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From Luke’s Journal March 2026  |  Vol. 31  No. 1  |  God at the Bedside

Ella (not her real name) was a young woman who had been attending our church on and off for several months. She asked for prayer about her mental health and indicated she would value a pastoral care visit. As the Faith Community Nurse in my congregation, I visited Ella and then continued those weekly visits for several weeks when this conversation arose.

Ella said, “God can never forgive me. He may love people, but he can never love me! I’ve done so many bad things that I can’t possibly go anywhere but to hell!” I could feel words jump into my mouth, wanting to respond “NO! God absolutely loves you…” but I knew that this would diminish Ella’s feelings, and she clearly was not experiencing God’s love. I listened to her lament, and after some time, I hesitatingly responded:

“You know I don’t know what you have done that might make you feel this way Ella, but I do know the Bible says that “God is LOVE” (1 John 4:8) and His love extends to everyone who believes in Him. I also know Satan is the “father of lies” (John 8:44) andthe “great accuser” (1 Tim 4:13). I think he is the one who deceives people into believing they are not worthy of being loved. I believe it is Satan’s voice that says to us, “You’re helpless, you’re hopeless, you’re useless, and you’re worthless… You can never be forgiven, and no one can ever love you!”

“I explained to Ella that I understood she was having difficulty believing God loved her and noted that she had said some difficult things about herself in our time together.”

I explained to Ella that I understood she was having difficulty believing God loved her and noted that she had said some difficult things about herself in our time together. I sought to reassure Ella that God loved her regardless of her past. He also wanted to forgive her for whatever it is was she had done, and what’s more – He wanted her life to be amazing – not just an ordinary existence but an amazing life as John 10:10 says, “The thief (Satan) comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they (you/us) may have life, and have it to the full.”

Over time, Ella felt safe enough to share her story, and it was a life laced with serious struggles with family violence, sexual abuse in childhood, sexual assault as a teenager, domestic violence in early adult relationships, substance addiction, and criminal activity to sustain that addiction. Ella hit rock bottom and decided to try to move out of ‘the pit’ she had found herself in by coming to church. That was where our journey together began.

Over months of weekly meetings, Ella began to see the need to address her addiction if she was to reclaim her life. We discussed 12-step programs and other recovery options. I promised to journey the course with her, and Ella commenced a 12-step recovery program with Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). Step 2 required Ella to face the fact that she needed to believe that a Higher Power greater than herself could help her recover. Ella knew she was powerless over her addiction and that she needed God to help her recover.

“At this point, Ella gave her life to Christ, and for a time she felt intense peace, relief and joy in knowing Jesus, proclaiming loudly that she felt like a ‘new person’!”

At this point, Ella gave her life to Christ, and for a time she felt intense peace, relief and joy in knowing Jesus, proclaiming loudly that she felt like a “new person”! However, her old story of shame, blame and guilt resurfaced, and Ella fell back into old coping patterns. Sadly, this led to her experiencing deeper shame, because she now felt that she was also a ‘failure’ as a Christian. Her fear of failing God and being ‘sent to hell’ increased the torment she was experiencing. Ella was suffering spiritual and mental anguish, her anxiety and depression increased and her health spiralled downward.

Feelings of depression and anxiety are real and often lead to isolation and loneliness

As Ella’s mental health deteriorated and her anxiety increased, she isolated herself more. This often happens as mental health declines – the person tends to withdraw from social connection and isolation increases. The psalmist confirms the dreadful nature of depression, with a third of the Psalms categorised as Psalms of lament. Psalm 88 ends with “darkness is my closest friend,” and has lines like “I am overwhelmed with trouble” (Psalm 88:3). These feelings are real, and Ella attested to the deep darkness she was experiencing.

The renowned theologian Charles Spurgeon experienced depression and is quoted by Eswine as saying, “The mind can descend far lower than the body. For [the mind] there are bottomless pits. The flesh can bear only a certain number of wounds and no more, but the soul can bleed in ten thousand ways and die over and over again each hour.”³ Dying the thousand deaths of the dark night of the soul is a lonely and isolating experience. The longer people are ill, the more isolated they tend to become.

