After more years that I care to remember, I have published the story of my struggles to obey God.  Crossroads Before Me.

http://www.amazon.com/Crossroads-Before-Redeemed-Life-ebook/dp/B006Z1FKZI/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1327110707&sr=1-1

Available at Amazon.com for Kindle. Kindle books can be read on any device including ipads, computers, iphones and smart phones.

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That was over two decades ago.  Looking back, I can hardly believe I survived that incredibly stressful time.  Yes, we moved on my due date.  Baby Sammy was born a week late.  I got my dissertation in on time.  But it took me more than six months to recover.  In the years since that incident, I have become more and more convinced that I am not the only one who over commits herself in a big way.  It is, I’m afraid, part of life in America.  And it may be getting worse.

Research supports this observation.  “In the last 20 years, the amount of time Americans spend at their jobs has risen steadily.  Today’s work year of 1,949 hours is 163 hours–almost a month–longer than in 1969,” writes Juliet B. Schor, associate professor of economics at Harvard University, in her book The Overwooked American:  The Unexpected Decline of Leisure (Basic Books, 1991).

I am often trapped by thinking, just one more thing.  Then one more, until I am exhausted and have lost all perspective on life.  This is not what God intended.  This is why, I believe, God gave us a Sabbath and commanded us to keep it.  Not as an arbitrary rule to restrict us, but because he knew we would keep grinding away if he didn’t tell us to stop.

Sabbath keeping has never been easy.  I can’t imagine the Israelites found it easy to rest one day in seven when they were surrounded by hostile nations who worked day after day without ceasing.  I wonder if the Israelites worried that their enemies would grow stronger than they did because they had more hours in which to grow crops, build cities, and wage war.  They had to believe God would prosper them while they rested.

Today, with the pressures of our busy lives we need a Sabbath more than ever.  But how can we do it?  How can we slow down, seek God, lay aside our agenda, and enter into his rest?  In a culture that values what we do, how can we cease doing and seize the Sabbath?

1.  Purpose in your heart to obey God’s commandments, even if they don’t make sense to you or seem unreasonable.  For many years after I came to faith in Christ, I did what seemed reasonable to me instead of trying to obey all of God’s laws.  I rationalized my behavior by telling myself that I was doing better than most of my friends.  But I was only fooling myself.  Finally God convicted me of my lukewarm ways.  He showed me that the way that seems right to me results in . . . death  (Proverbs 14:12).  One of my areas of disobedience was keeping the Sabbath.

At times I have wondered why keeping the Sabbath is so important to God.  Deep down inside, I wondered, why was it even included in the ten commandments?   Breaking the Sabbath certainly isn’t the equivalent of murder or adultery.  Or is it?  In Exodus 35:2, Moses told the Israelites, “Whoever does any work on it (the Sabbath) must be put to death.”  Sounds like God took it very seriously.

Keith Boyd, pastor of Trinity Baptist Church on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, says we need to keep the Sabbath because “if we don’t keep that commandment well, then we won’t be able to keep the others.”

2.  STOP.  Quit.  Cease.  I am convinced that the only way to understand the importance of the Sabbath is to just do it.  Some things must be experienced.  We have to stop and cease from our activities to fully recognize what God is doing in our lives.

One Sunday morning I had my hand halfway in the washing machine when I heard God say, “Stop!”  “Come on Lord,” I argued.  “It is just one load of clothes I didn’t get to yesterday.  It won’t wear me out to toss them in the dryer.”  Silence.  The kind of silence that says, I’m not going to argue with you, because you know what you need to do.  It wasn’t about fatigue, it was about obedience.

Phil Ashey, associate rector at Church of the Apostles in Fairfax, Virginia, says, “God didn’t stop creating after six days because he was tired.  God didn’t have to stop.  He chose to stop.  He could have kept going.  He could have created an eighth day and an eightieth day and an eight hundredth day.  He didn’t need to stop.  There is always more work to do.”

3.  Recognize that you need a break from the work of this world to see your life from God’s perspective.  ”The purpose of the Sabbath,” says Keith Boyd, “is to rest, recreate, and reflect on God’s work.”  We can’t rest while we’re working.  We can’t recreate unless we cease from our labors.  We can’t take time to reflect on God’s work in our life without being still.

When we don’t take a break, we get caught up in the notion that worldly achievements will give our lives meaning and satisfy our longings, but only an intimate relationship with Jesus can meet those needs.

William Wilberforce, a leader in the fight to abolish slavery in the British Empire, once said, “Blessed be to God for the day of rest and religious occupation, wherein earthly things assume their true size.  Ambition is stunted.”

4.  Learn to be satisfied with what God has for you–materially, emotionally, and physically. When my son Sammy was ten he had a horrible case of strep that wouldn’t go away.  Every two weeks, when the nurse called to tell me that Sammy was still sick, I responded by going home and cleaning my house with a toothbrush.  Surely those germs were lurking somewhere, I thought.  I was determined to hunt them down and wipe them out!

One time, as I wearily wiped another doorknob, God spoke to me.  “You don’t need to be doing this,” he told me.  “It’s not going to make any difference.”  I didn’t want to hear this. I wanted to do something–anything–to make my son well, but the outcome was in God’s hands, not mine.

We are a restless generation, rarely satisfied with what God has given us, always wanting more.  We want to make things happen and we think that our efforts will yield the desired results.  We need to come to God, admit our desire for control, like I did, and die to it.

“God invites us to learn to stand back and be as satisfied with what God has done as God is.  To enter into a place of delight with God and simply receive from him,” says Ashey.

