Transcription
Hi everyone, and welcome to this episode of Transformed You. I am Mark DeJesus, here doing a solo episode to discuss and share, and just really share my heart with you about a subject that is near and dear to my life and the life of those that God has called me to help. So I pray that this will be a real blessing to you.
And if you've been a listener or watcher of the Transformed You show and haven't been enjoying it, consider donating towards this work. We are supported by those who are getting a lot out of the material and those who've just aligned with our heart to see people experience healing of the heart, renewing of the mind, and transformation in relationships. And I believe this is a heartbeat, a core issue of what God is doing in our lives. So take the time to do that. Check out our website and resources. We've got ebooks, training materials that can all be a benefit to your life and to your journey. So consider that.
And in this episode, what I want to get on is one of my deep passions, and that has to do with the subject of mental health, emotional health, or really delving into the depth of the life of the heart and helping people to experience healing, freedom, and transformation in all those areas. Mental health is becoming a growing topic that people are addressing, realizing we need to address in our families. We need to talk about it in our homes. Our churches need to be aware of it. And I don't believe the subject of mental health should be exclusive to those who've been officially diagnosed. That's just my opinion. I believe mental health is an everybody issue and an everybody subject because all of us have areas in our life that needs some tweaking. All of us have areas of thinking, areas of mood stabilization, areas of our lifestyle, how we do relationships, how we see life, our belief systems that need tweaking, that need development, that need healing.
And what I want to do in this episode, my goal is not to cover the whole subject of mental health. My goal in this episode is to cover specifically how a root of rejection is a major, is one of the major root systems that causes people to lose a sense of mental health or to not be able to have the prosperous thinking, the healthy thinking, the vitality, the hope, and the fruitfulness that God's called us to live in. And there is an absolute war over the hearts and minds of people. And I've dedicated myself to really setting my feet in the trenches to encourage you, to teach you, to exhort you, to equip you, to mentor you, and to give you insights and to help consider me your brother to just walk alongside of you and to show you some things I've learned and what I've learned from my own journey and also the people that I've helped over the years.
And the great news is that God has taken what I've been through and he's used it now as, as my calling, as what I do to help others. And it's, it's really a great place when you can take what you've been through and use it now to help others. And I believe this is really where ministry needs to be, is that God is taking the bread that you're eating and feeding on and using it to bless others. The story of what you've been through and using it to bless other people. And that's where he's positioned me. And one of the areas I'm so passionate about is helping people to restore their mental health.
Now, many of you know my own story of struggling with severe anxiety, which a lot of that anxiety was going down the lines of obsessive-compulsive disorder. And it took me a long time to even realize that was kind of the main theme, the main avenue. You know, in the late '90s and the early 2000s, it wasn't as easy to like go online and kind of search what you're, what you're struggling with. There'd be these obscure websites that was helping people with anxiety. Wasn't as much material as there is today. And even in church avenues, there was zero discussion that I saw of like people deeply struggling. It was kind of like, well, go see a counselor. And, and there was a lot of shame attached to it. And it's like, and you know, what's wrong with him kind of feeling. Even if people didn't say it, there was kind of that sense of shame that, that surrounded it.
But I was so hungry to be free that I didn't care if people knew I struggled with those kind of things. And so breaking off the shame is really important in this subject, in this issue. We're not gonna get anywhere unless we really break the shame and learn to process out with trusted friends, with people that are leaders around us, the family of God, our biological family, people that we can feel safe to process with. Because as you're gonna see in this episode, the rejection route is so important in understanding mental health. Because rejection seeks to separate you from the love of God. It seeks to twist and distort thoughts. It seeks to isolate you relationally. You can be around a crowd of people, you can be around a ton of people, but still feel isolated. It wants to take hurts where authority figures have hurt you, parents, church leaders, pastors, bosses, any kind of community leaders, and out of that relationship, create hurt that then causes you to withdraw from future relationship, then to isolate you so that you're in a world of an echo chamber of these thoughts you're struggling with. And then the enemy kind of uses a sniper to, to isolate you in that place and just fire away nuclear blasts of torment that keep you from the freedom that Christ wants you to experience.
