Texting is an interesting linguistic form (or SMSing to some of our international readers). It’s a whole new language in itself. So many things R abbreviated b/c the point is 2 type as little & as quik as posibl. That, of course, makes it EZ & fast 2 read & communicate w/o saying 2 much @ 1 time.

In this day and age, we want everything done in seconds; if not, it’s looked down upon negatively. A prime example is a television commercial where a guy comments about new information he just got and two other guys texting look at him and say, “That’s so 17 seconds ago” in a derogatory tone.

So society doesn’t offer us any help when it comes to dealing with our issues. It’s presumed we will just swipe our screen onto the next page in our life just like we do with all our other devices. Or maybe we will create a bookmark for it or put it on our reading list so we can get back to it later. Unfortunately, usually the next time we get back to it is when our spouse is leaving, our teenager is in trouble, or we lose our job. Actually that “page” of our life tends to show up more than we think or want, yet we choose not to look at it. We get triggered by something or someone and the pain, anger, disappointment (or whatever) rises to the surface. What do we do?

The usual response to triggers is the “fight” or “flight” defense mechanism like most of us have learned at some time. But do we ever take the time to really process what’s going on inside our heart? Are we fleeing or fighting? And why? Is it really the situation that’s at hand or is it the fact that it’s the same pain you felt when _______ (you fill in the blank). This is now processing. And there are ways to help facilitate this too. Journaling and prayer ministry are the tools we believe work the best. Some issues can be processed between you and the Lord with prayer and journaling, while others sometimes require another person to help you through.

The fact is we all have issues to deal with; none of us have arrived at perfection yet. Taking the time to wait before the Lord, or to go meet with a counselor is extremely valuable. Don’t be in a hurry. This is a life-time process. R U 2 impatient? R U 2 busy? Take some time and W8 on the Lord. C wats going on inside U. There’s a point where U hav 2 stop living txt 2 txt.

YIC (Yours in Christ) –C

Deliverance can be a powerful tool in our arsenal to help people find freedom. Nevertheless, I commonly run into people who have tried it without much result. Sometimes we have taken authority over the bad fruit but not fully gotten at the root underneath it. It is not enough for the minister to recognize the problem and take authority. The person receiving must recognize it and have peace with what happened and compassion toward those who caused pain. With a few added keys, deliverance is as easy as spreading room temperature butter.

Melanie struggled for years trusting her husband with finances. She felt so powerless and insecure when she left them in his hands and didn’t micromanage. She acknowledges there’s a problem, has prayed over it and yet still struggles. Looking back at her childhood, she has recognized that her dad had a gambling problem and many times had lost his whole paycheck by the time he made it home, putting the family through many hardships and pain. Melanie had prayed deliverance prayers and taken authority over generational iniquity. She had renounced closing her heart toward her dad. Nevertheless, she was still struggling with trusting her husband.

We worked with Melanie to examine her heart and see if she was at a place of truly forgiving her dad for mishandling finances and even having compassion on him for his compulsion. When she looked more clearly into her heart, what she actually felt was a sense of powerlessness and abandonment. Not only did it seem her dad wasn’t there, but even God felt distant when it came to finances. This gives legal ground to the enemy and renders attempts at deliverance ineffective.

As we lifted this to the Lord, God let her know that He’d always been there for her and has always taken care of her well, despite the many financial hardships from her father’s gambling.

Melanie prayed again and renounced closing her heart to her dad as well as her husband in the area of finances. It now felt easy and free. She can now trust her husband in this area.

So often we fight the fruit but haven’t fully gotten at the root. Compassion is an excellent test. When we can look at the person who has hurt us and not only feel free but even see the pain they’ve been in that has driven their behavior, we are on the road to freedom. Then deliverance becomes easy like butter.

Has your car ever been stuck in the mud way outside of town? Your wheels just sit there and spin; there is no one to call and you’re just stuck. Some people are stuck like that in their Christian life. They struggle to live the Christian life victoriously or their marriages reduce to the same battles again and again. So often this results from not understanding the growth process.

People often try to feel exhorted into obedience, to work up enough willpower and passion. Over the years, as this doesn’t workout, they settle.

It is hugely empowering to see that emotional health and maturity are skills. Skills can be learned; there are steps to get there. When we see this, it restores hope. It’s no longer a matter that, “If I can just get motivated enough;” now it’s, “I need to discover the steps.”

