Interventionist Theology & Life Skill Sets

July 10, 2011 By 3 Comments

By Robert

Interventionist Teaching
Much of the teaching we hear in church has to do with faith: being encouraged that God will come through, that God is faithful, He is for you, just keep hanging on. This is good and right but not the whole picture.

We use the analogy that making an airplane sound to feed a baby is cute. But doing it to feed a 16-year-old is wrong! This exemplifies the relationship to faith. This teenager should now be better able to trust God since he’s not a baby anymore. Again, here’s good truth, so let’s expand that out some. In real life, the 16-year-old has learned some skills. Some hand to mouth coordination. He can probably even fix some meals himself. Certainly he can plate his own food.

If we aren’t careful, being overly focused on God’s intervention can lead to a victim mentality. We take steps to trust God, we fast, we pray and we end up feeling like God has not come through for us. We end up depressed and even angry at God. Yet, many times, we didn’t learn a single new skill in the process of exercising our faith.

Life Skill Sets
Maturity is more than faith and it is even more than repentance or casting something out. There are also things God wants us to learn in the process. There are those who have developed excellent people skills. Insecure and controlling people don’t “push their buttons.” They can speak up for themselves while maintaining respect in the conversation. There are people
with excellent writing and speaking skills, and those skills bring opportunity into their lives. Also there are people that have learned to handle finances well.

Dealing properly and responsibly with our emotions is a skill. Walking in empathy is a skill. Walking in the humility to take the “high road” with others is a skill. Learning to overcome a victim mentality is a skill.

Effort
When I studied for my masters in Christian counseling, I had to write a fifteen-page research paper for every class. That was in addition to  a couple shorter papers and reading several books on the given subject. What if a given Christian put that kind of effort in learning to develop good communication skills, or in understanding effective leadership that could help them on their job or leading in community volunteer projects? What if someone decided they have struggled long enough with a victim mentality and chose to study everything about it to walk out of it?

We will always need faith, but faith without works is dead. It’s not always about Divine intervention. Knowing there are skills and other things God wants us to mature in opens up new avenues of growth and gives us greater hope to see sustainable change.

Filed Under: Emotional Health, Leadership, life skills, Personhood Tagged With: , , ,

Journaling for Emotional Intelligence

July 3, 2011 By 5 Comments

By Robert

Emotional awareness and empathy are huge concepts. We hear a lot of preaching on guarding our hearts, putting a watch on our mouths, walking circumspectly. We make effort, sometimes we succeed, sometimes not. The key is emotional awareness. If I don’t know what’s happening in my heart, from which all the issues of life flow, I have little chance of managing it. (Pr.4:23) It is so easy to walk around angry or fearful or even guilty, and yet not really aware of it.

Empathy is the ability to tune into where other people are at. As much as the Bible has to say about guarding our hearts, it may have even more to say about loving others. Empathy is what empowers loving others. Consider this in the light of healthy dialogue.

A friend at church has trouble respecting boundaries. If I flat out call him on it he will likely get offended. If I say nothing, I support bad behavior and pay a price. If I disassociate, I may also communicate rejection. So what’s the key? Empathy. With empathy I can try and see things from his perspective. I can look past the behavior into what may be driving it. With my own emotions sorted and empathy operating, I can embrace humility and create safety for dialogue.

Safe dialogue is another huge skill that flows from humility. I bring up a potentially volatile topic with my friend and ask him to share his heart. This is very different than accusing him of crossing a boundary. I’m seeking understanding, I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt that there may be more to the story than I realize. It’s not backing away from truth. I may still say, “When you did such and such it appeared that…;” however, the drive is for understanding and a way forward, not to be right, or justified, or to correct.

Through journaling I can exercise my emotional awareness and empathy and they will therefore grow.  As I journal about what happened in a situation, how it made me feel, what may have been going on in the heart of the other person, I improve my skill. I don’t know of anything that gives a better rate of return than what we get by building emotional awareness and empathy. They are the key to excelling in dialogue. They are key in becoming that person on the job who has excellent people skills and so gets promoted. They are key in knowing myself, discovering my dreams and natural talents. Most of all, they are the key to a healthy relationship with God and an ability to cooperate with His dealings in my life.

Matt.12:34… For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.
Lu.6:45 The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good; and the evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth what is evil; for his mouth speaks from that which fills his heart.

