21/05/2020
Surrounded by Flawed Systems
Its not surprising that, during this time when our usual way of life is placed on hold, that many more of us are beginning to see that we are surrounded by flawed systems.
As I list them out, it can be scary to realise that the things we rely on most are unstable and untrustworthy! So, you’ll want to hang on until the end for the good news and the solution to this conundrum.
We only need to switch on free to air TV to find its a flawed system. What used to be a device to entertain and inform, has been tainted by hidden agendas. The news is politically biased and promotes fear, advertising is extremely manipulative, time slots are unreliable, plenty of the content is offensive and mindless, and most of it is misleading. Its no wonder everyone moved on to pay for streaming. $$$
Speaking of making money, have you noticed how many companies alter their products just slightly enough to inconvenience us, but not enough to be found guilty of extortion? Products we’ve paid good hard-earned money for become redundant after only a short use. One example is Apple changing the headphone jack and charging ports on iPhones, so all your old charging cables and headphones are now useless. Money thrown in the bin. Living in a throw-away society has led to us throwing away money and big business knows we have little to no choice but pay up.
Now that I’ve eased you in, how about we investigate something more serious, like education. I’ve spoken to several concerned parents recently who only through the introduction of mandatory home-schooling have they begun to worry about the subject matter being taught to our children. This is something I have been aware of for quite some years, but now many of you are seeing just how often political biases and teacher’s opinions are being taught as facts. And how many of us have complained that our teens weren’t taught how to understand their vote, or how to apply for a home loan, or complete a tax return, or the workings of insurance, or the basic principles of our rights and obligations under constitutional law? Important information that would help steer the course of their lives. And don’t get me started on how words are being misused and their meanings twisted or even abolished, for the sake of simplicity and political correctness. Could the system that is supposed to expand knowledge, really be dumbing down our children?
How about our health system? Its kind of at pinnacle importance currently! How many of us have conditions which doctors have masked with drugs without identifying the cause? How many of you have stopped to research the drugs your GP prescribes? With the global push towards private health, how can we rely on a system that makes a profit by keeping us unwell? Think about it, someone in a big corporation is getting richer simply by exploiting our reality and our natural fear of suffering illness, pain, and death. And let’s not even begin to point out the flaws in the scientific community and the recent pandemic!
And its not just for-profit corporations that have warped agendas, how about churches and charities? Purposed to be places of solace to bolster faith, stand in truth, support the disenfranchised and radiate hope…. yet many of us have found the integrity of such places to be a complete disappointment. Aside from all the revelations of pedophilia, condemnation, and corruption, or the guilt trips set to coax you out of your hard earned dollars, to line their pockets or earn brownie points and gain bragging rights. Most of them simply don’t mean what they say. When integrity has completely left the church, you gotta know Jesus has left the building!
Lets get back to you…
How many of you are concerned about what to feed your family? By now many of you understand that processed and fast foods, which we have all been consuming by the truck load, since the 80’s, are poisoning us. We see the increasing amount of illnesses and allergies, disorders and inflammation, auto-immune conditions and hormone imbalances, syndromes and diseases impacting our quality of life, all of which are exacerbated by GMO’s, sugar, preservatives, artificial additives, hormones, MSG, pesticides, antifungals and more. All of which saturate products we chomp down to survive. We are beginning to see the hypocrisy that an organic meal costs 3-4 times a meal that is filled with poison. Yet even with both parents working full-time (while missing out on knowing what their kids are learning at school or watching on TV), the average family still can’t afford to feed their children non-poisonous food, or afford the medical insurance for when they get sick.
Whilst I would love to go on a spiel about the government, law, and politics, especially with the current restrictions on our freedoms, not to mention mandatory vaccines, microchips, climate change, 5G or the Magna Carta, I feel that is a rabbit-hole we could get lost in for quite some time, and by now you’re probably ready to check out from this blog post and this world with all its flawed systems. So, I will leave all that to your own research and imagination.
It’s reasonable to feel overwhelmed and helpless when surrounded by countless flawed systems, but all is not lost.
We the people are waking up to the scams, the hoaxes, the corruption, we are learning about our rights and our freedoms that our ancestors fought for. We are seeking for spiritual truth over dogma. We are searching out alternative health services and growing our own food, we are challenging our children to think for themselves and avoid swallowing their teacher’s biases.
Just like any good blockbuster, there is good and evil influencing our systems. Most of the systems mentioned above are influenced by the flesh, by greed, selfishness, thirst for power and control. They are influenced by evil, which has always set about to counterfeit the original trustworthy design of the universe.
