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Chuck Crismier: Do you have a friend who is plagued by anxiety or depression, maybe despair? Well, today is the program for you or for them, maybe both of you, or for all of us. Today on Viewpoint, we're going to be talking about that. Our special guest today, Dane Kamala, with his book, Choose Prayer Not Despair. He said he was running down the freeway with his brother's Bible clenched tightly and he felt pulled forward by an unstoppable force.

He said it wasn't just a manic episode. It was like the beginning of a mental and spiritual battle that would test his faith and reveal the depths of his mind and set him on a journey toward healing and talking with you and me. Here on Viewpoint, we're going to be talking about that. I'm glad that you've joined us. It's conversation with ever-increasing conviction, talk that transforms, and I trust that today's program will be transformative for someone.

You see, if we look at the Bible, we find that there are any number of people that went through what you want to call intense stress that nearly broke them down or whatever you want to call it. Maybe it was some sort of mental health problem. Maybe it was a spiritual health problem. I can't tell you, but what I can tell you is that David, that God proclaimed to be a man after his own heart, said, "Lord, how are they increased that trouble me? Many are they that rise up against me. Many are them that say of my soul, 'There's no help for him in God.'"

And then he resolved his anxiety, his depression, his struggle by saying, "But you, oh Lord, are a shield for me, my glory and the lifter of my head." And over and over again, David reveals the struggle that he went through. Yes, he was a warrior, but he was also a musician. He seemed to have a tremendous caring attitude, but he was also a blend of warriorism and was indeed deemed to be the greatest warrior that Israel ever had.

Greater than King Saul that stood heads and shoulders above him, greater than all the soldiers of Israel. He said, "Who is the Lord? Who is the Lord? Why is this Goliath character taunting all the giant leaders of Israel? How can he possibly be doing that? What is it with my people that are so terrified of this guy?" Yes, he was nine and a half feet tall. Yeah, the beds of the giants were about 13 feet long. That's a pretty big character, but it wasn't to David.

Because in one sense, this David, who was concerned about how people were troubling him, rising up against him, also said, "Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of a living God?" So you see, it's possible for someone who has felt great anxiety, despair, maybe depression, overwhelmed, and yet to rise out against it and become a great leader on behalf of King Jesus. So that's what we're talking about here today on Viewpoint, Dane Kamala. I hope I'm pronouncing your name correctly. I get it right, Dane?

Dane Kamala: You got it, Chuck.

Chuck Crismier: All right, Kamala. Okay. Choose Prayer Not Despair: How to Transform Your Mental Health God's Way. Transforming mental health God's way. Now, that's interesting because in reality, all we hear in our culture today is mental health, mental health, mental health. Give them some sort of prescription, take them to the psychiatrists, take them to the psychologist, take them to the doctor and get a prescription.

But our guest today says, well, maybe some of that might be good, but in reality, it's not where the real answer is. He said the real answer has something to do with how we look at God, how we yield to Him, and how we communicate with Him. So Dane, it's good to have you in the program all the way from probably pretty warm Arizona.

Dane Kamala: It is warm today and it's really good to be with you, Chuck.

Chuck Crismier: Well, now, you have grown up there in Scottsdale, Arizona, right?

Dane Kamala: That's correct.

Chuck Crismier: And tell us what the environment is like there, other than hot, hotter, and hottest.

Dane Kamala: Well, you got a lot of mountains, so there's some amazing hiking when it's not extremely hot and it just happens to be that time of the year where you can actually get out and go hiking because we just got done with the past year and it's about cool. And when I say cool, I mean 60 to 70-ish degrees for a couple more months. So it's the best place to be in my opinion during this time of the year because you got the mountains, you got great restaurants here and lots of outdoor activities to do if you're in that kind of thing.

Chuck Crismier: Well, that's wonderful. So what kind of mountains do you have? In Virginia, we only have molehills. I think the highest mountain is 5,000 feet. I used to have a mountain 7,000 feet right behind my house in Pasadena, California, and I used to climb 14,000 foot peaks of the Sierra. So how high are your mountains there?

Dane Kamala: They're pretty high. I don't know the exact number of them, but I believe that if you were out here hiking either Camelback, that's one of the highest mountains here, you would get a good workout for sure.

Chuck Crismier: Very good. Well, I can't do that now, but I would love to be able to join you. I'm looking at your vigorous visage here on the front cover of your book. So tell us, when did you first come to the realization that something was going on in your mind, in your body that wasn't good?

