Recovery Ministry

Emotional health and spiritual health are often linked and dependent upon one another. Sometimes we have a tendency to pretend otherwise. This can happen especially when we find signs of compulsive behavior, lasting depression, unnatural fears or other emotional instability. It can be easy to think that whoever is experiencing these things really needs to improve their relationship with the Lord. And that is probably an accurate assumption. However, it can become dangerous and people can really begin thinking that something is fundamentally wrong with them if they believe that emotional problems have solely a spiritual cause.

I've begun the first class in a Recovery Ministry series with a couple other male staff from The Rock entitled Making Peace with Your Past. We are being lead by a leader in a local church who has lead and trained others to lead this course about a dozen times already. Here is a description of the course:

"This is a Life recovery study that offers practical, biblically based teaching to lead adults to identify, understand, and come to terms with the feelings and problems of growing up in a dysfunctional family. This course will help adults who grew up in a home in which one of the family members had emotional needs so strong that they disrupted the development of healthy relationships. Participants will understand problems from the past and identify and remove emotional, psychological, and spiritual barriers to fellowship with God."

I'm hoping that not only will it help me to take an honest look at my own past but that it will be a great tool of insight to help get started with a recovery ministry within The Rock. Many of our staff women (including Aimee) took this class last school year and they have been greatly blessed by it.

Again, emotional and spiritual health are closely linked I believe. Having unresolved emotional pain can be a hindrance to connecting with the Lord with freedom. I'm already learning a lot and am grateful to be taking this course.

Please be praying

- That I will make the time to thoroughly go through our daily homework

- That those of us in the class will be open to what God has to show us.

- That in the future this can be used as a tool to help other men in our church to make peace with their past.