7 Steps to Mental Health

One of the changes that I have noticed over the generation that I have lived, and whether a generation is 30 or 40 years, but during that time period, our society is much more attuned to mental health. You see more and more talk about it, awareness about it. There are many more clinics, hospitals, people in that particular field, in that area of the medical field, trained to deal with the emotional and mental illnesses that are a part of life. When I was younger, it doesn't mean those things were not a part of life, it just the awareness probably wasn't as acute, and the level of treatment and care that society had developed, at least when I was young, was not to the degree that it is now. Things have changed radically because of research and changing attitudes of society as well, but I think we are all aware that there is a great deal of attention that is paid to that in our society today. The stresses that life put on all of us and the things that we have to deal with, whether it's within our personal lives or just life in the larger sphere in itself, presents all kinds of challenges that maybe contribute in some ways to an increase in mental or emotional disorders that people have to seek treatment in one way or in one form or the other, and sometimes maybe just the awareness of it causes things to be a little bit more heightened as well, regardless of that. I think all of us realize that maintaining our mental and emotional stability and health is a very important key to life and is an extremely important matter. It is a part of our health, just as much as any other part of our life and our health is important to keep up with. We have, you know, we need to keep in fairly good shape, watch our diets to keep from contracting various forms of other disease, and we're aware of those things. There are things that we can do and we should be aware of to make sure that we don't contract, pass on, or perpetuate some of the issues that deal with mental and emotional health. I think we all realize just how important that is, especially any of us that perhaps have struggled with it, skirted some of the problems that are there, dealt with them, moved on, or continue to deal with them today. What I'd like to go through in my sermon this morning are some basic principles that help to keep our lives and our mental and emotional health stable and go through certain principles that I think are time-proven, collected from any number of different readings, articles, books on the subject that I think that you can find. As I've looked at this list and put this list together and reflect back over what I have read and perused on the subject over the years, all of these I've found at one time or another in various professional articles written by professionals on the subject of mental health and emotional well-being. And so they are time-honored, time-proven, and can go a long way in our lives toward helping us deal with, understand, and hopefully in every case even prevent certain issues cropping up in our life and being aware even of some of the causes that do come about. When we look at the principles of the Bible, God reveals a way of life that really, when you understand God's way of life, His way produces a sane life. It produces sanity.

God's way of living does not produce insanity, as we use that term. God's way of life is based on His law, and when you look and understand one of the foundations, there is a structured foundation that God's way presents that includes a belief in and contact with Him. We believe, we first believe in God, and then we maintain the contact with God that is so important and so necessary to living a way of life. In the Church of God, over the decades of my experience and our collective experience with the Church, I think we can state that an overall principle that I feel to be true is that the Church teaches, and we have an opportunity to practice a way of life that can stabilize people who do suffer from various forms of mental or emotional illnesses. We cannot and do not, never have, promise the complete cure in every case for what people may come to the Church with because of their background, because of their environment, but that may not happen completely in this life. Let's understand that. But I think that one of the things that I have learned and observed and do firmly believe is that understanding God's way of life, attempting and making every effort to live by it, and with what we practice and teach as a Church, that we can prevent certain breakdowns and certain problems, and most of all provide a total approach to life that helps us cope with life's stresses and its problems, the challenges, all that come with it. I used the term a few years ago in a sermon that I gave called, When Life Throws You a Curve.

Very, very often people get thrown curve balls in life, and we may be sailing along perfectly fine. Things seem to be all in order, and life is treating us well, and then a curve ball gets thrown at us, and it just completely disrupts our stance and our stability, and our life gets tumbled upside down. That happens for various reasons. But nonetheless, when we understand the basic foundation of God's way of life, I do believe that we can be on a foundation that can even help us deal with those curve balls and move through them. It may not promise the solution in every way, but the structure of God's way of life can help us. God's way of life is based on law.

