The Power Of Truth

One of the most powerful weapons we have against the enemy is our words. No matter what the circumstances are in our lives, we Always have the choice to either speak life or death over our situation. When Satan tries to tell us lies, we have to fight back with the truth. When you believe the lie, you empower the liar. Speaking truth over our lives is so important, because we do not want to give satan a foothold in our lives.

In this post I want to highlight how to speak truth over your life.

Before you can start speaking the truth over ourselves . We have to find the root of the lie. But, maybe we don’t even realize the lies you are believing. If your not sure what lies you are specifically holding onto, start asking yourself some general questions to help you identify the lies. Sometimes a lie can be as simple as “Everyone thinks your ugly,” so you start telling yourself “I am ugly nobody even wants to be around me.” The lie someone said about you has opened that door to you believing you are ugly. The door opened to let Satan sneak in to start destroying your life.

Example: During my childhood I was told I was ugly among other things. I was told this lie over and over until I started believing it. When I started believing it opened a door to Satan to enter my life, and he nearly destroyed my life, because of those lies. It wasn’t until I started believing I was wonderfully and beautifully made that I was able to start pushing out all of the hate I had for myself and everyone else around me that things started going positive for me.

So whatever that lie you are believing, identify it so you can combat it.

Know The Truth

You can’t speak the truth over your situation if you don’t know the truth. Take the time to dig into the Bible and find out what God says. If you are struggling with finances, not feeling loved, knowing your worth, pain, find out what God says.

Many people think the Bible is just a old folk story or fairy tale. But truth be told is it’s a instruction book on how to live a wonderful life. I am proof my situation would have changed until I started reading this instruction manual.

Write And Memorize Truth

This step is key. When Satan comes to attack you with lies, you want to be prepared. Write God’s truth down somewhere. When I first started doing this, I had index cards all over my house, that way if Satan started with his lies, I could speak truth right back at him. Do whatever you have to do to have these weapons constantly at your disposal.

Speak Your Truth Out Loud

The words, we declare over our lives are powerful. Something happens when words are audibly spoken. When you start to feel the enemy whisper lies get out your truth statements. No only does speaking truth tell the enemy to back off, speaking truth is a act of faith. The best time to speak truth over your life is when you are struggling to believe it.

Repeat It Until You Believe It

Aligning your heart with God’s truth is a daily process, but I promise you if you keep practicing this method you will start seeing changes in your life.

You may feel silly speaking it out loud for the first few times. But each time you do it you are able to believe it more each time. Remember when you stop believing the lie and start believing the truth you are taking away the power of the lie from the enemy.

Speaking truth is an incredibly powerful tool.

I did something when I was a new Christian, that some people told me was wrong. And i kind of feel silly even talking about it. But here it goes. I met a lady, who was rude and was always saying nasty things to people. I didn’t have the option of staying away from her. So, every time I seen her I would quote Bible scripture to her when she would speak lies about people. There was talking to this person, she was full of hate and was obnoxious about it.

After about a month of doing this. She began talking politely to people. Her husband actually told me she was better at home than she used to be, not so bossy. And she had actually started reading God’s word. He wanted to thank me.

This was the last thing I expected I was expecting her to just start ignoring me. After that she stopped being rude and obnoxious. People could actually tolerate being around her. Later I was able to visit her and her husband on occasion. They were completely different people.

Start speaking truth, to yourself to others and it will make the enemy flee.

James 4:7 says submit yourselves, to God. Resist Satan and he will flee from you.

Stop Trying To Be Happy

If you have to try to be cool, you will never be cool. If you have to try to be happy, then you’ll never be happy. The key to finding happiness is to stop looking for it. People are just trying to hard.

When you get angry at the neighbors dogs for barking all night long, you are not self-conscious about your state of anger. You are not thinking, “Am I finally angry? Am I doing this right?” No your out for blood in the middle of the night and can’t sleep because of all the barking. Or angry in any other situation. You inhabit and live the anger. You are the anger.

And then it’s gone. Hopefully before the cops arrive.

Happiness, like other emotions, is not something you obtain. It is temporary Always.

What this implies is the finding happiness is not achieved in itself, but rather it’s a side effect of a particular set of ongoing life experiences. This gets mixed up a lot, especially since happiness is marketed so much these days as a goal in and of itself. But X and be happy. Learn Y and be happy. But you can’t buy happiness. It Just is-once you get other parts of your life in order.

When most people seek happiness, they are actually seeking pleasure: good food, more sex, more time forTV and movies, a new car, parties with friends, full body massages, losing 10 pounds, becoming more popular, and so on.

