Tag: Journal

S.A.D and the Winter Blues

During the Winter months it’s common to feel a little down, which is why I typically emphasise the importance of gratitude and take intentional steps to be thankful at this time of the year. I noticed a few years back that I tended to feel symptoms associated with anxiety at the start of Autumn. My first memory of this was about 6 years ago when I felt a sudden wave of panic at the thought of summer coming to an end. At the time I thought it was to do with a new academic year beginning and needing to work harder to get my certifications. I told myself that it would all be okay and the slight panic that I could feel rising subsided, but the dread remained. The cold season has never been my preference. Unlike Elsa, the cold has always bothered me. I chucked it up to personal preference and a twist of fate that I was born in Autumn instead of Spring or Summer.

It wasn’t until 2018 that I realised that there might be more to this than just the downsides to an introverted personality. I was crying every day for about a week and didn’t know why. I felt a deep sense of despair and hopelessness and I didn’t understand why. At the time, I was between jobs, moved homes and had just enrolled on a Masters program. Yes, all this was tough and tasking, but I had been through worse and didn’t have to deal with feeling unmotivated as a result. In the grand scheme of things everything was fine and I had everything that I needed. But I was still really sad. Rather than give in to the feelings, I resisted it, didn’t tell anyone what was going on, hid my tears behind forced smiles, and tried to get through it with positive confessions. “We walk by faith and not by sight”, “Faith over feelings”, “God is more real than what I am feeling”. It wasn’t working. I felt more emotionally worn out, with each confession. My constant smiling made me feel like a fraud. I was faking it, but never making it. I eventually broke out of it, and I will come back to what exactly helped me, but I want to highlight the importance of knowing what it is that you are facing.

I firmly believe that you cannot fight something that you refuse to face. Whatever it is that is troubling you be it a health issue, a bad habit, an addiction or even debt, if you don’t face it you’re never going to overcome it. This doesn’t mean we lose faith, or that we stop praying. It means that we channel our faith in a specific direction and pray specific prayers. For me facing it was knowing that this was seasonal affective disorder. Knowing this meant that I could channel my energy into taking care of myself in a suitable way, I can refrain from things that could be a trigger and open me up to relapse and I could better position myself in prayer. I know that SAD is not my portion or my inheritance in Christ, so I positioned myself accordingly. Because I knew what I was up against I could fight back in faith with the invisible weapons at my disposal. That is what the fight of Faith is; Fighting a battle that is not visible to the physical eyes, but will yield (positive or negative) results. I have learnt that invisible battles can leave very visible scars. I have had to learn to fight better and smarter.

Counter attack is my favourite way of dealing with issues like these. Winter blues and sadness in general, causes us to want to withdraw and isolate. A little down time and alone time is good and healthy, but it can lead to other things like self-piety, self-loathing, low self-esteem, increased sense of hopelessness and worthlessness, these are all friends of the enemy, which can be used to keep you away from joy, gratitude, healthy relationships and communion with people around you. Instead of giving in to the narrative of loneliness, spend time with people. Don’t go over board and plan an elaborate party, which may make it worse. Just find 1 – 3 people who you can sit with, talk to or engage in a mild activity with. Being with and talking to people is a great way to regain perspective.

One of the things that I find often happens when we feel down is that we lose clarity. We don’t have a clear picture of what we want or where we are going. This is because we are so overwhelmed by the predominant feeling of sadness, which distracts us from our objectives. A great way of counteracting this is by writing. Journaling has a way of organising our thoughts. When we write we not only think about what we want to say, but we also think about how we feel as we say it and how we want to say it. This is a good way of practicing to process our emotions. We all have emotions, but in order to learn how to control our emotions we need to process them first. I would suggest writing no more than 20 minutes daily, and encourage that you end each journal entry with a positive statement. This could be something you are grateful for, something you look forward to, or a good memory from the past.

