LIVING ROOM’S OPEN DOOR – Living Room’s Open Door is a faith-based peer ministry offering group support for individuals who share struggles with mental health challenges. The groups recognize the connection between spirituality and mental well-being and the two are addressed together as part of the meetings. Members of such groups have found great comfort […]
Read More...CAN WE BE AS RADICAL? Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people. News about him spread all over Syria, and people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, and the […]
Read More...When you see beautiful things growing amid ugliness, not only surviving but thriving, doesn’t it amaze you? Does the picture above make you think of how that truth has at times been the same for you in your life? Do you sometimes feel like that flower growing in the midst of a broken mess, maybe […]
Read More...In his book, The Land Between, author Jeff Manion uses the story of the Israelites’ forty-year journey through the Sinai Desert as a metaphor for being in a time of testing, a trial. After generations of slavery in Egypt, the Israelites travel through the wilderness (the land between) toward the Promised Land. They crave the […]
Read More...God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging. Psalm 46:1-3 At the last Living Room meeting in Burnaby, someone […]
Read More...Jesus told the following parable: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’ Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store […]
Read More...SPIRITUAL SUPPORT I’ve focused a lot on the needs of people with mental health conditions for spiritual support via Open Door groups. But today I realize that in the situation the world is experiencing today, there are far more people who could use such support. Open Door could offer opportunities for all of us—to voice […]
Read More...MY PASSIONATE DESIRE – This morning, I was thinking about what I’m trying to do with this unusual Open Door initiative. I’m sure that many must be thinking I’m bizarre to think I can do something as revolutionary as this. But I think that God is a God of possibilities and I believe that this […]
Read More...SPIRITUAL SUPPORT – At Living Room’s Open Door there is one thing we all have in common. We are all looking for support from our peers as we try to find relief from our mental health challenges. But it is different from other kinds of support groups in that our spiritual needs are also […]
Read More...UNCONDITIONAL LOVE HEALS – Please stop for a moment and think what it would feel like to be: looked down on, not understood, not believed to have credibility, shunned, rejected, excluded, made to feel ashamed, to have your abilities underrated, to have your opinions ignored, not to be taken seriously. In human terms, what […]
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