Fathering Leadership

Overcoming Loss and Grief Impacts Your Experience in Father’s Love

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Cooperating with God in overcoming loss and grief has significant impact on your daily Christian life. This could be any type of loss or grief — death, job change, moving, etc. Therefore, I want to consider how grief can trap us and how to find some steps to healing.

Overcoming Loss and GriefDarkness

Have you felt the weight and darkness of loss? Most of us have at some level. It can feel very powerless and hopeless.

Some people even sink into an experience called Complicated Grief, meaning they get stuck in grief rather than moving through the grief process into freedom. The enemy would like nothing better than to trap you there.

Finding victory in overcoming loss and grief produces deep faith and increased compassion flowing out of your life. So first, let me share some of my story with you for a picture of the process.

No Father

In many ways I grew up fatherless. Although I did have a father, the contact I experienced often contained abuse.

As a result, I remember feeling completely overwhelmed by the world at the age of 21. I was delivering pizza for Domino’s, taking drugs, and living utterly directionless. I had no clue how to negotiate the adult world or what made life “work.”

Life becomes painful when hurtful things occur and “you don’t know what you don’t know.” Many questions enter into your mind:

  • “How come other people seem to find success in life and I don’t?”
  • “Why do I unwittingly say things that draw rejection from others?”
  • “Why do my feelings get hurt so easily?”

These statements and other powerless feelings expressed the loss of fathering in my life. I lived in this for a long time.

Then, a father figure did come along in my mid 20s who really began helping me. However, he passed away of cancer a few short years later. This added to my sense of loss.

Finally, after a few more years, God sent a spiritual father into my life that had a huge impact on my healing and growth. I received from him for about 7 years. However, he also passed away of cancer. 

Finding My Freedom

These losses seemed to dominate and overwhelm me at times. I’d even had the thought, “It’s dangerous for a person to father me.” Consequently, taking some steps to process grief began to release freedom into my life.

  • First, I learned to process my feelings of abandonment and anger that resulted from loss.
  • Furthermore, I learned to discover and renounce lies I had believed about God’s nature and character.
  • Paradoxically, I found that God’s presence had never left me and now led me forward into new things.

Let’s consider how you might take some steps also.

There are 2 crucial steps for overcoming loss and grief. 1) Recognizing and working through your feelings. 2) Working to embrace God’s character as good.

Work Through Your Feelings

First, understand that everyone deals with the grief process when experiencing loss. This process gives you the path to freedom as long as you don’t get stuck there.

I’ve ministered in Prayer Ministry to many people struggling with grief. Ultimately it comes down to a feeling of abandonment by God. Abandonment expresses itself in statements like,

  • “God doesn’t care about me.”
  • “Why didn’t He protect me.”
  • “God does hurtful and mean things to people.”

Intellectually, we know that these statements lie to us about God’s character. The Word states that God never leaves us nor forsakes us. He only, ever thinks good thoughts about us and not evil thoughts, because He always desires to give us hope and a future. (Heb.13:5, Jer.29:11)

However, intellectual truth rarely sets the heart free.

On the other hand, when you reach the place of facing your feelings and acknowledging them to God you take a huge step. Then, if you will ask God about these thoughts with a truly open heart, He will speak. “God, it feels like you abandoned me. Are you a God who abandons His children? Please speak to my heart about this.” 

Embracing God as Good

Finally, there’s a choice. Will you choose to embrace and pray, “God I don’t understand everything that has happened, but I choose to believe in Your goodness and that you always have my very best in mind”?

Consider this quote from Jason Clark, “God is love, His love is always good, and we exist to grow sure of this.” Freedom requires taking the step of faith to believe God is good even when there are many things you don’t understand. 

If you struggle with overcoming loss and grief, negative thoughts about God, and anger, please don’t battle this alone. Join a grief group or get some grief counseling. If you have some questions or desire ministry from us, drop us a line.

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.

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.

_______________________

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

6 Prefrontal Cortex Benefits on Emotional Health

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prefrontal cortexNeurobiology is finding solid science behind many Biblical principles. Comparing neurobiology with Biblical principles deepens your understanding of them and enhances your ability to apply these principles for spiritual health and healing.  

