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Is God behind Pharaoh’s hard heart?

There are plenty of difficult passages of Scripture within the Bible. And reading how God hardened the Pharaoh’s heart, the same Pharaoh God sent Moses to confront, is definitely one of them.

In this video, I share how learning about and knowing the heart of God from reading the Bible in its entirety will give us a better understanding of how to interpret passages that point to an assumption about God that is not true. I could have used many more passages from God’s Word to help with this, but I chose to make this a simple explanation. Hope this encourages and blesses you!

In this episode on my mental health journey as a Christian, I am sharing with you how a decision to return abroad as missionaries and the start of that transition, along with other unforeseen factors, triggered a relapse with my mental health.

There was a fear that I could relapse, but I had no idea that I would be triggered as much as I was at the start of our transition. At first I ignored those triggers and hoped it was all just temporary while we were preparing our return overseas.

More to come so look for my next mental health vlog!

Trusting the Lord does not always come easy. When a situation we are going through has no clarity for us, when we are confused about our circumstances and when we don’t understand why God has allowed things to happen in our lives, it becomes hard to trust Him in those seasons.

Perhaps some of us have the wisdom to understand what is going on while in the midst of a storm, but oftentimes we lack the greater picture of what is occurring. In those moments and seasons we have to choose to trust the Lord as we navigate the valley.

I have experienced enough of the faithfulness of God in my life where a sure pattern has been established in our relationship. God often gives me understanding and peace of a season I have just walked through or He releases that to me in time. This does not mean all my questions are answered, but for the most part my eyes are shown where the hand of the Lord had been the entire trial.

For myself personally, the last three years have blurred together under an umbrella of intense warfare and trials. I can actually tell you the day this season started for me. There was most assuredly a moment where I knew that the enemy was after me. I only knew those things because I felt it within me and I responded with holding more tightly to the Lord. Three years is a long time to endure an entire valley season, but that season has not been without God’s faithfulness and deep love for myself and my family.

While 2021 was coming to an end, God began to not only show me insight with what I just walked through for three long years, but also a long sought after word that this was the close of that intense season. And He has only confirmed it more since then.

I can only liken this dark season to Joseph in Genesis, who remained in prison two extra years because the chief cupbearer forgot to mention him before the Pharaoh. That betrayal, and no doubt the feelings of isolation and being forgotten by the Lord, taunted his heart. Yet, God had a perfect plan and a perfect time to release His child into promise and purpose.

As God continues to show me what He was doing in me and with our relationship, I am humbled how a lot of what He did was protect and guard me in this season. I did not always feel protected, but He had His hand on me and His angels surrounding me most in those times.

I wanted the Lord to answer my pleas for help and release me in my way, or what I saw as the only way, but He had a better plan and knew what I needed most. I wanted to be delivered out of tough situations. He only sustained me within them and gave me His grace to endure.

I wanted others around me to change and I begged God to change them. And instead the Lord brought change in me. He allowed parts of me that were holding me back from being fully who I am in Him to die, and I felt the pain and grief as His work was accomplishing something beautiful.

God was healing deep wounds in my soul. Wounds I had no idea were there or that were even impacting me on the level that they were. And as each wound healed I was able to look back in my own life’s timeline at those moments where I had allowed such wounding to be the lenses I saw them through.

Pieces of a complex puzzle were coming together and things began to make sense and become clear. I saw my own negative behaviors as a response to those wounds and I was amazed how healing resolved a lot of them.

The past three years, as horrible as they felt and were at times, will forever be marked in my heart and mind as the years that God dared to heal me and rescue me from myself. And instead of answering my desperate plea to be either removed out of a difficult situation or for Him to intervene the way I wanted Him to, God in His deep love for me desired my wholeness and His purpose in me rather than to respond as I asked.

And because of that I am forever grateful to Him.

 

How to lesson anxiety is crucial for those that find themselves more anxious than they need to be…

In this video I will be sharing with you practices I have in my personal life that help me calm my anxiety and retrain my brain to live out of the parasympathetic nervous system more often. We may not be able to stop struggles with anxiety all at once, but we can learn to continue to live our lives abundantly despite our issue with it.

The brain can learn to be on alert at all times because of certain stressful environments and experiences, but being on alert this much is not good for our mental or physical health. Learning how to practice calmness and other anxiety coping tips can be key in helping our brains learn that we are safe.

Do you find yourself questioning your abilities before God?

Moses’ response to the call of God on his life to be an instrument of deliverance of God’s people was first met with reluctance. He told the Lord how he lacked in his speaking skills, revealing a lack of confidence in his abilities to be used. However, was there more going on in his heart that we can try and understand? And do we, because of a lack of confidence in our own abilities, have more deeper reasons of not walking out what God has asked of us?

 

I decided to ask the Lord to change me more into His likeness after a conversation with a friend recently. I don’t remember what we were talking about exactly, but I do remember the topic of our need to become more like Christ.

I inserted that prayer into my journal the next morning (because I did not want to forget it) and sincerely asked God to work on me more.

And then I had this conversation with myself later on in the day:

“What did I do? Did I just ask God for more situations that will sharpen me and mold me into His likeness? What was I thinking? I’m still exhausted from the last season of sharpening I walked through.”

But then I was gently reminded by the Lord of an experience I had years back.

This experience was a time of praying healing for a stranger in the hospital when my husband and I lived overseas. My faith in believing that God responds to our prayers for healing was being challenged and this specific hospital visit was in response to a leading of the Holy Spirit.

