Do you want to succeed in your relationships and your work? What principles do you follow to achieve your goals? In the last post, I explained how mentally healthy people live a principle-centered life. Unhealthy individuals are reactive, anxious, and depressed as external life issues control them. What healthy principles do you live by to maintain your mental health? This post is longer than usual, but please read to the end to know how to succeed in every aspect of your life.
Biblical principles guide you in the way of prosperity and success. Joshua 1:8 states, “This Book of the Law [God’s Principles] shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.” I know you can point to ungodly people who never read the Bible, who appear to be successful, but success relates to every area of one’s life, including mental health.
God’s central principle is to love Him and love one another. God gave the 10 Commandments to show how He wants us to love Him and to love others. These formed God’s initial directives for the Israelites after rescuing them from Egyptian slavery. The first four commandments outline how to love God: 1. Make Him number one in your life; 2. Do not worship or serve idols or any created thing; 3. Do not use His name in vain; and 4. Keep the Sabbath day holy. The next six are how to love others: 5. Honor your father and mother; 6. Do not murder; 7. Do not commit adultery; 8. Do not steal; 9. Do not lie; and 10. Do not covet (crave what someone else has). How are you doing following these essential principles? When we adhere to these principles, we will achieve success and prosperity in our relationships and throughout life.
God Loved Us First to Show Us How to Love.
God showed how much He loved us by sending His son, who willingly came to earth to take the punishment for our sins so we can be reconciled to Him through the forgiveness of our sins (trespasses, iniquities, and debts). 1 John 4:9-12, 17 states, “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. 17By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. You cannot love as Christ loves if you do not love Him and do not live through Him (vs. 9). Also read Ephesians 1:7-10 and John 13:34-35. For many of us, we struggle to feel God’s love because of past disappointments by those who should have loved us but instead hurt us.
How Do You Feel God’s Love?
Experiencing trauma may make it difficult for you to feel or understand love if you have never felt loved. Know that receiving Christ as your Savior, the Holy Spirit then fills you with Christ’s love and helps you love well. Ephesians 3:16-19 states, “That according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” Being filled with all the fullness of God is an incredible experience. Have you experienced God’s fullness? To experience God’s fullness in your life and bear the fruit of a Christ-centered life, you must abide (remain in; dwell) in Him, and His Words abiding in you. You can’t love and be Christ-centered in your own power; I tried and failed.
John 15:1-5 states, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. 2Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. 3Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. (God wants to prune all the hurt and offense from your heart, so you can experience His fullness and love.)
4Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. 5I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.
John 15:9-10; As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. 10If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.
So, How Do You Abide in Jesus and His Love?
1. Make Him Lord of your life and submit to Him by obeying His instructions and principles. 1Peter 4:8 states, “Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.”
2. Pray continually and tell Him your struggles and needs and ask Him for His provision, comfort, wisdom, love, etc. (Phil. 4:6-7).
3. Acknowledge you don’t know how to love as He loves. Ask Him to search your heart and mind, and show you where you sinned or were wounded, and to heal those memories (Jer. 17:9-10). My online book provides instructions on how to do this.
4. Read the Word of God every day and meditate on His principles that give you success in all you do (Ps. 1:1-3). Ask God to reveal the unhealthy beliefs you hold that influence your emotions and behavior. Hebrews 4:12 explains, “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” Reading God’s Word reveals the unhealthy beliefs we must put off and the true beliefs we must put on (2Tim. 3:16-17).
5. Repent of the sins that God shows you as you read and abide in His word (Acts 3:19). Psalms 139:23-24 states, “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! 24 And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!”
So, How Well Do You Love?
The following verses explain what Christ-centered love is. My online book provides a detailed explanation of these verses and offers guidance on how to apply them to your life. Rate how well you are doing.
1 Corinthians 13:4-6;
Love is patient and kind; (Not at all – Sometimes – Most times – All the time.)
Love does not envy or boast; (Not at all – Sometimes – Most times – All the time.)
Love is not arrogant 5or rude. (Not at all – Sometimes – Most times – All the time.)
Love does not insist on its own way; (Not at all – Sometimes – Most times – All the time.)
Love is not irritable; (Not at all – Sometimes – Most times – All the time.)
Love is not resentful; (Not at all – Sometimes – Most times – All the time.)
1 John 3:16-18; By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. 17But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? 18Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth. (Not at all – Sometimes – Most times – All the time.)
Forgive as He forgave you.
To release the power of life-changing love, you need to forgive. Forgiving someone who hurt you is hard to do, but because God forgave your sins, you can forgive others their sins. This is a key principle to live by because forgiveness removes the curse and power of the offense you have towards the person who sinned against you. Additionally, when we fail to forgive, God says He will not forgive our sins, which separates us from Him (Matt. 6:15). Jesus explains the principle of forgiveness in the following parable, which illustrates what will happen when we don’t forgive, as found in Matthew 18:21-35. Colossians 3:13 states, “Bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.” And Mark 11:25 states, “And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.” Forgiveness is a vital component of loving others well.
Have Christ’s attitude of humility.
To forgive and love others as Christ does requires humility. Humility is the absence of self-centered pride that only thinks about themselves and not what is best for others as well (1Peter 5:5b-7). The following scriptures helped me to repent of my self-centered, controlling pride and to love my family better. Philippians 2:3-8; Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. 4Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. 5Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. I explain these principles in the post The Core Negative Heart Issue.
Conclusion
By now, you figured out that the greatest principle to live by is love. Love is powerful. Love heals mental health issues by replacing anxious, self-centered thoughts with hope, patience, kindness, humility, forgiveness, and so on. We can’t love well unless we are abiding in Jesus, the life-giving vine. Only as we abide in Him, love Him, and obey Him can we love those who are difficult to love. If you find it hard to love and feel loved, please read my online book, Hope For Complete Healing, to work through the issues that prevent you from receiving God’s love. We are all sinners in need of forgiveness, so we all have wounds from those who sinned against us, and whom we have wounded. If we make God’s love the principle that guides our thoughts and actions, then we will not sin against anyone.
RELATED POSTS:
Relationship and World-Changing Kindness
How to Dig up the Unforgiving Belief to Grow in Love
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All verses are from the English Standard Version. If you find my posts and website helpful, please share this link with your friends and family: hopeforcompletehealing.com. The information is copyright protected. Please do not reproduce any part of the posts or my book without proper citation to Joyce Hanscom and this website.
My latest book, Unlocking God’s Promises, explains 18 categories of relevant promises to each of our lives. It also includes the promises in Psalm 91.
If you find this website helpful, you would like to read Breaking Mental Strongholds, which expands on my website book and includes many of my posts.
Additionally, consider my book Fighting Unseen Battles, which describes the many unhealthy beliefs that control our lives and what the truths are. To learn more about this book, read the post How to Fight Unseen Battles.
Contact me at hopeforcompletehealing@gmail.com and ask for a PDF of Eight Life-Changing Prayers from the Bible. The prayers are for the Spirit of wisdom, renewal, spiritual strength, knowledge of His will, virtues of God, non-believers, the 23rd Psalm, and victory. I will also send you the Lord’s Prayer Model to pray effectively. Please leave your name, so I know you are a real person making the request.
Hope for Complete Healing 