The Tool Shed
What Are You Looking For?
We are sharing these tools to grow your joy in the marathon of life, Start where the Spirit leads.
The Maturity Pathway
A reflective mirror for noticing relational strengths and growing edges.
Immanuel Journaling
A guided practice for bringing your heart honestly into conversation with God.
Hearing Heart
Six quiet minutes to turn your attention toward God.
Books & Guides
Longer companions for exploring attachment, maturity, identity, and life with God.
The Maturity Pathway
Where Might Some Tending Help?
Maturity is not spiritual rank, personality type, age, worth, or an achievement to conquer. It describes relational capacities that can continue developing throughout life. Some capacities in us may be well-established, while others are still growing or need tender attention.
The stage labels below describe developmental capacities, not literal physical age or church hierarchy.
The capacity to receive comfort, care, joy, and help without shame, self-reliance, or feeling required to earn acceptance.
Reflective Questions:
- Can I receive comfort from God or others when I am distressed?
- Can I ask for help without feeling ashamed or weak?
- Can I receive another person's genuine delight in me without deflecting?
- Can I rest quietly without feeling that I must perform or earn my place?
- Do I experience a settled sense of belonging in God's steadfast love?
The capacity to know what you feel and need, take healthy responsibility for yourself, make choices free of people-pleasing, and live from your authentic identity in Christ.
Reflective Questions:
- Can I clearly know and express what I feel and need without demanding or manipulating?
- Am I willing to do necessary or difficult things even when uncomfortable or unmotivated?
- Can I say "yes" and "no" appropriately while honoring healthy boundaries?
- Am I able to make choices without excessive dependence on the approval of others?
- Am I increasingly living from my authentic identity in Christ rather than a projected false self?
The capacity to remain yourself while warmly connected to others, hear another person's needs without losing yourself, share two-way joy, and repair relational ruptures.
Reflective Questions:
- Can I remain myself while staying warmly connected to others?
- Am I able to hear another person's needs and perspectives without losing myself?
- Can I tolerate disagreement and stay relationally present during differences?
- Do I take honest initiative to repair relational ruptures and apologize when I cause hurt?
- Can I celebrate the strengths and successes of others without feeling envious or competitive?
The capacity to maintain or recover your identity under stress, return to relationship after overwhelm, and keep your heart soft through difficulty without abandoning yourself.
Reflective Questions:
- Can I maintain or recover my identity and peace under stress and pressure?
- When overwhelmed or hurting, do I have the ability to return to relationship rather than staying isolated?
- Can I suffer or experience disappointment without automatically withdrawing, numbing, or controlling?
- Can I remain curious, gentle, and open-hearted when things go wrong?
- Am I able to offer nurture and support to others without abandoning my own health and boundaries?
The capacity to give life without demanding repayment, create non-anxious environments where others flourish, champion younger generations, and continue receiving help while serving.
Reflective Questions:
- Can I give life, care, and encouragement to others without demanding repayment or validation?
- Do I help create non-anxious environments in which others feel safe to grow, fail, and flourish?
- Can I carry wisdom, experience, and spiritual vision without needing to control outcomes?
- Am I able to bless, champion, and make space for younger generations?
- Do I continue freely receiving grace, friendship, comfort, and help from others even as I care for them?
Whatever you notice through these reflections, bring it into conversation with God and trusted friends.
Immanuel Journaling (IJ)
Two-Way Relational Dialogue Under the Loving Gaze of God
Immanuel Journaling belongs within the larger rhythm of the Daily Chapel—our sacred space for upward and inward attention with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It is an embodied, two-way relational prayer practice that creates space to write our sincere heart to God and listen quietly for His tender, biblical response back to us.
This is not a technique to manipulate a spiritual feeling. It is a simple way of paying honest attention to God’s loving presence with you right now.
Write what you appreciate, then write what you sense as you listen ("Dear God, I'm thankful for… / Dear child of mine…").
Write what you sense God may be noticing in you right now, including your physical posture and sensations ("I can see you at your desk...").
Write what you sense God hears you saying to yourself in your thoughts—your fears, weariness, or excitement ("You are wondering if I will speak...").
What you sense of God's perspective on the weight of your dreams, blessings, or troubles without minimizing your heart ("I understand how big this is for you...").
