Holiday Blues to Holiday Hope

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THE DRIP LINE 

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Truth Drips | Motivational

Transcript

Welcome And Intent For Healing

Dina LaFargue Augustin 0:00

Greetings and welcome to the drip line where love and healing will flow into your soul. Tune in and take a listen. Come along this journey, allowing love and truth to permeate your entire being. Hopefully, the message shared this week will touch your heart, allowing you to move closer to your healing, making you more self-aware, and empowering you for your daily life, enabling you to live more prosperously and successfully. This week I feel moved to speak about surviving the holidays and finding peace in them, even if they have not treated us well in the past, even if we feel that the holidays just bring us intense loneliness and disappointments. I am very well aware that the holiday season from Thanksgiving in the US to Christmas and the New Year can be a very depressing time for many people. I've gone through it myself. For many reasons, as you yourself might know, the holidays of all times can remind us of loved ones that we have lost or bad or traumatic experiences. Negative emotions can easily be triggered during these times. Negative emotions can take over even though we don't want them to. Memories can become haunting during the holidays. The past and past traumas or negative experiences always seem to find a way into our hearts during the holidays. We may wish that things were different or weren't the way they are, but in any case, things press in. Being alone seems

Naming Holiday Grief And Triggers

Dina LaFargue Augustin 2:09

to become loneliness. Being alone might enforce loneliness inside of us, even if we don't want it. All the fun commercials that are running, all the ads, all the Christmas lights, the holiday baking shows, the Hallmark Christmas movies, the Christmas concerts, all the festivities, the lighting of trees and decorations, and all the parties can put quite a damper on someone who has suffered a loss or finds themselves alone when they don't want to be alone. It can be quite a heavy weight. The tears can roll down our faces, bitterness might rise up, and the scrooge in us might rear his ugly head. Sometimes we just hate the day or the month because it's when a loved one died or walked out on us. We can be so miserable that we just wait impatiently and anxiously for all of it to go away, knowing that it's gonna come back another year, hoping that the next year is different. If we have not been able to overcome what brings us down during the holidays, if we cannot overcome those devastating memories and we know we're gonna live through them year after year, we have to do something. We have to train ourselves. If we have not trained ourselves, we have to find some goodness in these times so we do not sabotage our own ability to find joy and peace in them. It's essential. What I'm about to say you may not like, but I'm sharing my thoughts and strategies and some godly truths that should help anyone change their perspective if they really, really want to feel better during the holidays and not live in endless or annual misery. You see, we cannot depend on life's circumstances to live in joy and peace. That's the truth. Life is too fickle and unpredictable, even for the most controlling A-type personality. I have lived through many a holiday in utter disappointment with and without a significant other, and without close family relatives around me. And I am a happy, go-lucky, positive person. And I have found myself at times needing to really dig in deep to really rediscover what the holidays are all about and how to find new and more meaningful ways, profound ways to celebrate them. Life will bring unexpected predicaments that truly throw us through loops in the holidays. And I have found myself in unexpected predicaments and circumstances that I didn't want to be in during the holidays. And I'm always going to celebrate with friends and family if I can. I love a great party and I love to entertain. From Thanksgiving to my birthday, which is in December, to Christmas to the new year. I love to celebrate, to have fun, and to spread the joy and not miss a beat. No matter how late I stay out, no matter how many days I celebrate, I push through knowing that I am tired for good reasons. I grew up in a family that knew how to have fun. I grew up in a family that knew how to love and celebrate life. However, when I relocated to Florida and got married, things changed. Ah, I was shocked. Yes, I was sharing time with the love of my life, but the family that I married into was not big on the holidays. Hmm. And my husband at that time, and that relationship lasted about 18 years, was inexplicably haunted by an apathetic attitude towards the holidays. And it always dampened my spirit. I was always like, wow, what is it gonna be like this year? So I had to fight hard to find my own joy, celebrate my own traditions, dwell in peace in them, despite what everybody else was or wasn't doing. I was away from my brother and

