Church Hurt - Spiritual and Mental Health Seminar

6/22/2024

Mental and Spiritual Health Seminar
 @Grace First Baptist Church, San Antonio, TX

Dr. Uejin Kim discusses the intersection of mental health and the Christian community, debunking common myths and emphasizing the importance of understanding mental health using different conceptual models. Dr. Kim explores the intricacies of the mind and brain, delving into the cognitive triad and biopsychosocial models to highlight the various factors contributing to mental well-being. The conversation highlights the history of emotional and spiritual trauma in church, the common myths about mental health disorders in the church, and the Biblical evidence of God’s perspective on our mental health issues.

Playlist Content

·         Mental health Basics: How does the brain work and who is a psychiatrist? 

·         How does our mind work in real life and is it my fault I am mentally fragile? 

·         Mental health diagnosis: now what and do I need medications? 

·         Christian church trauma: myths and misunderstandings about mental health

·         God’s response to mental health issues: A warm fatherly approach 

Resources

·         Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/iSnP_E

·         Youtube: https://youtube.com/@restorepsychiatry4396?feature=shared

·         Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100077531269592

·         Podcast: https://restorepsych.com/resources

·         Dr. Kim's private practice website: www.restorepsych.com 

Disclaimer: This presentation’s content is not intended to diagnose or treat disorders but for informational, educational, and empowerment purposes. Please consult your physician or mental health provider for specific medical and mental health needs. Our interaction via a public speaking platform does not constitute a patient-physician relationship.

#MentalHealthMatters #FaithAndHealing #BreakingFreeFromBoxes #GodsPerspectiveOnMentalHealth #EndingMentalHealthStigma

**Disclaimer: This site's content is not intended to diagnose or treat any disorders but rather for informational, educational, and empowerment purposes. Please consult with your physician or mental health provider for specific medical and mental health needs. Our connection via social media platforms does not constitute a patient-physician relationship.**

