeah, how does, like, pride fit into this picture with Christian perfectionism?

Carrie: And I, and I think that pride sometimes can be, out of our awareness. Like, we don’t, we don’t realize that that’s what’s going on within us. Even sometimes, like, this sense or need to control. Like, Yeah… I’m gonna make this happen.

Mark: Yeah. You bring up an interesting subject, that I think that when it comes to perfectionism, you will see aspects, like layers or aspects of pride in how it comes across, like in stubbornness, or how it comes across in defensiveness, how it comes from this sense of like, “I gotta get it right, portray it all right.”

Mark: But what really helped me, because I felt like a lot of perfectionists, a lot of Christians get stuck on pride, and, I got this pride, and I found it’s very helpful to for, to realize there’s an underlying shame that’s really driving the game here. So let’s take the word pride and use it in all the spectrum we could use it.

Mark: In stubbornness, defensiveness, never admitting they’re wrong, even a sense of being egotistical, whatever. Underneath that, let’s get to the root system, is a sense of shame. Because shame’s driving this, right? Because it’s, shame is saying, “I cannot be seen as flawed. I cannot be seen as weak. I cannot be seen as vulnerable, making mistakes, having failures, having sin, having strongholds, having whatever.

Mark: Whatever it is, I can’t be seen.” So it drives this pattern of living that then when that, when that collapses, right? So it’s like, like a perfectionist, all of a sudden they lash out in anger, right? Instead of going, “Okay, I got some anger going on here, you know. What kind of pressure am I living under?

Mark: What are some things?” The shame kicks in, and they feel shame that the anger showed up, that people saw it, right? Yeah. So, so I find that, in dealing with the underlying shame, it lessens those areas, because it’s like I don’t have to carry this fabricated image that I’ve got it together, got it figured out, or I’ve arrived in some kind of way.

Mark: And I found that to be like, now, okay, now we’re getting to the root system of things in, in what’s impacting the battle, like, like what we would say w-, with pride. ‘Cause I find that many Christians are like, “I have too much pride,” and in that then they’re just beating themselves up. And it’s like, wait a second.

Mark: First of all, tell me what you mean by pride. And when they break it down, I’m like That doesn’t sound like pride to me., it, it, it, it sounds like you get defensive at times or you get… You got a, you got a real intensive pressure you live by, right? Because one of the things perfectionists say is, “No one’s harder on me than me.”

Mark: True. Right?

Carrie: Yes.

Mark: And it’s like, well, that’s revealing. You know? That’Yeah… it’s, it’s revealing a window into a turmoil you live in. And so for me, I like a, like, an example in my life is like I felt like I had to have all the right answers, or I have to have the right argument, or the right statement back.

Mark: Or if I’m not in a good emotional state, that’s unacceptable. So it creates this like, you know, kinda defensive posture versus a, “All right. I’m not in the best space right now. It’s okay.” It’s okay

Carrie: Yeah

Mark: And inviting that compassion, that drowns out the shame that drives all the defense mechanisms that, that we live in.

Mark: Yeah. If that makes sense.

Carrie: I think for me it’s like I’ve got to keep all the balls in the air and never drop any. And, you know, then if I drop a ball, I feel really bad because then, you know, I let this person down, or I didn’Mark: Correct…

Carrie: you know, I said I was gonna call them back and I didn’t. And I think, you know, just over time, like, accepting and, like, embracing my own humanity and being able to, share that with other people.

Carrie: Like, “Hey, I, like, I told you I was gonna call you back this afternoon, and I didn’t do that, you know? And I am Mm-hmm… that I missed, you know, I missed calling you back.” And, and like, I think, like you’re saying, getting down to the heart issue, like, it’s an opportunity for, for repair. Yep. Or to recognize, like, also, you know, putting it in the grand scheme of things.

Carrie: You know, I missed, we have an alumni email that’s going out once a month that my assistant writes. I missed, like, reading over it and getting it ready to, like, make sure it was sent out. And then I was like, “Hey, guys, that wasn’t on her. Just for the record, it was on me.” Like, ’cause I didn’t… Yeah. She had it written.

