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When Jesus was discussing end times events with His disciples, He described days that looked pretty bleak. Do any of these descriptions sound familiar today?
In times like these, Jesus said many people will be deceived. This is why Jesus twice tells His followers to “be on your guard” (vv. 9, 23).
What exactly does “on guard” look like?
Maybe you’ve heard a similar phrase before a fencing match, reminding the combatants to raise their swords. That’s a good picture for Christians. Paul tells us that we can use the “sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God” to defend ourselves during spiritual warfare (Ephesians 6:17).
While Jesus is instructing His disciples, He tells them the sword-like power of His words. He said, “My words will never pass away” (Mark 13:31). In other words, His sword is invincible!
Another modern-day phrase that fills out the definition of being on guard is when someone says, “Heads up!” This means to watch out for things that may be headed your way. Jesus reminded us, “I have told you everything ahead of time” (v. 23) so we can be aware of what’s coming.
We are aware of the approaching dark days of the end times, but we are not afraid of them. Three times, Jesus tells us to “keep watch” (vv. 34, 35, 37). This Greek word means to be aroused from sleep so that we can give active and strict attention to the task before us.
“Be on guard! Be alert!” Jesus said (v. 33), so that you don’t become apathetic. The devil prowls around, seeking to use the times of turmoil to confuse, deceive, and then mislead people.
But we are not unaware of his schemes.
Christian, we must stay on guard. We must be ready but unafraid of the opposition. We must keep in mind the never-failing Word of God, and we must use that sword to cut down the deceiving ideas. The Holy Spirit will give you the right words to wield at the right moment—
“…Don’t worry in advance about what to say. Just say what God tells you at that time, for it is not you who will be speaking, but the Holy Spirit.” (Mark 13:11)
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I was sitting with a couple of ladies in our school district who were trying to figure out the logistics for a food distribution program. I was offering them a couple of suggestions when one of them asked me, “Have you ever had any experience with something like this?”
I told her that I had, and then she responded, “But this is going to be pretty big. Probably about 40 families.”
I smiled and told her that the food distribution program I helped coordinate fed nearly 5000 people.
She said, “Well, I guess we don’t have to worry anymore!” And from then on, whenever any logistical concerns came up, these ladies confidently handed off the situation to me. Once they knew that I had some relevant experience, they didn’t have any more moments of questioning.
Unlike Jesus, I didn’t create all of the food from a few loaves and fish. I simply organized the distribution of the food others had donated. I am glad these ladies had confidence in me, but at the same time, I had to guard my heart against the pride that can so easily puff up my ego.
Can you imagine if you were one of the disciples of Jesus, and had seen all of the miraculous things He had done and heard all of the profound things that He had said, and then still had the audacity to ask, “Who is the greatest”?!
And yet that is exactly what they did (Mark 9:33-35).
How in the world could they argue about something like this when Jesus was right there with them? Maybe this thought finally sunk in a little because later on they pivoted a bit in their argument to ask who was the greatest after Jesus (Matthew 20:20-28).
Jesus minced no words and left nothing vague in His answer: “Anyone wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all” (Mark 9:34).
This is exactly what Jesus embodied. He literally lived and died to prove that the highest greatness is measured by the lowest of servanthood.
…Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to His own advantage; rather, He made Himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a Cross! (Philippians 2:5-8)
The very last. Jesus made Himself nothing.
Not above some and beneath some, but the servant of all.
A mark of a godly leader is one who strives to be last.
Not: “I am second.” But: “I am last.”
This is not just a declaration, but it is a declaration followed by a lifetime of submitting and serving. Not trying to lead others, but trying to out-serve all.
This is part 74 in my series on godly leadership. You can check out all of my posts in this series by clicking here.
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I’m not a fan of rollercoasters, but I know a lot of people who really like them. Some even travel all over the world to experience unique rollercoasters. The anticipation as the cars climb slowly up the big hill, knowing that there’s no stopping this thing now! Then the rush of emotions, a deep breath and a laugh at the end (usually laughing at our friends’ responses while on the ride), and then we just walk away. The moment of anticipation leading up to the big drop was usually longer and more intense than the ride itself.
Not only do people travel all over to find rollercoasters, some people seem to have their emotions perpetually on rollercoasters.
One of the telltale signs of someone with an immature mental health is the way every situation gets blown out of proportion before anything even happens. Then as an event unfolds, their exaggerations continue: the molehills are mountains, every valley is the valley of the shadow of death, the night is a nightmare, the “crisis” is lasting forever, no one has ever gone through what they’re going through, and the list goes on.
