“We are victims of a mounting tension; we have difficulty in relaxing.  Our high-strung nervous systems are on a perpetual binge. Caught up as we are in a rush all day, every day, and far into the night, we are not living fully.  We must remember what Carlyle called ‘the calm supremacy of the spirit over its circumstances.”  

Can you imagine seeing this paragraph in your workplace’s monthly newsletter?!  This was written by The Royal Bank of Canada to their employees some years ago. I think they were on to something, not only in their statement but also in their name! 

We are failing to get out of life the very things we so badly desire from it because of being victims to tension. One definition of a victim is a person who has been tricked or duped.  Do you feel tricked? Tricked into thinking you just had to try harder, work more, push further and you could start to enjoy life?

Over-pressing will cause you to miss your mark...

There is a popular saying where one person says,  “God is good all the time,” and then the second person says, “All the time God is good.”  Some of us want to believe that God is good. Some of us believe that God is good.  And some of us have experienced that God is good.


There is a big difference between believing and experiencing, isn’t there?  I could describe for you an awesome dessert I made that is chewy, gooey goodness and you may be able to picture that in your mind and say that sounds good.  But it would be quite a different thing to get to taste it, experience it and know that it is good. 

 “O taste and see that the Lord is good. How happy is the man who trusts in Him!” (Psalm 34:8 NLV)  To taste and see that the Lord is good is to experience His goodness first hand.  

Maybe you believe God is good because you’ve seen Him do things for others but you aren’t sure...

We’ve all been there.  We get stuck on one negative comment made during a performance review at work, one negative comment on a Facebook post we shared or one negative comment about our appearance at a special event.  There may have been many good things said during your review, many positive comments on your post or many compliments are given of how beautiful you looked, but that one negative thing is all you can think about.  

The saying appears to be true: One bad apple spoils the whole barrel.

Why do we get stuck on the one negative thing? 

Because we were designed by our Creator to be “wired for love”.  This means anything that goes against love really stands out to us and gets our attention.  Negativity is not normal in the kingdom of God so it draws our attention and throws us off balance.

We should recognize the negative thing so we can deal with it, take authority over it, and bring love into it.  We are restorers...

Susan wished she could have a do-over in life.  She wished she could start over but with knowing all she knows now.  She told me she would make a lot of different choices this time around.  Right now she felt stuck in a life she didn’t want and wasn’t happy with. Not everything was bad, she was quick to add.  She loved her family and appreciated many good things about her life but she had a lot of regrets, dead dreams and a general lack of joy.


Although she knew this wasn’t possible to have a do-over, I told her it was possible to remake her life from this point she was at.  What she needed was an invasion of truth. “For if you embrace the truth, it will release more freedom into your lives.” (John 8:32 TPT)

One of the greatest discoveries of mankind is the truth that you can alter your life by altering your attitude of mind.  Of course, God already knew that and told us, “For as he thinks within himself, so is he...

You know well the feeling of your blood pressure rising, your fists clenching, your jaw tightening and your voice rising in anger.  It doesn’t feel good, does it? Anger is a reaction to a stressful situation.  

What if you could learn to respond in a different way?  A way that would leave you reigning in life, with your dignity intact and hope that the situation will work out for good. A way that will honor God and not invoke more stress on yourself and those around you, or make you later regret what you said or did.  

Here are 9 ways to control your anger and feel calmer:

1. When you get angry, you are poised for a fight.  You can instantly take steps to diffuse your feelings by intentionally forcing yourself to stretch out your fingers, reduce the tone of your voice, open your arms wide or slump in a chair.  Do the opposite of what you feel like doing by an act of your will.  Stress always has you constricting, so find ways to open...

When you are in the midst of a trial that is causing you stress, what’s the best way to come through it and not get stuck in it? 

It is with calm faith.

Oh, but that is so much easier said than done, isn’t it? I mean you are IN the trial, this is a REAL issue.  This is not you worrying about the future and what if this or that happens. Something has already happened. Now what?

Today I’ll share with you the 3 best ways to have calm faith IN the midst of the trial so that you will come OUT.

God tells you to expect to come through it, not get stuck in it.  Isaiah 43:2 says, “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.”  Notice He says when you pass through, not when you drown in the waters.  

Psalm 23:4 is another witness to us of this expectation. “Even though I walk...

I’m not sure it gets much more stressful than hearing a diagnosis of having kidney cancer when you weren’t expecting a thing.  This happened to me several years ago and I’m sure glad I had learned beforehand what the Bible teaches about healing so I knew how to respond in the day of crisis.  Today I’ll share 3 biblical truths that helped me to not worry about my health.

One of the leading causes of stress I hear from my clients is health related, either their own health or that of a loved one.  The stress comes from being in pain, incurring huge medical expenses, getting a scary diagnosis or wondering what would happen to their kids if something happens to them.  Health problems cause stress and stress causes health problems.

As always, to stress less, we need to go to the Bible as our ultimate authority, instruction manual and guide.  And there we’ll find these three biblical truths:

1. Jesus took care of our healing on the cross...

Wouldn’t it be great if you knew exactly what to do when you ran into difficulties in life and need a good idea?  Wouldn’t that help eliminate stress? A problem would come but instead of worrying or becoming fearful about it, you would just turn to the things you knew to do and not be ruled by your emotions.  Today, I’m sharing a plan for you to turn to when you are in need of a good idea of what to do.

1. Stop and quiet yourself.  Sounds simple but this is hard to do when you have been hurt, embarrassed or afraid, or when your mind is spinning fast trying to find a solution to your problem.  When we approach problems with a boiling over mad or scared to death attitude, we’ll make bad decisions. We’ll want revenge, we’ll make short-sighted decisions, we’ll be ruled by emotions and limited by our
   human knowledge of the situation.
   
   
2. Go to God with the problem.  Again sounds simple, but how many of us have thought about our...

Warning: If you want to keep your anxiety and stay in your depression or if you just want some sympathy this video is not for you.  But if you want to bust through the obstacles to stress-free living, here are 4 tips on how to do it. 

I’m about to say something that won’t be too popular.  But I say it out of total love and a desire to see people bust through stress instead of getting stuck in it.  I also say it as a person who understands stress, worry and fear consuming your life. And I say it as a person who found my way out to freedom and want to help you too. 

Okay, here goes...Some people are stuck in their life of anxiety, depression and stress because they see the obstacles in their life and they just lie down and say, “They are too big.  They are too tough. They’ve been around so long. There’s nothing I can do about it. They must be part of God’s plan or He wouldn’t have allowed it. This is just the way...

Is expecting the best just a positive thinking, worldly idea that is really a bunch of nonsense and won’t help your stress?  No! I’ll show you from the Bible today Jesus’ take on this subject and 4 ways you can apply it to your life.

Have you heard this quote before?

“Expect the best, prepare for the worst.”

Or how about this one…

“Expect the worst and you’ll never be disappointed.”

Or...

“Don’t expect too much. It’s always better to be surprised than disappointed.”

There are a lot of ideas out there about what we should expect but the only ones we need concern ourselves with are from the Bible.  

In Mark 9 the father of a demon-possessed child came to Jesus and said, “But please, if you’re able to do something, anything—have compassion on us and help us!” Jesus said to him, “What do you mean ‘if’? If you are able to believe, all things are...