It is based on His eternal law, the principles based and honored in the Ten Commandments, and the statutes and the judgments that flow from those commandments that when understood, when broken down in all their various parts and applied to people's lives, to families, to society as a whole, they produce righteousness, they produce good fruits and good works overall. When those laws are broken, then unstable conditions tend to result either in a person's heart and life or in the family again or in a larger community. That can happen. And when we deal with the problems of our society at large, we are dealing largely with the result of broken law. Broken spiritual law in so many different ways. And the solution that humans have come up to deal with that so often is to change the law or to deny the law that it even exists.

And that is so often the basis of a lot of psychotherapy and a lot of a fundamental approach. The basic foundation of psychotherapy today rests upon the foundation of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung and others. And those foundations you will not find a belief in God or in God's law at the heart of those foundations, particularly the law of God. So much of what is put out is meant to deny law in some ways to deny the guilt in order to deal with the guilt that comes into people's lives because of broken law and the therapy that comes as a result of attempting to deal with that guilt. But when life is structured on lawlessness, it can result in a breakdown of the mind. And sin in its ultimate form leads to a form of insanity. And that is something we have to understand. But let's look at some of these principles, not to get into the negative aspect of it, but as a method of prevention and a way to create and develop a stable environment in our own personal life and to build on that and to the degree that we can apply it and use these principles, even heal unstable minds and approaches in our life in these principles.

The first principle, or key to mental and emotional stability, obviously has to begin with God and His commandments, and that is obeying God and keeping His commandments as a fundamental foundation. Many scriptures we could turn to on that. I just want to hit a few here. Let's go back to the book of Ecclesiastes 12, where Solomon comes down to the end of his long discourse about life. Ecclesiastes 12, I've long concluded that Ecclesiastes is a kind of a summation of a life of Solomon, and his life was one of highs and lows. And you read Ecclesiastes and you read the biography of Solomon from the book of Kings and Chronicles, and you realize that he started out righteously and started out obeying God, but then he got sidetracked into sin, and many other things that disrupted his reign and his life and his time.

And Solomon's life is an example of what happens when you get caught up in a way of of iniquity and the problems that can result from that. And I've often, I've long felt that Ecclesiastes is kind of a summation at the end of his life of the lessons he learned, and I feel that he came back around and ended his life whenever that was, that he ended his life on a positive note, having learned and understood a great deal. In Ecclesiastes 12, here in verse 13, at the end of the book, he comes down to the conclusion of all that he had learned and all that he had written about here, and he said, let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter.

He said, fear God and keep his commandments, for this is man's all. This is, it was his conclusion, and it's not a bad conclusion. In fact, it's the best conclusion you can come to.

I like to think that Solomon read all the self-help books, went to all the therapists, read all the articles, took all the training and whatever was available to him, looked at his life, prayed about it, come back around and came back around in his sunset years, and he said, this is really what it's all about. This is it. This is the conclusion of everything that I've learned. Fear God, keep his commandments.

It doesn't get any better than that. It doesn't get any more complicated than that.

And I think that's true. I'm beginning to see that. I don't think I'm at the sunset of my life, but I hope that you're not either. But look at that and realize, fear God and keep his commandments. This is what he came down to conclude. He said, this is man's all. This is the will of God.

And it is the solution, ultimately. Now, there are a lot of other things that have to be done, we have to learn, we have to focus on. But with that as a foundation, you're not going to go wrong. And it is far better advice, counsel, and wisdom than we will find in a whole library full of good, helpful, informative books written by good, well-meaning, sincere, experienced, dedicated people who too learn various principles and basics of God's way of life and of at least the principles of the Bible and hang on to those and can bring those out in modern language and experiences that mean something. But when it's all distilled down, fear God and keep his commandments. If we start at that foundation and never go off of it, then life can be successful.

