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Greetings!
It's our spring edition of the EL Journal and lots of new additions to the ministry have begun: new More! booklets, website and healing opportunities.This Journal continues our focus on the various sessions from the Embracing Life Series: Cultivating Intimacy with Jesus. Our dear friend, Karen Greeno shares about her deepening relationship with the Lord in the "Something to Say" section. If you are interested in the purchasing the book Karen refers to, Listening Prayer by Dave and Linda Olson, simply click on this link and order from Desert Stream Ministries. Take a look at our excerpted article, "Who's Heart is Breaking" and "A Particular Grace at Work" by our Embracing Life leader in New Zealand, Glenys Brookbanks. May you have a plentiful and peaceful summer. 'Till next time...
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MORE GLORY!
More Glory! Intensive
God's Healing Voice for Shame and Self-Hatred at PIHOP, Pasadena
Hosted by Cheryl Allen
and the team from PIHOP.
Thank you all for a wonderful Transformation Workshop! Our Saturday conference on March 23rd was well attended by the folks from PIHOP and others from the L.A./Orange County area. The More Glory! Intensive helps participants to address issues of shame and the self-hatred that covers it and facilitates hearing God's healing voice through a listening prayer exercise.
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Embracing Life Ministries
Dedicated to helping one another realize the
Abundant Life in Christ!
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Whose Heart is Breaking?
By: Jonathan Hunter
Our hearts... get damaged when we forsake True Love for someone or something else. By refusing the "fullness of joy," we settle for lesser gods, mediocre enjoyment and bad counsel. What a tragic mistake we make: "A man who strays from understanding comes to rest in the company of the dead" (Proverbs 21:16). We all have stories galore that speak of the price we've paid. Some time ago, the Lord exhorted me about the "secret" sexual fantasies I had been entertaining in my mind. His words came like a two-edged sword piercing right through my delusions of mental privacy: "Son, why do you seek pleasure in the things that are dead?" I had come to a reckoning in my relationship with Him. Either I could continue offending His Presence with my illicit fantasies or repent and allow Him to re-seed my mind with His creative life. Thankfully I chose the later. The sexual fantasies disappeared straight away. His work of mental sanctification purified my imagination; a powerful, holy response to a small act of obedience on my part.
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Quote of the Month
"[Friendship]...implies a commitment to the relationship. Commitment is what characterizes friendship. We can walk away from casual acquaintances, but we cannot walk away from friendship once it has been established without breaking somebody's heart, including our own".
(Intimacy with God, Fr. Thomas Keating, p.33)
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A Special Note from Glenys Brookbanks 
A Particular Grace at Work
In my experience with close family members and others living with chronic illness/life-defining conditions, I have noticed a particular phenomenon occurring: I would call it "a grace" of God at work between people. I will try to put into words.
The sick often struggle with unstable and inconsistent symptoms. Their quality of life varies from one day to the next, even one hour to the next. They may be pain-free and peaceful at one time, then sleep deprived, tense with pain or fatigue at another. They may or may not be able to predict the pattern or changes from one state to the next; they may even be subject to different states of mind or varied emotional stresses along with physical discomfort.
Into this mix comes the visitor. For example, a person who is "just passing through the neighborhood" might ring up or text and ask if they can drop-in to visit; or they might just show up at the door on an impulse hoping very delightedly to take the chance to "catch up".
Most sick people are isolated from life as we know it and cannot participate as fully as those who are well. They miss their social life but may feel less than enthusiastic about receiving a visitor. There are several reasons for this. The visitor had tidied herself up before going out, but our patient has been caught feeling and looking "less than her best". The visitor has hatched the plan and has resources of well-being to carry it through. However, the sick person has not had time to adjust or prepare, having shallow resources of energy, personal confidence and capacity for social interaction in their condition.
I suppose I am saying that people are doing something laudable when they visit the sick but I think the grace also lies with the invalid who, out of his slender resources, encounters the other's superior strength with patience and expresses thanks and gratitude for the visit. There is a spiritual exercise going on in the one who is ill. Sometimes, perhaps often, it is the sick who show grace to the visitor and when this happens the weak are the strong and the poor are the rich in biblical terms.
I do believe God can give an anointing to the ones receiving the ministrations of others, an anointing to bless and empower them with strength and dignity. As they give themselves in their weakness, theirs is the greater grace. I think that the sick person who receives the offerings of others with a simple, humble heart ministers love and grace to the giver and dignity to themselves. This is a ministry of the Holy Spirit and is a particular discipline of the Spirit for the sick to practice. They are the ones who bless; they give a gift of grace - the weak to the strong - as they receive others into their lives. It is not always on their own terms and sometimes at great personal cost to their own comfort. This is very precious to God.
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| We hope you will consider sharing this email with friends and loved ones whom you think would benefit from the ministry of Embracing Life. This is a good way to introduce the material and we would appreciate your passing it along. Thanks!
Sincerely,
Jonathan Hunter
Embracing Life Ministries
(626)798-7398
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"Something to Say"
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Featured:
Karen Greeno
Embracing Life Leader
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Testimonies from More Glory!
HRock, Pasadena
We are so grateful for HRock Church, Gwen Gibson and the pastoral staff for hosting More Glory! for their Encounter Weekend on May 25th. The day was filled with healing and here are just a few comments from some of the participants:
...getting the lies of the enemy out in the open and being able to be honest with other believers was most helpful to me. I also profited from the discussion exercises. Through them I got to see what I really believe.
...[what I found most helpful was] the teachings, the praying out loud together, the combination of time with God, time with a partner, group sharing and then group prayer.
...I had shame and self hatred because of fear of God's love. I saw a gray shroud fall from my body after prayer. I asked the Lord to overwhelm me with His love, I am no longer in fear of this.
...[what I found most helpful was] honesty and transparency.
...[what has changed is] I am more aware of the conditions I put on accepting and loving myself. |
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Embracing Life Journal