While my husband and a couple of local sisters and I prayed for this young woman with a blood disorder, in my mind I saw for a split second a bright vision of Jesus standing next to this bed ridden woman. However, He was standing in the same place I should have been standing in.

God was revealing to me something amazing.

Whenever we walk in obedience to whatever the Lord is asking us, we are literally allowing Him to minister to others through us.

I saw it that day in the hospital. When I had my eyes closed, I saw Jesus standing beside the hospital bed healing this individual. Our coming together in faith allowed Him to minister and heal this young lady.

That visual that He gave me still holds strong in my heart. I try to keep it at the forefront of my mind when serving others, when showing love to strangers and when responding to stressful situations and people.

I am not perfect. I still forget the instrument I could be for the Lord at times and sometimes I forget who I truly am in Him, but in asking the Lord to change me more into His likeness I am hoping to act in ways and treat others as He would.

This experience He reminded me of softened my heart to be willing to continue to be molded and shaped in His likeness, despite the pain and struggle that sometimes comes along with change.

However, we do not need to go through hard experiences alone to become more like Christ. We can make an effort to become like Him through studying Him more in the Word and seeking to know Him deeper in relationship. And the more we allow ourselves to fall in love with Him, the more we are willing to be made more like Him.

Becoming more like Jesus is also recognizing those moments where He kept Himself open to walk out what the Father had for him to do.

Jesus, God incarnate, came to demonstrate for us a life that we are supposed to be living. He not only brought salvation to us through His death and resurrection, but He also became life’s manual for each of us.

Can you imagine God hearing a weary soul on earth asking for instructions with how to live this life, and then deciding that He would just come to earth and literally show us Himself?

That’s what He did. He came, He lived, He died, He resurrected and it wasn’t for us to only observe a sinless man, fully man and fully God, walking the earth. His life here on earth was also meant for us to learn from.

He demonstrated for us how to live for Him when He was here. He became our manual that we should not take for granted. We should study His life and His nature and character. We should aim to be more like Him, and then others will experience the mystery of Him ministering to them through us.

We are looking at mental health versus spiritual health in this video!

I had to create this video in response to the multiple questions I receive about whether or not you can be close to the Lord and still struggle with your mental health. There is nothing wrong in asking this question at all and I am delighted to touch on this with my own experience.

I have struggled with my mental health off and on for years now, and yet my relationship with God is very active and strong.

Our mental health can be separate from our spiritual health, but they do impact one another for sure. The different complex reasons any individual can struggle with their mental health explains how just walking away from God is not THE only reason anyone struggles (or even a reason at all).

My hope is that this video will shed light on the false assumption of those struggling with mental health as being distant from God. That is not always the case. Enjoy and be blessed friends!

Mind reading, the “why I feel everyone hates me…” mind trap. Assuming other people’s motives, intentions and thoughts via mind reading can be an unhealthy habit to have.

Mind reading is one of the cognitive distortions because it is a toxic way of thinking that only worsens depression and anxiety.

In this video, I will share not only how mind reading can become an unhealthy habit and toxic for us, but how it damages relationships or potential relationships.

Where does mind reading come from with us and how to stop mind reading will also be discussed. Enjoy another video on an unhealthy pattern of thinking and how to correct it! And be blessed friends!

“By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

John 13:35

This article will begin with a dream I received from the Lord a few weeks back.

It started off with an interaction with two of my sisters while we were seated at this large and rectangular dining table. In the dream, one of my sisters was upset about something and I was giving her advice on how to not lose her cool while we were at this table.

There was a good reason that I told her this.  And somehow, as dreams often work, I knew instinctively why this was.

The large table that we were seated at was on display in front of an audience that we could not see, a spiritual audience. And I knew that the rectangular table represented our lives. Sitting at this table was the result of a choice to follow Christ.

And I also knew in my spirit that we were being watched, and what was being sought after was how we demonstrated our love for one another. And that was all. Nothing else was looked at so carefully as was our love and how we treated each other.

Suddenly, the scene changed up a bit.

And it was no longer my sisters and I at this table, but the disciples who had first chosen Christ, aka the apostles. I watched them from an angle where they could not see me, but I was in the same room.

Two of the apostles were in an argument as they walked up to the same rectangular table we had just been sitting at. And one of them spoke similar words to the quarreling apostles as my own. He emphasized the need to love one another and told them as well that they, too, were on display before the heavenlies. And again in my spirit I knew what was being observed, how they loved and interacted with one another.

The conversation of these two apostles was not so important, but their hearts and motives, along with ours, were laid bare before the Lord, His host and a great cloud of witnesses.

I woke up and ran this dream through my mind again and again. I felt conviction, understanding, and excitement all at one time. And remembered the words of our Lord Jesus on His extraordinary message and emphasis to love one another.

“Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us”

Hebrews 12:1

Is the sky really falling or have we negatively thought ourselves into believing a reality that is not real! This type of thinking, thinking the worst will happen in any given scenario, is what is called CATASTROPHIZING and it is a cognitive distortion, or unhealthy pattern of thinking, that we must learn to overcome.

In this video, we will be looking at why we think the worst will happen, what fearing the worst does to us and why we end up falling into this bad pattern of thinking anyways.

I will be sharing more videos like this that focus on other unhealthy patterns of thinking (cognitive distortions), and will also share how to change your negative thinking that will lead you to be more healthy mentally and emotionally.