Filed Under: Boundaries, Emotional Health, Personhood Tagged With: , ,

A Journaling Tool for Forward Movement

June 19, 2011 By 1 Comment

By Robert

Ever feel stuck?
Picture being in the office at your desk. Your boss makes you nervous in the best of circumstances. You’ve been hurt by male authority in the past and he represents that well. He’s overbearing, demanding, demeaning. Now he’s standing over you waiting for you to finish typing out something he asked for. You feel tense and it’s hard to think clear and not fumble and mess it up. Later you just can’t stop thinking about what a jerk he is.

Has someone treated you poorly and you just can’t stop thinking about it? Maybe it’s a personal challenge, a battle you’ve struggled with for years. Maybe it’s a family member that won’t respect your boundaries no matter what you do. These types of things can really affect us emotionally, locking us into a state of agitation and anger or worry and anxiety. When our minds cannot make sense of something and don’t see any way forward, we feel stuck and play the tape over and over again.

Journaling for Emotional Health
Sometimes you need to receive prayer ministry. Yet, often you can work it out with the Lord. Here are some steps:
1) Treat your emotions as an objective reporter. Distance yourself a bit. When you get stuck, you enter a state of mind that impairs your ability to think clearly. Step back and look at yourself.
2) Write out step by step what’s occurred that bothers you. Remember, you are just journaling, putting it all down between you and God, so there’s no need to hold back.
3) Write out your feelings as best you can at each step of what happened. By making note of your feelings and emotions, you engage the right side of the brain which then works together with the left side’s logical documentation of events. With the blending of the two together it helps to make sense of what happened.
4) Write out why the other person may have acted as they did. What may have been their motives? What may have been their insecurities? Again, trying to journal this out as an objective observer, not judging it right or wrong, appropriate or not, in context or not. Simply brainstorming different scenarios. Try putting yourself in their shoes.
5) Tell the Lord what makes you angry about it, why it seems unfair. Tell Him what makes you fearful about it, what makes you feel threatened, how it makes your body feel. By notating your body sensations, this too, helps make connections in the brain that will open the way for better understanding.
6)  Ask the Lord His perspective at the different steps of what happened. Write out what you think He may be telling you.

In reflecting and journaling about an issue, we can gain much understanding about ourselves and others. We may begin to see some core issues of why we are anxious or fearful, or stubborn or irritated. And by engaging both right and left sides of the brain, science is proving that we are able to make sense of the events in our life, get unstuck, and continue to move forward. And isn’t that what we all want—to walk with the Lord, not stand still? This is a great tool and life skill to help us tend well the garden of our heart.

Filed Under: Emotional Health, life skills, Prayer Ministry Tagged With: , ,

Biblical Attachment

June 3, 2011 By Leave a Comment

By Robert

Many of us have understood grace and the Father’s love, yet we struggle to walk in this daily. We so often get stuck in our fears, worries, frustrations, and irritations. But shining light on God’s heart can help us get moving again. Picture this:

“Daddy!” the little boy says as he runs, smiling, to hug his father returning from work. Both father and son feel joy and connection as they embrace. This “connecting” is attachment, which is simply the capacity for healthy emotional relationships.

The initial parent-child relationship develops our ability for attachment. The infant’s brain receives signals from the nurture of a loving mother – her holding, rocking, soft words, and smiles – and neural connections are made. In this way attachment grows. Attachment is the foundation of emotional health and maturity.

The Gospel
Adam’s fall was about independence and separation from God, the opposite of attachment. “I’ll get the knowledge of good and evil and then I can decide things on my own.” It would not be too much of a stretch to say that independence is at the root of all sin. Think of the younger and older brothers in the story of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15. The younger self medicated, symbolizing, in a nut shell, the sins of the flesh. The older brother tried to strive, perform, and be good enough. There are the Pharisaical-type sins. In either case, both are in independence rather than loving relationship with God. Jealousy, gossip, competition, striving, addiction, most everything traces back to attachment pain.

Let’s Extrapolate
We have much more scientific understanding today of how the brain works in the area of relationship and what emotional health looks like. There can be many good neural connections for attachment or very few. If we combine this with the Biblical truth that we know, what do we get? A new light on the idea that God came to have relationship with us.