Carrie: She was ready to go. Yeah. I didn’t get it done. And then I thought, you know, in the grand scheme of things if this goes out on the second Friday of the month versus the first Friday of the month, is anybody, Mark: Right…

Carrie: gonna die or anything horrible gonna happen? No, it’s gonna be okay. Right. It’ll be fine.

Carrie: You Yep… maybe there was some reason in the grand scheme of things that, that somebody needed it, you know, on the, on the second Friday instead of the first Friday. I don’t know. But Yeah… it’s all okay. Like, it’s fine.

Mark: Yeah. I’ve had to go through a lot of, like, exposure therapy on that. And, and people who, people who work in any kind of compassion kind of work, serving kind of work, whether that’s pastors, teachers, counselors, therapists, coaches, whatever, there’s that, that threshold you that you’ll often have to go through of like, “Okay, I’m not able to respond to that.

Mark: I’m not able to… Okay, they’re, they’re…” It’s like a sense like, okay, maybe they’re disappointed in me. And the anxiety kicks up, the shame kicks up.

Carrie: Yeah.

Mark: And it’s like I let myself go through that, and I realize the, the shame and the fear, they were liars, but I was trying to fend them off with like, like what you’re talking about, that sense of, like, false responsibility.

Mark: Like, I gotta carry this. I gotta be responsible to people. But it’s, it’s distorted, you know? It, it, it’s a, it’s a pressure thing versus a beautiful serving thing, which Right… what, you know, what is, what it was meant to be. So it’s like I realize, oh, it… That’s a big place of discipleship in my work, of, of realizing, okay, I, yeah, I, I will not be able to fulfill everyone’s expectations.

Mark: And the, just,

Carrie: Huge. That’s hard for some people. They don’t wanna hear that. They’re like, “No, I just want everybody to be happy.” That’s what being the, the good little Southern Christian is. Everyone’s happy with me.

Mark: Yep.

Carrie: Everyone wasn’t happy with Jesus, though.

Mark: Yep. That’s

Carrie: okay.

Mark: Yep. And, and the thing you said about humanity is, is a, is such a key thing because we’re, we’re, we’re living in a beautiful, divine world of renewed spirituality.

Mark: But the Lord is very acquainted with our weaknesses. He’s Yeah… very aware of our limitations. And so I think that we don’t give ourselves permission to see that, and, that is actually a beautiful place of growth for us. And it’s been a beautiful place of growth for me because it’s made what I give out, like, like the flow is less striving, and I find it just more beautiful because I’d just be go, go, go, here, here, help, help, yes, yes, yes to everything.

Mark: And then realizing my limitations, appreciating that in me helped me in how I’m more compassionate and gracious in dealing-, but man, yeah, it’s, it’s taken rounds and rounds and rounds of exposure to that. And, you know, I do stuff on YouTube and, you know, write materials and stuff, and you get emails and this and that, and arguments and trolls and whatever, you know.

Mark: And those become other rounds too of where that would, that would hit my shame of Yeah… I missed something, I said it wrong, I need to explain that, I need to defend myself. And, and I’ve had to go through the practices of like not feeding that. And I, and I actually you know, learn to face the fear that’s there, and realize, wow, I’ve been running from this thing like my whole life of trying to make everyone happy and trying to make everyone feel okay.

Mark: And it’s actually this, this thing that like lords over me that I don’t need to carry. But anyway, it’s been in the trenches of that, of, of facing that. ‘Cause perfectionists have that to some degree working somewhere, whether it’s with God, whether, whether it’s with how they do their work, how they treat I gotta make sure I treat people just right, handle people just correctly.

Mark: That’s another area too. Did I say that right? Did I, did I explain that right? You know, then the inner critic’s like, “Well, you could have said this, you could have said that.” And going through like rounds of yeah, yeah, I feel that, I feel that, but I’m not gonna feed it.