Personal Story Of Lost Traditions

Dina LaFargue Augustin 7:30

my mom and my sister-in-law. And since my mother and father had actually divorced after college, the holidays did change. They were rather dull and boring compared to what they were previously when everybody was together. So once I hit my 30s, the outrageous fun, the outrageous joy, the awesome family celebrations ended, and my own personal life became more troublesome and lackluster than ever. So what to do? Now, my optimism really didn't change. My love of life didn't change, but my environment did, and the atmosphere around me did. So I had to do a reset. I had to do a mental reset to save myself. I had to find ways to celebrate life and the holidays in new ways. If I didn't, I felt like I would drown in sorrow and utter disappointment. It was essential. I can only say that God kept me. I couldn't tolerate those who were around me that just wanted to complain, be bored, and miserable. That was not my personality type. I am not a negative person, I'm not a pessimistic person, I don't like to be bored, and I don't like to complain. So to be around an atmosphere where there's constant complaining or boredom or just living life blasé oui, so to speak, it's not me. So I had to fight. And every time I tried to forge new friendships, I found myself running into people that hated the holidays for one reason or another, maybe because they lost someone or a relationship ended, or they were just of the personality to moat and complain instead of making things happen for themselves. And I would always say, like, no, no, no, you can't live this way. Why do you drown yourself in misery? And many times it's of your own doing. So I realized that even though my circumstances and atmospheres were not what I had imagined them to be, I was determined not to let the laps in life dictate how I lived my life or how I celebrated life and how I lived through the holidays. Meaning, no matter how the holidays might lack the ideal fantasy I had in my mind about spending them, I was determined to not be miserable and not let them pass by without doing something special. I would not focus on what was missing, but I would dig in and celebrate what was and what it was all about, what they were all about. Now, I can't take my credit for my ability to continue and celebrate them in some form of joy and happiness. I have to give God the credit. He nudged me. It was him, it was all him that reminded me that everyone is what everyone is actually celebrating should truly be about him. Not about everything outside of him, but that whatever we're celebrating should be with him and about him. So each and every year, when the holidays rolled around, whether I was alone or not alone, I cooked, I went out, I shared with friends, if there were friends around, I treated myself to special things, but in all of it, the Lord was in it. I invited the Lord to be with me in whatever I was doing, wherever I was going, whatever I was eating, and whenever I and whenever I was dining, he was invited. He was my special guest, he was my date. Even when I was watching those silly holiday movies, whenever I was taking a walk or dancing to songs, he was dancing with me. And whenever I was singing, he was singing with me because I invited him in. And I imagined him there because he says he is always with us. So I made a decision to take him at his word that

Choosing A Mental And Spiritual Reset

Dina LaFargue Augustin 12:00

he was right there singing with me, right there dining with me, right there dancing with me, right there celebrating my life with me. Sound crazy? Well, perhaps. But everything is about him anyway. It is. Thanksgiving. Let's talk about this first holiday celebrated in the US and Canada. Although historically, it was a tragic time for Native Americans, and not like the colonizers have advertised it and written it to be. I celebrate it. Mind you, I do have a decent amount of Native Indigenous blood running through my veins, and I stand with all my indigenous brothers and sisters and peoples that are diligently working to correct the lies and propaganda about how wonderful a day it was. But nonetheless, we are to be thankful for the Lord. We are to be thankful for his promises, thankful for his daily benefits and his blessings, thankful that he gave his life for us that we can live eternally in him with him in eternal peace. We should and must know that even in the toughest of times, God is still on his throne, helping us to find him, helping us to grow in him, drawing us to him, helping us to work out our own salvation, meaning helping us to work out the intimacies and the intricacies of our relationship, our faith and trust in him. Nothing should be egocentric in this life. Nothing should be humanistic, nothing we do should be just about us outside of him. Our lives are not our own. In saying all of this, and in saying that, no matter where we are or how we are, when these holidays roll around, we have to consider our situations. I know when the holidays roll around for me, I consider my situation, and whether it's my ideal or not, I remember that God is still with me and that I'm to look to him and to celebrate with him every day and at all times, no matter what. Yes, I cook with him in my, I set a table for him, I thank him for whatever it is he is doing in my life, and I try to do my best to allow him to have a say in how I spend my time. I'm far from perfect, and maybe I've worked too hard at it, maybe he's telling me I need to relax. But what I want to share is that I am mindful of him. When my birthday comes, I sing happy birthday to me and him. He named me, he decided the day and time of my birth, he created me before I was in my mother's womb. He set forth my destiny, hence my birthday is his gift. It is the day he brought me forth, and therefore he should be included. It is really our day, not mine, but our day, his day and my day to celebrate together. And anyone that believes celebrating one's birthday is sinful is a liar. God is the author and finisher of my life. So how could it be evil because birthdays aren't mentioned in the Bible? People have told me that. Certain faith systems that consider themselves to be Christians say that. But let us get real. How could celebrating what God created be sinful? It is more a sin to not celebrate your life because we are gifts, and He is our gift, and we are created in His image, fearfully and wonderfully made. So do I dare to ignore and pool pull on the day I was born or spend it in misery or pretending like it doesn't matter? Because people say it doesn't matter, or because some humans have let me down or failed to celebrate with me or to celebrate