5.  Let go of the idea that you have to do it.  I often find myself thinking that I have to do it or it won’t be done RIGHT.  “We think our work is indispensable,” says Ashey.  “We think that if I am not there, on the job, making sure that it is happening, then everything will fall apart.”

Jack Hayford, pastor of Church of the Word in Van Nuys, California, says,  observing the Sabbath is a “regular reminder, on a weekly basis, that you can’t get it all done.  You can’t do it without God, not well, and not fulfillingly, not adequately, and not as creatively and not as satisfyingly as with God’s help.” 

6.  Prayerfully make some concrete rules.  If you are married, agree with your spouse on a time and day of the week.  Most will want to have their Sabbath on Sunday.  Pastors who work on Sunday need to choose another day.  “Most of all don’t let the choice of day, an issue that has caused denominations to split, keep you from keeping the Sabbath,” cautions Ashey.  In our family, we cease our labors at 5:00 PM on Saturday and break the Sabbath at 5:00 PM on Sunday.

Once you settle on a day, make some ground rules using Boyd’s guidelines: is it recreation?  Is it restful? or is it reflective?    Our family attends church services on Saturday evening as the start to our Sabbath, or if we miss that we drag ourselves out of bed in the morning to attend services, no matter how tired or frazzled we feel, unless we are ill.  We don’t do laundry, clean house, go shopping, or cook elaborate meals.  We take walks, read, visit with friends, nap, putter in the garden.  On snowy days, we go sledding.  In the summer, we often swim in the local pool.

I find it especially important to eliminate activities that are stressful.  For me this eliminates almost all entertaining except having friends over for pizza or leftovers.  I like to focus on activities where I can hear God, such as being outside in nature.

Joshua M. Peck, a Rockland County, New York publicist and Conservative Jew, says Orthodox Jews do not do commerce of any kind on the Sabbath–no buying or selling.  Even turning electrical appliances off and on or riding in cars is prohibited.  In the Jewish faith, married couples are encouraged to have sexual relations on the Sabbath.  After morning services at the synagogue, family and friends typically gather for a long, relaxing meal.

If you fail and get caught up in doing, repent and ask God to forgive you.  Then try again.  Ask God to give you strength and wisdom to keep a Sabbath that pleases Him.  It took our family many starts and fits before we were successful Sabbath keepers.

If you and your spouse can’t agree on every rule, don’t despair.  My husband, Sam, and my son, Sammy, think watching Sunday afternoon football is a wonderful way to celebrate the Sabbath!  I’m not crazy about their choice, but I let it go.  While they watch the game, I take a nap or read a book.  When the game is over, we take a walk together.

In 1924, Eric Liddell stunned the world by refusing to run the 100 meter race at the Paris Olympics because the trials were scheduled on Sunday.  His dedication to God’s law still convicts me, paltry Sabbath keeper that I am.   Liddell went on to win a gold medal in another race–the 400 meter–a race that he was not expected to win.

I believe God gave us the Sabbath because he loves us.  He doesn’t want us to become enslaved to achievement, performance, and perfection.  Instead, he wants us to know the satisfaction and security that comes from knowing his power, his provision, and his purpose as we break from our work and turn to see his creative work in our lives.

Make room by:

Surrendering your day to him each morning before you even get out of bed!  Say a simple pray offering the day to him, asking him to guide you and order your day.

Quieting yourself so you can hear his still small voice.  He can shout to you over all the activities in your life, but he mostly speaks to us in a still small voice.  Psalm 46:10; 1 Kings 19:11-13.

Reading scripture.  The Gospels are a good place to start, find a reading plan and begin to engage with God through scripture.  Biblegateway.com has reading plans you can download to your phone or computer.

Connecting with God by focusing on a previous time when you felt close to him (five bar moment) or something that you are thankful for.  While connected to him, let him speak to you.

Being honest with God. He knows it all so there is no reason to hide. Angry? Tell him all about it but then be willing to listen to what he has to say. Sad?  He carries our sin and sorry, so tell him about it and then offer it to him.

Confess your sins to God.  We do this every night. Ask him to show you your sins of omission (things you should have done and didn’t) or commission (things you ought not to have done).  To read more about how we do this see http://aredeemedlife.wordpress.com/advice/parenting/family-confession/

Go to sleep thinking of all the things you are grateful for!

Let me know how you grow as you engage in these simple exercises!

Until next time!

I decided to post the text of most of my talk online because preparing for this presentation made me thing hard about what makes the Life Model unique.  Of course my presentation included an exercise which you have to experience to experience, but that can be replicated by following my post of a few weeks back on the Immanuel method. Much of this is distill from the Life Model website and books.

August 3, 2011  2:30

Churches are typically made up of two groups of people: Those who say they are “just fine” and those who feel that they need help. Those who need help often feel that they don’t belong, that everyone else’s needs are being met—but not theirs, and that no one really cares about them. Often the people who are “just fine” are coaxed or goaded or guilted into helping the needy ones, which would be okay if it really helped but sadly many of those relationships become burdensome with the needy people feeling that they never get enough and those who are “just fine” feeling resentful and wondering why the needy ones can’t get it together.

The Life Model has answers for this age-old dilemma because it combines character development and healing.

About three years ago I had a intern who introduced me to the Life Model.  The life model came out of a ministry to street kids in Van Nuys California called Shepherds House. As the ministry grew they began to also see Christian leaders who were struggling and they began to question why some people came to Christ and began to grow while others seem stuck and kept relapsing.  At one point they were seeing about a thousand people a month. They started examining people case-by-case so as to identify what people need to thrive.  What they learned integrated well with groundbreaking work on the brain and infant and child development. They were informed by their Biblical worldview and their experience with healing prayer and over time came up with programs that helps our left brains understand while our right brains receives the non-verbal training they need.

