Mental Health & The Church - A Study of Biblical Characters & Mental Health

Our goal is to provide a practical resource for you, your small group, or your family, that can be easily implemented and applied.

For this edition we’ve created a four-week Bible study based on mental health, the theme of the 2024 Lutheran Brethren Seminary Fall Conference. While the term “mental health” may be a modern-day convention, the men and women in the Old and New Testaments wrestled just as mightily with the same struggles we face today.

Each week, read the assigned Scripture along with the devotional, watch the companion video, and answer the reflection questions.

Companion videos, along with a PDF version of this study, are also available for you online at: www.FFBOOKS.org/4weekstudy

While we must be careful about foisting modern day medical diagnoses onto ancient people, one adjective that seems to capture Hannah’s spirit in this passage is depressed. She cries and refuses to eat (v.7). She is downhearted (v.8). She is deeply troubled, pouring her soul out to the Lord (v.15). She prays out of great anguish and grief (v.16). All of this went on for years (v.7). Hannah was barren in a culture where fertility was seen as a sign of God’s blessing. To add insult to injury, her rival would not let her forget this fact. Where was God in all of this? Had he forgotten her entirely?

While depression never crowds out God’s love (nothing can do that; see Rom. 8:38-39), it does crowd out our awareness of God’s love. The Psalmist captures this feeling well in Psalm 77:7-8. “Will the Lord reject forever? Will he never show his favor again? Has his unfailing love vanished forever? Has his promise failed for all time?” If we’re honest with ourselves, we’ve all asked that question at some point.

In the midst of her anguish, Hannah cried out to the Lord. He heard her prayer, and he responded―not with easy answers, but with his presence. In a broken world where we daily experience the effects of the Fall, only Jesus is strong enough to bear the heaviness that weighs down our hearts: “Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering” (Isa. 53:4a). So we can bring our burdens to him, because, counterintuitively, it is in our weakest moments when God shows up strongest.


Reflection Questions:

1. What challenges you about Hannah’s story? What encourages you?
2. Read Isaiah 52:13-53:12. Who is this passage about? How is Jesus described?
3. How would you walk alongside someone struggling with depression?

If anyone had a reason to cry, it was Job. In a single day he lost all of his livestock (his economic means), his servants, and his children. To top it off, he was afflicted with “loathsome sores” (2:7, ESV) from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. Later on in the book, we discover he also suffered from fever, sleeplessness, nightmares, and failing vision. In the blink of an eye, Job had gone from riches to rags. As he sat there in the dust and ashes, scraping his skin with a piece of broken pottery, his grief was so great that his friends could barely recognize him.

Elizabeth Kübler-Ross defines the five stages of grief as denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Guilt is sometimes thrown into the mix, with the grieving person questioning what they could have done differently, or feeling shame for making the lives of those around them more difficult. Grief comes in unpredictable waves, with unexpected outbursts of sadness followed by hours of numbness, peppered with periods of relative normalcy. Caught in the wake of such a powerful concoction of emotions, just putting one foot in front of the other can often feel like a Herculean task.

Yet God is with us in the midst of our grief, because “we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses” (Heb. 4:15a). Jesus himself wept over the death of a close friend (John 11:35), and David tells us that “the Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit” (Ps. 34:18). In his sermon on the mount, Jesus goes so far as to say, “blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted” (Matt. 5:4). The truth is that our pain is not lost on God. In fact, he even keeps track of our sorrows, collecting our tears in a bottle (Ps. 56:8, ESV). And ultimately, Christians can take heart, because one day soon Jesus “will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away” (Rev. 21:4).


Reflection Questions:

1. What challenges you about Job’s story? What encourages you?
2. When have you or someone you know experienced a season of grief?
3. How might you care for a friend who was grieving? What do they need most?

“I have had enough, Lord” (v.4). How many of us have uttered those words before? How many of us have hit a wall after a tough day, week, month, or year and said, “God, that’s it! I can’t take any more of this. It’s just too much. I can’t go on.” Elijah had had a rough season of ministry. From poverty to starvation to drought, to conflict with the king, to a showdown with the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel where he was outnumbered 850 to 1, the odds seemed ever against this prophet of Yahweh. And finally he hit his limit, lying down under a broom tree and begging the Lord to take his life.

The beauty of this story, however, is that God meets Elijah at the bottom of the barrel. In the wake of the prophet’s weakness, we might expect judgment and rebuke. What we get instead is a gracious God who sends an angel to bake Elijah a cake (v.6, KJV) and instructs him to take a nap. That’s not an exaggeration, it’s the text itself speaking. God sees the emotional state of his prophet, and he acknowledges the reality of his pain, even affirming Elijah’s complaint: “…the journey is too much for you” (v.7).

To those in the throes of burnout, God’s advice is not “try harder,” but rather, “I see you. I love you. Your suffering is real and I will walk through it with you, providing you what you need day by day.” God meets our exhaustion with the inexhaustible riches of his mercies, which “are new every morning” (Lam. 3:23).


Reflection Questions:

1. What challenges you about Elijah’s story? What encourages you?
2. Where in your life do you feel exhausted? What has God been teaching you in the midst of this?
3. How does Lamentations 3:19-24 apply to your life right now? 

Jehoshaphat was anxious, and for good reason: A vast army was marching toward Jerusalem to attack him. As the king of Judah living in the heart of the Promised Land, this was more than mere personal rivalry. God had given the Israelites a home of their own by fulfilling his promise to Abraham (Gen. 12:1-3). Now, that covenant seemed threatened. God’s promises were under siege, and it remained to be seen how the Lord would come through for his people. In the midst of his distress, Jehoshaphat confessed his own sense of powerlessness to the Lord: “…for we have no power to face this vast army that is attacking us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you” (v.12b).

When anxiety seizes us, Jehoshaphat’s prayer becomes our own. We, too, face attacks from an unseen army, numerous and strong. Outmanned and outgunned by the sheer volume of thoughts and feelings, adrenaline and cortisol, overwhelming our system, we can’t always marshall the willpower to shake anxiety’s grip or pray it away. We, too, fight to keep our eyes fixed upon the Lord.

As complicated as Jehoshaphat’s feelings were, God’s response to his anxious king was simple: “…This is what the Lord says to you: ‘Do not be afraid or discouraged because of this vast army. For the battle is not yours, but God’s’” (v.15). God fought for his people, and he continues to fight for you. At the Cross, Jesus won the victory over sin and death, and all of the lesser anxieties we face, crushing the head of Satan underfoot. Jesus is for you. He carries your anxieties, and the one who experienced such anguish that “his sweat became like drops of blood” (Luke 22:42) refuses to let anxiety have the final word.


Reflection Questions:

1. What challenges you about Jehoshaphat’s story? What encourages you?
2. What are people’s biggest sources of anxiety today? What are yours?
3. Does the presence of anxiety indicate a lack of faith? Why or why not?
4. What is one way verse 17 applies to your daily life this week?