“Dying the thousand deaths of the dark night of the soul is a lonely and isolating experience. The longer people are ill, the more isolated they tend to become.”

Social isolation is considered an objective absence of social relationships,while loneliness is said to be the subjective feeling of social disconnection, where there is a discrepancy in the quality and quantity of a person’s desired and actual relationships. Research undertaken during the COVID-19 pandemic found physical isolation alone did not always lead to increased loneliness; rather the experience of loneliness involved factors such as the “quality of social interactions” and the availability of “supportive social networks” which played a “crucial role in alleviating loneliness.”⁶ What appears to be important is social connection “whether or not people stay in touch with friends, family, and their community – rather than physical proximity.”⁷

The health risks of loneliness

Loneliness and social isolation are associated with reduced physical exercise and a greater prevalence of smoking and excessive alcohol consumption. More than half of women and men aged over 65 who feel lonely report having poor health – that is around twice the rate of those who don’t feel lonely.⁸

The intense experience of loneliness triggers the release of cortisol, our human stress response hormone. Cortisol triggers the body’s fight-flight-freeze response, which leads to greater production of glucose so our body can get the energy it needs to run or fight. Prolonged feelings of loneliness can lead to protracted high cortisol levels, and this can trigger the body’s immune system to have an inflammatory response. Chronic inflammation is a recognised contributing factor in diseases such as Alzheimer’s, diabetes, cancer, arthritis and heart disease.⁹

“Loneliness is correlated to health concerns, including cognitive decline, increased dementia risk, mental health disorders and heart disease.”

Loneliness is correlated to health concerns, including cognitive decline, increased dementia risk, mental health disorders and heart disease. It is said to increase a person’s risk of early death at a level comparable with smoking and alcohol consumption and exceeds the well-established early mortality risk of physical inactivity and obesity!¹⁰ So being lonely is bad for one’s health – it was definitely bad for Ella’s health! In order to facilitate Ella’s ongoing healing and recovery, it was essential for our faith community to help Ella stay connected to the church community because this would be core to her recovery.

There were many learnings gained from supporting Ella with her recovery journey to reclaim holistic health of body, mind, spirit, and relationships after four turbulent years. Her recovery journey was a forward and backward trajectory that required consistent, focused and compassionate care to achieve the stable mental health that Ella now enjoys. This article presents six key learnings from journeying with Ella:

1. Reflect Jesus in your words and actions

The journey with Ella continued for four years. Ella relapsed from time to time, and there was a definite pattern in the relapses. They always came when her internal self-talk repeated Satan’s old life-script of ‘useless, worthless, helpless and shameful’. These feelings triggered old coping responses used to numb her pain such as drug use or excessive alcohol intake. It was difficult and profoundly sad to watch Ella struggle to believe God’s word was real for her. Keeping her faith in God’s love alive was a challenge.

The quickest and most effective way to support Ella to get back on track with AA, and also to get her to claim her identity as a loved child of God and a new creation in Jesus Christ, was to work with her on her self-talk. This was achieved by reflecting to Ella the truth that Jesus loved her. It was done by reading God’s word together, sharing Scripture on post-it notes and in cards, and sharing Christian poetry and music. Ella shared about her childhood and early life experiences, and we discussed the meaning of love and how that had been shaped by her lived experience.

Ella also saw a counsellor to work through these past traumas. One important factor in her recovery was her experience of God’s love through the compassionate presence and boundaried actions of her Christian family at church. We determined that we were not going to give up on Ella, and that encouraged Ella not to give up on herself. Encouragement propelled her forward and silenced Satan’s lies that sought to consume her hope and deplete her internal resolve to continue the challenging work of recovery.

