Connection, Identity, and Support

May 1, 2010 By robert 1 Comment

By Robert

Joe felt so disconnected, always on the outside, at work and school and church. As he was growing up his dad had never been around. There had never really been a man in his life to call forth his identity. Julie felt an almost continual low-level anxiety—constantly afraid things might fall apart. She had a sense of impending doom, a fear of financial disaster, or some grave illness or family crisis. It was so hard to believe God would be available to her.

Eph 3:14-15 (AMP) For this reason I bow my knees before the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, For Whom every family in heaven and on earth is named [that Father from Whom all fatherhood takes its title and derives its name].

Fathering, mothering, and family are all God’s idea and God’s design. Every little boy and little girl needs to know dad and mom love them, and be secure in that love. Children need a sense of connection and identity. They need to know they are supported in all the life skills they must acquire to grow up.

When these foundational elements are missing (connection, identity, and support), wounding often takes place. God’s plan is for a divine exchange to happen, where Christians shift from the family model their parents gave them, to connecting directly with God’s love. We should feel like sons in His family rather than orphans. Most all wounding is based right here in these three elements. Think about it. Any fears I have—anxieties over finances, health, family, destiny—are all rooted in a difficulty believing God will be there for me. It is orphan living.

All healing needs to be based in these three things as well. Finding a connection to God’s love, and having our identity in that rather than performance or independence, is what brings about healing. There is a safe place in His love for both emotional and physical needs.  Just forgiving those who hurt us or trying to get rid of pain should not be the goal. Having intimacy with God, learning to live a connected, Fathered life, daily walking in His love and in sonship, is what He wants for all of us.

Filed Under: Boundaries, Christianity, Counseling, Father's Love, sonship Tagged With: acceptance, Chrisitianity, connection, Father's Love, identity, sonship, support

Meekness Is the Passkey

February 4, 2010 By robert 3 Comments

Closed Theological System

One of my main mentors was Jack Frost. When I first came to work with him I had a somewhat closed theological system. I had a set of fixed ideas about God and doctrine and I was not that open to anything that went outside my box. Jack was very different.

Teachable and Diligent

He was first of all teachable. There were certain key books God used in his life that he had read fifteen times or more. Not only was he open to new ideas, he understood what it took to really get a hold of them and incorporate them to where he lived on a daily basis. We give this kind of effort in school to learn new material. A given class might include lectures, a textbook, several other books to read, and a research paper. However, now that we are older, we seem to have the idea that we can read one book just one time and it will change our lives forever.

Willing to Try

The next thing I noticed about Jack was that he was not afraid to try. He would at times make adjustments to his teaching, not always having it perfect from the start, however, the important thing was that he was willing to consider new thoughts and open to try them.

A Personal Example                                                                                                                                                  

About a year ago I found myself really stuck in my walk with the Lord. I heard a minister I respected mention that God has taught the church many things about deliverance and generational sin and some of it actually works. That struck right at one of my theological boxes. Because of ways I have considered the deliverance movement “out of balance,” I had thrown the whole thing out. A short time later I had an opportunity to be ministered to by this same man, and he recommended some deliverance and generational sin stuff I could pray through. I was desperate enough to try it. Guess what? It worked, I found whole new areas of freedom in my life. In the type of prayer ministry that I do, these are still not the primary tools I use, but I have a whole lot more respect for them than I used to.

With a closed theological system there is little possibility for growth.  Meekness really is the passkey.

Filed Under: Christianity, Jack Frost Tagged With: Chrisitianity, deliverance, Jack Frost, ministry, sonship

Dynamics of Shame vs Respect

December 30, 2009 By robert Leave a Comment

Identity in Love

When we lack identity in God’s love we will have fears to deal with since it is love that casts them out. 1 Jn.4:17 Fear leads to control; a lack of vulnerability, having walls up.

