Five Practical Keys to Mental Health

Unleashing peace. That is the name of our new four-week series and my name is René. I'm one of the pastors here at Twin Lakes Church. Wow! I should disappear for three months at a time more often apparently. I, for those of you who don't know and you're going, "Who is this guy?" I am one of the pastors here. I just got back from a three-month sabbatical. So some of you are going, "Who are you?" because Mark and Val and Adrian and our guest speakers like Jay and Herman all did such a great job over the last three months. Let's just thank them. They killed it. It was awesome.

I was able to leave knowing that this place is in great hands but others are going, "Have you been away?" Yes, this three-month sabbatical is a beautiful thing that our church does for all the pastors here on staff. Every seventh year we get to have three months off and many of you have asked, "Well, what did you do on your sabbatical?" Honestly, the biggest thing was what did I not do because I unplugged completely from all social media, unplugged completely from email, allotted myself a maximum of 15 minutes a day to look at the news and many days I didn't look at it at all. Doesn't that all sound so awesome?

And so I was able to just live as I put it and as they say these days, IRL in real life. For example, I spent lots of time with the grandkids like Freddie and Dan right there. Don't they just look like fun? And then you may not know this but all three of our kids had three kids last year, three babies, three COVID babies and there they are, Emmett and Willa and Amelia. Everybody just say "Ah" together. Ah, yes. And we were also able to do lots of dates, a lot of René and Lori time. We live in a beautiful place to have dates and I hope you all take advantage of that. It was just such a fun time.

And you know one of my favorite things to do was go to different churches because since I wasn't hanging out with y'all, I got to go see all kinds of different local places. It was so fun for me to go, I tried to go to all kinds of different flavors of churches from the Pentecostal churches to the Frozen Chosen churches and back again, big churches, small churches, white churches, black churches, fat churches, skinny churches, all kinds of different churches. It was a ball and I have to tell you one of the coolest things for me going to a dozen different churches over the last three months was God is on the move here.

I felt such a warmth and love in every single one of these congregations and I want you to be encouraged with that. They're all growing again. There was such a sense of anticipation at every single church I went to. They know that God's going to do great things. Do you know that? God's doing great things here in Santa Cruz. Let's give God the glory for that because it's beautiful.

But I told you mostly what I did was just rest because I needed it. As I mentioned to some of you last weekend, there's never been more pastors than now who say they just want to quit their jobs and it's the same thing with teachers and it's the same thing with medical professionals, doctors and nurses. Really anybody who over the last couple of years was in any kind of a caring profession because the last like two and a quarter years have been very, very intense.

And although I wouldn't have said that at the beginning of my sabbatical, about two weeks in it I realized it was taking a while for my RPMs to slow down and I had been getting kind of irritable and grumpy and not sleeping well and truly showing signs of burnout and dangerously spiraling toward the anxiety attacks and so on that I'd struggled with for much of my life. Thank God I found such beautiful rest. What a gift sabbaticals are.

And I know that's a privilege that not everybody gets to have but I'm so grateful that this church provides that for the pastors because you know you need your pastors to have a center of peace and tranquility and rest and it's an investment in this church's congregational life to invest in your pastors that way so I thank you.

But I've noticed upon my return that I'm seeing the same kind of symptoms that I exhibited pre-sabbatical all around me. Why is that? I saw a very thought-provoking survey a couple of weeks ago. They say about six percent of the US population is on the extreme end of any particular issue like whether it's right or left for example let's say six percent's on the extreme right of any issue just name it and about six percent is on the extreme opposite side of any particular issue you could imagine and those two groups of six percent those are the ones that are posting online provocative stuff and try to work up a fervor for their issue.

The rest of us are what sociologists are now calling the exhausted majority. Raise your hand. Anybody in the exhausted majority here you are just tired of the division and tired of the fighting and tired of the almost constant bad news. Somebody said we're all feeling traumatized and tired and touchy and being away really out of the loop for so long and kind of coming back into now checking the socials again, checking the news feeds again. It's amazing to me how clear it is to me that basically our whole society is experiencing sort of a low-level PTSD.

All of us are over the last couple of years and so I thought what we need to do in my first series back is to see what the Bible has to say about mental health and it was pretty cool because last week in Dr. Jeremiah Johnston is the author of this book "Unleashing Peace." He is an Oxford trained PhD and he did such a great job kicking off this four-week series for us.