The symptoms of depression, seasonal affective disorder and some other mental health illnesses, include physical and emotional tiredness, lack of motivation and reduced interest. Because of this people often develop feelings of inadequacy and worthlessness. A great way to combat these thoughts and feelings is to revisit previous achievements. The other morning I went back and read the devotional I completed and published last year. I was blessed by what I had written, I took my own advise and applied some of the scriptures that I had written down. The things you create through God’s creative power become a memorial for you. You realise that although you don’t feel it right now, there is a powerful deposit inside of you that can only come from God. Your life is a testimony! Go back and visit your moments of triumph, your personal victories, your achievements and your testimonies. You are definitely worth more than you have achieved, but you also need to remember that you are more than what you feel. If you journal and take notes of good days and also take pictures, I would recommend that you re-read older entries and look at those pictures again. Use them to remind yourself that better days are coming.

Whether it is SAD, depression, anxiety, end of year stress or anything else, you can overcome if you will chose to believe that you can. Get help facing it from loved ones and health professionals. Help is always available if you reach out for it.

Happy New Me!

I haven’t posted this year, and for most of last year. It’s kind of felt strange not posting. I beat myself up a bit for not taking this more seriously and for not putting in the work. When this year rolled in I felt that I needed to say something about a new year, new chapters, goals, preparation and planning with God, but January came and went then a full quarter of the year past by and now a half year and I still didn’t feel like giving the happy new year message. I just didn’t feel like any of it would be totally honest or different from previous years. And the thing is we all want the new year to be different from the previous one, especially after a year like 2020. We all desperately wanted this year to yield some much more pleasant and promising prospects and memories than we had in the previous year.
For me, I didn’t just want the date to be different I wanted things to be different. A popular quote that most of us would have heard or come across at some point is, “be the change you want to see”. What a powerful concept and something we can all attest to be true. Yet after a year we’ve just had, which seems to have spilled over into the current year, more than ever I sense the difficulty to break out and be the change. Not only is it difficult to seek change in a world that has faced a series of challenges that are beyond human control, but also to find change when all we want and all we talk about is for things to go back to normal. It’s exceptionally difficult to commit to change when we’ve all had a year where we were confronted with our demons. For the first time, many people actually sat at home and had time to really think about their careers, really think about their financial circumstances, really think about their relationships, their habits, physical and mental health and spiritual life amongst so many other things. In the course of examination and thinking, if we were honest, we would have found things that we liked and things we didn’t like. We would have patterns and habits that have always been there but sprung up to the surface after a few weeks to months of sitting at home and having nothing else to do.

Just the other day, I was watching a report on the BBC featuring normal people, working professionals, people who didn’t lose their jobs or were significantly affected by the pandemic through the death of a loved one or by contracting the virus themselves, who admitted to drinking more frequently and in larger quantities during the day. One middle aged man said that he didn’t notice how much alcohol he was consuming on a daily basis until his children pointed it out to him. He had gotten to the point where he couldn’t go through a day without drinking. It had become normal for him. He drank 2 beers and a bottle of wine every day, which worked out to be about 100 units of alcohol a week. The average maximum recommended weekly alcohol consumption is 14 Units.
His encouragement was that anyone who was drinking more, should get help, whether they were still functioning like he was or not.

I mention this not to cast judgment or to make anyone feel bad for slipping up, but to say it’s okay to look at our not so great side. Whatever your habits and practices are and have been over the pandemic months, that is your normal. You need to embrace all of it. The good, the bad and the ugly. You can’t change what you don’t accept. You can’t change a world that you are not willing to acknowledge and be part of. You must show up and participate in your change for you to be the change that you desire to see.

