7 Steps to Mental Health

1. Recognize God cares about you.
2. Recognize your need for Restoration.
3. Turn from your destructive mental habits.
4. Trust in God's Power to protect your will.
5. Growth of Character though proper choices which become habit.
6. Observe the Laws of the mind.
7. Rejoicing in all things.

Introduction

God wants man to have a free will . Man was created in the image of God. He was given the ability to respond to the love of God out of a free choice. We refer to this ability to choose as the "will".  Lucifer was also created with this ability to choose. Lucifer, without reason, chose to love himself more than God.  He wanted to exalt himself to equality with God. Selfishness developed in Lucifer and selfishness is the root of all unhappiness.

Man was created with "higher powers", reason and conscience. God also created him with "lower powers"; emotions, instincts of self preservation, reproductive instincts, and appetites. The higher powers were to govern. The lower powers were to minister to his happiness, and promote survival.

Animals were created without true higher powers and without a free will. A mother bear's "love" for her cubs is a created instinct rather than conscience and the Chimpanzee's ability to reason is not a true higher reasoning ability.

Unfallen man was created with the higher powers (reason and conscience), as the guiding force on mans will. Fallen man was born with his will in subjection to his lower powers.   Happiness, peace, mental normality comes from freeing ones will from the control of the lower powers. Restoration.

1. Recognize God cares about you

Recognize God means you no harm. He is interested in your happiness. He created man in the optimal way for happiness, with reason and conscience guided by the words of God as the controlling force of the will. Passions and emotions are to minister to our happiness, under the control of reason and conscience.

Go is the source of life, of wisdom, and of joy.

"In nature itself are messages of hope and comfort. There are flowers upon the thistles, and the thorns are covered with roses. 'God is love'" is written upon every opening bud, upon every spire of springing grass."

Through the things of nature God has sought to reveal Himself to us. Yet these but imperfectly represent His love. Though all these evidences have been given, Satan .

Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God?
But even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore: ye are of more value than many sparrows. Luke 12:6+7

The word of God reveals His character. He Himself has declared His infinite love and pity. When Moses prayed, "Show me Thy glory," the Lord answered, "I will make all My goodness pass before thee." Exodus 33:18, 19. This is His glory. The Lord passed before Moses, and proclaimed, "The Lord, The Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin." Exodus 34:6, 7. He is "slow to anger, and of great kindness," "because He delighteth in mercy." Jonah 4:2; Micah 7:18.

"In describing His earthly mission, Jesus said, The Lord 'hath anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He hath sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised.' Luke 4:18. This was His work. He went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed by Satan. There were whole villages where there was not a moan of sickness in any house."

"Jesus did not suppress one word of truth, but He uttered it always in love. He exercised the greatest tact and thoughtful, kind attention in His intercourse with the people. He was never rude, never needlessly spoke a severe word, never gave needless pain to a sensitive soul. He did not censure human weakness. He spoke the truth, but always in love. He denounced hypocrisy, unbelief, and iniquity; but tears were in His voice as He uttered His scathing rebukes."

"It was to redeem us that Jesus lived and suffered and died. He became "a Man of Sorrows," that we might be made partakers of everlasting joy. God permitted His beloved Son, full of grace and truth, to come from a world of indescribable glory, to a world marred and blighted with sin, darkened with the shadow of death and the curse. He permitted Him to leave the bosom of His love, the adoration of the angels, to suffer shame, insult, humiliation, hatred, and death. "The chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed." Isaiah 53:5. Behold Him in the wilderness, in Gethsemane, upon the cross! The spotless Son of God took upon Himself the burden of sin. He who had been one with God, felt in His soul the awful separation that sin makes between God and man. This wrung from His lips the anguished cry, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" Matthew 27:46. It was the burden of sin, the sense of its terrible enormity, of its separation of the soul from God--it was this that broke the heart of the Son of God."

"But this great sacrifice was not made in order to create in the Father's heart a love for man, not to make Him willing to save. No, no! "God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son." John 3:16. The Father loves us, not because of the great propitiation, but He provided the propitiation because He loves us. Christ was the medium through which He could pour out His infinite love upon a fallen world. "God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself." 2 Corinthians 5:19. God suffered with His Son. In the agony of Gethsemane, the death of Calvary, the heart of Infinite Love paid the price of our redemption. .Jesus said, "Therefore doth My Father love Me, because I lay down My life, that I might take it again." John 10:17. That is, "My Father has so loved you that He even loves Me more for giving My life to redeem you. In becoming your Substitute and Surety, by surrendering My life, by taking your liabilities, your transgressions, I am endeared to My Father; for by My sacrifice, God can be just, and yet the Justifier of him who believeth in Jesus."

"Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God." 1 John 3:1. What a value this places upon man! Through transgression the sons of man become subjects of Satan. Through faith in the atoning sacrifice of Christ the sons of Adam may become the sons of God. By assuming human nature, Christ elevates humanity. Fallen men are placed where, through connection with Christ, they may indeed become worthy of the name "sons of God."

God reaches out for us personally individually.

Recall the personal intervention of God in you life recall the personal intervention of God in you life- tokens of his loving care. 

Habits oil the machinery of our lives, helping us glide through our days, saving time and energy.

As a habit is formed it lays down a literal pathway through the nervous system, from nerve cell to nerve cell, via the axons and dendrites.

Frequent repetition of an act, be it a thought, a feeling, or an action, wears a deeper and deeper groove in the brain, much like walking over the same place in a lawn will wear a deep path in the sod.

Scientists noticed tiny enlargement(s) on the tips of axons at the synapsis (of the more frequently used nerve pathways) and called them "boutons," French for buttons. The more "boutons" a nerve cell possessed, the more easily and quickly it was able to transmit its messages. Additional experiments revealed that repeated stimulation of a nerve pathway caused boutons to enlarge and multiply. This helps us understand how habits are formed in the nervous system. Basically any thought or action repeated over and over again builds little boutons on the ends of certain nerve fibers, making it easier to repeat the same thought or action.

If the thought or action is repeated (habits) the electrical stimulation though growth factor {NMDA receptor} caused the neuron in the path to enlarge and form a tighter connection in the form of more boutons. New thoughts or problem causes branching and new connections.

Once those pathways are formed, can they be changed? Unfortunately the brain grooves and boutons do not go away when they are no longer used. This makes it harder to change a bad habit, but not impossible. A new habit is formed by building a new and stronger pathway in the brain. This is done by consciously choosing to make a different response. The new choice must be made repeatedly, many times, over and over again. In time, more boutons appear on the new pathway than the old one, and the grooves wear deeper. It now becomes easier to take the new route, and the new habit becomes established.

If the alarm goes off in the morning at 5AM and my habit is to turn it off and sleep another 20 min. - This becomes a habit and to change I must Choose a different action - establish new pathways - The old will not disappear but the new will eventually dominate.

If{the mind} never required to grapple with difficult problems, it will after a time almost lose the power of growth. PP 596

As an educating power, the Bible is without a rival. In the Word of God the mind finds subject for the deepest thought, the loftiest aspiration. PP 596

The mental powers will surely become contracted and will lose their ability to grasp the deep meanings of the Word of God unless they are put vigorously and persistently to the task of searching for truth.-2MCP p417

Note - Life, July 1994 on Building a better brain is worth reading and is the source of the following information.

"Evidence is accumulating that the brain works a lot like a muscle the harder you use it, the more it grows. Although scientists had long believed the brain's circuitry was hard-wired by adolescence and inflexible in adulthood, its newly discovered ability to change and adapt is apparently with us well into old age. "

1990s be the Decade of the Brain. Scientists are beginning to understand that the brain has a remarkable capacity to change and grow, even in old age, and that individuals have some control over how healthy and alert their brains remain as the years go by. Recent research suggests that stimulating the mind with mental exercise causes brain cells, called neurons, to branch wildly . The branching causes millions of additional connections, or synapses, between brain cells. Think of it, says Arnold Scheibel, director of UCLA's Brain Research Institute, as a computer with a bigger memory board: 'You can do more things more quickly.'"

"God would have us arouse from our indifference, and no longer allow the intellectual powers to run to waste, and degenerate into imbecility. FC 257

" Delay the onset of Alzheimer's disease symptoms for years. Studies now show that the more educated a person is, the less likely he or she is to show symptoms of the disease. The reason: Intellectual activity develops brain tissue that compensates for tissue damaged by the disease."

" Make a better recovery from strokes. Research indicates that even when areas of the brain are permanently damaged by stroke, new message routes can be created to get around the roadblock or to resume the function of that area."

The motor area of the brain has been compared between the sales men and people who work with their hands. The area of the brain that controls hand motion had 2X the amount of connection and branches in the machines group. No surprise.

"Dr. David Snowdon of the Sanders-Brown Center on Aging at the University of Kentucky, the professor of preventive medicine who has been studying the nuns for several years, has found that those who earn college degrees, who teach, who constantly challenge their minds, live longer than less-educated nuns who clean rooms or work in the kitchen. He suspects the difference lies in how they use their heads."