Carrie: That, How do we…, like I really believe that, you know, God’s grace and God’s love is available for us as believers.

Carrie: But I find that we block, allowing that in. And so how do, how do people open themselves up, like at, at a practical level, to receive that?, is it, you know, is it a matter of like praying and saying, you know, “Help my unbelief-” Mm-hmm… in this area. Yeah… what’s the, what’s the first step?

Mark: I think, I think it’s an area of discovery for each person.

Mark: But if I’m dealing with a perfectionist specifically, or someone who’s obsessive compulsive-

Carrie: Yeah…

Mark: they automatically hear love and grace as too good to be true. Mm. And, and, and it’s so unfamiliar. It’s like learning a new language. Then there’s kickback. There’s kickback, ’cause when you talk about love, the, the…

Mark: especially even the biblical word love that’s brought out, agape, the, the, the common usage of it means to invite someone into a feast. Like you’re bringing them into a gathering. You’re coming in. We would use the term like, welcoming or acceptance, right? And so when you use a term like that, it triggers a sense of like, oh, is this compromise?

Mark: Is this like, you know… What are you talking about when you’re talking about acceptance? There’s confusion in that, right? Mm-hmm. And then they see grace as like, ah, is this just like whatever now? Do I just kind of… Yeah. ‘Cause they’re so used to… When you’re so used to running the engines on intensity- To kind of go, okay, we’re gonna, we’re gonna live in a different frequency here.

Mark: Yeah. So for me, like when you talk about first step, the first step is a sense of what’s your relationship with love and what that looks like? When you, when we talk about the love of God, what does that look like to you?, what does it look like to relate to God’s love as a father? Because that was…

Mark: God’s love as a father was the first thing that, began a, a monumental shift and change in my life. In the early 2000s, I, I, I’m, I’m in the midst of anxiety. I I didn’t even know it was OCD. I’m just like I got this weird anxiety that when I talk about it, I, I, I, it, it, it sounds weird. I got this thing, I spin it, and the thing…

Mark: You know, people are like, “Yeah, I don’t know. That’s what it sounds strange.” Like yeah, it’s weird, you know. And I remember in the midst of it, struggling. I’m on staff at a church. The, the church is doing great in the sense of metrics and numbers and all that. And all that, inside I’m going, “I am struggling. I feel like I’m just getting worse and worse.

Mark: I’m drowning.” And so I came to a place where I said, “You know what, God? I just, I just, I, I want a greater heart-connected relationship with you. I feel like I’ve been just going through the motions.” And so I just took a step of humility that said, “God, I need healing in my heart.” And so I began to see like in Isaiah 61 the understanding of healing of the broken heart.

Mark: Like wow, this is in the gospel. How did I skip over that? And, and, and the depth of the Father’s love that He has for us. So that began the shift for me of understanding God’s love as a father. Now, the mental health insights, the OCD, like understanding, that came along in the journey. But I find that if we, if we…

Mark: And when I say humble ourselves, it doesn’t mean like raveling, self-rejecting, you gotta like, you know, you gotta, you gotta like get on your knees until they bleed kinda thing. It’s more of like, all right, I’m teachable and there’s some things I need to learn that I don’t know. And I prayed this prayer. I said, “God, I don’t know you as a father.”

Mark: Mm. “I grew up in the church my whole life. I’m a poster child for involvement. Here all the time. I can’t believe here I am, a grown adult in ministry, and I don’t know how to connect to your love as a father.”

Carrie: I

Mark: don’t even know, I don’t even know what love is. Yeah. So it’s an admitting I don’t know it, and then a, a, just a step of humility that says I need to learn.

Mark: Because when we, when we open ourselves up for humble learning, life becomes like a tapestry of the, of the painting being developed in our lives. Because then it’s now I’m, I’m reading the Bible and I’m looking for it. I’m looking for an understanding of it. I’m, I’m talking to friends, and I’m noticing where they’re loving.

