How God Fixes a Man Part One

1. The man is brought to a desperate situation in his life and he can't get out.
2. The man's devices are broken. His devices are things that he has used to intoxicate his pain of not having a father nor a father/masculine imprint upon his heart.
3. There is a demand for masculinity in his life. This could be a wonderful wife, awesome children, great friends.

When these three are present God is ready for His master work: restoring a man.

What is Wrong with Men? Part One

Every boy has a key developmental time in his life - when he is between the ages of 7 to 11. For most boys they look for a father figure to awaken them into a man's world. The heart begins to ache for this as the mother finishes her primary touch on the young man's life. If there is no man to step foward and engage the young man, he will have a tendency to doubt his masculinity for the rest of his life. Most young men will find that sexuality works as a replacement for masculinity. Thus most men live their life not knowing the difference between their unseen, uncelebrated masculinity and their sexuality.

Thus we have a generation of boys who know how to have sex but do not know what it means to be a man; so we try to live according to what women's version of manhood is - and this does not satisfy the man. Our call is from God, our masculinity is from God. He defines who we are.

May God raise up a generation of men to reach the lost generation of boys.

Fear

Nothing is more anti-heart than FEAR. Fear causes us to not breathe with our hearts but revert to letting our mind and emotions control us. I have seen many a marriage ruined because one mate was more committed to their fears rather than to God or their mate. I have an extra chair in my office that I sometimes place next to a HeartTalk student. Their spouse sits in a chair across from them. The smaller chair sits next to them while their spouse is about three or four feet away. I comment that they are going to hold to the one (usually fear) and despise the other. They do not mean or think that they are despising their spouse but they are. Fear laughs and mocks our heart and our heart's desire. To live without fear means being committed to the way of the Heart without any editing allowed. It means being committed to letting the Spirit of God and the breath of God flow through us. It means being and staying connected to God through His Spirit and the hearts of those who follow Him with all their hearts.

The Heart Breathes

The heart breathes grief and joy in the same breath. To hold our breath spiritually means we cease to be. Our mind takes over and we function but we do not live. We live by happiness or saddness but we do not know life. We see others enjoying life but we do not recognize it or know its source. For most of us, we hate grief. Yet it is our introduction into the air of heaven - joy. Only a heart that has known and experience and expressed grief can truly embrace joy. People joy choke because they have not been prepared by the grief of life and living. If you love with your heart, you are going to know grief.

Breathe. Love. Live. Grieve and you will know joy.

God promises to those who grieve great joy that overwhelmes and overtakes the grief. Psalm 126.

Aches and Dreams - Planted Seeds Awaiting

There are desires deep within your heart that you are probably not aware of. Sometimes God has to orchestrate events to stir up those desires so that they come to the surface. God told Adam it was not good that he was alone. God planted and then fulfilled the desire of Adam's heart. Adam was asked to name the animals and look for one who corresponded to him. One was not found. Adam looked again and again. Finally a design for one was discovered. God had used the long process of naming the animals and looking for a mate to paint of picture of what she would look like. I believe God waited until the design ache of Adam's heart matched the design and purpose God had for them together. Hannah wrestled with God while He was drawing Samuel on her heart. What is God drawing on your heart? What lack aches your heart? What seeds has God planted and is now seeking to awaken in your life? Keep your eyes on Him and He will give you the desires of your heart. Psalm 37. Trust Him and open your heart to His work.

Tears - Sacred Prayers from our Heart

Large tears are whispers from our soul and heart. There are times where our minds fail us in expressing what we are going through. Romans 8 tells us that the Spirit of God moves in our hearts to express groans, sacred and holy groans to the Father. We all have had situations where these groans have been released. God is not entrusting these groans to our minds but rather to His own Holy Spirit to take them to the Father. Sometimes we don't know what to pray or how to pray. We are overwhelmed with what is before. However, our heart is still in communion with God and we both groan -longing for redemption, freedom from the corruption.

Some of us swallow our groans and tears. These go down into the bowels of our soul and ferment until they become bitterness and eventually rage. Now we are using our energy to supress these fermenting groans deep down in our soul. The rage overwhelms us and we occassionaly explode on those around us or perhaps in road rage type of episodes. Most know us has nice people - true except for the hidden rage. We need to release those groans at the right time. These groans are gifts from God in dealing with the pain of life. We need safe places where we can release those sacred tears and groans and we need to release them in a timely manner.

Do you swallow your Tears?

We are Most Like God

It is in our heart, our spirit, that we are most like God. When we are possessed by God through the presence of the Holy Spirit in our heart and we become a new creation - that new creation is our heart. When we chose to abide in His presence in our heart we abide in Him. When we learn to discern the voice of the Holy Spirit in our heart we learn to walk and talk with Him. The voice of the Heart is gentle, firm and kind. It is important to learn how to listen to His voice in your heart. Your mind is a wild computer looking for information to compute, to disect so that it can control the outcome. The Heart longs to love, longs for love to be received and returned - all for the sake of the receiver. God communes directly with our hearts, better yet reflectly. He echoes to our minds through the glory of nature but He communes with our hearts. I love to read the Psalms of the Day - if today is the 9th then Psalm 9 +30, Psalm 39 +30, Psalm 69 etc. Every month you will have read through the Psalms which are powerful heart words. Let your heart walk through the Psalms with your Lord. Listen for what stirs your heart. Stop and meditate on that, commune with your Creator and Savior at that point and let Him speak to you.

