The True Cause of Mental Health Struggles | Mark DeJesus

Mark De Jesus, I've been looking forward to this for a long time. Thank you so much for being on the Provoke and

Inspire podcast. It's awesome to be here. I'm really looking forward to our conversation. Yeah, me too. Me too. And it's it's

interesting. It's a it's a challenging world that you live in. Uh you devoted your life to uh mental and emotional

struggles and how to view them from a biblical perspective and needless to say, we live in a world

where this is becoming increasingly relevant. What initially drew you to this very challenging topic? What kind

of compelled your heart to step into this space? Uh the biggest reason was my own battle and my own struggle really coming to

terms. I grew up in the church my whole life, you know, from an early age. I've

all my memories are being in church and was in church leadership at a pretty young age. But I found myself even in my

20s having uh battles with anxiousness, intrusive thoughts, a lot of a lot of

struggles that I felt kind of crazy, what's wrong with me? Doing a lot of

spinning emotionally and um hitting stages of breakdowns where it's like I

don't know do I don't know what to do. I don't know how to how to deal with what's going on in my head and my heart.

And so that led me to really taking seriously I need to I need to learn.

There's stuff I don't know. There's stuff I need to learn and because I need help. And so my journey really started

with me trying to make sense of what I was battling. And within the midst of

it, as I started to gain uh insight on some things that were very very helpful

and profound for not only mental health and emotional health, but just my overall journey and walk with Christ, I

made this commitment. God, whoever you send in my path, uh send people to cross

my path who would benefit from what you're what you've done and what you're doing in my life. And so I I I committed

myself to that. And uh then within within a short amount of time, I made the decision to step out of the the

pastoral position that I was in at the time. I was on staff at at a goodsized church. And I said, I just want to I

want to help people. And that took me down a number of different avenues. I pastor I pastored a small church for

about five six years. And then uh but did a lot of teaching, writing books, a lot of one-on- ones. And as I began to

share my story, it's like everyone there's so much response to, yeah, I

struggle with that. Hey, my my sister, my daughter, can you talk to me? My kid, can I all this stuff coming out where

everyone else had similar battles of some kind? Maybe not exactly the same,

but but within within the arena and realized, hey, I wasn't alone. I felt

alone for a long time and realized I wasn't alone. People were battling this stuff, too. So, um, I just stayed on

that that thread of grace which was just opening up. Uh, people, the church needs

this. The body of Christ needs this. We're aching. We're hurting. We um we we have areas of our heart that need

healing. We we have areas that we're struggling with and don't know how to make sense of. And so, the more I

stepped into it, the more I realized, wow, this is actually what I was called to do. I I I and I had like a certain

framework like we all do. you know, God will do whatever you want me to do. And then we kind of have like a like a framework of what we think it's going to

look like. And then um my own journey and what I needed became the um became the spark.

And so I I actually really like that too because I find that effective ministry often comes out of what you've gone

through, what you've been through, you know, it's not something you're putting on, you know, or performing. It's like

this is this is breathing out of my own life. So that's kind of a quick snapshot of how that got started.

Yeah, of course. I think so often God uses both the positive experiences, you

know, like I mentioned before this recording started my life and ministry of growing up in the music and art scene

in Amsterdam. That's been a key part of my life for the rest of my life and including ministry. And so of course

that was a positive thing and I can speak on that with authority. But God will even use the struggles, right? You see that in Paul's life and the things

he pulls you out of gives you sort of the posture and humility especially I would say as it relates to a difficult

subject. It probably would be my guess would be challenging to speak into these

very deep very personal issues having just been someone who's been spared those right like you almost kind

of have to have some feeling of what that actually is. Yeah absolutely. Uh so yeah, so when I

talk about these battlegrounds, it's definitely not from an outside perspective kind of studying something and uh I'm very aware of what it feels

like to be in those places where your emotions are overwhelming, your mood is overwhelming, you're having thoughts you

can't seem to get past or around and feeling helpless about it. And I never

want to forget those moments, you know? I we we want to just kind of put it away from us and just move on. Um, I I'm

always reminded of what that's like because I see it every day in my journey and I I I remember and I I continue to

keep that in my heart. So, and it's not even like, you know, I've arrived so everyone, you know, listen to what I have to share. I'm on my own continued

journey as well, too. Yeah. Would you say that because there's I you

know, this conversation has evolved and you've been doing this for a long time. How would you say things have evolved in

a helpful way maybe within the church first? I know that the conversation has also changed outside of the church. How

have things changed? How what have you noticed about our perception towards mental health health, our willingness to address it and tackle it as a subject?

Would you say say things have changed for the better? There's definitely a lot more awareness for sure. A lot more

awareness. When I was when I was in what I call like the thick of like what do I

do? I need help. What's going on here? It was it was in the early 2000s. We're

talking uh 20 years ago plus, right? Within those decades, we have seen a lot

more awareness. When I shared it at the time, I I was actually very nervous to even

share it uh to even share anxiety or share aspects of depression or even

sharing about, you know, intrusive thought kind of thing there. Um, but I found that as I shared it, more people

were willing to break through the shame. And and sometimes that's what it takes. It takes people going, "Hey, I've got

this battleground." And other people go, "Oh, hey, you know, I I'm not crazy. I

just got some things I need to learn how to work through." But I think I think culturally this is in our world, both in

and out of the church has been a struggle. I mean, for for a long time, you know, for for hundreds and hundreds

of years, they'd kind of chalk up any battle to like melancholy. Oh, that person's got melancholy. You know, that kind of thing. Or um just kind of a get

over it uh stiff upper lip mentality. You know, many people in in our history

of the world have had such heartache, have had such pain, and they were like in survival mode, you know, constantly.