In Psalm 119, Psalm 119, Psalm 116, and verse 165. Here in this great psalm that extols God's law and God's commandments, very, very long psalm here in the middle of the book, let's just look at verse 165 where it talks about great peace, have those who love your law, and nothing causes them to stumble. Great peace, peace of mind, peace of soul, peaceful life, without stress, at least overwhelming stress, without confusion, without disorder, and some of the craziness that comes about in life situations. Great peace, have those who love thy law, who keep thy law. Nothing causes them to stumble. And then in Philippians chapter 4, verse 7, begin in verse 6. Philippians 4 and verse 6, Be anxious for nothing but in everything by prayer and supplication. With thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

The peace of God can keep our hearts and our minds. Sometimes in the middle of a trial or an extended period of difficulty or stress, sometimes all we want once is peace of mind. And the prayer doesn't go any further than that. Just for God, give us peace. Give me a peace of mind so that there's not worry about tomorrow, there's not a worry about next week or what is impending in life and in the situation. But these scriptures speak to the fear of God, which is really the foundation of one's conscience. And use the word heart, use the word mind in this, but that's another term for it, at least in the psychological terminology, is that of a conscience.

And a lot of psychotherapy tends to reduce or seeks to reduce one's conscience and any sense of shame, any sense of right or wrong, thereby producing stress or difficulty. And the purpose of that is to, in a sense, make a person a God unto themselves with the ability to determine right and wrong. If therapy can convince us that there is no standard except what we choose for ourselves, there's no right or wrong except what we determine based on our needs and our life situation, and certainly there's not any foundation in an eternal spiritual law of God, the Creator. If that can be stripped away, then a person in their own heart and mind or in their own conscience decides for themselves what is right and wrong. And that's the essence of becoming a God, and it's the ultimate idolatry. Because remember when Adam and Eve took the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil in Genesis 2, they were able to discern what was right and wrong, and they became as God. That's the whole principle behind that. They began to be able to choose right and wrong themselves rather than obedience to God, and that is at the heart of a great deal of thinking in our modern psychotherapy approach in order to reduce guilt, which according to certain schools of psychotherapy is the cause of so many of the problems and disorders that people deal with. Psychology administers a kind of a secular grace where a person's conscience can be removed in order to eliminate guilt, and that's the approach that is taken. Now, that is not what God's church teaches. That's not what the Bible bases its teaching upon, but we seek for a strong sound mind and the avoidance of the lusts and the problems and the sin that pulls at our flesh. In fact, sin is not a term that you will see in much of the annals of psychotherapy because of the religious connotations that are there and its religion that in many schools of thought is what needs to be stripped away. But the foundation here is obedience to God and keeping His commandments.

Another key, second key, to mental and emotional stability is the importance of having strong family relations. Families are the bedrock of any sound society, and families are something that we all come from and we seek to have in some way, shape, or the other. It's amazing even with the family structure in marriage being attacked, being turned upside down by so many different cultural trends today, that when you really stop and look at the trends of cohabitation, same-sex marriage, there is still this desire to attain something in a relationship that is really at the heart of a family as God structured and gave it to us in the model in the Bible. Whether it's two people of the same sex wanting to live together in a married state with a family, I mean that is really what they're trying to do. They're just going about it in a way that is contrary to the principles God hardwired into the structure. The same even with in many ways some of the other problems and some of the other situations that have been created, but there is still this desire to create a family, but not on the model that God says according to people's desires and wants. But the importance of a strong family relationship that is based upon the biblical model that we see where a husband and a wife come together in a committed relationship to cleave to one another and to produce offspring, children, and in that particular type of loving environment is so important. And yet I think we all realize that families don't always come together in the way that they should, and the conditions are not created that deal with sound, stable, strong family relationships. Sometimes families get turned around and problems develop within families that can be passed on from one generation to the next. Divorce leads in some cases and breaks up the stability that a stability that was there, or even creates more instability on top of the instability that was there within that led to the divorce, creating behavior and emotional problems, especially in children. There is so many studies that have been put together that shows the effect that divorce has and the long-term impact on children. I was looking at some material this week, writing another script for a program we're going to do this week entitled Before You Divorce. The title of the program. I was looking at some material that went through a lot of studies and some that I had read on a couple of years ago showing the long-term impact of divorce upon children. It does, in many cases, create insecurities, certain instabilities that are there.