We are huge fans of Theophostic at Church of the Apostles, but what we have found is that Theophostic alone is not enough. It is healing, and comforting and you would think this would be enough, to connect with God. But we find some people settle into their dysfunction. They are comforted into complacency.  Ed Smith the founder of TPM freely acknowledges that TPM exposes lies and renews the mind, marvelously– but it does not give us all that we need.  We also need community; we need to know what is our job, where we have deficits and what we need to do to recover.  If you never learned to tame your cravings as a child, TPM will help uncover the lies you believe that make taming those cravings pernicious, but in the end you will have to follow the ancient spiritual practices of fasting if you want to tame them. If you never learned to do hard things (another childhood task) you have to start doing them.  If, like me, you fail to explain yourself to those who misunderstand you, you have to start doing it. Getting TPM helps me to be at peace when I approach those who have misunderstood me but I still needed to force myself to go back to the person and explain, “I don’t think you understood my heart here.”  It is easy to thing it is their job, but the Life Model makes it clear that it is a childhood task, one someone in their fifties should not find so difficult. Sigh. TPM helps in so many ways: it is transforming to know you are loved and have value but it does not fix the whole problem.

The Life Model is not just for the people who we typically think of as being wounded. Everyone is missing something they should have gotten as children. Often we don’t know what we are missing.  What we experienced as children feels normal because that was our model, all we had.

When I first encountered the Life Model, I thought that I was doing rather well and I was compared to where I used to be. I had been running the Healing Center at Church of the Apostles for four years and I had processed much of my pain.  I no longer had frequent meltdowns. But I had never held my life up to any kind of ideal measuring stick. It is a little akin to growing up in Japan and thinking you are tall until you visit Sweden.  Or Sudan.

The Life Model provides just such a measuring stick.  It has evolved into a think tank where pastors, psychiatrists, social workers and teachers have come together to define where we should be, had life been perfect, and how we can get there, even though it wasn’t. (not that we will ever reach perfection but there is so much more maturity than we thought!)

Much of the early work was done by Jane Willard the wife of Dallas Willard, but there are other familiar names that are involved like Daniel Amen, famous for scanning tens of thousands of brains and other not so well known names like Jim Wilder who mentors many of the Life Model players. Karl Lehman, Chris and Jen Coursey, Ed and Maritza Khouri.

The life Model breaks life into stages: Infant, child, adult, parent and elder.  An infant should have his needs met without having to ask; a child learns to take care of himself. An adult learns to satisfy two people, at first a friend and later a mate.  A parent takes the whole families needs into account and an elder sees those who are at risk in the community and reaches out to them.  There are needs and tasks for each level. One of the biggest mistakes we make is when we try to become elders too soon. Parents need to raise their little ones; there will be plenty of time to save the world when they are older.

One of the hallmarks of the Life Model is the belief that we were created by God to live in joy, that joy should be our natural state. When I first heard this I gulped. I am pretty serious and I would not have characterized my normal state as one of joy.

Life is meant to be characterized by rhythms of joy and quiet. Knowing how to quiet yourself should have been learned in the arms of your mother but you can only download from her what she had to give, but not to worry! One of the first Life Model exercises is how to quiet yourself.

They also believe that we are created as relational being, meant to attach to God and to a spiritual family, that to thrive we need to live as if relationships are more important than anything else.

They also believe that we need more than teaching to heal. If understand principles were sufficient, the church in the west would be vibrant and whole. The western church has largely focused on the left brain, the part that is rational and logic, but apparent that is not enough. We need to train our brains to have healthy relationships much in the same way we train to learn to play a violin or speak Spanish. Reading about playing the violin is not going to make you even a mediocre performer.

On the Life Model website they write: “Contemporary Christianity has failure to achieve moral and character change. Beliefs do not change your character.”

Another belief is that someone can be gifted, even anointed and still not be mature.  It is like building a tall building. If the foundation is missing some bricks it won’t matter at first but as the building goes up (more responsibility), those missing bricks destabilize the entire structure.

Most people don’t recognize what they are missing.

Addictions come from a catastrophic failure to reach adult mature and mimic the ideal rhythms of joy and quiet.  Some drugs mimic quiet; other mimic joy but they are all counterfeits, taking the place of the joy and quiet that should come within from our deep connections to God and secure people. So the addict who takes something to calm him down is looking for quiet while those who want a high are looking for joy.

Another eye opening concept for me was the realization that we can miss out on infant maturity mostly because the adults who took care of us did not know what we needed, and yet we can still appear to be fairly mature.  The life model calls this pseudo maturity and likens it to flying upside down:  The plane that is your life appears to be at the right elevation but if you look closely it is upside down. Ouch! We know how to do hard things, but don’t know how to receive or rest or be still before God.  Things we should have learned in infancy. In our culture people like this often rise to the top where they burn out or become addicted to something to get them through. Sadly you are only as mature as the lowest hole in your wall. So pseudo mature people are . . . infants.

The average American man is halfway through childhood maturity; the average woman is half way through adult maturity. No wonder our nation is in trouble!

Life Model program are solution based. That means you don’t just learn about principles, you also exercise your brain (play the violin) so your brain and body learn the skills it needs to connect to God and people.  You can grow and mature.

When I first heard about brain skills I thought, what?  I pictured people sitting in yoga position humming. But the exercises are as simple as connecting to God and listening to him. Being quiet with a group of people.  Practicing telling very short stories about your life to other people, walking in sync with two other people, learning to recognize when someone is overwhelmed so you can give them room, evaluating your maturity using an easy checklist, recognizing your own attachment style and attachment pain. So much of what is learn is what healthy, socially skilled adults learned in childhood, but we all have deficits so if I can’t return to joy from anger but someone else in my group can, I can connect with them and over time download what they have.

