Welcome to the Illuminate Church podcast.
We hope today's message is encouraging to you.
Welcome everybody. My name is Tim.
I'm so glad to be here with you today.
Thank you for joining us here at Illuminate Church.
We help people find abundant life in Jesus and that's the
whole point of this series we're in starting today.
Welcome to Week 1 of Weeds in My Garden.
Yeah, it's, it's weeds. Yeah.
Just to clarify. Yeah, this is a series about
being honest about mental health.
I want to welcome everyone who's watching online.
I want you to know that we love you.
God loves you, This church loves you, and we're glad that you're
here. I want to welcome you.
If you're brand new, first time you've ever been here at
Illuminate Church, it's very important that you do one thing,
and that's before you leave today.
Go outside into the lobby, right on the other side of this wall
right here. And there's a place called
Connect Central. And the people there, they're so
nice and awesome and amazing, but they'll help you to quickly
and easily feel like Illuminate Church is home to you.
And there's ways to do that that'll speed up the process
besides you just showing up here every week.
Like, I don't know what to do with myself.
There's so many people here and everyone's nice, but I don't
know anybody yet. And how do I get to know people
and how do I get to know about the church?
They're going to help you out with that.
So make sure you stop by that. But I'm going to jump in very
quickly here today and I need to let you know to settle in.
It gets real, real quick. It gets heavy right from the
git, OK, during the pandemic, I was regularly on a Zoom call
with pastors from all over the nation.
And I don't know if you were been on a Zoom call before where
there's like so many people on it.
They have squares and squares and squares and pages of squares
where their faces are. You know what I'm talking about.
And when you go on these Zoom calls, I don't maybe this is
weird for you to think about, but you really get to stare at
somebody's face that you don't normally get a stare at because
it'd just be weird to stare at one person's face for a long
time, especially if they're looking at.
But when you're on a Zoom call, I'm just looking at that
person's face for a long time. Is this getting weird for you,
Ed? Yeah.
Felt good to me. So I would look at the faces, 1
by 1 by 1 by 1, and face after face after face, dozens and
dozens of faces. You see the same general affect,
which is kind of downtrodden, weary, heavy lighting.
These are pastors from all across the nation.
We're dealing with decision fatigue, grief, anger.
We needed each other to have this safe place where we could
speak to one another about our gloominess, this darkness,
feelings of despair. Some people, we needed to talk
off the wall of quitting. They're thinking about throwing
the towel in. And they're just like, the whole
group just starts rallying around them.
Like, no, you're going to make it.
You're going to be all right. During these Zoom calls.
It just would kind of remind me of other seasons of my life,
other seasons of ministry where I felt kind of the same.
You just feel mentally drained. Not like I've done a lot of work
and I'm just tired, but I've got nothing left.
Weak, downtrodden, bleak, all of these things coming to mind.
And not just me, a lot of these pastors on the screen.
There are reports in the last five years of how mental health
issues have been on the rise in pastors all across the country.
At one point during these last five years they did a 12 month
study and they found that 38% of pastors are seriously
considering quitting the ministry and many of them
actually ended up quitting the ministry post pandemic, just
ejecting from the church. Pastors struggling me during
part of that time. Struggling pastors air quotes
here who are closer to God than the average Joe or Jane, pastors
who are in His word, pastors who proclaim His word, which is
truth in life, pastors who pray His word.
And these pastors are struggling mentally.
And you begin to wonder if it's true of pastors, then what about
the rest of the world? What about regular people?
I'm using air quotes on purpose because it feels weird to think
that pastors are closer to God than anyone else when everyone
has the opportunity to be close to God.
However, if pastors are struggling and what about you?
How's it feeling to you? There's a man, he's a pastor.
His name is Ben Catcherias. Some of you here know his name.
He's at Mountain Christian Church up in Maryland.
One of our elders and his family, Robin Kelly Allen, know
him, have been friends with him. He wrote in the Christian
Standard, which is a magazine read by any Christian, but it's
read by a lot of church leaders. So his words are to the church,
to leaders. He says this, we have a problem.
Emotional well-being is in serious decline.
He goes on to say these words, you won't see it up there, but
it's a palpable crisis that was bad before the pandemic.
Isolation, social people, polarization, massive changes
with work, school, home life, all have exacerbated the crisis,
which has created an extended ambiguity.
And the reason the word is, is ambiguity is because a lot of
people are struggling and they don't know why it's ambiguous to
them. Why do I feel this way?
