The 25 EHS Truisms

The following are 25 powerful Emotionally Healthy Spirituality (EHS) truisms that have stood the test of time. They capture, in a memorable way, profound biblical truths about EHS as a discipleship paradigm. I use them often in my teaching and invite you to do the same.

1. It is not possible to be spiritually mature while remaining emotionally immature.
2. Jesus may be in your heart but grandpa is in your bones.
3. We cannot give what we do not possess.
4. What I do matters. Who I am matters much more.
5. Limits are often God’s gifts in disguise.
6. As goes the leader, so goes the church.
7. For an expectation to be valid, it must be conscious, realistic, spoken, and agreed upon.
8. If you skim on your inner work, your outer work will suffer as well.
9. You can’t separate knowing God from knowing yourself.
10. We cannot change what we are unaware of.
11. Loss marks the place where self-knowledge and powerful transformation happen – if we say yes to God.
12. Our doing for Jesus must be sustained by a life of being with Jesus.
13. We are not leaders who are married. We lead out of our marriages.
14. Our shadows undermine the best of who we are unless we face them.
15. Without silence and solitude it is almost impossible to grow in the spiritual life
16. The degree to which we grieve our losses is the degree to which we are compassionate people.
17. God speaks in the sound of sheer silence.
18. The truth sets us free, but it first makes us miserable (Sandra Wilson).
19. When we fail to practice Sabbath, we do violence to ourselves.
20. Sometimes you have to disrupt false peace to have true peace.
21. The body is a major, not a minor prophet.
22. We speak respectfully, honestly, clearly, and in a timely way, in the new family of Jesus.
23. We have to go backwards in order to go forward.
24. Discipleship is the putting off the sinful patterns of your family of origin, and culture, and learning to live in the new family of Jesus.
25. When you are not in reality, you are not in spirituality.

For those of you who are deep in EHS, what might you add? I would like to know.

– Pete
@petescazzero

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