Sermon Resources on Mental Health

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Mental Health Today

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Scripture

1 Kings 19:1-18, Job 3:6-7, Lamentations 3:17-26, Matthew 26:36-46, 2 Corinthians 1:3-11, Psalm 42:5-11

We don’t know what we are doing, and I think this is especially true about the way our society deals with mental health. In just the past fifteen years, I have witnessed a massive shift in how evangel...

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Mental Illness Creeps Up on Us

Author

Ryan Casey Waller

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Which is mostly how mental illness works. You don’t know you have it until it’s all up in your grill trying to destroy your life. This happens, most often, because getting honest with ourselves about ...

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Troubling Statistics about Mental Health in our Youth

Author

Max Lucado

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Scripture

Isaiah 41:10 , 1 Kings 19:4-8, Jeremiah 29:11, John 14:27, Philippians 4:6-7 , Psalm 34:17-18

Most alarming is the absence of peace among our youth. Research from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) is showing an epidemic of mental health problems among eighteen- to twenty-four-year...

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Gracious God, forgive us for when we

Author

Austin D. Hill

Keywords

Gracious God, forgive us for when we fail to recognize the destructive power of mental illness. Every day we are surrounded by people with real emotional and mental difficulties that we ignore. We con...

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Author

Timothy Jennings

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According to the National Institute of Mental Health, anxiety disorders are the most common mental health problem in America, affecting 28.8 percent of adults at some point in their lives—and the rate...

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What We’ve Learned About the Mind

Author

Jennie Allen

Keywords

Scripture

Proverbs 4:23, Luke 6:45, Matthew 12:34-35, Luke 6:45, 2 Corinthians 10:5, Proverbs 17:22

Did you know that more has been discovered about our minds in the last twenty years than in all the time before that? Did you know that an estimated 60 to 80 percent of visits to primary care physicia...

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Author

Dr. Caroline Leaf

Keywords

Scripture

Proverbs 4:5-7, Ecclesiastes 12:11-13, Isaiah 28:9-10, Matthew 7:24-27, James 1:22-25, Psalm 119:11

Gathering information without processing and applying it is counter to how the mind works and how the brain is structured and has a deleterious effect on our mental and physical well-being, creating a...

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Discovering our Common Struggles

Author

Alan Noble

Keywords

Scripture

1 Kings 19:3-8 , Proverbs 14:13 , Lamentations 1:16, 2 Corinthians 12:9-10, Matthew 11:28-30, Psalm 42:5

Get to know someone really well, and almost without fail, you will discover a person who routinely struggles to get out of bed in the morning. And not just because they’re tired. They can’t get out of...

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The UK’s Minister of Loneliness

Author

W. David O. Taylor

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According to a 2018 CIGNA study, loneliness in America has reached “epidemic” levels. After surveying twenty thousand adults, researchers found that 46 percent felt alone either sometimes or always, 4...

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When Doubt Hurts

Author

Uche Anizor

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As many theologians have helpfully described, there is a healthy place for doubting that is integral to faith. When approached thoughtfully and sincerely, these doubts can lead to a deepening understa...

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What’s Inside Counts: Healthy Pastors Preach Better Sermons

Author

Mark R. Glanville

Keywords

Your Inner Life Matters While I have long recognized the significance of a pastor’s inner life, I hadn’t pondered the relationship between our inner life and the act of preaching until recently. Our ...

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Preventing Pastoral Burnout: How to Cope with Overwhelm

Author

Alan Briggs

Keywords

A Leadership Coach’s Perspective I make it a habit to study what’s happening in churches across the country. I get the honor of coaching some incredible pastors, so I need to stay fresh. Any time I’m...

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Why Get Out of Bed? Because of Love

Author

Alan Noble

Keywords

Scripture

1 Corinthians 13:, Ruth 1:16-18, 2 Corinthians 11:23-28, Luke 10:25-37, 1 Kings 19:1-18, Matthew 26:36-46, Isaiah 41:10

Adapted from Ch 4 of On Getting out of Bed. Why is Existence Good? Living for the sake of living—doing things so that you can continue to efficiently do things—begs the question, Why live? To live...

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A Bone Fracture & Mental Illness

Author

Mark Meynell

Keywords

I sense that mental illness resembles a bone fracture. Bones have remarkable durability, but also, once broken, can rapidly heal and be reset. With normal daily use, one might never be aware of past p...

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Author

Robert L. Leahy

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The average child today exhibits the same level of anxiety as the average psychiatric patient in the 1950s.

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Author

Doc Childre and Deborah Rozman

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The American Institute of Stress notes that 75 to 90 percent of visits to primary care physicians are for stress-related complaints . . . A Harvard study shows that people who live in a state of high ...