Even when it may seem to be the best solution or even be something that is necessary, it still has its impact as families are disrupted and creates certain situations there. The importance of stable family relationships is so important and so necessary in developing being a key to good, sound mental health. It's within families that, quite frankly, we see the cases so often flashed across our headlines of child abuse and or beatings that take place. Spousal abuse, child abuse, and that happens so often within family structures.

Again, when you look at and you peel away the layers and look at some of the things that are behind the stories, unfortunately, you don't even have to peel too far because of some of the things that come up on our news today of small children being killed or child abuse situations. You look at the pictures, you look at people being led away in handcuffs on Fox News or the local television coverage, and you can begin to piece together a fairly graphic picture of a family that is just unstable. And that has led to many situations, and so often children are the victims of that. And you just realize that those relations there, that family, has not been living in a structured ordered life. Perhaps there's not been stable job situation, any type of permanency in the home or the address that those people might have, and it just, you know, it leads to all kinds of difficulties and situations. Maintaining strong family relations are key and a very important matter in dealing with mental and emotional health. A third key in this is the importance of developing friends and relations outside of the family. This is kind of a counterpoint to the previous point here, number two.

Developing friends and relations outside of the family. Some families are very cloistered, some are very inward inward, and developing relationships and developing an openness to the family can be a matter of treatment and it can be a matter of prevention. The more people know, in some ways, the more families are open in terms of just a normalcy and neighbors and other family members know people, know what's going on behind the walls to a certain degree, the better off the whole family or even a neighborhood community can be. For people to learn to interact outside of their own family with other people, other families of other backgrounds and have other points of view is very important. Any time we promote and maintain a cloistered, inward turned relationship within a marriage, within a family, within a a clanish unit, then it can lead to certain problems.

It can cover up certain problems. I've noticed that over the years as a principle at times that obviously there's certain dirty laundry that people don't want hung out for everybody to see.

And there's a time and a place perhaps for certain things to be found out or to be understood, but when you see certain secretive approaches and mannerisms and an inward turning in people's behavior, sometimes, not every case, but sometimes there may be issues, there may be problems that are there that are being covered up or being ignored. Or in some cases there may be problems that family members don't even recognize as problems. And again, a healthy ability to interact with other people of various backgrounds and points of view is very, very important to a balanced life. Living only in our own world of our own design can be very, very limiting. And sometimes we, I see trends in our society that are putting us more and more toward that, but that's where within the community of the church we have an opportunity because the church is really a larger community. We talk of the church as being a family, but it's a larger community where we are all working toward mental health when you really stop and think about it. And that's one of the reasons why involvement and our advocacy of fellowship over the years as a part of the matter of our coming together and being a church family is so important.

I grew up hearing about that and that was a new concept for me. We had a big family that I grew up in and came from, but when we came into the church, I remember the emphasis upon fellowship. You had picnics and you had Spokesman's Club and other types of social gatherings that brought the larger church together to develop the relationships that we have. But that is a unique feature of a church community and certainly of God's church, which is a larger community working as a whole community toward people's betterment, toward people's mental health.

And so when we have our services in a structured way, we have our socials, we have our various clubs and other gatherings, and more so in the past we had a lot of sports activities and we don't so much have that going on today. But fellowship, all of that, there's a purpose for that and that is to create a certain order and structure. Sometimes we take for granted that structure that we have in the church and various attempts have been made over the years maybe to reorder the way we do things and even to the degree of the type of service that we have. And a more open, less structured type of service has been advocated by some.

And I know every time I've looked at that and heard some of the ideas that have been put out, I say, no thanks. No thanks. I think that there are certain things that we have learned over the decades in the church that have stood the test of time and consider, you know, some might say that's being a stick in the mud that might be not as progressive as some would like, but I think that there is a certain stability that it lends itself to. You know, you think back 12 years ago when the church was flying apart, the church was going insane.