But while pleasure is great, it’s not the same os happiness. Pleasure is correlated with happiness but does not cause it. Ask any drug addict how their pursuit of pleasure turned out. Ask an adulterer who shattered their family and lost their children whether playing ultimately made them happy. Ask a man who almost ate himself to death how happy pursuing pleasure made him feel.

Pleasure is a false god. Research shows that people who focus their energy on materialistic and superficial pleasures end up more anxious, more emotionally unstable and less happy in the long run. Pleasure is the most superficial form of life satisfaction and therefore the easiest. Pleasure is what’s marketed to us. It’s what we fixate on. It’s what we use to numb and distract ourselves. But pleasure, while necessary, isn’t sufficient. There’s something more.

Finding Happiness does not require lowering one’s expectations.

A popular narrative lately is the people are becoming unhappier because we’re all narcissistic and grew up being told that we’re special unique snowflakes who are going to change the world and we have social media constantly telling us how amazing everyone elsewhere lives are, but not our own, so we all feel like crap and wonder where it all went wrong. Oh, and all this happens by the age of 23.

Sorry, but no. Give people a bit more credit than that.

For example, a friend of mine recently moved away and started her own business in a big city. She used all of her savings trying to make it work but it failed. Today she’s happier that ever for her experience. It taught her many lessons and what she really wanted and didn’t want in life which eventually led her back to a job that she really loved. She’s able to look back and be proud that she went for it because because she would have always asked herself “what if?” And that would have made her unhappier than any failure would have.

The failure to meet our own expectations is not anti-theatrical to happiness, and I’d actually argue that the ability to fail and still appreciate the experience is actually a fundamental building block for happiness.

If you thought you were going to make $100,000 and drive a Porsche immediately out of college, then your standards of success were skewed and superficial, you confused your pleasure for happiness, and the painful smack of reality hitting you in the face will be one of the best lessons life ever gives you.

The lower expectations argument falls victim to the same old mindset-that happiness is derived from without. The joy of life is not having a $100,000 salary, it’s working to reach a $100,000 salary, and then working for a larger salary, and so one.

So raise your expectations. Elongate your process. Lay on your death bed with a to-do-list a mile long and smile at the infinite opportunity granted to you. Create ridiculous standards for yourself and then savor the inevitable failure. Learn from it. Live it. Let the ground crumble around you because that’s how something amazing grows, through the cracks.

Happiness is not the same as positivity.

Chances are you know someone who always appears to be insanely happy regardless of their circumstances or situation. Chances are this is actually one of the most dysfunctional people you know. Denying negative emotions leads to deeper and more prolonged negative emotions and emotional dysfunction.

It’s a simple reality that shit happens. Things go wrong. People upset us. Mistakes are made and negative emotions arise. And that’s life. Negative emotions are necessary and healthy for maintaining a stable baseline happiness in one’s life.

I am a very positive person, I tend to look for the good in every situation. And deal with the negativity as it comes my way. Then I cope with it, in everything happens for a reason.

The trick with negative emotions is to express them in a socially acceptable and healthy matter, express them in way that aligns with your values.

There’s a lot of people out there who subscribe to the “always be positive” ideology.

I think part of the allure of obsessive positively is the way in which we’re marketed to. I think part of it is being subjected to always be happy, smiley people on television constantly. And then there’s the self-help industry that want you to feel like there’s something wrong with you all the time.

With marketing there’s always a buy this and you’ll be happy and soon we are bombarded with everything materialistic so that we get a “I have to keep up with the Jones” attitude.

Or maybe it’s just that society today has the belief that we want to actually have things but not actually having to work hard for it.

Happiness is the process of becoming your ideal self.

Completely a marathon makes us happier that eating a chocolate cake. Raising a child make us happier that beating a video game. Starting a small business make us happier that buying a new computer.

The funny thing is that all three of these activities above are exceedingly unpleasant and require setting high expectations of yourself and potentially failing to always meet then. Yet, they are some of the most meaningful moments and activities of our lives. They involve pain, struggle, engender anger and despair, but once we’ve don’t them we look back and get geared up about them.

It’s these sort of activities that allow us to become our ideal selves. It’s the perpetual pursuit of fulfilling our ideal selves that grants us happiness.

What’s It Like To Live With A Mental Disorder

When people get overwhelmed by deadlines at work or at school, they sometimes say I’m going crazy or I’m having a panic attack. These are such casual remarks that seem empty to others but to those who are suffering from mental illness, it a different matter.