2. Meditate on God’s word together

Ella used to read the promises in God’s word and say, “Yeah… but those promises are for you, not me!” She’d add, “How many people like me do you see in church?” We would remind her, “We all fall short, and we are all going through stuff. No one is without struggles.” We encouraged her to pray, just talk to God and tell him everything. We would read God’s word from a Recovery Bible, which was helpful because it highlighted specific verses for each recovery step.

We would repeat Scriptures aloud so Ella could hear the truth herself. She found these were two of the best things that helped her to get through the tough work of recovery. In 1 Timothy 4:15, it says, “Meditate on these things, give yourself entirely to them, that your progress may be evident to all,” so we began to write promises from Scripture that Ella found encouraging on post-it notes. She stuck them on her mirror and spoke them aloud as she brushed her teeth and washed her hands!

“Ella found speaking God’s word aloud helped her hear it, ponder it, and she could then form a mental picture of herself as ‘strong in the Lord.’”

Ella found speaking God’s word aloud helped her hear it, ponder it, and she could then form a mental picture of herself as “strong in the Lord.” It helped Ella focus her mind on her recovery goals. This targeted Scripture was renewing her mind as Romans 12:2 declares, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.” God’s will for Ella was an abundant, awesome life (John 10:10) and she needed to hear this often, so it was reinforced until she began to believe it as true for her.

3. Don’t be like Job’s friends

Ella experienced attitudes and words from people who professed to be Christians that confirmed the lies Satan had spawned in her mind! Those well-intentioned people sought to find a cause for Ella’s ongoing struggle with illness and saw her addiction as a self-inflicted illness. Others associated her mental health conditions with a lack of faith and personal sin. Some told her she was under demonic influence.

It was reminiscent of Job’s plight. We read the book of Job together, and Ella saw how Job’s friends got Job’s causal conditions wrong. They accused Job of insufficient faith and said the reasons for his suffering were the sins of his family.

Sadly, in working with people living with mental health conditions, we still witness Christians who peddle the inaccurate theology that assumes spiritual deficiency as the cause of illness. This leads the ill person to feel as if they do not belong within the church, and that is simply not God’s truth. Every Christ follower needs to remember Romans 3:23 “…for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

None of us has our act together all the time. If we can remember this, we will respond in ways that reflect Jesus’ compassionate grace and mercy when we interact with others with both our words and our actions. How we reflect God’s love to the suffering person is key to how that person will see themselves. We want the recovering person to see themselves as Jesus sees them; therefore, it is up to each one of us to demonstrate that in our compassionate care.

4. Mental illness is not God’s will for anyone

We all need to ‘trust in God’ for healing and restoration to health, but doubts will arise, especially when recovery is elusive. Our challenge is to keep bringing our burdens and the burdens of the sufferer to the Great Physician – Our Lord – in prayer.

We don’t ignore the issues. Instead, we faithfully approach God amidst all the suffering. We can protest to God, we can lament our situation to God, but we should always act with compassion toward ourselves and others, even when the problem seems overwhelming.

As Christians, we are called to compassionate action in the midst of a broken and fallen world, calling to God for ‘His kingdom to come’ and ‘His will to be done’ (Matthew 6:10). That’s what Job did. He kept talking to God. Job said, “Even now my witness is in heaven; my advocate is on high. My intercessor is my friend as my eyes pour out tears to God; on behalf of a man he pleads with God as one pleads for a friend.” (Job 16: 19–21).

“We had to remind Ella that her trust was not in people, not even ones at church, but her advocate and intercessor was Jesus Christ!”

We had to remind Ella that her trust was not in people, not even ones at church, but her advocate and intercessor was Jesus Christ! He was trustworthy. He was her reliable friend. He was the one to whom she could cry out about anything and everything, and He would hear her and plead her case before God, and she would be answered.

To bring the Lord’s comfort, we needed to acknowledge that Ella was suffering and had many major traumatic experiences to acknowledge and reconcile. We needed to bring compassion to her in person and let her know and experience that she was not abandoned but connected to a family who cared about her. We had to intercede for her in prayer when she could not find words to pray, and help her to see Jesus was her hundred-percent-reliable intercessor.

