Paths to Dwell In

By Robert

The development of personhood is a powerful concept in helping us move towards maturity and intimacy in all our relationships. This concept (the state or condition of being a person) has gripped me. The idea that it can be diminished through abuse and developed through respect explains many things. When mental, emotional, and physical boundaries are crossed; when we are controlled, manipulated, told how to think or not permitted to feel; when physical abuse or violations occur, we are then treated like an object rather than a person, thus taking away our personhood.

A married couple struggled with compulsive shopping and dieting. These addictions had really affected their marriage in ways that they had not identified. When issues came up for them to deal with, each found a way to avoid confrontation or discussion by choosing to escape using the spending or dieting. In that way, there was no deepening of rapport, no building of mutual understanding from one issue or conflict to the next. They moved away from intimacy instead of towards it. In a sense, they treated each other like objects, diminishing each other’s personhood.

People often feel unconsciously threatened by their lack of control in certain areas. When they gravitate to controlling responses as the single answer, not only does the relationship fail to grow and deepen, but also they as individuals fail to mature in the process of interacting with normal life challenges and experiences.

Personhood cannot be developed without respect of boundaries-mental, emotional and physical. When there is control rather than respect, intimacy is lost in all relationships.

By Robert

What would your life be like if you never procrastinated? What could you accomplish if you had the ability to step out and try anything you wanted? There are reasons people get stuck in ruts. Most of us have gone down the “try harder” route so many times we have lost hope. However, it is possible to find the motivation to pursue your dreams. The following quote illustrates this well.

“A manager loses his cool and berates an employee in front of the rest of the team. He thinks his tirade was good for productivity because the rant ’scared people straight,’ but their fear soon settles into caution. To perform at their best, the team members need to take risks, stretch themselves beyond their comfort zone, and even make some mistakes along the way. No one on the team wants to be the manager’s next target, so the team members play it safe and do only as they are told. When the manager gets docked a year later for leading a team that fails to take initiative, he wonders what’s wrong with the team” (Bradberry, Greaves, p.66 Emotional Intelligence 2.0).

Taking initiative involves risk. The only way a person can do this is if they feel safe. Often our parents first taught us that we live in a safe or unsafe environment. We learn early if we are free to take initiative even though we might fail.

Fear of failure is rooted here. In shame-based family rule systems, you are never to be out of control and never to be vulnerable. Somebody might get hurt. The answer to being more intentional in your life is not in trying harder. It is in dealing with the roots in your family system that creates the problem.

If this article is speaking to you, call us today for a phone appointment. We see people get free from these kinds of issues every day. (904.270.9472)

How to be free of anger

There is a major key in helping find freedom from anger. When it comes to dealing with anger we have been exhorted, admonished, and given techniques like praying daily for the person we are angry with until our heart changes. Dealing with anger can be elusive, we pray and nothing seems to happen. This issue of anger is very common with most clients I work with even though it is often hidden at first. The major key to freedom I have found is that there is usually a reason someone is holding onto anger.  

An Exercise

Think of the person you are mad at and why. Now search your heart considering the idea of fully letting it go. Do you notice anything hesitant in your heart to fully release the anger? What if you did fully let it go, how would that make you feel? Do not give the standard Christian answer from your mind, but look to your heart and see how it feels. We feel what we believe.

Most of the time the belief for holding the anger will be something like, “I’ll be unprotected if I let it go; it will happen again,” or “nothing will change,” or “they’ll just get away with it.”

Do not try to deny that feeling; simply acknowledge if that feels true in your heart. Then lift that belief up to God and listen. “Father, it feels like this anger is the only thing I have to protect me. God would You speak to me about that?” If you get down to how you really feel and what you really believe by embracing honesty, humility, and childlike meekness, acknowledging the truth- you will hear God speak. Once the hindrances are out of the way it becomes relatively easy to pray a prayer to release the anger and forgive the person who hurt you. I have done this with many prayer ministry clients and see close to a 100% success rate with this approach. Give it a try, or call me.

“This has been called the “Age of Anxiety.” Considering the attention given the subject by psychology, theology, literature, and the pharmaceutical industry, not to mention the testimony from our own lives, we could fairly well conclude that there is more anxiety today, and, moreover, that there is definitely more anxiety about anxiety now than there has been in previous epochs of history.

Nevertheless, I would hesitate to characterize this as an “Age of Anxiety,” just as I would be loathe to call this an “Age of Affluence,” “Coronary Disease,” “Mental Health,” “Dieting,” “Conformity,” or “Sexual Freedom,” my reason being that none of these labels, whatever fact or truth they may involve, goes to the heart of the matter.

Much as I dislike this game of labels, my preference…would be to call this the “Age of the Disordered Will.” It takes only a glance to see a few of the myriad varieties of willing what cannot be willed that enslave us: we will to sleep, will to read fast, will to have simultaneous orgasm, will to be creative and spontaneous, will to enjoy our old age, and, most urgently, will to will.

