Fathering Leadership

We Need Intimacy With God and People Like We Need Water

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We Need Intimacy With God and People Like We Need Water. This is the only environment where your heart can be healthy and you can grow into Christian maturity.

Understanding how to walk out intimacy in relationships is a huge key to growing in the Fathers love and to all growth and freedom from counterfeit affections.

Roger felt like he just couldn’t connect to a sense of God’s presence and His love. He said it feels just like it did so often growing up. His mom would be yelling and critical and unwilling to listen to what he was trying to say. Roger fought regular feelings of loneliness and discouragement.

Intimacy With God and PeopleA key for Roger was understanding that we are created for love. We need love and intimacy in our relationships the same way that we need water to drink or air to breathe. It is vital to our health.

Growing up in a shame-based family means growing up under the microscope of judgment. Any mistake could get you “the look” that communicates something is wrong with you. This teaches us to keep a wall around our heart all the time. We end up with an “us versus them” mentality and walk around with an “angry edge.”

The key to growing in emotional health is the ability to hold our heart open in day-to-day life. This will evidence in intimate relationships with people in our families and communities. We will be able to be vulnerable with each other, gracious, flexible and compassionate.

Without healthy intimate relationships in our lives we will turn to counterfeit affections – “things” to find intimacy with. This could be a relationship with food, drugs and alcohol, Intimacy With God and Peoplespending, or even workaholism. It can even be hyper-religious activity. Because we were made for intimacy, our heart will seek that connection of comfort somewhere.

So many families, even longtime Christian families, communicate only on the level of “news sports and weather.” There really is no heart-to-heart sharing of dreams, challenges, and vulnerabilities. This can take a number of different expressions. It can be sarcasm, joking, or mocking others. It can be postulating or stating certain absolutes that I accept or don’t accept in an attempt to protect myself. There’s often fight or flight, silence or violence, derogatory remarks, demeaning statements, bigoted or critical remarks, or the silent treatment – “no go” areas of things that I’m not willing to discuss.

Intimacy With God and PeopleI worked with Roger to find forgiveness and even compassion toward his mom. He was able to accept the fact that she did the best she could, that she was on her own path to healing. This included God speaking to his heart there was never anything wrong with him and that God had never abandoned him. This freed Roger to build a more intimate relationship with God, his family and others.

So this is a step beyond just dealing with our hurtful experiences. This is the active building of intimate relationships with family and the people God places in our path. This is moving forward in our maturity. Building and walking in healthy, intimate relationships brings fulfillment to our hearts.

How to Be Teachable and Build With Life Skills Through Prayer Ministry

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How to Be Teachable and Build With Life Skills Through Prayer Ministry. This gives you the tools to overcome feelings of worthlessness and powerlessness.

I worked in prayer ministry with Barbara who had been in two abusive marriages. She was very frustrated that, “God didn’t protect her.” She had feelings of helplessness: “Why didn’t I see the red flags, especially the second time?” She had experienced much loss in terms of the pain she went through and even more so in what it put her children through. The powerlessness was because Barbara didn’t know what she didn’t know.

Principle of MHow to Be Teachable and Build With Life Skills Through Prayer Ministryeekness
Consider meekness. In John 6, Jesus gave a hard teaching and many turned away; but Peter said, “To whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” Galatians 6 (Amp) says, “If a person is in misconduct, restore him in a spirit of meekness, considering yourself.” In Hebrews 12:5-8, there is the picture of a son receiving instruction and correction from a father. Meekness means a teachable heart.

It may seem odd to view Barbara’s issue in this light, until we look a little closer.

Principle of Independence
Independence is an opposite of meekness. It can often be expressed as a victim mentality. Here lived the children of Israel in the wilderness. “Moses brought us out here to kill us.” They were expressing their feelings of powerlessness and helplessness and a belief that God had abandoned them even after all the miracles God had done in their behalf. Believing you are abandoned is a shame belief. Shame results from feeling either abandoned or flawed. I used to view shame as something someone either had or they didn’t. I didn’t see it as more of a continuum that ideally is diminishing as we mature in the Lord. In other words, we all have areas where we struggle with feelings of worthlessness or powerlessness.

Shame Pool
We all have a ‘shame pool’ at some level. It causes us to focus on others rather than take personal responsibility; not embracing the idea people can only make us mad if we let them. It causes us to draw wrong conclusions like, “I’m cursed,” or “God’s angry with me,” or “God doesn’t protect me,” or “nothing ever works out for me.”

Consider this picture: Joey comes home deflated from being made fun of in gym class. He was “terrible at basketball.” Joey had no fear of telling his father of his troubles because his dad was safe and not critical. Dad helps him to see that there’s nothing wrong with him, he simply lacked skills. This communicates his problem is solvable; he’s not helpless or without power to change this How to Be Teachable and Build With Life Skills Through Prayer Ministrysituation. Dad also begins practicing with him to help improve his skill level. These experiences teach Joey that it is okay to be vulnerable and to talk out his problems. That someone will be there with emotional and even material or physical support. This leads to Joey growing up to have a deep faith in God and an ability to walk in community with others. He’s an overcomer because he has learned the skills to be a champion problem-solver.

Barbara’s family never dialogued through any issues. There would be yelling, critical comments or the silent treatment when issues arose. This would last for a couple days and then magically disappear. It was never clear how or even if resolution occurred, leaving her feeling somewhat powerless to do or say anything about the problem and living in the “unknown.”

Barbara was able to see the missing skills in her family and come to terms with it, embracing that her parents were not able to give her what had never been given to them. This broke off feelings that God had abandoned her. Seeing the missing skills gave her the ability to now learn them. Now she walks in healthy relationships, well able to see both red flags and good relational skills in others.