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Depression is a Thief

Author

Sergei Marchenko

Keywords

Scripture

2 Corinthians 1:3-4, John 16:33

Depression is a thief. A pickpocket. Swiping a memory here and there. An emotion, a plan for the afternoon, part of a conversation. It is a burglar. Leaving behind empty surfaces and containers that u...

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What It’s Like to Live with Depression

Author

Matt Perman

Keywords

Scripture

Job 6:2-3, Galatians 6:2, Romans 12:15, Isaiah 40:29, Matthew 11:28-30, 2 Corinthians 1:8-9, Psalm 42:11

We finally discovered that what I had was depression. I had battled depression before, but for some reason this time it caught me off guard. At one point, I met with a group of people who wanted to kn...

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Mental Illness Around the World

Author

Shelly Miller

Keywords

According to the World Health Organization, one in thirteen globally suffers from anxiety. In the United States, one in five adults have a mental health condition. That’s over forty million Americans;...

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PTSD and Our Core Story

Author

Casey K. Tygrett

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 1:31, 1 John 3:2, 2 Corinthians 1:3-4, Revelation 21:4, Jeremiah 31:3

The robbing of our lives occurs when the core story of who we are—created as “very good” (Gen 1:31) and never downgraded, and “beloved” of God (1 Jn 3:2)—is taken through specific memories and twisted...

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The Beach Ball Phenomenon

Author

Jessica Thompson

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 6:34, Proverbs 12:25, Psalm 34:17-18, Philippians 4:6-7, Isaiah 40:29-31

I have often heard anxiety described as a big beach ball that you try to push under the water. Do you remember playing that game as a child? Keep that beach ball under the water as long as you can! Yo...

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Author

Alicya Perreault

Keywords

We can only experience the true beauty of vulnerability when we're courageous enough to crack open the fractures in our mask and allow the light to shine in.

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Rather be Shocked than Alone with their Thoughts

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

Keywords

Scripture

2 Corinthians 10:5, Ecclesiastes 5:1-2, Mark 6:31, Psalm 46:10, Isaiah 30:15, Philippians 4:8

In a study conducted by Timothy Wilson, a social psychologist at the University of Virginia, researchers discovered what most of us already know: people do not like to be left alone with their own tho...

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Anxiety Feels Like a Weight

Author

Jessica Thompson

Keywords

Scripture

Philippians 4:6-7, 1 Peter 5:7, Matthew 6:25-27, Psalm 94:19, Psalm 55:22, Proverbs 12:25

Anxiety feels like a weight. It has been described as the feeling of tripping—the “moment where you don’t know whether you are going to catch yourself is how you feel all day long.” Or “when you tap y...

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Learned Helplessness and Induced Inability

Author

Mia Levetan

Keywords

Scripture

Proverbs 18:21, Numbers 13:31-33, Deuteronomy 1:28, James 3:5-6, Exodus 14:12

Learned Helplessness can be easily seen in a research study when participants are given a math test. In this study, some participants are told, “men don’t tend to do well on this test,” or “Millennia...

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Approaches to Mental Health are not Enough

Author

Caroline Leaf

Keywords

Modern psychological and psychiatric approaches to mental health, particularly the use of drugs like antidepressants and antipsychotics, don’t address the complexity of the human mind. Indeed, they ha...

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Author

Mark Buchanan

Keywords

Scripture

Isaiah 30:15-16, James 1:2-4, Romans 5:3-5, 1 Peter 4:12-13, Hebrews 12:1-2

A typical response to threat and burden is to want to flee it. It’s evacuation as the cure for trouble. If only I could get away is our mantra. Then I would be safe. Then I could enjoy my life. But wh...

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Living with Pain in a World Governed by Technique

Author

Alan Noble

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 11:1-9, Exodus 16:13-36, Ecclesiastes 1:12-18, Luke 10:38-42, 2 Corinthians 12:7-10, Psalm 127:1-2

Living in a society governed by technique conditions us to believe that in every way life is easier than it ever has been. Technique is the use of rational methods to maximize efficiency, and we...

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Harry Potter’s Dementors & Depression

Author

Mark Meynell

Keywords

Scripture

Isaiah 40:29-31, Job 3:25-26, 2 Corinthians 1:3-5, John 16:33, Psalm 34:17-18

When J. K. Rowling created the Harry Potter universe, she naturally drew on her own experiences to flesh it out. This is true even for such alarming creatures as ‘dementors’. These are soulless beings...

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God of grace, power and glory, and our

God of grace, power and glory, and our Heavenly Father: You raise up nations in your grace and holiness; and You bring down nations who go after and serve other gods of their own making. You are good–...

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