Some of us looked at our health and realised that we really needed to get off the couch if we were going to have lives beyond just surviving the pandemic. We realised that pandemic or not, we were lucky to even experience another day from the comforts of our living room, because truthfully, with the way we’ve been treating our bodies we haven’t earned the right. So, we decided to get on that bike, take that walk, do those crunches and run that mile. Others realised that the issues that cropped up in their marriage was as a result of not spending time together, not seeing each other for who they really were, and they are now working on being better. Others found that the damage in their relationship was to extensive to repair and they’ve began to make changes.
We have all been through something corporately and individually. We have all felt pain and sorrow, loss and addition.

I’ve been through my own discovery journey and yes, the person that I am today is not the person I hoped I would now be. But I know that the person writing these words is not the person I will still be in another 10 years. There are things that I want to change and there are things that I want to maintain. But I’m embracing me and noticing that I’ve changed, I’ve become someone else and I’ve decided that going back to become the person I was is not an option. Nothing good comes from dwelling on the past. Even if that past is full of rosy memories. It’s gone and done. I can only learn from yesterday and make tomorrow a better day. The future is a moving mark full of possibilities and new things to discover and conquer. I have an idea of where I’m going and a map in my hand to guide me, but when I get there I know that really being there will be different and feel different to what I imagined, because the map is only a picture of the real thing. But more so, I would have changed. The journey to the future would have changed me again, just the way the journey of the past changed me into who I am now. Once, twice, three times or more every year, I will tell myself, ‘Happy New Me!’, because even when times don’t seem to have changed much, I will.

Covid 19 and Where we Stand

There’s so much to say when it comes to corona, but I’ve had to step back and ask myself what God is saying. Really there are many things that have happened in the world since January and I have been asking and seeking God’s mind concerning where we stand as his creation and his people. On a personal level and on a Global level God has been at work shifting things, showing us some, concealing somethings in his infinite wisdom and also prompting us to deep prayer.

If there is anything I know that’s happening for sure in this season is that God is requiring deeper, longer and more earnest prayer, worship and praise from us.

What I also know with certainty is that God has called us to be a light and a voice of hope and peace, most especially at a time like this. We can allow the disruption of this pandemic to distract us and put us in a defensive zone or we can use it as a platform to be more active about our spiritual practices and more vocal about our Christian Faith. It will always be my prayer that people will not die, but live long and full lives and that when they do die they die peacefully without suffering and wake up to everlasting life in the arms of the father. Unfortunately, people die and suffer everyday, Corona or not, and it is important that regardless of how or when we die we make the very important and significant decision to  make Jesus Christ our Lord and saviour before we do.

Death is the reality of life, but more real is the Faith we have in God while we live, which promises a life spent with him in eternity. There are only two choices, life or damnation and we continuously pray that people get saved and know the love of the Lord here and more so in death.

What to Pray

The focus of our prayers should be that God’s sends salvation for our mortal bodies, especially for those who have been affected and are vulnerable to the effects of the virus. But we should also pray that more people will come to the saving knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. A cure and knowledge of the cure to Corona could save many lives, but it couldn’t save a single soul. Only knowledge of Jesus Christ and acceptance of this knowledge will save your soul. Let’s not get so distracted by the pandemic that we forget the pandemic of sin brought to the world through two humans, that is still corrupting and killing not only souls but lives at an alarmingly fast rate. The effects of this pandemic is very real and I do not take it lightly at all, but more than anything it has woken me up to the reality of finite state of the human race and how fragile and delicate this life is. It is precious and fragile and we should take it very seriously and use it to build a legacy of godliness that is guaranteed to out live us no matter how long we live.