Just a quick review in case you missed it. Jeremiah showed us that the word most often used in the Bible for peace is shalom. Say that with me. Shalom. Say it again. Shalom. Doesn't that feel good? It's Hebrew for peace but it means much more than that. It also means wholeness and harmony and balance. In other words, really mental and experiential wellness and this is what God desires for you.

It starts when we get peace with God, the salvation of our souls, forgiveness of sins and we all have that when we place our trust in Christ which is beautiful by His grace but our daily personal experience of peace and tranquility and wholeness, that peace of God really happens best as he said when I have a plan. Why? Because shalom is counter cultural. Tranquility, are you kidding me? Balance? That's counter to our culture's rhythms. It's counter to our culture's values.

So how do I get a plan? Well Jeremiah talked extensively about his plan last weekend. Today I decided I would get very personal yet simple and just share my own hard-fought and hard-learned plan because I'm not an expert on mental health and mental illness but I am a sufferer and so here's my story.

If you've been coming to Twin Lakes any number of years you've heard bits and pieces of this over the years but I don't think, in fact I know, I've never told my whole story the way I am going to do this morning, ever before but I want to put it together so that you can understand and be encouraged at how God can help you too. This is my testimony.

Most of you know that just before I turned four around the time this picture was taken my father Fred passed away very quickly due to cancer. There's my mom Rosemary, my little sister Heidi and there's me just before I turned four years old. So dad passed away a few weeks before my birthday and this is us shortly after the funeral at my aunt and uncle's house over in Lascatus. My aunt and uncle and me and my mom and my sister and if you look closely you can see a kind of a memorial photo of my dad up on the wall and my sister's too little to know what's going on but you can see in the eyes can't you of both me and mom who were just sort of shell shocked.

And I remember all of this crystal clear like it like it happened yesterday though I was only four and I remember thinking the thoughts that were going through my little brain were okay I get how the world works sometimes the worst thing you can possibly imagine happens even if you pray for it and even if you believe God is an all-powerful God who cares about you we live in a world where bad stuff happens and and like this was like the best the worst thing I could imagine happening as a little kid happened anyway.

So I thought to myself if that's the kind of world we are in then here's how I'm going to protect myself because the worst thing about this bad thing happening to me was that it surprised me it was a gut punch and so it's kind of like you know if somebody comes up to you and they're gonna like punch you playfully in the gut if they surprise you it really hurts but if you can prepare for it kind of stiffen up a little bit then then it doesn't hurt.

So kind of basically the way my mind was going was I can prepare for the gut punch by always anticipating the worst case scenario anytime anything happens and the way this happened was anytime anything happened it was like my mom's late to picking up from school probably died in a car crash. I have a stomach ache might be cancer and it got ridiculous but I thought this way bad stuff will never surprise me again but in reality I was just slowly incrementally training my mind to exist in dread all the time just constant anxiety and it builds up.

Right when I became a teenager I don't even remember what this occasion was by the way apparently I was preparing to debut my magic show I don't know why a 12 year old is wearing a tuxedo but um but around this time in my life I started developing severe obsessive compulsive disorder OCD and I suspect that it was a reaction to another trauma that I've talked about being sexually molested by an adult but really what OCD was for me looking back was another way to manage the uncertainty of life because uncertainty leads to anxiety and so let me create certainty in a million different increments.

I'll create rituals and what what I did with my OCD was I created all sorts of rituals like I had to touch my face 45 times on the right side then 45 times on the left side before I could even open the door to my room in the morning and if I didn't or if I lost track then I had to start all over again and there were hundreds of rituals like this throughout every day guess what didn't work.

Instead of being balanced I became severely moody because I was always feeling like I'm not succeeding in my OCD I'm getting something wrong and if something went wrong it was because I didn't do my ritual right and so I was always either in a black hole of despair or in the highest heights of just exhilaration but most people wouldn't have known this I managed it mostly by just stuffing all this down internalizing.

But you know anxiety is kind of like have you ever helped tried to hold a beach ball underwater in a pool and you can try to hold it under but if you just let go boom it just like launches out of the pool right this is what anxiety is like so I kept it under for a number of years.