Inviting God Into Celebrations

Dina LaFargue Augustin 16:30

my life? Heck no, no way. If God allowed a loved one to die on my birthday or around the holidays, so what? Don't take offense. I celebrate my loved ones when they're alive. I celebrate my loved ones' birthdays, not the day they left this earth. I did not mourn the day they died. If I know they are with the Lord, I say hallelujah and thank you, Lord. If I believe they went to hell, and hell is real, I cannot dwell on what is sealed. I cannot. I cannot mourn that. It is done and I cannot change it. I can't do anything about it, nothing. God is merciful in everything that he does and that he allows. I focus therefore on his mercy and love and I keep it moving. And I make every effort to celebrate, even if I'm all by myself. But am I really? Am I really by myself? Are you really by yourself? Are you not celebrating your birthday when it rolls around? Are you not setting a table for the Lord when you can? No, we are never alone. God has ordained our lives. We are no accidents. We're to celebrate who we are, even if there's some facets of ourselves that we don't like, even if we've been mad at ourselves and haven't forgiven ourselves about some things, we must love ourselves, we must accept ourselves, we must celebrate our lives. Now, I'm not trying to minimize anyone's pain or losses. I am just trying to remind us that life is life and we cannot allow the traumas and dramas order our thoughts or how we act and how we spend it. Now, recently I was challenged physically and mentally, I would say, with all kinds of issues and facing the possibility of having breast cancer and bone cancer. Yeah, all of that was going on for a couple of months. Things were happening in my body that couldn't be explained, and I had to have some biopsies. I'm just being transparent. And I was like, oh my Lord, have mercy. Help me accept if this is what you want me to go through and experience, and let it all be for your glory. And I fought to rebuke all negative thoughts and fears and pray to God for wisdom, strength, and the determination to live the next season, whatever it would bring, cling to him and his promises more than ever. And I went on a pilgrimage, I did, to search, to seek, to be delivered, to be healed, to be corrected, to uh have a reset, so to speak, to pray for my loved ones that we would all be drawn closer to him, and that our path would be the most direct path into his presence. And saying all of that, I know that there are many pacing, many people facing tough, painful, devastating moments and seasons right now that they'd rather not be in. And I can only say do it with God, dwell in it with God. As you go through, nothing in this world happens to God's surprise and without God's permission or allowance. And though it may seem harsh, it is truth. God is all powerful, all-knowing, and omnipresent. Nothing exists outside of him. So, yes, we may not understand him, God, or even be readily acceptable that

