Loneliness

How to break cycles of loneliness and depression

Written by Yvonne Galindo

I wrote in my previous blog “Intimacy I” with regards to being a single Christian Women in the church today and your relationship with Christ. It’s no surprise that more and more people define themselves as being lonely. Some suffer from loneliness because of losing a spouse or child. In most cases it’s divorce; someone you have been intimate with for years of marriage and then one day the happiness you both have shared is gone! I believe we use the word lightly, and don’t realize loneliness can be a serious ailment for some. Loneliness will manifest itself in many forms like using drugs to try to cope with your depression which sometimes can lead to suicide. This truly saddens my heart because I experienced the loss of a loved one who truly suffered from loneliness and depression. It’s not that she wasn’t loved it’s because she never loved herself or forgave herself for her past mistakes. Women not learning to love or forgive themselves are a number one cause of loneliness in the church.
Mother Teresa said it best ~ the most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved ~ anyone who has been divorced knows the feeling of inadequacy or feeling incomplete and unloved which sometimes can lead to unhealthy relationships. I myself have experienced feeling incomplete and unloved, because of those feelings I made some BIG mistakes, some that I have learned from and others I have regretted terribly. I needed to stop looking for someone and find myself in Christ. I needed to seek Greatness and find the good in myself by the renewal of my mind-Rom 12:2. It was a difficult process and I learned to place all my desires before God; to pray about them and trust God to give them to me if and when they’re right. Remember place all the good, bad and the ugly in His hands. There is no room for shame at the altar of God.
The story of your life has many chapters. One bad chapter doesn’t mean it’s the end of the book.

For more from Yvonne, visit her blog.

Do Your Homework

7 Practical Ways to put God first in Your Life

Written by Kim Gutierrez

Do you remember the days when you would come home from school and your parents made sure you did your homework first before you played outside? Now-a-days playing outside seems so archaic, like really…walk outside right now do you really see kids playing outside?
Not many!
Well anyways, when I started to think about “Do your homework first” I thought about all the things I’d like to do for the Lord, bible school, memorize more scripture, post more frequent on my blog, and get involved in a critique group and the list goes on. My problem is when to do it, my days seem so full. I’m sure a lot of you feel the same way. How can we possibly squeeze in another thing to our schedules?
My prayers have been “Lord, tell me what I should be doing and when.”
The answer was…”Do your homework first!”
“Oh yeah!” I answered quickly.
I was always pretty good about doing that as a kid, so I should have no problem doing it as an adult right? Wrong! Nowadays we have so many more distractions! We have our cell phones, IM, emailing, texting, facebook, twittering and thousands of tv channels!
I’m going to date myself but when I was a kid we had 12 channels, and a corded phone that barely reached around the kitchen wall enough for me to say “I’ll talk to you tomorrow at school.” and to play outside was a privilege I didn’t want to jeopardize.
So now I’m being asked to go back to when I was a kid and Do my Homework first? What does that mean to me? It means to me that the Lord is saying “do it FIRST!”
I’m taking this as a challenge!
Matthew 6:33 (Amplified Bible)
But seek ([a]aim at and strive after) first of all His kingdom and His righteousness ([b]His way of doing and being right), and then all these things [c]taken together will be given you besides.
Challenge?
The challenge is to daily do that what the Lord has called me and you to do FIRST,
then do everything else after!

Now I’m not saying go quit your day job…but here are some examples I can think of:
Let your Instant Message be to God first
Don’t read your emails till you’ve read the bible
Don’t change your status on facebook till you know your status with Him
Don’t follow someone else on twitter, unless you follow Him first!
Wake up earlier if you don’t have time in the day.
Mark 1:35 Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.
Put aside time at night, instead of watching TV for a couple hours.
Study the word of God for the same amount of time it takes you to put on your makeup

I know that if we seek him first he will be so excited, remember he is a jealous God and He Loves You!
Can you think of anymore ideas that could help someone seek God first?
What do you do, Homework first or Play first and how do you plan on changing that?

You can read more of Kimmy’s thoughts here.