So they they passed down this mindset of just not talk about just get over it, just move on, do what you can. And um I

even bumped up against some of that in my my parents' generation, you know, and where um they just kind of

never never addressed it, ever dealt with it, just keep moving. And so I think we're starting to come

out of that a bit. And there's there's more a lot more awareness, a lot more

welcoming of it. Um we still have we still have a ways to go in recognizing how this impacts all of us but I I am

optimistic that there is some um a lot of changes take good changes taking place of awareness of these

battlegrounds. H so where do you see that we still need to grow like if awareness is now

we've developed awareness and there's more of a palatability like okay it's okay you can say these things out loud

you're not going to get condemned or shamed for it. Yeah. Where in your mind do we still need to progress in our understanding

and uh tools for addressing these issues in the church? Yeah, good question. I I I stand at the

crossroads between two worlds. One one is called the church world and the other one is the mental health psychological

world. Yeah. And it has um it has had a a very clear

wall of separation. So a pastor has somebody in the church and say, you know, I've been anxious a lot, been

having a lot of panic attacks lately. They're like, "Okay, here, go to this counselor." Right?

I understand that. Um, and the the um but there's this mindset of like in the

church, you just preach the Bible and just do that. But mental health, we're going to we're going to categorize this

over here. And I I push back against that, not necessarily telling pastors,

you need to know how to handle any mental health battleground. Be equipped and be the guy, be the person to do it.

Not necessarily saying that, but I believe that the body of Christ ought to be one of the safest places on the

planet for people to experience love, the safety of connection, because a lot of our mental health battlegrounds have

to do with a sense of disconnection. We feel disconnected from God. We feel disconnected from others. Uh we feel

disconnected even from how we relate to ourselves. and love has has has been uh

compromised in some way where uh where we didn't experience in the way that it was meant to be. Right? And so I like to

bring the the kind of the plainness of we're not just talking about this mental health category we stick over here.

We're talking about how you think, talking about how you feel. We're talking about your emotional life and how that affects how you relate to

people. That's all of us, right? So I I like bringing the subject like I maybe I'd speak at a church and go I'm going

to talk to you about anxiety and how it it affects you. Now you may not have the battle that I have and many of you do.

However, all of us in this room have to deal with the fear factor in our life and we need to be aware of it. So I

like I I I like the idea of like this is a disciplehip issue. This isn't like

just a thing over here that I go to a therapist for and then I come over here. Now I I think therapists are needed,

right? And um and so I find in my in my study, maybe this is just the way my my

mind works. When I read mental health uh research and studies, there's so much in

there that I that I see the scriptures speaking to and you sometimes we get lost in terms you know where Jesus talks

about don't worry about tomorrow and you just basically like tomorrow will take care of itself and stay in today. Well,

you technically go well that's rumination, you know. Yeah, same thing.

And Jesus said it thousands of years ago. We're just we're just putting some new terms, maybe more um specific terms

to it. So I find that that's the next stage of of of growth is realizing as

pastors, as church leaders, as people of God, you don't have to be the superhero

to the person that is struggling with their mental health in some area. But

what you can be is you can be a very loving, safe listener, understanding

because that is uh that can't be um dismissed and how powerful that is. It's

incredibly some of my most um my biggest breakthroughs in life didn't necessarily

come out of some kind of um technical mental health therapy session. It came out of somebody loving me. And yes, I

need understanding. Yes, I need to work through some things. But that power of people loving on me and me and me

welcoming that in is uh is incredibly powerful. So I think that um maybe not

having such harsh dividing lines of it. I think that I it'd be great if pastors

could talk more about their own journey. I I I I unfortunately, you know, I've

heard of reports of pastors like a pastor I'm thinking in my mind right now who admitted his struggle with anxiety and depression

and that he was working on it and he got fired. Yeah. And it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Okay. You know, now people can have their opinions about that, but it's like um it I I could line up I could line up

a hundred pastors and point out all theirs. They just didn't talk about it, right? You know what I mean? Yeah. for sure.

Um, how much of this would you say is recognizing the the continuum or the

spectrum of these issues? Because as we've evolved in our awareness of it, I would say part of what it's done is it's

helped in a in a healthy way normalize it to a degree that this is a human thing. Like yes, there are extremes of

course that need a certain level of extreme care. Yeah. But don't we all deal with seasons

and times of varying degrees of anxiety and even I would say depression? Yeah. That are just a natural part of a fallen

experience. And so part of it is recognizing that a more integrated model

of communicating it and discipling people through it should be part of the church because on some levels we're all

going to face this on one level or another. That's right. Absolutely. And if you see it in a sense of spectrum, like you

said, it's going to be much more fruitful because then it puts us all into the picture of things. It's like,

do you have severe chronic uh depression that's been debilitating? Maybe, maybe not. But have you, like you said, those

seasons, right? And we we we we that opens up the conversation to a much

wider level of all of us learning and growing in this. And I think too um to get this this mindset we have of like

I'm anxious. It's like I gotta get rid of this or this depression. I gotta get rid of this versus seeing like oh this

is something I'm going through because there's actually there's actually like in depression there's

there's things of learning how to relate to ourselves differently of grieving that we may need to be going through.

There's invitations there of even anxiousness. I found at every stage in my journey where anxiousness rose up,

there were often around opportunities of growth of areas I was stepping into, but

it was it was nerve-wracking or uh you know created a lot of uh anxious tension

within me, but they were opportunities for me to learn how to get rooted in God's love in a deeper way. Learn how to

face my fears versus running from them. All right? So, I think I think if and some people have written to me, they

they like they appreciate that. I I like to sometimes shift the conversation to this is disciplehip versus this is like,

you know, a side topic because everyone deals with fear and it's all throughout the Bible. Everyone deals with times of

sorrow, sadness or uncertainty or doubt or or thoughts that come out of nowhere

like what do I do with these things? So, yeah, you're right on right on. Yeah. And I think it's our discomfort

with holding true two truths together at the same time, which is that God, yes, he wants us to be victorious. He wants

us to grow. He wants us to progress. And also recognizing that struggle is always going to be with us, right?