Thanksgiving, Birthdays, And Meaning

Dina LaFargue Augustin 20:30

there is a God, but in it, he is at work in mysterious ways. He has created us in his image, and we have the power and authority to proclaim and overcome and must learn to live in that which he has blessed us with. The only way to truly overcome the pain is in him. The only way to go through anything is with him. Truly. And yes, there are people that have survived crazy, devastating things in this life. But I'm telling you, God was in it all, even if they didn't acknowledge God. Now, currently in the US, there are many families that are being separated now. They are suffering traumatically and dramatically, losing family members and being sent to places unknown due to Trump's immigration policies and ISIS' brutal and illegal deportion of people. People, people that God created. One woman was interviewed on national television about her situation. She was separated from her little boy, incarcerated for a couple of months, and mentioned how praying with other women that were in the same situation helped her. But at the end of her interview, she gave credit to her Zen Buddhist meditation for her being able to manage her emotions during her illegal incarceration and the traumatic separation from her child. Now I was happy for her, but I was also saddened by her proclamation because in reality, Buddhism offers nothing for the individual's eternity. It offers no truth whatsoever. Love really does not exist in it. And you might say, well, if it worked for her, so be it. And I say she is totally unaware of what Zen Buddhism is really all about. Many people, in their haste to get fixed, run to methods and methodologies and medicinals that have lasting negative impacts because they don't do the research necessary before they commit to the treatment, to the method or methodology, before they commit to something that can be so life-changing. The new year approaches, and people are striving for new beginnings and a better year than they had before. People are seeking positive change and committing to resolutions that are shallow and have no real depth. And if they are seeking meaning and improve emotional and mental health, there needs to be more research done and more commitment made for anything to be of value. Now I'm going in this direction because many people reject Christ, many people reject that there is a God at all, and many people do so without knowing Him and without doing research. So many people make decisions based on emotion and feelings, and that is not valid. So many Christians do not know Christ despite claiming him. The need to know is essential if anyone really ever wants to live their best life and overcome the traumas and tragedies that they have experienced. People try to bury things, but we know the enemy comes to kill, steal, and destroy, and we must use the proper weaponry to overcome that thief and that murderer that seeks to destroy our mental health, our emotional health, and our spiritual lives. We must be aware of what we turn to for peace, relief, comfort, and self-discovery. My favorite word or term or sentence, it is essential. We cannot haphazardly turn to things we know nothing about. We cannot reject what we have never studied, and we cannot be opinionated and make claims if we lack the true experience and knowledge. So let me provide a very brief reality of what people are doing these days. Statistics supported. People are either totally rejecting the concept of God and religion and becoming atheists, or are turning to mysticism for answers, meaning, and power. We see yoga classes everywhere. We see yoga in churches and in synagogues. We see the bust of Buddha on almost every TV commercial and in every doctor's office that I go to. In places of business, too many

Hard Lines On Grief And Hope

Dina LaFargue Augustin 25:31

are proclaiming that they are Christian, but are not. So let me briefly describe the concept of Zen. Zen is a branch of Buddhism. And mind you, Buddhism was invented. It was invented by a Hindu prince named Siddhartha Katama, who disliked the idea of Hinduism and the concept of suffering in his religious culture. Zen is often described as a sudden awakening or realization that transcends the limitations of words and concepts. It emphasizes direct experience of reality, encouraging practitioners to let go of attachments in this life and preconceived notions and materialism and the very uh reality of being a material being. Now I've been an adjunct professor of world religions. I have studied them. And in Zen, the present moment is seen as the gateway to ultimate truth. This path includes right understanding, it's called the Eightfold Path, where there's right understanding, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. And all of this can be found on the website uh www.buddhanet.net. Dow, the eightfold path sounds good, right? Right thinking, right really to have a right attitude, right speech. It's all about behaving a certain way and doing the right things for the right reasons. But in reality, a true Buddhist doesn't exist. How can I say that? Because each branch of Buddhism has a slightly different concept of reincarnation, the reality of energy and the soul, or the non-existence of a soul. So the most profound belief is that the individual soul in Buddhism is the deception and most importantly, non-existent. In Buddhism, there is death and life of a moment or a thought. Materialism disintegrates, a body disintegrates, the