And so I lived in that, and I struggled with anxiety, panic attacks, a lot of OCD kind of thinking around relationship, unwanted thoughts, perfectionist, sick kind of things of always feeling like I had to do everything right, get everything right. Didn't know it was OCD for a long time. I thought of OCD as just people that have like cleanliness obsessions and didn't realize that these unwanted thoughts that tormented me, these fixations that I had, these patterns that I lived in were where OCD like. So this, this spreads into a lot of other areas that people struggle with when it comes to mental health. There's bipolar, which has to do with mood stabilization. There's paranoid schizophrenia, which has to do with, with thoughts that feel as though they are real, as though they are legitimate, but yet they're, they're not. There's a sense of voices that are calling for your attention.
My goal is not to try to be a clinician. I'm your brother in Christ, but I know a lot about these things in my own life and helping people and, and seeing them free. I've worked with a lot of these areas in, in helping people to spiritually understand these battles, psychologically understand these battles, and even physiologically to know your body and how your body responds to thought. And I think that wherever you are on the spectrum, whether you recognize some of your struggles, whether you've been diagnosed, or whether you know someone, I think everyone should be aware of how thought influences us spiritually, psychologically, and physiologically. Because they're, they're kind of three areas that, that, that work in those ways that create this package of how we find peace, how we live in wholeness, and how we struggle.
And I want to tell you that rejection is the common root of all mental health. So if you have somebody who's struggling in mental health, you'll find a rejection route somewhere down in there. And I'll explain that more as I move along in this episode. Now, I could talk at length at mental health. I could talk about the battleground of thought, the struggle of thought. And, and you need to know there's a war over your thought life. Like you're not just in this little incubator by yourself thinking these thoughts. There is a war over what will be the dominant thought that you will think of. If you wanted to summarize spiritual warfare, it comes down to this. This is where the war hinges on this statement: What will be the dominant thoughts that have the most influence in your belief systems, your perspectives, your choices, what you lean on as your grid for how you see life, for how you do relationships, for how you see yourself, how you see God, how you see other people? That's where the war is. And you must understand you live in a world that's at war. There's a system in the world that wars over you. There's also an internal war that the enemy seeks to do to steal, kill, and destroy. Get to that in a minute. Over your thoughts, you need to be awakened. And one of the reasons I passionately like to work on people's hearts is number one, to awaken them to the war. Stop sleeping at the wheel. Stop living in autopilot. Stop thinking that every thought is just your own thought. We need to become more aware of the war and battle that we're under.
And so you live in a system that's at war. You also live in your own battles. You also have battles that have been running in your family line. Do you notice that the patterns of struggle that you have tend to run in your genealogy? Do you tend to see that even certain mental health battles, they find run in family history? And we could get into all kinds of things about that, but I'm talking about thought. Thought can actually run in your generations. In fact, some of the battles that you have in your thoughts are carbon copy the thoughts that your parents probably struggled with. And at the same time, in their life. It's bizarre, right? But this shows you that we're not just fighting for you, or fighting for the generations. We're fighting for the healing and the restoration of our generations.
So I could talk about taking thoughts captive. I could talk about mental health and physiology and, and even nutrition and, and being aware of some people are having mental health struggles coming out of side effects of certain drugs or taking for something else. And that's a whole nother topic in itself. But what I want to talk about is the rejection route. And a very common root system that I want you to think about. You want to enhance your state of well-being. You want to enhance your outlook on the day. You want to enhance your mental, emotional, heart health. It has to do with the subject of love at the root system. One of the key factors in all mental health battles is the subject of what love means in this person's life. In some area of a person's life who has a mental health battle, any kind, at any level, whether you've been diagnosed or not. Even if you're just like, man, I'm just struggling with feeling discouraged and depressed and it's just not going, it's not going away. Or man, I just find myself anxious a lot, or I worry a lot. Or maybe you've got more significant anxiety, or, or wherever you're at, the issue of love is what's at stake. Your perception of love, somewhere in the root system, love has been compromised. So we're in the root system, love has been non-existent. In other words, there were certain things you needed to receive that you didn't receive. So for example, every single one of you, God designed your mom and your dad to set a grid of love in your life, to equip you so that you know that you're loved. And out of that love, you know who you are. And out of knowing who you are in love, you do relationships in an overcoming way, and you learn to overcome the things that come against you. And for everyone, there's been a compromise in that area.
