Mind Matters

Greeting

We are excited to kick off this incredible new series, Mind Monsters.

I am excited to dive into this topic because it is a needed conversation. As a nation, we have been trending in the wrong direction when it comes to mental health for the last five years. It was exacerbated in 2020 with the lock downs. All the metrics when it comes to mental health are not getting better.

And so for the next 6 weeks we are going to lean into the subject. May is Mental Health awareness month, so you’ll be hearing from other sources as well. But we thought it was important that we talk about this together as a church. For you to hear from the word of God, and for you to hear from your Pastor.

Now before we dive in I do want to tell you that this church is fully in support of counseling, therapists, and Psychologists, that come alongside the word of God to help you get better. There are so many Kingdom Minded resources that are available to you now. There was a time when the church told you to just go and pray your issues away. I am in no way minimizing prayer, and the power of God, but thankfully the church has also seen that counseling matters. Therapy matters. And you need to take advantage of all of the resources that are available to you.

There is no shame and there is no stigma in getting help. Just like there’s no shame in going to the doctor when you are sick, or something is broken, there is no shame in getting help when you are mentally not well. So, if today is helpful, but you feel like there is more work that needs to be done, then use every resource available to you to get better.

Reading

1 Kings 19:9–11 (NIV)

There he went into a cave and spent the night. And the word of the Lord came to him: “What are you doing here, Elijah?” He replied, “I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.” The Lord said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.”

1 Kings 19:13 (NIV)

When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave. Then a voice said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

Introduction

If you grew up in the church let me see your hands? Where are all of my church kids at?

The household that I grew up in, church was not an option. If you were living in that house, you were going to go to church.

We had long church growing up. We would come to Sunday School from 10 am to 12 pm. We would then head over to the fellowship hall and have lunch together. This is what most of the church did. We had the best home made food cooked from all of the grandmothers in the church. If you went to a predominantly black church, they would call this group the church mothers. The food was always amazing.

And then at some point later, we would go home and get a little bit of rest, because we had to come back for the Sunday church service that went from 5 pm to 8 pm.

Yes, you hear that right. We were in church on a Sunday evening from 5 to 8 pm. And if you did the math, we spent over 5 hours of our day at the church every single Sunday.

And so that is why if you are still here I honor you! Because you didn’t quit, you still love Jesus, and you are apparently strong enough to have overcome your PTSD.

Listen, I’m joking about all of that, but my point being is that I have been in the church long enough to see the church change, and adapt in very positive ways. The length of the service times is one of those changes.

The more significant change is in how we have started to handle mental health.

You see, going to church that much will make you religious.

And being religious will convince you that if you are broken on the inside, just don’t let anyone know if by the way you carry yourself.

If you are mentally broken, nobody cares as long as you are outwardly put together.

That’s the danger with religion.

Transition

And that didn’t start with the church, Lighthouse.

This goes all the way back to the scriptures with some of the heroes of the Bible. Men and women who seemed to be doing just fine on the outside, but on the inside they were broken.

If that feels like or sounds like you, let me tell you that you do not want to miss any Sundays while we are in this series. And let me introduce you to our first subject That we just read about, Elijah.

Text

It’s important for you to understand the story of Elijah. Elijah was a prophet to Israel. This meant that he was a person who heard from God and told the people what God was saying to them. In their day, they were God’s mouthpiece. They counseled Kings. They shaped religious duties. They spiritually reformed communities. These were men of God given, and men respected, authority.

When we meet Elijah in the cave, he is coming off the high of having successfully out dueled the prophets of Baal.

Baal was a false god, and Elijah was out to prove to the idol worshipping King of Israel, his wife, and all the rest of Israel, that only Yahweh was the one true God. So he arranged a show down on the top of a mountain in a winner lives, and losers die contest.

Elijah won, and all of the prophets of Baal were killed. This should have been a time of victory and celebration for Elijah.

But it was short lived, because of one person.

Every one say “one person”.

An entire nation was rejoicing, and the fires of spiritual reform are about to sweep Israel, but there is one person who had Elijah unhinged.

And that one person was the Queen, Jezebel. She was an idolator who worshipped Baal and brought the worship of Baal to Israel. When she found out that Elijah had the prophets of Baal killed, she said “by this time tomorrow, you will be dead Elijah.”

The Prophet who had just called down fire from heaven is now hiding, afraid, and he is running for his life.

And that is when the Lord speaks to Elijah and asks him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

Highs and Lows

Now when the Lord asked Elijah what he was doing there Elijah immediately starts telling God all about his lows.

1 Kings 19:10 (NIV)

He replied, “I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.”

There’s some things we need to learn from Elijah’s response. He goes right to the lows, and he focuses on everything that is going wrong.

Highs and Lows are Inevitable. Your focus is your choice.

As a matter of fact let’s say that together.

“My focus... is my choice.”

Notice that when the Lord asked him what he was doing there he did not share his victories with the Lord. He could have began by thanking the Lord for what just happened on Carmel.

“God, you’ll never believe what just happened! I mean, I know that you know. And, you know that I know that you know. But can I just tell you anyway? There was a battle… and they were like… and I was like… and they were like… and I was like...”

You know how our kids do when they tell us stories.

But instead, Elijah doesn’t focus on the miracle on the mountain, he focuses his attention on the negative. He is focusing his attention on what went wrong.

Where is Your Focus?

And we do this too, don’t we?

Think about this for a second. Think about the last time that you were in a funk. What were you focusing on? Was it on all the things that are going right in your life, or are you focused on what you don’t have; what isn’t going right.

I can answer that question for you - you focused on what you don’t have.

