Category Archives: mental health

Nov 2 2011

Reign in Me Again

"I will serve my King with a true heart."

I am persuaded that Americans simply do not process sovereignty, especially endowed in a person.  A recent trip to London I observed a deep committment to the Royal crown.  Some people are lactose intolerant; we are Lordship intolerant.  America is a broad, an open and friendly nation, characteristics worthy of emulation.  But we are also rebellious and arrogant people. We feel we’ve achieved a kind of intangible watermark, a personal liberty with her sleeves rolled up.

Jesus reigns and rules the Universe.  There is no competing gods trying to take his place, no competition for his job.  He is the ultimate Sovereign. He is a King [with a capital K] dressed up in the ultimate royal robes of light.

God is totally sovereign, ordaining, ruling, and disposing of all things as He will, or He has no control over anything and faith in Him is an utter absurdity.  Nothing is a surprise to God; nothing is a setback to His plans; nothing can thwart His purposes; and nothing is beyond His control.

“His sovereignty is absolute. Everything that happens is uniquely ordained by God. Sovereignty is a weighty thing to ascribe to the nature and character of God. Yet if He were not sovereign, He would not be God. The Bible is clear that God is in control of everything that happens.“

Joni Eareckson Tada, www.joniandfriends.org.

My heart must change.  I must set aside those American attributes of rebellion and pride.  You see, I belong to a new kingdom now, a new King.  He is not in danger of losing His throne [but I am].  He rules everything in His universe, not with an iron fist, but with an open hand with nail prints for all to acknowledge.

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Oct 20 2011

Is ‘Evangelism’ the Christian’s Greatest Fear?

“Why are you afraid of evangelism?”

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Lets get serious now, why does it  frighten you? 

Is it flesh, or maybe is it demonic?  What do you think? 

What does God desire?

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Bad experiences

  • Door to Door- My first witnessing experience happened in 1984, we went out 2×2.  I was paired up with Jody, a quiet and gentle soul.  I freaked out at our first house, and hid behind a tree, and got sick to my stomach, I left her on the porch standing alone.
  • Pushy televangelists–Hate them. I abhor Christian TV.  It is affront to God in my opinion.
  • “My friend was obnoxious with me.”– Are you ‘joshing’ me?
  • Clumsy Apologetics, (being caught without answers). You need to be light on your feet, nimble, evasive if you have to…

Emotions

  • Fear of Rejection– Major deal!  I hate to have people reject me.
  • Losing a friendship– IDK, maybe?
  • Fear of offending– Offensive, who knows, maybe?  It could very well be that I’m being persecuted for Jesus‘ sake.
  • Feeling inadequate– Never, but if I don’t ever witness, it is never an issue, right?
  • Embarrassment over unanswerable questions– Everyone has questions.  Besides, they are heathens!

Perceptions

  • Fear of what others will think about you.– Too close for comfort to answer.  O.K.  I admit it… I have chicken blood in my veins.
  • Rudely interrupting somebody’s life– Never thought of that.  Is that even remotely possible?
  • Being seen as arrogant– Not a chance, I am super humble (ask my friends.)
  • Your own weakness, hypocrisies, and inadequacies– You got to be kidding. Weaknesses, we don’t need no stinkin’ weaknesses!
  • Personal Doubt– I am throughly trained to avoid this trap.  Doubt is never part of my thinking, never, ever!

 

Guilt

  • Pastor says so.– He/she knows, he/she has heard from God.  Besides, who can disagree with him/her.
  • Jesus says so.– Are you sure?  He loves me too much to do this to me.
  • To mess up somebody’s eternal destiny is your fault– No sweat. Everyone is responsible for their own decisions.

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Thank you Evangelism Coach International for the jumpstart on this subject.  http://www.evangelismcoach.org/

A good start happens right here.  http://www.intothyword.org/pages.asp?pageid=53499

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Aug 23 2011

Some Simple Facts

•The World Health Organization predicts that by 2020, mental illness will be the second leading cause of disability worldwide, after heart disease.

•Major mental disorders cost the nation at least $193 billion annually in lost earnings alone, according to a new study funded by the National Institutes of Health‘s National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).

•When workers with depression were treated with prescription medicines medical costs declined by $882 per employee per year and absenteeism dropped by 9 days (Health Economics).

•Half of all lifetime cases of mental illness begin by age 14, three-quarters by age 24. Treating cases early could reduce enormous disability, before mental illnesses become more severe.