The church was spinning down into a pit of insanity and had been for a number of years. Let's be real blunt about it. And we hadn't heard the doctrines of the teachings of the church for such a long period of time in some cases. And I remember thinking, and the many of you will remember in 95 when the United Church of God came together and we jettisoned and walked away from that craziness. And we put together the United Church of God just to be able to come into an environment where there was peace, number one, was so important.

You stop and think about that. I remember this group here, where was it down here in Bluffton at the senior center where we all came together. And I remember some of us kind of peeking their head in the door when that first Sabbath and one of them, who's here, and do I really want to come in here? I remember some of them kind of walking along the hall or hugging the wall coming into the room that first Sabbath or two. And there was a certain tentativeness and hesitancy, but I think that we were glad to find a place that was what we remembered.

And that involved even to the structure of our service and the teachings that were there. It recreated the home, the comfortable home that we knew was right, and we just knew it was right, just even from those perspectives alone and as we moved forward. So these things are important within the church, and having a structured ordered life, a structured ordered family, has its blessings and has its benefits to the degree that we can create that, maintain that.

It can help us build our own mental stability and an approach to life that prevents us spinning off and out of control in other other ways. A fourth key is that a very simple truth of recreation. You know, there is a time to put put aside the seriousness and the heaviness of day-to-day life and to play and to get a change of scenery, to recreate through some type of activity that we engage in a change of pace in our life. And that's so important to, again, just maintaining a balance and stability and emotional well-being.

One of the keys that I've always retreated to in my own mind is that of just maintaining a steady regimen of exercise, whether it's nothing more than a walk through the neighborhood or a heavier workout in what I have now, which is a sort of a home gymnasium in my setup in a corner part of my garage with the treadmill and a bike and I even got a punching bag hanging from the ceiling.

I really like to get into that punching bag at times. There are times when the punching bag is the only thing that just kind of helps to deal with the stress. I've threatened at times to print out a picture and put that on there.

Of whoever or whatever might be the point of the time, but I've never done that. So don't think that that's ever happened. But last year, we were setting this gymnasium, home gymnasium up. I went down to Dick's Sporting Goods and bought a punching bag and a couple of 14-ounce gloves and it's hanging there and it's fun to just get into it at times and it will give you a good workout. But I've learned that over the years in my job that I've had to break away from the desk or the other demands that I have and make sure that I maintain a regiment of exercise for dealing with stress, dealing with even health matters and staying ahead of the years and the other issues that are there and trying to do that. But I think over the years, I'm not trying to live forever in what I do in terms of exercise or all of that. I think I've come to at least in my own mind that it's a matter of dealing with stress and hopefully diminish some of the other disorders that can come as a result and high blood pressure and all, but also just to be able to maintain a better quality of life so that the days that I do live and do have, there is the energy level, there is the health that I can enjoy what I do have. I take my vitamins and I do my exercise not to live forever, but to live the days that I do have at a higher level. That's my own personal philosophy of the need and reason for all of those, but they do contribute to a great deal of of well-being at times and relieving that stress and helping to avoid some of the other some of the other issues. A few years ago, what I call and describe, I skirted the edges of depression. I didn't have to get to the point where I had to have any medication or go to a doctor. Maybe I should have, but I didn't. But I knew because I dealt enough with it with other members and because of my own reading on it, I knew that I was skirting the edges of that pit called depression. It took several months to work through it and work out of it. One of the ways, not the only, but one of the ways that I dealt with it was to maintain a regimen of exercise.

It just had to be done. I recognized that. I never got to the point where I lost control and spun out of control in that way, but I understood what I was dealing with because of certain things in my life. I was able to come out of it by the help of God and the things that I think incorporated into the regimen of my life. But I knew I understood that recreation or exercise was something that I needed to do. That was one of the points in my life where I think I kicked it up to a higher level than I'd done before. It was probably part of helping to stay even.

What really got me out of some of those things was more spiritual than anything else.