Sometimes I feel like maybe you relate this to a a marriage context and you think, well, if there's struggle,

there's something wrong. Well, I've been married now for a decade and a half. I don't think the struggle's ever going

away, right? Like, it's just it's part of it. and reframing it as this is

challenging. Being human is hard and Jesus doesn't call us to completely cure

us of all things, but he does promise to be with us and grow us in all things. Yeah.

And that's wouldn't Wouldn't you say that's a critical distinction? Yeah, it is. It's good. It's you you you

articulate these things really well. And I think the the aspect of making room for humanity and and Ben, I didn't make

room for humanity in and in in church circles. I kind of grew up in and the influences in my life. I had to be a

superhero. Sure. It's like it's like God's going to show up today. And you know, kind of that like here we go, you know, very driven,

very perfectionistic, very pressure on me. And it took like these emotional

kind of breakdown moments to realize I'm carrying a burden I don't need to carry and I'm not making room for the humanity

of life, you know? And there's so many moments like even when Jesus went to the tomb of Lazarus and he stood there, you

know, at the grave of somebody he's about to resurrect and he weeps.

It's just a just a a beautiful picture of those two things of like resurrection in life yet weeping in the moment. And I

think in our modern world, we have to make terms with we're not we're not allowing room for our humanity,

weakness, uh just that that ache within our hearts of making room that just

because I'm I'm grieving or I'm sad doesn't mean I'm not victorious. I'm actually finding great things. I've

become more powerful to let myself go through those seasons. I've found connection to God or connection to to

his word or uh even just greater confidence in him through those valleys

versus like trying to run from them cuz we we constantly want to get away from feeling bad and move towards feeling

comfortable and good as quickly as possible. Uh I respect what you guys do because you put yourself in

uncomfortable places, right? You just you just kind of and I think in some ways you probably just get used to it. you're just kind of in these places,

you're evangelizing or you're reaching people and you just you're just in that place, I think a lot of us are um just

wanting to get uncomfortable feelings away. But when I looked at what I was battling, I said, "Okay, all right,

Mark, you got some stuff you're going through. We're going to learn. We're going to walk this journey and uh and

and God's with me in this." and and and and that I find that to be such a more

beautiful picture of his grace and love because it's it's this journey mindset

now instead of like get this thing off of me, get it away from me, now I'm I'm

walking and I'm learning renewal of how to think, of how to respond to my emotions, how to even respond and deal

with other people in a in a renewed way. It it changes the whole dynamic of how

how I see things. But I think um we're we're we're we're pushing Christians to be so much superheroes. They're carrying

these burdens and then they're expecting to be at this like kind of level and state all the time. They don't they don't make room for the the drier

seasons or feeling empty or the sadness or the anxiousness and realizing isn't

necessarily about something that's wrong with you, but more about something that you're walking through that's that it

might need just some insight, some edification, just some some equipping to to to learn. And I got and and I learned

the most in the in the in the actual walking u you know. So yeah, great

point. Well, and we are so profoundly equipped to deal with the reality of life, you

know, and that's why it's so sad when we we put on masks and we put on fronts as followers of Jesus, like I get it from a

secular perspective, right? If you were all you had and this was all there was and there was no transcendent hope or

pure perfect love, then what else do you do but run or numb or avoid or cope? But

here we are in this position where we know that we have this perfect and profound love that we are fully known in

all of our weakness and still fully loved. I mean, what a what a profound,

beautiful picture of being able to be fully who we are and from a place of wholeness deal with our stuff. That's

right. Like as paradoxical as that sounds, it's like no, you're not working on your stuff for acceptance and wholeness. You get to work on your stuff

from a place of acceptance and wholeness. Like what a profound shift and equipping mechanism for allowing us

to actually grow. It's so sad that we hide when Yeah. we should be the most liberated and honest at the same time.

And that would speak so powerfully to the world. Yeah. And what you're hitting at is is a really really big part of what we're

calling the mental health world is our connection or sense of disconnection to

love. It is a big deal because I I would say at the root system of it all

somewhere within there and I'm not trying to create a a silver bullet to everything but just a at the core root

system is how connected are we to love and so there is a there is a big thread

within Christianity where we do get into that performance mode and you said it wonderfully about living from a place of

being loved rather than try to live for it. And so when you have a battleground, we we we we step forward to get fixed.

And what I find is that we're we're bypassing love. It's like, like you

said, the these these two things at the same time are hard for us to to to comprehend. That we are absolutely loved

right where we are at and embraced. And then in that embrace of love, our lives

are are are are changed in response to that love. But we're we're dodging it because that powerful love is what we

want, but it's really uncomfortable. It's like very uncomfortable because because if I step in and embrace that,

then it it shifts how I relate to my battles. It shifts how I see my past. It

shifts how I see the struggles of other people. Like everything I I I my vulnerabilities come to the surface. So,

we tend to just go, "Hey, Mark, I heard you help with people. I got this battle. Can you fix me?" So, I've had to do a

lot of chipping away over the decades of uh chipping away at that like just fix me, fix me, fix me because they're

they're dodging love. I got this anxiousness. Just get it away from me. And and let's let's take a

journey about your relationship to the the love of the father and what it means to be rooted in that dynamic love. And

it's like right um but it's there and it's available for us. And it's that was

actually the first uh layer that opened up to me was my disconnect to the love

of the father that he had for me. And grew up in the church my whole life. And I mean my earliest memory is a wooden

church pew, you know, just kind of kind of put the setting in and um did all the

things, you know, and and I and I realized later in my adult life, I don't know how to connect to you as a father.