Mark: I’m, I’m watching dads love their children. I’m watching a husband love his wife. And hey, that, that, that, that’s… So now, now my visible world is becoming cues for the invisible of God. Yeah. Yeah. This is how you see, this is how you see me? This is how you, how you view me? So I had to change my posture from go, go, go to, like, I need to, I need to find ways in, in learning how to receive.

Mark: And for each of us there’s, there’s unique practical pathways. For some it’s journaling, for some it’s stillness, others it’s listening to music., we all have our various pathways. For me, it’s just kind of a stillness of putting my hand over my heart and reminding myself, “God, you love me right now,” and I just wanna remind myself of that, and I wanna sit in this for a moment as best I know how, you know?

Mark: Even on the good days and the bad days., because then over time I keep my heart in a posture of learning- And so if, if we’re open to learning, you’d be surprised what comes your way. You know, people tell me, you know, sitting there saying, “God, I, I need to know your love more and teach me your love.” And then they’re flipping through YouTube and Mark DeJesus pops in.

Mark: And, and, you know, they’re like they’re like, “That’s how I found your channel.” Not that it has to be me, but it’s just a sense of like, like things will come across your path. God will bring things subtly. Maybe a person that crosses your path, a book that you read, because each of us has various ways in, in how we learn and how we grow in him.

Mark: So it’s kind of a long answer to what you were, you were asking, but that’s some of Yeah… I found to be so helpful.

Carrie: I think that’s great. I think, I think it’s what’s really beautiful about the church is like we, we all have those missing pieces, like from our childhood, whatever that is. Yep. And I had some…

Carrie: Like, my dad was on, on many levels a great guy, but there were definitely some missing pieces there, and I took those, like those pieces of his brokenness and missing pieces and laid those onto God and I said, “God, you must be like that,” ’cause Dad was like that. And Wow… and I didn’t do it consciously, you know?

Carrie: Right. It was of course very subconsciously., and so there was, there was this level of like emotional distance, with my earthly father, and so there was some emotionally distance from my heavenly Father too. Yep. And, just coming, coming to that realization and then, like you said, seeing God’s love played out through other, whether it’s other people in the church, through like through reading about it or Mm

Carrie: people’s experiences, like coming to those still, quiet places, like to hear His voice and just know like, just even just sense His presence. Like, okay, I don’t, I don’t really know like or understand everything that’s going on in my life, but I just feel like you’re here. It’s kind of a messed up situation right now, but like I’m trusting- Mm-hmm

Carrie: that you’re here and that you’re gonna get That’s right… get me through this, you know? So and I’m, I know that like for, for clients and other people that I’ve worked with, they’ve also kind of seen God’s love in some, in some of those places. Sometimes it was just a friendship that didn’That’s right

Carrie: give up on them in the midst of their darkest- Yep… OCD moments. They were like, “Okay, I don’t really know how to help you, but I love you and I’m here and I’ll pray with you,” you know? – Yep… and, and I’ll support your, your counseling journey, and you can talk to me about things and just be available. So I think God God’s love shows up in, in many different ways, and people, people miss like how those times where they love someone very purely, a lot of times I’ll say, you know, okay, well, we love because God first loved us, so if you can love that even if it’s an animal or a child or a niece or nephew, if you love them with that much love, like how, how much does God love you?

Carrie: Because we’re human and our love is imperfect.

Mark: That’s

Carrie: right. And so God loves us so much more than that and, and I think Yeah, God’s love really is foundational in understanding, like healing from scrupulosity.

Mark: Absolutely. Yeah. and I think, I think that in, even in looking at the scriptures, if, if we’re not allowing our hearts to be rooted in love and letting love surround everything, like we like so many scriptures can be just tripwires, where we just get…

Mark: You know, the letter of the law comes in, we’re just drowning, and, and, and feeling accused and condemned, and we’re losing context, you know? And so, you know, the, the, the, the, the apostles wrote a lot about the importance of how we relate to each other, and I think that we skip over that when we’re reading the Bible.

