Natural disasters happen all over the world. When they occur, their aftermath is devastating. Not only to the area where they hit but to the people who have been victimized by the ruthless invasion upon their lives.

We’ve all heard a message on faith somewhere along our Christian journey. The Bible defines faith as “The substance of things hoped for the evidence of things not yet seen.” Hebrews 11:1.

We grow up in a world where we are bombarded by images, and people who try to tell us who we are or what we should be. We hear it from television shows, commercials, our family, neighbors, friends and even the enemy. Some of these messages can be affirming and positive, but they can also be hateful, demeaning and outright lies.

Speaking affirmations based in truth, specifically God’s truth, is one practice that transformed my thought life. In honor of mental health awareness, during this month I will post different affirmations that have helped me in my own mental health journey. Not just the affirmation, but the root behind it- some lie(s) that messed up your life in the first place.

The month of May is Mental Health Awareness Month. Its purpose is to make us aware that many people suffer with anxiety, depression and many other types of mental issues. This awareness is meant to not only make us more cognizant of these issues but to hopefully help us to learn to reach out to those suffering.

When I was reading the other day, the Holy Spirit highlighted this verse to me. So, I began to meditate on it. In any given situation we have choices. We are free to make any choice we want to. There are laws to support our choices and laws defining consequences of bad choices. So, what makes one choice “better” than another?

Ever feel like giving up? You thought you heard from God, thought you knew what you were supposed to do, thought you had gifts to accomplish something big and then…. crickets. Nothing is happening.

Some days you just wake up and wish you could go back to sleep. The day ahead of you seems too daunting; too much to do, too much to face, too much. You’ve been waiting for God to answer that prayer, send that money you need, or come through for you in a significant way but, God seems to not be listening.

I recently had the opportunity to speak at my church, and the message I taught feels prophetic for where we're at as a country right now. You see, the enemy has always attempted to fight against the truth of scripture, and as more time passes culture and Jesus seem to be drifting further and further apart.

At Christmas we welcome and celebrate the birth of Jesus. It symbolizes God’s plan to rescue humanity from sin through his son. It’s a beautiful picture of Gods unfathomable love, showing us the great lengths he was willing to go through to have relationship with us. We feel gratitude as we contemplate all that it means.

It seems everywhere we go someone wants something from us. Our spouses need our time and attention, our kids need us all.the.time.for.everything, our parents need us as they age, our employers need us to do our jobs. This list could go on forever.

Lately my news feed has been full of story after story of friend’s heartaches, disappointments, and stressful days of unanswered questions. After the year we all painfully traversed, what seems unfair is more pain. More questions, more reality smacking us in the face.

Have you ever noticed how easy it is to get caught up in the criticism we hear all around us? From the media, the Left, the Right, the church, the Government, everyone criticizing and complaining about what everyone else is doing or saying or isn’t doing…it is maddening.

Seasons are something we understand happens in the natural world but to the Christian it’s super important to understand that this principle applies to our spiritual lives as well. Just like Ecclesiastes 3:1-3 states, “There is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven, a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant,
and a time to pluck what is planted.”

When the blows just keep coming, the end of the pain is hard to fathom. When the rejections line up one after the other the dawn of a new day seems it will never appear on the horizon. When the souls ache seems too much to bear, the constant feelings of uncertainty and hopelessness bear down on the already heavy heart.

We all dread that middle of the night phone call from the Police, sudden job loss, the screeching of tires you hear from the front porch or the call from the Doctors office with your test results. These can invoke a sense of dread and anxiety unlike anything else.

Have you ever been distracted; had so much vying for your attention that you couldn’t seem to see clearly what order of priority your tasks should be placed in? When everything is on fire where do you aim the firehose first? It can be very frustrating at best to step back and take a deep breath so you can think clearly.

I never cease to be amazed at how God works in our lives; how he keeps offering us healing we didn’t realize we needed or didn’t want to address in the moment, because later always seems like a better time. In reality, when he begins to highlight it is always the best time to work on it whether we feel like it or not. I’m just not a fan of his timing if truth be told.

Sometimes concepts are presented and we just seem to grab onto them as though they are true without finding out if they are in fact true. This is a dangerous reality today. As believers it is our duty and obligation to search the Scriptures to find out what truth is and what it is not.