Dane Kamala: Yeah, it's interesting because mental health, especially in my case with going through a mental illness, is kind of hard to diagnose if you've never really taken time to think about just different mental illnesses. But I think for me, it was a battle for my soul, right? We talk about mental health a lot in our culture and society, but what's really going on is there something that's going on in the soul of the individual?

And we Bible believers understand that we have a soul, we have a body, and we also have a spirit. And I think my soul was under distress and because I didn't really understand who I was in Christ when I was early in my faith when this attack happened, I more so entertained some of these lies and deceptions from the enemy that started this spiral out of control and I just started to experience some of these things that the mental health illness I went through, which was bipolar, started to happen.

Chuck Crismier: I was wondering when we were going to get full disclosure here. Get some diagnosis. So you entered into what is called bipolar. It used to be called by another name, didn't it?

Dane Kamala: Did it? I always thought. Well, again, my limited knowledge in regards to when this happened, but I've always known it as bipolar. But there's multiple names for different mental health illnesses, right? You have schizophrenic, you have bipolar disorder one, bipolar disorder two with depression. So there's many different things that we've classified things in our literature, science, what have you.

Chuck Crismier: So in other words, you're two-poled. Right, exactly. Bipolar, two-poled. Well, there's a sense in which everybody is two-poled. In fact, the scripture says that we have a major battle going on within us. The Apostle Paul talks about the battle of the flesh against the spirit. So we're bipolar. But yours was more severe than that. We'll talk about that more when we get back from this break. Friends, we're talking with Dane Kamala from Scottsdale, Arizona with his book Choose Prayer Not Despair and I believe it's going to provide hope for you or somebody that you love. We'll be right back.

Welcome back to Viewpoint. I'm Chuck Crismier. Today we're talking with Dane Kamala from Scottsdale, Arizona. By the way, he is a social media content creator who shares daily messages concerning prayer and hope and encouragement with about a million and a half people, his followers. And he's actually formed a foundation. He's taken this very seriously. It's called Lit With Prayer Foundation. We'll have to find out more from him what that really means and how encompassing that is. But Dane, I'd like to go back to when you first experienced what you're calling some sort of mental illness, whether it was bipolar or what it was at that time. How did that manifest itself?

Dane Kamala: Yeah, so I was around 22 at the time and this just kind of started in my mind. I just was having some weird thoughts and because I didn't understand how to protect myself from the enemy, I was very early in my understanding of the Word. I had a good prayer life, but it was more relational and just talking to God. I didn't know how to stand on the Word. So when these different thoughts came, I started to entertain them.

Chuck Crismier: Thoughts like what?

Dane Kamala: Yeah, so I would say it was just whispers of like you're not enough and you have to perform for God. And I started to just start saying I need to become more, I need to become more, I need to read more, I need to read more. And I think this got me to a place where I was starting to just lean into not being enough, like this subtle lie from the enemy. And those subtle thoughts, even though they didn't sound super bad, I think gave the enemy an opportunity to start just messing with my mind where I would start to feel and experience things around me.

And when I say that, and I know that might sound weird, but we live in a spiritual world. So when I started to feel these little things around me that didn't feel right, I didn't know what to do. And I think that's what kind of started this whole mental break that just started subtly with these lies and then just starting to feel things, but not do anything about them. I think that's really important, I didn't do anything.

Chuck Crismier: Well, it sounds an awful lot like what I would call hyperventilation. Does that make sense?

Dane Kamala: Yeah, totally.

Chuck Crismier: A person that gets into hyperventilation just actually they lose control over their breathing ability and it can cause all kinds of strange things to happen in their bloodstream and so on, the oxygen and so on. So how does this relate to what they call panic attacks now? I don't like that term because I think it's become a garbage dump term for doctors to describe anything that they don't know what it really is, kind like the word stress. But how would you relate to what your experience to what people call panic attacks?

Dane Kamala: Yeah, I think I would relate what I went through to a panic attack from the sense of just overly exhausted, running myself down, feeling hyperactive. I think that's another word that I would describe the experience as because I was just feeling all of these different things.

Chuck Crismier: And that would sound like the manic aspect of manic depressive, which is the other term that used to be used to describe what you're calling bipolar.

Dane Kamala: Yeah, and I think they still use that term manic depressive, but it's more so to define bipolar disorder two. So you have bipolar disorder one, which is you have a full-blown manic episode. Bipolar disorder two is where you have more of a micro-manic episode. It's not as severe as someone with a full-blown manic episode that typically leads to a very long depressive part of that, which I didn't experience. I had at least what they diagnosed as bipolar one, which is a full-blown manic episode. You're delusional for a longer period of time. Mine lasted, I'd say, a month of just out of control thinking, delusion, not knowing.

