A HUNGER FOR RELATIONSHIP

Feeding The Hunger To Know Jesus More

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Adra has been using TA in counseling, theraoy, and workshops for over 40 years. He has conducted workshops for public organizations, including drug education programs and teachers, as well as for pastoral care organizations and churches. For additional reading and understanding of TA, Adra recommends reading “TA Today, A New Introduction To Transactional Analysis”, by Ian Stewart and Vann Joines, Lifespace Publishing, Nottingham, England, and Chapel Hill, North Carolina 1987. While working as a church pastor, he received extensive clinical training in TA Redecision Therapy at Western Institute For Group and Family Therapy, Carmel, California under Bob and Mary Goulding. He also received continued extensive clinical training at Eastern Institute For Group and Family Therapy in Boston, Massachusetts, under Schulamet Peck. In recent years he received continued training through TA Webinar’s occasionally offered by Southeast Institute For Group and Family Therapy, Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He lives in Owls Head, Maine with his wife of 58 years, Nancy. Nancy is an artist, has a studio in their home and sells her stilllife, portraits, and landscapes on her website “https:nancylovleyfineart.com”. They share a yellow lab, Molly, and have two older sons. They live near the ocean and share many walks on the long sandy beach only a five minute walk from their home. Jesus is the center of their relationship, work, and daily walks.

  • In my walk today I talked with the Lord about how I love being close to Him. He had revealed to me, in a walk some time ago, that He also wanted me to experience an intimate relationship with Him as my Heavenly Father and Creator. As a result, I am now not only able to talk with Him, but to also experience the intimacy of His supernatural presence and guidance. It has become a whole new depth of relationship with Him.

    Intimacy, for many people, is thought of only in the sense of physical pleasure. I have found, through my experience with the Lord, that it involves enjoying being in the presence of another, wanting to invest as much time as is necessary in listening and learning to know their heart. It requires an entirely new depth of listening. Such intimacy is the opposite of my sIn (the capital “I” for putting self at the center) and self-centered nature which wants to be understood more than to first understand.

    When I provide counseling and therapy for couples, I teach that understanding another person takes time. I help them practice learning to say, “My hunch is that you are saying the following…..Is that correct?”. The reason they use the word “hunch” is because it moves the responder away from, “assuming”, which most often only results in an argument and broken relationship. 

    It is the same with a spouse as with the Lord. Really wanting to understand, more than to be understood, takes hours of time in their presence learning the art of listening. Learning and practicing this is allowing me, in my relationship with my wife, family, and the Lord to more and more learn how to enjoy being with them. I is helping me to make sure I am hearing their heart by listening in ways that I had not known before.

    May your hunger for intimacy through learning to listen, dear reader, increasingly become a foundational value for your life, as it is becoming for my life.

    Hunger For Experiencing Him As Intimacy

  • When I walked with the Lord this morning I shared with Him how much I hunger to grow in experiencing the harmony and symphony between Himself as God the Father, His Son Jesus, and The Holy Spirit.  I was reminded of the special times when my wife and I had attended full orchestra concerts and experienced the excellent harmony and symphony of the different instruments as they all performed a musical masterpiece.

    God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit move in their relationship as a parallel to a professional and magnificent symphony orchestra. Jesus said that He does what He sees the Father doing and speaks what He hears the Father speaking.(John 8:28-29). He also said the Holy Spirit is sent by the Father and will bring to remembrance all the things that Jesus taught us. (John 14:26). The Three work as One consistently.

    Even so, I am made aware, with every new day, that my relationship with my wife and others can only move as a symphony when I am seeking to follow the Lord’s heart for them in each situation. My challenge is to not be satisfied with following my own heart of impatience and being defensive in each situation, but to seek and follow His heart. Whenever I succeed, in choosing not to follow my own heart, I find His guidance is consistently His love, His patience, and His desire to overcome barriers and build relationship.

    He is my Harmony and my Symphony for each situation. I love experiencing Him in this way with each new day.

    May all of us, dear reader, learn to experience Him as Harmony and Symphony in each new daily challenge that we face.

    Hunger For Experiencing Him As Harmony And Symphony

  • Today, as I walked through my wooded path, I talked with the Lord about the hunger to continue growing in welcoming His supernatural presence and guidance each new situation and with each new day. As I spoke with Him, I was aware of the sun making long shadows through the trees and the bids singing. I was in His chapel and I could feel His supernatural presence all around me. The trees pointed up toward His heaven and their branches moved in His gentle breeze. The birds sang his praise with their excitement that winter was finally over and spring had arrived.

    I told Him that I love not only feeling in His supernatural presence in the moment but, most of all, growing in this hunger with each new day. This desire has become part of my life now for many years now since I first knelt and welcomed Him into my life as my Lord and Savior. So it is that, what I experience with Him today, I want to experience in an even a greater way tomorrow.

    As I walked, I thought, how amazing that the Creator of this universe would want to come and dwell with me, and allow me to feel His actual supernatural presence and guidance. How amazing that He would create a wooded chapel path through the woods, and next to our home, where I could walk and meet and talk with Him with each new day.

    I pray that the periodic postings on this blog will encourage you, dear reader, to let this hunger continue growing in your life, as well.

    Adra Lovley, Jr.

    THE HUNGER TO EXPERIENCE THE LORD AS SUPERNATURAL PRESENCE AND GUIDANCE