Fathering Leadership

It is Normal to Need Ministry, Finding Freedom from Depression, Anxiety, and Brokenness

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Many people battle depression, anxiety, negative thoughts and negative emotions. They too often struggle in finding freedom from depression.

If you can recognize your powerless lies you can experience freedom.

Freedom from Depression Difficulties

Chris Cornell, lead singer of Soundgarden, recently committed suicide at the age of 52. He suffered from depression and anxiety. We hear of this so often in the news and it can give the idea that there’s simply no help to heal these issues. My experience is that help really is available.

Henry Nouwen in his excellent book, Life of the Beloved, shares how brokenness is so
mething that effects everyone at some level. Statistically 18.2%, 1 in 5 Americans, suffer from some type of mental illnesses.

I grew up in an abusive environment and suffered from anxiety, feelings of impending doom, and some depression. I also had symptoms of PTSD. Hearing a loud male voice in public or on television would cause an instant physical reaction of fear in me. My past affected my present.

From years of doing Prayer Ministry with people, I can tell you how common this is in the Body of Christ. It is also quite common that people continue to live with these issues without ever finding help. There is a reason people don’t reach out.

Asking for Help — It is Normal to Need Ministry

Brokenness lies to us by saying things like, “Its shameful – don’t admit it.” Or “There’s no help for you, you’ve tried everything.”

I have sought healing and worked to minister healing since 1986. Many things have helped, yet many things I thought would bring healing led to disappointment.

Let’s consider some keys to help:

  • It’s normal to need ministry. If you can embrace this concept you can get past the shame so often attached to issues like fear, depression, anxiety, and grief.
  • Help comes in packages we don’t expect, so it’s easy to get frustrated. It also tends to come in phases and not all at once.

Many times I’ve sought an instant fix through a particular person or a certain ministry. I experienced disappointment when it didn’t work out that way. Many things have helped, but only partially. And many people have helped, but not in the ways I thought they should.

The key is always to not give up when the first few attempts at reaching out don’t yield all the results you hoped. As I’ve continued growing in different types of healing, there has been a cumulative affect that has taken my healing deeper.

Things I have found to be helpful:

  • Understanding God’s grace.
  • Learning deeply the messages of the Father’s Love.
  • Deliverance Ministry.
  • Being mentored by healthy people.
  • Prayer Ministry – this has yielded the biggest result, especially the type of ministry that brings resolution to previously unresolved events.
  • Cooperating with God’s work in my life and not running when things get difficult.

I haven’t done any of these things perfectly. Mistakes where made along the way. Yet, the results have been significant.

Freedom From Depression and Emotional Pain

Today I largely walk free of anxiety. However, when it does occasionally come up, I have the tools to quickly move past it. I’m also free from PTSD. I can hear a loud male voice with no reaction whatsoever.

If you are struggling in these ways, feel free to email me for more suggestions of help.

Understanding that Shame is the Root of Control Issues Leads to Freedom

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Shame is the Root of Control Issues

All of us can move into controlling behaviors when we feel fearful.

This damages our relationships and even stresses our physical and spiritual health. Understanding the shame–control connection leads to freedom from hurt and stress. Let’s consider how it is that shame is the root of many hurtful behaviors.

Shame is the Root of Hurtful Behaviors

The way that families interact will be either honoring or shaming.

Most families are a mix having ways that they interact that are respectful of one another and ways that are shaming. Obviously any aShame is the Root of Control Issuesbuse whether physical, sexual, or emotional is shaming. However, so is the silent treatment, snide remarks, and cutting comments.

A simple test is to look at when you have a disagreement. Does the conversation stay respectful as you talk things out or does it move into hurtful remarks?

Now let’s see that even though shame is the root problem, Sonship Identity is answer.

Sonship Identity

Shaming interaction tears a person down. Shame says I am in some way bad, flawed, inadequate. Respectful interaction comes from a Sonship Identity. builds a person up. It treats the other with dignity and fosters intimacy in relationships. Intimate relationships are the key to self-esteem, confidence, the ability to take initiative, self-discipline, the freedom to try, and much more. This is a huge key because we so often think it is about trying harder or getting motivated enough. Even for overcoming compulsive behaviors, shame is the key.