Fast-forward about a year after I came here to TLC instantly one night my chest just explodes with pain I have a terrible splitting headache I get tunnel vision I can hardly breathe and Laurie thinks I'm having a stroke so she rushes me to the ER at Dominican the doctor assigned to me does all the tests the EKG everything else comes back says well good news it's not a stroke but can I ask you a few questions sure what's your job well in my sick legalistic mind I thought I can't tell him I'm a pastor because that might hurt my testimony so I go I don't want to lie so I said I am an educator because that's like kind of what I do right.

So he goes well is it a stressful job for you yes oh man it's so stressful and I was talking about you people it's so stressful how are you sleeping not too good terrible are you eating terrible are you exercising literally never and he asked several other questions and then he says well pastor René my family and I have started attending to a lake's church and we love it and we love you and I believe God brought you and me together today so that I could help you because you my friend are having the classic symptoms of severe anxiety attacks.

And that wasn't my last anxiety attack you that they're terrible if you've ever gone through them that man was Dr. John Jackson you probably know him best as the father of Rebecca Jackson who you've seen up here play violin many times in concert and worship and so on and in that moment when Dr. John said that I began a journey that I'm still on today by the way into better mental health.

I learned from Dr. Jackson so much I also learned from licensed therapists from scripture from other books that I read and what I want to do this morning in light of the series is share with you the five most important principles that I learned but first let me ask you Dr. Jackson's questions how are you sleeping how are you eating are you exercising at all are you more irritable than normal now if you're normally very irritable this may be hard to discern but then normal are you more down than usual are you catastrophizing more where you're always imagining the worst-case scenario is decision-making getting really hard for you are you avoiding people and maybe you're not even introvert but you're like I'm always peopled out all the time are you always exhausted do you no longer find joy in the things that once brought you joy.

If you answered yes to most of those questions you need a plan and let me suggest to you the roots of my plan five practical keys to mental health these are all rooted in scripture this is what I have learned personally about saying mentally and emotionally healthy now everybody's journey is different but my prayer is that at least one of these would hit a chord for you in fact I want to encourage you to as you listen put a star by the one that you're going to put into practice in your life this week.

The first is foundational I needed to show myself grace show myself grace. Here's why my wife Laurie used to tell me René you are the most guilt oriented person I know I always felt guilty about something now guilt can be a blessing if you're actually guilty about something culpability is important to own but I never felt like I was doing enough I always saw God as disappointed in me and so I really needed to hear verses like Romans 8:1 in fact let's read this out loud together therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus say these highlighted words out loud again no condemnation.

There's so many verses like this in Scripture it's hard to describe how freeing this was for me when I rediscovered the theology of the gospel of grace it changed my whole life you mean I don't need to do an OCD ritual to make everything right Jesus already made it right you mean I'm holy and blameless in God's side according to Ephesians chapter 1 right now there's nothing I need to do to get that and this is one reason why I talk about grace so much here.

Not understanding grace really just exacerbated my own mental health problems because I added to my anxiety guilt do you need to hear this you do not need to be perfect healthy cured normal to be loved by God God already loves you and God loves you so much he said his one and only son to die on the cross so that you would not perish but have everlasting an abundant life and shalom starts when I receive that personally amen God shows you grace to show yourself grace.

Second, seek support from multiple sources seek support from multiple sources now this was such a game-changing concept for me and I really want you to focus up here because I think that most people get this wrong let me explain this that night in the ER I asked Dr. Jackson okay what can I do give me the answer because I never want to feel this way again and he says well I can't give you the answer I said well that's depressing he said what I said was I can't give you the answer because there is no the answer.

And in fact René that's what keeps so many people from growing in this area because they're looking for the answer singular he said most people are looking for one magic key for Christians it's often prayer or some other spiritual discipline if I just pray better read the Bible more I'll be okay others it might be a magic pill if I just get the prescription right or the perfect psychologist.

Now these all may be part of the answer for you they were for me but the problem is that people look for just one thing they try one thing at a time that's a mistake because then people say well tried prayer didn't work yeah I tried meds didn't work yeah I tried and tried to seek the perfect counselor was gonna be like my personal Messiah never found him because they're making the mental error of looking for the one magic key they need it all host holistically working together.

