Daily writing prompt

How do you practice self-care?

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The more I try to find myself, the more I experience unhappiness. The more I turn my focus away from myself, the happier I am. It’s a paradox. Forgetting about yourself and your problems is a wonderful way to find heart-felt joy. People who consistently regularly do acts of kindness to directly help other people experience that kind of spontaneous inner joy. You can too. Go physically help somebody who is hurting or struggling and see for yourself. Go volunteer.

Another way to turn focus away from self and receive great joy is to open your heart to the presence, power, and reality of the risen Jesus Christ. Start humbly and honestly talking with Jesus from your heart. Ask Him to reveal Himself to you. When the inner light comes on you will be overcome with awe and amazement and the awareness of your problems and struggles will fade away in His presence. Surrender all to Him and begin to listen to and obey His still small voice throughout each day. Then His presence inside of you will begin to produce the fruit of His Spirit in your life: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” No form of self-care can compare with fully surrendering yourself to Jesus.

One thing that helps with self-surrender is a simple and humble gift of the Spirit that is presented in two books of the Bible: Acts and 1 Corinthians. It’s called speaking in tongues and involves the action of supernaturally speaking words that you don’t know. It’s an extremely powerful action that I do every day. (In yesterday’s post I described its benefits.) Here’s something I wrote about it today:

I was amazed to read in today’s Wake-Up Call blog:

“I was asleep living in my own comforts and daily life. A friend called me and told me in so many words that God had more for me and needed me. He sent me a sermon to listen to. I’ll be honest I had eight other tabs open and was kinda sorta listening. At one point the man speaking started to pray in tongues. Suddenly the Holy Spirit flooded me and I started weeping, overwhelmed with God’s love and presence. It had been years and years since I had felt God in that way.”

I wrote this before I saw Today’s Call:

Tongues isn’t about self. It’s about surrender, brokenness, and humility. There’s nothing prideful about it. There’s no point to prove. Tongues isn’t about the mind; it’s about surrender of the heart and the will to the direct control of the Holy Spirit and letting Him freely flow from within with Spirit-given utterance. Testifying about gift of tongues is no different than testifying about salvation. They are both supernatural works of God that we need to shout from the housetops so that people trapped by hopelessness and despair can hear and see the reality and power of the living, resurrected Jesus.”

If you listen to what the Holy Spirit is saying and do what He says, amazing things will happen. The world needs to see people who say they are Christians, living a Spirit-led, book of Acts, lifestyle. Will you?

Good or bad
The words you hear
Will program you
And influence
How you feel
And what you do.
Choose to hear
Words of hope,
Of wisdom,
And of kindness
So mental health
And inner peace
Can flourish
Within you.