Chuck Crismier: Out of control manic then, okay. Well, they used to prescribe something that now all of those that are trying to get control in Venezuela and Greenland and all of the rare earths and so on, they're trying to find lithium. But that used to be prescribed regularly for manic depressive or bipolar. How about you?

Dane Kamala: Yeah, so they did not give me lithium at the time and if I was to go back and think as specifically what the medication was, they gave me three different medications. I know one of them was something by the name of Zyprexa. But honestly, when I was going through all of that stuff, I was just— we were doing what we needed to do in the natural but believing that something needed to take place in the supernatural. So I didn't try to familiarize myself with all the medication. I just said, "Hey, if this is what I need to do right now, that's fine, but we're going to believe for the Lord to move supernaturally in this and heal me because that's not what the doctor said or was possible, at least."

Chuck Crismier: So how did you move from a framework in your own mind and behavior from trusting psychiatric medications and so on to trusting God?

Dane Kamala: So the reason I believe that I was able to get through this is because I had an extremely strong praying mother next to me. My mom is the reason I'm the believer I am today and she sat next to me in that hospital, in that doctor's office.

Chuck Crismier: That's what Abraham Lincoln said, by the way.

Dane Kamala: Yeah, I think that's— yeah, that was a really important thing, her encouragement to me saying, "Son, your identity is not in this crisis, it's in Christ," and she encouraged me to understand what that meant.

Chuck Crismier: As I considered coming together with you here today shortly before the broadcast, a song came to my mind. Actually, one verse of a song, it's a very common song we used to sing called "The Solid Rock," "Christ the Solid Rock I stand, my hope is built on nothing less than Jesus Christ and His righteousness," and so on. But the second verse says this: "When darkness hides His lovely face, I rest on His unchanging grace. In every high and stormy gale, my anchor holds within the veil." That's the verse that came to me kind of describing a bit of the struggle when darkness seems to hide even God's face. I rest on His unchanging grace, or His enabling power. How did that work for you?

Dane Kamala: Yeah, I like that you bring that up because I even remember when I was in the hospital and I was there for two weeks and it was the darkest moment that I was going through. I felt like the Lord wasn't there with me and a lot of fear had gripped me at that time. And I remember someone walking into my room and bringing me a Bible, opening it up to Psalm 23 and saying, "Dane, I know you're going through a lot right now," and I do not know who this person was and I still do not know who it was to this day.

Chuck Crismier: Maybe it was an angel.

Dane Kamala: I know. You can think about it that way because they opened it up to Psalm 23 and they just said, "Hey, I want you to pray this over your life." And I remember just reading the scripture and praying it over my life and even just going back to that scripture where it says, "You lead me beside the still waters, you restore my soul." That's what the Lord was doing from that moment to the time when I encountered Him in church when I was prayed for and healed. So it was just a strong moment for me to remember that God had never left my side, that He had never not been there. I just had taken my eyes off of Him in a moment and focused on the fear and focused on the pain of what was going on, which is really important whenever we're battling something in our mental health.

Chuck Crismier: And how long was it that you encountered or were dealing with the pressure and the struggle and the desperation of that bipolar incident before you began to shift your trust on the Lord?

Dane Kamala: Yeah, so from the moment it started to the moment I started to shift and stand on the finished work of Christ and stand in my identity from the encouragement of my mom, it was probably like three months from the start of it being small to it getting worse to being hospitalized to getting out and being in that doctor's office when they presented to me and let me know for the first time, "This is what you have."

Chuck Crismier: Wow. Okay. So you were guilty as charged. Medical guilty as charged. Okay. And so that would seem to be like a label that's sitting upon your head and we often say here on this program that labels can become like libels. So a label now fixated you in a particular mind and heart set from which it would be very difficult to get off. And so you would just continue to tell yourself, "I'm bipolar. I'm manic depressive. I gotta have this stuff. This is just who I am." But you didn't end up thinking like that, did you?

Dane Kamala: No, what you bring up, Chuck, is probably the most important thing of our family being able to see a move of God so quickly. Because when that label was given to me, I was also given the encouragement of my mom to understand what that label actually meant. That label did not mean I was someone who was bipolar. My mom helped me understand that your identity is in Christ. You're His son. You are going through something right now. It's something you're dealing with, yes, this is true, but this is not who you are.