I don't know how to connect to you in your love for me. And I look back and go, no wonder, you know, I'm I'm I'm so

vulnerable to so many things I'm battling with because a disconnect to love is um is that important. So, it

brought me back to a reboot, you know? Yeah. Like, let's just get back to the foundation. I got in all these tangents

and things. Let me just get back to the fundamentals again and and learn what it means to be loved by him to live from

that like you said which was actually a saying I would say to myself like today I'm living from love now I'm not living

for love because that actually changes a lot of things why or how do we miss that

like why like it feels like the first level of the game like don't move past it until we get this and yet

the I get it right I it's there's a human. There's a humanity to it. But how

does so few people and myself included at times not learn that most profound lesson that all other lessons would then

far more easily and naturally stem from? Yeah, there's a there's a lot of layers to it. And I think that some of it is,

you know, performancedriven Christianity. We kind of just get busy, do a bunch of things for God. Uh we we

we in in evangelistic work is you know God loves you as you are and and and

receive receive the work of Christ in your life. We step in and then we're like all right do this do this do this

do this. You kind of it's like wait wait wait wait wait wait we can't we can't

leave this love we got to keep growing in what that means. Um and I think too

if we're going to if we're going to walk in love we're going to have to deal with our personal interference with love.

meaning our are areas of brokenness. And so, so if I'm going to walk in love towards you on a regular basis, then I'm

going to have to allow myself to work on my emotional world on on on where I

struggle to love, where I struggle to see myself in love, where I get uh insecure and how I act out of insecurity. I have to right. So, I think

that it it it became something that um it connects to our emotional brokenness.

And so we don't really deal with brokenness or at least traditionally. It's kind of like just move on. And so

loving people be became a a performance thing I do in ministry, but not

necessarily something that I I know and I live in on a regular basis. It's not

something that, you know, so many Christians you talk to me, you know, when I'm home alone at night and

everything's over, the day is over. I feel so far from God. Feel so disconnected. I feel so discouraged. I

feel right. Um such a a narrative of not

feeling rooted in that love. So I I I began to to really embrace that this

isn't something I the love of God is not something I graduate from.

This is this is a fundamental I am for the rest of my life always growing in

always learning because it's so multifaceted and so lifech changing but

I also have to take a step to deal with some of my pain. I got to slow down a

bit. I got to make room for pause cuz love's not in a hurry, you know.

Uh it's patient. It's kind. I I I got to I got to take a step to go. I want to I

want to my priority is being relationally healthy versus my go go go

go go go just do do. So I think that the accomplishment world often takes over,

you know, and and I'm I'm sobered by Paul's words where he's like, I could give my body to be burned. I could do

this if I have not love. Well, the things that he listed out very intense

things. You go, how would you give your life to be burned? and not have love, right? I think one of the ways is that

we could just live in this life where we're trying to do stuff for God, hoping that now God, you'll love me. I'll go to

these great lengths to to get this connection to love. And um that's why

Paul said love is the greatest. We could talk about a lot of things, but it's the

greatest. It it's not a it's not a side thing. It's not something you graduate from. It's the greatest. So when I began

to shift and value that, it slowed me down my hypers speed living. It made me

it made me shift from val valuing the one-on ones. Uh where in the early

stages of ministry, I valued the crowd. You got these crowds. God's doing this

work. And and really, not that that's wrong or bad, but valuing the small

level cuz that's where life change really takes place. that's where we're like we're impacted uh in my opinion the

most profoundly. So anyways, I'm saying a lot there, but u but I think it's it's something we got to keep getting back to

and our our mental health battlegrounds are are often messaging, hey, we got to get get back to what it means to get

rooted in that love. Yeah. It's it's so sad. And and I think

of course there's a spiritual warfare component to the enemy. Yeah.

being very um motivated to steer us into the direction of sort of a functioning dysfunction and being okay just being

very busy and performative. And it's like, you know, it's like we've got this house with a falling down foundation and

we just run around cleaning the windows and vacuuming and and fixing little things on the outside and just we're

very content. He's very content, I think, to just let us live in that

surface level, busy, medicated, just keep going kind of mentality rather than

to say discover the profound beauty of

dealing with the core issue, finding that that love that that is so transformative. But I think we have an

enemy that's very active in keeping us from going there. And also I see think as you said there's a a Christian

culture that still puts too much stock in this sort of meritocratic spirituality. I am what I do. I gota if

I can just do all these things then I will fix it. And there is a letting go

of almost just saying no I'm a branch and what God requires of me is clinging

on to him. Yeah. And that requires a letting go of frenetic activity and busyiness and all

of these other things that I think the enemy uses to distract us. Yeah. And and I'm curious, how did you come to a discovery of that? You you you

speak very well to this. How did you personally realize these patterns and see like we need to, you know, um keep

keep a a a healthier um focus. Well, I think like everyone, it is an

ongoing struggle, right? I think I I am prayed and prone to all of the do do. I

also have a 9-year-old, a seven-year-old, and a 5-year-old. So like by definition it's very easy to

look up and a month has gone by. Yeah. I think I just discovered very early on

the deep, rich, lifegiving

value of just seeking my dad, just being with my creator. My I tell this story on

this podcast a lot, but one of the most profound spiritual breakthroughs in my life was when I I transitioned from high

school in New Zealand to university here in the US. And it was kind of a lonely reset for me. I'd moved continents three

times. I was starting over again socially and it was just hard. It was a hard for me relatively. It was probably

the most difficult mental period of my life. It's all relative obviously, but and when I came home in New Zealand over

the summer there, my my dad said, "Hey," he probably perceived the reality of where I was at and was like, "Hey, we

should we should go on these prayer walks." And we lived on in New Zealand on the ocean. I know, sorry, sad me. We

lived in this beautiful spot and he said, "Hey, let's go on these walks and let's pray together and there's a coffee

shop and we can walk and we can and we did this every day that entire

summer." And I would say for the first time I understood what it means to be a branch. I learned what it means to

really seek and know and love my dad and seek and realize that he knows and loves me. And it was through this beautiful

spiritual discipline that formed at that point of I need to be outside. I need to walk. I need to be honest. I need to

tell God everything I'm feeling and and allow him to permeate my life and change me. And I'm telling you, this pattern

and rhythm has now stayed with me. I mean, I was out in the parking lot of my

office building walking in circles, doing the very thing my dad helped me learn all the way back then. And I think

it's that grounding that's become my anchor. It's become my rallying point. When the fog of war and busyness and

struggle creeps in and confuses me, I I have learned mechanistically to go back

to that core and say, "Whoa, okay, all of this needs to be put aside. I need to

get back with my dad and I we need I need to get back to that place. And that's become I think