And one of the things we're, we're trying to help people understand is one of the deep wounds that people have is the wound of lack, meaning that you should have been loved in a certain area, but you weren't. And so many times it comes simple down growing up, did your father on a regular basis tell you that he loves you? Did your father reinforce in a firm who you are? Did he encourage you? Did he give you validation? Validation meaning that, hey, you did a good job, you're a good son, you're a great daughter, proud of you, like validating, affirming that, giving encouragement to who you are. And some people will say to me, oh yeah, you know, my dad was great, he loved me. And sometimes we, we tended to sugarcoat over our history to not realize, man, I got some stuff I got to work through. And it's not in blame. Every generation is responsible to recognize what they weren't given so that they can receive it from God and give it to the next generation. And, and so this is not a blame thing.
And so sometimes people say, well, yeah, my dad told me he loved me all the time. And I'll ask the second question, did he equip you in love to do relationships well and to live powerfully out of who you are? And many times, if we're honest, the answer has a lot of holes there. And that's where our pain is. And rejection gets into those areas, and we develop a rejection mindset by which we try to survive. Maybe you perform for love. Maybe you're just busy all the time. Maybe you're on social media all the time, just trying to get likes and trying to get affirmation to feel good about yourself. Maybe you're just constantly busy. Maybe you self-reject all the time, so you never take any risks because you just don't believe you have any worth of being loved. Maybe you just always feel separated from love, so you're in the inner prison all the time.
We get into our relationship with mom, where rejection gets into the love of nurture. She, your mom was designed to receive love from your father, to feel safe under his spiritual leadership, and be able to nurture you. And nurture is the love of recovery. Nurture is the love of comfort. Nurture is the love of everything's going to be okay. And a very common root in the area of, of mental health is a lack of nurture, the inability to know how to regulate your mood, to regulate your thoughts, how to have a thought that flies in and, and go, it's okay that I had a weird thought, it's not the end of the world. How to cultivate, what kind of meaning do you attach to your thoughts? You know, and this is where the struggle is. A thought comes to you, and you attach a meaning to it. This must mean something, and it explodes and it expands. And rejection creates the meaning and the narrative. And it's lies, it's counterfeit belief systems, it's chronic dysfunction.
And I want you to know that this is a prime place where the enemy is seeking to steal, kill, and destroy. And I want to remind you of a scripture in John 10:10, where Jesus reminds us, saying, the thief does not come, you know, it's like he's not here to do anything else but to steal, kill, and destroy. He's not here to be your friend. He's not here to do anything else but to steal, to kill, to destroy. You must realize when it comes to your mental health, the thief wants to steal it, steal your birthright as a believer to live in the fruit of the Spirit, which is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, patience, meekness, kindness, all those things, right? To have power, love, and a sound mind. He's coming to kill, to kill what? To kill your ability to live in the fruitfulness of God. And destroy, to just leave casualties everywhere. Because Jesus says here, I've come that you might have life and have it more abundantly. So what's the thief coming to steal? The life that Jesus came to bring. The life that he came to bring to breathe life. And where does that life come? It comes from the Father, flowing through Jesus as a work of the Holy Spirit towards you. And you must realize that flow is at war. There is an all-out assault of you landing in and resting in the love of God, his nurture, love of the Father, coming to protect you, make you feel safe. And that's why I deal so much with helping people to heal the father and mother image, because that's where rejection is in creating a root system to compromise your ability to experience love.
So many times people will say, well, I'm not sure why Johnny's struggling with mental health issues. He grew up in a loving home. And I would help people to understand, here's the problem. It's not that he wasn't in a loving home. There's a war in Johnny's heart over being able to receive that love. And if you as a parent will not blame yourself and not beat yourself up, because sometimes these subjects are so difficult, because they're like, my son's struggling because I have a terrible mother, I'm a terrible father. That's not gonna go anywhere. That's not gonna help you. We need sobriety and humility to realize Johnny's struggling with some things that I've struggled in my own life. And let's kneel down and let's work together on seeing the root system that wants to separate you from love be broken.
