Pastoral Prayer Ministry

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Help and Family for the Wounded in the Church Today

8/16/2014

 
Loving "community" for the wounded is hard to find and is frequently fragile when you do, here in North America. The emotionally mature are few in number and this has often been the case (read: 1 Corinthians 4:15 (Amplified Bible (AMP)) "15 After all, though you should have ten thousand teachers (guides to direct you) in Christ, yet you do not havemany fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the glad tidings (the Gospel).") 

Spiritual Parenting and Adoptions are desperately needed by the wounded in loving community, but so many leaders are merely "guides" and not "parents". This is not a negative judgement, it is a painful reality. People like the Apostle Paul are just as lacking now as they were when he wrote this two millennia (two thousand years) ago. The sad thing is that many wounded persons have to look outside already established "communities of faith" to other organizations to get support and "family". Fortunately some churches are adopting healing and parenting structures or new wineskins like Living Waters (www.livingwaterscanada.org) or Celebrate Recovery (www.celebraterecovery.com). 

I say to those in Christian Communities who are touched by the wounded (and if you aren't loving, compassionate and willing to reach out toward the wounded and disenfranchised, I question your faith: James 1:27 (The Message (MSG)) "26-27 Anyone who sets himself up as “religious” by talking a good game is self-deceived. This kind of religion is hot air and only hot air. Real religion, the kind that passes muster before God the Father, is this: Reach out to the homeless and loveless in their plight, and guard against corruption from the godless world."), put your compassion to prayerful action! Start, do something as God leads you from His Heart. Jesus makes it clear when He reads Isaiah 61 in the Temple that He came to heal the "Brokenhearted" and He chooses to do that through us: His Body. Regrettably, we know how immature and broken and dirty His Body is today and many of us grieve over this, for ourselves and for others who are deeply in need of "spiritual adoption". Many who are called Elders are actually Youngers (and must choose between parenting their own families and ministering to the body, often neglecting their own families) and those of Elder chronological age are still emotionally stunted and trying to care for their own needs. How many "seniors" are off galavanting around "fulfilling their dreams" while the body of Christ languishes for need of true spiritual mothers and fathers? 

You think me too harsh or severe, remember Paul's admonishment in the above passage? "Reach out to the homeless and loveless in their plight, and guard against corruption from the godless world." We will not grow to serve in love in this way if we "...get squeezed into the world's mold..." (Romans 12:1) We can only find this kind of loving maturity in Jesus' and in spiritual family and true spiritual family is TOO hard to find these days for many brokenhearted people! Be part of the solution! Want to know more about how you can help, write me, I'd be glad to suggest some options.

How to Grow in Emotional Maturity

10/1/2013

 
I am sitting at my back patio table enjoying an Indian Summer afternoon and thinking about and writing the text for an upcoming free seminar I'm doing on the 1st Friday in November (tentative date, not yet confirmed). 

As I do this study/writing, I am thinking about the "crucible of a loving community" that is needed to recover from severe trauma (that's my topic: Recovery From Trauma for my 1st talk).  As part of my journey through some documentaries on the trauma of soldiers, I was reflecting on the way the soldiers recovered who had close loving family and who didn't.  Those that had loving. close bonds with community more freely and adequately expressed their pain and grief, shame and guilt.  I assert it was the direct result of the mature brains around them with which they "connected".  Did you just say "mature brains" helped others recover from trauma and grow emotionally, Dave?  Yes, I did. 

Loving mature connection in families and communities grow our brains into a more orderly, whole, healthy brain.  I won't get too "geeky" on you, but did you know that neuroscientists have been carefully studying this stuff with all the great advances in "real-time" imaging of the brain that are now available?  And they find that the brain functions more as 3 separate parts when exposed to trauma (or you could say our minds dissociate to handle the trauma).  And the more love and mature connections with others a brain has, the more it function as a whole inside.  Check out Dr. Daniel Amen's website if you want to see some cool geeky stuff along this line: www.amenclincs.com

Oh and all this love and good relationship gets registered by us as "Joy" or the great feeling we get when people are happy to be with us!  Joy builds mature relational bonds between individuals and groups!  Joy matures our brains!

So loving close, healthy bonds are a foundational part of us healing from past trauma.  And in order to emotionally mature we must address these traumas which keep us back and "stuck" in negative ways of thinking about ourselves, others our surroundings...  To grow emotionally we must have close loving relationships, but even then it can be extremely hard to break free from old chains of negative thinking and what seems like unconscious unhealthy reactions and choices.  This is where counselling or close mentoring relationships with a more emotionally mature person can be helpful for some.  There are various ways of promoting the process of growing emotionally via counselling and some of these will be highlighted in the seminar I'll do on Friday, November 1, 2013 at 7:30p at the Gathering "space" at 245-279 Activa Ave  Kitchener, ON N2E 3V2.  For more information: [email protected] or 519-748-6862

    Author

    Christian pastoral counsellor and exhorter/teacher; registered social worker in private practice, full-time since 1999

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