Emotional and Mental Health - Emotional Climate

There are varying degrees of emotion in the human realm. We are not simply angry, sad, happy or fearful. We could be furious or irritated, overwhelmed with grief or unhappy, overjoyed or tickled, horrified or wary or any degree in between.

The fact is that positive emotions give birth to other positive emotions and negative emotions promote more negative feelings. Our thoughts feed off one another, and our thoughts and emotions influence our behavior.

Our negative emotions can affect our body's health as well, with psychosomatic illnesses. These are very real issues with no physical cause and can influence the longevity of our life.

Yet, when our attitude swings toward the positive, these same diseases disappear and our health actually improves dramatically. God gives us negative emotions to warn us of an unresolved conflict in our soul. It pays to pay attention to and to resolve these issues quickly.

Emotion is not influenced much by economic standing, relational status or our collection of material possessions. We can be happier as a poor person than a rich one, single rather than married, or in a one bedroom cottage instead of a mansion.

One person with horrendous life circumstances can be happier than someone who enjoys perfect health and material prosperity. Genetics even play a part in our overall satisfaction with life.

Melancholy personalities have a hard time seeing anything except through the filter of their negative persona; yet phlegmatic people will often view even the worse of circumstances with a positive outlook.

We tend to avoid people who are determined to see life negatively. Their favorite topics of conversation are their poor health and how unfair life is to them. They shoot holes in our hopes and dreams and bring us down to their level.

The presence of God's Spirit in our spirit is the biggest controller of our emotions; however, we also have the power to choose what our mind dwells on and what we allow to influence our life.

Prayer:

Father God, remind us that negative attitudes and feelings will prevent us from walking in Your Spirit (Galatians 5:15-25). They often deny us the opportunity to achieve Your preordained will for our life (Ephesians 2:10). We want to walk in Your ways and avoid the pitfalls caused by prolonged negative emotions

Help us to develop positive habits that will breed contentment and serenity. Cause us to take frequent moral, emotional and physical inventories in order to have the opportunity to bring any issues to You for resolution. Thank You for abiding in us and with us and for not forsaking us on this earth.

Thought for the Day:

As we face the sun (and the Son), we see a bright future and the only shadows in our life end up being behind us; people will remember us more for our attitude about life than for what we actually say and do.

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.

My Soul Waits - Filled with God's Fullness

 

God chose us before the foundation of the world to redeem us, to transform us, to give us His divine nature and to use us in the work of His Kingdom (Ephesians 2:10; 2 Peter 1:4).

We no longer deflect His will with hurried lives and busy days. We grow spiritually and come to the place where we surrender our desires and embrace His heart and mind as our own.

We have a continual conversation with God as we share our heart with Him and listen to His answers and directives for our day. God's presence satisfies our longing and fills our hungry soul (Psalm 107:9).

God redefines our plans and leads us in His Truth and everlasting way. He gives us a new name and nature with a heart of compassion and a willingness to do His will (Psalm 43:3; Revelation 2:12; Colossians 3:12).

Our focus switches from our self and our little place in the cosmos and increases to the world around us and the needs of the people involved in our everyday life.

We relinquish our hurt, bitterness, anger, and pride and walk in forgiveness, love and humility instead. This diminishes Satan's hold on our life and increases our fellowship with our Father.

We empty our soul of the cares of this life, having faith in God's faithfulness to work out every detail for our ultimate good (Romans 8:28). He fills us with His fullness and we change the world around us - one person at a time (Ephesians 3:16-19).

Prayer:

Father God, spiritual understanding is ours as we allow Your Spirit to discipline our carnal nature and strengthen our spiritual nature as You fill us with Your faith, hope and love (1 Corinthians 13:13). Help us to totally surrender to Your love and to trust You in the good times and the bad.

We know that only You hold the issues of life and death in Your hands (Psalm 41:13). We so enjoy the immeasurable intimacy which You share with those who love You and who keep Your commandments (John 14:15; Ephesians 3:8). We enjoy our fellowship with You and appreciate the showers of Your blessings on our daily life.

Thought for the Day:

Let us walk worthy of the Lord, pleasing Him in our thoughts, words and deeds, so that we can bear fruit by His Spirit through every good work which we perform; and may we continually increase in our knowledge, understanding and intimacy with God. - Colossians 1:9-10

Waiting on the Lord

I hate to wait. I am hyperactive and waiting makes my blood pressure go up. I usually take my knitting everywhere; so I can make the time pass more productively and prevent my blood pressure from rising. 