Mark: You know, I was just teaching on Philippians this past week, where, where Paul is, is, is talking about my, my dearly beloved, my joy, my crown, my, I… You know, he’s, he’s expressing all these words. He’s almost going on and on in, in talking about how much he has affection towards them. Yeah. And I think that a lot of believers when they read it, it’s kinda like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Mark: Oh, gotta work out your salvation with fear and trembling. Ahh. You know?

Carrie: That sounds scary.

Mark: Yeah, yeah. So, so the context gets lost, and so there, there’s just a lot of writing. Have fervent love for one another. Let love, let love have its work. You know, be kindly affectionate to one another. Yeah. Let’s speak the truth in love.

Mark: Let faith work in love. It’s just, it, it’s, it, the command is, okay, we, we…, the, the disciples walked with him. They saw him. They’re like, “Okay, we’re gonna convey him to you, but now we have to other because we saw Him, but the Holy Spirit is now gonna work through us interacting with each other. And so I just did something really simple, Carrie.

Mark: I went, I’d go, “Oh,” like I’d just, “, Carrie seems like she has a grace to her.” Like, like I, you know, that, that I gotta pay attention. There’s something there that I can learn from, right? I watch, not in a pressure way of like I’m examining her. Yeah. But a sense of like, “Oh, that’s interesting how, how kind she is,” or I’d start noticing that in the body of Christ.

Mark: I’d you know, the, like a per-, man, every time I see this person they’re just so kind, and they ask me how I’m doing or they, they, they, they say, “I’m praying for you.” And I take note of that versus going, “I’m doing fine. I’m doing fine. Okay, so we have to set up the chairs today. We gotta da…” You know. Like, like we like we get, we get into, it’s like, no, I need to see this because I need that, you know?

Mark: And I, I grew up, my parents kinda came out of like, some of, some of like the Jesus movement and, and, and got into some of the like the Pentecostal areas. So there was like this, this holiness kinda thing that was there. So there was a lot of, of the narrative of, you know, make sure your heart’s right.

Mark: Get your heart right. Yeah. We’re going to church. Prepare your heart for that., you know, we’re taking communion. Make sure your heart’s right. Your heart’s right. You know, I take… Right? And it created this sense of anxiousness around sacred things or around rituals that were meant to be beautiful reflections.

Mark: Here I am in disturbance, like, ah, my thoughts. How was I? Oh, man, I haven’t read my Bible in a few days, you know.

Carrie: Am I gonna

Mark: mess Do I have all this-…

Carrie: communion? Mark: Yes. Yeah, so I, I, I found that I had to renew that understanding as a father image and, and, and even as a dad now, you know, you look at… ‘Cause this is a cue I would often give people in coaching when they’re fussing over themselves, and, like, their, their parent.

Mark: I go, “Okay, take this whole thing that you’re wrestling through and just connect for a moment to how much you love your daughter,” for example. Right. Yeah. And just think about how much you love your daughter for a moment before we move further. And they go, “Okay, yeah, yeah, I’m really reflecting on that. I’m reflecting on that.”

Mark: Okay, now take what you’re struggling with and put that in your daughter, and she comes to you. I say, what are you gonna say to your daughter? And every time, 100% of the time, they say something contextual in, of, out of love. And they usually say, “I’m-” Yeah, totally

Carrie: different response. Completely different response.

Mark: Yeah. And I’ll jokingly say, “Wait a second, you didn’t lecture them. Where’s the lecture? Where’s the pray, pray read your Bible more? Where’s the, where’s the, your, your, you know, where’s all the stuff you just said about yourself? Where’s that?” Yeah. They’re like, “Yeah, that wouldn’t be…” I go, “Okay, so what we’re saying is we’re, we’re allowing abusive things within us towards us we would never allow towards someone we love,” right?

Mark: It’s like we’d have to call social services if they went into our head and-… and picked up a microphone of everything we’re saying to ourselves, right? Right. and so it’s, it’s… once, when love and grace enter in, it gets, it gives context. It’s like when, when Jesus was sitting there and, and he’s scribbling in the sand, and they’re like, they accuse the woman caught in adultery.