Because there are so many players involved in developing the Life Model there are many ways to experience it—lots of books, DVDs, online essays, conferences and at least three websites.  The original way people learned was by attending a one week conference in July. They have four levels and participants go every year for four years.  People rave about these conferences but they are expensive—nearly 1000 bucks for the conference registration with hotel bills and transportation on top of that and they are only held in two locations—Edmonton, Alberta, Canada and Peoria, Illinois.  I am not making this up!  And you had to go with a bonded pair—two sisters, a husband and wife, mother and son—someone with whom you have a permanent bond.

In 2007 one of the Life Model guys, Ed Khouri, decided to develop a program that could be done in groups so churches and recovery groups would have another way to learn the material and practice the brain skills as well as develop community.  He knew that most addicts have burned their bridges and did not have a family member who would be willing to spend a week–and a lot of money to bond more deeply with them. No, I don’t think so! Restarting is the first module in Ed Khouri’s program. The program is comprised of five modules Restarting, Forming, Belonging, Healing and Loving; each runs 12 weeks.  Only two modules are currently available the other three are still in development. The author of Forming, David Tackle, expects that module to be out at the end of 2011.

What kinds of things do you do in Restarting?

Every week you watch a DVD—between 26 and 45 minutes long, and then you have exercises you do in groups of three to six that are the equivalent of brain training. I have to admit that I was skeptical because so many groups talk about transforming lives so in 2009 I ran two test groups and saw the change before my eyes.  I don’t know that I understand it entirely but somehow you are giving each other what you should have gotten as children and infants and it causes growth.

Some of the topics you learn about in Restarting include:

Painful emotions

Healthy relationships

Toxic relationships

Trauma, hope and recovery

Leaving co-dependency behind

Attachment

Identity

Maturity

You learn to tell great stories from your life in two to three minutes, you learn to express appreciation, you learn to connect with God experientially, you learn to recognize when you are in attachment pain, you learn to build joy, so you increase capacity and at the end of the class you evaluate your maturity.

You DON”T spend a lot of time talking about your problems.  You DON’T spend time problem solving or trying to fix each other. You DON’T share painful details of your story (we teach you how to take the thorns out of your story).

You DO connect with God interactively and listen to him.  You DO learn how to better regulate your emotional pain and pleasure so your attachment to BEEPS does not run your life.

This one of my favorite Life Model stories from Jim Wilder’s book: A Complete Guide to Living with Men. This story shows what can happen, over time, when a group comes together and does the work.

Page. 284

Here is an example of a spiritual family and how it might work. A small church, comprised largely of cowboys and rodeo riders, asked me to do a men’s weekend. During that weekend we talked about the levels of maturity enough that all the men identified their own level. There were two elders, about three fathers, five adults and 20 boys and infants. By the end of the weekend the elders, fathers and adults decided (on their own) to help the boys and infants mature. Remember that when I say infants we are talking about men in their 20s, 30s, and even 60s.  Each of the children/infants checked off a list of the needs and task they had yet to complete to become adults. The group, under the direction of the elders, assigned men who were strong in those areas to guide the immature men through to adult maturity. One of the least mature men was Bob, the town drunk. The elders assigned three men to him. When I returned to that town a number of years later Bob was a sober father of two with a happy wife. There were three men glowing with pride in how Bob had grown. The entire group of men was heavily involved in summer and after-school programs for the community children—a sign of life to give.

Life Model websites

Lifemodel.org

http://thrivingrecovery.org/    Ed Khouri

http://www.equippinghearts.com/  Ed and Maritza Khouri

http://www.thrivetoday.org/  Chris and Jen Coursey

http://www.kclehman.com/  Karl and Charlotte Lehman

Endorsements

The Life Model is the best model I have seen for bringing Christ to the center of counseling and restoring the disintegrating community fabric within Christian churches.

Dr. Dallas Willard
Speaker, Author, Professor of Philosophy USC
www.dwillard.org

The answer given in the Life Model is very real—a combination of healthy spirituality, intellectual insight, a need for community and friendship—all put together to help us become transformed.

Dr. Francis MacNutt
Founding Director, Christian Healing Ministries
www.christianhealingmin.org

My counseling practice has been revolutionized by what I have learned from Dr. Wilder and the Shepherd’s House team.  Utilizing the principles from your books and the Thriving: Recover Your Life materials, I have been able to give the parents of the children I work with simple, do-able activities to build bonds with their kids and make a difference.  I can also explain to the parents why they work, which gets them more on-board with doing them. 

The Life Model is more practical and applicable than any of the theories I learned in my master’s program or since.  It makes sense and it works.  I can apply the theory to what’s going on in my clients’ lives (not to mention my own) and provide simple, practical ways for them to make the changes that they need to make.  Thanks for making that possible!

 Dawn C. Bartels, M.A., L.M.H.C.
(Licensed Mental Health Counselor) Orlando, FL

To read more endorsements see: http://www.lifemodel.org/info.php?page=endorseLM

Karl Lehman and his wife Charlotte developed the Immanuel method and have written extensively about it.  They have over 100 pages of essays online at their website: KCLehman. com.  And Karl has recently published a book, Outsmarting Yourself, which I highly recommend.  Lehman did Theophostic Prayer Ministry for about eight years and then developed the Immanuel method to help those with low capacity who got stuck during TPM. The Immanuel method has a clear advantage over doing TPM in that you can do it in groups, which is especially handy overseas where trained prayer ministers are greatly outnumbered by those in need.