That distinguishing moment of her reminding me of that and me making a decision to not accept that label, understand what I was going through and move forward and say, we're going to walk and we're going to believe that God can heal me. I never spoke the illness once over my life. It feels incongruent to me now even trying to say to you that that's who I was because it's so incongruent with the Spirit of God that lives on the inside of me.

I believe the reason God was able to move and heal is because of that decision. We face such a big problem right now with mental health because of the identity and the labels that the world puts on individuals that without much support around them from people reinforcing who they are in Christ gives them the opportunity to accept that label and almost stay in that bondage when it is not right.

Chuck Crismier: Well, we find this especially with Generation Z and then also Millennials. It's a plague, the growth of anxiety and of course social media doesn't help the matter. That helps to put more labels on people because they compare themselves with one another and many are driven even to suicide, which is a desperation kind of anxiety. So here's the book, friends: Choose Prayer Not Despair: How to Transform Your Mental Health God's Way. I think you can see that Dane has a passion to help people.

God is using an experience that he had and has recovered from wonderfully, giving credit to the Lord for how He moved in his heart and to his family for standing there with him. And here is a $20 book and I don't know how I can offer this to you for this, but I have to do it. It's yours for $6 on our website. It's a $20 book, yours for $6 on our website. Choose Prayer Not Despair: How to Transform Your Mental Health God's Way. And Dane isn't here to make money. What he's here to do is get a message across because that's his life. His life is to get the message across to touch people's lives. So Choose Prayer Not Despair: How to Transform Your Mental Health God's Way, the $20 book for $6 on our website saveus.org.

Call us 1-800-SAVE-USA, 1-800-SAVE-USA. Write to us at Save America Ministries, PO Box 70879, Richmond, Virginia, 23255. Write a check at $6 for postage and handling and we can get it in your hands. Okay, now before this break that's coming up here, Dane, there's another song that has come to me in my mind. Oftentimes this happens back in the 1970s. There was a gentleman who came up with some wonderful songs and one of them is called "Through It All." "Through it all, through it all, I've learned to trust in Jesus, I've learned to trust in God. Through it all, through it all, I've learned to depend upon His word." I think that's your song.

Dane Kamala: It's funny you say that because a year ago I listened to a song and it reminded me of the song that was playing the day I was healed. And that song is, I believe, the same song you're talking about. "It is Well With My Soul." Through it all, through it all, you know, so that was playing the day that the Lord healed my soul.

Chuck Crismier: Well, the one that I just mentioned to you is Andraé Crouch and the Disciples back there in the 1970s. And you're talking about "When peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever my lot, He has taught me to say it is well with my soul." What a beautiful song that is. And that man who wrote that had every reason to be depressed beyond measure. He had lost his entire family at sea, his wife and his kids. How could he write such a song? Well, you went through some pretty dark times and it seemed almost the darkness was hiding God's face from you. But because of the surrounding of your family, your mother especially, it was able to bring you out of that deep, deep pit, right?

Dane Kamala: Amen.

Chuck Crismier: All right. So again, friends, Choose Prayer Not Despair: How to Transform Your Mental Health God's Way. This book is going to be a tremendous help to a lot of people. Dane's message right there on his— he's got a YouTube site, he's got a podcast. He's got it all, friends. If you want to connect with him, we'll make that possible in just a few moments.

Again, I welcome you back to Viewpoint. Today we're talking about a subject that a lot of people would not really want to engage in because it seems so, shall we say, depressive because we're talking about mental illness. We're talking about situations that, well, the world may call mental illness. I'm not even sure what mental illness is, whether it really has an accurate definition. Is it temporary? Is it ongoing? Is it permanent? What is it? Is it caused by a breakdown of the chemical system in the body? Is it spiritual? Is it demonic? What is it? Maybe it's all of the above or maybe one of the above at some particular time. What say you to Dane? How would you define it?

Dane Kamala: Yeah, I think mental health is the state of your soul, right? Your soul is your mind, your will, and your emotions. And we feel many different ways: up and down, sad, joyful, anxious, but all of that is predicated on where you're directing your mind. Is your mind being directed to the word? We're told to renew our minds, not just conform to the patterns of the world. And then we also have the free will to choose certain things. The book is called Choose Prayer Not Despair for a reason.