I sense that God is wanting us to pray for mercy and wisdom first for ourselves and also for the leaders of our various nations. 2 Chronicles 7: 14 comes to mind, which says that “if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and turn from their wicked ways I will hear from heaven and heal their land”. Scripture shows us time and time again that the key to healing and restoration whether for our bodies, filed of work or anything associated with us, is prayer offered up in humility and genuine repentance from evil. Our generation needs this mercy more than ever before. Daniel prayed for the captivity of Israel to be turned around and their lands to be restored, He prayed earnestly for 21 days and in that time he prayed for mercy for himself and for all of Israel. His prayer for mercy on behalf of Israel worked and brought the captivity of Israel to an end. It was the will of God then and it is the will of God today that we pray. Joshua Selman said that “Prayer is the highest form of humility before God”. This is very true. When we pray we refuse to lean on our own understanding, we declare to God that we need him and that we want him. When we add repentance to our prayer we surrender control and prove that our heart and action is in line with our words. Repentance enables us to draw near to God with our hearts and not just our lips (MARK 7:6). It also enables us to align our actions and heart with his will; genuine repentance leads us to seek out the will of the father (Matthew 6:33, Luke 12:31).

We must also pray for judgment over the corona virus and the spiritual forces that are propagating the activity of this virus. The scripture informs us that we are not fighting against flesh and blood enemies but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places (Epesians 6:12 NLT). The NKJV calles the evil spirits in the heavely places – spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavely places. Spiritual beings require, physical beings to effectively operate on this world. This is why when God redeemed us from sin and death he needed to come in human form live and die like us to restore us back to God. God had to reason and negotiate with Mary, Joseph (Jesus’ Parents) and Zacharias and Elizabeth (John the baptist parents) for his redemption plan to be fulfilled. God as a spirit being is always looking for who is available to be his physical vessel on earth. He is gentle and waits for us to let him in before he can use us. He will never use us without our willingness to be used for his good purpose. The enemy is not so. He will use whoever is vulnerable and susceptible to his evil suggestions and specially delights in those who openly and actively invite him to accomplish his evil work in through them. These are the people we must place under the arrest of the power of the Holy spirit. People have been spotted actively spreading the virus through unsanitary means, even after they found out they had the virus. Deliberately not complying with the advice of health professionals, going out in public places and contaminating public spaces. These are hosts of wickedness. People who have signed themselves up to the plots of the enemy. They may think they are doing the right thing for whatever reason, but they need to be restrained by spiritual means.

I believe that these are some of the foundational prayers that we need to pray at this time. We must be vigilant and keep our spiritual armor on. Our weapons of warfare are not carnal – we don’t use fists, knives or guns to fight our most dangerous battles we fight in the spirit with the weapons of praise, worship and earnest prayers. We fight from a place of Victory because we have already won. We skip right to the celebratory praise, worship and thanksgiving part because we are people of Faith and firm hope. We sing hymns and sound out our songs of the spirit. And we continue in this spiritual attitude because we know that all things will work together for good.

January in Summary

I have spent the better part of January praying and waiting on God for what he has for me. I don’t have all the answers but, I have made a conscious choice to make sure that I am in a place where I can get the answers and directions, I need to ensure that I end up in the place where God has destined me to be. I can’t achieve the dreams God has given me by myself. I need the interference of someone who knows better and someone much stronger than me to help me get to my desired destination. My natural self is prone to discouragement and inconsistency. Without his divine assistance I will lose strength and momentum along the way. Because I know this, I have given myself over to prayer and supplication and focused more on receiving what I need to excel this year and the decades to come.

With the month rapping up I have confidence that God has my back because I have taken out time to make the necessary sacrifice that will enable me to excel this year. Of course, there is the requirement for ongoing, supplication further down the road, but for now I know that it is time to begin the journey and take that first step in Faith. Faith that God has heard your prayers and that he is with you and won’t let you take steps in the wrong direction. You can only have this assurance if you have really spent time in surrender to God in prayer.

Another thing I have been more deliberate with, which I will certainly continue to practice is reading the word and praying it back to God. The Bible in one-year plan on YouVersion has been a great resource in maintaining this. The plan gives you 4-5 chapters in the new and old testament to read daily and encourages you to write your thoughts and take away points at the end of each daily reading. It is spilt up in monthly portions so you can catch up here with February, if you would like to join. You are also able to invite others to join you with your daily reading habit and turn it into a group bible study. It’s also a great way to get your family members involved and keeps you accountable. It is a very useful and helpful tool if you are seeking to develop discipline in this area of your spiritual growth.