Attachment is at the crux of Christianity. God so loved that he gave. Jesus came to give us the ultimate gift of attachment, and then we are to give it away to the world. The more I connect daily with God’s love for me and walk that out in showing kindness to others, the more healthy I become and the more I express the heart of the gospel. But the more I get stuck in negativity, gossip, speaking ill of others, and fears, the more I build wrong structures in the brain and will struggle with being unhealthy emotionally.

Filed Under: Emotional Health, Father's Love, sonship Tagged With: , , ,

Keeping My Heart

May 27, 2011 By 2 Comments

By Robert

Prov. 4:23 Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.  

Most of us haven’t fully realized that:
1. Walls around our hearts are deadly.
2. Living open-hearted is the key to all good things.

It’s almost acceptable to be in a worry state, and we even show compassion to it. Dog Whisperer Cesar Millan states that we cannot comfort a fearful dog, as that may actually encourage his fear. We must lead him, give him confidence. Maybe there is a principle here for us as well.

Every struggle common to man starts with our hearts going “off-line” for some reason. I may have been triggered by some disappointment or betrayal, or perhaps a loss of some sort. This could have been big or small. Never-the-less, I lose connection with God and it causes me to seek comfort in wrong things, counterfeit affections. All struggle with addictions is rooted here. All issues of self-discipline and initiative lie here. The problem is not in my willpower, my faith, or my strength; it is in the awareness of what is happening in my heart and why. It is a very simple concept, yet a very big deal.

Moving into worry, anxiety, agitation, or impatience are signs my heart is closing. Here are a few more signs:
1. Are the lines at the grocery store or the heavy traffic driving me crazy today?
2. Have I replayed in my head a conversation or situation that pained me, or one that hasn’t even occurred yet?
3. Do I just want to get away from everyone and everything?
4. When others are talking, am I already figuring out what to say before they even finish?

Keeping my heart online determines everything, “for everything you do flows from it.” Understanding that we can learn to recognize emotions as they happen, both in ourselves and others, empowers us to respond in positive ways rather than in destructive ways. Living open-hearted in God’s love is the secret ingredient to fulfilling all our dreams. It is where healthy relationships are built, where creativity and initiative flow, and it is the place of rest and belonging where we don’t need false comforts or counterfeit affections.

Best of all, “keeping my heart” is a skill everyone of us can develop. We can learn what to look for, how to grow in our awareness, and learn what to do to get back “on-line.”

 

Robert Hartzell is the primary life coach and prayer minister at Fountains of Life. For more information or to set up a free consultation go to www.fountainsoflife.org.

Filed Under: Christian Coaching, Emotional Intelligence, Father's Love Tagged With: , , , , ,

The PreAbuse Setup

May 20, 2011 By Leave a Comment

By Dan Hitz
What makes one person more vulnerable to abusive situations than another?

When emotionally healthy people check out a spiritually abusive church, they don’t stay.  They recognize the dysfunction.  Healthy people put up boundaries which unhealthy people try to violate or outright reject. However, brokenness created in the “pre-abuse setup” produces a susceptibility to further abuse.

I have a friend who says, “Home is where the outside matches the inside.” It is the reason why a woman who has grown up with an abusive alcoholic father and doesn’t deal with her wounds can find herself married to her second abusive alcoholic husband. The way her husband treated her while dating felt familiar to her “normal” feelings growing up. She may even feel uncomfortable around healthy men – she sees herself way below his level. Those wounded by abuse often fall prey to “learned helplessness.” Those abused when they actually were powerless to stop it, continue to believe that they are helpless victims long after they actually have the resources to overcome.

Pre-abuse factors include past physical, sexual, and emotional abuse or neglect. The atmosphere is familiar, but surely a church must be a safe place. Those who grow up in a dysfunctional family without an appropriate mother or father figure may be used to – or addicted to – chaos. An abusive religious system offers structured chaos. The chaos is ordered around “scriptural” issues which seem to be worth fighting for. Those who are socially isolated are susceptible because they are looking for an accepting community.

His Chapel (not the real name of the church) was our family. We had many brothers and sisters who all believed as we did – who all suffered the same reproach for what we held dear. People outside the system were deemed “unsafe” so we stuck together.  However, we found out later that our relationships were only as strong as our adherence to the system. Abusive systems play off of the members’ guilt and shame. “No one else would accept me like these people if they knew what I struggled with.” I did find much forgiveness and confidentiality inside the system, but I also knew that implications could be made if I left.