Now does that make you a bad person? No, it makes you human. It is human nature to think about what we don’t have. It is human nature to want more than what we have now.

When used for good, that should drive us. It should be a force for good in our life.

But, when used bad, it is like poison.

Why?

Our lives are moving in the direction of our strongest thoughts. - Pastor Craig Groeschel

So when you allow negative thoughts to dominate your thinking, your life will follow.

So what we must do is change our thinking.

Start Driving

We need to move from passive thinking, to active thinking.

We need to get off of the sidelines of our thinking, and get engaged with our thinking.

So how do we do that?

You need to ask yourself, “what is causing me to feel this way?”

Identify the negative thought inputs.

What are the things that cause me to start thinking negatively?

Is it too much time on social media?

Is it too much time comparing what I have with what other people have?

Is it the music that I consume?

Is it the shows that I watch?

Your inputs are either moving you into healthy or negative thinking.

Let me hit you with something we don’t often think about, but how is your lifestyle affecting your thoughts?

Sometimes when I am slipping into a funk I just need to eat better, drink more water, get better sleep, exercise and get more sun.

You might be thinking to yourself, “well that’s not very spiritual, Pastor” and I would say, “maybe your problem isn’t spiritual.”

You don’t need a spiritual solution to a natural problem.

Be intentional about positive thought inputs.

When we have identified the negative inputs, we are going to start replacing them with positive inputs.

Set boundaries on social media.

Start celebrating people, and stop comparing ourselves with other people.

We are going to listen to music that glorifies God, or that feeds out soul.

We are going to stop watching shows that are not good for our souls.

And listen, this is not legalism. This isn’t doing or not doing things as a set of religious rules, this is us doing our part to take care of our mental health and our physical health.

Why? Because our lives are moving in the direction of mental health.

Don’t Follow the Pattern

Now I want you to know that the word of God speaks directly into this. I want to read what the Bible says about your mind in Romans 12, verse 2.

Romans 12:2 (NIV)

Do not conform to the pattern of this world...

There is a pattern that is affecting our mental health that I need for you to see.

Anxiety affects 42.5 million adults.

21 million adults live with depression, 3.7 million between 12 to 17 experience major depression and 2.5 million between 12 to 17 experience severe depression.

The second leading cause of death in children 10 to 14 is suicide.

I need for you to see where we are headed as a nation.

It’s not good. Things are not headed in a desirable direction. And Paul cautioned us about this. He said, “do not conform to this pattern....”

Romans 12:2 (NIV)

… but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

God wants to renew our minds and he wants you active in that process.

I am confident that God will do what he does, but we need to step into the fight, we need to get engaged, we need to be active, and we need to be committed to this.

Your mind matters to God.

Your mental health matters to God.

Your mental health matters to people you love.

Your mental health matters to people who depend on you.

The Spiritual Fight

Now a minute ago I said that don’t need a spiritual solution to a natural problem, but there are times when the problems are spiritual. When that happens, you need a spiritual solution.

And once again, we have scripture for this.

2 Corinthians 10:5 (NIV)

We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

There are some thoughts that will hit you that are a direct attack from the enemy.

This is why you have to remain engaged in what you are thinking. You have to be aware to your emotions and the condition of your would. This is when we turn to prayer. This is when we surround ourselves in a Connect Group. This is when we use everything in our spiritual tool belt to overcome this mental attack.

And let me give you your best defense.

As the saying goes, sometimes the best defense is a good offense.

This is when you need to use your weapon; the Bible.

Did you know that one of the descriptions of the Bible is that it is a sword?

Paul calls it the Sword of the Spirit.

So when the attacks come, you don’t just have a defense, but you have an offense, and that is the word of God. You take up your sword and you use this sword to fight off the attacks of the enemy.

This is exactly what Jesus did, and the same power will work for you.

Let me try and illustrate this another way....

Cancel the Noise - AirPods with and without Noise Cancellation

Noice canceling technology is an impressive piece of technology that we now have. You see, it wasn’t enough for us to have headphones. We also needed to create headphones that actively cancel out the noise around us so that we can hear the sound of what we want to listen to. This heightens our listening experience.

How does this work?

[show the picture]

Our headphones have tiny microphones that actively listen to the noice that is around it, and then it neutralizes the sound by actively inverting the sound waves. When the sound waves are inverted, the noise is cancelled.

In the same way, there is noise in your life that is blocking what God wants to say to you. God is always actively speaking to you, but you can’t hear him because of the noise in your life.

There is noise telling you that you are:

a bad mother

you’re never going to get out of debt

you’ll never leave a legacy

you are not good enough

the world would be better off without you

All of that is noise and it is drowning out the voice of God.

But we have been given a tool that cancels the noise in our life. We have been given the documented word of God. And since the word of God is unchanging, if it was true then, it is true now. If it worked then, it will work now.

You need to start your day in the word.

You need to end your day in the word.

You need to fill your day with the word.

And the word will begin to cancel the noise of the enemy.

It is going to neutralize the enemy’s mental attacks.

The word of God is going to take anxiety captive.

The word of God is going to cancel depression.

The word of God is going to eradicate toxic thoughts.

The word of God will cancel the spirit of suicide.

How does it have the ability to do this?

Hebrews 4:12 (NIV)

For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.

Conclusion

God cares about you. And he cares deeply about the parts of you that no one sees. As a matter of fact, he may be the only one in your life right now that cares about what can’t be seen.

So if you are tired of looking like you have it all together. Pretending like everything is OK. Telling everyone around you that you are fine, and you are not. Then come to Jesus. Let him in. And let him transform you by renewing your mind.

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