Facing Health Scares With Faith

Dina LaFargue Augustin 28:30

thoughts disintegrate, energies come together and form new thoughts, new materialism, new moments, and the cycle repeats itself. So the concept of an individual soul is non-existent. There is only the reality of energies, molecules, thoughts, and processes that move in cycles. Hence, uh the need to reincarnate from one life to another means in Buddhism that there is no individual soul reincarnating, there are only energies coming together to form a material thing or an energy thing. Hence, what is the purpose of life? If in death you have no identity, if in becoming part of another energy or another process, where is the need to live rightly, to have the right thought process, the right attitude to live the eightfold path? How can morality manifest in something that is not moral, that is amoral, that has no consciousness? So that is my most succinct summary of Buddhism without going into great detail because it can be very complicated, yes, very poetic, but the end is the same. Nowhere, from nothing to nowhere, to something that is unidentifiable and very impersonal. The article continues to say, every moment there is rebirth, every moment there is death. The arising of one thought moment means the passing of another thought moment, and vice versa. In the course of one lifetime, there is momentary rebirth without a soul. If there is no soul, what is it that is reborn? One might ask. Since Buddhism is an offshoot of Hinduism, I'm going to discuss the art of yoga, especially since yoga has become uh so popular in all the world, and very popular in uh the West, in the US. You find uh yoga classes in churches, you find it uh in schools, uh, it's in gyms, it's commonly practiced among Christians and people of all walks of life and faiths. The term yoga comes from the root word yuj, which means to yoke or to join or to bind. It is uh the art of uniting one's individual spirit with the universal spirit. And one might ask, what is the universal spirit? Yoga is definitely a religious practice, it is a system for perfecting one's human efficiency. And all this can be read in uh an article written by uh Theos Bernard, termed I can do philosophy. He goes on to say that yoga claims to destroy the defects of diseases of the mind and the body and seeks to establish health and bestow happiness and develop

Critique Of Zen And Buddhism

Dina LaFargue Augustin 32:00

intelligence and reveal true knowledge of self and to extract, quote unquote, the nectar of all things. In some of the holy books found in Hinduism, one being the Bhagavad Gita, and I know I have slaughtered that pronunciation, the word yoga is written almost every chapter. It is the method used to achieving liberation. And there are many types of yoga, but they all seek the same end: to help the individual soul detach itself from material existence and to reach the highest state, which is union with the supreme self. But what is the supreme self? Well, in Hinduism, really the self must seek to unite with Brahman. There's B-R-A-H-M-A-N. It is definitely a religious practice and that cannot be separated as such as we would like to think. The goal of yoga is to help the individual soul reach mocha, which means to be free from the material world and to unite with the universal transcending existence of Brahma. The soul no longer needs to incarnate itself into another form, which could be in the form of any living thing. The soul does not need to work out karma anymore because it has reached the ultimate uh state of intelligence, realizing that its material self was a deception, its material self was a corruption of Brahma. So Brahman is material energy that makes up the universe. Brahman is the uniting of every soul that has ever existed to become one soul, a perfected universal energy. Now, in the article, uh Hindu Human Rights. And it goes on to say that Brahman is not an individual god, as monotheistic religions like Christianity and Judaism and Islam believe. Brahman is not personal, Brahman does not interact with human beings, Brahman is not a god, it is not a personality. So when one is practicing yoga, they are actually yoking themselves to a spirit realm that they are totally ignorant of. Yes. So with those brief descriptions, let me go on to say that Buddhist and Hindu practices do not involve individuality at any level, and they do not explain any reason why I want me to live well or to live right. Think about it. If Brahman is not moral but a conglomeration of energy in individual souls and has no real purpose but to exist, and if in Buddhism the individual soul does not exist, what is the need for morality and right living? Ask yourself, how can amoral energy require moral behavior and ethics for better living and a release of all material impurities? Ask yourself how can pure energy without personality or intimate knowledge of itself or you can require karma for release of itself? It's all contradictory. And yes, people may argue with me left and right, but it all comes down to the same thing. There are impersonal, amoral energies that are sought to be joined to. Why would I? Am I a deception? Is my life a deception? No. I may deceive myself sometimes, but my life is real. So there are people that are in pain and agony. There are people that are desperate for connectedness that flock to these philosophies. But when they really, really study them truly and really research what they are doing, they will find that the true meaning of peace and identity do not exist. Love does not exist there. Unity is impersonal. There is no truth there, and there is no proof there. There is no personal connectivity. So essentially, in these philosophies, one is communing with a spirit realm in which they are totally ignorant of. And many of these philosophies will say that they are spirits that are not nice. So who do you how do you know who you're yoking yourself to or what you're yoking yourself to? You must be educated about what you're engaging with. So in these times, when the holidays can bring such pain and amplify loneliness and sadness and depression, Buddhism and Hinduism are not the way to go. The only God that really that readily identifies himself, that doesn't contradict himself, is the God of love. The God that is love and spreads love and cares deeply about each individual that has ever walked this planet. And you may say, well, if that's true, then why do I feel this way? Well, if that's true, should you flock to Buddhism? If it is the true reality, should you flock to Hinduism that has multiple and hundreds of millions of gods that are impersonal? Is that where you should run if you don't believe that the God of Jesus Christ is the God of love? This God, the God of all creation, doesn't change his beliefs or who he is or how he is and doesn't conform to man's ideas or more morph with the times. This God is personal in nature, and he is the God that incarnated himself and suffered as a human being in the flesh as Jesus Christ, a man, a living soul. So if