Healthy Prefrontal Cortex

Neurobiology has leapt forward in recent years. Science shows the prefrontal cortex is responsible for things like:

  1. Attunement: Enables us to tune into others, really hear them and connect.
  2. Emotional balance: Permits the lower limbic regions to become aroused enough so life has meaning, but not too aroused that we become flooded.
  3. Response flexibility: The capacity to pause before acting and inhibit.
  4. Empathy: Considering the mental perspective of another person.
  5. Insight: Self-knowing awareness.
  6. Fear extinction: GABA fibers (an inhibitory neurotransmitter) project down to the amygdala and enable fearful responses to be calmed.

(Siegel)

Biblically Speaking

As you read through this list above you get a good summation of emotional health.

  • Tuning into others.
  • Having empathy.
  • Insight.

These are key to expressing fruits of the Spirit such as love, kindness, goodness, and gentleness. (Galatians 5:22, 23)

Other prefrontal cortex functions mentioned: Response Flexibility and Fear Extinction. As our hearts embrace the Biblical truths of self-control and walking free from lust of the flesh and the pride of life we can see that physically in the brain, neural connections are made. (1 John 2:15-17)

Developing Your Prefrontal Cortex

Family – If you grow up in a family that is Biblical based, many of these things will normally be developed in your heart and in your brain. This occurs from repeated experiences of expressed love. It happens naturally as a mom and dad repeatedly model morality and godliness.

Church – Our experiences in church and personal devotions also help develop these traits of health. Examples such as when you hear good teaching that instructs and moves your heart toward love, or times of worship where God’s goodness convicts of sin and calls us to a higher place.

Prayer Ministry – When you have many unhealed experiences from not growing up in a Biblically based family your heart needs healing and your prefrontal cortex needs further development. Discovery Prayer Ministry accomplishes this well.  

As you learn how healing works and the steps to take, you will feel empowered and break free of any hopelessness and powerlessness you may be living in.

Dealing With The Anger Stronghold

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Have you ever prayed forgiveness repeatedly only to find you still harbored anger toward the person?

There is a prayer ministry tool for dealing with the anger stronghold that is very effective.

Freedom from hopelessness, from feeling stuck and powerless, and even from feeling unworthy is very available. Jesus provided all we need upon the cross.

When you feel clean and confident, that God is with you, you can accomplish wonderful things in life.

There is one main stronghold that can block this growth. Have you guessed it? Anger. Anger shuts healing down. Many people aren’t fully aware they even battle this.

Prayer Ministry

I have done 1000s of hours of prayer ministry with people for every kind of hurt imaginable, even deep abuses that brought patterns of feeling powerless and worthless. If a person can be open to consider their pain, there is always a way forward and freedom can be found. However, the one thing that closes the door for people and traps them in their pain is anger.

Angerthe anger stronghold

The most debilitating form of anger is anger toward God. This is the hardest form of anger to overcome. I have seen people get past this, but I’ve also seen a number of people not resolve it. They have a mindset that keeps them stuck.

This mindset locks in on the idea that they have gotten a raw deal in life. They believe they have suffered certain things that have had far reaching consequences and feel it just isn’t fair.

I totally understand this and acknowledge there are no easy answers.

I, myself, grew up in an alcoholic home and in domestic violence. This type of childhood hindered development of my social skills, educational growth, and even simply feeling safe in the world. The road has been long to work through this. There are no easy answers, but there is a key.

Faith in the Father’s Love

First of all, the Bible is clear that God is love. He never thinks a negative thought toward you. He loves you with an everlasting love. He is patient and kind. He has always loved you and has always had your best interest in mind. (1 Jn. 4:16; Jer. 31:3; Jer. 29:11)

Yet, looking at certain things people have suffered, that others have not, makes these truths about God seem false. Unfortunately, as long as you cling to these beliefs, there is no way forward. No one will be able to stand before the Lord and accuse Him.

So here’s the key – it boils down to a step of faith and a choice to let go of the anger. Consider saying this prayer: “God, I don’t understand how or why these painful events have happened to me. It seems like You didn’t protect me or even cared. Yet I know that’s not true even though I don’t understand how these two, seemingly opposing things, can coexist. God, I choose to lay aside my anger and trust You. I choose to believe You are loving and I lay aside my demand for You to explain things to me. I trust You to show me what I need to know when the time is right.”