"Within the human brain each neuron contains at one end threadlike appendages called axons, which send signals to other nearby neurons. At the other end of the neuron are similar threadlike appendages called dendrites, which receive messages from nearby cells. Axons and dendrites tend to shrink with age, but experiments with rats have shown that intellectual exertion can spur neurons to branch like the roots of a growing tree, creating networks of new connections. Once a skill becomes automatic, the extra connections may fade, but the brain is so plastic that they can be tapped again if needed. Like the power grid of an electric company, the branching and connections provide surplus capacity in a brownout. Snowdon and some neuroscientists believe that people with such a surplus who find their normal neural pathways blocked by the tangles that characterize Alzheimer's disease can reroute messages. To be sure, every brain is limited by genetic endowment, and flexibility does decrease with age. But new thinking in brain science suggests that whether someone hits that wall at age 65 or at age 102 may be partly up to the individual."

"Professor Snowdon's research shows that the better-educated sisters have significantly more cortex and more synaptic branching of neurons than their less-educated counterparts, which would allow the former to cope better with Alzheimer's disease, dementia and stroke. Brain exercising is a way of life at the nunnery, where the sisters live by the principle that an idle mind is the devil's plaything."

A 81-year-old stroke victim's chances of recovery depend on his brain's ability to redesign itself and grow new routes of communication.

" So far, Snowdon's team has examined the brains of 90 nuns for signs of dementia. He has found Alzheimer's in about 40 percent of the brains. In the general population, Alzheimer's is found in as many as 50 percent of those over 85. Soon researchers will look for proof of dendritic growth in the nuns' brains." (yet clinical dementia is present in only 25%).

"The standard teaching is that we lose massive numbers of neurons in the brain in the course of normal aging. Our data do not agree," says Robert D. Terry, MD, professor of neurosciences and of pathology at the University of California, San Diego."

Speaking at the NIH conference, he said he and his colleagues found "no significant decline in the total number of neurons in either midfrontal, superior, temporal, or inferior parietal areas. However, the number of large neurons does decrease while the number of small neurons increases to about an equal extent". The pathological diagnosis in Alzheimer's disease is decrease in the number of large neurons.

"Therefore, we came to a conclusion that large neurons are not dying but may be shrinking into a smaller size class. They're still there and the hope is that they may be regrown or retrained to regain function."

There is a great difference in synapse density of the neocortex between normal elderly and persons with Alzheimer's disease, Terry says, adding: "There's about a 20% difference between the mean synapse density in normal elderly and normal young. However, there's about a 45% difference between persons with Alzheimer's disease and comparable, normal elderly."

According to Terry, the parameter they found that correlates most strongly with severity of dementia is not plaque formation but the concentration or population density of synapses (Ann Neurol. 1991;30:572-580). Finding ways of boosting levels of appropriate trophic (growth) factors may help maintain synapse numbers to improve functioning with normal aging as well as diminish the severity of Alzheimer's disease, he suggests.

"One hypothesis to explain the increased prevalence in elderly women who had no formal education invokes the possibility of an effect of early deprivation, perhaps lowering brain 'reserve,' allowing the symptoms of dementia to appear at an earlier date during disease progression," he and colleagues report.

What can the average person do to strengthen his or her mind? "The important thing is to be actively involved in areas unfamiliar to you," says Arnold Scheibel, head of UCLA's Brain Research Institute. "Anything that's intellectually challenging can probably serve as a kind of stimulus for dendritic growth, which means it adds to the computational reserves in your brain."

So pick something that's diverting and, most important, unfamiliar. A computer programmer might try sculpture; a ballerina might try marine navigation. Here are some other stimulating suggestions from brain researchers:

-- Try a musical instrument. "As soon as you decide to take up the violin, your brain has a whole new group of muscle-control problems to solve. But that's nothing compared with what the brain has to do before the violinist can begin to read notes on a page and correlate them with his or her fingers to create tones. This is a remarkable, high-level type of activity," says Scheibel.

-- Fix something. Learn to reline your car's brakes or repair a shaver, suggests Zaven Khachaturian, a brain expert at the National Institute of Aging. "My basement is full of electronic gadgets, waiting to be repaired. The solution is not the important thing. It's the challenge."

-- Try the arts. If your verbal skills are good, buy a set of watercolors and take a course. If your drawing skills are good, start a journal or write poetry. "We keep seeing a relationship between physical activity and cognitive maintenance," says Harvard brain researcher Marilyn Albert. "We suspect that moderately strenuous exercise leads to the development of small blood vessels. Blood carries oxygen, and oxygen nourishes the brain." But be sure the activity is new and requires thinking. Square dancing, ballet or tap is preferable to twisting the night away.