Yoga, Hinduism, And Yoking Claims

Dina LaFargue Augustin 38:30

you're mad at God, how can Buddhism satisfy you if you're believing that that is the true faith system? Then blame that faith system too. If you're flying to yoga to give you peace, then why didn't that God find you before and fix everything that you're mad about this Christian God? I hope you're following me. In 1 John chapter 4, verse 16, it says, So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love. And whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. No other God loves. You can search the solar system. Yeah, I said the solar system to find a God that says he is love, except this God. In other Eastern philosophical systems, love has only become a concept in this postmodern era, captivating or capturing, or trying to capture love, but is expressed in mindfulness and morality, but it never speaks to love directly. Jesus Christ speaks to love directly and says He is love and commands us to love. So those searching for mysticism and personal connectivity, they need to turn to Christ. Yes. There is power in his love. Morality and ethical behavior are meaningless without love and without the God of love. He doesn't call us to deny ourselves. He doesn't dismiss our pain. He heals our pain. He binds up our wounds. He is a personal God that desires to commune with us on a daily basis. So, what are some of the most tantalizing insights that science has gleaned about human behavior and why we can become so intensely depressed, why we feel lonely? It's all about love. It's all about unity. It's all about identity. It says for starters, both romantic and non-romantic love appear to be essential to our overall well-being and indeed survival, according to Richard S. Schwartz. MHS, Associate Professor of Psychiatry, part-time at McLean Hospital and Jacqueline Olds. This is written in Harvard News. HMS, Associate Professor of Psychiatry, part-time at Massachusetts General Hospital. Swartz and Olds, who have been married to each other for nearly five decades, study how love evolves and how it can fall apart. Love, connection, and social relationships are well springs of well-being. Despite the lingering mysteries around attraction, love, and their demise, there seems to be little or no disagreement about how critically important relationships are to our very existence. Yes, relationship and love are critical to our well-being and to our health. Research and other studies in the field have found convincing evidence that relationships and how happy we are in them profoundly influence our health. Research has indicated the level of satisfaction with relationships in life, in midlife in particular, is a good predictor of healthy aging. Science shows us that being securely attached to at least one other person is a bedrock of well-being. Research by Waldinger and others in this article states they also focus on the danger posed by social isolation and the loneliness that can arise with an absence of human-to-human connectedness and interactions, whether friendships or romantic relationships, particularly among young individuals and older people. A growing body of evidence has suggested that loneliness drives stroke risk, amplifies the likelihood of suffering a heart attack, and contributes to the overall risk of death. It may also precipitate the development, excuse me, of worsened conditions, including type 2 diabetes, dementia, depression, and anxiety, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While the precise mechanisms remain to be elucidated, researchers believe that both the lack of social support and the sheer physiological stress of loneliness are at play. For example, research suggests that the chronic activation of the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal access, a communication pathway across three glands that play a role in the body's stress response, may unleash a downstream signaling cascade that fuels inflammation, which could in turn interfere with a number of