Sign up for Dr. Uejin Kim's Newsletter: https://uejin-kim.mykajabi.com/signup

www.uejinkim.com
www.restorepsych.com

Transcript

Okay, as is filling in, how are we doing today? Great to see you. Good. So my name is Dr. Uejin Kim. I'm a child, adolescent and adult psychiatrist. And as you know, Miss Melia said I am the physician owner of my private practice. But I would like to say that
a better credential is that I am a daughter of God, I gotta say, when I was 17, I'm 36 years old. So I have 36 years of life experience. Short but sweet right now. But um, and I've been a psychiatrist for gosh, I can't do math. So I started medical school at 2015. So it's been about 10, nine years of being a doctor and getting training for psychiatry get trained for child psychiatry. So it's been a journey. But I feel like in 36 years old, very short, like that I had got extracted so much wisdom by his presence. I was telling my husband the other day that I was like, I love therapy and wisdom, because I've been journaling since I was middle school. And I feel like I was talking to the Holy Spirit. I thought I was just writing a journal. But looking back, I'm like, he was in it every single day when I'm mad when I'm sad when I'm angsty when I'm a teenager. So it's just really awesome to be 36 and be sharing with you what I've been learning in my life. And I know that is very universal, biblical truth. So I, I hope and pray that you guys will ultimately be free. When I was driving here, I was just kind of praying, because this is a new audience for them. Right? This is first time we were reading it just each other. And I was kind of nervous. And I was praying about it. But he was kind of giving me the analogy or a vision, if you will, that some of you guys here have been living your life in a box. I feel kind of like that. It's like, oh, you can't get mad. Okay, come back to the word. Oh, we can't get sad. We can't, we have to go back to the Word. And I think ultimately, my desire for you. And I think God's desire for us come out of the box. You guys are children of God, and you have a wonderful world, some sad, some mad and some happy and some exciting, but he wanted you to be free to enjoy the whole playground, if you will. Does everybody kind of resonate with that? All right. Good. So I'm hoping that freedom is my goal for you guys today as I give you some of the training, clinical knowledge, but also my personal stories and I want to hear in my clinic, clinic stories, okay. So today's objectives is to understand the mental health using different conceptual models that I learned in my training, and understand the difference between mental health issues and mental health disorders. And along the way, and especially the third part of the talk, debunk any common mental health myths in Christian church. And I could charge in a quotation because I don't think this is Grace, First Baptist issues, maybe as a religion, and Christianity as a religion, what do we encounter? And lastly, discuss God's perspective and mental health, both mental health and the Bible. Okay. So this is a disclaimer, basically saying that the presentation content is not intended purposes to diagnose or treat, but as an informational education and empowerment purposes. And please consult your physician or mental health provider for individual diagnosis or mental health needs. And our interaction here as a public speaking, platform does not constitute a patient physician relationship. And I have a funny, but just as critical disclaimer number two, this is a bathroom door in my house that I kicked, and I cracked. And I include this picture to say that I'm not here saying that I'm better than you or I'm more wiser than you are more common than you. This is a door that I broke like maybe a few months ago, because my oldest kid refused to brush teeth. And he locked himself in the bathroom and we have to go to school. So real life situations happen. And I sometimes lose my cool, so I'm not here to preach that I got it all together. I'm just learning alongside you in this journey. Does everybody feel better about that? So what is mental health? So I like to get a little bit nerdy and go to the original Webster dictionary to kind of understand what mental health is. And mental means relating to the mind relating to the disorders of the mind and how has a state of being free from illness or injury related to being hold. So I'd like to highlight that mental is about the mind. And health is about being free and being home. And this is kind of like I said, this is my goal for us today that we We'll be a little bit more free, and a little bit more restored at the end of the talk with our minds as we understand how our mind works. So which organ controls the mind? And he guesses. So these are lists of organs in our body, and God created them perfectly, and they work perfectly harmonious harmoniously, amazingly together. And the organ that we're talking about is the brain. So do you see the eyes, nose, ears, kidneys, lungs, heart, intestines, all of them have a function, but they all tell something to the brain, like they all give data to the brain. So imagine, if you walked into the kitchen and somebody left the stove on and the kettle of water is like steaming hot, right, you will see that kettle, you'll see that steam, you might feel a little bit temperature rising in the room because of the scene. And you might hear the scene. And all of that data is going into the brain. And brain does an amazing thing of collecting all the data. And then now reaching a conclusion, this is a potential threat, that steam