Jesus First…Everything Else Follows
Dr Karl Lehman states the following: “Thousands of professionals and lay people around the world are applying the Immanuel Approach to deepen intimacy with God, permanently resolve past pain, and discern God’s ongoing guidance.” When we seek Him first, everything is in order.
Immanuel Prayer helps us to:
- Deepen intimacy with God
- Permanently resolve past pain
- Discern ongoing guidance from the Lord
The goal of Immanuel and really the target of Christianity is relational intimacy with God. That is why it is listed first on this list. We go after intimacy with Jesus first and everything else flows from that.
Matthew 6:33 supports this notion. Jesus says that we are to seek first the Kingdom of Heaven and His righteousness. Then everything else follows from that place. We start with relational, intimate encounters with Jesus. We seek Him. Then from this connection, we walk out this Christian life.
We get this backwards though, don’t we…We seek to know God’s will for our lives. “Lord what job should I take?” “Lord, who should I marry?” “What is Your will for me Lord?”
We also seek good Christian things: Spiritual gifts, healing, spiritual disciplines like Bible study and prayer, serving, etc. All of these things are good. But by seeking HIM, and letting all of these other things flow from this relationship, they become effortless and so much more effective!
The truth is that in order to know God’s will in our lives, we need to first know God Himself. That is what we do in Immanuel Prayer.
One of my favorite Immanuel verses is 1 John 3:2. It says that when we see Him, we become like Him, because we see Him as He truly is. As we get to know the true Lord Jesus and experience His true nature and character (not the distorted Jesus we have in our minds based on the sin, wounds, and lies we have developed over a lifetime), we become like Him. This type of transformation comes only from a growing relational intimacy with Him.