What you sense of God's desire to participate with your life and treat your weakness tenderly ("Times when you are frustrated are when I want to be closer...").
What you sense God offering you in refreshing, perspective, promise, and strength for this time ("Come away with me... with Me you are not alone.").
Spoken words settle deep in your nervous system. Reading aloud anchors God's presence, and sharing it with a trusted friend at The Table deepens relational belonging.
Hearing Heart
A daily six-minute rhythm of quiet attentiveness—an invitation to slow down, listen, and begin the day aware of God's presence.
365 Daily Audio ReflectionsExercises for Living in Connection
Simple practices for growing in openness, joyful connection, and relational belonging.
Telling a 4+ Story
Tell a story about when you felt sad, angry, disgusted, ashamed, fearful, or in despair. An embodied practice for sharing vulnerability, authentic identity, and returning to peace in under 3 minutes.
Speed Friending Guide
Gentle, structured prompt cards organized into three curated choices: Lighthearted (Fun & Discovery), Medium-Depth (Story & Connection), and More Serious (Heart & Meaning). Designed for dinner tables, gatherings, and retreats to spark warm connection, joyful laughter, and shared vulnerability.
Companions for Deeper Formation
Tools help us practice; these written works offer deeper biblical, relational, and emotional context for the journey.
The Joy of Becoming Fully Human
Why God's Delight Changes Everything
Becoming fully human in Christ involves joyful attachment to God, emotional and relational maturity, freedom from fear-shaped self-protection, and learning to live from God's delight. When we recognize God's smiling face over our lives, striving gives way to resting, and self-protection gives way to authentic love.
The Ways We Tried to Stay Loved
How Attachment Shaped Our Lives and Christ Redeems Them
From survival to surrender. From striving to beloved. From wounds to wholeness.
Explores how our early attachment patterns shape identity, relationships, and our experience of God—and how the unconditional love of Christ gently leads us out of self-protection toward secure attachment, surrender, and relational wholeness.
The Divine Invitation
Entering the Dance of Becoming Fully Alive
Have you wondered, if we have the God of heaven and earth living inside us, why we aren't experiencing more in life? What does it look like to have Jesus living in us as an individual and as a woman? The Divine Invitation provides a framework for entering the dance of becoming fully alive—developing a relationship with Jesus that is like two people dancing skillfully and gracefully, so entwined with His thoughts, emotions, and presence that you live joyfully and freely.
"Terri is a lover of God whose heart burns with a fire that is contagious. Her book is full of truth, insight and beauty all flowing from a wise and passionate woman." — Stasi Eldredge, Co-Author of Captivating
“What does it look like to become fully me, with Jesus in me? I came to understand transformation less as God erasing our individuality and more as a graceful collaboration. Over time we become more like Jesus and, paradoxically, more fully ourselves.”
Golden Memories
Discovering Divine Moments in the Storyline of Your Life
A guided exploration of recognizing meaningful moments of grace, listening for God’s commentary, noticing His character in our stories, and strengthening memories that help us return to joy, gratitude, connection, and belonging.
Biblical, Prophetic & Prayer Foundations
By Michael Sullivant
Prophetic Etiquette
For a New Generation: Character, Community, and the Voice of God
The future belongs to ordinary people who learn to recognize the Shepherd's voice. A grounded, biblical, and relational guide to hearing God's voice with integrity, humility, and love within healthy community.
By Michael Sullivant
The Romance of Romans
God's Big God-Story
A fresh, pastoral, and theologically rich journey through Paul's epistle to the Romans—unveiling God's covenant love story, our secure adoption as sons and daughters, and the unfathomable depths of His grace.
By Michael Sullivant
Your Kingdom Come
Living out the Lord's Prayer every day
A contemplative and practical guide to making Jesus' model prayer a living daily reality—aligning your heart with the Father's presence, kingdom reign, daily provision, and covenant peace.
Walking With Someone
There are seasons when what we need most is another person—a wise, prayerful presence who can listen with us, help us notice what we cannot see alone, and accompany us for a stretch of the journey.
Michael and Terri offer limited spiritual life mentoring for individuals and couples seeking deeper relational, emotional, and spiritual formation.