Anxiety, depression and all forms of mental oppression and illness are increasing at an alarming rate. Overwhelmingly, studies show the highest recorded rates of depression, anxiety, and suicidal thinking. This is especially apparent in the next generation which is the saddest, most anxious, depressed, and medicated on record. Nearly a third of teen girls say they have seriously considered suicide. For boys, that number is an alarming 14 percent. Warriors in Christ, our culture is withering under a tidal wave of mental health challenges. These complex issues can stem from chemical imbalance to spiritual opposition. Let's lift up this issue in our city and world this month by praying for God to bring His light and His healing to all those bound in this way.
The underpinnings of such rampant bondage are many, but if we look beyond symptom management to root causes, we can see three causes of emotional and spiritual disruption about which Jesus spoke to us often. We must directly contend with these or they will be deeply influential in our daily lives. They are anxiety, shame, and grief. Admonitions to “fear not, do not be afraid, do not worry, do not be anxious” are the most recorded in Scripture. Certainly, this is because the Lord knew we would be faced with the temptation to fear constantly. Charles Spurgeon captured the danger of fear aptly: “Anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows, but only empties today of its strength.”
Shame has been a struggle for every single person in some manner since Adam and Eve fell in the garden. Most people have no idea how shame is impacting them, and when we are unaware is when shame does its most significant damage. Shame is the primary tool evil uses to disrupt and disconnect our relationships, our stories, our communities, and our world. As K. J. Ramsey said, “Shame is always being leveraged by the enemy to tell a story where you end up alone.”
Grief is a part of everyday life for all of us on this planet. It’s because we were made for Eden and Eternity, but presently we reside on a broken planet. If we do not understand that grief is natural over every type of brokenness and kind of loss, we will misinterpret it in all sorts of wrong directions. When people do not understand they are grieving, they conclude that anything from God is not good or that life is not worth living.
These three emotional challenges have a stranglehold on many of God’s beautiful children because they are not properly facing them from the security in Christ we have been given. Instead of being rooted and established in the love of Jesus, beloved children of God are struggling to find identity in the faces and circumstances around them. As a result of this unmooring and lack of grounding in the love of God and His unique creation of each and every one of us, we take our questions of value and worth to the world around us to great peril. Evil gladly capitalizes on this plight and baits everyone with comparison, judgmentalism, pride, and fear regularly…all resulting in the highest ever recorded rates of anxiety, depression, and mental disturbance.
It is time for us to become activated and contend for souls everywhere.
Let’s pray together for anxiety to become a cue to run to the Lord instead of an all-consuming state of being.
Let's pray together to recognize the harmful bait of shame and instead live in authentic vulnerability and community.
Let’s pray together for children of God to lament well instead of grief coming out sideways.
Let’s pray together that a wave of becoming rooted in Christ sweeps our city, our nation, and our world in such a way that mental health problems diminish in the face of absolute security.
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