can blow up right. And the brain now tells the rest of the body what to do. So it will tell the legs to walk versus though tell the hand to turn off the knob. Right. So you're reducing threat because you perceive threat with other senses is everybody tracking. So this is kind of to say that they there's within the field of medicine, there's a two specialties that studies the brain, there's a neurology and psychiatry, and neurology is the person who studies the connections like neurological connections. So how does the eyes tell the brain you know, like, is more mechanism? Psychiatry is a field that studies a connection between emotions, thoughts, and behaviors, motives hurts trauma, how does that affect our belief system or something like that? So it's a little bit more abstract. And neurology is a little bit more concrete. So kind of like what I said a little bit, who is a psychiatrists, and this is just kind of say, What's the difference between psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists, you know, like what's going on? Right? It can get really confusing. So psychiatrist is a person who, after college, went to medical school, got training in general psychiatry, and regarding me for a few years, and that's called residency, and then sometimes people can go extra training. And for me, I got extra training and Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. So since we are from medical degree, we can prescribe medications as part of the option. But a lot of psychiatrists can do therapy as well. So that's, that's a training psychologists and therapists they do not have the medical degree. So they can provide talk therapy, very array of different talk therapies as a treatment options. Does everybody tracking? Yes, or smart audience. All right. So this is kind of the fun part. Okay. So we talked about how brain gets data, and it tells the body what to do. Okay, we got that. But how does the mind process situations that happens in our lives, right. So this model is called cognitive triad. And it's used by a very popular very evidence based therapy called cognitive behavioral therapy. Basically, this model is saying that your thoughts and emotions and behaviors are all connected. So it kind of forms a triangle. And unfortunately, my PowerPoint option for diagram only shows one arrow but it can go the other way around to Okay. I'm going to use some scenarios to kind of show you how this model actually will play out in real life. So scenario number one, okay. So situation happens when you're texting your husband, your partner, your boyfriend, or your adult son, whoever answers his texts or calls. You're texting him. Okay? The situation is that so your organs, your eyes are seeing the phone, you're hearing the text, your home, hands are actually typing, right? It's been 20 minutes, no reply. 40 minutes? No reply. Half a day. No reply. Okay, this is a situation is everybody resonating? Some who went through this?
So what would be your thought is if it's been half a day, and you texted somebody that you care about, and they did not text back, you can raise your hand because something's happened. Something's wrong. Ignore me. Yeah, they're ignoring their cheating, all right, because they can go or they're dead or I can go to the next stream. So let's say that we have this stuff, right? What will be the emotions that kind of feels with that? Scared? Nervous, right? Worried? Right? And what kind of behavior would you do with that thought and emotions? Act out? Yeah. Go to maybe hammer text that person, hey, where are you on that you're gonna be there. Right? All caps? All exclamation mark, right. So then this behavior creates another situation that will trigger another cognitive triad, not only for you now, but for the other person. Right? They're receiving those texts, and they're gonna run through another cognitive trial for that. So this is exactly how our mind works. Isn't that crazy? And can you imagine that this is immediate. There's no sense of control, per se, right. Now, let's look at the same situation. But scenario number two. So situation is the same. You texted them? No reply for half a day. But let's say that this time, we have a thought, man, they're not texting me back. But I think they had something. I think they had a meeting at work, or I think they said that, you know, they were going to do something and they can't get get to me as fast as I could. Let's say that we have, like giving the benefit of the doubt. Okay. What kind of emotions do you think will feel here? Just a little bit more neutral? A little bit more calm, right? Not as worried or anxious? What kind of behavior do you think we'll have here? Do you think will hammer texts you might even just text once the like, Hey, I was looking for you. But I think I remember he had something just call me back when you're free. Right? Then that behavior creates another situation, you're waiting, you're just texting once. So do you see how that situation creates another cognitive trial wheel turning for you and turning for the other person? So if we can just kind of, you know, this is a very zoomed in situation. But how many times do we create these situations in a day? How many times with the other person every time you interact? Right? It's a another spin of the Covenant trial. So what's the difference here? For scenario number one, scenario number two. The thought, yeah. So it's like a muscle. And I like to say that scenario number one is person who's mentally fragile. Okay. There are reactive, immediate misfires, or the cognitive triad, lack of in real life