Dear Ones,
Hope you have a blessed day! Al’s cataract surgery is on the schedule this morning for 10:30 and no breakfast for him. Thank you for your prayers for him and may all go well. The devotion is longer today but I found it hard to shorten and may you grant me grace today. 
Devotions from Judy’s heart
 If we look around our culture today, we are sick and have a self problem; there is a preoccupation with self and the concern of what will make me feel good and happy! Somehow our spiritual lives are left out and we are narcissistic and spiritually bankrupt. We can thank social media that has the cameras always on us as people watch, and we become obsessed with our self-image and ego. I read an article on the Cluster B Society which psychologists say are made up of 4 psychopathologies of personality disorders: The narcissist, the borderline, the histrionic, and the antisocial. The narcissist feels entitled and has an obsession with their self-importance. The borderline person has an unstable identity, feels empty and often tries to hurt themselves. The histrionic personality is an attention seeker and very emotional with a pathological need for sympathy. The antisocial person is impulsive and manipulates others and often violent. The article says that these things use to be delt with in the office of the one giving therapy but now it seems to have spread into public life as so many saying they are victimized; or if we disagree, we are accused and shut down. We find we are manipulated into compliance by false compassion, and we are being forced to obey or pay the consequences. That doesn’t sound like freedom, and instead of helping people mature it justifies them in their self-pity. Many of these people are now in positions of authority and power and want to impose their agenda on us. This article spells out how we are a sick and dysfunctional society and have become a new social order that replaces disorders for job qualifications rather than competence.

  This has caused a mental-health crisis, especially for college students and there is a 50% increase since 2013 of those who have mental-health problems. But instead of attacking the problem and strengthening the students to deal with problems, the administration shuts down any anything they think is offensive and cave in to the narcissistic demands of students What do we do?

  We need to turn back to God and like Alexander Solzhenitsyn said in 1978, “We have placed too much hope in politics and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life.” Let us turn to God in prayer and reverse our moral poverty. Prayer has everything to do with our getting free of the demands of our own egos and experience the freedom in the Lord. It has to do not only with our own individual needs but our nation. God is our only hope and may we pray not just privately but also publicly with others to hear God’s voice and become again a nation under God. Let us ban together and as it says in II Chron 7:14 may we humble ourselves and pray and seek His face and turn from our ways, and He will forgive our sin and heal our land.
  Challenge for today: Pray for a turning to the Lord from our focus on self and repent and go God’s way.
Blessings on your day and prayers and love, Judy