Exhaustion

Most of us are tired. We carry heart wounds and do not know what to do with them so we suppress them. It takes emotional energy to hold our wounds down. If it is a serious heart wound it may take all of our emotional energy to suppress the pain and grief. It is like we take our wounded heart and put it into a trash can and hide it. We stop being so that we can pretend we are not hurt. Then we operate by our minds. Our relationships are distant but controlled. We are polite but not passionate about anything except about denying what is going on in our heart. We promised ourselves to NEVER feel that pain again, ever, no matter what.

Tired. Exhausted. No end in sight. Yet God longs for communion with us from our heart. Our spouse and children and friends long to know us at a heart level. But we are terrified to open our hearts and let all that which has been suppressed for years - come out. Wretched person that I am, who will set me free?

Throwing Up

I know. No one likes to talk about it. But we all do it. Alone and in private. Yet this concept has helped a lot of people understand what they are going through when it comes to grief and healing so please bear with me.

Throwing up. When someone close to you has used that closeness to hurt you it is like they made you swallow cotton balls soaked in poison. If the abuse lasts for any amount of time it is like they kept forcing you to swallow these cotton balls soaked in poison. Soon you are free from the person with the poison but you still have these cotton balls inside of you. Because the person had influence in your life sometimes it is hard to recognize the cotton balls as poison. The cotton balls resemble words, attitudes, and feelings that you received from the poison person into what you think and feel about your self. That poison has to come out. So you get into a healthy relationship with a person who loves to give you cotton balls of blessing. Now imagine, your belly button is where blessing cotton balls go in. This wonderful person speaks blessing into your life and you receive it. But there is not enough room. The poison cotton balls were taking up all the room. Blessing cotton ball in and a poison cotton ball comes out the mouth. You emotionally throw up. When a person has dated and gotten hurt or even in a marriage then another person comes along and seeks to love that wounded person they get thrown up on. In fact, sometimes the more the person blesses them the more the wounded person throws up on them. If you recognize what is going on it helps speed up the healing process. This is very important. The poisoned person begins recognizing what is going on and appreciating the blessing person. Relationships sometimes fall apart because the couple does not realize what is going on. And sometimes it takes years before someone can throw up something that is deep down within themselves. A person filled with poison breathes poison into other people's lives even though they do not mean to. Another crazy thought: throwing up the poison hurts worse than when you swallowed it!

The Gift of Grief

When a parent does fulfill the Heart Longings that God breathed in us we experience a breath of grief. If we have a safe place to spiritual breathe, we exhale the breath through grieving however is appropriate for our age. However, if we do not have a safe place to express our grief we swallow the grief. Like manna in the Old Testament, it begins to go bad on us. Left for a season it produces anger, then bitterness and then erupts into rage. We have to use a lot of emotional energy to keep the grief down in our souls, locked away. This exahaustion can lead to depression and mental health issues. It is neccesary to release the grief breath. It will hurt just to release the breath almost as much as if it just happened. This is why most of don't want to deal with our past issues. BUT if we don't then our heart is not available for us to love and we live life by our mind and emotions - an extremely exhausting life. God gave the grief as a gift and in expressing the grief He promises that He will exchange the grief for joy. Not happiness but a sense of peace that goes beyond the mind's ability to grasp.

Father Awakens

Now the father ache in the child's heart awakens. For most children this begins about 5 yrs and continues through 11 or 12. The child's heart becomes focused on what the father says about the child. They will take how and what the father says to be how God says and feels about them. This is either a burden or blessing for the rest of their life. The father also awakens the masculintiy in the boys and the femininity in the girls. If the father awakens this heart gift then the child's sexuality will sleep. Andrew, my eldest, asked Tori one time why she did not have a boyfriend. She replied, I have dad, why would I need one? Asleep yet awakened. She asked me what dating was supposed to be all about. I said for her to discern what she likes about a certain boy, confidence, good looks, humor - and then put on that like a shirt or jacket, receive that from that person like a gift. Your man will have some form of that gift. Thus dating is about putting clothes, blessings on and not taking clothes off. The father must see the child. Paul tells Timothy to fight according to the prophesy that has been made concerning him. Fathers, prophesy to your children. See their wonderful, awesome hearts and tell them what you see. Tell them who they are in their heart (forth-telling) and tell them where they are going if they continue to live by the integrity of their heart (fore-telling). Fathers are failing today because their fathers gave them nothing. And now these new fathers are terrified because they have nothing for their children. Pray that these fathers would go to God to get from Him directly what they need for their children.