processing, we always say that Hindsight is 2020. Right? So somebody who always reflects and always in hindsight, right in real life is hard to reflect lack of insight, lack of perspective, lack of boundaries, and insecure. Okay. Scenario number two is a mentally resilient mind. It thinks through options slower to react is a controlled buyer of cognitive triad can process immediately in real time. insightful, has balanced perspective. So not only my perspective, but the other person's perspective. Right, has boundaries and is very secure, as much as possible. Okay. So, I like to kind of use the analogy of the muscle, maybe some of you guys are listening, okay, I have a mentally fragile mind like I'm right. Now, but I like to kind of take a pause and say, well, mentally fragile mind is not going to be mentally fragile for a lifetime. It's like lifting up workout muscle, right? Like sometimes five pounds starting off, it is so tough, right? And then you get sore the next day, and you're like, Should I do this, I don't know if I want to my back hurts, right? But if you commit to it, you can start lifting 1015 pounds, 20 pounds, you grow. And I want to kind of bring you to understand that our mind can grow to be more resilient over time. Okay. Now, let's take a pause because I'm sure we might feel a little bit convicted here that we're mentally fragile. So is it my fault if I struggle mentally? Is it my fault that I'm fragile, right? So this is another concept called biopsychosocial model. This is kind of tells you all the factors that comes into the health of the mind. Okay, what makes sense? ratzel What makes it resilient? These are all the factors, okay? And under the biological we have general medical conditions, IQ, genetics, biochemical imbalance, intra uterine exposure, which is a fancy word of saying, when your biological mom was pregnant with you, does she use any medications or substance, right? Substance, current or history of substance use? Do you see that this is biological factors, okay, that goes into the health of the mind. Psychological factors like mood, sensory comprehension, so some people might be a little bit more sensitive to loud noises or textures, right? These are something that is different in the spectrum, personality, emotional resilience, like I mentioned before, ability to focus and ability to relate. So these are all the factors and their psychological factors that affects the health of the mind. And social, your friends, sense of community upbringing, parenting that you received or didn't receive, okay? Bullying, hobbies, trauma, these are all social factors, maybe external factors that affects the health of your mind. And in my training, we stop there. But I think as I'm getting more confident in my training, there's a huge miss if we don't mention the spiritual aspect of our mental health, and this is not limited to Christian, you know, convictions and doctrines, I think spiritual we can kind of understand sense of belonging, a sense of purpose, right sense of meaning in your life, Christianity, and God has an answer for that. But I think we all have these spiritual questions when we're born. Correct. So I mean, can you imagine if you had a sense of purpose, lung belonging, and meaning how much healthier your mind will be? Right? So this is a huge aspect that I incorporate in my practice, and it's been wonderful. So out of all these factors, what can we control or change? Do you think we can control all of it? No, because you're smart. So I highlighted something that we can actually control. So whether you know the history of substance use, but what can we do about your current substance use your emotional resilience, like we said, if we start lifting the weights, it can grow over time, ability to focus unless you have ADHD. But even if you have ADHD, you can kind of grow that ability to focus over time, the ability to relate. Friends, you can choose your friends, you can choose Grace wars Baptist Church as your community, right? Your hobbies, which hobby do you want to do? And spiritual I highlight as a dream, because sense of purpose belonging and meaning, I think is a gift from God. But we can ask, right? So do you see that we cannot control a lot of things that goes to help you the mind is very small fraction. So a lot of times, there's people who say, is it my fault that I'm struggling mentally being mentally fragile? Or what do you think? Yes and no, but it's not 100% of the responsibility. Is everybody tracking say Yes, ma'am. All right. So what's the difference? So we talked about being mentally fragile and mentally resilient. We talked about all the factors that goes to the health of the mind. So what's the difference between mental health issues that we'll have today, today, and mental health disorders? Okay? So in statistic, this is called the normal bell curve. And this is a diagram to show that is a general fact that all the population will fit under the curve. So the theory is that a lot of people will be in the center of the curve, like median and average people, and there'll be less and less people that's less than average, right? Outliers. Okay? So everybody sits under that curve. So let's take an example of blood pressure. So in medicine, we kind of drew the line and our populations to say, this is a cut off, and after that is called hypertension or high blood pressure. Okay? So for Category number one hypertension is 130 to 139, for systolic bucket number, and 80 to 89, for diastolic, okay?
