Welcome to Resilient Faith , the podcast . Opportunities to find deeper resilience within ourselves can come when life seems most challenging . This podcast is to help you develop that resilience and connection with God . Being resilient and having power starts with faith .
Welcome , friends , to the Resilient Faith podcast sponsored by Brentwood Presbyterian Church in West Los Angeles . We are sharing our sermons from our recent series , the Gospel According to Taylor Swift . This was a six-week sermon series in the fall of 2023 .
It's important in this day and age to talk about current events and pop culture in our worship and be in dialogue with Christian perspectives and scripture . Using Taylor Swift's lyrics and some of her songs as a launching pad , we are discussing some of the important issues and looking through them with a Christian lens .
Thanks for listening and we pray that the Holy Spirit reaches you through this series . Our text for today is the second chapter of the book of Jonah , so something very new going with something very old , both relevant and related . You'll see , jonah is famous for being called by God to Nineveh and instead of doing what God asks , he literally tries to run away .
In fact , the text says he went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish , away from the presence of the Lord . There's a big storm , the mariners end up throwing Jonah overboard , and then the Lord provided a large fish to swallow up Jonah , and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights .
So I invite you to hear this text through the lens of mental health issues . Then Jonah prayed to the Lord , his God , from the belly of the fish , saying I called to the Lord out of my distress and he answered me . Out of the belly of Shale , I cried and you heard my voice .
You cast me into the deep , into the heart of the seas , and the flood surrounded me . All your waves and your billows passed over me . Then I said I am driven away from your sight . How shall I look again upon your holy temple ? The waters closed in over me , the deep surrounded me , weeds were wrapped around my head at the roots of the mountains .
I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever . Yet you brought up my life from the pit . Oh Lord , my God , as my life was ebbing away , I remembered the Lord and my prayer came to you , into your holy temple .
Those who worship vain idols forsake their true loyalty , but I , with the voice of Thanksgiving , will sacrifice to you what I have vowed I will pay . Deliverance belongs to the Lord . Then the Lord spoke to the fish and it spewed Jonah out upon the dry land . This is the word of God for the people of God . Thank you , god .
I think it's safe to say this is a very dark moment for Jonah . I can imagine him in the belly of this fish , deeply stressing out Depression , anxiety , self-loathing , loneliness are not hard to imagine . It's me , hi . I'm the problem . It's me , and perhaps some of us have familiarity with feeling overwhelmed , crushed , suffocated , terrified and exhausted .
How Jonah cries out to God and expresses his despair is only too relatable . One of the reasons why anti-hero is so popular as a song is because the feelings that Taylor is expressing are so familiar to many of us . So let me throw out some statistics here real quick , as I reference mental health .
According to the National Alliance of Mental Illness , anxiety disorders are the most common mental health concern in the United States . In 2020 , about 21 million US adults that's 8.4% of the population had at least one major depressive episode . The US Surgeon General , vivek Murthy , wrote in the New York Times at the end of April about the loneliness epidemic .
Eating disorders affect at least 9% of the population worldwide . 28.8 million Americans will have an eating disorder in their lifetime . The results of the 2023 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count found that 25% of our unhoused neighbors report experiencing serious illness in LA County .
And finally , according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , suicide is one of the leading causes of death in the United States , which is why it's important that we all memorize the free suicide and crisis lifeline number 988 . Save it in your phone so you can share it anytime . Call or text 247 for confidential emotional support 988 .
Now , thankfully , mental health awareness has grown over the years and these statistics show how prevalent of an issue this is . It's been helped by some major celebrities speaking out about their own struggles with mental health . Olympic gymnast Simone Biles , for example , has been open about her mental health struggles .
That started very publicly at the Olympics two years ago and , after being very intentional in prioritizing her mental health , she just won a record-setting eighth all-around title at the US Gymnastics Championship . I heard a great podcast interview recently between Christian author Amanda Held Obelt and Christian singer-songwriter Leah Wren .