People with poor life skills lack the interpersonal boundaries and assertiveness necessary to stand strong against abuse. They also fear that they can’t stand on their own. Learned helplessness leaves them vulnerable to the dictates of the system. Along with poor life skills comes poor or no foundation for evaluation of appropriateness. The system offers them so much of what they are looking for, but they lack the ability to perform a mental cost/benefit analysis. “Does the perceived benefit of staying in the system outweigh the emotional toll of performing to system specifications?” is a question that many are unable to adequately answer.

Reconciliation Ministries

Filed Under: control, Emotional Intelligence, life skills, Shame Tagged With: , , , ,

Tending My Garden– Emotional Responsibility

May 11, 2011 By Leave a Comment

By Robert

Emotional awareness is a learned skill. Many things can sprout up in our hearts; little foxes can come in and ruin our vineyard. Learning to recognize and be responsible with our emotions is a huge key in spotting them. This is part of having emotional intelligence. Many people have no idea of what is actually happening in their hearts. They are living in “numb-numbville” through counterfeit affections, as Jack Frost would say. God has a better way.

Cyndi has a great example: “The other day I felt restless and bored all afternoon. I often took breaks, going to the kitchen and opening the food cabinets looking for a snack; I was checking my email and Facebook repeatedly, just looking for ‘something’ to make the bored feeling go away. Finally, I tried journaling my emotions and telling God what I was feeling. Connecting with God’s presence helped some, however, something was still trying to shut my heart down and make me want to eat junk food. Eventually, I realized it all started when a contractor came by to give us an estimate and the house wasn’t as clean as I would’ve liked. This triggered feelings of failure and insecurity in me. Finding the source then enabled me to give it to God.”

Consider these verses:
Song 1:6, 2:15, 4:12-14… they made me the keeper of the vineyards, but my own vineyard I have not kept. Catch the foxes for us, the little foxes that are ruining the vineyards, while our vineyards are in blossom. A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse… Your plants are an orchard of pomegranates, with pleasant fruits, fragrant henna with spikenard, spikenard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon, with all trees of frankincense, myrrh and aloes…

The heart is like a garden – there are plants that bring forth fruit with wonderful life-giving nutrients but also weeds can pop up unawares. It is our job to know what is happening in the garden of our heart and to keep it well tended.

Every relational conflict, every craving, is connected to our hearts shutting down because of unrecognized emotional triggers. Knowing ourselves – awareness – is the answer to every problem – food, habits, lack of motivation, fear of failure, relational breakdowns…everything. This is the key to learning to work with yourself rather than fight yourself.

Our emotions are there for a reason. Honoring them and working with them rather than fighting and suppressing them makes a huge difference in how we walk out our lives. As the example with Cyndi shows, emotional awareness is a skill that can be developed.

Filed Under: Emotional Intelligence, life skills Tagged With: , , , , ,

Striving Is About Shame

May 8, 2011 By Leave a Comment

By Robert

Years ago I was on a sales call with a friend. We were meeting an executive at a trucking company my friend knew. I was expressing fear: “Do you think he’ll get mad we didn’t call first?” “If he seems too busy, we can just leave some information with his secretary.”

My friend finally said, “It’s not that delicate.” That phrase turned a light on for me. I wasn’t even aware of the fear I was experiencing. I hadn’t realized my stress and lack of rest.

So often I have been afraid of saying the wrong thing in front of people I considered important. My turmoil would lead to inward striving. This fear made it hard to step out and try things. It’s made it hard to be comfortable in my own skin and simply be at rest.

Striving is about shame, an inner feeling of inferiority; that something is bad, wrong, flawed about me. This shame shows up when I’m trying to do a given thing and I feel it is not okay to make a mistake or fail because if I do, my self-worth is in question. But if I can see these dynamics–how shame leads to fear and striving–then there is hope. God is able to comfort me and love me out of them (I John 4:18–perfect love casts out fear). God really does have a life of rest available for us!