Mark: And according to the letter of the law, they’ve got it on paper of what they can accuse her for. What Jesus brings is compassionate grace on the scene And levels the playing field, first of all. Who he is without sin, so it’s like, okay, that’s what grace does. Like, everybody’s broken. Everybody’s got stuff, right?

Mark: And then it invites a moment of healing. And and all he says to her is, “Where are your accusers?”

Carrie: You know, “Where are they?”

Mark: And, and he doesn’t just leave her as that. He says, “Go and sin no more.” Right now, now I think, I think counselors and therapists might have a little hard time with that. Like, wait a second, she’s probably got some dad issues.

Mark: She’s probably got some things to work She’s got some stuff she’s gotta work through, you know? And I’m not saying that wasn’t in place, but it’s like it shows the powerful perspective of what compassionate grace does in our lives. It helps us to see it and tune in to what Christ is doing and can do in a, in any given moment.

Mark: But we’re, you know, we get lost in our inner critic, being hard on ourselves, the shame that’s just flooding our thinking. So

Carrie: So here’s, here’s the biggest argument that I think Christians dealing with scrupulosity have about grace. And they say, “Well, if I’m not so hypervigilant about my sin, if I’m not on top of things, then that means, like, oh, I don’t care, or I’m just gonna go off the rails.

Carrie: I’m just, I’m not gonna take my relationship with God seriously, or I’m… How do I live this holy life and also embrace grace?”

Mark: Hmm. Yeah. It’s, it’s, challenging their control issues. It’s contra- it’s challenging how they live their life. They live their life on a basis of striving. And so when grace comes in, it challenges their black and white kind of living.

Carrie: Huge, yeah.

Mark: And so, and so from my perspective, the Apostle Peter is an example of black and white, all or nothing thinker, right? So he’d come to Jesus, “How many times should I forgive? 70 times seven?” He tries to be magnanimous, right? Like, all or nothing, right? Or even in the moment where Jesus is like, “I’m gonna wash your feet.”

Mark: And he’s like, “No, no, you’re not gonna wash my feet.” And then Jesus gives him a correction, and then Peter’s like, “Okay, don’t wash my feet. Wash my whole body.” You know? Yeah. -huh. It’s kinda like, it’s kinda like, it’s kinda like, “Bro, just let Him wash your feet. He doesn’t have to do the…” You know what I mean?

Mark: He’s that, Extreme, yeah… swinging back and forth. Right. And so the beauty is the Holy Spirit’s work of grounding him in grace, which Peter talked about so much, about grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. You see that from the Gospels into his writings in, in, both in Acts, you see this, this deepening work the Holy Spirit did in his life.

Mark: So it kicks up the black and white thinking, that like if I leave one ditch, I’m gonna automatically go into another ditch. And it’s like when we’re driving down the road, our thought isn’t like, “I’m gonna drive in this ditch, and if I get out of this ditch, I’m gonna go into another ditch.” How about we just drive on the road?

Mark: Right? Yes. I know that. But the, but, but, but we think in those kind of extremes that, that, and that, that fear that, that, that controlling fear that comes in. If I really leave this, I’m gonna lose control and I’m gonna go into this opposite extreme. And I’ll tell people, “If you get in that ditch, then we’ll call out that ditch.

Mark: How’s that?” And to, to this day, at least in my work with people, I’ve never seen the other ditch get get landed into. They actually go, “Wow, okay. This is actually beautiful.” But it takes time because the, the, the law and, and that weight and burden is damaging to us, but we’re used to it. Sure. We’re conditioned to live in it.

Mark: We’re just used to that. We’re, we’re used to living in the dungeon of it and the taskmaster of it. We’re used to the grueling ways that it operates. So it takes time to go, “Okay, God, you’re not barking at me all day?” Like, I used to think that God was just on me all day long. Mm-hmm. You know? I attributed all this critic stuff to him.

