It bothers me that church goers who have experienced depression, drug use, faulty parenting, auicidal ideation, and traumatic marriages form a group to promote mental health in the church. It’s probably good to create more discussion of what can be done to provide a safe place for church goers to grow. It’s good to point people in the right direction (to professionals) to find the help that is needed. It’s not wise to create suspicion in the help that is being received.
One impression I get is that this group of people have good intentions by creating more discussion, yet they seem to be promoting their ideas, not Chris. What bothers me more is an approach that defines the human spirit as emotions, logic, physical, and spiritual well being, with each being out of balance with each other. I’m not sure Scripture looks at our health and flourishing in that manner.
CA Lewis said that no one has met a mere mortal. Eccles 3:11 states that each person has a vacuum in their heart that only God can fill we are each searching for means and purpose that can only be met by following Christ, doing what He wants. We are creates souls that inhabit a physical body, with emotions, thoughts, body chemistry, in a broken world. Our mind and soul influence our brain’s decisions and emotions, our actions, character and purpose
On the flip side, I met with Dan Young, 53, former student, third marriage, but changes by Christ. After 4 stays at Valley Hope for drug and alcohol use, he is now free of substance abuse and tobacco use. He praises God for what has happened, God’s grace has intervened. The journey began 4 years ago, and a motorcycle accident that should have killed him, represents God’s dramatic intervention.
Soul is the essence of your being that brings together the beautiful mystery of who you are: your physical body, desires, thoughts, emotions, hopes, and passions. According to Dallas Willard, “The soul is that aspect of your whole being that correlates, integrates, and enlivens everything going on in the various dimensions of the self. It is the life-center of the human being.”5
“I pray that God, who gives peace, will make you completely holy. And may your spirit, soul, and body be kept healthy and faultless until our Lord Jesus Christ returns” (1 Thessalonians 5:23 CEV).
Soul integrates; sin disintegrates. Soul unites; sin divides. Sin is the unraveling of your soul’s intricate unity; it defiles, corrupts, and poisons.
Our truest self is screaming for air, desperate to break through the surface of a shallow, hurried life and breathe deeply of God himself. To exhale failure and inhale grace. To come alive again.
Adrian - Matthew 16:24-25. Message - Jesus went to work on the disciples. If they want to follow, they need to follow His lead. Adrian - this is the antidote to self pity.
Counseling may be necessary to overcome sin and suffering. But it must come under the leadership and authority of Jesus, denying ourselves and our distractions.
"Be thankful for the thorns and thistles which keep you from being in love with this world." — Charles Spurgeon
Are we holding on to our struggles, afraid of what it will mean to ask for help or surrender to Christ? Is our identity wrapped up in our struggle of in Christ?
Men are God’s method. The church is looking for better methods; God is looking for better men.… What the church needs today is not more machinery or better, not new organizations or more and novel methods, but men whom the Holy Ghost can use; men of prayer; men mighty in prayer. The Holy Ghost does not come on machinery, but on men. He does not anoint plans, but men–men of prayer …
The training of the Twelve was the great, difficult and enduring work of Christ.… It is not great talents or great learning or great preachers that God needs, but men great in holiness, great in faith, great in love, great in fidelity, great for God–men always preaching by holy sermons in the pulpit, by holy lives out of it. These can mould a generation for God. - EM Bounds
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