What hooks you?

I got hooked this week. Hooks are words, moments, or situations that capture your heart, raise the temperature inside you, where you find yourself trapped by your emotions. It happens to all of us. A person uses just the right loaded word carrying with it implications or accusations and you get hooked. You get defensive in another situation and you can't figure out why your defensive but you are. It is because you got hooked.

Here is the thing. A hook get's deep in your heart and then it pulls. When that happens, just like a fish on the end of a fisherman's line, we fight to get off. In the flailing around we can find ourself just more hooked.

So how do you get unstuck when you get hooked? Well what I learned this week is when you get hooked and you can't figure out why you are hooked no matter how much you try to talk it out it will only get worse. Your horns get locked and without knowing the hook you just battle to no avail. The conversation stops at the hook.

The first thing you have to do is identify the hook. This is hard because it can mean having to table the conversation. But tabling the conversation allows you to get the time to allow your heart to settle. When your heart is settled you are in the best position to calmly identify and remove the hook.

This only happens in conversation with God. According to his word he can identify and expose the things in us that don't bring glory to him. This is prayer, journal, and questions directed to God and then listening as he reveals it.

Once you know the hook you can then go back and re-engage the conversation to find resolution. Learning to live and communicate this way honors God, heals relationships, and catapults mission forward.

So here is to the removing the hooks in our lives!!!!