How Does the Heart Become Broken? Broken parts of the heart form mostly during our childhood when our brains are still developing. Prior to age 13, we are dominated by the emotional and relational parts of our brains (think right hemisphere). Our cognitive brain...

The Landscape of Brokenness: Four Modes of Human Functioning When Jesus gave us the Parable of the Sower, he was illustrating the core problem in the human condition, first announced in Isaiah, that he came to remedy. People’s hearts are blocked, their eyes see but do...

When we live with constant internal or external pressure, we can go into manager/firefighter mode full time. I call this EMT (Emergency Medical Technician) mode because EMTs only keep patients alive and stable; they don’t heal. Likewise, our manager selves cannot...

The Bible does not use the terms manager, firefighter, exile, and true self. But we can find examples of them in Scripture because they have always been part of human nature. In the Gospels, we often see Jesus working with one of these four mindsets in a person’s...

When Jesus made his first public announcement about his mission, he did not speak of dying for our sins. He spoke of healing “brokenhearted” people who are “captive” and cannot find what they need for personal freedom (Isaiah 61:1). The prophets who spoke about the...

Ministry Objectives The overall objectives of our ministry are: To help instill a healthy, biblically-based, life-giving concept of God, one in which people feel infinitely seen, infinitely accepted, and infinitely loved. To help people understand and navigate the...

Example: Healing Encounter with Manager, Firefighter, and Exiled Inner Child In the dialogue below, you will see all the three types of parts (manager, firefighter, and exile/inner child). In the beginning, as is normal, all three of these voices feel blended, like...

Overcoming Barriers to Connecting with God The deeper our pain and trauma, the more difficult it can be to connect to God when that pain and trauma are stirred up. We find three major categories of blockages to be at work here. Parts so mired in the traumas of our...

The Three Phases of Deep Healing God gave us instincts to protect and manage wounds. Those instincts are present for both physical and emotional wounds. The deeper the wound, the more our protective instincts kick in and affect the healing process. In the ministry we...