Hello, thank you for joining me today for Give Him 15. I can't wait to read you today's post from our new

devotional and appeal to heaven. Give Him 15. Appeal to Heaven, Volume 3. This post is so

encouraging. And I want to encourage you leading up to Thanksgiving.

It's a week to be encouraged.

And the title of today's post is,

Reject Shallow Living, Refuse, Small Dreaming.

According to a study reported in the May 2010 issue of

a thorough sclerosis, you don't need to know the name of it.

Atherosclerosis.

Participants who were persistently depressed had a two-fold increased risk of

narrowing of arteries. This is the same magnitude of increased risk that one sees in comparing

a pack-a-day smoker to a non-smoker. Incredible. Hopelessness, if not checked, is a death

sentence. A recent study in the British Medical Journal confirms this, reporting that people

with serious depression were two-thirds more likely to die prematurely.

Even those with mild depression had a 16% higher risk of dying compared to individuals

who were distress-free. We can die from sorrow. God told us this long ago. Proverbs 1312 says,

the hope deferred makes the heart sick, but desire fulfilled is a tree of life. Most of us think

only of our emotional or spiritual heart when we read this,

but science is now proving that the verse is true of physical hearts as well.

Hope deferred creates a diseased heart, both emotionally and physically.

And with a diseased heart, no one can run life's race effectively.

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us. We're exhorted in Hebrews 12.1.

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