A Call To Christian Maturity
How would you define Christian maturity? Is it how long you have been a believer? Is it how well you know the Bible? Is it your ministry role? Hmmm…I don’t think so.
There is something so different about Immanuel Prayer (OK, so there are a ton of things different about Immanuel Prayer!). What I am thinking about today is how Immanuel Prayer is a call for believers to take responsibility for their own part in the drama of life.
Too often we turn to blaming others and disconnecting relationally when in reality much of what we are experiencing has very little to do with the other person. Instead, it is some old toxic emotional content implicitly triggering forward and making it feel like the other person is 100% responsible.
Dr Karl Lehman’s book Outsmarting Yourself http://outsmartingyourself.org/ lays out a framework for why we do what we do and then gives practical steps for doing something about it. Imagine that! When I find myself responding like a child in a life situation, or over-reacting to that seemingly benign event, there is a pretty good chance that I have felt that way before. Dr Karl calls it, “Catching your past invading your present and what to do about it.”
As we get healthier emotionally, we can begin to notice when we are triggered and non-relational. Then we can take responsibility for ourselves and ask the Lord for help in getting our relational circuits back on. As we do this, we can stay in the moment, remain connected to the people around us (even the perceived source of the trigger), and not allow the triggering to create a break in our relationships. Ideally, we take it another step and go in for our own weekly Immanuel session with a coach and let Jesus take a look at the triggering with you so that we can move from ‘coping’ to healing. It is in the memory work with Jesus that the healing of these emotional wounds is permanently resolved. As this process continues, I find myself not responding to situations like I have my whole life. What freedom!
Dr Karl lists four ways to get our relational circuits back on:
Attunement
Deliberate Appreciation
Calming
Humor (Non-sarcastic)
I wrote about Attunement here: https://immanuelpracticum.com/book/attunement-power/. We’ll talk about the others in future blogs.