Why Love And Morality Need Personhood

Dina LaFargue Augustin 44:00

physiological functions. Now bear with me, I'm going somewhere with this because I'm talking about loneliness and the pain and broken relationships and the loss of loved ones and how impactful it can be and how hard it can be during the holidays, and how people turn to systems and things that really don't heal relationships, that don't heal the heart, but are superficial and only focus on a self that is considered to be unreal or corrupted and not individualized. So bear with me. The article goes on to say, and while the beneficial physical and emotional effects of love are evident, Waldinger said love itself will continue to defy efforts to deconstruct it and will remain empirically elusive. And he says, and that is fine by him. So he sent it saying that love is evident, love is necessary, and love defies to be deconstructed and destroyed. Love remains, even though it can seem elusive. He goes on to say looking at human connection through hormonal, neurochemical, and behavioral lenses will undoubtedly continue to shed light on our most intimate relationships. But thankfully, love is too rich, complex, and varied to yield all its secrets to empirical investigation. So, in closing, what I must what I'm saying is that we may feel disconnected from people, we may despise being separated from friends and families, we may be grieving lost loved ones and feel desperately alone and suffering from cancer or lupus or sickle cell anemia or some other excruciatingly painful ailment or disease, but we are not alone. We are not alone. And even though the psychological studies and the studies by these doctors that are well informed and talk about the essential need of a human connection and a love connection and a social connection, I'm saying that we are not alone and that if we are disconnected from our human friends and families, we do have a God that loves us. We do have a God that became human. We do have a God that is fully God and fully man that loves us. So we are never alone and we do not have to suffer alone, and we never have to feel truly alone and isolated because Jesus Christ, the embodiment of God, the living word of God, lived as a man and lived out our pains and understands our hurts, understands our loneliness, understands our grief, understands our suffering. In 1 John chapter 4, it says, we can only love because of him. Yes, we can only hurt from lost love because we have loved. See, the scripture actually says we love because he first loved us. We love because he first loved us. So again, we can only love because Jesus exists. We can only love because God is real and God exists and God is love. So in our loneliness, in our disconnectedness, in our sufferings, we still have God. We still have Christ to think on and to live with and to live in. This is how we know that God is real, because if anybody has ever loved on this earthly plane, in this earthly realm, and on this planet knows God. Period. End of the discussion, end of the controversy,

Science Of Loneliness And Health

Dina LaFargue Augustin 48:00

end of the fact that you don't believe because he says he is loved, and if you have ever loved or wanted love or desired love, it's only because he has loved you first and because he has made you. Do not dwell in the darkness of an amoral uh energy, a conglomerate of energies and atoms that exist without a consciousness. Look to love from where all hope arises. In again, I'm gonna give you scripture. I'm gonna give you the word of God Himself. 1 John 4, 9 through 10 says, and 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, that we might live through him. And 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. Again, if we have loved, it is because of him. If we exist, it is because of him. First Peter chapter 5, verses 6 through 7 read, humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. Therefore, look to your source. The source, the meaning of life which comes from your Lord. Jesus is the reason for the season, and we should focus our attention on him, not on ourselves, not on man-made ideations, not on what we think it should always be like or look like, but look to him and celebrate the small and the big with him because it is all about him. We were made of him and for him. He created the seasons and the times so that even when we go into the new year, our resolutions should be to truly know him, to live for him, to serve him, to appreciate him and commune with him. Truth. Read Ecclesiastes in the Bible. Get information, get knowledge. Romans chapter 15, verse 13 says, May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. When you believe you have hope, and with hope you have expectations of a better end. With hope you have a future. Without hope, what do you have? Live in hope. And God gives that hope. But Jeremiah 29, 11 says, and it's one of my favorite verses, for I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord. Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. There is hope in every moment. There is hope in your present and your future. No matter what it looks like, there is hope. As long as God exists, there it is. Live in it, believe in it, trust in it. Hold on to the promises of God. If you do not believe on him, call on him to reveal himself to you. Look at the things you have and the things you have overcome. They can only happen with him because he owns all things and he made you, and your very life exists because of him. Your very life depends on him. Psalm 24, verse 1 reads, The earth is the Lord's and everything in it, the world and all who live in it. What more proof do we need? What more proof do we really need that God is real and that he loves us? This verse emphasizes that nothing exists outside God's ownership, outside God's presence, outside God's existence. It challenges us to recognize that we too belong to God. By realizing that everything we have is a gift from Him, we cultivate gratitude in our hearts and remind ourselves to use our resources wisely according to His will. When we believe that nothing is worth it, we are wrong. When we feel nothing will change for the better, we are wrong. When we feel we cannot go on anymore and are too exhausted and hopeless to care, we are wrong.