Why am I tired? Why am I tired of living?
Why do I want to be isolated? Why am I isolated?
All of these questions arising, this ambiguity.
So it's created an extended ambiguity and heightened stress.
That's a perfect cocktail for burnout and emotional struggle.
If I had to raise your hand and say, could you identify with
these words, a great amount of us would raise our hands.
It's no wonder that the World Health Organization, the world 8
billion people Health Organization, has recently
stated in a scientific brief that global prevalence of
anxiety and depression has increased 25%. 25% may not sound
like a big number to you until you consider it's 25% of 8
billion. That's a lot.
Recent surveys reveal a radical downturn in attitudes and
soaring levels of anxiety and worry on all fronts.
Anxiety is now the number one issue for women and the number 2
issue for men behind drug abuse and alcohol, which really tells
me that men have an anxiety problem that they're masking
with weed and booze or worse. Mental disorders are the leading
cause of disability worldwide, and according to an article in
the International Journal of Epidemiology, I don't know how
to say it, so I say it fast. EPD demyology that one mental
health disorders now affect one in five adults.
So if you're sitting next to five other adults, there's a
high likelihood that at least one, probably more, are
struggling with a mental health issue right here, right now.
Generation Z, anyone born between 1999 and 2015, is
considered the most stressed out generation ever.
In recent years, the share of high school students who say
they experienced persistent feelings of sadness and
hopelessness rose from 26% to 44%, according to the
Association of Psychological Science, which means that
roughly half of our kids feel hopeless. 50% of parents and
teens Parents of teens report worsened or new worsened or new
mental health problems in their teens since the beginning of the
pandemic. Most times it's depression and
anxiety, so it makes sense that we would learn that many
children, many young adults are fearful, sad and struggling with
life. As a result, suicide has become
an epidemic. I hate to show you this next
step, but suicide is now the second leading cause of death
for young people 10 to 24, 10. It's heavy and it's real.
Part of me, honestly, as your pastor, candidly, just sharing
with you from Tim's brain to you, is I fret about the idea of
12 weeks of diving into this heart of darkness.
Well, at some point it become too much for us and you all will
revolt and leave the church and say we're going somewhere where
it's happy for a little bit and where it's all rainbows and
unicorns and marshmallow. Marshmallow cream, specifically
delicious because it is so heavy.
And it's some way I have. And church has preconditioned
you to come here expecting, aren't you going to make us
laugh sometime and make us feel good?
And I'm going to feel better about myself and leave here.
And so I, I'm concerned and considered like, should we even
do this? But listen to me After minimal
thought and very minimal prayer, the Lord has made it clear
because here's how the prayer goes.
God, should we care for people who are struggling with mental
health? And even before you finish
asking the question, you feel like an idiot for even asking
it. Like guys are like, no, I don't
think you should let them struggle.
Especially when you consider this our church.
We don't know the exact number because we don't count this
number. It's not really important to us
necessarily, but we think there's about 2500 people who
call Illuminate Church home. There was about 3500 people here
at Easter. There's about just over 1700
people attending on a weekend. And so I'm just putting the
number somewhere kind of in the middle.
There's probably 2500 people out there in the community say this
Illuminate Church is where I go to church, even if they come
twice a year. If you take 500 of those and
consider them to be next Gen. young adult, youth club, 56 kids
ministry, all of them having a great old time over there,
they're not talking about heavy stuff over there.
They're having a blast. And that leaves you with 2000
adults. And I told you that one of every
520% of all adults are struggling with mental health.
It means at the bare minimum, 400 adults in this church right
now are struggling with a mental health issue.
And I dare ask the Lord, should we care for those 400?
And if you take the statistic that almost half of our young
adults, teens are struggling with mental health issues,
that's about another 150 or so. I don't even really know the
exact number, but somewhere around 550 people in this church
right now are having a mental health crisis.
And so we absolutely must address this.
At which point in my mind, I imagined you all saying yes and
Amen. For those here who are
struggling, we must address this.
For those who are not here, people you know, in your
neighborhoods, in your workplaces, in your extended
family, we must go through the series for the healing of Jesus
to reach into the middle of this valley.
We're going to walk through the series.
We believe it's time to get honest about these issues and
address them head on. To begin, I want to show you a
video of a short video of a song that was the genesis for this
message series. It comes from a girl named
Kendall Inskeep. She herself going through her
own mental health issues and out of it was burst this song.