We've got to choose to cling to God's word and His truth, not the lies of the enemy or things that can deceive us. So I think the state of our soul determines our mental health. Everyone struggles in some sense, if you want to call it mental health, because we're sometimes anxious, we're sometimes happy, we're sometimes sad, we're sometimes joyful. But there's something that we can do every day to maintain something that is available to us through the Spirit of God living on the inside of us. And that's love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, self-control, gentleness, and faithfulness. That's available every day. You can be going through a storm and you can still be joyful. But we have to understand the state of our soul, how that works, and how to operate in these things to fight back against anything that deters us in our mental health.

Chuck Crismier: Well, the Apostle Paul had to deal with that from prison. He wrote the book of Philippians and was just considered the book about joy. James, who was beheaded, said, "Count it all joy when you suffer many trials, tribulations," and so on. So how we respond to these kind of situations determines the state of our minds, of our wills, our emotions. And if you give into the flesh, the flesh is always going to bring corruption, isn't it?

Dane Kamala: Amen. And Paul, to your point on the book of Philippians, gives us such a great applicational thing in directing our minds when he says in Philippians chapter four, verses six through seven, "Don't worry about anything, but instead pray about everything. Tell God what you need and thank Him for all He has done. Then you will experience God's peace, which surpasses anything we can understand. His peace will guard your heart and mind as you live in Christ Jesus." So that is literally the theme of why I wrote this book. Our response to the things that happen in our life determine the experiences and the emotions that we ultimately live in and feel. So if we learn how to pray, if we learn how to look towards the Lord and as a first response to anything in our mind like an anxious thing that happens, a personal experience that you're going through that's difficult, if we learn how to think, which Paul talks about all in the New Testament, teaching us how to think, he says to think on things that are good, that are praiseworthy, that are noble and of good report, to think on those things. So he gives us such great practical things and that's something that we just have to learn how to do.

Chuck Crismier: He says if there be any virtue, if there be any praise, think on those things. And we actually have a special plaque. It's a beautiful little plaque with that scripture on it. And we keep these kinds of things in different places, not to completely clutter up our walls, but to make sure that we keep our focus correct. Joshua said, "As for me and my house," he says, "choose you this day," and that's what you have in your book. Choose Prayer Not Despair. Choose you this day whom you will serve, but as for me and my house, we're going to serve the Lord. This matter of choosing is a big deal, isn't it?

Dane Kamala: It is everything because again, when we talk about the state of your soul, which is where the mental health challenges begin, part of your soul is your free will. Right? You can choose to love God, love people, or love the ways of the world. So every single day we make choices on things that we're going to give our attention to, things that we believe are true about our lives, things that we believe that sometimes someone says about us.

So every single day we have got to take in everything that's coming into our mind and say, "Is this true? What does God's word say? What am I going to stand on? What am I going to believe?" And we can pray and come in agreement with God's word because it can't return to Him void. His word is the truth. When we stand on that truth and we renew our minds to it, what happens? We renew our mind, we experience peace. We renew our mind, we keep our soul in a state that the Lord wants us to be in, which is in that state of peace, in that state of joy. It's available. It's not something we have to get. It's something that's within us that has to be released from doing something with our soul, which is to yield it to the Spirit of God on the inside of you.

Chuck Crismier: We have to appropriate it by choice. And it's there for the choosing, but it's a matter of choice. And here's what bothers me. I don't know how old you are, Dane. Do you fit in the millennial generation?

Dane Kamala: I do. I'm 34.

Chuck Crismier: Okay, so you're a millennial. From millennial on down, the closer we have moved down that track, feelings have become the landmark of the soul. Feelings have become the Lord of the church. It began in the 1970s, believe it or not. It began in the education system in Southern California. I was a teacher then. And we were taken to separate classes on the weekend and were required to be retrained in how we spoke.

And here's what happened. Instead of saying something in a factual way that that's true or that's factual, they wouldn't allow us to do that. You had to say, "I feel." I feel that this is right. I feel that that's right. I feel, I feel, I feel. Well, almost instantly within two years, that began to take hold throughout the whole body of Christ. I feel. That developed the whole divorce debacle that spread across the country, even in God's house, and everything else from that. And so feelings became the final arbiter of truth.

I feel. It's almost as if feelings became an alternate or surrogate Holy Spirit that we relied upon. So people then become in anguish over the Lordship of their feelings. And there's no anchor there. There's nothing substantive. There's no anchor for their soul. Am I speaking something that connects with you?