We were informed friends who understood her illness and sought to ignite hope within Ella. That meant hoping with and for Ella when she had little hope for her own situation. Ella has since said this was the only way she could keep getting up and working on her recovery. As Christians, we have a reason for hope because we have a certain future in Jesus. Be prepared to tell people the reason for your hope, “But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary; they will walk and not be faint” (Isaiah 40:31). This verse became another one that Ella repeated in her recovery.

5. The implanted word of God facilitates healing

Ella clung to several Scriptures as a word for her life, but her favourite was 2 Timothy 1:7, “For God has not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind” (NKJV). When Paul wrote the second book of Timothy, the early Christian church was experiencing gruesome and cruel persecution by the Roman Emperor, Nero. Timothy was pastoring the church of Ephesus, and he was fully aware that if Nero came to find him, he would be killed in a most barbaric way. Needless to say, when Timothy let his mind dwell on that possibility, he was afraid! That’s why Paul encourages him in writing the letter of 2 Timothy.

So, what does a ‘sound mind’ mean? It comes from the Greek word sophroneo, which combines the two Greek words sodzo and phroneo. Sodzo means to be saved, healed, and delivered. It suggests notions of being rescued, revived, salvaged, and protected to a future that is safe and secure.¹¹ The second part of the phrase ‘sound mind’ comes from the Greek word phroneo, which refers to every part of the human mind and the processes that enable it to function and come to decisions. So even if our mind falls into a pit of despair and fear, as Timothy’s and Ella’s did, we can speak God’s Word into that situation: asking the Spirit of God living within us to heal our minds and to shield our emotional health from the untruths that otherwise fill our mind and lead to illness, helping us make right and healthy choices.

“God’s word works in our minds as mental health protection, safeguarding our emotions and defending us from the ‘father of lies’ who tries to arouse fear and doubt..”

Ella had discovered that revelation for herself, saying to me, “I am going to protect my mind by speaking God’s Word, and that will help me think differently!” God’s word works in our minds as mental health protection, safeguarding our emotions and defending us from the ‘father of lies’ who tries to arouse fear and doubt inside us with self-talk like, “You know you can’t do this!”, “That doesn’t make any sense!”, “You are crazy!”, “No one can ever love you!”.

So, what Ella did when she was confused, and the old story started derailing her thoughts, she would proclaim 2 Timothy 1:7 aloud. Then she would go to Jesus with the problem and share it with Him, as the story of Job had taught her. Ella knew she had the power of God’s Spirit within her, but it was easy to succumb to anxiety, doubt and fear when she had a setback or a difficult issue to deal with.

Many of us are like Ella. We would love to function in life always brimming with confidence, free of doubt and fear; but then intimidating things happen that throw our world into chaos, and our self-talk can become negative, our thinking repeating Satan’s lies.

Some translations use the word ‘self-control’ or ‘self-discipline’ in place of ‘sound mind’. God gave each person free will to choose their thoughts and their actions. Paul reminds us that a disciplined mind, one that is controlled, ordered, educated and exercised, can ensure that our emotions do not reactively drive our responses when we experience difficult times. As Ella said to me, “In the old story, I would just react and do whatever came into my mind, but in my new life, I can ask God to help me make the right choices.”

It was helpful for Ella to bounce ideas around with others so she could make choices that would help her. Ella had never experienced being able to share open, honest, and safe communication, so it was important that she went to God’s word and could then speak about it with others and with God in safety and without judgment.  

The Spirit of God is powerful. He gives us the strength to persevere during times of struggle when things can look hopeless. God gives us His power through His Spirit, but that power must be exercised with self-control, and the essential characteristic of God, which is LOVE. God wants us to ,“Love one another, and ourselves as he has loved us” (1 John 4:8; John 13:34).