This song is called being honest.
I tell you that I'm whole, but I'm still healing.
I tell you that I'm happy, but I'm grieving.
I thought I was a fighter 'cause I was a fight.
I'm still in the fire, but if I'm being an artist, I'm not
being an artist. I'll give you roses.
Just hope and you don't see the weeds in my garden.
I'm in the darkest. I'm sitting waiting and praying
for someone to show me what. They are cheering loudly as she
is making her great confession that she's been hiding what's
really going on. A church in Illinois called the
Crossing tracked down Kendall and find found out that she's a
believer and they brought her to their church.
They capture her story in a testimony video of why and how
she wrote this song. And just so you know, Kendall
was on The Voice. She was Season 17.
She was on Team Gwen. Any Team Gwen fans here?
Yeah. She's made a great career out of
having a so, so voice. I'm just saying.
OK, I might. Hi, Jimmy.
I just don't know why I said that.
I wish I never did. There's no take backs when it's
recorded forever in history. I want to show you the video of
Kendall giving her testimony and I want you just to try to put
yourself into her story. Here she is.
My name is Kendall Inskeep, I live in Nashville, TN and I'm a
singer-songwriter for Warner Chapel and Cornman Music.
There's a lot of hurt. There's a lot of pain that is
deep rooted in my story. Ended up kind of rebelling when
I was a late teenager. I was so angry at God.
I knew he was there, but I had never had a relationship with
him. I was at the point in my life
where I did not want to be here anymore.
My family, I hadn't talked to them in probably a year.
They're like, OK, you need help. So I went to a facility for two
months and I started journaling to Jesus.
And I had read this journal entry to one of my friends and I
read her this journal entry. We prayed about it.
We asked Jesus to just remove this from Kindle.
And I felt this overwhelming peace and joy.
That is the day that Jesus met me where I was.
Song House is this collaborative workshop for TikTok, Instagram,
social media platforms. The founder is Tyler Ward.
We all go into this loft on Wednesdays and Saturdays.
We're paired into random groups and we have 30 minutes to write
a pre chorus and a chorus. So the day we wrote on us, I was
just getting out of a really bad funk and my passions and my
desire to do the things that I love just kind of were just
depleted. I felt defeated.
And so I called Tyler that day and I was like, I'm not coming
in. I'm I'm not going to write
anything good. Just totally allowing the enemy
to get to me. And he's like Kendall, you're
going to put 2 feet on the ground, you're going to get your
butt up and you're going to come into song House today.
So I get there, we have around or whatever.
I asked him to leave again. Like I'm crying every 10
seconds. Like I'm just like a mess.
But messes become messages, you know?
He's like, no, you're staying. And then we get into the room
and we're all going through the same thing in different ways.
And the concept was honesty. And we're like, what if we're
being honest about not being honest with ourselves?
And it was like, and we wrote this song in like, I'm not even
kidding, probably 15 minutes. That raw emotion that you might
see it in the video. That was exactly how I was
feeling that day. Turns out a lot of other people
were feeling that way too. I think, you know, one of the
lines that everybody tends to go to is the, I'll give you roses.
Just hoping you don't see the weeds in my garden.
It made me stop in my tracks because it was like, if you
can't even be honest with yourself, how are you being
honest with the Lord? So that's not very authentic to
our relationship. And how are you going to be able
to fix me if I don't even give you those pieces?
And so it was a moment of surrender to anybody going
through a season of defeat. Allow yourself to feel it, but
do not allow you allow that specific pain or suffering to
determine your future. Your pain will be turned into
something beautiful. Your weeds will be turned into
roses at some point. So keep faith in that and know
that because she or he who believes that the Lord will
fulfill His promises is blessed. If I'm being honest, I was the
problem. I want to read to you these
words again that Kendall sings in the song.
She says. I tell you that I'm whole, but
then I insert this word. Actually, I'm still healing.
I tell you that. I'm happy, but I'm actually
grieving. I thought I was a fighter.
I'm still in the fire, but if I'm being honest, I'm not being
honest. I'll give you roses, just hoping
you don't see the weeds in my garden.
If I'm being honest, I'm at my darkest.
I'm sitting here waiting and praying for someone to show me
what love is. I'm just being honest.
And the message. Of the gospel, the message of
this church, the message of my heart today is to say to you, if
you are making this prayer, I'm waiting and praying for someone
to show me what love is, then you're in the right place.