Sometimes people say, man, you know, my son or daughter, you know, had self-destructive thoughts or even suicidal thoughts. It's like, well, we all loved him. They were surrounded by love. The war is over receiving love. Any of you have like a relative or somebody you loved who struggled with addictions, who struggles with addict tendencies of any kind, maybe drug addiction or, or, and everybody would gather around, maybe even have an intervention. You're like, we love you, we love you. And that person would receive the love and hugs and all that, and then that night go out and use. Why is that? Because of the war inside that won't allow this person to receive the love that God has for them and receive the love of the relationships around them. That's why uprooting rejection route in your life is so important. Because rejection wants to infiltrate every place in your life that has to do with what love means, you experiencing love from God, loving yourself, and loving other people. And then out of that, if, if you don't receive love, you will have no idea who you are. So don't walk around and go, I know who I am and I'm secure in that. Baloney. It has to come out of receiving love. The Father's love sets the atmosphere to tell you who you are. And out of that is how you do relationships. And how you do relationships will set the footprint for what mental health will look like in your life. This is making sense so far?
So one of the scriptures I bring up to people a lot is Romans 8:15, which is the cornerstone for how God began to help me recover and root and restore mental health in my life. Because I was saying, God, I want, I want to heal. I want you to heal my anxiety. And God began to show me, well, I want to show you how to experience intimacy with me. And I was like, yeah, that's great, but I need you to heal the anxiety. And the only thought that was coming back was, I wanted to teach you how to connect with me, how to worship, how to spend time where you truly can receive from me. And the first block I was confronted with was the route of rejection. And at first, I was like, I don't know if this applies to me. But then when I began to discover it, I was like, it's everywhere.
And I remember the day, I remember the, the moment my eyes were illuminated. And it was in Romans 8:15. This is my life scripture. It's even written on the inside of my wedding ring. "For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the spirit of adoption, by whom we cry out, Abba Father." And my course that's based on experiencing God's love as your father and exposing the rejection mindset, I teach in these passages. But this is the, it reveals the mission and assignment of rejection. Paul says, you didn't receive the spirit of bondage again to fear. There's rejection. Why? Because it's the opposite of the spirit of adoption. God says, when you became born again, there's a spirit of adoption that comes to you. I don't know what this looks like. I don't know how to fully explain it, but there's an adoption God brings. There's a revelation experienced when you come into the family of God. You're no longer just a child of your earthly father. You're now of a spiritual order. You've been rebirth. There's a renewal, a new identity, new nature. You have a new father of a heavenly order. And he says, you've received that by whom you cry out, Abba Father. So you say, how do I know I've received the experience of adoption? Well, you're comfortable talking to God as a dad. Because Abba means dad. Abba Father, dad, Father. When you are comfortable with a dad relationship with God, that shows you, for me, you've received the spirit of adoption. You've understood that. And that's available at salvation. It has been my discovery that me and masses of other believers never received this experience. So their foundation of salvation is like, well, move, well, you came into the kingdom. Yeah, I loved you enough to receive you. But now perform for the rest of your life. And, and the dominant problem that Christians struggle with is feeling separated from the love of God, not feeling connected, not feeling close. And so they feel like, well, I don't feel close because I'm doing something wrong. And I need to do more. And, and you're just in this constant cycle. And breaking out of rejection learns to break the cycle to say, I need to learn how to receive love from God. And you learn how to receive love for myself, to love myself. I need to learn how to receive love from relationships.
And so it awakened me. I said, that's rejection right there. This spirit of bondage again to fear. The rejection seeks to separate me from love. Even though Paul says nothing's gonna separate us, but this rejection comes in with lies to separate you from that connection to love and connect you to fear. So rejection is the route that starts it, welcomes in fear. And now this becomes the twin towers of what you battle against. Because once fear comes in, it compromises peace, it compromises sound mind. Paul said in, in Timothy, he's to, to his writings to Timothy, God's not giving you the spirit of fear, but what's God giving you? Power, love, and sound mind. And that's part of the antidote to mental health strengthening. You need power, which comes from the Holy Spirit of releasing boldness in you, confidence, and courage. Love, which comes from the Father, establishing in you love, that love casts out fear. And a sound mind, which can go into soundness of stability, or it can go into self-control that can be translated there. This is the war that is over your life of keeping you from that.