Finally, I’d like to encourage you to review yourself each month. How did your January go? Did you pray more like you said you would? Did you stick to your goals? Did you commit your goals into the hands of the Lord and trust him? Did you write down the words and instructions you received from him? Are they in line with the Word? Which scripture spoke to you the most this month as you read the word?

As you continue to ask yourself questions that evaluate your journey into 2020, think of what you can do better or differently in February and set yourself small targets to do things that will further develop your spiritual life. Yes, I am asking you to prioritise your spiritual goals above every other goal. This is what Daniel and his friends did. Their spiritual goal was to please God and worship him alone and to fulfil the requirements of the law of God even if that meant going against the customs, norms and legal decrees of the Land. Instead of their health, education, careers and finances declining, they flourished, prospered and excelled in all that they did. I strongly believe that if you prioritise your spiritual goals and do what is said in the scriptures you will also begin to experience flourishing in your finances, relationships, career, health and wellbeing. This is what God wants for us and what he is willing to give us.

Reflecting at Christmas

This is by far the busiest times of the year and it’s not because of all the shopping. Actually, according to Shopify, November is the busiest commercial month of the year. I think it’s all the end of year rush, last-minute work targets and personal goals we want to achieve all between now and the 31st 23:59 which gets us all worked up. And on top of all that we want to enjoy the festivities and rest. We will soon discover that we cannot rest if we don’t eliminate the stressors in our way. At this time though I would say that one of the most important and beneficial things you can do for yourself is to spend time in reflection. When I’m reflecting or journaling it is in these moments when I’m most aware of what God has been teaching me through the day or the year. We need to intentionally create moments where we have epiphanies based on what is happening. Significant changes do not happen with the turn of a calendar it happens when we allow our minds to receive and engage with what is happening in our environments. We are praying for God to change our stories in the new year or decade, but we must ask ourselves what God has been engraving on the tables of our hearts over the last year or even decade that we haven’t paid attention to.

Beyond the feelings and the goosebumps, we might get when we encounter God, there are notable changes that take place in less spectacular ways inside of us. Being a lot more reflective, has help me understand that I ought to look for the mundane. Looking for God in the silence and seemingly insignificant is how Elijah got his life back as he stood on the mountain of God at the brink of depression.

I’m thinking about my life and things I want to focus on improving and things that I should keep and be more consistent with. Reflectively, I can say that I have grown over the last year. One of the key areas I have experienced growth and change in is how I think about giving and receiving love. It’s important to regularly reflect on how we relate with people and things.

Earlier in the year I had a conversation with someone that helped bring the thought process to mind and I can say that on reflecting on my understanding of extending love and hearing what the other person had to say, I found myself thinking that maybe I didn’t quite have a full understanding of what love – the God kind of Love – is. Maybe my limited understanding of how vast God’s love is keeping me from receiving all the wonderful gifts of God’s awesome love. I’ve begun thinking of love in a different way which has led to changes in how I practice love. Nothing drastic or dramatic, but significant enough for me to desire and chase after more of God’s kind of love in my heart. It is the kind of love that chases you and woos you regardless of how you are or what you’ve done. That love, loves you just because and nothing you could do could make it grow or diminish. Can I be that way towards myself and the people in my life? Can I be more loving regardless of what if?

At this point, I can say that any work that you catch me doing is related to reflecting and checking that the plans I make for the coming year are in line with the work that He has already begun in me. After all, what good is a perfect gift if I don’t take out the time to enjoy and use it?

Christmas blessings!

Prayer and Hearing God

In my last post I touched on the process of practicalising our worship through thanksgiving, using my stuck in traffic scenario.

