Mental health has been a topic that has been circulating around culture and around the church a lot in 2019.
As a girl, I struggled with an eating disorder. I had anorexia for about a year. I weighed around 95 pounds, and hardly ate anything. I remember feeling ugly, worthless, and trapped inside a body I hated. The thing was, I had been a Christian my entire life. I knew Jesus loved me, I loved him back, and I knew that he healed people… but I never personally invited him into my mess. As a result, I suffered from mental illness.
I vividly remember being in a worship service, lifting my hands and surrendering every area of my life and pain to Jesus. In that moment, I physically felt weights being lifted off of me, and I knew my eating disorder was gone. I didn’t know it at the time, but The Lord had cast an oppressive spirit out of me.
As Christians, it’s absolutely possible to go to church every week, know all the stories, believe and still. be. oppressed.
So why are there so many Christians tormented by mental illness, if Jesus already conquered every sin, death, and disease?
Some people might argue that it is because we live in a fallen world. There will always be pain and sometimes we just have to suffer. But this completely undermines scripture and the sacrifice Jesus made on the cross. When we come into agreement with our mental illness or pain, we are saying “Jesus, you died for me so I could get into heaven, but your sacrifice wasn’t powerful enough to take away the pain of this world.”
Yes, we live in a fallen world. Yes, life is going to be hard. Will we face difficulties? Absolutely. But we are promised that we will overcome, because the true word of God says:
These signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover. Mark 16:16-18
The Lord will cause your enemies who rise against you to be defeated before you. They shall come out against you one way and flee before you seven ways. Deuteronomy 28:7
The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. John 10:10
No weapon that is formed against you will prosper; And every tongue that accuses you in judgment you will condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD, And their vindication is from Me,” declares the LORD. Isaiah 54:17
But the question still remains:
Why are there so many Christians tormented by mental illness, if Jesus already conquered sickness and death?
There are three common reasons that I have found:
1. We are not empowered by the Holy Spirit – We talk so much about God the Father and King Jesus, but the third part of the God Head is often overlooked in the contemporary church. The Holy Spirit. He is a person and he is a gift. The Holy Spirit empowers us, strengthens us, and delivers us from sin. We are instructed to undergo two baptisms—water baptism, then baptism of The Holy Spirit (Luke 3:16). That means simply praying and inviting the Holy Spirit to come and fill you. It is impossible to live the Christian life fully when we are apart from the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit.
You will know when you have been baptized in the Holy Spirit because you will be filled with new power. You will be able to operate in the spiritual gifts that the bible describes in 2 Corinthians 14, you will have the power to be able to live in freedom, and to command the Enemy to leave. You will begin to develop the fruits of the spirit (Galatians 5:22-23) and hear God’s voice.
If your relationship with God feels dry, powerless, or stagnant, that is a good indicator that you are in need of the Holy Spirit. It is also important to note that being baptized and filled with the Holy Spirit is NOT a one-time thing like water baptism can be. There is the initial asking/baptism experience with Him, but we have to continuously be filled with the Holy Spirit. This means asking the Him to fill you daily.
2. We are uneducated about deliverance. Deliverance ministry is a ministry of the church that concentrates on spiritual freedom. When we study scripture, we learn that there are demons, they constantly work to oppress humanity, and that we must be on our guard, ready to fight and conquer the schemes of Satan. (Ephesians 6:12, 1 Cor 16:13-14).
Deliverance ministry often happens when the afflicted person takes a step back from their situation and realizes that they cannot keep living this way. The oppressed Christian realizes they need rescuing from compulsive sins or behaviors they cannot stop committing or have little control over, such as alcoholism or a drug addiction.
In my case in 2017, I was horribly tormented by anxiety. I reached a point where I could not take it anymore. I had panic attacks every single day and tried taking supplements and different forms of “self-care” remedies. They did not work.
I finally went to my spiritual mentor and told her that I had been ridden with deep anxiety for months.We prayed together and a demonic spirit of anxiety left my body. Since that day, I have not had panic attacks and am no longer bound to anxiety. I have total and complete healing from that mental illness.
Many times, especially when someone initially goes through deliverance, it looks like what I did–partnering with a spiritual leader or mentor who is filled and empowered by the Holy Spirit and breaking off demonic strongholds by the power of prayer. Deliverance is a serious step towards freedom, and those seeking it should be fully accepting of the lordship of Jesus in their life and ready to turn away from their sin.
I have written about my journey with deliverance, how do identify and cast out demons, and how-to walk in freedom. You can read further about deliverance on my site HERE.
