Roe V Wade was overturned yesterday and my social media feeds have been permeated with Pro-Choicers spewing arguments that are complete nonsense, whether I was a pro-lifer based in Christianity (or any religion) or a pro-lifer based in atheism. I will present those arguments and provide logical and scientific reasons why they are invalid. You may say “there is no absolute truth, truth is subjective.” If you do, you just contradicted yourself already and made a poor argument. To say definitely that no absolute truth exists, you are defining subjective truth as absolute truth…
There is a trend in psychology going around about understanding and healing your inner child. I have never understood it until today. I think a reason seasonal depression hits me, is it brings back feelings and memories that were uncomfortable or negative for younger me. I sat on social media and observed the “memories” that it had for me for today. That only exacerbated my mood. Lost friends, past failures, broken relationships, etc. Nothing changes if nothing changes, so I took action.
Today, I chose to listen to my inner child. I chose to serve my inner child. I chose to embrace my inner child.
Picture this. It is Sunday morning. You are attending your Sunday morning church service, yearning to experience God, working to deepen your knowledge of God, and aiming to deepen your relationship with God. You are in the middle of the musical worship portion of the service when people slam through the sanctuary doors with a ruckus. But it doesn’t stop there. They loudly speak to people throughout the congregation. Would you be distracted? I would be. Would it interrupt your worship? It would for me.
The Stages of Change Model is a key tool in addiction counseling and recovery. We can see the Stages of Change model active in more than just recovery from substances, but instead in any type of change we are endeavoring to make. This model even describes when the Holy Spirit starts convicting us for things in our life that are not of God.
Recently, I have encountered many Christians who say that addiction is not a disease it is purely a matter of choice and self-control. As somebody in recovery and finishing up his Masters in Addiction Counseling, I firmly say that is bologna, and can be a very dangerous and harmful thing to say.
The Stages of Change Model is a key tool in addiction counseling and recovery. We can see the Stages of Change model active in more than just recovery from substances, but instead in any type of change we are endeavoring to make. This model even describes when the Holy Spirit starts convicting us for things in our life that are not of God.
If you follow me on Social Media, you will constantly see me sharing pieces of my story, facts about mental health, experience with addiction, and more. Why do I do this? Why am I so vocal about addiction and mental health? It took time, counseling, and people speaking truth into my life to realize that God uses the broken. We are to boast in our weakness. I do just that. When I tried living my life for my glory and how I saw best, I burned everything to the ground and hurt those around me.
I know this may be controversial, but I am a believer that God doesn’t necessarily plan out our lives or our callings. When I first had this idea presented to me, I was astonished that anybody could believe this. Hear me out. I think for somebody to be able to reconcile us having free will with God planning every detail of our lives is a bit hard to do. Sure, I do believe that he knows every possible option we could take and more importantly, knows which one we will actually take, without orchestrating it. However, I believe that God intentionally designs our hearts and personalities to serve in different ways, and we have the choice how and where we use those. He forms our hearts for a purpose and uses our pains and brokenness to help inspire that purpose.
We read throughout the Bible how God uses the weak to lead the strong and how he uses the broken to minister. Over that past couple of years, I could not see how that can be more true in my life. I was once a locally licensed pastor for the Church of the Nazarene. Through that title, I had my foot in many different ministries. I helped with Children’s ministry, I helped with Youth Ministry, I co-led the Young Adults ministry, and I was on the worship team all by the age of 22. My church life looked great. However, I was dealing with trauma that led me to depression and I made some bad choices to alleviate that pain. When I checked myself into the mental hospital, all my bad choices were exposed. The week after I got out of the mental hospital, I had my “pastor” title and license stripped away from me, and rightly so. My pastor didn’t leave my side, but he worked with me through healing until he was called on a new mission to a new church.