Many people do not understand what I feels like to live with a mental disorder. Sadly out of every five individuals one person suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, anxiety, depression and other mental illnesses.

Below is a collection of revelations and descriptions of what it live to live with mental disorder.

Maybe if people would try to learn a little more about mental illness they would have compassion and treat these individuals with love and respect.

Here are some descriptions, that were said by people who had a mental disease. I have changed the names.

  • I Don’t Have Control

Mental illness feels like you’ve lost control of yourself. You don’t know who you truly are because this disease controls you and takes over your emotions. It lies to you and tells you that you are worthless. You always wonder if the things you do are your personality or the disease. And on top of the oppressing feelings, society stigmatizes you into violent, scary individuals. While very few are violent or scary they are put into that box, even if they receive treatment or prescribed medicine to cope with their disease.

A few years back I was a facilitator at a mental illness support group. I had to find places that were on side streets, basically have the group in secret or no one would come. Because they would fear what people would think of them.

This group was to help them learn to coping mechanisms that would make them live their lives fully. It was a safe haven for people who felt them feel like outcasts in society.

  • I Can’t Move On

Mental illness feels like a crushing stone on your chest making it hard to breathe. It makes me feel trapped, not being able to stop the flood of past memories or the continual cycle in my head. It makes me feel helpless, alone, scared of myself, scared of everyone else, embarrassed and ashamed of who I am. – Susan

They usually have a therapist that helps them through the dark times and reminds them to take one day at a time.

  • I Don’t Know Who Is The Real Me

Mental illness is faking a smile so others around you think your okay. It’s forcing yourself to get out of bed in the morning because if you don’t your anxiety will kick in. It’s hating to be alone but not having any energy to hangout with others. It’s having exhaustion but being able to sleep. It’s a constant battle with yourself, everyday, to just keep pushing forward and hoping for the better. -Gary

  • I Need You To Understand Me

Sometimes I need people to just pay attention to what kind of emotions responses they need to give me when I’m in a melt down and don’t think this life is worth fighting anymore. I need someone to be there for me and think to themselves: okey she’s anxious right now, hold my hand and tell me I’m safe and everything will be okay. -Patty

  • I’m Not Lazy

Getting out of bed every morning is hard. People think I’m lazy but I’m to exhausted to fight another day like yesterday. My depression has a funny was of pushing me down, I don’t want to cancel plans but when depression take hold of me, I hurt all over and am struggling to move. -Stephanie

  • Don’t Judge Me Unless You Know How I Feel

Why I have self-harm scars and my history with self-harm. People see it as a teenage thing. It’s hard to explain why I self-harm and that it’s not an effective coping mechanism. But on a bad day it’s the only thing that numbs the pain. It transfers the emotional pain in to the physical and I can get a few minutes of relief. – Jane

  • I Try Hard To Be Normal

When you are living with mental illness you can still be a normal functioning adult but be fighting a constant battle inside yourself. Every single step make you feel like you have concrete shoes boots on because your mind puts up mental roadblocks. Day to day activities are done, kids are taken care of and off to school, but your mind is telling you every little possible thing that could go wrong, negativity, frustration and fear all rule your thoughts. Feeling like you’re not good enough, yet you know you are. Feeling like your not good enough, yet I’m fight so hard to do as much as possible.

  • I’m Not Making It Up

A lot of people don’t realize you might hear voices with major depression. It depression with psychotic tendencies. It not my inner self that’s talking to me. There different voices and sometimes they want me dead. I can’t tell people this or even talk about it because they freak out, and they will think I’m a dangerous person and avoid me. So I just fight this on my own. -Jerry

  • I’m Not Strong Like You

My sadness, out of fear that others will judge me because of how minimal my problems seem to be. Little do they know these small problems are so much bigger for someone like me. I’m constantly told not to beat myself up, or that’s nothing to cry over. Sharing is hard when some people can‘t understand what it’s like being in my shoes. -Ruth

Mental illness is real, and with help and medication people can learn to cope. And live full lives. But there are instances when Dr’s can over medicate someone with a mental disorder.

It’s alway best to tell Dr and therapist’s everything.

Almost every experience I’ve had with individuals with mental disorders stem from a dysfunctional family life. Talk to people before you judge about anything.

I was very fortunate to have had my experience with mental disorder as a facilitator.

There is hope out there and you are not the only one, to feel the way you do.

What Idol Do You Worship?

I’ve been thinking about idols the last few days. I prayed to God, “if I have any idols in my life, reveal them to me.”

