Rhonda and Danny Calhoun, friends of ours and co-directors of Our Father’s Farm ministry near Kansas City, have also observed this same phenomena. They routinely use the Immanuel approach, and recently shared with us about their experiences with Sarah and Claire. Sarah came to them at the age of 13, almost totally disabled by post traumatic stress disorder from the horrible abuse she had endured. Even though she had been rescued from the abusive environment of her early childhood at the age of six, and had received regular care from a team of mental health professionals for seven years, she was still unable to eat normally due to a variety of triggered reactions, unable to sleep normally due to regular nightmares and triggered reactions to being in bed at night, unable to participate in mainstream public schooling, and could rarely get through a day without intrusive traumatic memories causing panic attacks.

Thankfully, she responds well to work with the Immanuel approach, and has received transformative healing through a series of beautiful, gentle interactions with Jesus. By the time she was 15 she was thriving instead of barely surviving, and this is where the Immanuel approach and non-Christians come in. Her friend and next door neighbor, 12 year-old Claire, was a deeply troubled non-Christian girl who regularly cut herself. One day Claire came to Sarah, intensely upset, asking for help, and saying that she was going to cut herself. Sarah didn’t know what to do, so she invited Jesus to be with her, she was quickly able to perceive His living, interactive presence, and then she asked Him for help. In response, she felt like the Lord said: “Bring Claire to Me, like Rhonda does with you.”

So 15 year-old Sarah invited 12 year old Claire to try Immanuel prayer, and even though Claire wasn’t a Christian, she was still willing to try it. She promptly experienced what she describes as “close encounters of the Jesus kind” – she had a mental image of Jesus standing in front of her, He told her that He had been cut so that she would not have to be cut, He showed her the marks on His body, and then He went on to say, “You’ve always wanted a family…would you like to be part of My family?” She said yes. Sarah and Claire didn’t take time to discuss theology, but I think this qualifies for becoming a Christian, since Claire has been talking to Jesus regularly and following Him openly since this initial encounter. Furthermore, Claire hasn’t cut herself, or had the urge to do so, since that day in the summer of 2009.

Karl Lehman, M.D., personal collection of Immanuel stories