To break out of this habit requires us developing emotional capacity. John Maxwell describes it like this: “Emotional capacity is the ability to handle adversity, failure, criticism, change, and pressure in a positive way.” Just as athletes have to develop lung capacity or muscle capacity, developing emotional capacity takes time, patience, and diligence.
Increased emotional capacity is not escaping from our problems or even learning coping skill. Escapism never allows us to confront the things that are keeping our emotional capacity immature. On the other hand, maturing emotional capacity is learning to pause to get perspective so that we can avoid turning every mountain into a molehill, and every challenge into a do-or-die battle.
Let me illustrate this by looking at two emotions which seem to be the most rollercoaster-ish.
(1) The first rollercoaster emotion is anger
Out-of-proportion anger can either burn everyone around us when we explode, or it can eat away inside us if we hold it in. Neither of these are healthy emotional responses. Jesus got angry at the religious crowd that was keeping people away from God’s kingdom, but He didn’t ride the rollercoaster that led to a sinful expression of His anger.
God asked Jonah a very helpful question: Have you any right to be angry? (Jonah 4:4). When we feel the Holy Spirit asking us this question, our defiant first response is almost always, “Yes! I didn’t do anything wrong! It was all him!” Solomon would counsel us to cross-examine that thought (Proverbs 18:17).
Sometimes God will bring someone else across our path to help us pause to get perspective—to flatten the rollercoaster. For instance, God used Abigail to help David (see the story in 1 Samuel 25). However the Holy Spirit cross-examines us, we need to learn to truly listen. James told us:
My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires. (James 1:19-20)
(2) The second rollercoaster emotion is fear
Fear usually causes us to fight or flight. Those are the natural responses, but the supernatural response is to pause to evaluate. I love the reminder that F.E.A.R. means false evidence appearing real.
As with anger, our first pause to get perspective on this potential rollercoaster that can plunge us into a deep, dark valley should be to cross-examine the false evidence of fear.
When the group of ladies came to the tomb of Jesus on the Sunday following His crucifixion, they were already battered and bruised in their emotions. Finding an empty tomb brought even more fear in their hearts. But there is a keyword in this account that will help us:
In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men [angels] said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; He has risen! Remember how He told you, while He was still with you in Galilee: ‘The Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.’” Then they remembered His words. (Luke 24:5-8)
The Holy Spirit can help us remember the truth in God’s Word to counteract the fear-inducing false evidence (2 Timothy 1:7; John 14:26), but we must pause to listen to this evidence before this rollercoaster emotion picks up speed.
The bottom line: Don’t try to escape your strong emotions. Pause. Cross-examine the evidence with the help of God’s Word, the Holy Spirit, and a friend to get a healthy perspective. This can help you flatten the rollercoaster before your emotions run away with you.
The Holy Spirit who inspired the words of the Bible is the same Holy Spirit in you. He can illuminate the biblical promises for your prayer time, and He can help you apply the biblical principles to your everyday circumstances. I have lots of new content every week, which you can check out on my YouTube channel.
“Carl M. ‘Daddy” Hanson (1865-1954), a spiritual father to many early Pentecostals on the northern Great Plains, earned his Pentecostal stripes on both sides of Azusa Street. He experienced the Pentecostal distinctive of speaking in tongues in the 19th century, and he became an early leader in the Assemblies of God in the first half of the 20th century.” Check out this mini-biography of this Pentecostal pioneer.
Absolutely astounding! The silk of spider webs has unique properties that medical science is beginning to use in humans. What an amazing Creator we serve!
In my sermon about parenting, I quoted from Proverbs 22:6. Commenting on this verse, Dick Brogden, in Proverbs: Amplified and Applied, wrote, “The principle regarding our children is that the things they are taught early on will give them every opportunity for stability later in life. This reality does not guarantee that they will make right choices (including whether or not to follow Jesus); it does guarantee that they have the resource of wisdom to draw on should they choose. … Whatever their choice, we can rest in the peace that we laid up for them every resource for good. Our peace (regarding our children) comes from what we have done with our heart and resources, not what they have done with theirs.”
Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Audible.
My, my, my, how quickly things can change! Unfortunately, the constant changes usually lead to feelings of instability. Fortunately, Jesus told us the surefire way we could find the stability, security, and confidence we all crave.