Amanda has been very open about her deep grief after the sudden death of her sister a few years ago . Christian author Rachel Held Evans . Leah is a Christian singer-songwriter who has been open about her struggles with chronic physical and mental health issues .
In their conversation , leah named the tension that is very real in our discipleship between God's goodness in the midst of our suffering . She spoke of the misconception that if God is good , I'm supposed to feel great and not have anything bad happen to me , but rather God's goodness is about holding us in the midst of pain , not taking us out of the situation .
The miracle isn't always the healing . Sometimes it's the caring and the dwelling with God . Amanda spoke of the need to normalize the experience of pain rather than shoving it to the margins and acting like you're an anomaly because you're struggling . We wanna fix the problem , but we don't have the capacity to be patient with our pain .
We have a very real need for companionship and the ability to say yes . Being human is hard . I have been there . I am with you . You have my love and my support and my solidarity . Christian author Sarah Clarkson writes about her experience with mental illness in the latest issue of Plow Magazine . She tells of how , at 17 , her mind became her enemy .
Eventually , diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder , she was taught to interact with her mind in terms of hostility as something to resist , to fight to subdue . Actor Matthew Perry uses similar language in his memoir about addiction and substance abuse . This is a battle and the mind is the foe .
Clarkson , however , poses the question through a Christian lens of how to love your enemy when your enemy is your own mind , when your mind tells you things that aren't true about the world around you or even about yourself .
We see this reflected in Taylor Swift's music video , and we can probably relate to instances of self-loathing and the mean , awful things we say to ourselves that we would never say to or about another person , especially someone whom we love .
We can easily drown in that self-loathing , in that depression , in that anxiety Waters closing in deep , surrounding weeds wrapped around our heads . As Jonah says , it's me , hi , I'm the problem , it's me . So Sarah Clarkson , then , considering the command from Jesus to love our enemies , has to reconsider her relationship with her mind .
It's an intentional shift to no longer think of approaching her mental illness through conflict , combat and power struggle . She writes , it's easy to baptize a view of power that sees God as the ultimate strongman just waiting to crush all the things we most dislike , including what is weak in ourselves .
But the power of God is Jesus , the suffering servant , born simply to die for the healing of his people . And so now she sees God as first a healer . She writes that's how I recognized God's arrival in my own story by a grace and gentle presence that restored and healed me even as it bore the darkness of my broken mind .
A grace and gentle presence that restores and heals , that restores and heals even as it bears the darkness of a broken mind . This is not a God who rejects us as problems , but gently and graciously holds us fast .
When it comes to issues of mental health , there are no quick fixes , no easy answers , no simple prayers or spiritual practices to make it all go away . Often it takes medicine and counseling and lots of support and patience .
But knowing that we are not alone in our struggling , that we are supported and loved by a God who suffers with us , alongside us , by a God who is good and righteous and merciful and just apart from whether or not our bodies and minds are fully healthy and whole , perhaps that offers a sliver of peace that surpasses all understanding and buoys us in a love that
doesn't let us go , regardless of how far down into the pit we might find ourselves . The pit is real , but it doesn't have to be where we stay alone , for God goes with us to bear the darkness . So , from the belly of the fish , jonah cried out it's me , hi , I'm the problem , it's me . That's not a direct quote , but it's close enough .
What he did say is you brought up my life from the pit . Oh Lord , my God , deliverance belongs to the Lord , and maybe , by the grace of God , like Jonah , our antihero , we too will not remain in darkness but eventually get spewed back onto dry land . Friends , may it be so for you and for me . Amen . You've been listening to Resilient Faith .
The podcast Resilient Faith is sponsored by Brentwood Presbyterian Church in West Los Angeles . You can follow our church and this podcast on Facebook at BPCTeam , and Instagram at BPC underscore USA . Make sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform , and thanks for listening .