Today you came, you've arrived at the right place, the right
house. We want to be a house that shows
you love. But more than that, we want to
show you the one who loves you. Amen.
As I was wondering if these words were true of anyone else
in the church, we sent out a survey to kind of take the pulse
of the mental health of the church.
We sent out a link, sent out the survey, and hundreds of you
responded. Thank you for doing that.
Thank you for being willing to share your journey with us.
I want to show you the results of that that survey.
First of all, you'll see how many men and how many women
responded. This is not a rebuke.
What I say next, but this isn't funny.
What it really shows me is that men are not willing to be honest
about the fact that they're not being honest because men can't
quantify what's going on in here, don't have to give voice
to it, or our pride doesn't allow us to really say, hey, if
I was being honest, I am in a mental health crisis right now.
And so we don't respond. The other flip side of it, you
look and say, wow, women are messed up.
And the truth is there's a lot of women that are and, and the
word messed up is not the right term to use.
I apologize for using that word. But there is a lot of women
going through mental health crisis a lot.
And so if you are a man and you're looking at this thinking,
well, only 75, oh, excuse me, only 25% of the men in the room
need this. I don't need to be here for this
series. Let me tell you, your mother
needs you to be here for this series.
Your wife needs you to be here for this series, your daughter,
your granddaughter, your sister, your Co worker.
If there's a woman in your life that you love, there's a high
likelihood that she's struggling and she needs you to learn what
she's going through and she needs you to learn how to
minister the healing of Jesus to her.
So even if you're pretending like it's not you, you know
somebody who it is. Amen.
Here are the ages. I think it's important to see
that it's from young to old. I don't know why the 30 to 39 is
so high. Maybe that's just a proponent of
who answered the most to the survey.
But from 10 to 80 included. Now here are your answers, your
responses. We said, what are you?
Do you have any thoughts of these?
Are you dealing struggling with any of these?
And here's how you responded to anxiety and worry. 68% burnout
stress, 60% depression, 30% self esteem. 36 skipping that one
trauma 27.4. The one I skipped is hard to
even imagine because if this is a Church of 2500 and 5% of the
people in here are struggling with suicidal thoughts or self
harm, that's 125 people in the church.
They could be sitting right in front of you, right next to you.
It could be you. 20% of the people said none of the above,
which is totally fine. I don't want anyone to generate
something that's not true. Like wow, I don't want to be the
only healthy person here and I'm just going to make something up
so I can like fit in. Like praise God, if you're not
struggling with any of these, 20% of you, which means 80% of
us are saying we are, we're struggling.
No matter how big or small it is.
At some level, you're having a mental health issue in your
life. If our church was being honest,
we're not being honest. We're giving each other roses
and hoping you don't see the weeds in our garden.
Meaning you show up the church like I'm blessed and highly
favored. Give me a hug.
Bring it in, man. Prince.
Gone. Yeah, please gone.
Let's talk about the weather or sports because.
Because we don't know how to deal with the reality of where
we really are. So I'm going to give you some
roses. Hope you don't see this mess.
I'm hiding it from you. This sermon series is going to
be very similar to a book with 12 chapters.
And I'm going to encourage you. You need to go on the journey.
Read all 12 chapters. I know that we live in the era
of church is an option. And so if a better option comes
along, deuces the beach, the Mickey Mouse, the golf course,
every man has his temptation. That's mine.
I'm asking you to choose this to be the better option for your
health and for the health of those people that you love.
This week is the introduction, Chapter 1.
The next three weeks we're going to tackle 3 lies of the enemy
with God's truth. Am I known?
Am I accepted, am I loved? After that we're going to go
into 5 specific issues, suicide being the first one.
Deal with it head on. Depression, anxiety, burnout,
stress. We're going to talk about all of
them in this series. Near the end of the series,
Doctor Wes Bevis will be here. You don't know who he is, but he
is a well sought after man of God in the church.
He's a clinical psycho, LMHC. He's got a lot of dot name
letters after his name. You know what I'm talking about.
He's got all the all the credentials, but he loves to
come to churches and sock to talk to the root of the mental
health crisis. What's really great about Doctor
W is that he's going to be with us here on Sunday morning.
Then Sunday afternoon, the times and the details will be
released. And later he's going to meet
with parents, teachers, administrators, anybody who has
teenagers or soon to be teenagers in their lives and
talk about teenage mental health specifically.
