​          A huge assault is being done to our minds. Visually manufactured information and entertainment is sedating our minds and stealing our potential. Reading is now an essential skill for survival… why?
          When you read a book that has no pictures, your mind is having to “work” in order to formulate a visual picture in your mind. This process is actually exercising our brain, exponentially, through imagination. Our imagination is so powerful that when reading a story we can creatively imagine “sound”. From various characters, whether it be a woman talking or a young boy speaking to a father, or a reptilian orc growling at an elderly wizard. The very task of engaging our imagination to process the information we are reading literally exercises, strengthens, and builds to our brain capacity – which IS itself a MUSCLE!
          When we watch the television… our brain is mostly at rest due to the fact that no imagination is required to process the information being depicted. Through the TV we see, hear and many times are subtly and suggestively “told” how to perceive information we are viewing. The need to critically assess the information or utilize our imagination is done for us; leaving our brain-muscle at rest the entire time. What is the physical difference of a person who weight lifts 2 hours every day of his life vs. a person who chooses to be bed-ridden for most of their life? In like manor unregulated hours of spectating television programs, and various media platforms are subjecting developing minds to massive cognitive lethargy.
          In fact… children today are genuinely experiencing increasing levels of anxiety in school because their critical thinking faculties are inactive for the majority of their time in home and life. Problem solving is stress inducing. Problem solving is essential for survival at the most basic levels of human need. If school is a place to challenge the mind and the brain is a muscle… challenging the mind is “resistance-training” and problem solving stress are the “weights”. Reading is producing genuine anxiety in students of all stages, because they are losing mental fortitude.
          The increased anxiety we are witnessing today in America culturally, is in part, a result to decreased tolerance to some of the most basic stressors required for human survival. As we increasingly indulge in visually manufactured information and entertainment; the more our society as a whole, becomes less tolerant of stressors required for critical thinking and problem solving. The result being a passive existence where resistance is expressed by complaining and problem solving is reduced to begging for assistance. Human characteristics of perseverance, determination and high-work-ethics are increasingly perceived as extraordinary qualities.
          Critical logic affirms that only within independent-self-sufficiency is personal security, stability and safety attained; while dependence for basic needs, on anything other-than what is within your control, is uncertain-security with no guarantee of safety, stability or future provision.
          Today Americans are in a divide because independent-self-sufficiency is viewed less and less of a possibility causing dependence-on-entitlements to be a dignified means of survival. People today struggle to see beyond survival due to how weakened we have become cognitively. But if you are a dependent in any area of your life… survival in the long-term requires problem solving your total independence.
          There is no quick solution to this assault. We must unplug from visually manufactured information and entertainment as much as possible. Read an article every day. Require children to use their imagination. By the use of hypothetical scenarios, challenge your children to solve realistic world problems. Ask them to give personal opinions to controversial topics. Don’t judge their response good or bad but gauge their thought process; Challenge their ideology with questions not statements. These are critical mind exercises at all ages.  Solve Logic puzzles. Play Sudoku. Read. Read. Read. Embrace ways to become an entrepreneur. Technology is a tool to help us do more in life… don’t let it control you…control. it.

​I hate myself see, for being so unclean, my self-esteem so low that I’m cheaper than a hoe! See the only value I have for me is when a man’s gaze is fixed on me that I give myself for free, cause no one knew how to love me except by saying I was pretty.

​Sitting here alone I think, “could someone ever love me?... I’ll let them do me IF they promise to stay, cause the sex is ok… but what I really WANT… is for someone to stay, and hold me, caress me, give me lots of kisses and hugs, cause this my friend is the only way I get love.”

​The purpose for sharing this poem is to wake the self-righteous, the religious and the shallow minded to the reality that all sinful lives come at a price, and even when people don’t seem remorseful for their sinful or immoral behavior, it does not mean that they are not afflicted and crying out to God for help in their solitude. The church must rise up and seek the Lord for a Holy Love that will not compromise the Truth. All sin beats us up and we live in a time where the children literally do not know right from wrong.

May the Lord magnify His love and His Truth, may we the people seek God with a renewed urgency to help, love and heal; May we seek the Lord with a new hunger and thirst for righteousness and pursue the power of holiness in America, for the glory honor and praise to the One who was, who is, and is to come! Amen. ​

​By Noemi Soto

Long suffering produces endurance to persevere and sustains in us a right spirit before our Holy God. It is endured only by the grace of God and His mercy towards mankind. It is a product of balance. A balance where man is submitted to God, even in weakness, and God’s power is demonstrated thru man as overcoming strength. So often we deceive ourselves and others when we take the credit for our accomplishments or praise others for theirs. It is how we glorify man and deny the power of God. 

​Remember that apart from God we can do nothing.