Idols are someone or something you or worship other than God as though it were God. What would you put before God.

Go and cry out to the gods you have chosen. Let them save you when you are in trouble! – Judges 10:14.

We tend to think idolatry as a sin of the past or an eastern mysticism thing. We certainly don’t have idols in western culture right? Actually, idolatry is surprisingly modern and very prevalent in our culture. Part of the reason we don’t think about idol worshiping today is because our definition of idolatry should off. We think idolatry is confined to bowing down to a golden statue or praying to a wooden trinket. Since we don’t do those things, we assume we don’t have idols. Since we don’t do those things we don’t have idols.

But we do have modern day idols. Lots of them. They look different that the idols of the past, but we still practice idolatry today.

Before we look at idol worship today, we need to get a better definition of what an idol is. What exactly is idol worship? And what is an idol.

What Is Idolatry? What Is An Idol?

An idol is when something or something becomes more important to us than God.

Even good things can become idols when we make them the ultimate thing in our lives. Anything, or anyone, can become an idol if we place value for that thing/person above our value of God.

In ancient times that would have looked like bowing down to worship a golden statue. Modern day idols look different- more like getting our identity from or jobs or staring at our cellphones, or playing games all day. Even someone in our life’s can become an idol. Anything that becomes more important than God becomes an idol; and we all have them. Idolatry today might look different, but it is all around us.

Idolatry is alive today. Is it that a 12 inch tall statue or piece of wood can do something bad to us? Or is it that we do something awful to ourselves when we place adoration and attention that should go to God? When it comes to idolatry, the danger is not in the item… it is in us.

An idol is anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, and anything that you seek to give you.

So, what does the Bible say about Idolatry?

Therefore, my dear friends, flee from idolatry. -1 Corinthians 10:14

Put to death whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. -Colossians 3:5

Gather together and come; assemble, you fugitives from the nations. Ignorant are those who carry about idols of wood, who pray to gods that cannot save. -Isaiah 45:20

Those who cling to worthless idol turn away from God’s love for them. -Jonah 2:8

Do not turn to idols or make metal gods for yourselves. I am the LORD your God.- Leviticus 19:4

Those who run after other gods will suffer more and more. I will not pour out libations of blood to such gods or take up their names on my lips.- Psalm 16:4

Formerly, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those why by nature are not gods. Galatians 4:8

The rest of mankind who were not killed by these plagues still did not repent of the work of their hands; they did not stop worshiping demons, and idols of gold, silver, bronze, stone and wood-idols that cannot see or hear or walk.

The acts of the flesh or obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, fractions, and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.- Galatians 5: 19-21

God sets the precedent for His people early on that His people shall have no other Gods except Him.

Idol worship today might look different, but it still exists. We shouldn’t let anything, even a good thing, take the place of God in our life.

Ways To Grow Closer To God When You Feel Far Away.

For years I felt really close to God. I was growing in my faith, talking and walking with God, and even though things weren’t perfect, life was going well. Then suddenly I felt stuck in a rut, I felt like I wasn’t growing in my faith and was becoming distant from God. It wasn’t until I tried these steps below that I noticed a positive change in my faith in my spiritual walk. Here are 3 simple steps to deepen your relationships with God no matter how far away from Him you feel.

1. Reach Out

It can be easy to become overwhelmed by life, but instead of holding everything in reach out for help. If you don’t feel God in your life as you used to. Don’t be afraid to come to Him. God knows our deepest thoughts and the desires of our hearts. No matter how long as it’s been since you’ve truly felt God’s presence; please know that calling out to Him is the solution. God doesn’t ever push us away. He loves us, He pursues us, and He wants us to grow in our relationship with Him. Admitting that we need God’s help is not a sign of weakness; instead, it’s expressing a desire to know God better.

2. Limit Distractions

Life is full of so many distractions and unforgivable there are many things that can hinder our walk with God. The hero’s of the Bible weren’t strong on their own power, but the Bible says that they walked with God. They had temptations and weaknesses of their own, but their desire to do God’s will had a greater hold of them. Sometimes in order to walk with God, we need to walk away from the things that are driving us away from Him.

If anything in your life has taken precedence to spending time with God, consider putting it on the back burner for awhile. When social media, computer games, entertainment or future plans take precedence, it can be nearly impossible or find room for God. Consider limiting the amount of time you spend on these activities and use that time to grow closer to God.