An incredible class. It's going to be free to you to
come and invite your friends. If you got teenagers living next
door, say, hey, if your kids are ever suffering or I've ever
suffered or you think they may ever suffer, come with us.
And then Monday, he's going to stick around and meet with our
ministry staff, some leaders here at the church, looking
forward to having him. And then we'll wrap up the
entire series with what we're going to call Hope Weekend,
because that's the point of the series, help and hope and
possibly, and we believe it, healing.
It may take longer than 12 weeks for your healing to come, but by
the end of the series, the idea is that you have help and hope
that heads towards your healing. That was a bunch of ages.
That's what's pastors do bunch of.
So what I want to do today is just give us some principles to
guide us, some constructs by which we will understand the
series and understand mental health.
Here's the first one. Don't be quick to judge a
problem without considering perspective, context.
Say it another way. Don't be quick to judge a person
who's going through a mental health crisis without
understanding context. We tend to be a narrow minded
church, not illuminate the church in general when it comes
to mental health, mental health issues.
We need to destigmatize mental health, especially in the
church. People can't be honest which
leads to their healing if they're afraid of being judged
or shamed in the church. So let's let this be a House of
healing by making it a House of freedom, by eliminating our
judgment and understanding context, asking questions,
listening, refusing to be narrow minded.
Oh what's wrong with you? It must be XYZ.
You need to fix that. There are three components that
make up mental health and really every mental health struggle is
a combination of these three components being affected and
usually they go in order. The first thing that happens is
typically something situational. Everyone say situational.
These are circumstances that happened to us.
Trauma from another person, a horrific event, overwhelming
stress. Something hits US incredibly
difficultly. If you want to think about it
this way. Situational mental health
happens when we stand at the edge of the lake and the waves
come. They're buffeting us now.
Sometimes the waves happen because somebody drove a
speedboat right near us, somebody on a jet ski, something
external, and you stand there and either wiped out by the
waves or you learn resiliency. Other times we're standing at
the waves hit and the waves have come simply because the wind
blew, meaning life sometimes just happens.
Health crisis, death in the family, loss of a job, even
something as simple as a blown tire.
What it does to that day, you know what I'm talking about.
We stand there and these waves hit us and we did follow.
Or we grow resilient. Or sometimes the waves are there
because we walk over here, we pick up a boulder ourselves, we
stand at the edge of the lake and go.
And because of our own doing, these waves come and they impact
us. The situational mental health
begins to happen, then you move from there, and typically what
happens is because of whatever situation is happening,
something physiological happens. We have situational now we have
physiological meaning your body is responding as it's been
designed to respond to trouble, to trauma, to harm, to these
waves. The amygdala, it's part of your
brain. When you touch an oven the
amygda goes pull your hand away hot right?
Same part of your brain that says this is painful, fight
fight freeze engages the autonomic nervous system.
This tells your body to do things without even thinking.
You just are responding. Chemicals are dumped, adrenaline
dump, cortisol dumped into your body.
And when this happens enough, here's what happens.
Your brain literally gets re hardwired.
It was made one way, now it's being shapeshifted into another
way based on the trauma that's happened to the extent that now
this is your new reality. And I've been the situational,
the physiological, and then the spiritual. 3 components that
make up mental health. The spiritual is the root of all
things. We believe that you have a
spirit that leads your body, and when you go through trauma and
stress, the body starts to lead the spirit and it feels out of
control. And the more out of control it
feels, the more terrifying it is.
And that's when hopelessness starts to set in.
Now, just for a minute, step with me to the side and realize
that the the original design, there was no trauma and stress.
Trauma and stress was entered into the equation because of
sin, and sin is often the root of spiritual mental health.
Whether somebody sinned against you or you sinned against
yourself, it traumatizes you, starts to change your
physiological nature so that you think this is your new reality
and there's no way out. The original design in the
garden, perfection, sin enters the equation and their bodies
changed. They're now able to die broken,
and we live in that reality. We're in this middle ground
where the brokenness of our bodies is experienced by all of
us, including mental health. Mental health is impacted
physiologically. And then you think of final
destination, which is renewed presence with God because of
faith in Jesus, in the perfection of the garden.
No more weeping, no more cancer, no more mental health issues.
And we're existing right now in this middle.
And what I'm asking you to do in this series is to be patient
with all of us because we're in the middle to reserve judgement,
to not say, well, I know why you're there.
And here's the answer. You need to pray more.
