Mental Illness
With God, Mental Illness has no stigma.
Stigma, isolation, loneliness, and shame often follow a diagnosis of mental illness. With God, mental illness has no stigma. You are His precious child, deeply loved and fully accepted.
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Bend Your ear to me and listen to my words … hear the deep cry of my heart. Listen to my call for help, my King, my True God; to You alone I pray. (Psalm 5:1-2)
MENTAL ILLNESS
We know in our heads that God is with us always (Isaiah 41:10) and that He will never leave nor forsake us (Deuteronomy 31:6), but sometimes, no matter how hard we try, we cannot see God, hear God, or feel His loving presence in our lives.
Five chapters into Job’s story, we read, that Human beings are born to trouble as readily as sparks fly upward. (Job 5:7) We are broken people, living in a broken world, surrounded by broken family and friends – every single one of us born to trouble.
MENTAL ILLNESS CRASHED INTO THE WORLD
Mental illness crashed into the world the moment Adam’s teeth broke the skin of the forbidden fruit, and it has waged war with God’s precious people ever since.
In Psalm 88:6, David wrote, You have put me in the lowest pit, In dark places, in the depths … You have afflicted me with all Your waves.
In his nineteenth-century sermon, Honey in the Mouth, Charles Spurgeon said, “The mind can descend far lower than the body, for in it there are bottomless pits. The flesh can bear only a certain number of wounds and no more, but the soul can bleed in ten thousand ways, and die over and over again each hour.”
God knows us intimately, and He understands our struggles completely. There is not a single hair on a single head that He hasn’t counted, or the briefest shadow that He’s missed, or the smallest mutation of DNA He doesn’t know. He is with us every moment of every day, without fail, even when we cannot see Him or hear Him or feel Him.
JOB’S STORY
Anguish, despair, grief, loss, pain, and sorrow fill the pages of Job’s extraordinary story and line the Psalms of lament:
- If only my anguish could be weighed and all my misery be placed on the scales! It would surely outweigh the sand of the seas… (Job 6:2-3)
- I will not keep silent. In the agony of my spirit, I will speak; In the bitterness of my soul, I will complain. (Job 7:11)
- My heart is filled with bitter sorrow and unending grief… (Romans 9:2)
- Why am I so sad? Why am I so troubled? (Psalm 42:5)
- I have wept until I am exhausted; my throat is dry and hoarse; my eyes are swollen with weeping, waiting for my God to act. (Psalm 69:3)
- My soul is deeply troubled, and my heart can’t bear the weight of this sorrow. I feel so close to death. (Psalm 88:3)
Yet what God allows, He has also purposed. We rejoice in, celebrate in, boast in, shout our praise amid, and glory in our suffering because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character hope. (Romans 5:3-4)
And hope will never fail to satisfy our deepest need because the Holy Spirit that was given to us has flooded our hearts with God’s love. (Romans 5:5)
[T]he short-lived pains of this life are creating for us an eternal glory that does not compare to anything we know here. (2 Corinthians 4:17)
One day there will be no more pain, no more sorrow, no more darkness, no more anguish, and no more tears. “Behold,” says Almighty God, “I am making all things new.” (Revelation 3:4-5)
WORDS TO PRAY WHEN YOUR HEART IS HEAVY
Soul’s True Shelter
Be gracious to me, O God, be gracious to me!
For my soul seeks refuge in You;
in the shadow of Your wings I will make my refuge,
until the ruinous storm passes by.
(Psalm 57:1)
Break Into My Confusion
Break into my confusion, Lord.
Help me to know who I am
and what I am meant to be.
Guide, uphold, and strengthen me
as I leave behind the world
of limits and labels.
(Susan Gregg-Schroeder)
My Heart is Heavy
Father, my heart is heavy. I feel like I have to carry the burden alone. Words like “overwhelmed,” “distraught,” “exhausted” seem to describe where I am. I am not sure how to let you carry my heavy load, so please show me how. Take it from me. Let me rest and be refreshed so that my heart won’t be so heavy in the morning. In Jesus’ name. Amen. (prayerist.com)
Mercy Multiplied
Lord, hold me in this darkness. Comfort me with Your ceaseless love. Fill me with Your abounding hope, Sustain me in Your Spirit, and remind me often on this winding journey home that these are precious days of mercy multiplied. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
FREE PRINTABLES
Mental Illness Prayers
God doesn't promise to heal mental illness, but He does promise to be with us in it. Through prayer, God meets us in our suffering. Use these short prayers as often as you need words to cry out to Jesus.