Firstly, I’d like to add that worship is a deliberate act expressed through behaviours and gestures and not a spontaneous moment lead by feelings and emotions. It is a [practical] lifestyle not an occasion or event or a segment within a church service. Importantly, it is a form of prayer to God, which Jesus highlights in Luke 11:2. (Our father who art in Heaven hallowed be your name.)

The beautiful thing about prayer is not only that God hears us but he also speaks to us. It is a conversation between you and God and not a monologue directed at God or soliloquy spoken out into the atmosphere. Hearing from God is the most exciting thing and also one of the main things that keep you coming back to the place of prayer. Unfortunately, people don’t wait to experience that part.

I have found that as I have grown in my Faith and continued in prayer I hear God better and much quicker and I get answers through the most unexpected mediums, sometimes almost instantly. It was not always like this. I sometimes still find that I have to seek and wait for my answers, but more often than not I enjoy a well paced flowing conversation with God  more regularly that I used to. So what changed and how did I get here?

I’ll use my experience of today as an example. So, I’ve been mulling over some information I got at work and I was wondering if I should pursue the idea. I muttered a few prayers while eating my yogurt and left it knowing that I would get directions about what to do next. On my way back to my desk I looked through my Instagram feed (praise God for Instagram) and the first post I saw said this “You get in life what you have the courage to ask for”, in bold black colours. In the caption it had Matthew 7:7. This was the answer I needed. To confirm this (out of the mouth of one or more witnesses will God confirm his word – 2 Corinthians 13:1), I saw another scripture based post taken from Romans 8:31, which says if God be for us who can be against us. This was a clear direction as to what I needed to do. I knew it was God because it spoke directly to my situation and what wasn’t sure I was meant to do and it was also confirmed. I instantly felt the courage and the opportunity for me to ask opened up.

Even before I prayed whilst eating my cherry yogurt I sensed God telling me not to be afraid, to take the plunge and not allow fear to get in the way of my progress. My prayer was only a continuation of the conversation that was already taken place in the spirit (the heavenly realms) and I was apart of.

About ten years ago I didn’t have this experience and if I did, I was too unaware to have noticed it. The more your spirit engages in the conversations of the Spirit, the more you learn to assimilate the conversations of heaven and pick up the signals that are being transmitted to you.

I can hear God better and quicker now because for a long time I deliberately listened out for God, trying to distinguish his voice from the many other voices I was exposed to.

Practical Worship

Situations such as heavy traffic are designed to test and strengthen your godly character.

You wake up in the morning get dressed, feeling good, looking like heavy bling and then you get out of the house only to discover that traffic has built up outside your house and you can’t get out of your road let alone into town to catch your train. You try to walk and catch up with the bus in front, but the driver refuses to open the door, mouthing something like he is in the middle of the road and not at the bus stop. Then he turns the other way, brings out his sandwich and takes a hearty bit.

When you prayed this morning, you were not given the update about traffic making you late for work. Maybe if you had been informed you would have set out much earlier and arrived ontime. Maybe even a little earlier to impress your manager. But you’re not impressed. In your head the verse of the day is ringing, “This is the day that the Lord has made, I will rejoce and be glad in it”. So you force yourself to smile and not join in with the building crowed that is murmuring and complaining about the situation.

It’s hard, but you know you have to give thanks in all things. So, you internalize a prayer of thanks. You think about it and role over it in your mind until you are able to verbalize it and formulate it into words. Slowly but surely you realize it isn’t such a big deal and you find yourself thanking God you were not in the car crash that caused the traffic in the first place. Your thanksgiving some how made you see the bigger picture. That maybe your safty is more important than being on time to work. That your punctuality was given in exchange for your perfect peace and protection. That providence wasn’t sleeping when it heard your prayers sending the presence of God ahead to make rough paths plain.

Sometimes something as trivial as traffic can be big enough to cause an obstacle to your worship, but “I will enter his gates with thanksgiving in my heart, I will enter his courts with praise”.

This is worship in Practice.