the anchoring place of rediscovering my identity,

reorienting myself to who God is, who I am, dealing with my anxious thoughts, the

busyiness of life, the challenges I'm going through. So, it's really been that was a long-winded way of saying I think

that has been the most profound revelation as simple as that sounds. Yeah, it's not long-winded at all. you

you listening to you is very encouraging for me. It really is because I see you

uh awake to your emotional life to to that meaningful connection to God. I see

the picture of you know your earthly dad as well as uh what that's done to then usher into your connection to your

heavenly father. Like I I I it encourages me cuz we need more guys like

you out there, husbands, dads also. you know, you got a job, you got stuff going

on, responsibilities, but there's that homing device of like, you know, who I am is not like

just lost in what I do. Like I I'm loved right now, right where I'm at. And I

need reminders of my anchoring in that because I I I I had to do this little simple routine where I would just sit in

a chair and just put my hand over my heart and and and Father, you you you

love me right now and I want I want to anchor myself in that because I'm about to go into this day and everything in my

day is going to tell me do this to be loved or get pulled, you know, in all these directions. And I just want to

anchor myself so I remember throughout this day. I I don't I don't have to I don't have to be pulled by that

anxiousness or that emptiness. I can be filled by you in this. So I live from love. So it um in all my work, you know,

digging in the trenches and working. There's a lot of disconnection, you know, to what we're talking about here.

Disconnect to emotions. There's a I spent years in, you know, the church world just kind of like I I felt like I had a sledgehammer just trying to get

through like the hard shells and the It's okay. It's okay. especially um especially for the men because they'd be

very very hesitant to kind of to kind of go there. I could get it. It's all right. It's all right though. You can you can go here, you know. So, um

I appreciate you sharing that because it's it's it's encouraging to me what what you're doing cuz even uh your your

ministry is doing great things and touching impacting people's lives, but there's a core I can sense in you that

is authentic, real, and um so thank you. Thank you for that.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, well, I I appreciate that. And I I you used a phrase the other just recent earlier on in this conversation

rather that you said you don't graduate from God's love. And I would say that

the more I walk this out, it's more that recognition that I'm I'm not going to learn this lesson in a binary sense.

Like lesson learned. I I it's more a reality that Ben, you're going to need to keep coming back to

this again and again and again and again. And it's not so much

what's the best way to say this? It's not so much that it's it's a thing accomplished as more

as more of a process, a a rhythm, a like I said, an

anchoring point in my life that I know is going to have to be there and it's going to be there in the hard times and the good times and everything

else in between. But it it is never something I I know I will never graduate from this because it's

it's the the very process by which I remind myself of who I am and what's

true. Yeah. And so to think that I would graduate from that is doesn't make any sense, right? Yeah. It's like

Yeah. And I think that I think many Christians try to treat themselves as though they should be a finished

product. and and and a journey mindset is something I I I I I talk about a lot

and it's it's woven within a lot of things that I that I do or write or talk about um because many are condemning

themselves because they don't see like a finished product looking result in their life and are not and not recognizing and

many are saying wow you're right it is a journey and and that often settles the waters a

bit to kind of go okay I'm on my way here And now I lean into learning. So

this is the cool thing about this this like never arriving. I'm on a journey is it it keeps you in humility and

teachability. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So like we're doing this meeting. You you contacted me, but I'm sitting here

being blessed listening to you. I'm learning from you. You're learning. You're hearing whatever I can. You know

it. It's like we open up our frequencies. Yeah. To to taking in learning, growth, and

development everywhere we go because there is no like in the kingdom of God, there's no expert, so to speak. It's

like we're all in this journey. And um

it it it uh it it creates such a grace opportunity of what it looks like to to

navigate issues and not be afraid of them, not be afraid of of the things that come our way that we're wrestling with. So

yeah. Yeah. It's totally what you're saying. It's like I I was just uh interviewing a friend of mine. His

name's Josh Porter. He's a pastor out in in the West Coast and he wrote a book on disciplehip called How to Die. And it's

he's this from this artist world. He was in this punk band and he's this very artistic guy. And he wrote this

brilliant book. And one of the key lines from it was that he realized that the core of self-denial was the willingness

to surrender to love. And and then he used an analogy in his marriage that

it's like part of my self-denial in marriage is is is just accepting love is

just accepting that I I can't control it. I'm never going to be perfect. There's always going to be an issue, an

element of struggle, but but the self-denial is this surrender to love. I just thought it was such a profound way

of describing exactly what you're saying, which is that this is a a neverending process and true freedom is

is knowing that we have the source of hope in the midst of what will never be a never- ending process. And that's

okay. Yeah, it is okay. That's as powerful. You know, we think of surrender as something like, okay, here's a list of

things I got to I got to give up, you know, put down that route versus like I see what you're saying as like a burden

lifting. Like I'm changing yolks. I'm I'm I'm I'm coming into this beautiful thing. And there is You're right. You

said it earlier. There's a war over this. I think I I I just personally see the

war that comes against Christians. A lot of it is to perpetuate the sense of disconnection,

a sense of being disconnected from God. Cuz if I if I feel or or have a sense of feeling disconnected from God, it's

going to branch out into all kinds of behaviors, all kinds of things. I'm going to look for love in the wrong

places. I'm going to I'm going to, you know, get into performance mode. I got to prove myself. I'm going to compare myself to others. I'm going to feel like

I'm not good enough. I'm going to like it's just the the the list is just going to go on and on. Um and and and so I think that um yeah,

what you're what you're sharing here of surrendering into love is uh is is a is a great reminder of that. Really really

good. And there's almost this sad thing you see in people where

they just they're clinging on almost to the struggle rather than surrendering to

the love. Mhm. You know what I mean? It's like they there's almost this weird twisted control in remaining bitter, remaining

feeling condemned and feeling like they're not good enough. There's almost a weird self-imposed imprisonment. And I

know it's more complex than that, but it I see that where it's like you're just going and I'm sure you've done this where you're just like begging people to

accept Jesus's vision for who they are and and they're just they just remain locked in in these patterns and these

behaviors and these mentalities and ways of thinking that it's just and and years go by and you

have the same conversations. Yes. How how do we is I mean is this just a

purely spiritual thing? Is it a prayer thing? Is it a begging and pleading thing? Like and maybe that relates to a

question I wanted to ask which is every one of us deals with mental health emotional health struggles but also

every one of us deals with people in our lives who we love desperately who are locked in these things and we

often feel like we've done all the things we've we've passive aggressively handed them the books we've prayed we've

sent them the YouTube links you know it's all we've we've cried and we've yelled and we've tried everything right and we feel desperate and helpless

sometimes How as a position person, not as a perfect person, but as a person who cares and wants to help, what do we do?