Its no coincidence that our planet is precisely located to facilitate life perfectly, where 1 degree closer or further away from the sun would result in our destruction. Its no coincidence that organic food is best for us or that natural remedies hold untold healing capabilities. Its no coincidence that families succeed and survive better when they are a solid unit. Its no coincidence that intelligence grows as we discover more opportunities to ask questions and think for ourselves. Its no coincidence that evil is being exposed and its systems are being revealed as flawed, for the scriptures have spoken of these things for millennia. But in the end it ALL works out perfectly!
Therefore, I encourage you to have hope, especially those who have avoided reading scripture. This is all exactly how God said it would go, He warned us through His sevants the Prophets, but we chose our own way, we allowed our unrighteous urges and indulgences to drive the systems of this world instead of submitting to God’s wisdom. But the good news is that He also put in a contingency plan, so that none should perish. A Saviour, an intercessor, someone who upended evil’s opportunity for success, someone who told us that a new system, one completely other-worldly, would come in place of all current systems. A new government with Christ in charge! He passed the test, He overcame the desires of the flesh to overpower us. Instead, Christ showed us that serving all, having faith and giving up His life, His rulership and His rights for His people is what a trustworthy ruler looks like. All there is left to do is come to Him and await His return as King!
The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. 2 Peter 3:9
07/03/2017
Are you Stuck at the Doorway?
One of the most frustrating forms of attack that we’ve all seen far too often, is when our Inner Enemies use our thoughts to keep us stuck at the doorway of our potential.
When life gets tough it is giving us a nudge to want to leave our situation. Some of us even head for the door, towards a change, towards healing, towards growth. Yet that pivotal step across the threshold gets harder and harder the longer we have been stuck there.
The lack of comfort in our current circumstances becomes at least a discomfort that we know, we are familiar with its curves and edges. Sometimes we can even see around its corners and prepare ourselves for any foreseeable issues that lie in wait. But that vital step across the threshold, through the doorway into change, has nothing familiar to it, nothing to smooth out the knots of the unknown that cripple us from within.
We then become victims trapped by our own choice, and those choices are governed by our thoughts and our fear. Fear that reminds us of previous pains, and regrets, which we are now avidly on the look out for, in order to avoid repetition.
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Statistics show that there are 3 common traits found in those who experience successful steps across that threshold… Steps towards recovery and wellness. Recovery from addiction, from injury, from illness both physical and psychological, from trauma and tragedy. These traits are grounded in Faith.
Trait 1 – A DESIRE to be WELL.
As previously noted, once we have become so used to our struggle, our inner enemies convince us to choose it, rather than the effort needed to pursue wellness. Our desire shifts in favour of the sympathy generated by our sad stories. We have all met that person who, no matter how many different pieces of good advice you give, to help them out of their troubles, they have talked themselves out of each suggestion before even considering it. This particular inner enemy enjoys any attention it receives, the pity, and the seductive quality of unloading emotional baggage onto anyone who will give an ear. It is a trap that so many of us fall prey to and we owe it to ourselves and also our loved ones to ask ourselves ‘whether or not we actually desire to be well? And are we willing to go make the changes needed to get it?’. We must accept that suffering is supposed to prompt that urge to head for the doorway of change. By faith we understand this process, we recognise that suffering is par for the course and was even experienced by our own Precious Saviour. Faith gives us the desire to trust this divine process.
Trait 2 – DETERMINATION to get WELL
Faith gives us access to Godly ammunition, and the weapons of Heaven. We must remember that every time we are faced with a choice that takes us to the doorway, we come under attack of fear. We fear the choice required to take that leap into the unknown, we fear the outcome. This is the intention of our inner enemies to keep us from stepping out in Trust. However when we apply and rely upon those weapons of Heaven that are available to us through God’s Word, our determination becomes empowered. We recognise the war, and refuse to allow these enemies to win out. For those unable to accept this war, they forever remain caught in that place of defeat, and a defeatist attitude is toxic to growth and blessings. God has promised to give us His tenacity, when we lean on Him and His strength, and not on ourselves.
Trait 3 – EXPECTATION to be WELL
“Faith is the substance of things hoped for; and the evidence of things unseen” Hebrews 11:1. As we make each step towards each new doorway, it is vital that we recognise where our focus is placed. If we keep our focus on the past and our disappointments, on our regrets and our shame, on our pain and betrayals, then we begin to lose sight of the abundant blessings God has promised us. Our inner enemies know that if we stay stressed, distracted and disconnected, we will never engage in the fight against them. We will expect defeat and there they have us trapped. Yet when we meditate on the Promises in God’s Word to bless us, to help us and to give us peace, our expectations change and we become hopeful, encouraged to put on our Godly armour and keep stepping towards the door to wellness, and eventually through it!
The doorway is waiting, we are well aware that it is there. Will we choose the easier option and wallow in our despair? Will we avoid that threshold into potential? Or will we make a decision today to see the war clearly, to accept the journey towards wellness and to put all our expectations on God? To give Him the power to turn our Tests into Testimonies! And our Trials into Triumphs!