Shame is the Key Force Behind Compulsive Behavior

All compulsive behavior, whether it’s over-spending, over-eating, substance abuse, or pornography is drivenShame is the Root of Control Issues and maintained by roots of shame. The compulsion is a “fruit” not a “root,” and cutting it off will not solve the problem, it will grow back. We so often think our problem is the “loss of control,” and we assure ourselves we’ll change and not do it again. However, the real problem is the shame and the anxiety it produces. Anxiety needs an antidote and so we turn to some compulsive behavior that provides a temporary numbing experience. All compulsive behavior is about the trance-like state it brings, reducing our anxiety for a little while.

Hope, Steps to Take
Understanding shame dynamics puts a huge tool in your hands. Fighting the “fruit” simply leaves you condemned, with feelings of failure. Getting at the shaming lies you have believed and dismantling your interactions that are not respect-based, brings lasting freedom.

Other steps you can take:

Surrender Through Prayer For Growth

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God's presenceWaiting Prayer is the only way I know to stay at rest in the midst of anything.

Learning how to wait in God’s presence daily in prayer is slowly producing some significant results in my life. I’ve so often had expectations in ministry that crushed as God had very different plans.

I would venture to say many of you also have battled unmet expectations in your relationships, finances, ministry callings… Many people get mad at God during these times. However, as we surrender and grow, we find God doing something so much more wonderful than we would have imagined.

Surrender in Prayer

It takes daily surrender to simply sit in God’s presence and love Him for Him alone, not needing a single thing from Him. There’s a time for petition and intercession. But we also need times to simply sit and love Him. Even if He isn’t answering our prayers as we think He should. Even if the prayer seems dry sometimes.

Ps.131:1,2 — Lord, my heart is not haughty, Nor my eyes lofty. Neither do I concern myself with great matters, Nor with things too profound for me.  Surely I have calmed and quieted my soul, Like a weaned child with his mother; Like a weaned child is my soul within me.

Many of us would like to make a decent income, have a nice home, maybe even be honored in our profession. But what if God calls us to something very different than that?

Paul grew deeply in surrender to God’s plan. He was warned about going to Jerusalem and went anyway! Submitting to prison. There was nothing in this world he needed to be happy. God alone had become his contentment.

Growth

Life so often goes in ways we did not expect. When we practice a life of surrender to God’s presence, taking up our cross daily, we can handle these interruptions and watch God do amazing things with us as we launch out in these new and unexpected directions.

“The man who has God for his treasure has all things in One. Many ordinary treasures may be denied him, or if he is allowed to have them, the enjoyment of them will be so tempered that they will never be necessary to his happiness.” — A.W. Tozer

Brother Lawrence, (The Practice of the Presence of God) embraced being a lowly dishwasher, yet we know his name to this day.

Will you choose a life of surrender and allow God to direct you in unexpected and wonderful ways?

Prayer Ministry Simplicity

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prayer ministryUnderstanding the simple heart of Prayer Ministry will help you find deeper healing. It gives you the key to cooperating with God in a lifelong paradigm of healing and growth.

Prayer Ministry and Deliverance are presented in many different formats and formulas. Often there is a checklist of things to pray over that may have hindered or damaged the person. This is commonly done through praying a set of pre-written prayers that address everything from generational curses, a spirit of rejection, to ways a person may have participated in certain occult practices. I believe this is good in as far as it goes.

Once the initial “cleaning up” and breakthrough have occurred, how do we then partner with God through the lifetime “School of the Holy Ghost”?

Intuitive Prayer Ministry

I’ve been reading the biography of Kathryn Kuhlman by Jamie Buckingham. In early chapters he describes Kathryn’s father as one who gave her lots of affection and whatever she wanted. Her mom, on the other hand, was the disciplinarian — never saying she was proud of Kathryn nor showing her any affection. He goes on to describe how those things affected Kathryn for the rest of her life, that despite the incredible anointing in her life she so often tried to prove her worth.

Everyone knows intuitively our childhood affects us in many ways. Prayer Ministry healing is as simple as making peace with those childhood events.

My Own Example – How I Overcame PTSD

As late as my 30’s I would immediately tense up physically at the sound of a loud male voice. I would often have feelings of impending doom sweep over me. If I happened to watch a television show that suddenly had a scene of domestic violence I would feel my stomach churn and adrenaline surge through my body.