Filed Under: Christian Coaching, Emotional Intelligence, Prayer Ministry, Shame Tagged With: , , , ,

The Simplicity of Prayer Ministry

May 1, 2011 By 1 Comment

Prayer Ministry is defined in so many ways; everything from godly counsel, to spooky stuff like the healing of memories. But what is it really? What makes it work?

Frank’s boss informed him at the last minute that he will need to stay late as the deadline of a project has just been moved up…again. On the way home from work, his mind was locked onto all the ways he disliked his boss. These negative tapes had been playing in his thought life for over a year. However, through prayer ministry, Frank was able to find complete resolution on this issue.

Simplicity
Prayer Ministry is so incredibly simple, many times we step right over it thinking, “there has to be more to it than this,” and we add complication. But it really boils down to only three core things. Consider these scenarios:

Anger, Unforgiveness
Not long ago someone on your job was a real jerk to you. Whenever you think about that individual, it drives you nuts. You get angry, or agitated and maybe tense up just at the mention of their name. Finally, with someone you trust, they help you get honest about your feelings and work through forgiveness. That’s Prayer Ministry.

Sorrow, Loss, Regret
Maybe you felt a loss as a really good friend moved away and finally you talk to someone about the pain you are feeling. They help you acknowledge your sorrow and work through letting it go. That’s prayer ministry.

Identity Lies
Perhaps there was a time when a friend rejected you, even demeaned you in front of others. Ever since then you’ve struggled with feelings of rejection, insecurity, and inferiority. Finally, a Christian brother helps you to look back at this event and to ask God about it, and God says you are loved, you are the apple of His eye, and that person’s treatment wasn’t about you anyway; he was only reacting from the hurt in himself. That’s Prayer Ministry.

Prayer Ministry is simply getting honest about our pain, coming to the light with it, and letting God heal it so it doesn’t interfere with our daily walk anymore. As mature Christians, these things can happen naturally as we relate to the Lord day by day. However, there are times when we get stuck and the process stalls. That’s when prayer ministry can really help.

These scenarios are simple. Never-the-less, helping people face these three things–anger, sadness, or lies about their identity–is the crux of Prayer Ministry. We work with individuals who have minor wounding all the way to those with the deepest, most unimaginable abuses, and we see consistent results. The healing always involves going to Jesus with one of these three core issues.

Filed Under: Christian Coaching, Leadership Coaching, Prayer Ministry Tagged With: ,

Dignity and Justice vs. Shame

April 23, 2011 By 3 Comments

By Robert

Think of that guy at work who is super friendly. He’s always quick to make you laugh, a great conversationalist, makes you feel liked and included. But, he’s often a little late to the office, there are times when he puts some of his workload off on others, and he sometimes doesn’t consider other people’s time boundaries.

What about the demanding boss who expects you to work extra hours without extra pay? He talks down to people and doesn’t use appropriate respect. Everything is always about his vision and the company and never about building people.

Now think of God being so kind to Israel in bringing them out of Egypt. God protected them, yet they turned to idols. God contracted with them to give them the Promised Land, yet they continually backed out of any responsibility on their end. Instead they used excuses that flowed out of a victim mindset.

Boundaries are not just a nice teaching that worked its way into the Body of Christ to help co-dependent women. Boundaries describe where everyone lives. The lack of boundaries is the lack of dignity and justice.

Dignity and justice are universal human problems, their absence always allows a boundary to be crossed, inducing shame. These dignity/shame dynamics are the central roadblock to growth and fulfillment.

For example, I ministered one time in Nigeria, sharing my story of painful experiences and how God met me and brought growth. Many of the pastors came up after the teaching and said, “We’ve never heard anyone share their weaknesses. We only share our strengths.” In their churches, they preached a standard of faith and victory that set the bar high. They themselves couldn’t live up to it, but they would never share that; if they did, people may no longer follow them. Here’s the point. This high standard by the leader made it “not okay” for anyone to live under that. So now, no one can be honest about their shortcomings and therefore no growth or maturing ever takes place.

Facing ways we’ve experienced injustice, attacks on our dignity, impossible standards that employers, churches, or society have communicated to us is the beginning of growth. So often, like the children of Israel, we don’t want to come into the light with our shame issues. However, when we do, they become the very stepping-stones to real growth. By doing this, true change is within reach.

Filed Under: Boundaries, Christian Coaching, Leadership Coaching, Personhood, Shame Tagged With: , , , ,
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