03/08/2016
A Culture Dependant on Pills and Potions
Sometimes when it comes up in conversation that I write a blog on faith and mental illness, or when I share my experience with learning to manage mental illness, the subject of medication is brought up. I am not a Doctor and am not qualified to give any medical advice, I am simply here to share my thoughts, and my experiences, and to ask you to consider these theories logically for yourselves.
Certainly there are many arguments for use of anti-depressants and mood stabilizers etc, (though I have become distrusting of how many are actually valid). If we experience long-term sadness, or episodes of extreme fear, if our children’s behaviour is unsettlingly out of hand, if we find it hard to concentrate or sleep, then it seems the first response from the medical world is a prescription. Yet the Scriptures are filled with guidance on all these issues. These are all classic attacks from Inner Enemies, and God has provided the way to overcome. This doesn’t mean I am opposed to all prescriptions, far from it, I have used them as my first port of call for many years, and still would if my investigation supports it, however it is only now that I am aware of the bigger picture and hope you are also…..
While I believe it is up to each of us to decide if medication is an option for us, we must do so with prayer and wisdom. We must consider the side effects, the risks verses the benefits, especially consider the cost of long term use, decide how long we are willing to be dependant on them, and to also research alternative options. We must take our health seriously and begin to make hard but necessary changes when are bodies begin to warn us. It has become far too common practice to seek out a prescription to bypass our symptomatic struggles, and accept the easiest option, rather than taking the symptoms as warnings that something else is going on that must be addressed.
Prescriptions offered in a mind-altering context are done so without any scientific diagnosis, no blood tests, minimal follow-up and the results are not as reassuring as you or I may like to believe, just check out this link to discover the hidden evils within this drug fuelled money making system.
That being said….Pharmaceuticals have certainly come a long way in recent decades, and some amazing benefits are being discovered. My concern is simply that as a society we have come to rely on medication to help us manage a countless amount of health concerns. We have become accustomed to numbing our pain, and bandaid-ing any underlying issues. Many long-term side effects have begun to surface after extended use of many pills and potions. The consequences of pharmaceuticals are reaping havoc on our bodies, and our minds, as I will share on personal level a bit later in this post. I am not suggesting anyone ignore medical advice or to neglect to take responsible steps towards managing any issues, mental, health or otherwise. I am saying that much more evidence has come to light recently that support natural therapies, diet, and dedication to non-pharmaceutical treatments. All of which are impacting countless conditions that we have become reliant on using medication to try to control.
By hiding our symptoms beneath a mask of medication, are we trying to take our health out of God’s control and put all our faith in Medicine?
Our beautifully wonderfully made bodies are a gift we need to take responsibility for, and ultimate responsibility comes when we put our trust in God. God intends his children to be taken care of and every need supplied.
And this same God who takes care of me will supply all your needs from his glorious riches, which have been given to us in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:19)
Here is the point to understand in regard to illnesses………
He uses our suffering to change us for the better, to help us come into close unity with the scriptures.
We need to keep an understanding of faith systems in order to make the most from every situation as God will us to. Otherwise isn’t all suffering just a waste of time, and feels like punishment instead of opportunity for miraculous transformations?
Romans 8:18 “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.”
Throughout my life I have leaned heavily on any type of pill or potion that claimed to help my various conditions. I have self-medicated in order to tame my symptoms. I too felt unable to cope with the health issues and mental issues I have had to go through. Yet somewhere beneath my desire to avoid illness and pain, I knew I didn’t want to be ignorant to the true underlying cause.
Through my most severe episodes, after my car accident, my lawyers encouraged me into therapy. I saw a psychiatrist for my mood instability and a psychologist for my car-phobia issues. The psychiatrist was quite inept at managing my state of mind, his only course of action was to prescribe mood stabilizing medication. I took the medication to help narrow the peaks and troughs of my emotional reactions, hoping it would give me temporary support and confidence until I could work to find the deeper causes with my psychologist. Yet I felt little relief while taking the pills, at one point I even had suicidal thoughts, thoughts that had never ever crossed my mind in my depressed state before being medicated.
Along with my regular psychology sessions, I invested my time and energy on inviting God to move me towards the type of healing He could give me, towards the hidden truth inside me. I began to gain a clear understanding of myself and how to face up to and deal with my deepest issues. Issues I had no awareness of prior to therapy. I slowly reduced my medications until I came off them completely. This was in no way the EASY option. Medication offers a ‘quick fix’ yet none of the healing, while God’s healing is permanent and has all our best interests at heart, even if it is more laborious.
God showed me that He was using these situations to develop my trust in His plan, to show me His amazing might in my weakest moments, and to guide my steps towards the healing that He wanted for me. He used these situations to teach me priceless lessons about myself in each stage of the process.
“Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I obey your word.” (Psalm 119:67)
I also had a physical condition a couple of years ago that resulted in numerous hospital visits, and many weeks spent bed ridden. Of course the first suggestion was strong medication, which I willingly took for many months, until surgery could resolve the symptoms more permanently. Yet the underlying issue was not discovered in a Doctors surgery or a hospital. The medication and the surgery only managed the symptoms, yet just like with my mental health, I felt the urge to discover what caused the issue in the first place.
Sadly many medical doctors seem to have issue sharing information with natural therapists, both trying to deny the value of the other, and we are the ones who get caught in the middle, unsure of who we can trust. After much research and dedication to my illness both inside and outside the Doctors office, I began to discover some answers. With the help of a Naturopath and Nutritionist I began to understand that taking antibiotics for sinus infections and a dependence on the convenience of junk food since my teen years, both led to an imbalance of my digestive bacteria, this threw my hormonal balance out of whack and I became seriously unwell. Since then I have refused antibiotics, using amazing colloidal silver to keep infections at bay, and changed my diet to a much healthier organic one. For a period of time I detoxed and used supplements to repopulate the lost natural enzymes and re-boot my immune system. Not only have my symptoms ceased almost entirely and my health improved dramatically, but also I received understanding on a new level about how my choices and my actions affect my life.
I guess my point here is this…. You are responsible for your own health, and cannot rely on one Dr or Specialist or Guru to take that responsibility, for they are not the ones who must live with the consequences.
We have been placed on this planet for a temporary period of time. Given a lifetime of issues purposed to draw out our hidden curses and develop character in the process. If we simply mask the inner enemies and smother our understanding in ignorance, we fail to receive the abundant blessings and miraculous transformations that God intended for our GOOD! All the things God has placed at our disposal to help us through this life are to be used in moderation, with wisdom and prayer, while God’s love and faithfulness can be indulged upon to the full extent that we can muster.
08/05/2013
Turning His Face*
Through these few weeks of suffering the condition I mentioned in a recent post, I have been more focused than ever on bringing more of God’s presence into my day-to-day life. Funny that!
We always stretch further for Him when we are suffering, don’t we?
Last week I completed a 2 week fast. No alcohol, No TV, and did not touch a blog site or any social media. My intention was to meditate, and work on my novel, as much as possible (although my plans are not always His and He had other things for me to deal with).
The foundation of a successful fast, is giving up anything that seeks to control us, anything we enjoy enough to get lost in, or find a pull towards during tough times. Easy distractions or addictions, habits and weaknesses. During a fast we make a 100% non-negotiable promise, to God, to go without which ever thing we are fasting for an achievable amount of time.
Each time the tempting thought arises we acknowledge God and our promise to Him, we reinforce that promise and we ask for His help when it gets tough. By doing this we are making some huge expressions of faith from our softened hearts. (God just loves it when we do this!)
These are some things that speak out of our hearts during a fast like this – God is real, He watches us, We revere Him enough to want to keep our promise. We need his help when we are weak. We are willing to give up the pleasures of the world to acknowledge Him and invite Him in to our situation.
It is the most powerful exercise I have found to overcome the world and my flesh, and witness His presence.
The first thing I noticed during this particular fast, was how much spare time I had to get other things done. I accomplished so much, and after feeling useless for a number of weeks, I felt a great sense of achievement as I ticked off many things on my never ending to-do list.
The second thing I noticed was how much easier it was to discover God’s guidance and to find things to praise Him for. The medication I am on for this condition has exacerbated my mood disorder significantly, I am more emotionally sensitive than ever. It can only take a millisecond for me to burst into tears, or flick on the rage switch, grit my teeth and loose any place of calm. Often, in times like this, I pray. Usually something desperate like “Oh Lord help me, take away my emotions, help so-and-so see how hard this is for me and not aggravate me! I don’t want to feel like this” etc. Then I wait…with angry tears….until He changes things.
However, during this fast I found praising Him was a much quicker way to flick off that unpleasant switch.
I recommend everyone tries this, it is not always easy, but it works every time!
Right in the midst of a full blown attack, when our Inner Enemies are hitting us from every angle, rather than fighting back in anger, we can end the battle then and there. By pushing aside that tidal wave of ammunition, which fuels unpleasant emotions, just for a second, and find something, anything to be grateful for. Praise God for that, whatever it may be. It could be as simple as the ability to breathe, or the warm bed you are about to snuggle up in… It could be the legs that allow you to walk away from something aggravating. 😉
If there is anything that will send our Inner Enemies high-tailing it into the distance, it is Praise! Worship! Gratitude! Forgiveness! A sure way to grab onto the face of God and turn it towards you!
Inner Angels & Enemies 