Dane Kamala: It really connects with me because feelings let me know how I'm going through something, but they're not the truth about who I am. Because I can feel anxious, but am I my anxiety? I can feel worried, but am I my worry? And I think that's where it gets dangerous to your point on feelings become factual for people. Because if someone is told that they are what they feel, that gets them again to label themselves as someone who is a worrier, someone who is fearful, homosexual. Right?

Our language and how we say things and speak things matters. So we have to be careful about distinguishing a feeling versus the truth about what God actually says about me. Because if your soul dictates your life and not the Spirit of God living on the inside of you, you will be run by your feelings, which always change.

Chuck Crismier: Right. And that means there's no place for faith. Right. I am so appreciative of some of the things that you're communicating here because we're living in a time in which anxiety is just hyperventilating everywhere. In God's own house, people are anxious, anxious. In fact, it's called the "anxious generation." It's not just in America, it's all over the world. Men's hearts failing for fear for the things that are coming upon the earth, as Jesus said.

So we cannot live at the level of our feelings. It's kind of like realizing that there's a whole gaggle of geese that are flying over you and so you decide that because there are geese flying over you that you need to make a nest for them in your hair to take up a living spot there in your hair. So when feelings fly over you, a lot of people seem to be creating a nest for them right there in their heads as if they're permanent. It's a very dangerous thing that's happening, I think.

Dane Kamala: It is and we have never lived in a time where we are told all throughout our day many different ways to think because of social media. And if we do not protect what we watch, what we listen to, and what is coming out of our mouth, we are going to be ruled by our feelings because the social media platforms are built to make you think and feel all different types of ways so that platforms and social media companies can make money. Social media is neutral, but it can be used for evil and good. So even though I'm someone who's on social media sharing my faith, I know that if I don't have a personal time to sit with the Lord and abide in Him and rest in Him, my soul will be up for grabs at whatever I'm looking at, watching, hearing, seeing. There's so much overstimulation in our world right now, which is causing, I believe, a huge problem amongst the youth in terms of how they feel because they see so much.

Chuck Crismier: Well, the scripture says, "Be still and know that I am God." Right. So it seems to me that we have an aversion more than ever before from being still. How can you be still when you have earbuds in your ears, you're constantly listening or you constantly have a cell phone in front of you? It's constant input. How in the world are you ever going to hear from God? How in the world are you ever going to be at peace? It's almost like we're sowing anxiety into our spirits every day.

Dane Kamala: It's 100% true. And when the average person is on social media for about six hours a day, how many different pieces of content are they seeing that's coming at them in the matter of seconds as they scroll, that can make them feel all these different ways. So if you don't learn how to discipline yourself and set apart time just like Jesus did to go away and be with His Father, we're never going to be able to get to a place where we can hear from the Lord because our spirit is so sensitive to God when we're with Him and Him alone.

Chuck Crismier: Exactly. All right. Friends, we're going to be back with Dane Kamala in just a few moments. You're going to want to get his book Choose Prayer Not Despair on our website. The $20 book is available to you for only $6 on the website saveus.org. You give us a call 1-800-SAVE-USA. We'll be right back.

We're told to be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and thanksgiving to make known our needs unto God. Our guest today is seeking to communicate his heart and the heart of the Lord toward every one of us, especially those who are struggling with mental health issues, emotional issues, and so on. Dane Kamala with his book, Choose Prayer Not Despair: How to Transform Your Mental Health God's Way. I wanted to share with you the words from a person who endorsed this book.

And I think that these words go a long way toward helping anyone who is listening today to understand why this may be just what you have been waiting for. Choose Prayer Not Despair is a beacon of hope for anyone walking through the shadows of mental health struggles or standing beside someone who is. Dane's words radiate compassion, authenticity, and unwavering faith, reminding us that no valley is too deep for God's light to reach. This book is a lifeline for those who have been seeking a solution to get through life's most challenging struggles.

And on it goes, he said, "I wholeheartedly recommend this book," and he is also ministering to young people today. But you don't have to be a millennial, you don't have to be a Generation Z. You might be in my generation. You may be a baby buster, you may be a baby boomer, you may be of the greater generation before that, because Satan will reach his tentacles to take your mind, your soul and turn it into mush so that God cannot have dominion over your life.

Choose Prayer Not Despair: How to Transform Your Mental Health God's Way. $6 will put this $20 book in your hands. It's on the website saveus.org. Give us a call 1-800-SAVE-USA. Write to us at Save America Ministries, PO Box 70879, Richmond, Virginia, 23255. Write a check at $6 for postage and handling. Okay, Dane, I want you to tell us what you are doing now. You've written the book, but you have a number of expressions on the internet. In fact, that's kind of your area of your ministry, isn't it?