I recently attended a Share Immanuel conference where we learned how to do the method and I came away impressed. This does not take away the need for a team that can do TPM, it just makes this kind of healing more available since it can be taught in a weekend and can be done with groups. Theophostic Prayer Ministry is done one on one or two on one which means a team on a short-term mission trip cannot minister to very many people.

I have described it as “doing Theophostic backwards” because you connect with God first instead of at the end, but the basic principles are very similar. There is a brochure written by Jim Wilder and Chris Coursey at LifeModel.org (http://www.lifemodel.org/product.php?type=book&rn=86) that describes the method, but I have to honestly say that I did not understand the brochure (even after several attempts) until I had experienced the method at the conference. I am very interested to know if what I have written is clear enough. Can those who have not already experienced Immanuel can do a successful session following these instructions?  Successful (to me!) means you were able to connect with God and were aware of his presence.

Here is my attempt at a clear explanation of how you connect with God using the Immanuel method.

1. You can start one of two ways: either by remembering a time when you sensed a strong connection (a five bar connection) with God or by thinking of something that you appreciate.  Let me break these down a bit.

If you have a clear memory of a time when you felt a strong connection to God—-at a retreat, during worship, while praying, or any time when you knew he was there—you can reconnect to Him by going to that memory and remembering that time.  Jim Wilder calls this approach the “interactive seat” because you are interacting with God.

The second approach is to connect with God by thinking of something you appreciate.  This can be as simple as mangos the delicious fruit that makes Jim Wilder smile, or anything that you are thankful for. I’ve focused on the beauty of springtime, flowers, my dog Darby, my little friend Jayden—it can be anything but it is best if it is not something or someone you feel conflicted about and it must be real and true—not a fantasy.  To connect with God by this avenue, simply think about the thing or person you appreciate and invite the Holy Spirit to come.  Jim Wilder calls this the “appreciation seat.”  The more detail you give the better. I pictured spring as it came to each flowering plant in my yard—daffodils, phlox, irises, azaleas, rhododendron, hydrangea . . . Soon my body felt lighter, my chest was relaxed and I was smiling.  You can also go to a memory where you were filled with gratitude. I often use mental picture where I had a mental picture of my parents playing tennis with Jesus in heaven.

Try to stay in your interactive or appreciate seat for at least three minutes. You can shift memories or appreciation topics if you like to fill the full three minutes. According to Wilder this makes you brain more plastic.

If you are leading a group in an Immanuel exercise, make sure everyone in the room is connected. Instruct them to raise their hand if they get stuck. In a group of ten or so, you can minister to individuals who get stuck quietly.  If they get stuck on the first step, trying to connect with God, use TPM to help them. I have used this successfully with non-believers.  It seems that many people have a memory of a time when they felt God was near.

When I was in Uganda, one of the recipients got stuck part way through his connection exercise. He had gone back to a memory of a time when he was deeply connected to the Lord at the headwaters of the Nile where water pours out from between two rocks. He saw the Lord beckoning him so join him in deep water, he waded out, got knee deep and hesitated.  I could tell he was stuck by his wrinkled forehead, and when I asked he said that he could not go deeper. I then used TPM to process his fears and he was able to go to the Lord and enjoy being with him in the water.

1. Before you use Immanuel to help people process trauma or pain, it is best to let the connection with God get strong.  There are many ways to do this.  One is to let people connect to the Lord for about three minutes, then ask questions that help the person perceive the Lord’s love and goodness toward them such as:

Lord, would you show __Name_________  how you feel about them?

Lord, do you have a pet name for     name    ?

Or instruct them to ask the Lord, Lord, how do you feel about me?

Once they are having a deep connection with the Lord, you can consider processing pain.  This can happen over several sessions, if time allows. If you have a large group, put people in groups of three and have the prayer ministry team stand in back of the group and watch for raised hands that indicate that someone in the group of three needs help.

Start by asking each person to go back to the place of connection—using either the interactive or the appreciation seat.

Have each person share with their group of three what they focused on for a minute or two, and what they experienced with God. Give that experience a one to two word name such as spring, mangos, Great Falls or God’s presence.

Now one person at a time, have someone in the group of three go to back to their connection place and reconnect with God, then have them ask the Lord, Is there somewhere you want to take me where I do not perceive Your presence?  Remember that God is always with us but we don’t always perceive His presence. The other two members of the group can watch and intercede silently. Pay attention to the recipients facial expressions and body language.

If the person becomes overwhelmed:

1. Remind them of the name they gave their connection place: for example, spring, mangos, Great Falls or God’s presence.  Hearing another person say that word should help them return to that place.
2. Once they are safely back in the place of connection with God, ask them to look at the difficult situation as if through a ship’s porthole.  In other words, they should picture standing in the place of connection and looking at the painful situation as if through a small opening.
3. Another option is to ask the Lord to show them the big picture. People often report seeing the situation zoom out as their perspective on the painful memory shifts. This enables them to see their trauma in a new light. I’ve heard people report, for example, “I saw that I was being beaten, but it did not last long.”
4. Have the person share what changed when Jesus showed up with the other two members of the group. It is best not to share a lot of detail about the pain, instead focus on the Light. This can be hard because we have focused on the pain for years but now we see the situation with new eyes.  We want to use care to not burden the others in our group with the story of our pain.  Jim Wilder calls this taking the thorns out of our story.
5. When one person is done processing, you can move to another person in the group until everyone has had a turn.