So rejection and, and fear are like these, this connected spiritual force to steal your ability to live in the power of mental health that God's design, or a prosperous soul, or the fruit of the Spirit, or a, a heart that is awakened to the life of God and living and flourishing in that, right? The NIV will even say that this spirit of bondage makes us a slave to fear. So rejection will hardwire you into fear. So you're constantly in that. Now, for the antidote of mental health, it's been found in the writings of scripture that have been here all along. It's in 1 John 4:18. It says, "There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear." So if you battle with any area in your life of keeping a sense of peace, stability, sanity, and resting in that stability, there's a love issue. Love needs to have a deeper work in your life of you experiencing it, receiving it. Because what does it do? It actually casts out fear.
And when we talk about spiritual warfare, there's many things that people talk about battling the enemy. And we can get in all kinds of tangents on that. But I've found the most fruitful place is what you need is love. What you need is connection to love. And when I work with people one-on-one settings or group settings, my goal is to create safety so I can be a vessel to help this person to experience love. Because if they can experience love, it will actually cast out fear better than anything I've ever seen. Love will cast out rejection, it'll cast out anger and bitterness, they'll cast out so many things. And so it gives you the antidote. "He who fears has not been made perfect in love." There's your prescription. That if you have, if you have anxiety, you have fear. Fear, anxiety is a form of fear. If you have panic attacks, it's a form of fear, right? These areas are, if you have mood disorders, there is a fear there at work somewhere, okay? If you have OCD, fear is in there somewhere. You know, this could go into all kinds of things, schizophrenia, personality disorders, depression. Somewhere fear is in there. Even people who struggle with depression, the Bible says that anxiety can lead to depression. So this fear factor needs to be resolved.
How your focus isn't receiving love, but rejection wants to separate you from receiving that love. So examples of this, how this rejection can, can work in your life and keep you from the power of love. Give you example. So for a person struggling with anxiety, anxiety, the theme of anxiety is lack of safety in love within your physiology, your psychology, your thinking, your spirituality. There's an area of a war over you feeling confident in the safety of love. In the area of panic attacks, panic can offer come out of chronic anxiety that just keeps building and building, leading to panic attacks. And come out of trauma. What is a trauma? It's an event where you didn't feel safe, where love and safety was compromised. And now you've got to work through what you've been through. Many of you have been through series of traumas, you don't even know they're traumas. And what you need over time is a journey of reestablishing the safety of what love means.
When it comes to depression, many times the growing disappointment or heartache or unhealed sorrow can get turned inward, right? We're now it's battling against you. And there's pain that you're going through. And what you need is the love of recovery to slowly, methodically restore you back to a place of refreshment. I work with so many people who've struggled with disappointment. And it's, there's many people that are depressing, didn't even know it. They don't realize it, but they're manifesting all the symptoms of it. And, and what they need is the safety and love and the nurture of God to get them back on their feet. So desire can be conceived as a tree of life to restore the life of the heart again, to restore who you are and get you back in the game of relationships.
You know, I could even talk about the, the battleground of bipolar, which, which in people who struggle with bipolar, whether it's one or two or, and getting all the technicalities, there's a mood issue. There's an inability to regulate moods. And there's somewhere in there, what rejection keeps its clutches on is the lack of nurture. It's the inability to receive love and nurture yourself through the things that you're going through, right? I've even worked with people at times who've had personality disorders, massive rejection issues, massive, massive. Very, very deep. I mentioned obsessive-compulsive. Rejection breeds obsession because people with OCD have unhealed pain, unhealed emptiness. And their brain has been conditioned to obsess. And then the compulsion acts out of the obsession. And deep below, there's an emptiness and there's an unhealed pain that hasn't been met. So they survive and they seek to hope by following some obsessive and compulsive pattern.
I hope this is making sense. When you don't have the love you're designed for, your mind will become obsessive in some form, in thinking or in behavior. So my awareness is to the awareness I want to bring to you that I talk about the rejection mindset is to help you to realize, okay, rejection blocks you from receiving God's love. So if you struggle and feeling close to God, that's a key. If you struggle, it not, now people think that because someone grew up in a loving environment, that they should be fine. I'm telling you, there can be a war in them that doesn't allow them to receive. And we have to work on our ability to receive love. We've lived so long in performance-driven Christianity. We've got to learn how to receive love.