When you can pray this prayer, it opens the door to healing and unlocks amazing forward movement. And as you take this step you will eventually come to see that God does work all things for good and does restore the years the cankerworm has eaten. (Rom. 8:28 ; Joel 2:25)

How to Build the Conditions for Healing to Overcome Depression

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Robin Williams suicide has again brought the issue of depression to the forefront.

Depression is not the easiest thing to overcome, it typically takes a number of steps. The important first step is to realize that there are steps we can take and to not take on victim thinking concerning this problem.

Victim ThinkingSad Teenage Girl

If we aren’t careful we can take on a victim mentality when it comes to healing depression. This means thinking, “Mental illness is just too difficult. Unless God supernaturally heals the person there’s no hope.”

There’s a lot of focus these days on people not understanding mental illness. This came out a lot when Rick Warren’s son committed suicide. “Don’t judge” became a marker of proper Christian compassion.

Of course, it is true, we should not judge. I haven’t walked in Rick Warren’s shoes nor in the place his son walked. Mental illness often does involves actual organic issues, physical chemical imbalances in the brain. Yes, this does need physical healing. However, we can’t stop there or we may move into a victim posture.

Many times, when the conditions of healing are present, physical healing happens.

The Conditions for Healing to Overcome Depression

Depression always involves negative thinking. Some have described it as anger turned inward. The condition for healing is resolving this negative thinking.

Why do people have negative thinking, self-anger, and feelings of hopelessness?

People have these things because of unresolved emotional issues in their lives, usually things from their past they haven’t dealt with that have been avoided and pushed down. Unfortunately the church so often takes a deliverance only approach toward healing, meaning that we seek to cast something out – anger, rejection, hopelessness, etc. – or pray something in – physical healing. This is, of course, good in as far as it goes. But the Bible is clear that God also wants us to deal with our heart issues.

Luke 6:45  – A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.

Proverbs 4:23 – Keep your heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.

If someone hurts you emotionally, there’s a biblical way to deal with it. If you fail at something and experience loss and disappointment, there’s a biblical way to deal with it.

I’m not referring to denying our emotions or casting something out. I’m talking about coming to terms with something hurtful that has happened. This means knowing that God is good and that He loves you regardless of what has happened to you. If recurring negative thoughts persist, it indicates this is still being worked out in your heart.

Ideally this “coming to terms” should happen naturally in healthy Christian families. Hurtful events are discussed, love is affirmed, loss is processed, and your worth is validated. However, if we didn’t grow up in this type of family, these skills still should be learned.

Fruit and Root

The key to helping those with depression is to get to the root of the problem through prayer ministry and not just focus on casting out the fruit.

If you have a lifetime of unresolved issues it’s going to manifest somehow. (If a car is consistently given unclean gasoline it’s going to sputter.) These issues could manifest in ways such as depression, addiction, fears and phobias, etc.

God wants to move in His power and supernaturally touch us, and He also wants us to mature and deal with our heart issues and not allow them to fester.

Will dealing with unresolved issues always heal depression? Probably not. But it will sure help much of the time.

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Your Emotional Health Determines Your Growth

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Abiding in the Vine Produces the Fruit of the Spirit (growth).

It takes emotional health to consistently abide in the vine.

In the Body of Christ, it’s common to consider “Abiding in the Vine” in order to be fruitful. What is less common, however, is a detailed description of what that looks like and how to get there.

Obviously spending time with God and loving your neighbor as yourself sums things up well. Yet, what if you are having trouble spending time with God and loving your neighbor because of unresolved issues in your heart?

Picture beautiful juicy fruit coming to ripeness on the vine in the gentle spring sunshine. Emotional health is this gentle spring sunshine that empowers you to love God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself.

The concept of emotional intelligence will help give you the definition you need to blossom forth into greater fruitfulness.

Prayer Ministry ToolEmotional Intelligence

Emotional Intelligence refers to a place of awareness of your emotions as they occur. This awareness enables you to treat yourself with care and respect and  empowers you to live intentionally. This is also a place of perceiving other people’s emotions as they occur, so as to respond in helpful and loving ways.

