After multiple failures over several years, including job loss, lawsuits, marital distress, ministry failures, and many regrets, Paul Chipman found himself highly stressed and unknowingly depressed.
“I felt as if an ominous cloud of negativity had engulfed me, causing me to undergo intense feelings of low self-esteem, self-hatred, and helplessness.”
While visiting a local bookstore one day, the Lord lead him to the book, A Better Way to Think by H. Norman Wright. That book, and others like it, revealed to Paul just how negative his outlook had become.
“Over time, my sorrows were replaced with a triumphant confidence in God’s love for me and His plans for my life, bringing about a renewed excitement. Through the process, I made the vital discovery that I could master my thoughts, instead of my negative thoughts mastering me.”
Paul’s ministry, Think Right Live Right Ministries, helps those struggling with negative thoughts and depression learn to retrain their brain to think right and meditate on positive thoughts. While spending time with God and memorizing His Word tops Paul’s list of favorite hobbies, reading books about neuroscience, brain plasticity and positive faith based thinking is something he greatly enjoys. He shares a few of his favorites: Your Thoughts are Killing You: Take Control of Your Mind and Close the Door to Those Negative, Depressing, Fearful, Worrisome Thoughts Forever by Marybeth Wuenschel. A Better Way to Think: Using Positive Thoughts to Change Your Life by H. Norman Wright. Think Better Live Better: A Victorious Life Begins in Your Mind by Joel Osteen How God Changes Your Brain by Andrey Newberg and Mark Robert Waldman Brain Power: How to Fine-Tune Your Brain Naturally by Samuel C Verghese Crushing: God Turns Pressure into Power by T.D. Jakes Paul also enjoys spending time with his family. As one of thirteen children raised on an okra farm in Southern New Jersey, he appreciates the blessing of having a very close-knit loving family. He met his wife, Vonda, while he was attending Dallas Theological Seminar and they have been married for 35 years. Due to Vonda’s medical condition, they were advised to start a family right away, and within three years found themselves the proud parents of three sons, ages 22 months, 15 months and 6 months. Their family is now blessed with daughters-in-law and grandkids. When he’s not spending time with them, or conducting workshops and seminars, or counseling individuals and couples, he can be found exercising, horseback-riding, and watching old black and white movies with his wife. And if it’s Christmas time, then he can be found in one of his favorite places in the world; sitting in his recliner in front of the Christmas tree, listening to Nat King Cole and Johnny Mathis sing his favorite Christmas songs.
In his book, Think Right Live Right, Paul states that…
“God had been preparing me to be a vessel through whom He can deliver an untold multitude of people still held in bondage to their twisted and distorted thinking patterns and self-destructive behaviors. I was to take what I had experienced and use it to help others whose toxic thinking patterns stole their dreams, robbed their joy, destroyed their hope, and undermined their confidence in God’s promises.”
And Paul will continue to do just that in his workshop at The Noble Man Conference.