3. Be Intentional

Set aside time where you can be alone with God in a place with few distractions. Waking up 1/2 hour earlier to read the Bible and pray might be just the thing to help you strengthen your relationship with God. Or maybe you could listen to an audio Bible or the radio while preparing dinner. God will meet you where you are and since the Holy Spirit dwells within us, we can spend time with God in a variety of places.

When we seek God with all of our hearts we draw near to Him, we will feel His presence once again.

How To Become A Better You Every Day

I thought I would give you a few ideas on how to strive to be better than you were yesterday.

  • Become more observant. Notice everything that surrounds you. The world is full of examples, ideas, words, wisdom, mistakes and experiences.
  • Collect ideas, ideas and thoughts tend to evaporate from your mind too fast. Try to capture then before it’s to late. Try writing down, or sketch every single one.
  • Read, read a lot. Reading is probably the best investment of time ever. Devote at least 30 minutes a day to reading. I always have a book with me.
  • Analyze your day. Consider what things you manage to do well and what mistakes you’ve made.
  • Start writing. The biggest value of a good writing skill is that it cultivates a discipline. First of all, the discipline of thinking. Your thoughts will cease to be random and chaotic. They will gradually become systematic and structured.

If you do these things every day. You life could change immediately.

If you are committed to being a better person today than you were yesterday. Better thoughts, better decisions and better actions.

The Best Things In Life Are Backwards

Trying too hard to get what you want in life- love, respect, and happiness-often has the opposite effect; you end up lonely, dejected, and miserable.

There’s a part of the Navy military training that’s called drown-proofing where they bind your hands behind your back, tie your feet together, and then dump you into a 9-foot deep pool.

Your job is to survive for 5-minutes.

The vast majority who attempt drown-proofing will fail. Upon being tossed into the water, many of them panic and scream to be lifted out. Some struggle until they slip underwater where the proceed to lose consciousness and have to be fished out and resuscitated.

But some make it and they do so because they understand two counterintuitive lessons.

The first lesson of drown-proofing is paradoxical: the more you struggle to keep your head above water, the more likely you are to sink.

With your arms and legs bound, it’s impossible to maintain yourself at the surface for a full 5 minutes. Even worse, your limited attempts to keep your body afloat will only cause you to sink faster. The trick to drown-proofing some to actually let yourself sink into the bottom of the pool. From there, you lightly push yourself off the pool floor and let your momentum carry you back to the surface. Once there, grab a quick breath of air and start the whole process again.

Surviving drown-proofing requires no superhuman strength or endurance. It doesn’t even require that you know how to swim. On the contrary it requires the ability not to swim. Instead of resisting the physics that would normally kill you, you must surrender to then and use them to save your own life.

The second lesson of drown-proofing is a bit more obvious, but also paradoxical: the more you panic, the more oxygen you will burn and the more likely you are to fall unconscious and drown

In a sick and twisted way the exercise turns your survival instinct against you. The more intense your desire to breath, the less you will able to breathe. The more intense your will to live, the greater the chance you will die.

This drown-proof exercise tests emotional self-control in situations of extreme danger. Can you control your own impulses? Can you relax in the face of potential death? Can you willing risk your life in the service of some higher value or goal.

These skills are far more important that a training soldier’s ability to swim. They’re more important that his resilience, his physical toughness, or his ambition. They’re more important that how smart he is, what school he went too, or how good looking he is in a suit.

This skill-the ability to let go of control when one wants it most-is one of the most important skills anyone can develop. And not just for training in the Navy but for life.

Most people assume the relationship between effort and reward is one to one. We think that working twice as long will produce twice the results. That caring about a relationship twice as much will make everyone feel twice as loved. That yelling your point twice as loud will make you twice right.

I tried for many years to fight for my marriage. I was exhausting myself to make things better between us. All I did was burn myself out and was heading toward a nervous break down. I chose to stop fighting and things started to get better.

The assumption is that most of life there exists on a linear curve that there’s a one to one ratio between effort and reward with everything. For example: I knew a teenage that tried drinking twice the normal amount of red-bull so he could study for exams and still be able to win a scholarship for playing football. All that happened was he ended up at the hospital emergency room having a heart attack.

The linear curve only exists for mindless, repetitive tasks like driving a car, filling out reams of paperwork, cleaning the bathroom. In all these cases, doing something for two hours will double the output of doing it for an hour. But that’s because they require no though or ingenuity.

Most activities in life do not operate along the linear effort/reward curve because more activities in life are not basic or mindless. Most activities are complex, mentally and/or emotionally taxing, and require adaption.

We tend to lean into fear and uncertainty and just when you think you’re going to drown, just as your reach the bottom, it will launch you back to your salvation.