“Self-management is your ability to use awareness of your emotions to actively choose what you say and do.” Emotional Intelligence 2.0

Emotional Intelligence (EQ) is becoming huge in the corporate world. Business people in Fortune 500 companies are paying $4000 to $6000 for a two-day training program. Why? Businesses realize that everything from individual job performance and initiative, to managers that can motivate and lead from a respect base all work from good EQ.

In the Body of Christ we have better tools than the world for helping people develop their EQ or better yet, their ability to walk in the Fruit of the Spirit in every area of life.

Prayer Ministry Tool

Our emotions are part of our design.

God gave us our emotions as a barometer. They show us fluctuations in our “emotional weather.” We have too often had over-balanced teaching about denying our emotions and acting in faith. While there clearly is a place for that, there is also a place of acknowledging emotions to see what is going on in our hearts. For example, if I cannot acknowledge that a person made me angry, how can I bring the anger to God and deal with it?

I either have peace in a given relationship with others, myself, and God – or I do not. I can either look at some painful event that occurred with total peace – or not.

If not, I need to find out why. Prayer Ministry is a tool to accomplish this. With the Cross, the Blood, and the Name of Jesus, we can take things so much further than the business world working with emotional intelligence exercises alone.

At Fountains of Life we use Discovery Prayer Ministry. We do not try to fix people, or even try to figure out their problems. We simply seek to facilitate people moving into their God-given design. Most people really do know what they feel when given a little support and encouragement. This empowers them. In this way we are not in a position of trying to be a savior, and they are no longer victims needing something to come from the outside to fix or rescue them.

As I minister to people day by day, I see them learning to love well. If you want to go deeper in loving God and others, contact us today. We would love to see you abiding in the vine and producing much fruit for God’s kingdom.

Fathers Love Coming Home Exercise

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Fathers Love Coming Home 

“If you’re not at home in love you’re going to need drugs, or alcohol, or porn or food…” – Jack & Trisha Frost.

Fathers love coming home

In Father’s love circles we talk about being “at home in love“. It’s a place of feeling:

  • Connected to God’s love that casts out all your fears.
  • Safe and valued.
  • A heart response back to God that cries out, “Abba Father!”

We all feel our heart drift away from the Fathers love sometimes. We are triggered for some reason and we need to find our way back home.

This is a great concept that really hits home where we live, however, how do we work it out? In today’s post I will show you a very useful prayer ministry tool for coming home to the Father’s love.

 

Triggers

 

Step 1– Identify a negative experience you have had recently (please take a moment and do this).

Here’s an example, I’m driving along and a person zooms around me just in time to stop at a red light. However, I was going to turn right. I now have to wait for the light to change because “speedracer” felt the need to zip in front of me and stop. This event brings negative feelings to me. I feel angry, slighted, not considered.

 

What Do I Want Instead?

Step 2– In the negative situation you identified, what would you have wanted to happen instead?

I would have wanted to be more considered by that other driver. This question roots out my wrong belief. So in my case, I don’t fully believe I’m loved just for who I am, a son of God, made in His image. I believe I have to be considered by others to be loved and have worth.

 

I believe I am worthwhile if…?

Step 3– Identify your belief by adding what you wanted instead of what happened to the sentence stem: “I believe I am worthwhile if…”

In my case this is, “I believe I am worthwhile if I am considered.” As I do this exercise, I realize that when I have negative feelings it is because of an underlying shame belief. A belief that tears down who I am as a person, as a child of God.

 

Receive God’s Truth

The final step is to simply receive God’s truth in the place of the lie I have discovered. Truth — I have value simply because I am Fathers Love Coming Homea child of God. My worth does not depend on other people properly considering me. What is God’s truth in your case? Ask Him for it.

Drifting away from being at home in the Father’s love is something we all experience from time to time. This is a good tool to help you “come home.”

PS. – There are times we are triggered beyond what an exercise can address. At these times we need to take the step of getting some prayer ministry. If this is your case, contact us at info@fountainsoflife.org  This exercise is based off of Tony D’Souza’s Discovering Awareness series.

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Fathers Love Based Emotional Health Prayer Ministry

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Fathers Love Based Emotional Health Prayer Ministry is Key to Making Everything Else in Your Life Work

Emotional Health brings:

  • Personal growth in being grounded, overcoming issues, and reaching goals.Fathers Love Based Emotional Health Prayer Ministry

  • Social ease in relationships.