•One in four adults experiences a diagnosable mental disorder in any given year, including our returning troops. One in ten children has a serious mental or emotional disorder.

•Suicide is the third leading cause of death for America’s youth ages 15-24. More youth and young adults die from suicide than from cancer, heart disease, AIDS, birth defects, stroke, pneumonia, influenza, and chronic lung disease combined. The vast majority of those who die by suicide have a mental illness-often undiagnosed or untreated.

•Our jails and prisons are now the largest psychiatric wards in the nation, housing well over 350,000 inmates with serious mental illness compared to approximately 70,000 patients with serious mental illness in hospitals.

•One out of every five community hospital stays involves a primary or secondary diagnosis of mental illness.

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Source: NAMI.org

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Aug 9 2011

Good Grief

Good Grief
How Depression is a Blessing in Disguise
by Rev. James Winsor

A darkness creeps into the soul and smothers it. Who knows why, how long it will last, or what will make it go away. You feel like you have nothing left to give to anyone else. You don’t want anyone around, except that one person who knows how to lift the darkness. You can’t and don’t want to explain how you feel. You don’t know why you’re sad, and you feel embarrassed by it because you have a pretty nice life. You can see why hungry, sick or poor people would be sad, but not you.

If you’re up to it, you try to process thoughts about God or words to or from God. This feels impossible. At best, God is distant. He couldn’t care about these stupid, unjustifiable feelings. There are people with real problems; God should be much more concerned about them. At worst, God becomes a very active enemy. He judges you for feeling this way. He wants you to just drop this selfish, self-centered, self pity trip. Doesn’t the Bible command, “Rejoice in the Lord always?” You’re a long way from doing that. Every word of good cheer seems to condemn you more for not being cheery.

As you deal with these feelings, you start to see what’s at the bottom. For the most part, it’s self-loathing. You just can’t stand being around you! Sometimes you can’t see the causes for the self-loathing. It’s just there and it won’t go away. I hate being me, and anyone who really knew me would hate me. The people who love me only do because they don’t know me.

Sometimes the self-loathing turns outward. It explodes into a kind of rage against the world. Now the darkness has covered not only your heart, but your eyes. You can’t see outside of yourself. You have trouble remembering there is an outside world. When you wake up to that fact, you again see the self-centeredness and hate it all the more.

It doesn’t seem possible to break out or for anyone to break into it. Even God doesn’t seem to know how to break inside the darkness.

Some of the most spiritually-rich Christians I know experience depression. Some of them medicate it. Some don’t. But it doesn’t make that much difference when it comes to the soul. You can’t medicate the soul.

God is up to something in your depression. There are things God can do for you better when you’re depressed. Someone once said that God empties in order to fill, and kills in order to raise up.

God could have made a world where depression is impossible. He could have made a world where sin, death and Satan are not on the scene. But God decided ahead of time that it was better to do things His way. There was something important that He could do with a broken world that He couldn’t do with a perfect world.

In paradise, Adam and Eve did not know God as well as you do. They walked and talked with Him, but were ignorant of what God was really about. God is self-sacrificing, self-giving love. Adam and Eve didn’t have a clue about Good Friday. They didn’t need Good Friday. Do you realize what that means? They didn’t need God’s self-sacrificial love. All they needed was a creator and provider. They didn’t need a Savior. But that’s what’s best about Him. He saves sinners by dying for them. When Jesus was on the cross, you were loathed enough. God took out all of His holy loathing, and it was over.

There is nothing more important in your life than God’s saving love for sinners. Depression is a cold, gray wind that blows you off the cliff. You can’t find anything inside yourself to cling to, to hope in, to claim as a basis for God’s acceptance. All you have is Jesus and His love for sinners. His resurrection of sinners in Himself. His baptizing of this sinner, you. That’s all you have. You fall into the water and lose yourself.

But once you fall in, you can only see the love of God in Christ. A purple robe for mocking. A brown cross. Silver nails. Red blood. A white robe shining forth from the darkness of the tomb.

Have you ever noticed that you can see the farthest at night? In the daytime the most distant object you can see is the sun – a mere 93 million miles away. But at night your eye takes in countless stars and galaxies that are many light years away. Your vision is greatly improved in the darkness.

So it is with depression. When you are having bright days of happy sunshine, you can’t see too much further than your studies, sports, work, friends, family or possessions. A very small world. But in the darkness of depression you begin to see the glistening vast expanse of God’s love in Christ.

And when you are full of self-loathing and darkness, the love of Christ is all you have. And as it turns out, you don’t have Christ at all until all you have is Christ.