Mark: Yeah. Like, wait a second. You’re, you’re not just nagging me? Oh, okay. That that you’re actually so secure that you’re, you’re growing with me. And so it brings the picture of, like, a patient parent that’s working with their child as they’re growing and developing, right? The more you bark, the more you, the, the more you try to control, either the worse it gets or you’re gonna get a whole list of other problems, right?

Mark: You’re present, you bring instruction, you bring a bond, you bring… And out of relationship, the, you know, the growth happens. And the Father’s the same way with us and, and, and how he’s working with us as sons and daughters. But yeah, I run into that a lot where that initial resistance comes up, and I had it myself.

Mark: I… It’s funny because I, I was very, a very guilt-ridden person, and anxiousness and guilt. And I actually found that guilt was harder to work through than anxiety. I thought as I was making progress and working through anxiety, oh, my goodness was I so grateful. But this nagging guilt, I mean, it was just treacherous because I attributed it so much as just God guilting me all the time.

Mark: And most of it was just trying to make people happy, doing enough, this thing I’m missing, all this. And I would just, and I would just keep chasing it trying to fix it. And so, when I, when I began to make some, some strides in just, in just a sense of, like, I’m not chasing the guilt trip all the time. I, I, I literally said to myself, “Man, is this-” This feels a little too good to be true.

Mark: I got, I feel, I feel more space and freedom to make decisions, to like live and move and have my being, to, to kind of navigate my day now that I don’t have this like backseat driver just nagging me the whole way., so it, it takes a process, but, I think that we have to recognize there are, you know, there’s resistance and there’s withdrawal symptoms that will kick up as we’re entering it into, and it’s…

Mark: Like, like you said, it’s been here, and like I said, it’s been here since the beginning of the church where people are like, “Ah, this, this, this is, this is a burden, but at least it gives me a sense of certainty,” right? We like that sense of certainty. Like, I, yeah, I know I, I don’t need to have all these things in Christ, but you know what?

Mark: It makes me have a sense of certainty. I did this today, I did that today, and I got the little bit of rush from it. I’m okay now. Right?

Carrie: Yeah. Yeah. And, and then oftentimes, like the irony is we’re not really okay as we think we are, you know, underneath- Yeah… it all. Like you said, there’s, there’s the intense weight and guilt and anxiety Mark: Yep

Carrie: everything., yeah, I, I hope that this conversation has been helpful and freeing for some people maybe who are trying to really shift their theology. I think that that’s a piece that a lot of times the secular counseling for scrupulosity misses. It’s like they kind of, they kind of understand that… Or, or they may see it as, “Well, you know, the the problem is this person believes in God, and if they didn’t really, like, believe or care so much about their faith…

Carrie: Like, they care too much. If they didn’t care as Yeah… they would be okay.” And not really understanding that there is a, like a theological shift in understanding that needs to happen in order Mark: Yeah…

Carrie: to embrace God’s love and grace. And it, and it’s uncomfortable, in the beginning, and like you said, it’s strange and it feels, “Oh, so I’m not going to beat myself up now because things didn’t go according to plan?”

Carrie: Or, you Yeah… how, how do I change this, this language that’s coming up for me or in my relationships? – So this has been, this has been really great. Thanks so much for joining me today.

Mark: Yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s my pleasure, and I think that, I continue on my own journey, and I think that there’s something really good that you brought out, that there’s a…

Mark: There’s the, the clinical aspects of working through OCD and scrupulosity, then there’s that theological rooting of like, okay, now what? What am I filling myself with? What am I growing in? And I think that’s, that is a, a, an important thing. And if I could encourage, it’s that love of the Father and the grace of Jesus Christ that, that can really help bring a renewal in, in what this journey can look like.

Mark: So yeah, it’s an honor to be able to talk to you today. I appreciate your work and what you’re doing to help people, and you know, a lot of it comes out of our own, what we’ve learned and what we, what we’ve struggled with in helping others. So thank you for, for the work that you do