You need to have more faith, or you need not to ever take
medicine. Listen, sometimes when people
are in the middle, they're going to need medical help.
Sometimes when people in the middle, they're going to need
clinical help from a counselor. Sometimes when people in the
middle, they're going to need to remove themselves from certain
triggers and stressors and situations and people.
But here's what I want to say to you because it starts originally
perfected and it ends originally perfected and this is spiritual
work that God is doing. The middle also is ministered to
spiritually, and that's why we're addressing this
spiritually. If you're in the middle of a
mental health crisis, we are in support of you seeking medical
help if that's what you need to get through the middle.
But at the root of everything, the message of the church is
that Jesus is able. If you have a physiological
issue, he can heal it. If you have a mental health
issue, he can heal it. And really, the two are tied
together for me. I just want to tell you my story
again. When I went through crippling
anxiety. Listen y'all, I could barely
function. I could barely sleep for years.
Four years roughly. It started situationally.
Fear of heights, overwhelmed, stress.
This is my whole story through unrest.
You already all heard this story.
I'm just putting it in context of the message.
If you didn't hear the story, go watch it on YouTube.
All the messages are there. Starts situationally.
It changed my Physiology so that my brain was rehard wired so
that anytime the smallest trigger happened, my body
responded to my new body's makeup.
Tons of stress, tons of stress, tons of stress to unwind both of
these things. I tried counseling and it was
good. It was helpful.
I tried changing the way that I approach situations, but the
total unwinding of it happened at the feet of Jesus.
The healing of the physical and the healing of the situational,
the trauma happened at the feet of Jesus.
So as we go through this, we're going to give grace context to
everybody in the room as you're walking through the middle.
But we want to address this as a church from the spiritual side
to say Jesus is able. Listen to me.
Yeah, you can cut for that. But listen, I'm not telling you
that if you're still struggling and you've prayed a lot that you
failed. I'm telling you that God is
still working. And there may be things that
you're going to learn in this series, modalities, practices,
trauma, healing that is available to you that you've
never heard of before and you've never processed before.
I am standing here as witness. There are people in my life who
are witness that what we thought was impossible to cure and
taking way too long to be healed.
God was working it out the whole time for His reasons and His
purposes. So while people in the middle
don't judge what God's doing, and if you're in the middle,
don't give up on what God's doing.
Psalm 1/19/68. I say it 100 times.
He's good and all He does is good.
Romans 828. He's working all things out for
good. Even the process of your healing
he's using for good. Let me move on #2 don't.
Don't underestimate the power of your community.
I'm going to say some obvious things.
We have become so busy that we don't have time for the very
things that could be having a massive positive impact on our
mental health. Most of all, real deep
friendships. We don't make time for it
anymore here at the church. This staff that works here, we
love you. We want good things for you, not
to take from you. And sometimes when we invite you
to church, it feels like what we're doing is taking away your
Sunday morning. I wanted to sleep in.
I want to do whatever. And now you're making me feel
bad about not coming to church. Listen, what's in our heart is
what science proves. Those people who attend church
regularly get into the House of the Lord with other believers
have a massive decrease in the amount of mental health issues
in their life studied fact. So when we're inviting you to
church, we're inviting you to something good to say it's good
for you to be in the House of Lord is good to you to for you
to be with other people constantly community that lifts
you. I love and can I just speak to
everyone who's watching online today.
I love that you're there. I love that you're watching.
I'm grateful. But online leaves something to
be desired. It serves a purpose 100%.
If you're like in the hospital, if you're on vacation and want
to stay connected, if you want to catch up, I don't know what
circumstances you're there. So sometimes it's purposeful,
but better to be in the house because here's what happens.
Satan will deceive you into thinking that you're getting all
that you need by watching church online while eliminating from me
what you need as well as a message.
You need the community. You need the people with you.
Otherwise what happens is when you fall down, there's no one to
pick you up. Ecclesiastes chapter
Ecclesiastes chapter 4 says 2 are better than one because they
have a good return for their labor.
If either of them falls down, one can help the other up, but
pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up.
We're going to be a church that helps one another up.
Will you help me out when I fall down?
I will help you when you fall down.
Amen, Galatians. Paul writes that we are to bear
one another's burdens, and you can't bear anyone's burdens if
you're by yourself. And no one can bear your burdens
if you're by yourself. If you're not invested in
relationships, Here's what happens.
You will be isolated. Mental health crisis will come.
I'm not declaring these things, by the way.