This is so important I want you to follow me here this is a common logical fallacy known as confusing necessary and sufficient causes I want you to understand this because people make this mistake all the times in fact say this out loud with me confusing necessary and sufficient causes let me explain it to you this way think of a plant in fact this is so important I even put a graphic in your often when I'm explaining this to people in counseling I'll draw this on a piece of paper or a napkin or something like think of a plant what does a plant need to grow and to blossom and to be fruitful well it needs air right carbon dioxide oxygen needs sunshine soil water it needs a seed every single one of these things is necessary not one of them is sufficient does that make sense?

So don't confuse a necessary cause with a sufficient cause the flower doesn't go well I tried Sun it didn't work right it needs all of these things working together and your mental and spiritual health is very similar for example you need sleep and exercise you need a healthy diet you need people friendships perhaps medication and professional counseling and by the way let me just pause here to say I have personally been immensely blessed by anti-anxiety meds they may not be part of the solution for you they may be part of the solution they may be part of the solution for a while see a professional.

But the reason I wanted to pause to talk about this briefly is if you have been told and every time I talk about this I always have people come up just in tears saying my family or whatever is putting so much guilt on me for going to a professional therapist or a doctor or trying medication for my anxiety if you've been told that it is unspiritual for a Christian to use medication or even to see a therapist that is false teaching.

In fact in Dr. Johnston's book which we have back at the bookstore he has a whole chapter called the Bible weaponized and misread when it comes to mental health and he talks about this whole issue I encourage you to check it out and then the seed of course is the gospel all of these things together are what I needed to get healthy if I was immersed in the gospel that's great but I wasn't sleeping and I wasn't eating right I wasn't going to be mentally healthy.

You see this all through the Bible by example for example think of Elijah in 1 Kings 19 he shows severe signs of depression and burnout it says he sat down under a broom tree and prayed that he might die I've had enough Lord he said take my life no better than my father's I'm no good I'm burned out I want to end it so God sends an angel and what does the angel do watch this suddenly an angel touched him and said get up and get over it no hey get up and eat I love that verse and he looked around and there by his head was a cake of bread baked over hot coals and a jar of water so we ate and he drank and then he got back to work no took another nap and then if you know the story goes on a long hike then he goes sleeps for a long time and then God appears to him in prayer and then God gives him a very practical you could call it a business plan.

So it's all these things working together it's not one thing it's diet and sleep and prayer and a plan mental health is never about one magic key it's about a bundle of healthy choices there's a word for this in the modern English lexicon holistic holistic holistic need a holistic approach.

Okay so back in the ER Dr. Jackson then says to me now that you understand this idea it's very under important for you understand René because I'm not gonna give you one magic key here I'm gonna give you a bundle of healthy choices multiple sources of help.

Now I'm gonna give you the specifics that he gave me in a minute but here's the big picture here's what they all boiled down to point three set a routine and stick with it set a routine and stick with it show of hands how many parents or grandparents do we have here can I see a show of hands good would you agree with me how little kids need routine or they just have these epic meltdowns right?

Let me ask you this is the same thing true of adults of course it is to avoid our meltdowns we need a healthy routine God knows us knows this about us he loves us and this is why routine if you think about it is baked into scripture isn't it weekly Sabbath daily prayer this is why Psalm 127:2 says it is senseless for you to work so hard from early morning until late at night does that sound like working at home during the COVID lockdown?

I'm convinced that part of our national and global mental health crisis right now is that when we went to working from home during the lockdown as most of us did we lost a whole routine and we never got into a new routine so why do we work so hard a fear is often at the root of it fearing you'll starve to death for God wants his loved ones to get their proper what rest.

So back in the ER Dr. Jackson says René I'm gonna write down a prescription for your life and to kind of give it authority he writes this down on one of those doctors our ex pads sleep same time each day eat same time each day exercise at least 20 minutes same time each day and take at least one day off a week same day every week.

Now obviously life throws us curveballs sometimes it's impossible to keep the routine exactly I've never had a week probably where I've kept the routine exactly but the point is to have a general routine and speaking of routine this maybe sounds a little self-serving coming from a pastor but we need to get back to a routine of attending church in person a lot of us got out of the habit during covid please make it part of your weekly routine again same place same time every week because you know all the research is showing mental wellness has helped when we're in community.