Mental Illness & Metaphor
It isn't easy for us as Christians to admit when we’re not doing well mentally or emotionally, but metaphors can build a bridge facilitating greater understanding, empathy, and compassion. Craft your own mental illness metaphor.
17 Verses to Shatter Stigma
Do you struggle to believe that your mental illness is real? Do you feel shame or wonder if others believe it's real? With God, mental illness has no stigma. Scripture is balm for our souls as it speaks directly to our hearts.
God Says I Am
Do you know how much God loves you, how valuable you are to Him? Do you feel seen, known, treasured, safe, and chosen? God cares about every detail of our lives. He is our shelter from the storm, our strength when we are weak, and the one who loves us beyond all imagining. Yet how often do we identify ourselves by the single most important detail about who we are—a child of God?
9 Ways to Help A Loved One With Mental Illness
“What do I do? How do I help?” When a loved one has a mental illness, we may be unsure of what to do or how to help. Where do we start? The truth is, there are many ways to help. These seven are a great place to begin.
7 Anxiety Exercises
When we’re anxious, afraid, overwhelmed, or in pain, shifting focus from our circumstances to God can require strength and courage we don’t feel. Yet, carrying our anxiety alone allows it to grow into a deep, dark, stagnant well, but when we surrender it to God, He turns it into streams of flowing water: fresh, clear, and life-giving. Let these seven exercises ground you in the moment. God is waiting for you, ready to take your anxiety and give you His peace.
Depression Self-Care Action Plan
Depression can make it difficult to practice healthy self-care. Building an Action Plan gives you quick, doable steps each day.
Emotions Wheel
God created us with a complex range of emotions which can be difficult to identify and explain. The Emotions Wheel is a tool designed to grow our emotional intelligence, thus strengthening our relationship with God as well as our compassion and empathy for others.
POSTS TO PONDER
When OCD Steals Your Peace
A terrifying postpartum OCD episode left me questioning my thoughts, my identity, and my ability to care for my newborn. Yet God met me in the midst of fear with His truth, peace, and protection. Discover how scripture became my anchor and why intrusive thoughts do not define who you are.
Seeds of Depression
When it comes to helping someone I love, I cannot control how another person seeks healing. So, I will be sharing the journey through the eyes of the one who loves and sees and keeps trying, the one who grows tired but still can look out over the soil of a relationship and dream about seeds.
Finding Hope in Depression • Psalm 43
When the waves of depression keep crashing and hope feels far away, Psalm 43 offers a lifeline. Like the Psalmist, we can turn our pain into prayer, invite God’s light and truth to lead us, and begin to preach hope to our weary souls.
Troubled Minds: Mental Illness and the Church’s Mission
Amy Simpson
Mental illness is the sort of thing we don’t like to talk about. It doesn’t reduce nicely to simple solutions and happy outcomes. So instead, too often we reduce people who are mentally ill to caricatures and ghosts, simply pretending they don’t exist. They do exist…
This Beautiful Truth: How God’s Goodness Breaks into Our Darkness
Sarah Clarkson
Amid the daily realities of sickness and isolation, disappointment and pain, it can be profoundly difficult to grasp the real goodness of God. But this is where God breaks into our darkness with beauty. In the wonder of creation, in art or film, story or song, in the kindness of his people and the good they create, God breaks into our pain in a tangible way, teaching us to trust his kindness and hope for his healing.
Grace for the Afflicted: A Clinical and Biblical Perspective on Mental Illness
Matthew S. Stanford
Why has the church struggled in ministering to those with mental illnesses? Each day men and women diagnosed with mental disorders are told to pray more and turn from their sin. Mental illness is equated with demonic possession, weak faith, and generational sin. In Grace for the Afflicted, Stanford informs us about mental illness from biblical and scientific perspectives.
The Hidden Smile of God: The Fruit of Affliction in the Lives of John Bunyan, William Cowper, and David Brainerd
John Piper
John Piper invites you into the lives of John Bunyan, William Cowper, and David Brainerd to discover how God takes the privilege of faith and strengthens it with trials so that we experience a greater hunger for him. The perseverance of these godly servants exemplifies the essential fruit that affliction can produce in your own life.
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Anxiety
Seeking God's Peace.
Anxiety, fear, and feeling overwhelmed areinvitations to lean into the one who knows us best and loves us completely—theGod of all comfort.
Depression
Longing for light in the darkness.
Depression isn’t a surprise to God and doesn’t disqualify us from making an impact for His kingdom. Hold on to hope. God is here.