Preparing for the Dissociation Seminar

This Saturday Di and I are running our first day seminar on ministry to people with dissociation. By dissociation we do not just mean Dissociative identity Disorder (DID, or what used to be called Multiple Personality Disorder - MPD). Nor do we mean specifically victims of Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA), which seems to be a bit of a focus of some Christian counsellors workingin this area.

Rather, we have learned from our training with Anazao Counselling, and from subsequent experience ministering to others, that almost everybody dissociates to some degree. Not just daydreaming or zoning out, which are actually not varieties of dissociation, but protecting themselves from many difficult childhood experiences by creating alternate parts in their minds.

While preparing the lessons and resource sheets for Saturday's seminar we have been going over case notes about sessions with people we have counselled in this way, and I am once again amazed at what Jesus will do with you when you are willing to get out of your comfort zone and ngage with something new and familiar.

Even more inspiring are the testimonies from people who have received ministry. It takes great courage to open up your very inner being and expose your deepest secrets to someone you might not know well. It might be even harder with people you do know well! This is especially true in the case of dissociation. You may not even know those secrets yourself until a dissociative part gains confidence in that Jesus will protect you and allows you to have the memory and feelings of some event about which you have little or no knowledge.

When I have obtained permission I will share some of these testimonies, but I just want to say now that there are some people around who were once in despair and who are nor rejoicing in their new found freedom and love for Jesus.

Recent Beth Tephillah Ministries Seminars

The Hearing God's Voice seminar we ran last weekend at Warrnambool was a great time. About 40 turned up for the Friday Night and all day Saturday sessions, where we taught about what it means to hear God's voice, some of the obstacles to hearing and how to overcome them, ways to begin to hear God, dreams and visions, creative imagination, and the nature of prophecy and prophets.

Everyone engaged in the practical exercises, which for some were their first experience at actually recognising that God does speak to them. For others it was reinforcement and the discovery of further ways to hear, and what to do with it when we do.

About half have already indicated their interest in having us return to Warrnambool to do our Intimacy with God seminar later in the year, and we will also repeat Hearing God's Voice for them before their next Restoration course begins in 2008. The material is available online at listening2god.com for anyone to use.

The weekend before this we ran the first Intimacy with God course in Williamstown for about 25 participants, and this was well received. God has been speaking to many across the world about this. It is not new, but seems to have been neglected in our instant, results oriented, modern society. More recent generations of Christians, apart from rejecting that approach to life, are also seeking a more authentic, less control and 'success' dominated way to live as followers of Jesus. They are finding it in some of the older spiritual forms as well as in the fresh revelations that God is giving to his people as time grows short.

The Intimacy with God material will also be put online at intimacywithgod.net when time permits. Watch for it.

Our next seminar at Williamstown will be on the 8th of September and looks at Generational Healing.