And the criteria is that, you know, if if you're having a stressful day, or if you just worked out, your blood pressure's gonna go up. Right. So the criteria is that you have to have three separate readings to be this high to qualify to be a category one hypertension. Do do you agree that you guys have heard about that, right? And there's category number two hypertension, and the cutoff as high as 140 plus for systolic and 90 plus for diastolic. But in medicine, even if it's evidence based this mind the stand is a little bit more arbitrary and less than Before the new thing, so when we draw the line, we have to take into a park for public health concerns. Okay, so what is the risk of diagnosing? So then they're going to start taking medications, right? Do we have enough meds for all the people who will be taking the medications, and then dying, risk of not diagnosing. So what is the risk of not diagnosing and then they have a critical consequence of not diagnosing. And just like I said, Do we have enough meds? Do we have enough doctors do we have enough doctor's visit, all these things are not really medical related, but it helps us to draw the line in the sand. So these are the symptoms of depression and anxiety disorder. And it's like depressed mood, loss of interest, weight loss, weight gain, can't sleep or sleeping too much, or excessive worry about various topics, worry that's difficult to control. The reason why I'm not focusing on this is I want you to kind of get the big picture, I don't want you to read this and be like, I have anxiety. And I'll explain why. All right. So let's take fatigue for an example. So just like hypertension, we need three separate meetings and a different time to do that. In psychiatry, we have no symptoms, but we have a criteria of these symptoms to meet a diagnosis. Okay. So fatigue is one of the criteria, but let's take fatigue, for an example and go assess it on a normal bell curve. Okay. So everybody's gonna have different levels of fatigue, right? Most people are gonna feel somewhere in the middle, and they're gonna be people who are really tired all the time. We're not tired at all. Okay. So we've drawn the line in the sand. So let's say that even in the fatigue criteria, there's a cut off, okay? And we say, Ooh, after this line, this is pretty significant fatigue, and it can meet the criteria for depression. Now, we need to do many other factors to meet depression. But just imagine with me, I put the smiley face there, just under the cutoff. Okay. So imagine somebody with a blood pressure of so the cutoff was 131 30, over 80, right to meet hypertension. What if somebody wasn't 129? Over 79? Three different times? They didn't make the cut off. But are they healthy? See what I'm saying. Just because you don't make the cut off doesn't mean Oh, yeah, I'm free. I can eat whatever I want. I don't have to exercise, right? Like, I don't have to change my lifestyle. You're just missing the cut off doesn't really mean anything. We're all going towards being healthier, right? And what if, on the other side? Let's say that somebody is working out doing all the right things, and they're 131 over 81? Are they screwed? Because they got the diagnosis? We just continue working on ourselves continue to think that we were doing so do you see that a diagnosis doesn't really change the journey, and the destination is just a diagnosis. So whenever I talk about diagnosis, my patients I said, Don't get married to a diagnosis. First of all. Second of all, psychiatry doesn't have a blood lab, it doesn't have a number. So a lot of times, it's a relationship of things that they're telling me. And a lot of times, maybe the bigger fire is more evident by interview. And then a few months. I'm like, You know what, tell me more about that, like what's going on there. So sometimes diagnosis change, and different things kind of come up. Right. So psychiatry is a little bit more vague than hypertension. But even with hypertension, do you understand everybody's on a spectrum, there's no shame or relief of not having a diagnosis either way. Okay. So do I need medications? So just like hypertension, let's say that you're hypertension, number one you just got diagnosed? Do you think while some doctors might, but do you think doctors are going to be like, okay, then here's a three hypertensive medications and pick up the rest of your life. Now, a lot of times, they'll be like, Okay, you just got diagnosed, okay, start exercising a loop or start cutting out some salt, they're gonna recommend lifestyle changes, okay. So just like in diagnosis of depression or anxiety, if you just met the type of diagnosis, some doctors might prescribe it. I mean, I can't really preach on how everybody practices but if those symptoms are just new, or is not as bad, then you can kind of say, well, let's do some therapy first, right? Let's get you some involved in hobbies. Let's get some behavioral changes to see if they'll work. That's a valid treatment option. Okay. It's not that after you get I know that everybody's on meds. But just like if you got diagnosed with hypertension, number two right away, right, your blood pressure really high for some reason, we might recommend making medications, right and you're doing all the last year style changes, there's nothing that more you can do to lower your blood pressure medication might be an option. So how you measure that in psychiatry? Is how severe are the symptoms? And how long have the have the symptoms been present? Okay. And also interesting term is mental health burden. So how much is depression or anxiety causing burden to your day to day function? Are you able to not pay bills, go to Job, maintain relationships? So these are the ways that we kind of measure in psychiatry, of how significant mental health burdens is everybody kind of tracking? Yes, yes. So let me just ask you, when you saw that psychiatrists was going to give a talk about mental and spiritual health, right?