I'm just saying this is typically what happens.
And then in your crisis, you will look around for people
because suddenly you realize I am in trouble and here's what
happens. In your desperation, in your
neediness, you reach out to people who can't really help
you, and you find yourself partnering with people who end
up doing damage to you instead of helping you because you're
reaching out in desperation. I just need love.
I need somebody pay attention to me.
I just need to be wanted. And all of a sudden you find
yourself in a situation you don't want to be in because
you're desperate for relationship.
So better to have relationship before you're desperate.
When we bear one another's burdens, it's like I should come
to you and say, what can I take from you?
But when I'm desperate, I come to you and say, here's what I
need, here's what I need, here's what I need.
So better to start now and not forsake your community.
Think of it this way, your community, when it comes to your
mental health, is your spiritual safety net.
There for you before you get into the fire, there for you
already. Don't underestimate the power of
your community #3 watch your intake, watch your intake.
The eye is the lamp of the body, says Jesus.
So whatever you put into the eye is good, the body will be good,
But if you put into the eye that which is bad, the whole body
will be bad. Philippians chapter 4 says that
this way. Finally, brothers and sisters,
whatever is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, if
anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such
things. Fill your hearts and minds with
excellent and praiseworthy things, which means make sure
that you're spending time in the word of God.
Because if you want to put into your eye that which is good,
there's nothing better than this goodness.
It is a variable garden of goodness.
And please make sure which you intake off of social media that
you're very careful about. Everything is spiritual on some
level. If you're going to be online,
make sure that you're careful about who you are allowing to
influence your heart, soul and spirit.
And make sure you're careful about who you follow.
Jesus says follow me. And there's all sorts of rabbis
on social media. Not really rabbis, they're
teachers who are trying to get you to follow them.
Political pundits, people setting, culture, people
defining things for you that are opposite or different are
slightly skewed from how the word of God would say it to you.
Social. Social media is great at two
things really Great Depression and anxiety.
The studies are in social media does not impact positively your
mental health at all. Period.
It doesn't. So what are we doing?
I said at youth camp. Death scroll when?
I guess it's called doom scroll. But isn't it really death
scroll? Some people would say about
social media? It's a really cute bear.
That's what people who own pet Bear say.
It's a cute bear. Such a cute bear.
I love my cute bear until the bear eats them.
Some parents would say to me, like I I don't want to tell my
kids to get rid of the bear because they love the bear.
It's a cute bear. If I take away the cute bear,
they're going to be upset at me. All I'm trying to say is the
bear looks really hungry. Hope that doesn't sound too
redneck, but here we are. The winds will blow, the waters
will rise, the rain will fall, and your foundation against such
things will be whatever your intake is.
So what is your life built upon? Social media feed the gospel of
Jesus Christ. All I'm trying to say is watch
your intake. Here's the last thing.
It's OK to admit that you're not OK.
The thrust of the gospel is that Jesus came into the world that
was broken and fallen. Jesus came to save and to heal,
which means people were in need of saving and healing.
Jesus himself said, is the sick that needs a doctor, and then
the doctor came. We want to be a kind of church
that creates this incredibly beautiful, safe hospital so that
the doctor can do his work in Jesus name, Amen.
In fact, it will be your honesty, your candor about where
you are that will give hope in life to somebody else.
We often will be in situations where people are hurting and
they've hurt to the extent that they've hurt themselves or
worse. And you just say to yourself, I
wish they would have been honest with me.
I wish they would have called me up and told me their truth so
that I could journey with them. And the reason that they're not
reaching out and being honest with you is because you are not
reaching out and being honest to them about how things are really
going for you. The world is hemorrhaging hope,
and the local church is the hope of the world.
And sometimes the greatest way that you can give another person
hope is by saying to them, Me too, I get it.
I understand. I've walked where you're
walking. I'm walking there.
Now let's walk together. You're not alone.
You're not the only one. That's the lie of the devil, by
the way. When you're going through a
mental health crisis, you're the only one and you're the worst of
them. It's not true.
That's why Jesus said that 2nd is this Mark chapter 12, verse
31. The second command is this love
your neighbor as yourself. There is no greater commandment
than these. Love your Lord, your God, and to
love your neighbor as yourself. Therefore, our marching series,
our marching orders in this series is this love your
neighbor as you want to be loved.
All you have to do is think, if I were going through a mental
health crisis, what would I want somebody to do for me, to pray
for me, to encourage me, to walk with me, just to be with me and
whatever it is that you think that you would want done for
you. Jesus has commanded us well.
