Emotional and Mental Health-Freedom from Negative Emotions

Journaling is a lost art form and mental health tool. It takes many avenues of expression and can be a variety of sizes and styles. Whatever fits the personality and needs of the journalist.

This is a method of documenting the events in our life and dealing with pent up thoughts and emotions. When we do not express our thoughts in words to a mentor or on paper in a journal, they will erupt from our soul at inopportune times.

                             

Sit in a quiet place and journal all of your thoughts and feelings. In doing this, you are emptying yourself of yourself.

Do not talk, sing, pray, watch TV, listen to music or answer your phone...just listen to your soul - your thoughts and feelings - and wait on the Lord to come and fill you with His comforting Holy Spirit.

It may take hours...it may take days...it may take weeks or months as it took me to get to the root of the issues which plague our soul. This all depends on how much inner and outer clutter is in our life.

We cannot be discouraged if we are not successful when we start journaling. It takes time to develop a new habit. Just remember that tomorrow is the first day of the rest of our life and our God is the God of second chances.

As we continue to journal each and every day, it will not take long to get to the root of the issues causing us unrest. Then we can follow the Serenity Principle and either deal with the issue(s) or place it in God's capable hands to resolve in His timing and way.

Once we finish with our journal and go about our day, we can stop what we are doing at the first sign of unrest in our soul or spirit- even if we just duck into the bathroom for a few minutes.

Taking time to pray allows God to reveal the source of these negative thoughts and emotions. Then, once God shows us the origin of our anxiety, anger or other negative emotion, we can repent or ask for God's help.

He may lead us to forgive, to change our focus about the situation or to serve the person, which is hurting us. It also helps to switch our focus to an eternal perspective and set boundaries around anything from this temporal world, which is causing us trouble.

Does our issue really matter in the overall scheme of eternity? If not, we can let it go and let God teach us to think like He does about the issue.

Prayer:

Father God, we ask You to give us Your wisdom to know what situations we can change, and which to leave in Your skillful hands. Give us the strength to deal with the issues that You reveal are our responsibility. Then help us to turn the rest over to You.

Help us to develop an attitude of acceptance about them. If we cannot change them, then we can praise You for them, in them, and through them, even for the negative things. By doing this, we end up walking in complete serenity and in the dynamic power of Your Holy Spirit.

Thought for the Day:

What is it in your life that is causing you a problem right now?  Can you do something about it? Then, do it! If not, then change your focus and give the problem to God.

A Changed Life

 

Would you like to have your life changed? As a Born Again Believer, we have the Holy Spirit present in us to fill us with all the fullness of God. This is the key to walking in Serenity.

We fall to our knees and pray to our Father God, the Creator of everything in Heaven and on earth. We pray that from His glorious, unlimited resources that He will empower us with inner strength through His Spirit.

This allows Jesus Christ to make His home in our heart as we totally trust in Him. Our roots grow deeper in God's love and this keeps us strong in body, soul and spirit.

We empty our self of the inner clutter caused by our overly committed lives. We can journal until we are totally void of self and totally filled with all the fullness of God ^{(Ephesians 3:14).}

He gives us the power to understand the root of the issues in our life as well as the wisdom of His Word. We bask in the width, length, depth and heights of His love for us.

We experience the love of Christ, although it is hard for us to fathom how He can love us so completely and deeply, even in the minutest details of our life.

God fills our spirit and soul to the brim with His life, wisdom and power. We can dwell in this inner sanctum within His divine presence in us all through the day.

We no longer feel the need to worry and stress over the issues in this world, because we are not really part of it any more. We are hidden with Christ in God (Colossians 3:3).

Prayer:

Father God, our mind is quick to fill with worry and clutter with each sunrise. Thank You for helping us not to allow the pressures and distractions of this world to monopolize our attention. We no longer want to run full speed ahead all day long and then fall into bed at night too exhausted to spend time with You or in reading Your Word.

Yet, Your mercies are new every morning (Lamentations 3:22-23), and we can learn to access them in Your presence within us. Draw us close to You and keep us in the center of Your will. Remove any Satanic strongholds that prevent us from growing in Your grace and keep us safely tucked under the shadow of Your wings until we come to spend eternity with You.

Thought for the Day:

At times the cacophony of life prevents us from hearing the voice of our beloved, Jesus Christ; but God wants to fill us through all of our being with all of His fullness, so that we can experience for our self the richest measure of His presence and become a body wholly filled with God Himself.

- Ephesians 3:19 Amplified Bible

Walking in the Spirit

Does God actually talk to us? Is it an audible voice, an inner voice, an impression or feeling or thought in our mind? How can we hear God's voice?

We start by developing a physical "closet" in which to meet with God: Under the tree in the garden, a path where we are walking or jogging all alone, a chair in our home where we are uninterrupted, the spare bedroom, the attic or basement, or an actual closet space in our home. 

We go there with our journal and nothing else. No Bible, music, TV or radio. Just a chair and some breathing room without any distractions. We spend time here for thirty minutes to an hour any time during every day and we journal whatever comes to our mind.

At first, it may be lists of things we need to do. Go ahead and jot these ideas in the journal. When we write them down, we clear them from our mind and quiet those "voices" in our head.

Then we may think of Bible verses, a movie clip, a conversation or some event we had in the past; jot it down in the journal. Again it clears our mind of this inner clutter.

Write down concerns or problems as a prayer to the Lord. Then we spend some time praising God for who He is and what He already did in our life. We think of His goodness and grace, and we overflow with gratitude toward Him.

Next is the hard part, which gets easier with practice… LISTENING. With a cleared mind, we listen with our inner, spiritual ear in our spirit to any words the Holy Spirit may whisper to us (1 King 19:12).

We heed and obey His directives and enjoy His comfort and encouragement every moment of every day of our life (Galatians 5:25). We live with His praises on our lips and His peace in our heart, and we eventually learn to pray without ceasing throughout the day (1 Thessalonians 5:17).

Prayer:

Father God, teach us to walk by Your Spirit step-by-step. We may falter as we mature from crawling to walking and then running, but we are soon sprinting through life by the direction of Your Spirit, in obedience to Your Word and under the guidance of Your peace.

Help us to yield our life to You, to walk away from the deeds of the flesh (Galatians 5:15-25) and to allow Your peace, which transcends human reasoning, to guide our hearts through Christ Jesus (Philippians 4:7). Fill us with Your fruit and wisdom; and teach us to do only Your will in every circumstance (Galatians 5:22-23; Ephesians 2:10).

Thought for the Day:

We encourage others by offering to pray for them, showing them love even when they are unloving toward us and sharing a testimony of God's love - sometimes without even using words.