Today with Jeff Vines

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I want to take you to Psalm eighty eight, he
says the writer, Lord, you are the God who saves
me day and not, I cry out to you Verse two.
May my prayer come before you turn your ear to
my cry. You have put me in the lowest pit,
in the darkest depths. Your wrath lies heavy on me.
You've overwhelmed me with all your waves. You have taken

(00:22):
me from my closest friends, and you have made me
repulsive to them. I am confined and cannot escape. My
eyes are dim with grief. I call you Lord, every
day I spread out my hands to you, even though
it's going to be the darkest season of your life.
God put this here to show you that mental illness
is where you become a person of greatness.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
Today, Today, Today Today with Jit Fines, pasta apologist and
Bible teaching. My name's Aaron and you're listening to Today
with Jeff Finds. Welcome to the program. In this episode,
we continue a series that Pastor Jeff has been saying

(01:06):
is a very difficult one to go through. It's brought
up some memories and personal struggles for him. It's a
series on anxiety, depression and Jesus We heard the beginning
of the message in the last episode, and if you
want to catch that episode, re listen to it. You
can find it wherever you listen to podcasts. Just search
for Today with Jeff Finds. But today we'll hear the

(01:28):
remainder of this message on anxiety and depression. We're starting
in Psalm eighty eight, which begins with Lord, you are
the God who saves me day and night I cry
out to you. Let's join Pastor Jeff for the rest
of this message and find out how to thrive in
anxiety depression with Jesus.

Speaker 1 (01:52):
God says to those who experience mental illness, and this
is not just theory to me, this is real because
this is the case in my own life. God says
to us in the midst of this that I am
your God, not because you get up every day and
put on a happy face, not because you say and
do everything right, not because you never talk back, not
because you never lash.

Speaker 3 (02:11):
Out or get frustrated with me.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
I am your God because I love you, and I
am a God of grace.

Speaker 3 (02:18):
And we should find that liberating.

Speaker 1 (02:20):
That as we go through this series, all the things
we're about to learn, we should never forget that. So
why did God place it in the Bible? To show
you that mental illness can last a long time. Two
to show you the grace of God during the dark
seasons of your days. And three to show you that
mental illness is where you become a person of righteousness.

Speaker 3 (02:37):
This is hard to fathom.

Speaker 1 (02:38):
It's hard to accept, and when somebody told me this
in the middle of it, I didn't appreciate hearing it.
But in retrospect after the fact, it's true. God put
this here to show you that mental illness is where
you become a person of greatness. The writer saw mediot,
which again we're gonna unveil just in a moment. He
should not be saying things he's saying, but at least

(03:00):
he's saying them to God.

Speaker 3 (03:02):
You know.

Speaker 1 (03:02):
One day, when I was in the middle of my anxiety,
I finally got the courage to leave the house. I
had to come to the office because I was preaching
again that weekend. Through that season, I continued to preach
and continued to pray and continue to learn. One day
I got to the office and I just my brain.
It was in that cloud again. It was in that place.
I don't know where you go. It's like Paul. Whether
you're in the body or out of the body, I

(03:23):
don't know. The only difference was I wasn't caught up
in the third Heaven. I felt like I was caught
up in the third Hell. This was terrible and I
couldn't think. I couldn't process.

Speaker 3 (03:32):
You know what I did.

Speaker 1 (03:33):
I'm gonna make a confession. I got my iPad out
and I watched Forrest Gump.

Speaker 3 (03:37):
I don't know why.

Speaker 1 (03:39):
I just thought, maybe I need a good laugh. The
problem with Forrest Gump you get some laughs, but you
also get some serious dialogue. And I came to the
scene where Lieutenant Dan, who had lost both his legs
in battle, who hated Forrest because Forrest got the Medal
of Honor and he felt Forrest was an idiot. And
here Lieutenant Dan, coming from a long series of family

(04:01):
members who were war heroes, got nothing, lost both his legs.
Forrest carried him out of the jungle, and Lieutenant Dan
hated him for it. But not only that, he hated himself.
Became addicted to sex, drugs, alcohol. He was destroying his life.
But he heard that Forrest Gump has a boat and
is shrimping in Alabama, and he promised Forest that if

(04:25):
you ever own your own boat, I'm gonna come and
be your first mate. Holding true to his word, he comes.
He becomes the first mate Forrest Gump shrimping entity, but
they're not catching any shrimp. And one day a horrible
storm comes and all the boats come in except one.