6. The ‘weaker parts are indispensable’ to the body of Christ – the church

God created every person as a relational being. As Christians, it is God’s design that we live life as a body joined together by God’s love. In 1 Corinthians 12:27, “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. Each part has a unique purpose; each has a part to play for the well-being of the whole. The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you’ nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.’ On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and on those parts of the body that we think less honourable we bestow the greater honour…” 

Ella may have appeared to be ‘weaker’ or ‘lesser’, but she is a most valued and essential part of God’s family. As health practitioners, we need to recognise the value of connection to God’s family for our most vulnerable community members. Such a perspective ensures we work from an ethos of ‘how good FOR us to support Ella’ rather than a perspective of ‘how good OF us to support Ella’!

Ella has found healing and has recovered, and her story demonstrates, “All things are possible with God” (Matthew 19:26).

Points to ponder

Ask yourself:

• Am I practising as a health professional who reflects Jesus Christ in ways that enable and empower the transformative change that brings a full and abundant life to the recipients of my care?
• Are my words and actions actively or unconsciously discriminating against people living with mental and spiritual distress?
• Is my perspective, ‘How good of me to do this’ or is it ‘How good for me to do this’? 
• How do I show the ‘weaker’ members of my church/community that they are ‘indispensable’ and not just tolerated?
• How am I ‘honouring’ those ‘weaker’ parts of God’s body in my words and actions?

As people participating in the body life of a Christian church, we need to be mindful of how all the body parts work together to create a healthy faith community. We need to convey a strong message to every person that they belong to this body, and that everyone has an important role to play in the health of the whole church and the whole community. In so doing, we will facilitate healthy, vibrant communities that restore physical, mental and spiritual health to everyone and enable people to live thriving, full and abundant lives.

After all, that is why Jesus came to earth: “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I have come that they may have life and have it to the full” (John 10:10 NIV).

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1. AIHW, Prevalence and impact of mental illness [Internet]. [updated 2025 June v36.0; cited 12 July 2025] Canberra (AU): AIHW; Available from: https://www.aihw.gov.au/mental-health/overview/prevalence-and-impact-of-mental-illness
2. Lawrence D, Johnson S, Hafekost J, Boterhoven De Haan K, Sawyer M, Ainley J, Zubrick SR, The Mental Health of Children and Adolescents. Report on the second Australian Child and Adolescent Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing [Internet]. Department of Health, Canberra; 2015.Available from: https://www.health.gov.au/resources/publications/the-mental-health-of-children-and-adolescents?language=en
3. Eswine Z. Spurgeon’s Sorrows: Realistic Hope for those who Suffer from Depression. Scotland (UK): Christian Focus Publications; 2014. [Loc 238 of 325 kindle vers]
4. de Jong-Gierveld J, van Tilburg TG, & Dykstra PA. Loneliness and social isolation. In Perlman D, & Vangelisti A. (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of personal relationships. pp.485-500. Cambridge (UK): Cambridge University Press; 2006.
5. Ibid. 486
6. Kong N, & Lam J. Physical isolation and loneliness: Evidence from COVID lockdowns in Australia. Jnl Ec Behav & Organ. 2024; 224:598-623. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2024.06.034.
7. Ibid. p.600.
8. Holt-Lunstad J, Smith TB, Layton JB. Social relationships and mortality risk: a meta-analytic review. PLoS Med. 2010 Jul 27;7(7): Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/273910450_Loneliness_and_Social_Isolation_as_Risk_Factors_for_Mortality_A_Meta-Analytic_Review
9. Ibid.
10. Holt-Lunstad J, Smith TB, Baker M, Harris T, Stephenson D. Loneliness and social isolation as risk factors for mortality: a meta-analytic review. Persp in Psych Sc. 2015;10(2):227-237.
11. Walsh M. God has given us a sound mind. Perspectives; Powell Tribune., [updated 2020 June 4; cited 2025 July 22], Available from: https://www.powelltribune.com/stories/god-has-given-us-a-sound-mind,25654