John

Yeah, this is the Rock House Center podcast and I'm John Murphy.

Beth

And I'm Beth Murphy.

Beth

We feel burdened to talk today about providing hope for the hopeless because we're seeing people drowning in hopelessness and despair that may have been there under the surface.

Beth

That's really been exacerbated by the circumstances in our world, and so we want to speak to that.

Beth

We want to speak to who God is, what he does, and what the.

Beth

Truth is that is the true hope for hopelessness and despair, and anxiety and depression.

John

It really comes out of a lot of witnessing the suffering and people who have been suffering for a lot of years.

John

They may have gone to a number of different facilities or doctors or whatever.

John

Trying to break free.

John

Of how they're feeling, but they're just stuck.

John

They're caught in a in a situation where they just continue to either do the talk therapy or take the medications, but they just can't come out from underneath.

John

The anxiety and depression and so they end up hopeless and there is clearly hope for all of these people and we want to dig into why that's the case and how a little bit of how it is that we got.

John

Off on the wrong foot of deciding that.

John

It was a hopeless case if traditional secular therapy or psychology didn't have an answer.

Beth

And of course, this hopelessness also pervades deeply in the church and includes people who maybe haven't tried traditional mental health tracks.

00:01:16

That's right.

Beth

Maybe they've tried ministry.

Beth

They've tried prayer and they sense that God has the answer.

Beth

Or is the answer somewhere or the answer somewhere in their faith?

Beth

But they can't get access to him and to his answer, and so sometimes this is people who have gone deeply in the mental health track.

Beth

And sometimes there's people who've never stepped foot in.

Beth

But have just suffered quietly or have tried many things in many ministries, but one way or another, despair and hopelessness has really just compounded over time.

John

One of the interesting things about that piece of it starts with a conversation that we had where we were doing a presentation to a number of pastors.

John

Question came up where do you send the tough cases as in the diagnosed, clinically depressed, clinically anxious the people who have struggled with addiction.

John

But when their really tough cases come, where do you send them the response?

John

That we gave in the meeting was we don't refer to anybody else because we've never seen anything that God can't heal.

John

And of course, that was a little bit of a shock, probably to the room, because they don't think that way.

John

Most people in the Christian culture have sort of felt like that.

John

We can help to a point, but when it really gets bad, we got to refer him out to somebody.

John

So it was interesting that some of the people in the room were kind of excited about the possibility, but then there were others who really, they challenged the idea and they wanted some proof.

John

We have proof on a couple different levels.

John

One is that we have experience proof.

John

We've been at this for 14 plus years and the other thing is is that we have data.

John

We've been collecting data for a long time, and most recently had a database with the results of 358 clients reviewed by an independent 33rd party. To validate the results were having which are just absolutely miraculous.

John

They're having big breakthroughs, so we had a real solid answer for those people.

John

For the people who asked those questions.

Beth

The interesting thing to remember though about that setting, and it certainly happened on a number of other occasions.

Beth

These were people not just in the church.

Beth

These were pastors and we've just become so conditioned in our Christian culture to not even think that God is the answer or has the answer because we got somewhere on a track.

Beth

That we got just really separated the quality of our inner peace from our relationship with God somewhere long ago and and without realizing it kind of handed it over to the secular world as opposed to really putting your stake in the ground on what?

Beth

It says at the end of Ecclesiastes, in the 12th chapter, where it's stating that this is greatly paraphrased, but the concept being that knowing God, the relationship with God is the whole of man and that deep reverential fear of the Lord, meaning Worshipful reverence of the Lord is.

Beth

The answer to all inharmonious circumstances under the sun, which means everything.

John

Like you're saying that the early church clearly that was there so over time from the early church forward.

John

Apparently the disconnect was growing, and by the time you get into the last century then there was a movement towards psychology and psychiatry as the answer.

John

So in effect what they were doing is they were stepping into the void of the church, not having the answer.

John

For what it is that was disrupting people peace, and that's where the whole thing began over the years, what it's evolved into is they have created a bunch of names for buckets of symptoms and it's the they diagnose a particular series of symptoms or collection of symptoms, and they call it a certain thing.

John

And I think people generally have some hope when they hear something that says this is their problem, and so there's a real attraction to having a name for the way they feel.

John

But it's not like the medical health side and the medical health.

John

There are certainly symptoms, but they're also tests and there are things that actually can typically will confirm that you have whatever the.

John

The disorder.

