30/11/2022
SPIRITUALLY POWERFUL AND MENTALLY DAMAGED
This is the state of many Christians. We are spiritually mature, advanced, and powerful, but we are clueless when it comes to our mental health. This is the root of many church ills and church hurt.
I faced a lot of church hurt in my time. Some of which I am not ready to talk about.
I faced rejection too, accusations, and took the blame for things I did not do just because an elder saw it fit to blame me instead of them tarnishing their reputation. I have been threatened and taken advantage of. I have been used for other people’s personal gains in the name of the church and God. And I know it's not just me. Many people face that too.
We have a tendency to ignore our physical and mental health and just focus on just being spiritually powerful. This is why we have prophets who struggle with depression and pastors who struggle with anxiety and powerful women and men of God who are suicidal because of their past trauma.
The sad thing is we trust powerful men and women of God. We think they must be living a perfect life. Unfortunately, that is not the case. There are many powerful people in the house of God that are living dysfunctional lives. Many of them struggle with their mental health and even have horrible habits which they picked up while trying to cope with their trauma.
Matthew 7: 16
By their fruit, you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles? 17 Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. 18 A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit.
The Bible says that we shall see them by their fruits. Which fruits are we bearing as the church? Which fruits are we bearing as the church leadership? Because we are spiritually powerful, we bear fruits of the spirit, but because our lives are dysfunctional and our mental health is messed up, we bear unpleasant fruits too.
We do not have our mental health under check; therefore, we find ourselves doing the very things we say we do not want to do. We end up hurting the same people we are trying to bring healing to. And we chase away the flock of God instead of taking care of it as Jesus instructed us to do.
We find this in Romans 7:16 where Paul says “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me.