“In a shame bound family system there tends to be rigidly defined boundaries. This causes the development of self to get cut off early. Children learn to value defiant individualism over the ongoing dialog of relationship.” (Facing Shame) Most teenage rebellion can be found right here!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Agape Reformation, Father's Love, Jack Frost, Prayer Ministry, Shiloh Place Ministries, sonship

How to Receive Like a Son

October 25, 2009 By robert Leave a Comment

A Slave Mentality

Many people and ministries are struggling at this time in receiving their needed resources. I believe that for the childlike, the teachable, those who have not grown cynical and critical but can still be in awe of what God can do—fresh, out of the box ideas are coming like never before!

Where to Find Resources

We teach a series called “Living a Fathered Life, Going from Slavery to Sonship.”

Israel in the wilderness had a slavery mentality (no faith to try anything new, always gravitating to the negative, no awe of Father) and so could not enter the promised land. There is no inheritance for slaves.

In Luke15 the older brother complained, “You have never given me anything,” and the father said “Son, you own it all.”  The son was complaining because his father did not give him liquid assets, instant solutions. The father was trying to show him that he had given him so much more than that, something so much higher. So often in our prayers we are asking God for finished products, liquid assets – “God give us the money for this venture”; “God make my business or ministry successful, in Jesus name.”

How Sons Receive

However, God often deals with sons by giving them raw materials. The older brother could go out to the field and choose any goat he wanted, catch it when he wanted, butcher it, cook it, call his friends and have a party—anytime. There was no shortage of resources there, only a shortage of perspective.

Perspective

He could not see liquid assets and so thought he did not have any assets. The father said, “Son, you are a builder, you can put things together, you have been running my whole operation for years. You know how to put together a business plan and implement it. Help yourself, go take the raw materials and do what you want.”

Press In

Why not daily ask God to anoint your eyes, to show you raw materials instead of liquid assets. When I worked with the subsistence farmers of the Dominican Republic, I would continually be amazed at their resourcefulness. One time Tulio and I went up the mountain for some poles to build a back porch. He knew where to look to find just the right trees for the job. He found some vines nearby that he cut for rope. He looked around for what was needed. Here in the US we are addicted to the finished product. We have lost the understanding of how to be a builder like our farmer forefathers had.

Challenge – spend 30 days asking God to show you the raw materials that are already there and to coach you how to pray like a son instead of a slave. Instead of praying, “Give me the finished product,” pray, “God show me how to put together these raw materials in a way I have never seen before.”

(This material comes from Arthur Burk’s new teaching, “Social Entrepreneurs”)

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

How to Receive Fathers

April 18, 2008 By robert 1 Comment

 I have had at least three significant spiritual fathers in my life.

Sam Gilpin was the first who led me to the Lord and took me through the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. This taught me deep things about transparency, surrender and restitution. This started me on a path to healing.

Pastor Steve McCoy was the second. Space does not permit me to share the many ways he has stood with me for 23 years. Certainly the foundation in God’s word that has kept me in the race all these years would be at the top of this list. The message of grace he preaches that has brought much healing was huge. Certainly counsel through all the years was also significant.

Jack Frost and Robert Hartzell togetherThe late Jack Frost was the third who took my healing from such a broken childhood much deeper. Jack taught me the messages of Sonship that I have been sharing. He taught me church etiquette for traveling ministries. Jack taught me how to impart a message of grace to churches with other paradigms for ministry in such a way that it is received. Jack was amazing to me because he had a vision of where the church needed to go to fulfill God’s plan, yet because of his sonship he could bring his message in a way that it would be received rather than being yet another “martyr” who has “revelation that no one else sees” and ends up judging the church for being so lukewarm and deserving of wrath.