(04:46):
And the only reason Forrest Gump remained is because Lieutenant
Dan determined he was determined.

Speaker 3 (04:51):
To die that day.

Speaker 1 (04:53):
So he climbs on top of the mast with this
storm that had the potential to destroy them, to destroyed
every that had gone into harbor, and Lieutenant Dan has
it out with God, and in this frustration he says
to God, you'll never sink this boat.

Speaker 3 (05:11):
Is that all you got? God? You son of a gun?
Is that all you have? You call this a storm?

Speaker 1 (05:16):
And he yells, it's time for a showdown between you
and me, God, one on one. Here I am, come
get me. You'll never sink this boat and he screens
and yells at God. And then in the next scene,
after the storm subsides, here comes Lieutenant Dan, the atheist
who's been shouting at God all night long, and Forrest
says he never said so but I think he made

(05:40):
his peace with God.

Speaker 3 (05:44):
When I saw that.

Speaker 1 (05:46):
Believe it or not, God uses If God can use
a donkey, he can use force gum. I remember on
my couch thinking, I gotta get this out, and I
let God have it. I'm a pastor, I'm your I've
been serving you since I was twenty one years old.

Speaker 3 (06:03):
I have given everything to you.

Speaker 1 (06:04):
I went to Africa for you, I went to New
Zealand for you, and here you are.

Speaker 3 (06:07):
You've got me in this darkness and you won't answer.

Speaker 1 (06:13):
The healing that took place that day, probably more than
any medicine, at least. I was still talking to God.
And God did not strike me down and smite me,
because he's a God of grace and mercy. And I
began to learn he was doing something. You know what
is Satan's accusation against Job. If you read the Book

(06:33):
of Job, Satan says to God, Job's relationship with you
is transactional. Of course he serves you because you keep
blessing him. Of Course he does the right thing because
you keep giving him more and more.

Speaker 3 (06:45):
Stop you withhold that stuff. You stop blessing him.

Speaker 1 (06:50):
You wound him internally and externally he'll curse you. He'll
curse the day he was born, and he'll curse you.
Give him inner and outer darkness, and he will not
serve you. That passage spoke to me because I realized
that much of my relationship with God at that point

(07:10):
in my life was transactual. That I had used people
in the past as a means to my end, but
now I'm using God. Did I really go to New
Zealand and to Africa for God? Or did I go
for myself? Had I been serving him for me or
for him? And you have to ask the same question,

(07:33):
is Satan right about us?

Speaker 3 (07:34):
About me? About you?

Speaker 1 (07:37):
We all begin with that attitude because we come to
God to get something, and that's natural. We want to
be healed, we want to be saved. Those are good things,
But if you never grow out of that emotionally, you
become a roller coaster because it'll be contingent on what
you think God is doing for you at the present time.
But God in our lives is trying to move us
out of egocentrism where everything's about us, into theocentrism that

(07:59):
where everything's about God. God and job speaks to God
the same way that the writer of Psalmatia speaks to God.
Let me give you a demonstration. It's in Job nine,
verse twenty two. It's all the same. That's why I
say he meaning God, destroys both the blameless and the wicked.

Speaker 3 (08:14):
You hear what he's saying. God, it doesn't do what
he's going to be righteous, You kill us both.

Speaker 1 (08:19):
When a scourge brings sudden death, God walks the despair
of the innocent. You hear what he's saying. An innocent
person dies. God, they're in despair. You do nothing about it.
When a land falls into the hands of the wicked,
he blindsfold its judges. If it is not he, then
who is it. Job is saying, you could have straightened
us out. When injustice happens, You could have prevented it.
You don't whose fault is it, then it's got to

(08:40):
be yours. Job talks to God the same exact way.
In Psalm eight, the author talks to God. And yet
here's the key now in all of this. At the
end of the book of Job, God says, Job has
honored me throughout this entire endeavor. And God turns to

(09:01):
Job's friends and says, you better ask Job to pray
for you.

Speaker 3 (09:04):
Otherwise I might smite you. Job.

