Your mental well-being
For some reason it always seems easier to talk about and admit to having physical problems than it does to having mental problems. I guess that despite all of our medical awareness and improved understanding of mental health issues, many of us still find it difficult to identify with what another is going through when it comes to the mind.
I write this from the heart with great concern for anyone who is struggling at the moment. How easy it is for us for whom the lines have fallen in pleasant places (Psa 16:6)
I’ve just broken off from preparation of Sunday’s sermon to write this and I was deep into Elijah following mount Carmel and clearly he was in a very bad place mentally. Yesterday I was speaking to someone who told me how hard they are finding it at the present time to cope mentally (their own state of health prevents them from going out at all and so they are literally locked up in their house on their own 24/7 and it was really getting to them).
One of the things I love about the Bible is that it doesn’t paint pretty pictures. Rather it shows life as it is – both the good and the bad, the easy and the hard. And in some of the Psalms we get an insight into the Psalmist when he is really struggling emotionally, spiritually, mentally.
Take for example Psalms 42 & 43. What a picture of a man really struggling
Psa 42:3 My tears have been my food day and night, while they say to me all the day long, “Where is your God?”
Psa 42:5 Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? …
Psa 42:7 Deep calls to deep at the roar of your waterfalls; all your breakers and your waves have gone over me.
Psa 42:9 I say to God, my rock: “Why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?”
Psa 42:10 As with a deadly wound in my bones, my adversaries taunt me, while they say to me all the day long, “Where is your God?”
Psa 42:11 Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? …
Psa 43:2 …Why do I go about mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?
Psa 43:5 Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? …
Is there hope when you are in this sort of place? Well, for the Christian certainly, and the Psalmist points out how.
Firstly he takes his own soul to task. He reasons with himself, with the way that he is feeling. Now that is incredibly hard, but it is the right thing to do. To remind yourself that what you have in Christ, and where you stand in Christ is not about how you feel, but about what God has said and done. Remind yourself what is reality for the Christian in Christ. What is your future. That Holy Spirit indwells you and intercedes for you. That this is not how it all ends!
Secondly he pleads with God. Read the two Psalms and just see how he pours out his heart to God, pleading with Him to bring him through this to a good outcome.
Thirdly, he looks back and remembers the good times –
Psa 42:4 These things I remember, as I pour out my soul: how I would go with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God with glad shouts and songs of praise, a multitude keeping festival.
He doesn’t close down, he doesn’t become so inward looking that he can’t see past his current position.
And fourthly, he confidently looks forward, trusting in His God to restore him to his former state of joy in the Lord. Three times he challenges his own soul with the question “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me?” and each time he immediately supplies the remedy “Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.”
Friend, how is it going with you. Inevitably the longer this lock-down continues the more challenging it will become for most of us, but we can do something to help ourselves in it. Take your soul to task when you become aware of a growing problem, plead with God urgently and persistently, remember what it was like before, and trust God that it will, by His grace, be like it once again!
Friend, how is it going for you?