I will tell you, at least from experience, that those things can make a big difference. But just a change of pace. The Feast of Tabernacles, it gives a lift every year.

Even coming to Sabbath services is a form of spiritual recreation as we come together weekly with each other. The Holy Days are their own form of spiritual recreation for getting our minds into the right frame of thinking and on to God's way and God's purpose and His plan. But there are other things and times for us to take a trip here, a week there, a day trip, or just an afternoon. It may be nothing more than just a couple of hours on an afternoon of going to a museum, walking through the mall, walking through a park, whatever it might be. One of my friends and I, we joke, our vacation accounts with the Church are always basically at full. But we'll take an afternoon off, we may take a few hours, and we'll both say, well, we took a vacation for a couple of hours this afternoon. And a couple of hours can recharge your batteries and get refocused and back to the desk or back to the routine. But do those things. Change the pattern and change the routine as a matter of staying on course of things. A fifth key is to avoid the dependency on drugs and alcohol to cope with life's problems. Drugs and alcohol distort reality. And if we get to a dependency on a drug or on alcohol. And when I say drug, I may not be talking about the hardcore type drugs, even some over-the-counter stuff and things that we might engage in can create a dependency on us. And certainly alcohol is over-the-counter and can sometimes just under-the-counter too, depending on your age, I suppose, but they can both create a dependency and an inability to cope with what's going on in our life because they distort reality. Let's look back in Hosea chapter 4.

The Bible says a great deal about alcohol and the distortion that comes about as a result of reliance on it. In Hosea 4, verse 11, he makes a statement in the midst of the prophecy against Israel and for their idolatry. But in verse 11 it says, Harlotry, wine, and new wine, enslave the heart. So you've got a reliance on sin, or harlotry is speaking, that's an immorality, and wine. And very often the two are connected, immorality and alcohol abuse.

I shouldn't need to speak any further in terms of the interconnectedness of both of them in regard to leading to problems. But harlotry here, primarily in this particular section, is talking about a spiritual harlotry, but it flows from the physical side of things as well. And it says, they enslave the heart. They enslave or control the mind, the heart, the emotions, and leading to problems, leading to a distortion of reality. Look at Isaiah 28.

Isaiah chapter 28. And verse 1. Isaiah 28. And in speaking here to Ephraim, God likens them to being drunks. Verse 1, he says, Woe to the crown of pride to the drunkards of Ephraim, whose glorious beauty is a fading flower, which is at the head of the verdant valleys to those who are overcome with wine. And so in this prophecy here of pride and spiritual problems, he talks about this being like creating a drunkenness upon the whole people as those who are overcome with wine and losing control. Down in verse 7. But they have erred. They also have erred through wine and through intoxicating drink, are out of the way. The priest and the prophet have erred through intoxicating drink. And so specifically to the religious leaders, he says that an inability to control and use alcohol led to intoxication, and they erred spiritually and in judgment in many different ways. He just uses that as an illustration of how far they had strayed. They are swallowed up by wine. They are out of the way through intoxicating drink. They air in vision. They stumble in judgment. For all tables are full of vomit and filth. No place is clean.

That's a pretty powerful statement. But we could go through many, many dozens more of what the Bible will say about the abuse of alcohol. And these two, it speaks to an erring in judgment and vision and a stumbling in life. Need I say more in regard to the effect of abuse of alcohol? You've all seen it. Some of you have lived lives in families or seen its impact in your families and know it firsthand. I know it firsthand from my family. And I know its power. I know its joy. And I know its enjoyment. But people lose discernment of the mind that gives them judgment at times and leads to, again, can I use the term, craziness of life. When a person gets beyond the tipping point and something happens in their mind and they're not able to control alcohol. Alcohol is a part of life. It's a food. It is a part of enjoyment. And when you can enjoy a drink in the right circumstances, it's a benefit of life. Whenever a human being gets to the point where they cannot control it and they become an alcoholic, I do think there is something that trips in the mind. Call it physical, call it spiritual, psychological, whatever you want. I'm not here getting into the issues of alcoholism as a disease and all of those other matters. We'll leave that for another time. But I do believe something triggers in a person's mind and they truly cannot control it. And the proper therapies of Alcoholics Anonymous and some other therapeutic works to basically have a person realize they can never take another drink is probably the best. I do think that something happens and it may be physiological, but the person has to realize that and deal with it in order to get life back under control and a semblance of order, stability, and sanity.