Dane Kamala: Yeah, what we do, and my mom kind of helps me behind the scenes with some stuff too, is we just create content in the form of short-form content, long-form content. I read a substack as well, too, which is just a publication online to just equip believers with biblical insights to help them understand who they are in Christ so they can overcome different things like mental health, like anything that's just making them feel like something in their life isn't right or they're missing something. Because when we have a relationship with Christ and we have the Holy Spirit, nothing is missing in our lives for God to use us in great ways. So we just want to encourage people and we want to encourage early believers, people who don't even know Christ to understand what it means to be a follower and to be able to walk in all that He's called them to walk in. So we just love to encourage people through prayer as that foundation and then other things with reading the word and understanding the scriptures and things of that nature.

Chuck Crismier: All right. Well, what is the Lit Foundation all about?

Dane Kamala: Yeah, so we started that a couple years back and what I wanted to do was I wanted to create a place where we could partner with different organizations to provide counseling to believers who were maybe walking alongside a family member who needed help and they just couldn't get access to that. So what we try to do is walk alongside different families who are going through this and just provide them help through the use of Christian counselors who can provide them insight and things of that nature. We're praying alongside these folks and family as well too, but again I'm not a licensed therapist or counselor, so we just want to create more resources to help people who are going through something like this.

Chuck Crismier: So you're not licensed by man, but anointed by God for this.

Dane Kamala: It's a great way to put it, Chuck.

Chuck Crismier: You know, I'd rather have somebody anointed by God, really anointed by God, than had triple doctorates behind their name.

Dane Kamala: I can tell you the most important person in my life was my mom who was anointed by God to walk along her son in belief for healing. So I'm right there with you.

Chuck Crismier: That's terrific. Now, this foundation that you have exactly what is it called?

Dane Kamala: It's just called the Lit With Prayer Foundation. So all of my social media pages are Lit With Prayer. And then we have the Lit With Prayer Foundation, which can be found at litwithprayer.org, where we connect with different people who are going through some of these things and start walking alongside of them and just get them connected to more resources. We're kind of doing a whole revamp right now. But yeah, people can just find us there or through Lit With Prayer's social media handles.

Chuck Crismier: All right, litwithprayer.org. Litwithprayer.org. It's a 501(c)(3) group that you have formed. So if you were to listen to the plea of someone who was coming on the air today, let's say that I opened up the lines today for someone to come on and say, "You know what, I've been experiencing some of the same kinds of things that Dane experienced, maybe it's manic depressive or bipolar as they say, maybe it's some other kind of anxiety, maybe it's what oftentimes people call panic attacks." What would be the first thing that you would say to such a person?

Dane Kamala: Yeah, such a great question. So the first thing I would say to them is tell me a little bit about what you're going through and what does your relationship with God look like at this point. I think our personal relationship with the Lord is really important and what I find in a lot of the people we've walked alongside with is their personal relationship with the Lord has been weaning or just like being it's been difficult to maintain as a result of what they've gone through.

And I understand that, I know that was definitely part of my situation. So I would encourage them to really get back into where they were before this thing happened: a love for the Lord, a love for prayer, a love for reading His word. Now, I'm not saying you've got to be in the word for two hours a day or in prayer for an hour a day. What God requires from us is a heart that is just surrendered and yielded to say, "I need you and I want to spend time with you."

So I would really encourage them in to what that looks like and to be spending time with Him and then I would also pray over them. I would help them maybe find some scriptures in the Word that they could start holding on to because God's word is alive and I'd have many of those in your book.

Chuck Crismier: Yes, I do. Yeah. Well, I'm thinking about Moses for instance. He was the greatest prophet that Israel had until John the Baptist came along. And yet he was in despair a lot of times. I mean, he had two and a half million people that he was leading out from Pharaoh's dominion toward the promised land, but these people were not nice. They complained, they murmured, they complained, they wanted to stone him at least a couple of times. And so Moses finally said to God, he said, "Look, Lord, I can't do this unless your presence goes with me, forget it. Unless your presence goes with me, forget it."

Dane Kamala: Yeah, I like how you bring that up too because he also, when he was going through that burden of caring for all the people, he also said like, "You can just take my life," right? Like, "I can't do this unless you're like you said, you're going to be with me and you're going to do something." And then God helped him appoint different leaders to help him carry that burden.