Yeah. You're talking about the deep trenches. And one of the biggest pains that people in any kind of compassion

work face and that's like you're you're you're offering something to somebody, you know, you're seeing something in

somebody and you're you're loving on them, believing in them, giving. Grace

is there, love is there, and it like hits a it hits a a wall. kind of bounces

off and it's one of the heartbreaks and and I I've had to learn a lot of layers and how to relate to that because there

was times where I would just take on that Superman cape and tie it tighter and just try harder and maybe I say it

this way, maybe I do it that way. actually created a lot of burnout in in my journey and had to learn how to um

give give situations over to God and and realize I'm a vessel and and and and not

carrying that excessive kind of burden that we can didn't get into like a false burden bearing.

But I also feel like it helped me to tune in to God's heart for humanity because his love is there, his goodness

is there. we had that sense of of of uh rejecting it and pushing back to that

and not not receiving it. I I think to to go to your question, I think that when you when you've been

disconnected to love, there's this problem where you get used to that. You get used to your coping mechanisms. So,

for example, if I'm massively neglected as a child and no one's there for me and I develop this mindset that life is on

my own, I can't count on anybody. You know, if I don't if I don't come to illumination of that, I will push people

away, push people away, push people away, push people away. Love will be right in front of me, and I will find a

way to reject it, to disqualify it, to say no to it, to to to keep what has developed in my

heart, which is a at first it's a wall of protection, but that wall becomes a prison because it it it's it's not

having a function now other than imprisonment. It's blocking me. So like for me I had to realize that I had a I

had a world of of rejection kind of thinking in my life meaning I perform for life's my own and I'll reject you

before you reject me in my head so that I don't get hurt and and and then an

imprisonment of like a self versus self battle. I I think from a um from a from

a a scriptural standpoint and the spir I'm sorry spiritual warfare standpoint it's almost like if the enemy can get us

at war with ourselves it's like okay there you go that person's going to be in a in a whole war on their own they

just get they get locked in this feedback loop you know these these issues of self-hatred and shame and

self-rejection some of that gets spiritualized too that's a whole tangent itself where I watched this for for a

lot in my upbringing in the church that like um rejecting or putting yourself

down was seen as admirable, right? And it's like, wait a second. I I I

don't I don't know that this is what Jesus died for, you know, like this kind of self-imposed

um uh u rejecting and putting yourself in a in a in like a condemning uh kind

of way. And and so um the the the the the choice to say I got to open up my

heart to love. I it is one of the aches of life that you can love somebody all day long and

that resistance just goes no. And and I think that for me I had to have an

awareness that's something I battle with. And I had to make a decision. Uh

God, I don't know you. I don't know you in the in the in the love that I'm needing. Again, this is a Christian of

decades saying this uh grew up in the church. I need to be open to that. So

then what I did was I made a very significant adjustment in my life. At the time I was working at a church. We

you know had multiple services in the weekend, busy busy, all this stuff, right? I just made this one adjustment.

I looked around at everybody I was working with, my worship team, uh you know, the the the sound people, the the

ushers, all the people there. These are vessels of love and I open up

my heart to loving them in more meaningful ways versus just we got a job

to do. And two, I'm going to say yes when love shows up in simple ways. So like for example, I'd

come off the stage. I was a worship leader at the time. I'd come off stage and I'd be thinking about all the things that went wrong. The drums were too

fast. The mic was this. My monitor was off. I didn't this didn't right. that that we all fall into those patterns.

Come off the stage, someone goes, "Uh, Pastor Mark, thank you so much. Worship was wonderful." And my head would go down, damn, thanks.

You know, kind of do that thing. And it was like, it was like, no, as awkward as it is right now for me. I I I I began to

pick my head up. You know what? Thank you. I really appreciate that. And I

began to say yes to love when it shows up. Cuz we'll ask God, "God, I need you. I need you to show up and often time a

person shows up and we're like yeah no no that's not that's not it's like no that was probably was it it just wasn't

in the package you you expected or wanted you wanted some you know divine mystical kind of thing to take place and

to come out of the sky and uh instead God sends a person and and I realize that that's the

beautiful space there so it's caused me to appreciate um the the dayto-day

divine moments where love shows up. But man, we have a resistance and it led me on a journey and I I I talk a lot about

it of that resistance within ourselves to seeing ourselves through love that uh

many of our mental health battlegrounds have hooks onto that that keep it keep us in our internal spirals. You know, we

turn on ourselves in shame, something goes wrong, we we we look in the mirror, we we're disgusted by what we see. We're

um we're in this world within ourselves. So when true love shows up, it's like

it's way. So uh don't mean to go go on and on about it, but I think that's that's a very uh important area to

address that that needs to be talked about more and more. Yeah. Yeah. And there's a there's an

injunction to long longsuffering, right? We're not we're not called to conditionally walk with people, right?