And again, you've got to know your limits and your limitations. 12 years ago, I don't know if I've ever mentioned this to you or not, but 12 years ago in the months leading up to the split in the church and I knew that what was going to happen and I knew that my job, my employment was coming to an end and I didn't know what the future held. And I knew this for several months out. You know, you start to worry and you start to know it created a great deal of stress. One of the things I did was I stopped drinking anything for several months because I knew the stresses that were there from the church breaking up and the pressures that were there from just the church breaking up and what that meant for my own family and what it meant for my own physical employment. Those were heavy matters to deal with. And I remember sitting late at night, many hours, many nights, thinking and just rolling over my head. But I just made sure I didn't have any alcohol in the house and I didn't even take a beer because not that I was abusing it, but I knew that it could very easily become a crutch at a very critical point in my life what I was going through and I didn't want that complication to have to deal with. So there I went several months when I went on the wagon. I'm off the wagon today. But if you can control your life on these issues, rather than having it control you, you've got a key to mental health and emotional health.

And don't ever lose that. That's the teaching of the scriptures. Don't let it enslave your heart.

If you can keep from doing that, you've learned a very important critical principle of life.

A sixth key of mental health is to learn to handle the themes of instability in movies, music, various media, of our popular culture. I mean, everywhere we turn today, there's instability. And it's the ones that are the most unstable that we find the networks spending the most time on. And the unfortunate wreckages of personal lives are the ones that people want to focus on. And you want to put out all the details of these individuals.

And these people are unstable. They are living lives of sin. And yet, those are the ones that all the shows want to focus on. And the movies are made of. This is what sells.

As I was watching the ones about some of the coverage of Anna Nicole Smith, and one pretty astute person, he didn't have any good motives, I don't think. He was just basically explaining why there was such a fascination with somebody like her and all the others is because it sells. It sells. And that's why there is the time spent on it. And that's an indictment of our society. But it goes beyond things like that. There are so many other forms of instability that form the themes of popular media. And you and I can engage vicariously in all kinds of mental illness. Stop and think about it at times. When we get caught up in certain programs, movies, that what we're dealing with in so many of them is mental illness. Instability. Immaturity. And it may make a compelling story. I'm not even going to mention any of them. You mentioned, you know, you fill in the blank. And getting caught up in that and a steady diet of it, I think, can create certain problems. I think the question we have to ask ourselves is, if we do, find ourselves so interested in spending so much time in that is ask ourselves, why? What are we looking for? Is it excitement? Is it understanding? Is it just plain entertainment? If that is the case, I'm not saying that, you know, from time to time, that might not be something we would engage ourselves in. But if we do, we're going to be able to engage ourselves in. And we would just completely exclude from our life. I don't think you can live a cloistered life today. I'm talking about just a continual steady diet of instability, of unstable relationship, dealing with subjects that warp reality, that warp the reality of the Bible and of righteousness. You know, and the end of the critic can say, in the end, too, that's true. That's true. There's dysfunction. If you want to use that term again, dysfunction. There's sin in the Bible. Yes, that's true. And yet, there is, along with that, the overall theme is the solution to those problems. And the reasons why what David did, or what Solomon did, or some other character, Samson, whatever it may be, you put it all together and you put your time on that, you'll learn not to do that. You'll learn not to have multiple wives. It's not good to have many wives. Why it's good to only live with one.

And you can learn what happens when, you know, to families and children when that is the case, when divorce sets up like that and all kinds of things. So that doesn't hold water to me.