While working in my group of three at the conference we did have one time where one of the people in my group got overwhelmed and began to cry. I asked if they could go back to the peaceful place of connection and mentioned the word they had given that experience but they shook their head and cried harder  . . .  so I did Theophostic, asked them to focus on the pain, name it and see what they were believing that made them feel that way. Then when we had the core lie, we asked the Lord to speak.  It was very powerful. I was helping her using TPM but from within an Immanuel intervention.

If you get stuck, you can ask the Lord directly, Lord what do you want me to know here? or What should we do now?  If you get really stuck it is best to “park it”—in other words to park your memory, your pain, and put it aside for another time.  Because these aren’t individual session, you might not get every situation resolved.  It is best if you explain this before you start.

As with any method like this, start with yourself. You can do this easily alone, then try it with one friend, then a small group. Try to have enough people on hand to help those who get stuck. If you work with a group repeatedly, everyone will build capacity and soon that group will be able to help others.

I would love to hear from anyone who tries this both with his or herself and with others.

It is not as hard as you think. We often get tense because it is hard to see people suffer and we think we have to fix the problem or come up with the solution. But we don’t have to be the answer experts. In fact I believe there are only four things we need to do to be a first-rate friend: Love our friends, listen to them, respect them and keep our lips zipped.

Let’s break these down.

Love Them

There isn’t a person on the planet who doesn’t love to be loved. We were made for close relationships with people and with God. Yet we often find it hard to stay relational and connected to someone in pain. How can we do it?

1. I remind myself that I can listen to them without agreeing with them.  I also tell myself, I don’t have to fix this. This is not my problem. I don’t have to take responsibility for this issue; I can help by listening.

2. Stay attentive. Make eye contact. It is often good to match the expression of the person who is sharing.  Matching facial expressions shows the speaker that you understand without words.

3. Be genuinely glad to be with them. People can tell if you want to be with them. According to Jim Wilder of the Life Model, a signal goes back and forth six times a second from your eyes to theirs that tells them if you want to be with them.

If you aren’t glad to be with them, be honest about your limitations. It is okay to say, “I only have ten minutes,” or “This isn’t a good time for me to talk,” or even “This is touching on some of my own pain and overwhelming me, can you spare me the details?”  Wilder calls this “taking the thorns out of the story.”  By this he means telling the story in a way that leaves out specific detail so we won’t overwhelm people.

4. Be aware of optimum spacing. The best distance for deep sharing is about an arm’s length apart.  If you move closer, a lot of people will feel that you have invaded their space and will back up.  If you stand further away, people tend not to open up. Also it is helpful to angle your body a bit relative to theirs, straight-on may be too confrontational, while side-by-side makes it hard to maintain eye contact. Choose something between straight-on and side-by-side. This works seated as well as standing, so think about positioning chairs at the optimum distance and angle for sharing.

5. Monitor you attitude. If you feel that your relational circuits are dimming or going off, take your feelings to God and process what you are feeling. Remember when talking to God always tell him how you feel not how you think you ought to feel. I sometimes find that my worry and concern get in the way. When I take my fear to God and connect with him, he gives me his perspective and enlarges my capacity to stay connected.

We all know people who radiate warmth and draw people like bees to honey. If you think about what makes them warm and inviting, it is almost entirely non-verbal. They smile, make eye contact and are genuinely glad to see you.

Then there are those who struggle to connect. According to the Life Model, the kinds of social skills that make it easy or hard for us to connect with others are learned while we are still infants. Have you ever seen a mother and baby smile at each other?  First one smiles, then the other. Back and forth. As they smile, their brains release dopamine, which builds joy and helps them bond. Babies and mothers need rest, too. Indeed the optimum emotional growth occurs with mothers and their little ones share synchronized cycles of smiling joy-building and rest where they let their bodies slow down and enjoy being quiet together.

If someone seems cold, don’t assume they don’t want to connect. Maybe no one synchronized with them when they were tiny and now they don’t know how to synchronize with others. They may isolate themselves because it was too painful to try repeatedly to connect without success. But it is never too late to build those social skills. We can help by tuning in, being genuinely glad to be with them and modeling good skills, including when to disengage, take a break and rest.

Listen to Them

The second way we can reach out to a struggling friend is by honing our listening skills so they feel understood. According to the class Listening for Heaven’s Sake by Equipping Ministries International, listening makes people feel loved and helps them process and take ownership of their own problems.  And knowing how to listen well can also keep you, the listener, from becoming anxious or overly involved in your friend’s woes.

How do you start? The best way to make people feel understood is to reflectively listen to them. It shows them that we want to understand even if we don’t get it right the first time. To listen reflectively, we listen closely and try to discern what the seeker is feeling and thinking.  Body language and voice tone speak volumes about what others are feeling and if you listen closely you should have some idea of the thought, or situation, that has them stirred up.  Then simply put the feelings and thoughts together and slap a tentative opening on the front and you are good to go.

Tentative opening?  The Listening for Heaven’s Sake class teaches participants to start with a tentative opening because no one likes to be told what they think or feel. Even if someone says, “I am furious, that car almost hit me!” they don’t want to hear you say: “You are angry!”  The tentative statement: “You sound a little angry,” sounds so much better.

Start tentative. Some good ways to make your reflective statement tentative is to turn it into a question such as:

Am I hearing you say  . . . ?

Are you saying . . . ?

Are you feeling  . . .?

Or you can just begin with the word, “So . . . you’re feeling . . .  or “It seems like you’re . . . .”

The word little is also great.  “So you’re a little blue?”  “Am I hearing you say that you are feeling a little down.”

It takes practice but when you get good at it, it becomes almost automatic. People love it when you listen.

When you reflect back the feeling and the situation, try to use different words than the speaker.  Don’t sound like a parrot! It will only irritate them.

“I am so angry.”

“You sound angry.”