We're called to love them for the person that they are now. It's like if we're going to operate from a place of

wholeness in dealing with our own issues, we have to be willing to love and serve people who are also likewise in a place

of wholeness, even paradoxically while they're still dealing with the issues that might frustrate us. And we want to

see those things grow and change. And so it's a refining in even in of itself

that is a refining thing. Can I love someone and and have no guarantees that the

brokenness that they're dealing with will ever change because that's not what's promised, right? It's um it's not what's modeled

either because if my if Jesus love for me was conditioned on a certain trajectory of improvement,

right, man, I would be in deep trouble. Right. Right. And yet and yet that's the very grace God asks us to extend. even if

it's if it's brutal and motivated by desire to see the person grow and change. Um, man, I feel like we could go

on and on and on. I I'm I'm respectful of your time here. So, I just want to maybe end with this idea.

You know, our culture is obsessed with the self. It's all about self-help. It's all about the quick fix. It's all about

identity shifting. It's like a big thing on the internet right now. What role does just selfishness play in

our mental health struggles in the sense that the the tendency or the risk is that in wanting to deal with our mental

and emotional struggles, we become so inward focused that that in of itself compounds the

problem. What's the difference between good love, self love, it's even an expression I don't like to use,

and the world's version of narcissism and just ultimately something that's going to create more damage than than

create any solutions at all. Yeah, that's a really good question and it's a space I've decided to to stand in

and speak to to help bring clarity to it because in Christianity we worry about

it, right? because there's things like warnings about lovers of themselves and things like that and it's like I don't want to get into that territory. So,

I've done a lot of diving into that and and and realizing when we talk about whether

it's everyday selfishness or an intense part of the spectrum that can move into

something like narcissism. It actually begins with a disconnect to love. In the

absence of love, it's now going to fuel all these battlegrounds where I'm in

survival. And a part of survival is I'm staring at myself because I'm constantly

trying to fix this and do this. Love is like love works as a flow. It it

it And so to explain this really quickly, um we didn't love God first. He

loved us first. We love him because he first loved us. So love begins, all love

begins with God and he loved us first. So love actually starts with being a

recipient of that which is a a paradoxical shift from where a lot of us go. We think of like I got to love God,

love God, love God, love God. We haven't brought into an understanding. My love towards God is a response of his love.

And and because that's really what worship and our lives are is a response to all that he is, all that he's done

and doing in our lives. So in that uh seeing myself out of that and when love

when I'm looking at myself through love it now helps my eyes to look up and out

because if I go I see this I just want to sit in this and I just want to just be by myself and I just want to just

stare at myself all day. I'm not mo I'm not now I'm not flowing in love. The the

flow of the water is now stagnant. It's come in and now it's just sitting and now the water's getting murky and

stagnant. It's meant to be a flow. It's meant to flow right through me. So I the

two battlegrounds that I've I've seen over the decades is one people struggling with just being recipients of

God's love. We don't know how to receive. We don't know how to be just just just uh gracious receivers of that

love. So we're always trying to like perform for God for love. And then when it comes to loving other people, we're

just trying to love them, trying to love them, trying to love them. Uh when we're disconnected from that from ourselves,

we're just performancedriven. So we're just giving I got to You can love these people in like a certain moment, but in

everyday life, we're hard on ourselves. We are uh cynical, condemning,

accusatory. So for me, a realization that was helpful was that when times get

tough for me, Mark turns on Mark and I I

become an adversarial voice that really

mirrors what the enemy is saying and wanting me to come under. And so, you

know, people talk about the selft talk and and all this stuff. You know, we always got this like, you know, dialogue kind of going on within us. And I looked

at it and I said, "What if I began to introduce the the the really the love of

the father and how he sees me and um and and I and and that really

comes into play when we're in pain cuz mo most of the time when we're in trauma or pain or suffering, we we we do what

Job did at first. He just like he went down to like his birth, you know? He's like, "I should have never been born. Curse the day my mommy g." Right? And

it's a again, we're humans. It's it's a natural thing to have that kind of response, but there's a deeper level of

now connecting to that love that you're talking about of that unconditional I

love you and I embrace you right where you're at. So, I began to develop a a a

different pathway of I looked in the mirror and said, "Mark, me and I had like I was talking to myself, right, Mark, we're not going to be enemies

anymore. You've been conditioned to be an enemy to yourself." And so, um, I'm

going to operate in that love and witness of of of how the father relates to me, I'm going to practice that

towards myself. So, if we're living in that in a healthy way, it actually So,

when I talk to Ben, it's going to improve my relationship with Ben because I'm living out of what I'm cultivating

within me. When I'm by myself, when I'm alone, I'm I'm operating in kindness

towards myself, patient towards my journey, what love speaks out. So when

I'm with you, I'm just living out of who I am versus like, okay, it's it's

ministry time. We got to, you know, right? So, um, so yes, it can get, but I, but I

see that whole spectrum of selfishness, it's a signal like even narcissism, you know, even even, um, mental health and

psychology, uh, it's it's all in their documentation. Narcissists are massively neglected, massively disconnected at an

at a very intense level going back to their childhood. And even what we see in our generation, uh, if we we look at,

you know, the younger generation, wherever you are, if you're millennials looking at Gen Z, if you're Gen X looking at millennials, there's always

this sense of like, you know, you guys don't have it as bad as we did. You're kind of self-centered, right?

And and what I find is that if I shift my lens and realize, um, where's the disconnect to love? Cuz when I when I

see the disconnect to love, it actually opens up. I even see that with my kids, you know, um because we all have these

tendencies to just become in self-s survival. When we open up love, we open up the valve to look out and to and and

to bless. Now, what we've been given is flowing out of us. So, I'm big on like

in the pipeline of love, uh where where am I growing? Is it learning to receive more? Is it learning how to see myself

through that as I'm giving that out? Is it learning to see other people more through love? because love impacts all

three three dimensions and um but yeah there is that the aspect where we can

get too much in ourselves and I deal with a lot of uh obsessive compulsive

kind of battles. It's a big part of of what I talk about to do with intrusive thoughts uh that seem to come out of

nowhere and it causes people to like I got to figure this thing out. you know, I got I

got to, you know, the the saying naval gaze kind of just stare because we think if I stare at this thing long enough,

then I'm going to fix it. And and really, it's not about that. It's it's about Yeah. You know, you're doing your

your your your awareness. Awareness is way different than like staring. But I'm

I'm keeping my head up because in my journey, God's doing a powerful work as

what I'm learning is just being sent out into others. I'm blessing you, but I'm also experiencing healing even as I'm

sharing it with you. So, I'm constantly reminding people, keep your head up, head up and looking out. Don't just

don't just stare down cuz life is out here. Yeah, you're battling. Yeah, you're struggling. Um, but keep that in

mind because because God's on this love and grace journey with us through through it all. So yeah,

hope that makes sense. It totally makes sense. And I what I would add to it for my totally un

non-professional take here is gratitude has played a powerful role in my life. And you know,

even as I was mentioning my spiritual disciplines of walking and seeking God, I think one of the most profound things