3. We do not take authority over the enemy. A lot of Christians pray, plead, and hope that God will someday take their illness away instead of standing ground and taking authority over the spirits attacking their mind. This of course, comes after deliverance once that bondage has been broken and you have freed yourself from the oppressive spirits.
Imagine your teacher gives you an assignment to complete. She has given you all of the instructions on how to complete the project, but you refuse to read the directions and instead have a melt down and send her countless emails begging her to complete the assignment for you. Is your teacher going to do that? Doubtful.
Why do we do that with God? We refuse to read our bibles—the instructions for how to live a free and whole life—then beg him to take away our torment. Will he do it? If you wish and hope and pray, I mean He’s God… He can. But if you continue to sit back and let the enemy bully you, you will never grow in your faith. When we refuse to learn spiritual warfare, we live a life of spiritual immaturity and compromise—you will survive but never be able to thrive. You will be powerless over every wave the enemy throws at you and be swallowed up in torment.
The good news is, that is not what God has intended for your story.
The bible tells us to take every thought captive (2 Cor 10:15). We are to call out those invasive, compulsive, and negative thoughts and cast them back into the pit of hell where they belong.
Christians must understand that their identity is royal because they are a child of God and are not subject to any kind of torment from the kingdom of darkness.
You have all authority and power over the enemy because the king of kings lives inside of you. When we don’t know our identity in Christ and who He says we are, we allow darkness to push us around.
Part 2: Examples from the Bible
Pastor and theologian Neil T. Anderson writes, “Christians who think demons were active when Christ was on earth, but their activity has subsided are not embracing the whole counsel of God in light of what His word says, nor are they facing reality.”
Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Ephesians 6:10-12
Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. 1 Peter 5:8
If demonic forces are not actively trying to oppress believers, why would Paul instruct us to wear the armor of God and continuously fight against our enemies?
Now that we have established that there are spirits, the bible continues to go into even more details about the kinds of spirits that attempt to torment us.
For God has not given us a spirit of fear but of power and love and self-control. 2 Timothy 1:7
We see from this verse that fear/anxiety is not simply a chemical imbalance, but a spirit. Does your body have a physical reaction to the Spiritual climate? Absolutely. That is why psychologists can only tell you what is happening in your body once that anxiety enters. It cannot explain how or why anxiety got there. A Harvard Medical article stated, “Nerve cell connections, nerve cell growth, and the functioning of nerve circuits have a major impact on depression. Still, their understanding of the neurological underpinnings of mood is incomplete.”
Neurological scans and doctors can only tell you the physiological affects that mental illness, in this case depression, can cause you. Their best guess is either the mental illness was passed down genetically, or that it is the aftermath of trauma.
Can I tell you something, friends? We are not just bodies. You are a complex being, made up of a spirit that God breathed into, a soul that contains your will and emotions, and a physical body. All of these work together and affect one another. They are not separated but work together and make up YOU!
Scripture tell us that generational curses are the cause of illnesses passed down throughout our families, and that they are not only physical but spiritual (Exodus 34:7) . They can be broken by the power of Christ through deliverance, and we can receive total and complete healing. This doesn’t sound like science and faith bumping heads, but actually explaining one another!
When you really think about it, it makes so much sense. They work together because He is the author and creator of our body, spirit, soul and science.
If we write off what the bible says about mental illness because it wasn’t around when modern medicine was, then we are undermining Gods word and authority. We are picking and choosing aspects of the bible to believe and parts to throw away. When we do this, we are saying that the bible is not truth, but just good teaching that we can pick and choose where to apply and where to ignore. In other words, it is being your own god.
The Bible does not shy away from talking about mental illness, so the church shouldn’t either.
Scripture actually tell us not to be afraid 365 times! One for every day of the year. Jesus even tells us not to be anxious about our lives! (Matthew 6:25-34)
If we are instructed not to be anxious, but instead to cast out fear, then this means that we have dominion over it!
The bible even goes beyond depression and anxiety—it discusses insanity, confusion, madness, epilepsy, self-harm, and suicide. These are only a few references that I could find quickly. The scriptures do not tell us that these people only had medical issues, but spiritual ones, and that these mental illnesses came from unclean spirits, or demons.
Ref: Isa 61:3, 2 Tim 1:7, 1 Sam 16:14, Matt 4:24, Mark 5:5
Throughout the gospels of Jesus, multitudes of mentally and physically ill people were brought to Jesus and he rebuked demons out of them. We see this in the cases of epilepsy, Tourette’s, self-harm, even crippled people were physically healed by Jesus simply rebuking a spirit out of them. From this we learn that demons can cause mental and physical illness. Do they cause every single form? No, some people that were brought to Jesus were just sick. But the same resolution was found every time a sick person, mental or physical, was brought to Jesus: he healed them.
