Pastor Voddie Baucham preached a powerful sermon about mental disease called “Nebuchadnezzar Loses His Mind.” I encourage you all to listen to it! I took notes and will share them with you.

Drugs just mask the way you feel. There are seven things you must consider about mental illness.

1. You’re a physical and spiritual being.
2. You live in a fallen world. You’re going to have bad days. You’re going to feel badly. Stuff is not going to work as well as we age including our brains. PTSD is simply a human response to trauma and tragedy, not a disorder. Human life is not always going to be peaceful. We mourn at death. This is normal! Teenagers are all over the place emotionally and people want to drug them. Boys are taken to school to sit in a chair all day long without moving. We drug them for years with a drug that we have no idea what the long-term side effects do to them. We live in a fallen world and act like it’s supposed to be a bed of roses. We’re promised tribulation!
3. Your sin has real physical and emotional consequences. Provers 26:13 speaks about having anxiety due to laziness. Proverbs 28:1 speaks to paranoia. Psalm 31:10 speaks about physical consequences to sin. James 5:13 speaks to those who have committed sin and are sick as a result. He must repent. 1 Corinthians 11:27 speaks about being sick and even dying if eating the Lord’s supper in an unworthy way.
4. There’s real evil in the world. In Ephesians 6:11,12, we are told that we wrestle against evil forces. There’s no pill for that! We are to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.
5. There’s no evidence that drugs cure any mental illness. There’s not one reported cure since there’s no scientific diagnosis to cure.
6. Psychotropic drugs mask symptoms and have severe, potentially deadly long-term side effects. They don’t cure anything. Few drugs cure anything. Most just manage symptoms. This is an indisputable face. They’re highly addictive and powerfully dangerous to get off of. That’s what’s so horrible about it! Your body will rebel and may even shut down. Even caffeine can have the same problems. Many need caffeine to feel good and have uncomfortable symptoms when not drinking it. Someone is making a lot of money on psychotropic drugs.

Most mental problems are caused by underlying mental or physical conditions such as lack of sleep, no exercise, poor diet, tragedy, loss, immorality; all can cause depression. Then Pastor Baucham shares the Gospel, the hope we have in Christ, and to keep our eyes and mind on Him, not on ourselves.

For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ.
2 Corinthians 10:4,5

***A few years ago, I wrote a post about psychology and how it takes God out of our lives, as if God can’t give us a sound mind as He promises. I believe it has caused far more wide spread sin and suffering than it has helped. “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind” (2 Timothy 1:7).