We can look back to learn or we can look back to relive. Looking back to learn is healthy, but looking back in regret to try to relive our past is unhealthy and unproductive. Learning vs. reliving makes all the difference. See my full message on this mental health thought here. I have lots of new content every week, which you can check out on my YouTube channel.
“I’ve learned one thing: You only really get to know a person after a fight. Only then can you judge their true character.” —Anne Frank
Lenny Esposito is an outstanding Christian apologist. Check out this podcast where Lenny discusses the historical facts about the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
“Life with God is not immunity from difficulties, but peace in difficulties.” —C.S. Lewis
“I believe it will only be known on the Last Day how much has been accomplished in missionary work by the prayers of earnest believers at home.” —James Fraser
This is a good reminder from Axis for parents with students returning to school. The heading of this section of Axis’ weekly Cultural Teanslator is “Back to Backpacking.”
“What it is: As a new school year begins, teens might have mixed feelings of excitement, anxiety, and feeling overwhelmed.
How to approach this season: As Hannah King writes in Christianity Today, all seasons of transition bring with them an element of loss. Starting a new school year might mean making new friends, meeting new teachers, or starting a new curriculum. It can also mean the loss of free time, increased stress levels, and more difficulty creating intentional moments as a family. For parents, the beginning of a new school year might also feel like a reminder that time with their teens living at home is dwindling down, a feeling which can bring its own set of griefs, pressures, and regret. King recommends allowing space for teens and adults to name the things they’re disappointed about or not looking forward to, noting that repressed sadness can keep us from ‘entering freely into [the] joy’ of a new thing.
“Start the conversation: What will you miss the most about this summer?”
“Either you deal with what is the reality, or you can be sure that the reality is going to deal with you.” —Alex Haley
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Without a doubt, Jesus had the most robust mental health of anyone who has ever walked planet Earth! Dr. Luke, a trained physician, captures this in just one verse (Luke 2:52) where he talks about how Jesus grew in a wholly healthy way, and Luke lists Christ’s mental health as the first priority.
I’m sure there have been plenty of times when someone asks you about something you like or dislike or why you do something the way you do, you probably don’t tell them the facts but you tell them a story. We have a story for everything we like, everything we do, and everything we avoid.
It’s good to rehearse these stories and to really listen to them. If we don’t really listen to them, we cannot learn from them; if we don’t learn from them, we rob ourselves of robust mental health.
From some of our stories, there is a regret that comes from three enemies. These enemies are all tied to our stories about our past and they are would’ve, could’ve, and should’ve—“If only I would’ve…” and “Things would be different today if I could’ve…” and “I should’ve known….”
One of the ways we need to talk back to those thoughts is like this, “I only know the would’ve, could’ve, and should’ve now because I’m older and more experienced. I didn’t know those things in the past so it was impossible for me to have done something differently.” Even the apostle Paul noted, “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me” (1 Corinthians 13:11).
If we don’t talk back to those regrets of yesterday, we will have doubts about today: Will I make another mistake today? Do I have what it takes to meet today’s challenges? What will others think of me if I mess up? If we don’t address those doubts we have today, that will cause us worry and stress about tomorrow.
Regret … doubt … worry … stress. Those don’t really sound like words that contribute to positive mental health, do they?
Here’s the thing we need to remember—Learning from our yesterdays is healthy, but trying to relive our yesterdays is both unhealthy and unproductive!
Dr. William Osler said, “If the load of tomorrow is added to that of yesterday and carried today, it will make the strongest falter.”
Four times in just ten verses, Jesus told His followers not to worry about tomorrow (Matthew 6:25-34). He ties that worry about tomorrow to having little faith. That lack of faith comes from our doubts, and those doubts come from our past regrets.
T.G.I.F.—thank God it’s Friday!—is an escapism. It’s not wanting to deal with the regrets, doubts, and worry by trying to push them to some distant time. It doesn’t allow us to really concentrate on today. The Bible constantly brings us back to the present.
Today is used 203 times in the NIV Bible
Tomorrow is mentioned 56 times
Yesterday is only used 8 times
Jesus taught us to pray, “Give us today our daily bread” (Matthew 6:11) so that we won’t let past regrets spiral downward into daily doubts and then anxiety about tomorrow. Elizabeth Elliot wisely counseled, “One reason we are so harried and hurried is that we make yesterday and tomorrow our business, when all that legitimately concerns us is today.”