John

And then there is a treatment if it's possible to heal it or their symptom management, but it's all based on a medically validated and confirmed condition.

John

In the case of psychiatry, then, or psychology, what you have is a collection of symptoms which create a name and the only option that really psychiatry or psychology has been able to offer.

John

Or symptom management.

John

So in effect, what's going on is that they're working on symptoms, but they don't focus on.

John

'cause because there may have been some implication that they were getting at cause, but the reality of it is they're stuck on the symptom level of trying to help people.

John

That's why someone would be taking meds for their depression or the anxiety over a number of years and not having results is because there isn't actually a healing process built into that approach.

John

Unlike in the healthcare world.

John

Where bodies heal on their own and medical professionals basically facilitate that process.

John

In the case of psychiatry and psychology and our mental health just dealing with the way things feel doesn't actually advance healing.

Beth

And so the big missing piece there course is that over the centuries the psychiatry world psychology world has been completely focused on eliminating God as a consideration for where the the resolution lies.

Beth

And in our view, at Rockville Center, we believe and know.

Beth

There is no healing to those things outside of God because it resides in our spiritual domain.

Beth

So if you go at it from the get go, eliminating what the answer is then of course you are left to symptom management and the best hope being that you're going to kind of restore.

Beth

Brain or numb or override the way life feels without getting access even to the causal dimension of this by connecting with the disconnect from God and the sources of where the internal suffering arise.

John

Yes, it's like someone gives you an aspirin because you have aches and pains from flu.

John

That has absolutely nothing to do with the 'cause you do heal because God has put in us as built into our body, a process of healing that comes from God.

John

God responsible for that.

John

When we cut our finger, we put a band aid on it that doesn't make the tissue grow back together.

John

The implication is, by the way people think about and engage the mental health world.

John

They feel like that if we can deal with the symptoms or if we are doing our best to manage the situation that somehow there is an underlying.

John

Healing force, but the reason that that's not true in behavior health is because the God factor is missing over on the body side.

John

The healing came along because of God over on the emotional side and the peace side and the condition of our heart and our motions.

John

That also requires God system, but that's pretty much been.

John

Put aside in the world of mental health and there it's built around trying to have a scientific or man wisdom or a secular perspective.

John

And in doing that they have stepped away from and really don't engage the reality that in the same way God is, is behind the driving of healing from a physical perspective.

John

He's behind the driving of healing from the emotional perspective as well.

Beth

So even in those situations in secular mental health where they do acknowledge that early childhood has a lot to do with the suffering that a person may be experiencing in their adult life.

Beth

So we would agree with that, but they're not going at the spiritual answer to healing and redeeming that and the big missing piece here is, it's actually even missing in traditional forms of biblical counseling.

00:08:34

Right?

Beth

You know, I've read just even recent articles articles over the years, and certainly have heard.

Beth

Terms to this effect, but the mentality commonly there is the source of help that we get from God is Christ as our comforter and that he has compassion for us because he has suffered all things that have been suffered in mankind.

Beth

And that basically God through Christ is going to help us sort of gut it out in this life.

Beth

And then the big redemption comes 'cause you get to escape this world and go to heaven one day.

Beth

With all due respect, we just view that as kind of a miserable prospect in terms of it's completely missing the big picture.

Beth

Answer of what God promises, which is his peace that passes all understanding right in the midst of your circumstances, right here in the here and now.

Beth

That God can do what he promises to do to transform us by the renewing of our minds, so that we can discern as good and pleasing and perfect will, and so that we experience all circumstances in our life completely differently.

Beth

And what we experience at Rockhouse Center every day is that God does it changing.

Beth

Work and everything in our spirit.

Beth

Virtual, physical, emotional, mental being follows suit and comes around and begins to change, unwind and we do profoundly in a new way.

Beth

Become a new person and so of course it affects every dimension of our lives, but that's because we're starting at the foundation of how God made us how God wired us.

Beth

And allowing him to rewire us, which is a completely different process.

Beth

In fact, like I say, even from what you read in traditional biblical counseling, and it's certainly a different prospect from the approaches in secular health.

Beth

Secular mental health, even the ones that propose to try to acknowledge the importance of childhood traumas on current day life.

Beth

They're still ignoring God as the answer and again.

Beth

In our view, then, they're not able to get at any truly deeply healing answer.

John

Do highlight the idea that we're supposed to be at peace, no matter what's going on in our life right now, because we're saved and going to heaven later. Ten 1520 seventy 100 years later. That's not God's plan.

