Date: Future Date To Be Announced
Description:
The development of the Immanuel Approach for emotional healing and for life by Dr Karl Lehman, Dr Jim Wilder and others who have been incorporating the model has contributed a great deal to our understanding of how to strengthen and maintain an interactive connection with God as well as how to understand and address things that seem to be hindering this interactive connection. As the model develops, it seems to be getting more clear that God’s primary goal for this interactive connection is to help people deepen their friendship and intimacy with God and out of this friendship and engagement secondary goals emerge which include healing, personal growth, clearer discernment, a better understanding of God’s heart and many other things. The Immanuel Approach seems to be unique (at least to my knowledge) in the way that it combines multiple practices/ingredients seen in other prayer/healing models into one comprehensive model. The practices which seem to help the Immanuel Approach work as well as it does include but are not limited to:
- Beginning with helping people feel/be safe, peaceful, and open to connecting with God and others. (Dr Lehman describes this primarily in terms of getting a person’s relational circuits online)
- Explicitly inviting God’s presence and guidance.
- Sharing with another person what is coming to one’s awareness.
- Maintaining the interactive connection with God over an extended period of time.
- Welcoming God’s help and drawing on various interventions to address blockages to perceiving God’s presence as they arise.
Including these practices used in Immanuel Approach sessions into one’s personal prayer times seems to be proving quite helpful for many people in deepening their interactive awareness of God’s presence. However, the absence of having a person to share what is coming to one’s awareness can make the other practices significantly more difficult to incorporate. This workshop will identify ways that thoughtful people have been working with this challenge with positive effect as seen in the Joyful Journey prayer journaling model. It will also explore additional possible ways of drawing on Immanuel Approach practices in our personal prayer life and invite conversation and participation among the participants to further our understanding of what works for them and what could be incorporated to deepen our interactive connection with God. This workshop will primarily be structured more heavily towards right brained experiential learning than towards left brained logical explanation. This is part of the reason this workshop description includes so much left brained explanation. All who feel inspired to join are welcome.
Note that for a deeper exploration of incorporating the Immanuel Approach in your personal prayer life you may want to consider joining the 6 week training group called Practicing God’s Presence in Daily Life lead by Andy Ross.
If you are interested in developing your ability to practice the Immanuel Approach with others both as a facilitator and a receiver you may want to join one of our 6 week Immanuel Approach Basic Skills Training Group which are lead primarily by Michael Schaefer.
Workshop Prerequisites: None
Workshop Cost: Free