Now, Paul said, "I'm convinced nothing shall separate me from the love of God," right? You need to tune into that word, convinced, which sometimes is translated persuaded. Paul had to be persuaded. He had to come to the belief and the agreement that nothing will separate him. Because all day long, the enemy is seeking to separate you from love. Don't you see it? Separate you, not feel close to God, not be able to love yourself, and then separate you relationally. And that third area really puts, puts a deeper trench in the struggle that people are facing today. Because we live in a world that may be socially connected digitally in social media, but we're very disconnected in true relationship. So rejection seeks to isolate you from relationship fulfillment.
I've been doing a study personally in the book of First John. And maybe at some point, I'll do a Bible study on it, because I think it's so fruitful for mental health, emotional health. And John is constantly talking about walking in the light with God, learning to receive love from God. But he does a lot of discussion about processing that with each other. You know, he says, "How can you love a God you can't see when you don't love a brother you can see?" And one of the things John is bringing out is we learn how to receive love from God and love God by how we do life with each other. Many Christians are like, oh, God in a prayer closet, seeking God. And they don't realize we've got to work out our woundedness and heal. Because many of our struggles lead back to our earthly relationships. So it's like that friend who betrayed you, that God helps you heal through, which leads you back to maybe a pastor who hurts you, an authority figure that wound did you wrong, you? And then there was that relationship there. And it leads back to your mom and dad. And, and God wants to heal you of those issues. And then the cycle continues. And God continually works. He's working a healing of your relationship grid. You want to shove it down, put it away, and just not think about it. And God's gonna know that's the place that I want to meet you and show you who I am. John's writing is all about fellowship with one another. He says, "Your fellowship is with us, and our fellowship is with the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." So it's like, the, the fullness of joy comes about with us, with each other, relating with God together. And don't you see that's where the battleground is? It's like we're separating from each other constantly. We're isolated from each other. And that's the war and the battleground. Because the healing of mental health comes down to you recognizing the war over your ability to receive love. And the practicing and healing of it is going to be found in your spiritual family, in the family of God, and your biological family. And God bringing restoration.
Now, some of you say, man, that's really tough because my family is rough. And I get it. And that's why God gave us the family of God. And, and, and He is our Father. We are brothers and sisters. But all that needs to be worked out. I want you to know that if you battle with any area of mental health, your remedy is connection with the body of Christ. It's connection relationally to work out some of the thinking that works against you, to work out those areas. I see many times, you know, families will come to me with their children and they'll say, my son or my daughter, really concerned, can you help him? And I tell them, what I really can do is help you. Because you, as a mom, you, as a dad, you're the most powerful voices in your child's life. Don't ever let the enemy steal that from you. Now, there's nothing wrong with getting the counselor's help. But learn for yourself. Don't outsource the power that God has given you. Because I've seen people set free and break free of mental health battles simply by establishing a loving environment by which they could process out. And, and in that context, prayer and ministry of the word, and, and just being able to love on them and break through those areas where they've not been able to be loved. Because in the storyline, there's been an isolation and disconnect from what it means to be loved. And you can hide in your roles, you can hide in your stuff.
Let's see. This is the problem is that many times the body of Christ is not a safe place. And the body of Christ is accepting a very shallow life. Hey, how's it going? About minutes going good. We've lost our depth. Because church life is so fast, our lives are so fast. We have time for it anymore. And our mental health is, is suffering. And so we're going to doctors and psychologists and psychiatrists, go fix me, fix me, fix me. It's like, wait a second, you've got years of things that are piling up inside of you that need healing. It's time to start facing this stuff.
One of the things I want to encourage you in that rejection really wants to mess with, and I've seen this over and over again, many people have a loss of peace and sanity because they've been injured by an authority figure in their life. I'm not just talking about mom and dad. I'm talking about a church leader. I do a lot of work on spiritual abuse, and it's been astounding to see what's been happening over the decades and how church environments have been abusive. And this is where rejection works the most. Because it, it gets into places where authority figures who should have loved you, but didn't, it just didn't step up to the plate. Either they did things towards you that were harmful, or they didn't give you what you needed. Both create a great deal of woundedness.