Speaker 1 (09:11):
After all the things that Job had said to God,
why would he say? Why would God say that that
Job had honored him? And the answer is this, Yeah,
he's talking. You might even say he's talking trash, you
might even say he's accusatory. But at least he's still
talking to God. At least he's still communicating to God.
He's angry with God, he's complaining to God. He's accusatory

(09:31):
to God, and he's wrong and most of his assumptions.
But at least he's still talking to God because he
knows God's there. Even though he does not subjectively feel God,
he knows God's objective presence is undeniable, and Job never
walks away from God. He stays with God until the
very end, and as a result, Satan is defeated. If

(09:55):
while you are in your darkness, you can tell please
hear me. Now you're thinking, oh, man, I want I
want something. I know you know what you want. You
want stats, you want healing, you want me to give
you a formula.

Speaker 3 (10:03):
Just stay with me.

Speaker 1 (10:04):
Those things we're going to talk about, but for now,
please understand, if you continue to do good, you continue
to go to church, you continue to feel you're getting
nothing out of it in the middle of this fog
and haze and confusion.

Speaker 3 (10:21):
If you continue to go to church, to read the Word, to.

Speaker 1 (10:25):
Surround yourself with friends, if you continue to do these things,
what happens is it turns you into greatness. But if
you run, and you run, the disease grows more intense.
It is meant to turn you from egocentrism into theocentrism,
which inevitably produces endurance, stability, peace, and a centralized joy.

(10:51):
At the end of the book Lord of the Rings
the book, not the movie, Sam and his friend Frodo
are headed up to the mountain of Doom. And as
they're headed up, Sam realizes his strength and energy is gone,
are gone, and he's come to the end of himself.
And he's tempted in the book to crawl up in

(11:12):
a little ball and just die. And yet the writer
tells us, even as Hope died in Sam, or seemed
to die, it was then turned into a new strength.
And I quote Sam's face grew stern as the will
hardened in him, and he felt through all his limbs
a thrill, as if he was turning into some creature

(11:34):
of stone, and still that neither despair or weariness, nor
endless bar and miles could subdue. It is in the
darkness that you will throw away the transactional approach to
God and begin to know and serve God the way
He's meant to be known and served pragmatically. Can I
show you how this works?

Speaker 3 (11:54):
Again?

Speaker 1 (11:55):
It was my friend Dame Johnson that came to me
in this mental illness when I was frustrated with God
and I had no understanding and basically I was panicking,
and Dan came to me, having gone through a season
of depression himself, said this to me, Jeff, when you

(12:15):
can pray to God, God, keep me in this darkness
until I have learned the lesson and become the man
you want me to become. When you pray that and
you mean it, because in the beginning, you're going to
pray it hoping it's the kind of the secret code,
the key that will unlock all this and you'll be free.

(12:35):
But when you pray it and you mean it, two
things are going to happen. One, you're going to find
that you love God for the sake of God. You've
become theocentric and two that's when you'll be healed. It's
almost like in the darkness, God says, all right, here
we are, Jeff. We're going to find out if you've
been serving me or if you think I'm here to

(12:58):
serve you. Right now, you're not getting much out of me.
I know that you've taken so many things for granted
in the past. Will you resign and say, oh God,
I get it. I'm going to serve you and I
want you to build in me the man or the
woman that you need or want me to become. That's

(13:22):
hard to hear when you're in the middle of it
because there are many causes, which we're going to talk
about later, but there's only one attitude that brings victory,
the only victory. The only way to get this victory
that we're looking for is to totally yield the entire
illness over to God and to say, God, doing me

(13:44):
what you have to do with me, Be gentle, doing
me what you have to do with me to make
me into the man or the woman of God that
you desire for me to become. Do you know when
I went through the anxiety disorder, James One began to
make a lot more sense to me. Blessed is the
one who persevere is under trial, because having stood the test,
that person will receive the crown of life that the

(14:05):
Lord has promised to those who love him. I used
to look at that passage as Okay, if I behave
and I endure, then I'm going to give the crown
of life. But what I think James says here the
one who perseveres is the one who gets eternal life.
So God wants to make sure that we persevere. So
to make sure that we persevere, our whole life becomes

(14:28):
a training ground of endurance, teaching us to endure so
that God can make sure those He's called will receive
the crown of life. Somehow we turn into some creature
of stone and stel that neither despair or weariness, nor

(14:49):
endless barren miles can subdue. Okay, let's end. Why did
God put this in the Bible to show you that
mental illness can last a long time, To show you
that God gives his grace in the darkness days of
your life, To show you that mental illness is where
you become a person of greatness. There's no doubt in
my mind, but here's where some of you probably wish

(15:11):
we would have begun to show you the darkness is
neither objective nor permanent. Now let's talk about this. Do
you know who wrote saw eighty eight? The person who says, God,
you're not there. This is permanent. The person who does
not say I don't feel you're there. No, he says
you're not there. He doesn't say I feel that you've

(15:32):
forsaken me. You have forsaken me, You've abandoned me since
my youth. He believes that darkness is absolute, not relative,
that darkness is eternal, not temporary, that it's objective not subjective.

