FOH Courses

Colossians 3:12-17: “¹² Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. ¹³ Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.¹⁴ And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. ¹⁵ Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful. ¹⁶ Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. ¹⁷ And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”

The goal of Focus on the Heart is to multiply the number of spiritually mature women worldwide, not by transferring more information, but to facilitate transformation. Close relationships change us, and the more we live in an authentic close relationship with the Lord Jesus and with His people, the more we will heal emotionally and grow spiritually.

FOH has developed discussion-based courses that help women identify the barriers in their hearts that keep them from living the love of Christ in daily life. The courses also provide opportunities to strengthen and deepen their relationship with the Lord.

FOH recognizes that women can only be as spiritually mature as they are emotionally mature, so emotional healing for heart wounds is a necessary part of spiritual maturity in a fallen world.

FOH primary audience is women. Women have a unique place of influence: they are more often than not the heart of the home, family, church and community. Families begin to change when even one woman gives her life to Christ and begins to live out of heart filled with the love of God. Suddenly there are new possibilities for growth and healing.

• Relationships are redeemed by forgiveness
• The power of destructive behavior patterns is broken
• The Holy Spirit pours out life-giving joy
• Freedom to live the truth of God’s love replaces struggle to conform to a Christian ideal

But, as is all to evident in churches and Christian homes, all things do not become new immediately. Many of us are distressed by the contrast between the Christian life as described in the New Testament and the attitudes and actions that flow from us on a daily basis. FOH was developed to help women search and see why there is such a contrast.

Focus on the Heart leaders on 6 continents have seen that a wounded heart is the greatest barrier to growing up spiritually. All of us have emotional wounds that produce barriers to receiving God’s love and the security He intends for us to experience as we totally trust Him. These cumulative experiences make it difficult for us to truly believe that God is as good as He says He is. The unbelief hidden in the depths of our hearts serves as a barrier to receiving His love as we continue in life. The barrier keeps us from experiencing the security He intends for us to experience in His love. Our trust in Him is limited.

Heart wounds are caused, not by bad experiences, but by what we came to believe as a result of those experiences. In effect, we come to believe lies about ourselves (“I am bad, defective, worthless, powerless,” etc.), lies about others (“They will fail me”, “I have to live up to their expectations or they will reject me”, “They are against me”, etc.), and lies about God (“He will fail me”, “He doesn’t really care about me”, ). These lies are normally invisible to us, hidden deep in our hearts, but pressure or stressful situations bring them right out. We see the results of these lies when we are angry, defensive, unloving, envious, controlling, resentful, jealous, hiding our hearts from others, or finding substances or experiences that allow us to escape temporarily from our pain (addictions) — all of the thoughts, attitudes, and actions that we know do not please the Lord.

These wounds in our hearts break our trust in God and keep us from growing spiritually. These lies also open the door to oppression by our spiritual enemy. He is ‘the father of lies’ and works actively to grow his lies in our hearts and to blind us to the real truth. Jesus, however, says that He Himself is the Truth(John 13:6), and that the Holy Spirit will lead us into all truth (John 16:13). He longs to replace every lie with His Truth so that we can enter more and more into the abundant life He came to give us.

In FOH, we define spiritual growth in terms of relationships, as Jesus did: spiritual growth means increasing in our ability to love God completely, ourselves correctly, and others compassionately. The FOH courses provide a path toward understanding the dynamics of emotional healing and, because healing in itself is never sufficient, the courses provide opportunities to deepen our experiences of God’s love and care. Around the world, we have seen that true faith is based on our experiences with God, not on what we know about Him.