And on this point I just want to say you might have noticed we're doing all we can to turbo charge to deepen to enhance the community here at Twin Lakes Church lots of opportunities to plug in I'm super stoked about something that's happening in a month our new fall series you'll get through this how much do we need to hear this phrase say it out loud you'll get through this turn to somebody next to you look them in the eye and say you'll get through this you're gonna get through this.

So this starts September 24th and 25th this is gonna be an eight-week journey in the book of Genesis through the amazing life of Joseph and my weekend messages are gonna correlate to the book by the same title and small group videos by Max Lucato just being in a home group will boost your mental wellness and we don't want anybody to be left out and we need hosts so if you can open your home for a small group just go to TLC org small groups to sign up do it today or for more information because getting positive content like this in community is gonna really help you.

With number four stop binging on negative content stop binging on negative content as your pastor I urge you to consider whether having the cable news channel on 24/7 in your house is really the best strategy for your personal Christian formation or whether scrolling through endless news feeds and socials you know I talked earlier about kind of the exhausted majority we're all exhausted by non-stop intense headlines and feeds.

Why is this happening? You know you hear people say well we live in unprecedented times but if you think back these times aren't unprecedented right they're not think back to the 60s the 70s there was political division then too there was war there was social unrest there was inflation only one factor has changed now this is all happening in the age of 24/7 media and here's the problem both traditional legacy broadcasters cable news networks and so on and new media socials and so on they all get their revenue based on numbers clicks eyeballs views ratings and engagement that's how long you watch and if you share if you comment the higher those numbers the more money they get for ads and those numbers are boosted when their content feeds your emotions especially outrage you view more you share more and this is why the news and socials are now non-stop outrage machines and also I don't know if you've noticed they're non-stop opinion machines.

Why? Because there's actually not enough bad news 24/7 and so what they do is they create loud-mouthed celebrity influencers in order to say things that outrage you whether it's a news headline or whether it's politics or whether it's sports their job is to say things that you go what so you engage you are being played you don't need them they need you so stop binging on negative content it is terrible for your mental health.

You know there's a reason that Jesus said this what a great verse your eye is like a lamp that provides light for your body that means your whole self your life when your eye is healthy your whole body your whole life is filled with light but when your eye is unhealthy then your whole body is filled with darkness your whole life you know it's easy for me to to talk about the news for me I rarely binge the news but you know what my thing is I love thriller novels adventure books and spy novels and you know what I've noticed if I read too many of those in a row without a break I start to get really paranoid is somebody following my car somebody bugging my phone is somebody in the tree in my front yard that's the Russian spy you know and so I gotta take a break.

You have to know your triggers what are you reading what are you watching what are you listening to what games are you playing look at Proverbs 15:14 I love this verse let's read this out loud together a wise person is hungry for truth while the fool feeds on trash what are you feeding yourself on now of course I can't just take something away without replacing it with something else you got positive content you got to put in one of the best things I have done for my mental health recently I started a new hobby a couple of years ago I bought a beat-up old-use paddleboard and I started to stand up paddleboarding and I'm like obsessed with it I get out there every single day on the ocean if I can and what this daily habit has done for me is number one it gives me exercise number two it gives me a routine and number three guess what it's impossible to binge negative content out there.

In fact it's so good for you I have to show you something I really don't have time to do this but I have to show you this article it was in the Wall Street Journal Thursday and I thought this is perfect for our topic this weekend and also perfect for where we live look at this headline the underrated therapy for anxiety and stress water look at this quote look at this quote neuroscientists say spending time near oceans yes lakes rivers and other blue spaces can provide a range of benefits including reducing anxiety and easing mental fatigue.

Now maybe you say well I'm not a paddleboarder surfer sailor watch this even the sound and smell and sight of water is mesmerizing and soothing do you agree with that what I'm saying is this we apparently live right next to the largest anxiety reducing tool on planet earth the Pacific Ocean so get out there and take advantage just look at it stop binging the negative start binging the restorative.

All right I'm bringing us in for a landing pretty quick I have one more point today but first as I said I'm no expert on mental illness so I asked a local licensed marriage and family therapist Lacey Warren who you also see up here in our worship team sometimes for her own professional perspective watch this.

