Do you feel like your prayers aren’t doing you any good when it comes to your stress, worry, and fear? Or do you find yourself throwing up emergency prayers when you have run out of all other options? Today I’m sharing 4 kingdom principles to get powerful results when you pray.

As a Christian, prayer is a powerful tool we have for busting through stress. But I think way too many of us have either taken it for granted or don’t really understand the power we have available through prayer.

1. Think of who you are talking to.  When you pray you are getting the very God of this universe involved in your situation.  Be impressed with the power and authority of your Father. Read the 38th chapter of Job and you’ll be reminded of God’s power to carve the canyons of this earth, how he tells the ocean how far it can go, and how the lightning bolts report to God saying, “Here we are.” If God can create this amazing world and continue to sustain...

If you are feeling drained and stress has left you exhausted, you very likely have leaks in your life that are allowing your energy to slip through. Let's identify and fix your energy leaks so you are ready to jump full force into God’s plan for your life, which I’m pretty sure does not include being too tired to make a difference in this world.

If we’ll look for the energy leaks in our life and fix them we can handle things with easy power and carry our responsibilities without a strain. We can learn to live life without wasting an ounce of energy and all our efforts can have maximum results or in the words of the Bible, "everything we put our hands to will prosper".  Sound good?

Let’s discover 7 leaks that drain our power or energy...

1) How you think you feel has a definite effect on how you actually feel physically.  If your mind tells you that you are tired, your body accepts the fact.  A big example of that for me is when the number of...

Are you tired and worn out?  Do you wake up in the morning and already start your day feeling tired?  Do you feel like your energy has been destroyed from all your stress, worry or fear?  

Stress can make you exhausted and most of us aren’t talking about it! So, today I’m exposing stress exhaustion and sharing with you how to beat it and get your energy back.

Energy is a real problem for most of us.  There is always more we want to do and we run out of time and energy to get it all done.  We live busy lives. Add in stress and we can be totally wiped out. Being tired is a major sign of anxiety and depression.   

If I get really stressed, I’m too tired to think or make decisions as simple as where I want to go to eat. I don’t want to leave the house, I just want to be a couch potato and binge watch my favorite show on Netflix. Stress is draining!  

So what’s the answer?  We need a power source to plug...

A man told his doctor, “I would give anything if I could get my mind to be peaceful and quiet.  It’s what I want more than anything in this world.” Is that you today? Is your mind constantly going and you can’t seem to relax or unwind? Today I’m sharing 8 proven keys to a peaceful mind.

We live in a busy world.  There is always more that needs to be done.  We’re under terrible pressure. Things can really get you down.  It can make you nervous and give you trouble sleeping. If you want to go back to a mind that is at peace where things are new and fresh, hopeful and untroubled, listen to these 8 proven keys to a peaceful mind.

1. Every night before bed (at a minimum and perhaps a couple of other times of the day), visualize you taking your worries out of your mind and dropping them in the water as you are on a speed boat headed in the opposite direction.  Watch them get smaller as you get further away. They disappear into the...

The blows of life, the accumulation of troubles, the multiplications of problems over time tend to sap your energy leaving you feeling hopeless, tired, discouraged, doubting yourself and defeated. So, today I’m sharing with you ten ways to raise your self-confidence to reduce your stress, believe more in yourself and see success.

Way too many people are defeated by the everyday problems of life.  Their minds are obsessed with thoughts of insecurity and inadequacy.  This is due to the fact that such ideas have dominated their minds for years.  When hopelessness enters your mind it discolors your outlook and distorts it. You start to doubt that you have the ability to meet any responsibility or to succeed at any opportunity.  You shrink from life. But God doesn't want us to feel that way.

Are you ready for those 10 steps to regain your confidence?  Here we go:

1. Form and meditate on a mental picture of you succeeding.  Hold onto that picture. Never...

Remember the song from Sunday School: Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.  Little ones to Him belong. They are weak but He is strong, Yes, Jesus loves me, Yes, Jesus loves me.  Yes, Jesus loves me. The Bible tells me so.

I can almost hear you singing it along with me as you read the words.  Why is this such a classic song? Because of its profound message in simple language that even a child can understand it.

So, when did you stop believing the message?

• When you asked for something in prayer and didn’t get it?
• When someone was abusive to you and you wondered why God allowed it?
• When your spouse said they no longer loved you?

Or maybe you would say, I still believe it, I know Jesus loves me.  If that is the case, may I ask you why you have stress, worry and fear?  Do you really believe He loves you or is that just some kind of automatic, you know it’s the right answer, kind of answer?

For I would like to propose to you that ...

Meditating is something I can almost guarantee that you are already doing and probably don’t even know it!  Do you worry? Well, then you are meditating. You talk about your problem.  You rehearse it over and over in your mind.  You imagine the worst case scenario. Worry is just meditation on the wrong things.  If you get your mind filled with the word of God and the love and power of your God, there won’t be any room or time for worry to stay a part of your life.  

Let’s start by clarifying that there are two different types of meditation. One type is about stillness, quietness and relaxation and I talked about this type in my article, Should Christians Meditate to Reduce Stress?  The second type is what we are talking about today and this type of meditation is about you being guided by the Holy Spirit into an encounter with God.

God told Joshua to meditate on the Scriptures day and night, not letting them depart out of his...

It seems like every expert today is recommending meditation as part of your daily routine if you want to have a happy, successful life.  But does a Christian have any business playing around with meditation? Be sure to stick with me throughout the entire blog as we look at this from several angles.

If we look at the origin of meditation, we find the earliest mentions of it by the Buddhist and Hindu religions.  Positive Psychology Today says, “The major split between Hindu and Buddhist meditation occurred when Buddhist followers no longer believed that meditation should be used to reach a closer understanding with a higher being, which is what Hindu meditation was for, but rather as a means of realizing one’s interrelatedness with all things.”  This eastern religious type of meditation became popular in the US in the 1960s for non-religious reasons as a form of relaxation. There is no one formal, accepted definition of meditation but most techniques...

I don’t know when the romance ended for me.  Being saved at the very young age of 4, I don’t remember a time of what life was like without Jesus.  I never had a honeymoon phase with Him like a person usually has that gets saved later in life.  So, when the romance ended?  I'm not sure.  

I remember the honeymoon time in my marriage.  I felt excited and as if life was just beginning.  At first, it was fun and it felt like anything was possible. Then money challenges came, dividing up chore challenges came, and raising a family challenges came.  

Life fell into service and busyness.  Duty and obligation. Some of the romance was lost in the relationship both with my husband and with God and my heart screamed, “There’s gotta be more to life than this!”

At times I felt guilty for feeling that way.  So I would work on gratitude and pouring myself into service at Church.  That would help me find...

Do you like window shopping?  How about going to open houses and looking at really nice houses in your area?  Do you car shop when you aren’t in the market for a new car? One day I discovered that I really didn’t like to do these things because it just made me feel bad about my current life.  I was so stressed about my current life, that I had stopped dreaming. It hurt too much to look at things that I would like but couldn’t have.

Now, I’m all for being content with what you have and sometimes these activities I’ve mentioned as well as our constant view of the best of other people’s lives on social media or HGTV, can be a source of causing discontent, jealousy or stress and should be avoided.  

What I found though with my inability to enjoy dreaming was that I had started to “just go along for the ride” in life, whatever happened was happening to me and out of my control, and that resulted in me not going the...