And remember, researchers agree that it's never too late. Says Scheibel: "All of life should be a learning experience, not just for the trivial reasons but because by continuing the learning process, we are challenging our brain and therefore building brain circuitry. Literally. This is the way the brain operates."

"It is a law of the mind that it gradually adapts itself to the subjects upon which it is trained to dwell. If occupied with commonplace matters only, it will become dwarfed and enfeebled. If never required to grapple with difficult problems, it will after a time almost lose the power of growth." Mind, Character, and Personality, Volume 2, page 418,

Gratitude Promotes Health.--Nothing tends more to promote health of body and of soul than does a spirit of gratitude and praise. It is a positive duty to resist melancholy, discontented thoughts and feelings--as much a duty as it is to pray.--MH 251 (1905). {2MCP 797.1}

"Great harm is done by a lack of firmness and decision. I have known parents to say, You cannot have this or that, and then relent, thinking that they may be too strict, and give the child the very thing they at first refused. A lifelong injury is thus inflicted. It is an important law of the mind--one which should not be overlooked--that when a desired object is so firmly denied as to remove all hope, the mind will soon cease to long for it and will be occupied in other pursuits. But as long as there is any hope of gaining the desired object, an effort will be made to obtain it." Mind, Character, and Personality, Volume 2, page 419

Law of Mental Hierarchy

The higher powers (conscience and Reason) must rule the lower powers.

"The heavenly angels are . . . at work to take hold of reasoning minds, and their power is mightier than the hosts of darkness.." Mind, Character, and Personality, Volume 1, page 102.

"God has given us ability to think and to act, and it is by acting with carefulness, looking to Him for wisdom, that you will become capable of bearing burdens. Stand in your God-given personality. Be no other person's shadow. Expect that the Lord will work in and by and through you." Mind, Character, and Personality Volume 1, page 103

 Loving submission to a higher authority must be done in an atmosphere of liberty.  The higher authority must be chosen (not forced) because it agrees with reason and conscience.

 Submission obtained by force or emotional motivation diminishes the relationship, making true love impossible.  Force may be physical, financial, physiological or spiritual.

 Love is the opposite of Selfishness.

  One cannot give unselfish love to someone if there is only one option.  Paying taxes is not an act of unselfish love for our President, whereas giving to a Church maybe an expression of unselfish love for God.

A loving (unselfish) submission may be rational for a child to parent, wife to husband, human to God, employee to employer, citizen to president.

 When God, a husband, parent, employer, president forces submission it can no longer be loving (unselfish) submission but plan submission.

 A man proposes marriage to a young lady and she says she needs time to think, and then he pulls a gun and says you have 30 sec to decide.  Is she able to lovingly submit to his desires?    

Law of Mind and Body

Physical action and words change mental thoughts and feelings.

" It is a law of nature that our thoughts and feelings are encouraged and strengthened as we give them utterance. While words express thoughts, it is also true that thoughts follow words. If we would give more expression to our faith, rejoice more in the blessings that we know we have--the great mercy and love of God--we should have more faith and greater joy. No tongue can express, no finite mind can conceive, the blessing that results from appreciating the goodness and love of God. Even on earth we may have joy as a wellspring, never failing, because fed by the streams that flow from the throne of God."--MH 251-253 (1905). {2MCP 419.3}

... the Brain is "born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth forever." 1 peter 1:23

When we read the Bible information in put in our brain. The Holy Spirit empowers the pathways in the brain with this information linking in other thought patterns - creating a new mind. God doesn't put the information in our brain but guides our thoughts.

- ... feed upon His word, for it is spirit and life. This word kills the natural, earthly nature, and a new life in Christ Jesus is created. ... MR Vo10 p166

By the grace of Christ it is possible for us to reject impure thoughts. Jesus will attract the mind, purify the thoughts, and cleanse the heart from every secret sin. "The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God; . . . casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ."[+ COR. 10:4, 5.]- Christian Temperance and Bible Hygiene p136

7. Rejoicing in all things.

Make it a rule of never to utter one word of discouragement.

Seek to brighten the lives of others with words of hope and cheer.

Do acts of disinterested benevolence.  Give to other without the prospect of personal rewards.

Keep fresh in your memory all the blessings that God has given you.  Keep a record of them and share them with others.

Rejoice in your trials.

"And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose." Rom 8:28

"Rejoice in the Lord alway: and again I say, Rejoice." Phil 4:4

"Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God." Phil 4:6

'And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.' Phil 4:7

"Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content." Phil 4:11

"I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: every where and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need." Phil 4:12

"I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me." Phil 4:13

"But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus." Phil 4:19