I also attempt to start conversations with the potential friends sitting in the waiting room with me. I give them one of my business cards, which has the Romans' Road printed on the inside of the card, and I invite them to join me at church on Sunday.

However, waiting has some other benefits as well. Waiting on the Lord renews our strength and allows us to rise up and soar in the Spirit (Isaiah 40:31). While waiting, we will hear God's clear direction for each moment of our day.

Waiting on the Lord gives us time to function in the ministry of intercessory prayer for whomever God's Spirit brings to our mind. It also allows patience to do her perfect work in us (James 1:4-8).

Waiting gives us time to praise and worship our Father, either silently or out loud and either by singing or reciting scripture, which we memorized along the way.

Paul learned to wait the hard way. As an active minister of the Gospel, he rarely sat still. He worked as a tent maker, as a missionary and as an apostle in the far reaches of his known world.

Yet, he also had years at a time of inactivity. He learned to be content, to wait on the Lord, to pray and write, and to minister to anyone the Lord brought his way (Acts 20:27, 28:30).

Like Paul, as we wait, we learn to trust in God and to know Him as our personal Savior. We come to realize that He is our safe refuge in any oppression or trouble (Psalm 9:9-10).

Regardless of whether we live in peace or in turmoil, or in health or we die, God is in us and with us in this world and in the next. There is nothing to fear as we wait on the Lord.

Prayer:

Father God, as we wait on You, we feel Your loving kindness with us as we greet each new morning (Lamentations 3:23). We grow in courage and strength as we wait on You (Psalm 27:14). We learn to rest patiently for You and not to fret about injustice or to fear the future (Psalm 37:7).

You never forsake those who seek You (Hebrews 13:5). As Your Saints, we experience Your faithfulness first hand and can testify to anyone who will listen. We sing Your praises both night and day as our soul waits patiently for You, because our hope rests in You (Psalm 9:11, 33:20; 130:5).

Thought for the Day:

As our whole being waits patiently for the Lord, our expectations come from Him and we find hope in His Word and rest for our weary soul. - Psalm 62:5, 130:5

The Futility of Worse Case Scenarios

Painful incidences teach us to be wary of life and to fear the future. We imagine situations that may never occur. These are called “worse case scenarios.”

In order to feel powerful over life, we rehearse these invented circumstances in our imagination, trying to come up with coping skills to deal with any event, which may possibly attempt to blindside us.

This habit causes us to squander our human assets in time, money and energy on an event, which may never happen.

This pattern may also cause a negative attitude toward life and may even result in depression or addictions to provide us with an illusory defense from future pain.

Sometimes, unnecessary and malicious punishment cause us to grow up taking our self too seriously, never learning to laugh at our self or trust anyone in life.

We cannot even trust God, because we harbor the false belief that He allows bad things to happen to us; when actually sin in the world is the real culprit here.

Some people make no decisions at all for fear of making a mistake. If we do make the wrong choice, we overreact and berate our self over our lapse in judgment.

We worry endlessly over things we have said or done, fearing that others will reject us. We rehash past and future conversations in our mind, which does not help at all.

These emotions then fuel negative and addictive habits that we use to cope with our buried feelings. We use them to prevent ourselves from feeling our fears, or to silence the negative thoughts playing over and over in our mind.

These thoughts may be attached to some past experience or connected to some fear regarding the future.

When we put our worries to rest, we will find a whole new world of creativity and expression without the fear of failure and judgment from our self or others. We have God's pervading, abiding peace.

Even if someone disagrees with our opinion, or if we make a mistake, we have no need to fear disapproval. Christ died to take away our fear, insecurities and condemnation (Romans 8:1-2)

Prayer:

Father God, as long as we do our best, that is all You require of us. You liberate us from the crippling effects of fear and condemnation. We enjoy new mental and physical health, restful sleep and peace-filled days without dread of the future (Proverbs 3:24).

As we seek You and focus on Your Kingdom on the earth, You provide all of our needs from Your glorious riches (Philippians 4:19). Thank You for healing us of our need to engage in worse case scenarios to feel the false security they provide. We give You all the praise, glory and honor for our freedom in Christ (Colossians 1:27).

Thought for the Day:

Serenity comes when we ask God to give us wisdom as we make a list of the things, which we can deal with our self; make another list of things we need to ask other people for help to deal with; and lastly make a list of the things we need to leave in God’s capable hands.