The Rev. James Winsor is pastor at Risen Christ Lutheran Church in Arvada, Colorado.

Taken from the Spring 2002 edition of Higher Things magazine. You can write Higher Things at P.O. Box 58011, Pleasant Prairie, WI 53158-8011.

www.issuesetc.org

Bryan’s Note:  This is the second article by Rev. James Winsor that I have selected for www.brokenbelievers.com.  He has a very definite ministry to those who struggle.  He writes with insight and a real sense of wanting to help– not preach.  I hope you will enjoy this and receive the gift he offers.  Let me know what you think.

 

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Jul 28 2011

So You Want to Become Vulnerable?

 
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To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”

 — C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

Public speaking has never been a problem for me. All through high school, Bible college, as a street evangelist– nothing I’ve ever done really has ever been a concern.  But,  I have friends who rather submit themselves to hideous torture then to put themselves in that public position.  They are afraid of the spotlight, feel exposed and just a little too accessible in the lime light. 

Becoming vulnerable in love is ‘above and beyond’ the fear of public speaking.  It is almost irrational in the way it takes charge.  We refuse to put out, with the fear of being that accessible.  We will not allow ourselves to become a victim.  But public speaking has nothing on loving someone deeply, because of the risk involved.

Men are the greatest perpetrators of this attitude.  We close ourselves off and keep our hearts protected and safe.  We cannot truly give our hearts away, because we cannot share that which is most intimate (we hate that word!).  I will refuse to become vulnerable to anyone, because of the risk I put myself in. To really “trust,” in deep way, is way too much exposure for us.

Our families cannot understand our emotional coldness.  They think that the problem is their fault.  They struggle to understand.  And we respond to their attempts to accommodate us with skepticism and fear.  We hold back and pathetically attempt to adjust to their efforts.  Selfishness ultimately wins the day.

Lewis reveals that our natural inclination is towards selfishness.  We try to hide and avoid the “nakedness” that love requires.  I am convinced that we will spare no effort to stay safe, becoming invulnerable to another’s inspection.  We wall up ourselves to the risks of love.  But learning to trust is one of life’s most difficult tasks.

Jesus Christ has come, to teach us how to love openly and freely.  He became vulnerable, laying aside his perogative of being God.  He is teaching us to love like him. We will only truly heal when we risk it all, with our Father, and our brothers and sisters.

 

 

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Jul 1 2011

The Curse of Social Isolation

Quite a few studies now out, revealing the reality of social isolation.  It seems more and more people are veering away from social contact. A Duke University study found that Americans are choosing to become more solitary than ever. Many are eschewing all relations all together.  This is a problem.

I’ve seen some of the statistics– fully 25% of people have no relationships at all, and 50% have no relationships outside of their spouse and children.  This disturbing trend is building momentum.  In 1985 the figure was just 15%.

I think that a lot of pressure may be coming from the internet, although Facebook and Twitter have reconfigured social connections.  Longer work hours, the iPod and Blackberry, chat rooms and cable TV contribute to the move away from human contact.

The commute time is also a factor.  For every 10 minutes stuck in traffic there is roughly a 10% drop in social relationships.  So if you have a bad commute on I-80 you are more likely not to want to have a friend over.

Hundred years ago our society was far more geared for personal contact.  People would regularly visit each other.  Neighbors knew each other.  There were parlor games and dinners.  Music recitations and skits.  Card parties. Television and radio had not yet grabbed the countries psyche.  Sociologists and anthropologists confirm that our history was deep in contact with each other.  We were not built for solitary living.

With community life disappearing people are turning to online relationships. Our churches are trying to adapt, as even Christians are not connecting like they should.  I have been out in the Alaskan bush villages, and the older generation is frustrated because the younger generation seems to be in trouble.  “They don’t pick berries, or hunt; all they do is sit in front of the TV or their laptops.”

I guess the biggest issue of all is mental illness.  Social isolation is a direct antagonist of depression and other disorders.  In order to get better, people must reach out and connect.  There is no substitute, no other option.

I see the shift in my own life.  I have dropped 80% of my Dish Network.  I am seeking to back off of being online 6-8 hours a day.  I am trying to be around flesh & blood as often as possible.  I am personally trying to consciencely maximize that time.  It keeps me healthier. 

To be healthier, we think its physical.  We have our gym memberships and we run on the treadmill.  That is good.  But I’m thinking we are losing out if we don’t workout socially (and spiritually) as well.

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