If anxiety is more prominent in our time, such anxiety is the product of our particular modern disability of the will. To this disability, rather than to anxiety, I would attribute the ever-increasing dependence on drugs affecting all level of our society. While drugs do offer relief from anxiety, their more important task is to offer the illusion of healing the split between the will and its refractory object. The resulting feeling of wholeness may not be a responsible one, but at least within that wholeness-no matter how willful the drugged state may appear to an outsider-there seems to be, briefly and subjectively, a responsible and vigorous will. This is the reason, I believe, that the addictive possibilities of our age are so enormous.” (1976, p.32)

Farber, L.H. (1976), Lying, despair, jealousy, envy, sex, suicide, drugs, and the good life. New York: Harper & Row.

Steve’s Theophostic Testimony

I became frustrated with myself because of a habit I’ve had for almost 50 years: picking at my cuticles and the skin around my finger nails. I’ve done this in my car, in church, at work, in meetings, and just about everywhere I go. By the end of the day there would be a pile of dead skin. It would upset and embarrass me but I couldn’t stop. I had prayed for years that God would help me quit the picking. I knew He would, but it hadn’t happened yet. It became almost unbearable if I thought about not picking at my fingers.

I felt I would be out of control of my own body if I didn’t pick.

Robert Hartzell did some Theophostic ministry with me about this. The first thing that popped into my head was a memory involving the first time my step-uncle had molested me almost 50 years ago. All I could feel was anger. It was based on the realization that this was the first time I had been introduced to pornography and the thoughts of the struggle I had with it for many years as a direct result. I saw myself taking a hammer to his head and bashing it in. I’ve never been a violent person and this was a new experience for me.

I had never had any emotion surface about the times he had molested me. I had reasoned that it had never been as bad as it could have been, and during those times I always felt like I would just rather have been someplace else. In the session with Robert, God led me to forgiveness for my step-uncle and spoke His truth to lies I had believed as a result of this experience.

Finally, I dealt with a fear that the next day I would go right back to picking again regardless of the Theophostic ministry I had received. I felt God say to me in response, “I’ll be responsible for that.” I felt total peace about myself in the memory. The memory was still there, what happened, happened. It couldn’t be changed. However, I was no longer angry or frustrated with myself for not taking control of my own body. I now knew that this habit was within my control now and I could choose not to pick at my fingers.

It has now been more than a week later. I have driven my car to work and back every day, sat in church, and been in meetings. I have not felt the compulsion to pick at my fingers, not once! God has finally delivered me from this habit. Praise God.

Steve

Prayer ministry, when used properly, is the most incredible tool I know of for people to find freedom.

So what exactly is Prayer Ministry? Quite simply, it is prayer. It is honestly looking at and facing the pain in our life, then asking God to speak to it. We, as prayer ministers, do not seek to give advice, diagnose, provide insight, or give direction.

So often, Christian counselors inadvertently move people toward victim thinking in seeking to solve their problems for them, or even get a word of the Lord for them. Of course, people are happy for you to solve their problems for them if you let them, but this brings little lasting fruit and may lead to ego on the part of the minister. Any form of ministry that places me, the minister, as a person’s “source” is moving toward dangerous ground. People are really quite capable of hearing from the Lord themselves with a little support.

Prayer ministry should encourage people to discovery. A prayer minister should not take on the responsibility at any level to resolve a person’s problems, issues or pain in life, but should encourage people to own their own emotional pain, take responsibility for their own thinking, not blame other people or circumstances for their emotional reactions and move forward toward God’s resolution.

When people are willing to take ownership, I see them get free every time. When a person chooses to face their pain, God always shows up.

1 Tim 4:2-speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron.

The subject of conscience and empathy is quite fascinating. On the far bad end of the scale you have the sociopath, who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience. Their chief characteristic is a lack of empathy because they cannot feel another’s pain. From this far end is a broad middle, where most of us have a conscience functioning at some level. What is fascinating is the role our conscience can play in keeping us from sin and moving us toward intimacy with the Lord when functioning well at the good end. John Sanford describes this well:

“There are two kinds of conscience. There is an active conscience which causes remorse after the sin. It operates by the law. It seldom if ever works powerfully enough before the event to prevent it. It reminds us that we have failed the Lord and ourselves, but seldom if ever makes us aware of our brother’s hurt. It makes us aware only that we failed to be what we set out to be. It seldom moves us to real repentance. Repentance happens when we are hurt for the sake of the Lord and others. Remorse remains self-centered and is seen in terms of our own failure to perform.”

Then there is a healthy conscience that leads to real repentance which “is a result of the gift of love. If I love someone, and my spirit is awake and alert, it checks me before I do a potentially harmful deed. Love constrains me because I cannot stand to hurt the one I love.” (P.122, Healing the Wounded Spirit, Sanford)