Christians that want to be mentally healthy should continually replace a T.G.I.F. mindset with T.G.I.T.—thank God it’s today!
Taking a line from Joshua who said, “Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve” (Joshua 24:15), here are four things we need to choose to remember each day.
Choose to remember that God uses all things—even our would’ve, could’ve, and should’ves—for our good and for His glory (Romans 8:28).
Choose to forget those old, self-limiting, stress-causing stories (Philippians 3:13).
Choose to believe that God is doing something new—something I never could have planned (Isaiah 43:18-19).
Choose to believe that God can help you tell a new story about your past (Genesis 41:51).
You have to choose each day to say “Thank God it’s today! Thank God that I’m not who I was yesterday! Thank God that He is using my would’ve-could’ve-should’ve moments from yesterday to prepare me for today! Thank God that He is teaching me a new story!”
If you’ve missed any of the previous messages in our series on a Christian’s mental health, you can find them all here.
Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Audible.
Have you ever wondered why the Roman soldiers treated Jesus so cruelly? After all, these are professional soldiers so why are they acting in such an unsoldierly way (see Mark 15:16-20)?
Perhaps they thought that Jesus was just another criminal that was in cahoots with Barabbas—a murderer and insurrectionist. But where would they get that idea? It must have come from the lies and slander that the Sanhedrin were spewing.
Perhaps the soldiers had a low value of all human life. Where would this come from? First from their leadership: particularly the way history tells us that Pontius Pilate treated the Jews. But we can go a little broader because we also know from history the disregard the Romans had for the weak, the young, the sick, and the aged.
The bottom line is this: Anytime there is a departure in even the slightest degree from the Great Commandment—love God, love yourself, and love your neighbor—the resulting society is dark and ugly, with people mistreating others in the most inhumane of ways.
We stand as a check against the decay in societal values. Our high view of God’s power and love, our proper understanding of each person’s worth in God’s sight, and the way we express genuine love for others—especially the weak and marginalized—is a preservative to the moral decay.
It’s so easy to get caught up with the loud voices around us. Pontius Pilate did, the Roman soldiers did, the Sanhedrin did, and the crowds that listened to these leaders did too.
If you are concerned about the moral decay you see in your neighborhood, the movies and music that are released, or the behavior of our elected officials, we must adhere all the more closely to the Great Commandment: Love God with all your being, maintain a healthy self-image in light of God’s love for you, and then love your neighbor—allof your neighbors—in the same way God loves you.
Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Audible.
Mobs are scary things! Almost anyone can get caught up in the ugly mentality, vile words, and inexcusable actions.
Even professional soldiers. When Jesus was arrested, He was turned over to “the governor’s soldiers” (Matthew 27:27). These are professional soldiers. Punishing people—even carrying out capital punishment—was their job. But they gave in to the mob’s thirst for blood and made a sport out of punishing Jesus, doing what was outside of their job description.
The mob outside Pilate’s courtroom was stirred up by the religious leaders, and they “shouted all the louder” for a murderer to be released to them instead of a Healer (vv. 20, 23).
Even as Jesus hung helpless and dying on the Cross, the religious leaders continued to incite the crowds with their taunting, prompting even other condemned men to join in (vv. 39–44).
How easy it is to get caught up with the loud voices of the hour and to join our voices and actions with theirs! Mobs are hungry things and they continually devour almost anyone around them.
But Jesus didn’t succumb to the mob mentality. He didn’t even say a single word to those who taunted Him so mercilessly. Instead, as Peter recorded for us,
“To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in His steps. ‘He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in His mouth.’ When they hurled their insults at Him, He did not retaliate; when He suffered, He made no threats. Instead, He entrusted Himself to Him who judges justly.” (1 Peter 2:21-23)
The unexpected way that Jesus responded got people’s attention. A professional soldier, a centurion, after watching how Jesus conducted Himself as He died, had to admit He was the Son of God.
It’s so tempting to join with the loud voices around us. It’s even more tempting to shout back at those who are insulting us. But let us remember the example of Jesus, and perhaps offer a prayer like this:
“Holy Spirit, help me to not succumb to the loud voices, nor to lash out against people who torment me. But, like Jesus, may I entrust myself “to Him who judges justly.” May my quiet lifestyle be a testimony that gets the attention of others. In the name of Jesus I pray this. Amen!”
When Jesus was discussing end times events with His disciples, He described days that looked pretty bleak. Do any of these descriptions sound familiar today?
Craig T. Owens 