Today I am completely free. The way I became free was by making peace with the events that caused these reactions. This is one example of the many ways you can overcome emotional triggers in Prayer Ministry.

Triggers

Everyone faces emotional triggers from time to time. These triggers may be feelings of rejection, fear, helplessness, etc. We pray to break these things off of us and yet they persist.

As you learn to make peace with the underlying events (root) that cause these triggers (fruit), you will find freedom. Unfortunately, we the church, so often only attack the fruit and not the root. Therefore freedom is often limited. Allowing God to reveal the root and making peace with it will bring freedom. Good fruit will then grow.

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Resources to Help

We have a teaching on Mp3 or Video on the Fruit and Root concept.

We also offer Prayer Ministry if you need help in this area.

Helpful Articles

Enhancing Deliverance by Examining the Compassion Root

How to Build the Conditions for Healing to Overcome Depression

How to Practice God’s Presence Continuously

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AbidingGod's presence

Revelations 3:12 — Him that overcomes will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out…

I love this verse. It speaks of such a love for God and of allowing Him to deal with every uncrucified area of our hearts until we reach this place of “going no more out.”

Is this place achievable and if so how?

Reading the classic book, The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence, he talks of reaching a place of continually staying in God’s presence. Many other Christian saints have also written of this experience of maturity and its benefits.

There is a place:

  • Where true change occurs.
  • Where God is ever gaining more ascendancy in the heart.
  • Of no fear regardless of circumstances.

Paul speaks of this place in 1 Thessalonians 5:17 — pray without ceasing.

How Can You Reach the Place of Continual Abiding?

You build it step-by-step like you build a house. With this structure you can become a “living sanctuary tried and true” as the old song goes.

So how to you do this?

I believe it is with simplicity. Every time you think of God you speak some words of love to Him, ask for grace for your day, acknowledge your need of Him, focus on a sense of His presence. Have daily prayer times of reading some scriptures and then quietly sitting in a sense of His presence.

As this develops you will notice there are things in your heart that are in conflict with the presence of God, things you may not even have been aware of. As you embrace the cross by continuing in His presence, He will accomplish His sanctifying work and you will go deeper. This may lead to forgiveness, repentance, or other purifying motions gently guided by His inhabitance.

Do What You Can

As you focus on what you can do to grow in God’s presence and not worry about what you can’t, you begin to continually abide more and more.

Capacity to Try and Emotional Health

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Capacity to Try and Emotional Health

The capacity to try is an interesting measure of ability for hard work and therefore success. It is also very much tied into emotional health. Capacity is the product of the right environmental foundation and the right development, even as a muscle in the human body is developed. Ultimately it is having a heart of sonship.

I worked with Joe in prayer ministry. He owned a small painting business. He had good current accounts and new ones calling him, yet he found it difficult to get motivated and seize the day. Things fell through the cracks and his family suffered financially. He was so tired of the self-condemnation. He’d tried everything and felt hopeless.Capacity to Try and Emotional Health

In his book, Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell states that, “Working hard is what successful people do.” Then he presents an interesting study: “Alan Schoenfeld, a math professor at Berkeley, studied average students working through math problems. One student endured twenty-two minutes on a problem and finally found her misconception and solved it. Most students studied asked for the answer after just a few failed attempts. The average student concludes it is too hard to ever solve at the two-minute mark.” (italics mine)

Capacity to try applies to learning all skills. Recently I’ve been into cycling with a group. Some days I can stay with the front of the pack. Yesterday I had trouble staying up with the back of the pack. Do I get discouraged, do I keep practicing?  How long will it take to build up my legs and endurance? In learning Spanish on the mission field, I met missionaries who never grew beyond asking where the bathroom was. They felt foolish speaking incorrectly in front of the locals. Of course, not being willing to make a mistake shuts down all learning. This is true with  growing in emotional health. It too, has a learning curve and requires persistence.

Capacity to Try and Emotional HealthHow long can I go before giving up? “Success is a function of persistence and doggedness and the willingness to work hard for twenty-two minutes to make sense of something that most people would give up on after thirty seconds. Testing how hard someone is willing to work reveals their capacity at success.” Gladwell (2008)

One of the ways exercise intensity is measured is through heart rate. Willingness to try is an interesting measure of emotional health and capacity for forward movement.