So here's what happens. Your lens on authority figures gets distorted. So for example, you get hurt in a church, and the pastor was abusive in some form, in some way. And understandably so, you get out of that church. And I understand that. The problem is, if that doesn't get healed, your lens to authority will always be cynical, judgmental. And then it can be very easy for rejection to create walls in your heart where you never allow an authority figure to be allowed in your life again. Now, I know the healing and recovery takes time. Trust me, trust me, it takes time. But I caution against vows that separate you permanently from ever having safe authority leaders in your life. Because God placed, when you're, when you're looking for breakthrough, God will place somebody in your life to be a healing vessel to help you. And if you've got these wounds and walls, you won't be willing to receive it. Now, I'm not telling you to just, you know, if you've been in a spiritually abusive situation, you've been deeply hurt, to just run back to another authority figure. No, that's not what I'm saying. It takes time. But what I'm saying is, allow God to heal your hearts so that you can remain open.
Because here's what rejection does. This is a cycle of destroying your mental health. An authority leader hurts you, you withdraw. In the withdrawing, you can create walls in your heart. And rejection loves that, create those vows, create those walls. Rebellion, conform in that. And what rebellion does is push back towards the authority figure or any input. And then in that, then you isolate. And you're in an emotional isolation. That's where the enemy can get you the most. I've found in my own healing, recovery comes out of finding safe relationships. And, and it may be organic. It may be, you've been in an institutional church and you're out of it now, and you're struggling to find authentic connection. I get it. Because the church needs to make a decision. Are we gonna be a real body? Are we gonna really be a body? Or are we just gonna be a machine that just kind of like goes through the motions, like we're having church, but we're really not grounded in the depth and developing maturity? I get it. It may need to be organic relationships that form, or you meet with somebody on a regular basis, have coffee, and you do life together. And maybe in a group that forms, maybe some business people that you know that are Christians, that are believers, that you get together with and just share life. Out of that, the love of God begins to be formed in your life. That's where I found the greatest breakthrough. Because my battleground isolated me. And I remember in, in pastoral days, years ago, when I was first really dealing with this stuff, I was surrounded, I was in a big church, surrounded by a lot of people, but I was isolated in this battle. I don't know where to go. I didn't know what to do. And I had to allow God to heal the relational wounds, heal my ability to receive the love, because there was love there, I just couldn't receive it. But I also had to heal the lens of how I saw authority figures. Because I created vows of separation that then gave more room for the enemy to perpetrate torment and insanity and belief systems that kept me out of the power of God's healing love.
So the action step I want to encourage in breaking out of the rejection mindset is finding organic relationship connection. Start somewhere. And what you want to do is you want to ask yourself, what does love look like in my life? Am I able to receive and give love out? Because that's the foundation for where we're gonna begin to recover and to heal.
So I pray this is a blessing to your life. I pray it encourages you. And action step I want you to take is the book, "Exposing the Rejection Mindset." Because this is where it's available on audio, Kindle, paperback. It's also, there's also a training course, a very extensive training course. I know groups have been using it, churches have been using it, individuals going through it. If you want to take a smaller start, I've got "Experiencing God's Love as Your Father," which really specifically goes into that subject right there. If you realize like, wow, I struggle to receive God's love. You want to, you want to really hit the "Exposing the Rejection Mindset" and you want to toggle into the book, "God Loves Me and I Love Myself." Because this is gonna help you to open up the pathway of receiving and loving yourself the way that God loves you.
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And so I pray that this episode is an encouragement to your life and your journey. Because I'm taking what God's shown me and the work that I do. You may want to sign up for some personal coaching. You can go to my help page, right at the top. There's a link on MarkDeJesus.com. In fact, I can show it to you here for those watching the video. You see right at the top page, next to donate, that says help. And it'll give you some, some information on where to start my process in working with people in various areas of their life. But I'm praying that God would help you to heal the areas that rejection has infiltrated in your life, so that you can receive the healing that God has for you, to receive His love, let that love cast out fear, and to re-establish what, because your thoughts are so powerful. Love creates the atmosphere by which your thoughts can have the power that they need to have in their life. And I pray that even the peace of God, as you've listened to this episode, will help and encourage you to feel God's presence, its love, and that relationally you can begin to, to work out these things. And, and, and God can show you that love that casts out fear.
So anyways, praise a blessing to your life. Go get 'em. I love you. Thank you for all your support. We'll look forward to more great episodes that Melissa and I will do together. And we'll see you next time. God bless.