It's, those solutions are not always put out in every case. Again, I'm not making a statement that, you know, tries to control our viewing or whatever, because there are, if I had the time, I could list, let's say, certain movies that I have enjoyed watching that do present unstable relationships. But in some of them, and even in recent films, they will turn things around and offer a solution or a lesson that is there that is founded upon righteousness. I'll say that for another time. I'm just saying a steady diet of this is something that can warp our sense of reality. Dabbling with the occult, witchcraft, demonism, and again, there's plenty of that out there.

It skirts into a world of lawlessness that invites uncontrollable interference at times. I've watched from a distance the fascination with Harry Potter. Of course, we've come to the last book of the Harry Potter series. I guess at least they think so, until Miss Rowling may decide she needs a few more million dollars, I'm not sure, in the movies and all. But I guess, you know, the Bible has very clear statements about avoiding witchcraft and demonism and those things. And we've turned things so far around our society where that is a best seller and it is a way of teaching values of courage and honesty and loyalty and friendship and is accepted in that sense. And I think that's a commentary on society. The biggest commentary probably is to look at the biggest selling books in both fiction and nonfiction today on the on the lists. And they are books that deal with atheism and such as God is Not Great and a book that deals with occultism.

That in itself should be more than enough to speak to where we are in our society and in this world. And it is something to stay away from and to not get caught up in.

And a seventh principle to maintaining stability, try to quickly conclude this, is to learn to seek competent help and to seek it early before some really big problems or even permanent damage occurs. It's never a sign of weakness to seek help when you know it's needed.

In fact, that can be a sign of strength.

When you have control and you still have control, that's the time to seek help. The main thing is to never ever lose control. And God's Church offers a whole package of treatment that goes far beyond the therapist's couch. I think a wise member learns to use that whenever he uses what the Church has to offer to maintain a mental and emotional stability, whether it's counseling from the ministry, fellowship with each other, the education that's available through sermons, Bible studies, and material and literature that the Church has that really provides a diet of knowledge, of inspiration and encouragement that when properly used can help us all to keep our focus upon God, His Word, His way of life, the plan of God, and the kingdom of God. When you really break down the whole package of salvation that God offers us, the doctrine of salvation is a salve to minds that have been scarred by today's society.

It really is. To understand the value of repentance, that there is a need to repent and to change, that there is a reason for this, the insanity of our modern world, the out-of-control relationships, the problems and the poor fruit of society, to understand the reason for that and to repent of it, or one's part within it. And to move away from that, which is broken law.

Law that the mind is incapable of understanding. And God, by His Word and His miracles, He brings us to see that focusing upon the self is a wrong way. That we have to focus on Him and get the self in the proper perspective, repent of self, and begin to replace that self with the love of God.

God then grants forgiveness, and the understanding of that forgiveness is a great aid and balm for a troubled mind. Truly understand that. It helps us to leave the past behind, to leave our past, to leave the past of other people, and to move away. And God then grants the gift of the Holy Spirit as a power, which we know from 2 Timothy chapter 1 verse 7 is a spirit of peace and of a sound mind, is what God grants to us. And when we focus on that, when we understand that, it is a great benefit. In Ephesians chapter 3, that doctrine of salvation is the whole package of salvation God offers to us is a great aid to dealing with a scarred mind. In Ephesians 3 and verse 14, Paul writes what can be a very good anthem or creed for us to think about in terms of the stability and the power that we receive by His Spirit. He says, For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man. That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you being rooted and grounded in love may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height, to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge, that you may be filled with the fullness of God. Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly, abundantly above all, that we ask or think according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church, to Christ Jesus, to all generations forever and ever. This prayer that Paul ends this section of Ephesians with is a powerful thought and prayer to help us focus on and to understand as a summation of these keys to mental stability and emotional health. So important to us. So important to maintain and to never ever lose control as we live our lives in a world that is in many ways out of control. To be able to control our lives and our mind by these principles is a great blessing. Let's focus on that, never lose sight of it, and keeping our hearts tuned toward the Kingdom of God.