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A lack of change in trying circumstances over an extended length of time often creates a feeling of hopelessness.

I have recently talked to a couple of different loved ones who are going through situations that are creating severe emotional struggles and feelings of hopelessness. Various difficult situations in each person’s life have gone on unchanged for so long that there is no visible sign of hope, no discernable way out of their trying circumstances. We have talked in previous posts about the necessity of positive thinking and speaking in an attitude of faith over one’s life; this is especially beneficial when one speaks the promises of God over one’s life. Scripture speaks of holding fast to what you confess in faith “without wavering (Heb. 10:23).” (The meaning in the Greek of this verse is wonderful. I’ll do a follow-up post on it.) The popular philosophy of Law of Attraction also promotes speaking out the positive changes in your life in an unwavering manner until you see them come to reality.

It takes a level of belligerence to hold on to hope.

I recall hearing a study on the news some years ago on people who lived to be over 100 years old. The sole factor they had in common was not any particular health habits but a decision to Immerse Yourself in the Full Healing Contemplation Here »

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Guilt is a recurring struggle for many people. It is one of the most common search terms that people enter to read about on this site.

I’ve also read numerous blogs online by people who turned away from conventional religion due to spiritual leaders who erroneously bogged them down with a sense of guilt, making them feel that God is on a constant campaign to condemn their every thought, word, or action. In complete opposition to how many people were taught as children, guilt is a bondage that God our Father does NOT desire for us to live with. Scripture makes countless points to uphold this idea, but I’d like to focus today on one particular passage to get you started on releasing your guilt.

One of the leaders of the early church back in the first century A.D. was a man named Paul. He is considered by many to be the greatest apostle or leader of his day, having written a large part of what is now the New Testament. Yet, though some people tend to exalt him almost to deity, Paul was just a man with the exact same struggles and imperfections as any other human being. In Philippians 3, Paul talks about his past social status, education, and career–all the things about which a person could normally boast. Paul says he considers all this status nothing compared to actually knowing God. Next is the part important to one’s struggle with guilt. Paul admits something everyone overlooks, “Not that I have already been made perfect. But I am pressing on, striving to take hold of the prize for which I was taken hold of by Christ (Phil 3:12).”

This is key to freedom from guilt. Paul admits that he fails, but says he still presses forward to fulfill his God-given destiny.

He keeps pressing forward in life to fulfill the whole purpose for which God gave him life. In the releasing of your guilt, the first point then to apply to your own life is Immerse Yourself in the Full Healing Contemplation Here »

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Want physical health? Your emotional hurts may be as much as 85% of the root cause of your physical health problems!

There was an astounding statistic in an article on 12 Tips to Preventing Cancer from Dr. Mercola’s email newsletter which said, “Even the CDC [government's Center for Disease Prevention and Control] states that 85 percent of disease is caused by emotions. It is likely that this factor may be more important than all the other physical ones listed here…”(1) Those of us who readily acknowledge our need for emotional healing will have little difficulty listing a broad range of physical conditions that are in need of healing as well.

To see physical healing, we must come to terms with the emotional hurts of the past and present.

If you are struggling with past hurts, Immerse Yourself in the Full Healing Contemplation Here »

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There are occasionally those times in each of our lives when we are faced with the pain of a broken relationship, whether it be a trusted friend, spouse, or significant other.

The pain is very real and the grieving process is natural and necessary. Yet, there are a couple of easy, helpful ways to daily restore hope and joy to your wounded heart while going through that grieving process. You can choose to restore hope and joy to your heart on a daily basis instead of groveling in (staying focused on) the pain and betrayal. Immerse Yourself in the Full Healing Contemplation Here »

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Many of us are prone to hold on to our failures; as a result of our own tendency to do so, we inadvertently think that God also holds on to our failures and treats us accordingly.

There is no doubt that, at times, we suffer in our current circumstances due to a prior failure. For example, years ago when we were just out of college, my spouse didn’t change the oil in the car for a couple of years! The result was a locked up engine. The failure in maintenance resulted in car trouble that we had to deal with. The trouble was a result of our own failure, not brought about by any outside force. Sometimes, when we are going through a circumstance that is a result of our failure, we begin to believe that God is causing the circumstance as a type of punishment for the wrong step. This idea weighs down one’s spirit with destructive feelings of guilt. This misconceived guilt makes it more difficult to overcome the trying circumstance because we—erroneously—wonder how long God wants us to be punished by it.

When we have a clear understanding of God’s description of His forgiveness for us, it helps us to move past our failures to healing. Immerse Yourself in the Full Healing Contemplation Here »

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Most of our fears are destructive in nature. I recently read about a study that expressed how 80% of illnesses come from stress or fear.

Yes, there are healthy fears that keep us from touching a hot stove top or standing in the middle of the expressway, but those fears are not the type that usually flood our minds on a recurring basis. As the saying goes, “Rome was not conquered in a day” and neither will your fears be, but there are some practical ways to start dealing with them, so that, over time, you will control them more than they control you.

