I grew up in a rough trailer park in Northwest Indiana, the eldest of a single mother’s five kids. Life was hard, but my mom was a spiritual powerhouse and made sure we were in church. We attended a small Spanish Pentecostal church in our community, and even though we weren’t Hispanic and didn’t understand what was happening at times, we felt the move of the Spirit, which transcended any language barrier. I carried the heavy mantle of being the man of the house after a string of abusive men came and went. As soon as I was able to work, I held every kind of job you could think of with the pres ..read more

Historically, diagnoses of bipolar disorder have been handed out like candy by inpatient providers, making a misdiagnosis of bipolar disorder one of the main complaints among private practice mental health providers. If you or a loved one have ever been admitted to an inpatient facility, chances are you’ve received the diagnosis of bipolar disorder. In fact, I don’t remember a time when someone has come to me from an inpatient facility who did not have bipolar disorder listed among their documented  paperwork. The purpose of this article is to cover the most common myths about bipolar di ..read more

Editor’s Note: Part 1 of this series (find it here) covered the fourth and third most common mental-health causes for insomnia. In today’s article, you will learn about the second and first most common mental health reasons you experience insomnia. When it comes to the top factors causing insomnia, mental health has taken the lead over the past decade, outpacing other reasons for you not being able to fall asleep or stay asleep. In Part 1 of this series, we discussed how unprocessed grief and PTSD (unprocessed trauma) can disrupt your sleep. In this article, we focus on the other two leading ..read more

Watch for Part 2 of this article, coming soon to Charisma Magazine online. Do you ever find yourself staring at the ceiling fan, trying to fall asleep? Or perhaps spend the first hour or so of the night tossing and turning, hoping to catch some shuteye? Do you ever wake up in the middle of the night and find yourself calculating how many hours of sleep you can still get if you could just fall back asleep? Or do you perhaps wake up in the middle of the night, unable to fall back asleep, only to doze off just in time for your alarm to sound? If these scenarios resonate with you, you are not alo ..read more

Is it possible to fast and the Lord not hear your plea? God said of Israel, “You cannot fast as you do today and expect your voice to be heard on high,” (Isa. 58:4, NIV). What were they doing wrong? Israel was unrepentant and had forsaken the ordinances of God. Though they appeared to be seeking God and delighting in His ways, their sin was all God could see. Instead of truly humbling themselves before God, fasting had become just another faithless mechanical performance full of strife, anger and lashing out. Breaking News. Spirit-Filled Stories. Subscribe to Charisma on YouTube now! Though ..read more

I am more excited about fasting than I have ever been. Don’t get me wrong—I enjoy eating! Though I enjoy eating, I cannot say I enjoy watching people as they cut into a big, steaming, juicy steak while I’m crunching on steamed broccoli. I have found that hungering and thirsting for God brings with it a much greater reward than satisfying the temporary hunger I may be experiencing in my body. Do you remember Anna? Her story only fills a few lines in Luke’s Gospel, but I believe God saw much more in the life of this precious saint. She is called a prophetess, and her simple testimony is that ..read more

It is still amazing to me that food was the enticement used to cause Adam and Eve to sin, resulting in the fall of mankind. I find it equally interesting that Jesus began His earthly ministry—to redeem us from sin—by abstaining from food. I imagine it was an extraordinary sight for John the Baptist to see his own cousin, the Lamb of God, descending into the water to be baptized like everyone else. Most of the folks who were baptized that day probably went home afterward to celebrate with a fine feast, talking about what they had seen and heard. Jesus did not. He followed the leading of the H ..read more

God said, “Let the priests, who minister to the Lord, weep between the porch and the altar,” (Joel 2:17). On a house, the “porch” is the part everybody can see; it represents the more public aspects of your ministry. The altar represents private ministry. In the life of a believer, there should always be more private than public ministry to God. When you read about Jesus, you do not see Him praying in public nearly as much as you see Him praying in private. The Bible says He would often pray through the night and have intimate times alone with His Father. Out of those times in private devoti ..read more

Our American diets are loaded with sugars, toxins, processed foods, meats, etc. Yet it is possible for us to be eating large meals, be overweight and still be malnourished. In that sense, it is easy to see how our physical lives again parallel our spiritual lives. We can become over-nourished on a hefty diet of church programs and activities, religious structure and traditions of men and yet be severely undernourished when it comes to the deeper things of God. Jesus said, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled,” (Matt. 5:6). When you begin to de ..read more

If we are not careful we can allow life to get us into the same old ruts and routines without even realizing it. Our relationship with the Lord can suffer the same fate. When we don’t do what it takes to stay sharp and sensitive to the Holy Spirit, our praise, worship, offerings and even preaching can become heartless routines to God. As a believer, you can pray, read your Bible and go to church week after week and still be losing sight of your first love. It is not that you don’t love the Lord, but the busyness of life can bring you to the point of losing your freshness, your enthusiasm, an ..read more