These men of God were there for me even though I was not always so sure of that. Not only did I have to work through my abandonment issues, I had to learn how to relate to the spiritual fathers God had placed in my life. I had no example to draw from. I feared my earthly father and there was not anything functional about our relationship. There were times of not asking for help and counsel because, “They don’t have time for me”. There were times of longing for them to meet my needs instead of taking my own proper personal responsibility. Both of these attitudes represent a slave/master mentality. If a slave asks a wrong question he may be hit and yet he does not eat unless this abuser feeds him. We often carry these same dysfunctional patterns over to how we relate to God. When things go our way we are so happy. When things are going wrong we can take it as rejection, thinking, “God doesn’t care for me”.

Hebrews 13:17—Obey those who rule over you, and be submissive, for they watch out for your souls, as those who must give account. Let them do so with joy and not with grief, for that would be unprofitable for you.

When we can learn to walk in healthy submission, to be a blessing rather than place demands, to get under and support the vision of the fathers God has placed in our lives it is very profitable for us, we mature into all that God has for us. It seems weekly we hear of another Christian couple getting divorced or leaving the church offended only to repeat the cycle at the next church. I believe it almost always comes down to the issues I have shared in this message. What if I would have gotten offended and left one of the spiritual fathers I mentioned in this article? Look at the heritage, the growth I would have missed! It is so worth it to work through our “children in the wilderness” mentalities, (as a slave relating to a master) and learn how to receive and relate to the spiritual fathers God places on our lives!

Filed Under: Father's Love, Healings, How to Change, Jack Frost Tagged With: authority, Father's Love, sonship, submission

Everyone Longs for a Father

April 18, 2008 By robert Leave a Comment

 Everyone Longs for a Father

The heart can grow cold. For a long time I had convinced myself that I never had a father available for me and that I certainly did not need one now. I grew up in a home where my dad was often gone drinking and when he was home he was abusive. In my mid twenties he went to prison where he remains to this day. I thought I had learned to live just fine without a father in my life, but did I really?

I recently saw the movie August Rush. It starts with children in an orphanage dreaming of the day their parents or some family would come and take them. I was tearing up right away, they just wanted a family! Think of the dreams they must have had, a dad to play ball with, mom waiting with homemade cookies as they came home from school, someone to tuck them in at night.

It so happened that right after that I saw the Indian movie Salaam Bombay. It was about the street children in India. A village boy’s father died. His older brother dominated him and was mean, making him do lots of work around the house. One day, in retaliation, the boy broke his older brother’s bicycle. The mother sided with the older brother and made the boy leave until he had the money to buy another bicycle. Can you imagine a mother so numb, so existence-only oriented, that she would kick out her son to the streets so as not to annoy the older brother who was the only bread winner for this poor village family? He ended up on the streets of Mumbai. These kids are the outcasts of society, everyone harasses them and nobody cares for them. (In Brazil street children are actually often murdered by the police.) At one point he had just escaped from the police, his one friend died from drug withdrawals, he could not go home and he had no one. He just broke down and cried.  

Even when we did have a relationship with our parents;

  • if they were not safe, if we had to put up walls of protection to fight off being controlled or shamed,
  • if we could not freely share our problems without being blasted with advice or made to feel condemned,
  • if love was not expressed,

we can still end up feeling abandoned at some level.

We know about Jesus as our Savior and Propitiator. We have learned much about the Holy Spirit and His gifts. Have we, however, learned to relate to our Heavenly Father?

Hebrews 12:7-9 If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom a father does not chasten? But if you are without chastening, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate and not sons. Furthermore, we have had human fathers who corrected us, and we paid them respect. Shall we not much more readily be in subjection to the Father of spirits and live?

If we can receive and endure discipline then God is dealing with us as sons. This is how God wants to relate to us so we can grow and mature and fulfill the destiny that He has for each of us.

However, it then says, that if we do not receive discipline we become as illegitimate sons (no counsel, no inheritance and blessing from a father).

Finally, if we are in subjection, we live! Life flows through us, what we put our hand to prospers, and God’s favor goes before us!

Filed Under: Counseling, Father's Love Tagged With: authority, Father's Love, sonship