Transformed- Mental Health

Back in our college days, my future wife (then just a friend) once shared a prayer need for handling another friend who was making romantic overtures lately. We all have our own ways of reasserting our sinful nature, if and when we backslide. This man’s particular drug of choice was women. As a musician he was fairly adept with them, and my wife did, after all, care about him and his spiritual state. So at first, she feared resisting him would be a challenge. But soon it wasn’t, and he got the message -- because her mindset had changed.

 More on that in a moment. Pastor Aaron shared during the “Transformed” message on mental health this week that temptation or struggling with sin starts as a desire, then if not resisted leads to a doubt, followed by deception, followed by disobedience and defeat. Points for the alliteration, but to put it another way, it’s dangerous for us when a desire becomes a meditation. We can be so convinced that a situation is perilous for us, and we are weak when confronting it, that we are preoccupied with succumbing. Or at least with letting someone else down gently or in finding an escape from the struggle.

The escape, besides (of course) trusting in a God who enables us against any temptation, is often to end the meditation. Give yourself no place to think about how tempted you are. Your un-renewed mind, after all, is another part of your flesh and can war against your spirit as much as any other part of you. We all, as pastor’s message stated, have an inner being that delights in serving God and another nature that still makes war against Him (Romans 7:22-23). And it’s easy to forget sometimes which side our mind is taking in the fight.

In clinical psychology the term is anosognosia – or, having a condition where one of the symptoms is being unable to recognize that you have a condition. Have you ever heard the adage that, if you’re asking yourself “Am I crazy?” the answer must be no, because a crazy person never asks that question? Similar concept here. You can be very self-aware about your sin and temptation, but at the same time during the meditation you become unaware of your deliverer. I particularly liked hearing the phrase on Sunday that your feelings don’t shape your life -- your beliefs do.  Manage your mind. Believe in your source of help. You serve a master who has defeated every enemy, including your own unquiet mind. Proverbs 23:7 says, “As a man thinketh, so is he,” and this is encouraging when you consider how much control you have been given over your thoughts. Make yourself stop thinking you are being tempted and, pretty soon, you might not actually be tempted anymore. It’s been known to happen.

I remember praying with that godly young woman, long ago, to be sober and equipped for victory in that difficulty with her friend.  But even then I could tell she didn’t really need it.  Once her mind was right for the situation, the rest was execution. Part of me suspects the Lord brought that situation to me not to become a prayer warrior, but to teach me something that she knew and I needed to know. My wife is mentally one of the healthiest people I know, but we are each as healthy as the thoughts we choose. It is not the season of temptation, or the flesh, or the devil, but I, who decides which thoughts linger in my head. And you can have that control too.

Written by: Chad Halcom

Edited by: Tamara Sturdivant