Prayer Ministry Leads to Life Skills

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Prayer Ministry Leads to Life Skills

The person who can speak up about issues, yet in a respectful way, has the life skills to go to the top. Among the prayer ministry appointments I do in any given week, there are always some on having a voice versus feeling powerless.

I recently worked in prayer ministry with a college student whose professor was clearly being unfair but he was afraid to go and talk to him. That’s a form of powerlessness.

Another person, Mary (not her real name), went on about how her husband was sarcastic with the kids and not valuing her viewpoint. She felt he took more of a demeaning, punishing approach to discipline than a valuing boundaries approach. Mary felt there was no way she could confront her husband about this, that he would never receive it and would become very defensive.

Prayer Ministry Leads to Life SkillsI, myself, can look back to when a key leader in my life had promised me promotion. It never happened and I never said anything. This cost me. I felt powerless, even selfish. In those days it wasn’t clear to me what the right skills were to talk about a problem like this and I didn’t know how to deal with the issues in my heart toward speaking up properly.

I worked with Mary to discover a number of “powerless” lies she had believed. She loved her dad growing up but there were times he would get angry and she would feel powerless and unprotected. As Mary heard God say that He was with her in those times, that her dad had his own struggles he was dealing with and that his anger was not really about her, she felt freedom.

The next step would be considering what skills Mary would be needing in talking with her husband The skill of standing up for herself yet without demeaning him or backing him into a corner is the most important one. After the prayer ministry we did she felt empowered to take these steps with her husband. Mary reported back that they ended up having a great discussion as she realized his heart was to help his kids move forward and be men. His approach to discipline needed some adjustment, but his intentions were much better than she had imagined.

Most all of us need voice lessons. The ability to bring up issues in respectful ways is one of the primary life skills for growing into all God has for us, yet one of the more difficult ones. There are men who have never had that tough conversation with their bosses, or wives who have allowed their husbands to run roughshod over them for years. There are Christians who have wonderful spiritual gifts but they never step forward to let others know and so they never serve in a meaningful way in their churches or communities. God has so much more.

The quotes below are from Emotional Intelligence in Couples Therapy. This book talks about numerous long term studies done in Prayer Ministry Leads to Life Skillshaving a voice in life’s relationships.

“New studies in relationship science have identified with a high degree of precision what people who succeed in their relationships do differently than those who fail.”

“All people in lasting intimate relationships feel misunderstood or mistreated at one time or another. At these times, some people respond in ways that make it likely that their partners will treat them better in the future, and some people respond in ways that dramatically increase the odds that they will be even more misunderstood or mistreated.”

“If people want their spouses to treat them better, they need to think and act like people who usually get treated well by their partners. There are specific skills and attitudes involved in knowing how to bring out the best in others, and there is evidence that people who know how to do this are more successful not only in their marriages, but in most areas of their lives.”

Atkinson, Brent. Emotional Intelligence in Couples Therapy. New York: WW Norton & Company, 2005.

Enhancing Deliverance by Examining the Compassion Root

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Enhancing Deliverance by Examining the Compassion Root. Trying to do deliverance without first resolving the underlying painful event never really works.

Prayer ministry is key to making peace with what happened thereby enhancing deliverance.

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.

Deliverance by Examining the Compassion RootMelanie 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.

Deliverance by Examining the Compassion RootMelanie 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.

Sonship Life Skills Give Hope for Change

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Sonship Life Skills Give Hope for Change

Sonship Life Skills Give Hope for ChangeHas 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.

Synthesis for Assimilation of Sonship Life Skills

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Synthesis for Assimilation of Sonship Life Skills

What does it mean to really learn something to the point of being able to apply the new skill? When I learned Spanish,Synthesis for Assimilation of Sonship Life Skillsthere 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

Commando System Cleaner Prayer Ministry

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Commando System Cleaner Prayer Ministry. Just as a computer system can be cleaned and optimized, so can your soul.

Prayer Ministry is effective for cleaning up thoughts, feelings, and attitudes that run in the background of your life.

Commando System Cleaner Prayer MinistryMany 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. ICommando System Cleaner Prayer Ministrythought 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!

Shame Cycle of Control and Release

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 Shame Cycle of Control and Release describes the underpinnings of addictive behavior.

Understanding the shame cycle of control and release will help you move ahead in prayer ministry as you identify what drives addictive behaviors.
Addiction
Shame Cycle of Control and ReleaseSamuel had an addictive relationship with exhibitionism. Since adolescence, he episodically and secretly caught women by surprise and exposed himself to them.Denial
In his state of denial, Samuel had regarded each one of the hundreds of occurrences as an isolated loss of control.

Shame and Control
After each event, Samuel felt extremely shameful and self-hating and promised himself that he would never again engage in this behavior.

Samuel became a clergyman in hopes that a religious life would provide the control he consciously willed. In retrospect, the piety and intensified control in his life only seemed to make the secret release, when it came, that much more exciting and compelling.

Control and Release Cycle
The shame and fear he felt after each episode further intensified his fervor in controlling all aspects of his experience. Overtly he threw himself into working harder, longer hours, demanding more of himself and his colleagues, and being more critical of his wife and children. He lived with tension between the control that he consciously willed, and the release from it, which he found in his addiction.

 

The Age of the Disordered Will

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Prayer ministry promotes acceptance and resolution of heart issues.

Acceptance and working to resolve our heart issues rather than force them may be the battle of our times. Prayer ministry is needed to fix this. This section of an article by Leslie Farber explains it.

“This has been called the “Age of Anxiety.” Considering the attention given the subject by psychology, theology, Prayer ministry promotes acceptance and resolution of heart issuesliterature, 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.

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