TLGN Overview

The Mission

Our Mission is to Move People from a Devastating Diagnosis or Crisis to Extraordinary Living. We fully intend to provide each person we engage with, who has been diagnosed with a life threatening or life altering illness, or serious crisis, with “the opportunity” to know and experience “LIFE” to the fullest, no matter how severe their diagnosis or condition may be.

This mission is based on a passages found in the Bible,first and foremost in the Gospel of John, verse 10:10 regarding “abundant life” and secondly in the book of Jeremiah, verse 29:11, which says “I know the thoughts I think toward you says the Lord, thoughts for good and not evil, to give you a future and a hope.”

Believing that someone can find abundant life in the midst of life-threatening crisis is more than some people can comprehend, but it is exactly the experience of those who choose to believe. In fact, on many occassions we have heard people say, after working with us for a while, “I am living more now than ever before in my life.”

The Vision of The Life Givers Network ^®

Our vision is to build a broad network of people who can provide early, intentional, life-oriented, people focused intervention for every person diagnosed with a life-threatening or life-altering illness as well as persons who have just encountered some extra ordinary crisis. We encourage caregivers to participate in this process as well.

The Basis of The Vision

The vision for Life Givers is based on God’s Word as found in the Bible. In February of 1991, while part of a graduate school class, Dr. Jim was challenged with the question, “What are you doing to intentionally take healing to people?” That same night, while reading and seeking God’s direction, he came across a passage in the Old Testament book of Numbers, chapter 16, verses 46 to 48.

In those verses, Moses spoke to his brother Aaron saying “Take a censer and put fire in it from the altar, put incense on it, and take it quickly to the congregation and make atonement for them…the plague has begun.” That same night Dr. Henry decided to return to New Jersey, pray, seek the counsel of friends and family, and see how he could position himself to do as Aaron had done, stand between the “plague of cancer” impacting his family and those individuals who he knew and loved were being impacted. In January of 1992, Dr. Jim opened James Henry Counseling Associates (JHCA) from which The Life Givers Network® has evolved.

The Goal of Intervention

The primary goals our our interventions are as follows:

To provide “safe ways” to sow hope, nurture life, and provide ongoing encouragement” so our mission is accomplished.

To honestly and openly address the spiritual and emotional conflicts that just about every patient and caregiver will have to face.

To help patients and caregivers alike to understand that early intervention is as important as early diagnosis and the reasons why.

To see that this opportunity exists in every community in America and in as many places in foreign lands as possible.

Our Expectations

After more than forty years of ministry and clinical experience, more than twenty three of those years spent in helping persons with serious illness, Dr Henry is convinced that people in every community who are diagnosed want help to LIVE more fully, even if they are unable to verbalize that need, for whatever reason.

Contrary to what many people told us in the early years of this work, we have found there are many people who want to learn “what to do and what to say” so they can make a significant difference in the lives of those they love and care for. We are committed to identifying, empowering, and providing ongoing encouragement to those people because we know ordinary people can be so empowered that they are able to make and extra-ordinary difference in the lives of others.

“JOY”

The Bible teaches that “…the joy of the Lord is our strength (Nehemiah 8:10).” Over the years we have heard numerous reports of patients going to group meetings to find hope and encouragement, only to come away more depressed because the focus of those meetings was on the disease and treatments rather than on things of great concern to the patient.

Utilizing a very different approach, where we focus on the value of the individual and their life instead of the disease, we have found that our meetings whether they be large or small are characterized by “joy.” The joy comes as a result of our focus and it literally becomes a source of strength. This strength is all-inclusive and covers physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. The basis for this phenomenon is the spiritual strength which works its way out from a person’s inner-most being, providing a new found strength in all the other areas.

Anyone who knows the work of Norman Cousins, former editor of The Saturday Review who went on to teach Medical Humanities at the UCLA School of Medicine knows the importance of humor. His story as related in the classic, Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient, is clear proof of how joy and laughter can permanently impact a person’s physiology. It really is a must read.

Bottom line, the Bible teaches us that “…a merry heart does good like medicine (Proverbs 17:22).” In fact, some people would probably testify that when medical solutions have run out, that a merry heart, created by the “joy of the Lord”, has been better medicine than any they have ever taken.