lifestyle Archives - Dr Carol Ministries

Break the Fake: Finding Real Life

Jesus didn’t come to revise the list of do’s and don’ts that would get you into heaven; He came to bring you LIFE! How often we get that mixed up. We end up fighting about what’s on the sin list when we should be all about embracing His kind of life and helping others experience it too. We settle for such ineffective substitutes. So when you look at your own behavior, are you finding real life?

How Rest Activates Your Transformation

Are you tired yet? Have you had enough? Are you fed up with trying harder – at your job, at your health, in your marriage, with your kids, with your thinking, or perhaps with the spiritual change you know God wants for you? You’ve learned by now that simply trying harder to change your behavior doesn’t work. You may need to learn how rest activates your transformation in areas where you need it most.

The Key to Staying Clean in a Dirty World

How is one supposed to maintain or develop a healthy understanding about and attitude toward sexual intimacy in a culture where anything and everything goes? Whether single or married, how can you maintain or develop sexual integrity when there are endless opportunities to engage your body and mind in ungodly “stuff?” This key to staying clean in a dirty world can become priceless for you.

Love is not Wimpy

Say love and chances are your immediate mental picture is soft, squishy, and colored in pastels. If you’re over 40 you may think of “love means never having to say you’re sorry,” or the “summer of love” in 1967. If you’re under 40 you may think of tolerance and kindness and warm-hearted feelings.

But those images have little or nothing to do with what love is all about. True love is anything but wimpy, or particularly feminine. That impression is a caricature of what real love is all about.

What pictures come to mind when you think of love?

A mother nurturing her newborn baby?
A suitor on one knee proposing to his sweetheart?
Jesus holding out welcoming arms to a sinner?

Yes, love underlies all those images. But if those are the only images of love we focus on, our lives, and our Christian witness, will be lopsided and ineffective.

Is it love to stand by as your child destroys themselves and the family through violence, theft, and fear as a result of drug addiction? Is it love to keep giving your spouse the benefits of marriage while they are engaging in infidelity? Is it love to accept a hurting, sick, miserable sinner as they are without providing a way for healing and transformation?

Love is not saying “anything goes,” “you’re OK, I’m OK,” or “do whatever you want.” That’s cowardice, not love! God’s not like that. And you and I shouldn’t be like that either.

As Bob Goff’s popular book asserts and illustrates, Love Does. Love may start with accepting things the way they are, but it refuses to let them stay that way. Tweet that. Love does something about it.

4 Necessary Keys to Helping People

Blessed to be a blessing. Cultivating generosity. There are few things in life that lead to more satisfaction, more fulfillment, more joy than making a difference in someone else’s life. Helping people truly helps you.

If you’re empty and dry, you need to get filled up. You need to take in soul nourishment every day. But once you’ve received, you must give. If you don’t, your life will become stagnant and stinky. If you want the water of God’s fullness and blessing to keep flowing to you, you must allow it to flow through you to others.

Over the last few months I have experienced this more than ever. In response to some of my writing I’ve been hearing from more and more people who are struggling with fear and anxiety, marriage problems, compulsive addictions, and more. Working with my team to find innovative ways to help even more people like you has drawn substance from deep in my soul. It’s made me stronger, more productive, and helped prevent me from stalling in grief after my husband’s death. Real fulfillment and joy bubble up from my heart as I see people blessed and changed by what God has given me to share. And this is just the beginning.

You can experience the same. There’s a reason you’re on this planet. God has something for you to do. And that always involves being a blessing to others. “Freely you have received, freely give.” (Matthew 10:8)

Here are some keys to helping people, to letting God’s blessings flow through you to others.

Break the Fake: Finding Real Life

How Rest Activates Your Transformation

The Key to Staying Clean in a Dirty World

Love is not Wimpy

4 Necessary Keys to Helping People

7 Keys to Living Fully Alive from the Inside Out

Healthy Relationships