“I am angry. She almost hit me.”

“So she almost hit you?”

AAArrrggh. No one wants to be mimiced. If you are struggling, be silent and keep an attentive expression. That is so much better than most people do.

So let’s try to practice reflecting.

Exercise One:  ”I am really struggling.  My daughter says she wants to move to California.”

Step one. Chose a tentative opening.  So . . .

Step Two.  What might the seeker be feeling? Hurt. Sad. Betrayed. Lost. Devastated. Irritated.

Step Three. What is the situation?  Her daughter wants to move out. Her daughter is leaving.  Her daughter is moving away.

Put it all together

So am I hearing you say that you are feeling sad because your daughter wants to move away?

So you’re pretty upset that your daughter wants to move out.

It seems it would be pretty painful to have your daughter say she wants to find a new place to live.

Let’s try it again

Exercise Two:

“My son broke my favorite teapot!”

See if you can come up with a good reflective statement.  Send them to me as comments and I will post the best ones.

In my next blog, more on listening, respect and how to keep our lips zipped.

Ideas in the blog are from the course Listening for Heaven’s Sake and the Life Model at Lifemodel.org.

We started our class this week by quizzing each other about our names. Kudos to C——-a and V—— for knowing everyone’s name. We also talked a little about things we had in common:
Those born overseas? L, Y, S–y, C
Who is from Virginia? C——-e, S–i, P
Who is from California? Betsy
We learned that Christine and Yvonne both have their MSW (Masters in Social Work)

We watched session two of the Theophostic Basic Seminar DVDs.

We learned about Listening, which I will try to summarize here for those who missed class. The material in this section is gleaned from Listening for Heaven’s Sake by Equipping Ministries International and my own reading and experience. http://www.equippingministries.org/

Studies show that people feel loved when we listen to them, yet few of us listen well.
To demonstrate this concept we paired up (your partner had to be someone you did not know before you joined the class) and did these exercises:

Exercise One

The person closest to the far wall was the “speaker” and the other person is the “listener.” The speaker talks for one minute about a topic of their choice. Don’t chose something too intense. A good place to start might be to describe your day or your drive to class, but you can choose whatever you like. The Listener is to do all they can to listen well non-verbally. In other words, you can’t say anything. You can make little noises like hmm or unhuh, but no words. The teacher keeps time. (If there are an uneven number of students, the teacher gets to participate, too).

After one minute, switch roles and repeat the exercise.

When both partners have had a chance to be both the speaker and the listening, take some time to process as a group.

Here are some good questions to help the group process:
1. How did it feel to have someone listen to you? Most people will respond that it felt great.
2. What did they do to show they were listening? Smile, lean forward, make eye contact, nod their head, make encouraging noises, have a concern expression on their face and were still and focused while listening.
3. What was it like to be the listener and not be able to speak? Most people will say it was hard.

Exercise Two

Using the same partners, repeat exercise one except this time the listener should do all that she can to show that she could care less about what the speaker is saying. The speaker can continue speaking about the same topic as in exercise one or they can choose a new topic.

I find that it is hard to have this one go a full minute (people get quite agitated or start laughing) so I usually call time after about 40 seconds.

Process as a group.

Questions:
4. How did it feel to have someone not listen to you? Most people will say it felt horrible, and that it was even hard to think or speak clearly when no one was listening.
5. What did they do to show they were listening? Avoid eye contact, look down or away, fidget with their phone, yawn, look at their watch.
6. What was it like to be the listener and ignore the person? Most people say it is hard.

Some comments:  In our culture people are most likely to open up and share if you are standing or seated about an arm’s length apart. If you move closer most people will scoot away and if you stand further apart, people tend to clam up.Also facing dead on is less likely to feel comfortable then rotating about 45 degrees out.  Does this make sense?  To get an idea, face your partner and then rotate your body about 45 degrees to either side.  So you are not facing each other directly nor are you standing side-by-side.

It is also good to be aware of your surroundings. Is there a large vase of flowers between you and your friend?  Are chairs too far apart for intimacy?  Women tend to sit on the sofa with each other and both will instinctively rotate towards each other.

Likewise, research shows that the right amount of eye contact is about one minute, then you need to break off, look away and then resume.  Constant eye contact is too intense.  You don’t want the person to feel like a bug under a microscope. This varies with culture and with so many cultures in our area, it is good to talk about what is comfortable. Asians have told me that they were told not to make eye contact with adults.  African-Americans have told me that when approaching someone from a distance, they make eye contact early on while still far apart, whereas whites often look down until they are about eight feet away and then look up and smile. So friends from different cultures can miss each other and never know why. My friend looks at me from a distance while I am looking down, then when I look up to smile, she is looking down, hurt because I did not acknowledge her earlier.  For me it can feel awkward, like I am staring someone down if I look up from a distance, but I am learning and it is becoming more comfortable.

Up next (when I have more time to write), What is our role in relationship?

We all learned about triggers from Theophostic Prayer Ministry which teaches that the primary source of our pain is rarely the present. The pain orginates in unresolved memories. I’ve been practicing Theophostic or TPM as we call it for years, since, I think, 2004 and all of us have benefited.

Now most of my family knows the drill: Let yourself feel the painful emotion and, because your brain works by association, a memory that feels the same will surface. Once you have the memory let yourself be in the memory and process how you feel and what you believe. Your feelings will match your beliefs and as you cycle down to deeper and deeper levels of feelings you will hit pay dirt: A core lie such as, I am worthless; I should have never been born; or my personal favorite, No one will ever love me because I am unloveable. Once you have the core lie, we ask Jesus to speak: Is it true that Betsy is unloveable? And he does. It is different for everyone. I ususally see pictures in my mind, some people have impression or thoughts that come to them. It is a glorious experience, something you have to do to fully understand.

