The Right Food For Good Mental Health

Content below is the transcript for the above video.

Hey there. Hi from my back deck. It’s 60 degrees in Missouri, and I am loving it. I wanted to talk to you all today about a wonderful message that God’s given me on Mental Health.

You know if you look around there are people who are really struggling. Far be it from me to act like I’m not part of that crowd because I sure am.  I deal with things all day long, people’s problems and my own problems and I come home and I’m just worn out. I wonder where am I going to get the strength for tomorrow? But, you know God is just so faithful and he helps me. 

God is constantly teaching me and he always uses really simple examples. To help me with my issue in the devotional, “The Right Food for Good Mental Health.” God was giving me this example about well, he’s given it to me several times but never in this context, but when I had my son John, you know, man, I struggled for two years to lose weight. It was just horrible and I was pressed and I was irritable. I was tired and so I started doing research on what am I gonna do, I did some research and I figured out oh, I mean all the wrong Foods, you know. And so I was like well, okay, so I can’t have the high refined carbs and the sugar if I expect to lose weight. I have to eat more meat and veggies. Well, that was not what I was used to doing and I had terrible eating habits. So, I was determined that along with exercise I was gonna change my eating habits. So I did! I’m telling you it was not easy because I had developed a very strong taste for the wrong foods. I love me some apple pie and I would rather eat oatmeal than eat a steak, but I started disciplining myself to just do it. For a while it was a struggle, I wanted my sugar, but after a while when I started seeing the changes in my body from good habits, I started feeling like I was able to focus and my mental Acumen was much sharper. Oh, and I really started liking the results so much. I was like, oh, this is really good! I was motivated to continue the good habits because of the results. You know even when I fell off the wagon and started feeling sluggish again, I was so motivated by how it felt before that. I got back on the wagon relatively quickly. 

What do you think this has to do with mental health? 

Okay. I’m getting there. I promise! You know God’s word teaches us that we are created with the Body, Soul and Spirit and he uses the Physical Realm to teach us about the spiritual realm. We have a video on human design and the anxiety mechanism on our website. So if you haven’t listened to those, those are great backstories and foundations for this video. But, the point is we have Body, Soul and Spirit and the soul is the deepest part of us. It is a part of us that is the seat for our deepest thoughts and deepest emotions. It is the part we need to take, we need to take note of and pay attention to our soul. We need to pay attention to our spirit because those are the parts that last forever. Those are the parts that deeply affect us much more than you than our body does. A simplistic way of explaining it is that our body communicates with the physical world. So you are looking at my face, you’re hearing my voice.What I’m saying is going through your body through your senses into your soul and then God’s word and his Spirit communicates with our spirit. When our spirit is born again, that is when our spirit is made alive in Christ! 

We have the ability to be able to communicate with God and that spiritual communication. It is an avenue to feed our soul with the things that our soul needs from God. Because we were created with a desperate need for God. I like to say and I didn’t make this up somebody else probably did. We have a God-shaped hole in our heart and in our soul. If that hole is not filled with what it needs….Meaning God it’s like you’re starving to death or dying of thirst in the desert. Of course, you become anxious and the problem is most of us suffer from anxiety or mental health issues because we are not taking care of our soul. We are not feeding our soul with the things that God designed our soul to be fed with and that is with God himself. 

So, what does that look like? Well, you know if your soul has been fed with the crap of the world for all your life. Like my sugar and carbs, you have some habits. You got a break and believe me honey I get it. I still have plenty of bad habits and you have to, so you have to get rid of bad habits and you have to start new habits. New habits include

Being born again and if you don’t know what it means to be born again, or to receive the gift of Salvation, please go to my website. Please look it up!! We have two different areas of our website that deals with how to be born again and receive the gift of Salvation by grace. But once you are born again, and you have this relationship with God, then you have to develop good habits. It’s like when I started eating meat and veggies that suddenly I was, you know, a size eight and felt great again. No, no, no, it was a process and our soul also needs to take this journey with God and develop good habits and get rid of bad habits. And you know, and we have to remember too that our flesh is this thing that you’re looking at right now, this mug, it isn’t any better than The Day My Soul and Spirit were born again. It’s not the part of us that gets regenerated through the spirit of God when we’re born again. This flesh is not gonna it’s until we are given a new body. This body is actually our enemy. And we must treat it as thus we need to bring it under subjection. Paul talks about that all the time bringing our more mortality our flesh into subjection because it wants what it wants and it wants it now. But, when we start to feed our soul with spiritual things, the things of God, his word, learning to talk with him and listen to him connecting ourselves strongly to a good church that teaches the truth, a church that provides for discipleship, becoming part of a small group and spending that necessary time on feeding our soul.