Love’s Mystery And Human Connection

Dina LaFargue Augustin 53:00

Because God gives us hope. We have a God identity, and we can find our strength in Him, we can find perfect peace in Him, and we can find love in Him. Read His Word, put His Word to work, put Him to work. We must try God before we quit and throw in the towel. We must try the one true living God before we say we have tried everything. If you haven't tried Him, you haven't tried everything. And if you say you have tried Jesus and He didn't answer you, I'm gonna say you are also wrong because He always does. Then I say you've not gone to Him in sincerity and truth and a true desire to know Him and to be found by Him. Isaiah 40, chapter verse 31 says, But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength, they will soar on wings like eagles, they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint. I know for a fact, but you have to hope in Him. Your belief has to be towards Him. You have to trust that His word is true and faithful. You have to hope in this Lord that says He is not a man that He should lie, nor the Son of Man that He should change His mind. Strength, power, and renewal are ours to have if we truly want it. But we have to truly want it. Psalm 37 23 says, The Lord makes firm the steps of the one who delights in Him. So we can find strength and stability in Him, for He orders our steps and makes them firm. The Bible is full of comfort, hope, and the promises of God. We only have to look to find out. We need not spend our holidays in darkness and depression and isolation, for we are never alone. Remember, if we search, we will find that biblically all celebrations and all holidays were truly unto the Lord for the good works and the mercy that the Lord God showed to his creation. So when we spend our days mourning for losses to the point where we live in clinical depression and ongoing depression and anxiety and fear and hopelessness, we are truly denying our own identities in Christ. We are truly denying the power of God's love. We are truly denying the promises of God and living in rebellion. And we are denying ourselves the hope and the peace that knowing God offers. We are to live in Him. We can live in Him. We can be prosperous in Him. We can thrive in Him and with Him. When we change our focus, we can change our mental state. When we change our focus, we do a mental reset. We acknowledge who our Maker is, and that we are of Him and for Him. And in that we can overcome all things and all periods of darkness. Colossians 3, verse 17 says, and whatever

Never Alone: Christ And Comfort

Dina LaFargue Augustin 56:30

you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him. Without Him, our efforts are in vain. Without Him, our suffering is in vain. Without Him, our loneliness is in vain. Without Him, who are we? We are lost. I hope what I'll share today has had an impact. I hope for anyone out there who's feeling lonely and isolated and despairing can grasp what I am saying and takes the effort to seek God out, to seek out the love of Christ, and to believe that truly you have a purpose, you have a future, and you need not feel hopeless or despairing, and you need not take your own life. God is love and God is with you. In closing, again, I hope that what I've shared is meany and good food for thought and contemplation. I hope it is a source of hope and life for you. I hope it is a comfort as you go through this holiday season. In the meantime, be blessed, be at peace, be in Him, be diligent and searching, be filled with hope, be healed and be in love. Truth drips.