Chuck Crismier: You know, I've just finished writing my 12th book called The Power to Overcome. And it's really not talking about mental health issues. It's talking about a lot of other things, the spiritual issues that we face. But to a certain extent, it has application implications here. And you say in your book, "You are an overcomer. If you don't see yourself as an overcomer, you will see yourself as one who is overcome," right?

Dane Kamala: Yeah, I love how you brought that up because it just always brings me back to 1st John when he is talking about being an overcomer. We are an overcomer because Christ has overcome and we get to overcome through what? Our faith, putting that in Christ. So Christ has overcome and we get to sit with Christ in the heavenly places like it talks about in the word.

Chuck Crismier: So we don't overcome by our feelings, we overcome by faith.

Dane Kamala: We overcome by faith in Christ and then that is our position, which is rooted to our identity. Right? But your identity can be challenged against the enemy saying, "Hey, God's not— God doesn't love you because look at that mistake you made or look at how anxious you are, God wouldn't make you go through this." But we go through things for God to help build us up in our character. Yeah. And it's this overcomer's life is already there, but we have to walk in it, right?

Because the enemy can tell you a lie to try to overcome you in an area of your life. So if you forget your position, it's easy to make yourself think that you aren't an overcomer. That's why the scripture is so important.

Chuck Crismier: Well, you know, I think it would be possible for you to say, "You know, well, the Lord just didn't make me quite right and I went through all these things, nobody else has to do that, but I had to." Well, that's not true. It's not that nobody else, everybody else has to go through something. And another person might say, "Well, God, He created Dane to be bipolar." Well, I'm not convinced that that's true either, but He has chosen to use the situation you found yourself in, the experience you found yourself in to be a ministry, an encouragement, and to build others up, hasn't He?

Dane Kamala: That's such a great point. Do I believe that God gave me bipolar? Absolutely not. Do I believe God used it to turn it around for good and now help give Him glory and help other people experience freedom? Yes, that's the God that we serve.

Chuck Crismier: All right. Well, do you have temptations that direction, Dane?

Dane Kamala: In regards to just like the old identity and believing those things?

Chuck Crismier: That's right. And threats back into the bipolar arena.

Dane Kamala: You know, every year for a few years, I would have a subtle lie that would come to be like, "What if it comes back?" And I just, because of what I experienced of God tangibly healing me in church when I was prayed for and seeing that and it changed what I believed about healing, every time that thought would come, I knew how to use my soul to direct it to my spirit and to stand on the finished work of Christ. So like the Bible says, we've got to take every thought captive and obedient to Christ. So I can take that lie and I can reinforce what God did for me, stand on His finished work and be able to not let that thing get a foothold like the enemy did in the past. So it was a little couple subtle little things here and there every year for a few years, but it was nothing more than that and that torment never came back. It's been over 11 years.

Chuck Crismier: Hallelujah. The weapons of our warfare are not carnal or fleshly but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds, casting down our imaginations or reasonings and thoughts and everything that wars against what God has to say and against our own souls and spirits. Casting down our reasonings and thoughts and every high thing that seems to exalt itself against the Word of God. That's what we need to do. We have to cast those things down, friends.

That's spiritual warfare and it goes on between our ears. It's not out there in the never-never land up there in the extraterrestrial areas. It's mostly between our ears. The battle of the flesh against the spirit. Some people call it the "battlefield of the mind," but we're more than conquerors. Dane, you're more than a conqueror and you're doing— you're bringing redemption to the terrifying experience that you had and we thank the Lord for it. Again, friends, Choose Prayer Not Despair: How to Transform Your Mental Health God's Way. $6 will put this $20 book in your hands. It's on the website saveus.org. Give us a call 1-800-SAVE-USA, 1-800-SAVE-USA. Write to us at Save America Ministries and seriously consider becoming a partner.

Every day we're confronting the deepest issues that touch America's heart and home from God's eternal perspective. I think you can see that, yes, even today. God bless, be a blessing, and remember, when darkness hides His lovely face, we must rest on His unchanging grace. In every high and stormy gale, our anchor must hold within the veil. On Christ the solid rock we stand. All other ground is sinking sand. God bless, be a blessing.

You've been listening to Viewpoint with Chuck Crismier. Viewpoint is supported by the faithful gifts of our listeners. Let me urge you to become a partner with Chuck as a voice to the church, declaring vision for the nation. Join us again next time on Viewpoint as we confront the issues of America's heart and home.