I think some of you guys might have been afraid. Oh, no. I'm gonna find out that I'm crazy. Who had that? No, everybody's talking. Everybody's mentally resilient. Okay. How many people here kind of feel some kind of relief?
Based on what we talked about today? Maybe some kind of wisdom, okay. This is not as crazy or complicated as I thought, okay, for that. So when I, when I was driving here, I kind of told you that I feel like God kind of gave me a vision that a lot of us were operating inside the box, right? Oh, I can't do this. Oh, I have to come back. I can't feel this. Oh, I have a bad thought is bad. But let me just kind of tell you how these boxes that we operate under were created. Okay. And I grew up actually, in a Christian home. I would like to say that I grew up in my adolescence, mostly with Baptist denomination So, and Baptist Baptists are the ones that really taught me the love of Word of God. Right. And that's a lot of truth to that, right. And I'm not saying as a Baptist, I think it's also a family culture, maybe in Christian parenting, right, historically have missed this aspect of mental health. Right? And how do we do that? And one of the ways that I see very commonly is labeling emotions and thoughts, some thoughts and emotions are bad. And some thoughts and emotions are good. who witnessed that or experience that or heard that? Yep. Yep. So I'm anxious and worried. Well, that's a sin because God provides everything and he's looking at the sparrow and you're not trusting that so that's bad, right? I'm depressed and I'm suicidal. Well, what do you have to be depressed about? God provides everything you have to be thankful it says give things whatever you might that you have. Right? Spitting out scripture, but you're feeling bad. You're feeling sad. You're feeling worried? That's wrong. That's not happening. Okay. I heard that myself. Growing up. I heard my patients say that, that they heard that when they're growing up, so it must be happening somewhere, right? So what is the consequence of saying they're good thoughts, and bad thoughts, and good emotions and bad emotions? Like we talked about in cognitive trial? Trial is pretty fast. How it goes, right? And sometimes, even as a child, you don't even know. Right? I'm mad because that guy stole my sandwich. Right? But now the mom is like, we can't get mad. You have to turn the other cheek. That happened to you. I don't know you guys are cracking up for a reason. Right? So labeling a bad especially from a parent's perspective. What it does is number one, one person could be like, Okay, I'm bad. Okay, then if I felt that then I'm a bad person. Okay, I'm gonna try to not be a bad person. Oh, no, I feel bad again. Oh, no, I feel bad again. I'm a bad person. I'm a bad person. And either, you can just hide it. Like, I'm not a bad person. I'm happy. I'm not sad. I'll turn the other cheek. I'll work out walk extra mile with my fellow friends. Five miles, 10 miles. Right. Now you're gonna ignore your true feelings and you're gonna work out and imagine that your feelings don't exist. Right? Does that really sound like a mentally resilient mind to you? Do you see that they're walking on eggshells. Right. The other side is let's say that they got bullied and they punch the kid. Why didn't you come As a kid, I was mad Well, being mad is increases. But the Bible says do not go to bed angry. So that's bad. One child will be like, That's not fair. I'm bad no matter what I do, and this is not fair. So you know what? I am a bad child. I'm just gonna do bad things. All right, all my life. Right? It might feel look more free to you. But does that sound like and feel like mentally resilient 90, you know? So I understand the concerns, and the reasons why maybe the parents, ministers, pastors, churches, Pharisees have done that. Because it's complicated, is dirty, is messy, to let them be angry. Let them be sad, when they don't even know what to do with that. Right? I understand. But I think when we label this bad, or good, then it creates next generations who don't know what to do. Right, right, and the next generation who don't know what to do, do you understand that? So the second myth that I hear this a lot as you can control your bad thoughts and feelings. And a lot of times I use the one capture every thought captive and make it submissive to Christ is a very military term, isn't it? So that you're you have the sense that you can capture every thought and submit it underpriced. Correct. So there's an aspect of control. Okay. But what happens if you tell people that you can control your thoughts and feelings when you cannot control your thoughts? People start to feel guilty? Because I could control it, but I did. And if I didn't, then that's my will. Therefore, I'm bad for not controlling. Do you see that? It's very subtle. So this is why I feel very passionate about it. Because calming and try it is spins fast. And if you imagine, developmentally, you can't expect the three year old to act like a 60 year old. Right? So developmental, you have to understand that as you're growing up, you're going to be mentally fragile, and there's going to misfire. But if you just say, you didn't control that you hit your friend because you're mad, and you could have stopped, right? And you did. So you're bad. This is bad behavior. Instead of going out, why did you feel bad? Let's work it out. Right? working it out in vivo and training them to be more mentally resilient.