As I worked with Joe, he got in touch with an ambivalence his mother often expressed toward him. It was hard and painful to acknowledge this. But as he worked through it he was able to let go of lies that he lacked value and was powerless. He saw his mom had her own pain and that her ambivalence was not about him.

Many of us struggle with deep-rooted lies of powerlessness from where abuse objectified us repeatedly. The capacity to try comes from having lived in a safe environment where parents were loving, kind, patient, available, and encouraging. A place where it was okay to make a mistake, okay not to know something. There was an atmosphere void of absolute thinking, critical comments, and bigotry. In this environment, the child is supported in his efforts, learns from his failures and experiences the payoff from his work thus developing his “try” muscle. If this is not our foundation, we have to resolve any pain remaining from that lack and build it into our lives by knowing that our Heavenly Father is patient, kind, and enduring with us.

Understanding that the foundation of “willingness to try” is based in the Father’s love gives us a map for success rather than a bullet-point formula.

Gladwell, M. (2008). Outliers. NY: Back Bay Books

Thriving in the End-Times Through Surrender

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1 John 4:17 — Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as He is, so are we in this world.

God has a place of abiding for you wherein you will have boldness even in the day of judgment. The Apostle Paul walked here. You too, can have peace in the midst of anything that might ever happen.

surrenderNo Fear

We live in days that are scary to many people. We seek to alleviate our fears in many ways such as:

  • Overly focusing on the news of distressing world events.
  • Sports addiction.
  • Food addiction.
  • Posting on Facebook.
  • Even Biblical prophecy.

This was even true in 1700 when Madame Guyon wrote her autobiography:

“The revelations of things to come are also very dangerous. The Devil can counterfeit them. Frequently they raise false ideas, vain hopes, and frivolous expectations. They take up the mind with future events, hinder it from dying to self, and prevent it following Jesus Christ.”

The key to thriving in the end times is dying to self in order that God possess ever more of our hearts. 

A daily “Practicing His Presence” whereby He is ever more gaining first place in our hearts is our only comfort and sustenance.

Consider Paul, he didn’t fear what would happen in the end. He knew what awaited him in Jerusalem and went anyway. Paul walked in a deep surrender. He could abound or be abased, his contentment came from God’s presence.

Practicing His Presence

Practicing God’s presence will always involve surrender. The surrender fuels it. We embrace the cross daily to follow Him.

Matthew 16:24 —Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone desires to come after Me,                      let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.

How Do You Grow in Surrender?

You’ll never willingly go to prison for God if you can’t praise Him when little things don’t go your way. This can be challenging. Consider these questions:

Can I stay focused and submitted to God’s presence…

  • When my flight is delayed?
  • When finances are insufficient?
  • When my spouse is in a bad mood?
  • When people speak ill of me but I’ve done nothing to them?

Surrendering in little daily ways, staying focused on praise and thanksgiving even when everything goes wrong, brings growth. God’s presence becomes an ever increasing reality in our lives. Our surrender and obedience grow deeper.

The Fatherless Curse

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sonshipLast week we saw a heart of sonship releases to us a continual abiding in the Father’s love, an experience of being placed in His presence. (Romans 8:15)

When we have not had this experience or the struggles with having the heart of a spiritual orphan cause us to lose this experience, we battle the curse of fatherlessness.

Without Sonship There’s a Curse

Mal.4:5, 6 — Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.  And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, And the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the earth with a curse.

This curse is over every nation, it’s the curse of fatherlessness. The world is full of rebels, people using other people to get what they want. People who cannot submit. Even Christians that become angry when God does not meet their expectations.

The Rat Race

“A rat race is an endless, self-defeating, or pointless pursuit. It conjures up the image of lab rats racing through a maze to get the ‘cheese’ much like society racing to get ahead financially.” — Wikipedia

Countless people in business have sacrificed their relationships with their families to “get ahead,” to be a success. People in ministry often struggle with this even more. Bible schools in many places actually teach that we need to be willing to sacrifice our families for the sake of the Gospel. Our children then grow up and often want nothing to do with God because of what they’ve experienced in an absentee father who gave it all for the ministry.

Our identity gets tied up in doing whatever it takes to be successful. We are in the Rat Race. However, if you win the Rat Race, that makes you the number 1 Rat! You end up old and lonely. Is that what we really want?