Speaker 3 (15:44):
But he was wrong. Now, who wrote saw eighty eight?
The answer is a.

Speaker 1 (15:49):
Man by the name of Heman, not Hayman. In the
extra story Heman h E M A n. And you
will find his name in first chronicle six and you
will just cover that David put Heman in charge of
writing worship music and songs in the House of the Lord. Now, remember,

(16:11):
the Psalms are one of the greatest works of literature
and history. Both historians, Christian and secular will admit that.
And Heman wrote the psalms that are recorded in the
forties forty through forty nine. In other words, Heman wrote

(16:32):
some of the greatest literary works of art in history.

Speaker 3 (16:36):
Nobody questions that.

Speaker 1 (16:39):
Millions and millions and millions of people have read his works,
his songs, his music.

Speaker 3 (16:45):
No author has.

Speaker 1 (16:47):
Had their works and artistic impressions read, contemplated and discussed
as much as those who wrote the songs.

Speaker 3 (16:59):
Heman's darkness turned him into a great artist.

Speaker 1 (17:04):
And I go back to the two Greek words in
the New Testament for pain, Philipsus and priasmas. Both words
refer to pressure, and the image is to stop on
the grapes and the wine press, squeezing them until the.

Speaker 3 (17:16):
Good stuff comes out.

Speaker 1 (17:17):
God had to squeeze Heman to get the good stuff out,
to encourage and minister to millions of people, millions, and
it goes on through generation after generation. Do you think
Heman would have seen the day when you and I
would stand in this place and talk about his work. No,
his suffering was not relative, it was not absolute, It

(17:40):
was not eternal. His suffering was temporary, subjective, and definitely relatable.
God was always there, whether he felt like it or not,
And through his suffering.

Speaker 3 (17:52):
He was turned into a great artist. If God is
your savior.

Speaker 1 (17:56):
You can know with certainty this darkness will birth the
graat this lot of your life.

Speaker 3 (18:01):
I know you don't want to hear that now.

Speaker 1 (18:04):
I definitely didn't want to hear it, and I wanted
to smack people who said that, But I cannot deny
the reality of what it does. When when you discover
through this series that there's light at the end of
the tunnel, there is a way you can be healed.

Speaker 3 (18:16):
I am confident of it.

Speaker 1 (18:18):
When you discover that on the other end of it,
you're gonna be You're gonna be singing a different song.
You're gonna be saying those days were the best days
of my life because they did something in me that
changed me for eternity. God has not abandoned you. He's
always working. How can I know that, Pastor Jeff In

(18:38):
the end of Psalm thirty nine, God turned your face
away so that I can have a moment's peace. The
end of Psalm eighty eight, darkness, My best friend is darkness.
But what does Matthew twenty seven say? From noon until
three in the afternoon, darkness came over the land. About
three in the afternoon, Jesus cried out in a loud voice,
My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?

Speaker 3 (18:56):
What's the point?

Speaker 1 (18:57):
The point is because Jesus suffered total darkness objectively. You
and I only get subjective darkness because.

Speaker 3 (19:05):
He did suffer abandonment.

Speaker 1 (19:07):
You and I only feel like there are times when
God has abandoned us. But the reality is because Jesus
experienced the objective wrath of God. He didn't just feel abandoned.
He didn't just merely feel the wrath of God. He
experienced objectively the wrath of God and abandonment from God.

(19:27):
He's the only one that can truly say what the
writer human says and saw eighty eight. Darkness was his
only friend. The disciples left him, his own people left him,
even his own father left him. Why Jesus suffered the
darkness and the abandonment our sin deserves. Jesus experienced the

(19:48):
darkness as his only friend was darkness, so that in
your darkness, Jesus becomes your true friend, who's always there,
who's always working, and who will never leave. In the garden,
Jesus did not abandon his darkness, And if you think

(20:10):
about it, in the garden, Jesus did not abandon us.