All this to say that I know about triggers, but I don’t get so easily triggered anymore. Or so I thought.

Then I began reading Lehman’s book. Kudos to Karl for being so open. It is as if he is dissecting his heart in front of you. And ouch, it got me.
One of the best ways to recongize that you are triggered, he writes, is to check your relational circuits. My what? Relational circuits are anologous to electrical circuits, they can only handle so much juice before the go frizz, bang, pop.  The list is long but I will give you the ones that resonate with me:

1.  Do I feel connected to ____________?

2.  Do I want to be connected to ________?

3. Do I experience their presence as a source of joy?

4.  Am I comfortable making eye contact with them?

5. Am I patient and tolerant (or impatient, intolerant and irritable)?

At this point several people came to mind and I was batting 0 for 5.  I began to squirm. It is so easy, as a busy ministry leader to simply carve people out of your life. Those who criticize me.  Those who irritate me.  Those who wanted “too much” of my time.  Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!

I was looking forward to a quiet Friday. I was fasting and looking forward to connecting with God.  Good Friday.  But as the morning puttered on I began to feel the conviction of the Holy Spirit. I had a few calls I needed to make.  To people I had rendered invisible.

They accepted my apologies and said that they honestly had not noticed.  I know that is true. It is so easy to ignore people and they just assume you are busy. It is so easy to look good and have a rotten heart. But God knows, and so do I.

If ever there were a good day to eat crow, Good Friday has to be it.

September 28^th

David to me:

I tried soaking prayer a little while ago and . . . wow. I’m very convinced I felt the presence of the Holy Spirit. It was like being touched without having surface area contact me. God setting off the neurons directly rather than by applying pressure. See, left brain! I didn’t try to explain it, but it just came to me For a short time the sensation got very intense on my stomach, lower chest, and sides. As for “connecting” with God, I guess I did do that. He reached out to me and I responded with praise and concerns and questions and more praise. I think my mind still hasn’t gotten past the idea of a connection being almost tactile, like plugging in a cable or coupling two train cars. And no revelations, new understandings, or images today. I can’t say I’m disappointed, though!

As for speaking in tongues, my mind does go places. When I try and let sounds out, my mind goes to the scene in Lord of the Rings where Gandalf and Saruman are shouting in a made-up, but very dramatic, language, with Saruman trying to cause an avalanche and Gandalf trying to stop him. And then I feel really silly!

My left brain making unwanted connections again. Right now, I think that as I grow and learn that God and I will open up new pathways in my brain that will support deeper connection with the Holy Spirit. Once that’s done, sounds I don’t understand won’t get auto-filtered by my mind.

Regarding the church, they weren’t pushy, though they were practically jumping out of their seats when I said I wanted to be prayed for. Nor did they say that I had to speak in tongues to demonstrate baptism of the Holy Spirit. It was more that they had complete confidence that I would. And the gift bag for first-time visitors contained a loaf of fantastic banana bread. So I think I’ll go back next Sunday.

So I feel pretty good! And it looks like I’ll be in bed by 10, which hasn’t happened in a while.

Love,

David

September 29

David to me:

Some interesting reading this morning as a result of googling “soaking prayer.” Lots of people seem scared by it, and lots more sense that soaking advocates have lost sight of God and the Bible. One article that seemed very insightful suggested that some soakers have slipped into worshiping the act and the resulting visions rather than worshiping God. It seems very dangerous.

I suppose the solution is to keep reading my Bible and Experiencing God. Thoughts?

David

Me to David:

It seems to me that you had a genuine encounter with God during your time of soaking so I would not be afraid to do it again. It is sad how many people feel frightened by new forms of connecting with God. In reality, soaking has been around for a very long time, people just used different words. It very much like the silence and meditation that the early church fathers practiced. The Psalmist describes “lying down in green pastures” as God restores his soul in Psalm 23.
Don’t be afraid. You are on the right track.

By the way, our church is hosting a famous revivalist, Randy Clark, in early November and I recently learned that Sam and Luke are coming up for the conference. Is there any way you could come with them?  It is expected to sell out. I will pay your registration fee if you can come.  Thursday, November 4 through Saturday November 6.
Pray about it.

I pray that God will become more and more known to you as you open your heart to being known by him, the lover of your soul.

Betsy

September 29 email from David:

What seems to bother a lot of them is the number of parallels between sensations experienced and Hindu mysticism. My thinking is that a person who is trying to soak without focusing on Christ and without wanting to experience His love falls into a sort of spiritual trap. They gradually lose sight of the central truths of who God is and end up consumed by their need for a spiritual high.

As an aside on how people think, the majority of google hits for “soaking prayer” are pages that copied one of two opinions on soaking, one for and one against. Very few write up their own opinions.The two best comments on it I’ve heard are one from you and one from someone on the web with similar experiences to yours; soaking is about God. Not about you and not about feeling nice.

Sam’s already invited me and I want to go! He’s also invited another mutual friend of mine, who doesn’t know just how much she’s in for. Though I think we forgot to mention that there’s a registration fee.

David

Me: I’ve got some resources, so tell your friend she can come for free, too.  Send me her name so we can get her on the registration list.

David: I was too preoccupied earlier to tell you how much I appreciate your email

I’m dealing with a ridiculous amount of homework right now

I’m trying to think how I could managed my time better and got more work done, but I don’t think it was possible to do any more right now this feels like more work than TJ

* sigh *

[end vent]

me: Oh. So sorry!  I am glad you liked the email.

I pray that God would give you wisdom to know what to do and what to let go of.