So I don't know if you guys would resonate with us, but in church.
I think we put the enemies in the wrong. Like, presence of power when it comes to mental health? suicidal thoughts. That's the devil. All right. That's the devil working. Right? Yes. Depression, that's the devil. So it doesn't exist, right? But how many, just imagine how many times did the cognitive triad have to spend to get suicidal? Many, many, many, many. So instead of judging people where they're at after millions of calls and try out that misfired, we have to accept, hey, some aspect of this is not in your control. And maybe I can empathize a lot of times when I was mad and sad. Do you kind of understand that? So I feel like the devil is in the details. The devil are in these myths that church practice and Pharisees practice. Because Can you imagine next generational trauma, next generation of not knowing what to do? Right? It continues, and this is his mega scheme, if we don't pay attention, secondly, introducing guilt to the church separation. Now, I can't talk to anybody. Right. And I don't know if I had that slide. But what the devil does in church is now we are in spiritual religious school with report cards than a family with love and safety. That's what the devil wants us to see what I'm saying? Yeah, this is his biggest scheme, by putting letting people feel like they have control over things that they don't control, and labeling if you felt that that happens very naturally bad. So these are just very two commandments. Is everybody kind of tracking? So I'm going to switch gears and so we know what generations before us or church or Pharisees did, right? What does God think about mental health and mental illness? So this was not in his plan. Just like cancer just like The just like cold, just like flew gay. This was not in his plant when he designed the world. So he will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning or crying or pain anymore. for the former things have passed away, right? This was not in his plane. But I think what the devil slash devil used the church to do is Oh, so this was not in his plan. So let's call everything back. Tears are bad. paints that, let's just imagine that we're in heaven now. Right? By just making things go away and pretend that they don't happen. But I think a ripe posture of church as a family is recognizing that there's pain, recognize it as a tear, recognizing there's death, right? Yeah. Except it because this was not in his plan. And that means that we're not going to be here for see, you see the tone changes a little bit. It's like, acceptance, healing together. And finding freedom. Yes, yes. Yes. Yes. So let's look at some examples. But he Elijah himself does. This is Elijah. He is running away from decibel. He's doing all this work. He's being threatened for his life for a very long time. So it is literally running away from her. So but he Elijah himself went a day's journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under the broom tree and he asked that he might die saying, it is enough now Oh, Lord, take away my life or I am no better than my father's. Okay. So he's saying God just killed me. I feel suicidal. Okay. Do you think God responded? No, you don't. You know, like, I'm providing everything for you. Like, what do you have to be complaining about? Do you think God says that? And the angel of the Lord came a second time and touched him and said, Arise me for the journeys to grieve for you. And it's tough. I know. Here's some food and get some sleep. You know what I mean? This is David. I'm worn out from sobbing all night. I flooded my bed with weeping drenched it with my tears. My vision is blurred by grief. He sat here my cry for help my King and my God. For to you I pray in the morning, Laura, you hear my voice in the morning, I lay my requests before you and wait expect them. Just God saying you have nothing to worry about. I provided you for last 10 years, your next 10 years? No, God blesses your son. You're scared. But Moses, us to the Lord. Oh my Lord, I'm not eloquent, either in the past, or since you have spoken to your servant. But I'm slow of speech and of tongue. And this isn't the burning bush, right? God is like, I'm gonna use you to bring my people just like you wanted. And he's like, no, no, no, I'm just scared. I'm not prepared. Like, you know, like, this is not me. Pleasing someone else, right? Where anxiety, right? I will say social anxiety, right? performance anxiety. So God says, Well, God does get angry because he's frustrated but but does he say Fine? I'll still find someone else. Your anxiety too much. I'm just gonna walk away. Does he say that? No. You shall speak to him Aaron and put the words in his mouth and I will be with your mouth and his mouth and we'll teach you both what to do. It's okay, you feel anxious, I will be there every single step of the way. And this is Jonah. Anger. Right? He has his opinions on what is should be done and he's angry. And he complained to the Lord about it. Didn't I say before I left home that you would do this lord and this is why I ran away to tortious I knew that you're merciful and compassionate God slow to get angry and fill it unfailing love, love. Lord, please kill me. It's better for me to die than to live. He's throwing a fit. Right? But does God ignore that? Or just say you're wrong? flat out wrong? You know? He says, Do you do well to be angry? How's that anger serving you, Jonah? Right. It's a very