Trying to exhort myself to emotional health is like telling someone who’s learned to add, subtract, multiply, and divide to go do complex algebra. They can’t do it regardless of how much they want to. The needed foundation is there, but they then have to learn the basic skills of algebra, what steps and processes are done, in what order, and so on.

Our passion at Fountains of Life is to give tools to people that empower them and help them to discover those steps and the emotional maturity needed to fulfill their destinies. We offer workshops, articles, CDs, as well as prayer ministry.

It is possible to walk in wholeness, peace, and balance while being an activated member of your family, your church and your community.

What does it mean to really learn something to the point of being able to apply the new skill? When I learned Spanish,there were more steps than I imagined. I thought learning the corresponding Spanish word would be enough. Then I realized that learning to use it in everyday conversation was a whole other step. And even after that, I also had to learn to hear it used in the context of conversation.

Likewise, my son will learn new ways of maneuvering a soccer ball that can knock an opponent off balance. He will practice it over and over until it becomes second nature. Only then can he use this new skill under the pressure of a game situation.

In the Christian life there are many skills we can acquire as we mature:

• Learning responsibility with emotions–learning to recognize them in ourselves and others, and to more effectively handle them.

• Learning to partner with God to problem solve. Breaking things down into their parts, brainstorming, defining variables verses non-variables.

• Finding resources for what we need in spiritual and career growth rather than living a welfare Christianity like the children of Israel in the wilderness did.

• Learning spiritual hygiene to stay clean of negative emotions and live in daily hope.

• Learning skills of intimacy with God and man–living in vulnerability, transparency, and expressing emotion.

• Learning to do research and find the knowledge we need to accomplish a task.

What does it mean to let our lights shine so that pre-Christians will be drawn to us? Maybe the skills are a little more defined than we have considered. We have to go way beyond generally knowing about something, synthesizing it down to intimate knowledge until it is a part of us.

Synthesis – Reasoning from the general to the particular; logical deduction.
Assimilate – 1) To take in and utilize as nourishment : absorb into the system 2) to take into the mind and thoroughly comprehend

Many Christians live years shut down, with their “Operating System” running slow. Computer programs like Spybot – Search & Destroy, Advanced System Optimizer, and PC Pitstop, claim to stop unwanted programs from running in the background, clean your system registry, and even remove viruses, making your computer run much faster!

We can also have unwanted programs running in the background, replaying thoughts of how someone has mistreated us or how life just isn’t working out. This often occurs because of errors (lies) in our “system registry” that tell us God isn’t for us, or there is something wrong with us. These lies can give legal ground for an enemy “virus” to come in and exacerbate the problem.

There have been times where my “system” was running so slow I was practically shut down. It was hard to pray, read the word, or even to concentrate at work. I found myself wanting to eat more and just watch TV all the time. I finally went to a Prayer Minister where I discovered a number of past places I had hidden anger. I didn’t even realize it. Ithought I had dealt with all the anger in my life.

There is something so cleansing, renewing, and restoring of child-like innocence when we get all the “bugs” out of our system, clean out the pipes, and connect again to God. It is really wonderful to have communication channels opened and functioning again!

Crossing boundaries is like coloring outside the lines in a coloring book. The lines are what make the picture—they define it, express it, they reveal what it is supposed to look like. They help us learn to improve our coloring skills by giving us a framework to function within. Children scribble-scrabble with their crayons. Coloring books help them learn small motor skills, to control hand movements and train them to do what they desire. As youngsters mature, instead of haphazard strokes on a page, mindful and purposeful marks and colors are chosen to create a picture in the way they wish to express it.

Boundaries have a purpose in our lives; they define our picture, who we are. My boundaries, like the coloring book page, are a picture of what I will or will not do.  When someone tries to get me to do something I don’t want to, and they begin to push me, they have crossed my boundary. As I see it, they colored outside the line—my line. This might take the form of a spouse using the silent treatment, or someone using anger to manipulate or control me into doing something I have already said no to. If I am talking with someone and indicate I need to go, and they continue to draw me into conversation, they are coloring across my line.

Many times those who do not respect boundaries and scribble-scrabble over others are struggling with insecurity and fears of being rejected. They are still learning the “small motor skills” of self-control. Part of growing in our spiritual walk is understanding how to honor one another’s rights, choices, and feelings rather than randomly coloring all over the page. We also need the maturity to set loving boundaries with others in a way that still values them. By doing this, it helps us all mature and learn to color within the lines, freely expressing ourselves, yet respecting everyone else’s picture.

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.

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