John

His plan is for us to have peace here and have it now have the supernatural peace that you're.

John

Talking about and.

Beth

Yeah, the abundant life that's the abundant life is here.

John

And we have to get to that place.

John

We have to reorient our thinking is that the Christian culture, the move of Christianity, the movement of Christianity was never about salvation alone.

John

That is just so critical to understand because that sort of thinking that you're talking about is based on that thought.

John

The second Thessalonians scripture.

John

Is really clear and many other scriptures that talk about ongoing regeneration and working things out in US and how God is going to give us the power and the desire to fulfill the potential of our transformation to become more and more like Christ and be sharing his divine nature.

John

And so the second Thessalonians scripture that I love it talks about salvation is the first fruit of the working of sanctification, and so really the Christian mass movement as it was originally founded, was about sanctifying people for which Christianity was the first step, and it is through that sanctification of becoming more and more like Christ that we do have.

John

This crazy supernatural peace, despite the things that happen to us.

John

Whatever it may be, as we're more and more sharing in the trust that Christ had in God, the love he has in God, the desire he had to please God, the being able to be led by the spirit to be led by God and do the things that please God out of his love for God, when that when those things starts kicking in, it completely changes the way.

John

We feel and of course, and this is an emotional thing.

John

It affects how we feel inside affects our peace.

John

And this is obviously the outcome of the people who have been coming to see us for the last 14 years.

John

Is that as we've basically helped them find the sanctification path in their life and help them find the places where they got derailed through their life story that we can move them back into this track to become transformed and really to be driven out of the love of the Lord.

John

Instead of being driven out of a oppressive discipline to display the fruit of Christ character without having Christ character without having his heart, without having the things that drive him.

John

Which by the way, also brings on a pretty significant amount of the anxiety and depression that we encounter here is related to a message that they're under about how they are unable to earn God's love or how they're unable to be assured of their salvation. The regret they have for things they've done in the past. The perfectionist messages.

John

Performance messages that come on them?

John

I mean, we could go through, we could spend a lot of time, would be a very long podcast or really breakdown how it all works, but we can tell you that as we are able to.

John

Move people out of control towards trust in God and have the transformation of being driven by a desire to please God instead of being driven by the consequences of our bad decisions.

John

People come out of incredible long histories of depression and anxiety and a whole bunch of other things.

John

We do have reports from people.

John

Who regularly tell us how they have been working off of their meds with in combination with a doctor's advice and are now off of those meds and they some of these people have been on those meds for.

John

You know 1020 years?

Beth

Back around where we started on this, the sense of burden for people who feel hopeless and despairing.

Beth

So there is that proverb.

Beth

The hope deferred makes the heart grow sick.

Beth

Well, so there's been a a deferred hope when so many people have put their hope in the secular.

Beth

Answers of the world and they've gone that track we could possibly count how many times every week we hear someone say I've done everything I know to do.

Beth

Because they have.

Beth

They've done everything that the world has prescribed on whatever track they've gone.

Beth

Whether it's the secular mental health track or they've gone the the track that's been prescribed to them in the church, or maybe it by other Christian counselors or maybe even biblical counselors.

Beth

But it's never LED them to the truth of God being the answer.

Beth

And how he is the answer.

Beth

You know?

Beth

What is the practical way in which that actually plays out, which is what we're doing every day at rockhaus center, and so back on that Ecclesiastes scripture at the end.

Beth

Of Ecclesiastes at 1213. Just basically saying that God is the foundation of all happiness and the adjustment to all in harmonious circumstances and conditions under the sun.

Beth

So that means God is the answer.

Beth

The Bible, even the revealed word of God, isn't the answer.

Beth

Stand alone without connection to him, the churches and and.

Beth

Psychology and psychiatry certainly aren't.

Beth

Not God is the answer and so it's in relationship with God where we are giving him permission to do the transforming work.

Beth

That's what scripture promises.

Beth

That's what it it promises, though, is the way in which we become someone new.

Beth

And all of these things begin to unwind the tangled normal of things.

Beth

That has caused us pain and suffering through our years, begins to unwind as we relinquish our grip on control and more and more are able to trust in God and rest in him.

Beth

Lean on him and actually live in the peace of God.

John

Yes, we actually get in a place where we trust him to change who we are to actually get inside and rewire our hearts so that the way we respond to our world is altered dramatically.