fatherly, right. You're throwing a fit. Okay, I got it. I got it here man. And to give John a credit, and I also like when I grew up, like Bible stories were taught so black and white. Okay, Jonah's screw up, he doesn't get it. You know, and then, like, God is good, and so black and white, but to give credit to Jonah, these were the people who were like raping everybody. killing everybody sacrificing kids. This is the abominable population and his eyes. There's no way that these people should be forgiven. Right? So let's give Jonah some credit that there's a righteous, maybe, maybe not righteous in a sense of presence of perspective of God's control and God's sovereignty. But there's a reason to be angry right now But God is a very fatherly God to say, How's that anger serving you, Jonah? Do you see that compassion, being present? Sitting with a messy, right sitting with a complicated and God knows that our mental health problem, our spiritual problem, our emotional problem, our physical problem is bigger than us, is bigger than us. So imagine the smiley faces us and a timeline on the world, and the sun is a creation. And like I said, we create generations who don't know what to do with this, who don't know how to control it? Can we control it? I don't know. Let's try, right? Let's call it bad and good. Let's judge people, right? By what we see. generational trauma, generational misunderstanding of what the enemy's actually doing. Right? So it's growing exponentially. Okay. And can you just imagine what your mom and your dad told you about you? What the grandparents told them? You know, it goes above and above, right? But the beauty is that Jesus died on the cross, so that we can stop the generational misunderstanding? Because, yes, maybe some of us have parents who didn't get it. Maybe some of us have parents, within their best interests, they stayed in the box. And we don't know what's outside of the box. But what's beautiful about the Bible is that Jesus died on the cross so that he can save and restart a new generation, a new generation with a very well rounded understanding of who God is, and how he handles our emotions and feelings.
So that's our hope. Does that kind of make sense? Yes. So what's the difference between church and religion versus God? God doesn't dismiss our problems. He sees the reality of God, the gods are surprised by our problems. He expects it. He doesn't hide it. He reveals it. He doesn't judge it. He sees beyond it. He doesn't ignore it. He's aware of it. He doesn't blame it playing sin. He doesn't give up on it. He said, there's too much. No, he deals with it. He gets down to your eye level one and deals with it. And one of the sermons that I heard at my church, it was a blessing, right? Like, what's the definition of blessing? And the definition in that scripture was kneeling down, God, kneeling down, that kind of sounds like a little bit weird, right? But imagine, and the pastor said, it's like father kneeling down, so that their eye to eye with a kid's level, I'm here, I'm not going away. And I want you to know that if anybody is struggling with mental issues, or maybe you got connected, and I'm fragile, I do act like that. Don't feel guilty, I don't want the space for the enemy to use. Guilt is not going to be welcome here. Right? I want you to know that God's blessing is he's kneeling down to your level and saying, I got you, we're gonna go through this, we're going to work out that cognitive triad, and we're going to lift some weights, and it's gonna be better over time. Now, on the other hand, I wanted to protect the people, maybe including myself, maybe making some of those judgment calls, right? Maybe those insensitive saying, you're depressed, or I don't know why. Right? Maybe you are that person. And I'm not gonna let the enemy take that guilty. Because I always tell my patients, don't feel guilty for things that you did and said, without knowing what you know, now.
Do not feel guilty for things that you said. And you did. Without knowing what you know now. But now that you know, go forward. Now that you Ford, make some phone calls. Now that you know, make some emails,
yes, give some hugs. hug yourself. Yes, guilt and shame is not going to be part of this journey. And I want you to know that if there was a blindside that the church missed, this is what this talk is about. I'm not gonna let you get away with guilt. Do you understand that and man, amen. So just like this curve, we're all falling under some kind of curve, right? But we're covered by the cross. Thank you. And maybe we're not perfect here. We don't feel happy here. We don't feel all joyful here. Maybe there's some valleys maybe we're still mentally fragile. We don't know. But, but God's got you. And one of the questions that I got is like, whoa, your fees are pretty high. I can't afford you. So am I screwed? Yeah. This slide, and I told her, God might not use me to help you. I'm not the author of your journey. I mean, God's your father, he might lead you to places. That is not me at all. I'm just here to give a talk. And this the wisdom you gained, and you go forward. So I'm not here to promote myself that I'm the best psychiatry I'm not. Right. And maybe maybe the journey is that you just needed somebody to talk to, you know, I don't know. So I want to give the credit all back to God and a sovereign to call back to God because I'm just here sharing what I learned. Right? Yes. However, that hits you. I hope that you don't feel guilty. I feel you were free. I feel I hope that you feel more wise, right and more aware. And, and God's gonna use that