Love those people the same way. Do for them what you want done
for you. That's the command.
And I believe that we can do this.
This last thought, maybe today you feel like you're struggling
mentally, really struggling, and you think to yourself, I'm not
sure anyone can help me. I'm not sure anyone can
understand me. I don't even think Jesus can get
into my mind and understand my mess and feel what I feel.
Hebrews chapter 4, We get this promise, for we do not have a
high priest that's Jesus who is unable to empathize with our
weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way
just as we are, yet he did not sin.
What am I saying to you? I'm saying in Matthew chapter 8,
we learned that Jesus was homeless.
We learned his family was thinking that he was crazy.
In Matthew chapter 12 and in Matthew chapter 26, it says his
best friends turn their back on him.
His closest friends sold him to be killed for money.
That's Matthew 26. He stood face to face with the
devil and endured all of his demonic tricks.
That's Luke 4. He dealt with death, John
Chapter 11. He endured gossip and slander.
Matthew chapter 12. John chapter 8, this happens to
a lot of people going through mental health crisis.
People just gossip about you, slander you want you to know
Jesus has experienced that he endured suffering for
righteousness sake. John chapter 15, he was shamed
publicly. Mark chapter 14 he endured
periods of hunger. Mark Chapter 11, he received
criticism of his ministry. Who would criticize?
Like you can criticize me, I get it.
There's lots of criticize, but Jesus, his theology was mocked.
You can pick any verse. His message was rejected, pick
any verse. His preaching was critique.
Luke chapter 4. His disciples didn't get it.
So the writer of Hebrews also says for this reason, he, Jesus,
had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order
that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in
service to God. And then he might make atonement
for the sins of the people because he himself suffered when
he was tempted. He's able to suffer.
He's able to help those who are being tempted.
In this series, let's be the hands and feet of Jesus.
You've heard me say before, as the body of Christ, we should be
doing what Christ did while he was in his body.
And what Christ did while he was in his body.
He took his pain and gave it purpose so that he could
identify and empathize with other people going through pain.
And we get the opportunity to do the same.
So I've walked through this difficulty.
I'm walking through this difficulty.
And I want to use this pain to help minister and give hope to
another person, to read life and help and hope to them.
But listen, church, none of this happens if we don't start being
honest about the things that we're not being honest about,
about what's happening in and through this.
I want you to know that you are in the best place you could be
if you're walking through a mental health crisis.
You are not alone, not at all. Many around you are also
struggling. And so you made a fantastic
decision to be here today. And I want to say to you, well
done. Don't let the enemy discourage
you from coming next week and being here for hope and for
healing now, while Jesus is in the process of making all things
new and we're in the middle ground from original design to
final destination. I want you to know this.
One day is coming where there will be no more weeping, there
will be no more gnashing of teeth, no more sorrow, no more
brokenness, and you will be healed.
But listen to me closely. If you do not have a
relationship with Jesus, you have no chance to the war in
your minds. If you do not have a
relationship with Jesus Christ, you do not have a chance against
the attacks of the enemy. If you don't have a relationship
with Jesus Christ, you have nothing in your power, nothing
that you could pay to cover the penalty of sin.
Bible says the wages of sin is death.
What is owed to us when we sin is death.
But thanks be to God that Jesus has paid the price and made it
possible for anyone who believes in their heart, confesses with
their mouth and be saved. This is the promise of God for
anyone who's willing to believe. So if today you haven't yet
believed, today's your day to allow Jesus to save you from
what only Jesus can. So we're going to pray.
If you bow your heads, close your eyes, don't go into
religious mode, and don't let fear speak to you.
Let faith arise. And consider that the Holy
Spirit drew you here to this space so that if you've never
believed on Jesus today you would believe, confess with your
heart, confess with your mouth, believe in your heart that Jesus
is Lord and the Bible says you will be saved.
So whole church, would you pray this prayer out of your mouth
nice and loud together saying, Father, in the name of Jesus, I
recognize my need for a Savior because of my sin.
I am due death, but I believe and confess that Jesus is Savior
and Jesus is Lord. Now come Jesus into my heart and
live your life through me, I believe.
Thanks for joining us today. We hope God is speaking to your
heart through this message. If you'd like to connect with
us, you can text Connect to 4:07 588-0115 or visit Illuminate dot
Church. Have a great week.