The orphan spirit is often a man with a hurt little boy on the inside of him, angry at never being fathered (never being made to feel safe, loved, and accepted).

The orphan heart means you feel like you don’t belong – at work, school, the church you attend. It continuously pushes you into striving to attain, to be something, to feel okay about yourself.

God wants you to feel “at home” in love where you have a sense of, “I’m valued, I belong, I’m accepted.” Not many have come into this deep of a rest. It starts with receiving the Father’s love and it continues by receiving and embracing a heart of sonship.

The Sonship Heart

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leader follower childLast week we saw that many people have had an experience in the Father’s love but have struggled
to abide there continuously.

Embracing a heart of Sonship is the primary key to this abiding.

Malachi Captures It

Mal.4:5, 6 — Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.  And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, And the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the earth with a curse.

Why will Elijah be sent? Because he was a Fathering Leader. When Elijah was taken up Elisha cried out, “My father, my father.” (2 Ki.2:12)

Elisha Sonship

Consider the heart of sonship Elisha exhibited. He followed Elijah no matter what:

  • Even when he didn’t understand.
  • Even when his spiritual father seemingly rejected him telling him to stop following him.
  • Even when others mocked.

Are you learning to follow God even when life turns in directions you never expected? What about in the dry times, when it seems like God is not there? As we learn to abide faithful in these times, it is a sign our hearts are embracing sonship.

Elisha had a sonship heart that could trust – and so he received Elijah’s mantle of authority, his inheritance.

No fathers = no inheritance! Orphans don’t get an inheritance. Sons receive the inheritance of being placed in the Father’s presence.

“For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption (in Greek, it means “placed in the Father’s presence”) as sons by which we cry out, ‘Abba! Father!’”  (Romans 8:15)

A fathering spirit is being released on the earth in these last days restoring the hearts of the fathers to the children and children to fathers.

Malachi 4:5, 6 concludes by saying that without sonship there is a curse. Next time we’ll consider how that hinders us.

 

Why People Struggle Abiding in God’s Love

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StruggleSome people struggle to find an experience of being loved by God. Others do experience God’s love but can’t seem to maintain it. Fears, worries, and anxieties quickly return.

Many times the problem is a sonship issue, a struggle with having the spirit of a spiritual orphan.

So first, let me define what I mean by an “experience” in God’s love.

Finding the Father’s Love – Feeling At Home in Love

The first time I was around my wife Cyndi (at that time my girlfriend) and her parents I was shocked. Nobody was afraid. Cyndi was very clearly not afraid of her dad. She seemed relaxed, talking, sharing, laughing. She was “at home” in her earthly father’s love. I was still learning to have an experience like this.

Are you “at home” in God’s love?

  • A place you feel so loved, so safe, so accepted and valued.
  • A sense you belong.
  • No feeling that you have to do good enough.
  • No sense that others are on the inside, accepted, but you’re on the outside.
  • No sense you might accidentally say the wrong thing and get “the look” of irritation that communicates you do not measure up.

There came a point in my Christian life where I experienced God’s love. If your struggling with this, get this series on the Father’s Love and it will help.

After awhile, I discovered, I struggled to maintain God’s love. The fears came back.

The Orphan Spirit

I remember being on a ministry trip to Tampa, Florida with Jack Frost of Shiloh Place. It was a conference on the Father’s love. Yet I was having a panic attack. My mind started racing with all the problems I saw in my life that seemingly had no solutions. My heart was beating harder, my breathing became shallow, I felt adrenaline and knots in my stomach.

When I saw clouds in my life and everything wasn’t going my way, I would panic; fear would return and I would struggle to trust my Father’s love. Orphan thinking would pull me from being “at home” in His love.

Some people study all the books and CDs on the Father’s love. They come to the conferences, receive prayers – but just can’t get the Father’s love. They continue to live life as if they didn’t have a home.

The Stronghold: knowing how to have the heart of a son.

The Answer: needing sonship introduced to the heart.

Malachi Captures It

Malachi 4:5, 6 Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. 6  And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, And the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the earth with a curse.

As you begin to embrace a spirit on sonship in your heart you begin to live more continuously in the Father’s love. In the next post we will consider these verses in Malachi more closely.

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