Then our soul starts to grow in all the things that are the opposite of anxiety and mental health problems. Like the fruits of the spirit love joy peace, right all those things that the top three love, joy and peace. You can’t have those three things overflowing in your soul and be depressed or be anxious because perfect the Bible says perfect love casts out fear when you are fully loved you’re not afraid. When you are engaging in the love of God in other words receiving it and it’s flowing out of you. Guess what you’re not thinking about yourself so you don’t have time to be depressed or thinking inwardly and and sad about the things that you don’t have. This isn’t Magic. This is just God’s word! Okay? It works… I promise you it works. 

There are times I wake up and I’m in a mental funk because I’ve had eight hours of sleep eight hours of mindlessness for anything to go into my mind without meeting being able to control it and I had to get up and intentionally start my day asking God to bless the reading of his word to give me to focus me in on him and that’s a discipline right? It’s like going to the gym, he’s disciplined and eats the right foods. The unbelievable thing that happens and I promise you this happens when you discipline yourself. I promise you, just as much as you think that that diet and exercise will change your figure. Reading, studying God’s word and and feeding your soul with the spiritual things of God will change your complete outlook on life and andI want to read a couple passages from the Bible about theresult. The result of Desiring God and feeding your soul with spiritual food. 

There’s two scriptures in Psalms 63 and Psalm 73. I want to read to you and this is again the great result of seeking God and feeding your soul. The psalmist says

Oh God, You are my God early will I seek you and my soul thirsts for you? I long for you in a dry and thirsty land where there is no water.

(It says my flesh, but we understand that to mean it’s like an example.) So I have looked for you in the sanctuary to see your power and your glory because you’re loving kindness. God is love his loving kindness is better than what it’s better than life. Therefore my lips will praise you thus I will bless you. In other words, we praise God when we have discovered his presence. We praise him. We want to praise him. We want to lift up our hands and I’m using Liberty with the scripture right now. I will lift up my hands to your name. My soul will be So Satisfied So Satisfied in other words, if you’re So Satisfied you’re not anxious. And my mouth will praise you with joyful lips and Psalm 73 that’s almost as who have I in heaven, but there is not upon the Earth that our desire beside the My Flesh and my heart fails, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. you see when we start feeling ourselves with the presence of God.

Then he replaces all the bad thoughts with thoughts that are healthy because he’s healthy God doesn’t God’s not anxious. He’s not he’s not depressed. No, he’s not he is he is satisfied and he will satisfy us. But when we start stuffing our soul full of the things of this world or our own selfish desires. Well, we’re stepped full of ourselves. There’s no room left for God. So we got a we got to change our habits. We’ve got to make God the center of our life. We’ve got to love him with all of our heart soul and mind then we understand that his presence is better than even our own life and we desire his presence more than we desire anything. So I hope I hope this is helpful.

It was such an encouragement to me. You know, Jesus said blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled? Oh my goodness. What an amazing promise and it’s true. You know God’s presence is the most important part of my life. I can’t imagine my life without him and I can’t imagine being able to help anybody else or even help myself without a strong sense of his presence.

So, I hope you’ll consider this. I hope you’ll read the devotional on this and if there’s anything that we can do to help and if there’s any other subject that you want me to research I’m happy to do that. I’m just here to help you and I just praise God for his word. I hope that you’re having a wonderful day wherever you’re at as well. Take care.

We would love to hear your thoughts about this devotional. Did God speak to you or challenge your daily walk with him? Or is there a topic that you would like Kimberly to cover or expound on? Please share with us in the comments below.

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