John

Again, we have a lot of proof of this, and there's a white paper that we put together that's on the website that digs in more deeply and makes a comparison bringing a lot of quotes from even the psych world where they.

John

Recognize this is not new information to the Cycle World.

John

Nobody would be surprised to hear that if they're a practitioner, there is.

John

Is an issue with effectiveness in that world?

John

And how do you get effectiveness?

John

And there's an issue with the fact that so far there has not been a scientific medical physiological test that validates any of the diagnosis.

John

The diagnosis were more put together in the anticipation that those tests would come over time, but they actually have never come.

John

Not that the psych world can't.

John

Help people.

John

They can certainly help them deal with the some of the ways things feel at the moment, but we're talking about the fact that.

John

There is no ultimate resolution to the cause by just what there is available now in the psychiatric and psychology world.

John

The other scripture that I think is is great is the second Peter 1/2 where it says that God and Jesus are the source of absolute peace and freedom from fear, moral conflicts, agitating passions.

John

And they are the source of perfect well being well.

John

So obviously God is declaring that I'm the answer to this problem and what's happened is, is that through buying into or participating in or however you want it?

John

Whatever the 'cause, we sort of limited God.

John

We got him in a box and we've limited it to what our limited belief is of his power and the way in which he can help us.

John

I think a really critical aspect of getting free and getting hope.

John

Back is First off recognizing that God does have the answer, and for many people who have been involved in struggling with anxiety, depression for a lot of years, they don't have any hope because they don't see anything on the horizon.

John

We need to take people to a place where they open their minds to the reality that God actually does have an answer, which will be the beginning of it.

John

Reestablishing hope in people.

John

Who have been on this road for a long time and really don't see any other answer than taking more drugs, doing more therapy, and by the way the drugs have a lot of side effects and suffering under the side effects of the medications they're taking.

Beth

Back to the reference that you made at the first of speaking to a small group of pastors.

Beth

It just speaks to the situation within the Christian culture, just that the Group of responses, which is generally that your answer that well we don't refer out anywhere because we haven't seen anything that's.

Beth

Too big for God.

Beth

And that always elicits something of a gasp, which can be hopeful, excited, or occasionally, even with pastors.

Beth

And I will also say that it's been absolutely thrilling to many pastors who send everyone who comes to them.

Beth

If it's not something they can address in a session or two and their people marriage or their parenting or their depression, their anxiety or their mental health situation, they send them to rockhaus center and and sometimes scholarship them because they're so excited.

Beth

That somebody latched onto the answer that they have always assumed was there, but didn't know how to access and and so that's what we're speaking to in just the big picture of providing hope to the hopeless that God really is the hope in a very practical, meaningful kind of way.

Beth

And we just want to go on in to saying a prayer so that.

Beth

Whoever is listening.

Beth

Now you want to to grab hold of that hope and open your heart to the Lord, revealing that to you.

Beth

However, he's going to do that.

Beth

That got the opportunity to do a repeating prayer right here and get that started.

John

So if you're someone who has been suffering short or long term under emotional disorder or some sort of self destructive behavior, or even if there's something along the lines of an addiction or self harm, or it doesn't matter, it does not matter what it is.

John

Marriage issues, relationship struggles, parenting problems, child rearing.

John

All of these things have core solutions in God and we have obviously seen that repeatedly or we wouldn't be right now telling you if we hadn't actually seen it and have the data to prove that it actually happens.

John

And so I just want to move to a place where people are opening their hearts to the fact that God is the answer.

John

And so I want to encourage you to.

John

Engage this prayer and begin to open up to a new answer and to have more hope in your life about how you're going to get free of this and move into God.

John

Leading for the answer.

John

So if you're in that place and you're ready for a breakthrough and you're ready to have some hope back, then just go along with me with this prayer.

John

Heavenly Father, I reject the lie that anything other than you.

John

Is the source of emotional healing.

John

I renounce any faith I put into substitutes for your healing.

John

Father, I declare the truth that you are the answer to my anxiety or depression or any other disruptions to my peace.

John

Father, please heal me of any way I have suffered under this false belief.

John

I invite you to invade my heart.

John

With your healing presence.

John

I opened my heart to your will for my healing.

John

I ask you to strengthen me.

John

To follow your leading.

John

So that I can be free from my suffering.

John

I pray this in the name of your son Jesus Amen.

Beth

Thank you for joining us today.

Beth

God bless you.