Lacey you're super familiar with Christian faith you're a Christian you grew up at Twin Lakes Church your husband's in ministry how do you find that Christian faith can positively impact somebody's mental health?

Yeah so for me I know personally faith can be so supportive in a way that traditional treatments can't right because knowing Jesus personally having the community of support through the church is so powerful our faith helps us make sense of suffering it helps us persevere through hardship and mental illness is a unique form of suffering and it helps us connect with community so for me even in my own life knowing that God made me and made my unique brain and understands more than I do it helped me to kind of rest in that sense of man this is really hard but it took off the shame from it like knowing that God really gets it he knows about mental illness.

I think the partnership of pastors church leaders and psychiatrists psychologists mental health professionals licensed professionals that is so important to have that integration like that is so healing for people and staying connected to community is foundational I believe that is how God created us to thrive connection to him connection to other people in our immediate community.

How do churches sometimes get it wrong but there's still sometimes maybe even often this strange like viewpoint of mental illness that it's we got to tough it out or a Christian shouldn't have mental illness or you could kind of hide the symptoms and yet our brain is an organ in our physical body and we don't tend to tell someone who's newly diagnosed let's say like with cancer or diabetes or something we don't say like just give it to God just pray about it like those of course those those are like what you were saying those are foundational but we would say you need appropriate medical care.

So when it comes to mental health to really de-stigmatize in that way we've talked about my message this weekend is there any particular point that you feel like you want to elaborate on or correct?

Yeah so I mean personally I would just want to acknowledge that for anyone struggling with mental illness suffering with mental illness to acknowledge that you're not alone that God is with you and loves you and knows that experience of what that's like to struggle that is so important and that de-stigmatizing is one of the reasons that we're doing this series and I want you to know you're not alone God is with you we're with you we have mental health support groups you can get all the info at TLC org slash support groups but we also have a table in the lobby today because the face-to-face contact is so important we've got a group for people going through mental illness right now for you we've got a whole support group for you we also have a support group for those who are family members of people with mental illness because that's a whole different kind of suffering and challenge we want you to know we are for you.

Now I want to wrap up with a point that for me has been absolutely one of the most practical most effective keys that I have learned it's number five start each day with scriptural prayer and I know I keep talking about this but I haven't talked about it in three months I know that for sure this is a habit that I started during COVID a couple of years ago that really changed me and it's this the moment I realize I'm awake before I rise before my coffee before I open my eyes I pray through a scripture from memory and I personalize it.

I can't overstate how this changes my experience of the rest of the day so I just want to challenge you to try it if you're not doing this already choose one of these scriptures and do it every morning this week here's my go-to scriptures the Lord's Prayer the fruit of the Spirit they're in your notes Psalm 23 but I want to close by reading you the end of Matthew 11 this is the prayer that I prayed every single morning of my sabbatical 90 straight days because I was almost too tired to pray I was so tired and I almost couldn't put a prayer together and what I loved about this prayer is it's Jesus voice speaking to us and maybe you feel tired today the exhausted majority or maybe you've had some mental health struggle like the one I described I hope you are encouraged that by God's grace I'm navigating mine I found help I'm still growing I'm still on the journey but for me that one of the worst days of my life that horrible anxiety attack that put me in the hospital ended up being one of the best days of my life because it's like when an alcoholic hits bottom that's where I found help that's where it started to change for me and for you maybe it starts today.

This morning listen to the voice of Jesus in these verses come unto me all you who are weary and burdened and I'll give you rest take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls from my yoke is easy and my burden is light Jesus loves you so let's come to him for rest right now would you bow your head with me let's pray.

God of peace we come to you right now asking for your peace in our lives first of all I just want to pray for anybody who is suffering with mental illness right now may they be strengthened by your love and God I want to pray for the mental health professionals here doctors therapists caregivers strengthen them too thank you for them and I pray that if there's anybody here who needs to take that first step toward you the Prince of Peace they might pray something like this in their hearts Lord I don't understand all this but I'm starting to understand that being a Christian means living in peace with God and with others because you have the peace of God so bring peace to my soul Jesus I turn to you as my Savior and Lord God may we as a church develop lifelong habits for mental and spiritual wellness not in our own strength but by the power of the Holy Spirit through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.