  • Good people skills which are key to all leadership growth.

Fathers love based emotional health prayer ministry gives a set of principles that reveal a road map to emotional health.

Let’s Consider Where a Fathers Love Based Emotional Health Comes From

The Problem – Amorphous Skill Sets

It often seemed that other people just somehow had emotional health and I didn’t, with no clue as to why.

When I did try examine how to have emotional health, I didn’t have any idea where to start looking. I ended up with pieces of skills — like the boundaries concept for example, or trying not to be codependent — but it took many years to have a complete “roadmap” to health.

For many years I saw people who naturally faced life more at rest than me and flowed better with relationships.

I noticed that if they faced a large school project or a job change issue, they faced it with composure and practical steps. They seemed to be relaxed in social situations and even if someone was a bit inappropriate, they didn’t take it personally. Emotionally they were stable and secure.

It was mysterious to me how they could do these things and it gave me an inferior feeling toward these “successful” people.

Emotional Health is Modeled or Learned

Modeled

Some people grow up in good homes. Mom and dad:

  • Attuned to the hearts of the children.
  • Spent quality time.
  • Set healthy limits in respectful ways with them.

These children develop:

  • A sense of identity.
  • Security.
  • Problem solving skills.
  • Empathy for others that directs them away from hurtful actions like gossip, “one-upping” in conversations, hurtful remarks, or having a victim mentality.

Learned

Unfortunately many of us did not grow up in this type of a healthy home. Living this way causes a sense of mystery to surround healthy life skills; and when this is the case, you have to dig in and learn these things somehow — either on your own or from a mentor.

So I’d like to point you to a terrific resource to help you discover and develop a Fathers Love Based Emotional Health. I have written an ebook on this subject.

Through years of doing Prayer Ministry to help people finding a Fathers love based emotional health, I have gleaned many valuable insights.

Applying these insights have helped people make progress in their personal growth, have more social ease with their relationships, and improve their people skills and communication.

I wrote this ebook to put these tool into more people’s hands. I know this book will bless your life and enhance your growth.

 

FamilyModel.jpg

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Connection Versus Authoritarianism for Prayer Ministry

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Connection Versus Authoritarianism for Prayer Ministry

Living connected to healthy relationships brings freedom from counterfeit affections and wonderful personal growth to our lives. Working out heart connection versus authoritarianism for prayer ministry brings freedom.

Counterfeit Affections

Connection Versus Authoritarianism for Prayer Ministry

Addictions specialist Craig Nakken states, “The process of recovery from addiction is found in the renewal of the self; in forming and focusing on a caring, meaningful relationship with the self, and others.” This is key to freedom from food, drugs and every other addiction. God created us for vital connection. When our hearts are closed off to connections, we feel lonely and seek false comforts.

Personal Growth

Connected relationship means we are holding our hearts open to family and friends. This takes vulnerability. Without walls for protection, our hearts are more vulnerable to hurt. Yet walls always block out both the bad and the good. We cannot selectively allow ourselves to feel some emotions and not others. For example, we cannot choose to let in love and joy, but block out the more vulnerable feelings of fear and loneliness. When we close our hearts to the negative emotions, we also (perhaps unknowingly) prevent fully experiencing the positive ones.

The heart of the message of the Father’s love is to hold our hearts open – this means we being open to all emotions. When this happens, relationships express compassion and empathy back and forth as well as dialoguing through problems for growth. Growth is completely impossible without the vulnerability to be open to dialogue. When we feel too vulnerable, we resort to authoritarianism.

Authoritarianism

Authoritarianism is the opposite of connecting relationship. It is about black and white thinking, absolutes, and forming judgments. It is basically legalism. We all struggle with this at some level. It is what we do to protect our hearts when we don’t feel safe. Practically speaking, this is communicated by cutting remarks toward our spouses and judgmental statements, parenting based on rules more than relationship, and finding fault with everything and everybody.

To the degree we treat others this way reveals the degree we feel God treats us this way and how we treat ourselves. Read that sentence again; it is very important to grasp this concept.

We all are looking for connection and meaningful relationships, but to have them we must put our walls down. And if we can recognize these legalistic areas in our lives where our hearts lose connection, we can take the steps to be free from them and live with open hearts, no longer drawn to counterfeit affections.

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