I am so very thankful for this message from Dr. Michael Lyles in CHURCHLEADERS. I have know many people with mental illness that have been hurt by the Church. My challenge to all of us is this, how are we helping people with mental illness? I also wrote about the homeless last week, Homeless, is your Church helping the homeless? Ministry is not always pretty. It’s getting out of the walls of your Church, your comfort zone, it’s ministering to people that do not go to your Church.
Dr. Michael Lyles:
In more than 30 years of psychiatric practice, it is still common for people of faith to confess shame, guilt, embarrassment and spiritual confusion over their struggles with mental illness. My average patient is more comfortable asking for prayer for cancer than mentioning a mental or “emotional” struggle to his or her faith community. Most of my patients struggle in silence as they have heard mental illness described as being a function of spiritual weakness, a personality deficit, a salvation issue or the lack of properly applied faith. They have tried to pray it away, claim appropriate Scriptures, simply get over it or plead for a miracle. When the immediate miracle does not transpire, some become so frustrated and hopeless they curse the day they were born (Job 3).
The majority of America is looking in all the wrong places for a PEACEMAKER! It is not in politics, it is in Our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen! A new high of 29% of Americans say the Bible is a collection of “fables, legends, history and moral precepts recorded by man”
America has to much politics and hate and not enough JESUS!!!!!!!!!!!
Actor Zachary Levi has a Biblical message to help people defeat anger and love their enemies as Jesus did.