And that same healing is available to you through Jesus.
The Young Boy With Epilepsy (Matthew 17:14-20)
And when they came to the crowd, a man came up to him and, kneeling before him, said, “Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is an epileptic and he suffers terribly. For often he falls into the fire, and often into the water. And I brought him to your disciples, and they could not heal him.” And Jesus answered, “O faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him here to me.” And Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him, and the boy was healed instantly.
Then the disciples came to Jesus in private and asked, “Why couldn’t we drive it out?” He replied, “Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”
There is SO much to unpack here, we don’t have time to get into all of it. But BELIEVING for the healing is what caused this young man to be healed of his mental illness. The disciples all followed and loved Jesus, but they did not have any faith that he could cure the young man from epilepsy! Jesus then rebukes his followers and calls their generation perverse because they didn’t believe he could cure the disease.
So often, we are the disciples in this story. There was a season of my life where I was overwhelmed with severe depression. During those days, the darkness felt more real than the presence of God. It wasn’t until I cast out that spirit of heaviness that l could see that I was believing the lies it fed me: My sorrow was too great for God to take away. That I was unlovable and meant to be alone. That God hated me, and my depression was punishment for being a bad daughter.
What lies have you adopted?
We must see through the lies of the enemy, even when our emotions and mental state seem so out of control and wounded. People are in bondage to the lies they believe, which is why we must reject every statement about ourselves that does not align with scripture. We do this by reading the word and learning about who he says we are.
This is why Jesus says, “You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” John 8:32
I do want to bring up medication briefly, because I know there will be questions and people will probably make inaccurate assumptions.
I am not telling anyone to go to their kitchen and dump out their medicine or neglect what their physicians have told them. Doctors, medicine, and therapists can be wonderful help, but they are not the hope.
In the words of pastor Henry Seeley, “I’m not here to give you medical advice. But I believe that God has more for you than just spending the rest of your life dependent on medication. Medication might take a season, and that’s okay, that could be part of the journey for some of you. But if I went to the doctor, and the doctor told me there was something wrong and I need to take Tylenol every day for the rest of my life, I would question what that kind of advice that is. Because that is acknowledging that something is wrong, but rather than fixing what is wrong, we are just going to cover it up so you can cope for the rest of your life.”
Part 3: Walking In Freedom
What does it look like to practically walk out everything we just discussed?
- We must be filled with the Holy Spirit daily
- We should seek deliverance and spiritual freedom if we notice there are areas in our lives that are not submitted to and ruled by The Lord Jesus.
- We must put on the armor of God daily (Ephesians 6)
- We should spend time daily reading the bible, worshipping, and praying in the presence of God.
- We must stand firm, speak scripture over ourselves, and pray against the enemy when the attacks come.
All of these steps can be accomplished by having a healthy and vibrant prayer life. The more time you spend talking with God the more truths he will reveal to you about the journey you are on.
One of the pastors at our church said something profound the other day. He said, “The dark places where the church doesn’t go and spread the gospel, will come to infiltrate the church.”
I heard the Holy Spirit say, “That is what has happened to my church with mental illness.”
My heart broke when I heard that. And I began to work on this blog post.
As the church, we must be vigilant followers of Jesus who do not conform to the thinking patterns of our culture and society. We must take the narrative back and view contemporary issues through the lens of the one we are following, who IS truth.
Our world is so starved of the truth right now—we are constantly lied to in news, media, politics, and religion. We cannot follow the world and choose to be our own source of truth. We have seen where this has gotten our world. Mental illnesses, addictions, racism, divorce rates, murders, suicides, and terror attacks have continued to rise. People are lost and in despair because they do not know healing is available to them. What is the church going to do about it?
Are we too busy bickering about if mental health is a spiritual issue? The differences between doctrines? We have the answer, we have the healing, we have wholeness because we have Jesus.
His sacrifice was so powerful, it erased sin, death, sickness, and disease. When Jesus rose from the dead, it was so you didn’t have to cope and live with mental illness. He overcame it so you could have life to the full!
If you are still waiting for the healing, then it is for a reason and that reason will be revealed in His perfect timing. But hear me when I say, the healing will come as long as we seek Him and seek spiritual freedom.
It’s okay to not be okay, but it’s not okay to stay there. We have a hope greater than and outside of medicine, doctors, or a diagnosis. We have Jesus.