Speaker 3 (20:14):
In the middle of his darkness.

Speaker 1 (20:15):
When the darkness came, he could flee, He could have left,
He could have said no, I'm not going to do this.
So because Jesus in the garden did not abandon us
in his darkness, what makes you think he will abandon
you and yours. He's already proving that he is a
friendists closer than a brother, that he will never leave you,
he will never forsake you. And do you remember that

(20:36):
sarcastic question in Saw eighty eight? Do the dead rise
and praise you? Do you know what the answer is? Yes,
they do because Jesus rose again and praise the heart
of the Father for his restoration and for the defeat
of sin and death. And that's exactly what you and
I can do. If we trust him, we two will
rise up in our darkness and praise him.

Speaker 3 (20:59):
If you run to him, keep running, keep running.

Speaker 1 (21:03):
You will praise him for the deepest darkness moments of
your life. There was a lady that used to come
just quickly. There was a lady that used to come
every Easter when we used to meet at the Felix
Event Center. We used to gather all our campuses and
meet up at Apu and I would see her every Easter.
She would force her way to make it to the service,
and I would say, how are you because she was
facing brain cancer. I mean it was a horrible journey.

(21:25):
Beautiful mother, beautiful daughters and husband, beautiful family. And every
time I ask her that question, how you doing, how
you feeling?

Speaker 3 (21:33):
Does it hurt?

Speaker 1 (21:33):
And she would always respond nothing, That the resurrection can't
take care of.

Speaker 3 (21:39):
Nothing.

Speaker 1 (21:40):
That the resurrection, but the promise of the resurrection is
not only in the life to come, but it's here
and now that dead people, that dead bones can rise again,
can rise up, can be lifted up. Michael Wilcock in
his commentary on Psalm eighty eight. This darkness can happen
to a believer. It does not mean that you're lost.
The darkness can happen to someone who does not deserve

(22:00):
it. It happened to Jesus. It doesn't mean that you've strayed.
This darkness can happen to anyone at any time, because
only in the next world will such things be done
away with unnecessary. This darkness can happen to anyone without
knowing why, but rest assured there is a purpose, and
eventually you'll know it.

Speaker 3 (22:21):
You'll know it.

Speaker 1 (22:21):
For now we see only a reflection, as in a mirror.
Then we shall see face to face. Now I know
in part that I shall know fully even as I
am fully known.

Speaker 3 (22:29):
Listen, this darkness stinks. No other way to paint it.

Speaker 1 (22:38):
And it's true your friends don't understand it until they've
experienced it. It's impossible to explain, But can I tell
you as we go through this series, you have to
keep this in mind. God is with you. God has
never abandoned you. He is doing a mighty workn you.
You're gonna become a person of greatness. Yes, that's true.
You're gonna become a person of greatness. You're gonna move
from egocentrism to theocentrism.

Speaker 3 (22:58):
Your life is gonna be about God.

Speaker 1 (22:59):
It's gonna to move past a transactional relationship into one
that is so real and felt.

Speaker 3 (23:05):
It's going to change the rest of your life.

Speaker 1 (23:07):
If you will run and keep running to God even
when you don't feel he's there, keep coming, keep listening. Father,
I pray for all our family members right now that
are going through some top of mental illness. It is
a pandemic of epic proportions in this country and around

(23:28):
the world. Help me to explain the reasons why from
the Word of God as we go through the series.
Encourage those who are in the middle of it right now,
in this deep darkness. Encourage them, if nothing else, to
remember they should speak to you, what is in you,
what not ought to be in them? To be honest

(23:48):
with you, You're pretty big God, you can handle it.
But to keep running to you, even if it's running
to you in anger and frustration. And to remember that
you will ever leave them. That because you did not
abandon us in your darkness, you will not abandon us
in hours. And I pray that you give them insight
and passion to listen to this sermon again and again
until it makes its way deep into their minds and

(24:09):
emotions and put these things into practice that will lead
to peace life through Christ and His name.

Speaker 3 (24:18):
Amen.

Speaker 2 (24:21):
You've been listening to Today with Jeff Finds. Next time
we'll bring you a new message from pastor Jeff. You
can listen to more messages like this. Just search for
Today with Jeff Finds. Wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 1 (24:36):
You make

Speaker 2 (24:54):
Today Today, Today Today with Jeff Findes