Let’s start with a positive statement that you can quote out loud or repeat in your mind when faced with fearful thoughts. Immerse Yourself in the Full Healing Contemplation Here »

One of the surest, most stable ways to heal one’s self worth is to form the mental perception of yourself based on God’s value of you. If your self-perception is based on God’s value of you, and God is unchanging, that means your value remains priceless and unchanged, as opposed to when we form our self worth on our interaction with other humans who are imperfect and fluctuate emotionally depending on physical health and circumstances. Lavish in today’s Video Reflection as it expresses your priceless value and God’s endless love for the person that you are!

Click Here to Open the Healing One’s Self Worth Flash Video

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Please read Recognizing Real Love Part 1 before continuing this post. It contains all the foundational points for the illustration I will be covering below.

It is not God’s desire for any person to come to the end of his/her life having never experienced truly loving relationships on a consistent basis. However, many times religious beliefs or a compliant personality cause many people to endure long-term, emotionally unhealthy relationships because they suffer from an unrealistic guilt about getting help and/or getting away from the abusive relationship.

The abuser frequently tells the submissive person that he/she loves them, but then lives a lifetime of behavior that causes emotional and even physical harm to the other person. For a compliant personality type, the extreme contradiction in words and behavior is not enough to compel them to get help or make a change to bring the necessary healing to their lives.

Again, let me emphasize, infrequent, low-level hurtful behavior does take place in healthy relationships. However, allowing another person to treat you with consistent, immensely hurtful behavior will have lasting effects, deepening harm to one’s emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being the longer it is allowed to continue. If you are having difficulty in dealing with such a relationship in ways that will bring definite healing to your life, finding a reputable counselor is must. As the boundaries of acceptable and unacceptable behavior are not always clearly defined in our minds, we utilized a detailed definition of real love in Part One. A good starting place for distinguishing between acceptable and unacceptable behavior, between healthy and destructive relationships in your life, is using Immerse Yourself in the Full Healing Contemplation Here »

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Recognizing real love can empower you to bring about needed emotional, physical, and spiritual healing. It enables you to distinguish truly harmful behavior in your relationships from typical, daily personality conflicts.

I have several friends and relatives who have gone through repeated, emotionally and physically traumatic experiences due to emotionally unstable family members who either refuse to take medication or are not helped by it. However, we all must, from time to time, handle the type of emotional hardships common to unstable or purposely hurtful people, whether in a situation on the job, in the neighborhood, or with relatives. While talking with a friend about recent stresses with a bipolar spouse, it became apparent that some of the difficulties I have seen myself, friends, and family experience in unhealthy relationships stem from an unclear view of what real love is.

The inability to identify real love causes some people to devote the years and effort of an entire lifetime to relationships that continually bring them harm when they could learn to identify and develop the truly loving, healing relationships in the realm of their existence. It is not God’s desire for any person to come to the end of his/her life having never experienced truly loving relationships on a consistent basis. The more of a clear, definite understanding that one has of real love, the easier it is to know where to draw the line Immerse Yourself in the Full Healing Contemplation Here »

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In my life experience of working with people who are seeking after God, there has been a noticeable characteristic of people’s responses to God being affected by past parental relationships.

I have seen children from abusive family situations that felt great apprehension at the thought of even talking to God, fearful of His rejection or of some sort of mistreatment by Him. I have known women who were making an effort to seek after God, but because of past abusive relationships with fathers and ex-husbands, could not emotionally handle the intended positive analogy in Scripture of paternal characteristics in God. Though Scripture makes clear that spiritual beings are neither male or female, since God often uses the analogy of a Father to illustrate to us certain positive characteristics that can be seen in earthly fathers, people can, without being aware of it, project bad attributes particularly from fathers (but also mothers and any other person seen as an authority figure) onto God. Throughout my career, I have made it a point to remind people that God’s fatherly characteristics are those of, not just a good father but, a perfect one, since God is perfect and that concept has been helpful to them.

There is a term in psychology when dealing with boundary violations that is called a withdrawal of love. An example of this emotional violation is when a parent who is displeased with the child, whether for poor behavior or even just behavior against the parent’s personal preferences, responds with anger.

Even if the child’s behavior was ethically unacceptable and needed some form of discipline, the discipline included more than just corrective action; it was carried out with types angry behaviors which portrayed that the parent no longer loved the child due to his behavior. Parents like this, often unintentionally, also display behavior that conveys to the child that his actions were a personal insult to the parent. This results in a performance-based relationship. “If you do what I like, I’ll love you. Immerse Yourself in the Full Healing Contemplation Here »

Enjoy this video blog with some positive thoughts on Forgiving Yourself to Promote and Accelerate Your Healing.

If you would like to read in more detail on this topic, see the article in the Personal Refelctions Category entitled, “Believe You Deserve to be Well.”

Click Here to Open the Healing by Forgiving Yourself Flash Video