I've grown in and learned in is this idea of gratitude where, you know, I'm I'm with my dad. And my natural response

to the love I feel in that moment is to be grateful for all that he has done for me. And this so powerfully reframes my

situation and so wells up within me a desire to respond to that gratitude by

loving and serving others that it's this powerful mechanism that it's this powerful spiritual discipline. I think

so often we can view gratitude as kind of something we teach our kids. You know, say thank you when you ask for food. Um, but I I think God uses

gratitude as a way to remind him of his love for you as demonstrated by the

litany of things that we all at every g given moment have to be grateful for. And then the response that that creates

in me is a desire to want to extend that love because I I'm so overwhelmed by what he has given me.

Yeah. Right on. Really good. It's it's very evident to me that your your spiritual disciplines I'm a walker, too.

I I like to I go on daily walks. It's it's it's a amazing way to process and

and and just connect to God and and just what's going on in my journey. But your um your disciplines to me and the way

you share them, they're all um anchors to keep you rooted in that love

and keep you rooted in that. So that's very wise of you. And because many times we look at disciplines as like it's a

list of things I got to do, make sure I do these things. When it's done anchored in love, it's like a I get to do. It's

like it's like the discipline of having a date night with your wife. It's it's not it's not like

I got a date night, you know? It's like if I'm like that, there's a there's a problem. It's more like I I get to do

it, but there's a fight around forgetting about it or right. So, it's it's it's all disciplines are all

reminders of anchoring us in that love because out of that the relationship flourishes. It's like just okay, we'll

just have the date night. Where where's our favorite place to go and let's just talk and then things happen, right?

So, um, going back to the gratitude, I I find for me it's one of the it's one of

those like with love, it's one of the underutilized Passover kind of things.

Ah, yeah. Yeah. Grateful. Yeah. Thanksgiving, what's it what's the two things you're grateful for?

It's um it's it's something that if I'm in a really difficult spot of my mood,

what I'm going through, I find across the board in anchoring to his love tied

to that gratitude. And um when when you're in a funk of any kind, there's a

there's an initial resistance to it. That's kind of talking about some of the self stuff that we battle with. It's

like, okay, what am I grateful for? Nothing. Cuz everything's going wrong, right? it up. So the gratitude pokes at

it and God's love is not just dismissing what you're going through.

No, it's realigning my focus into where he is. Gratitude is going to help me to to

align with where he is. You know, the word says we enter his gates with thanksgiving. There's like there's this

spiritual picture of like a gateway opening up uh in the heavens over my

heart when I connect to that sense of gratitude, right? And we enter his course with praise. You know, we know

that verse, but I I that's become a a a model in my mind of stewarding that

connection. It's like it's like this isn't just something just list off a bunch of things, just do a nice thing to

check it off. So for a guy like me who um in so many seasons of my life has

struggled and fumbled through disconnection to his love for me, God,

where are you? Where am I? I'm going on uh gratitude has helped me in those moments. It's also helped me when I have

those kind of breakthrough moments. You know those days where I'm like, "Oh god, you know, this this is great." I anchor

myself in gratitude in those moments because I never want to forget it. I document it. I I I used to leave um this

is back in the early 2000s, smartphones weren't even around. I had a I didn't have a smartphone. I had a dumb phone. I

had a flip phone, you know, and it but it had if you went through the menu like 10 times, there was like a voice

recorder way in the back. And when I would kind of like have breakthrough moments of just being able to sense that

connection, I'd record memos to myself. That's good. Mark, just this is Mark letting you know

uh you're going to be all right. You're loved. you know, I just just some kind of exhortation that I was connecting to

in that moment because we leak all the time. We forget, you know, we we get we

get a breakthrough in an area and then oh, we're so aware of where we feel like we're going backwards and you're not

going backwards, you're going deeper. It's just it's just deeper levels of this. But I need reminders.

Yes. So, gratitude anchors that, you know, it it it's and I find that gratitude will

will keep me and this is the way I would say it. Gratitude keeps me focused on

what God is doing versus getting hung up on what I think he or I may think he's

not doing. Yes. Do you know what I mean? Cuz I I can get lost into this thing and I'm praying

about this thing and this thing. Gratitude kind of anchors me in on like where the grace is. And if I if I remain

focused in that, that's where the fruit is versus fussing over this and why isn't this happening and why, you know,

these these things aren't seeming to happen. So, um I treasure it, but I do

run up against a lot of like Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I need to be grateful. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, no, no, this is really

important. And to that end, that is where it is a discipline, right? That is it where it is like a, you know,

I'm here in Minnesota and often we have to throw salt down when it there's ice, right? And sometimes gratitude is like

that, right? You got to just like it's got to melt that layer of myopathy and

selffocus and narrowed perspective. And as you start to say, "God, look at this.

Look at this. Look at this." It's like that ice starts to melt and your problems don't go away and they don't become diminished in value, but they do

shrink. They do shrink under the the full view of a God that is giving you

the very breath in your lungs. they appropriately shrink and it allows you to go,

okay, okay, okay, this is real. It's okay. These are things that God wants to hear about, but man, it feels different

now than it did before I enacted this beautiful process of melting away my

narrow focus and I reminded myself of the goodness of God. That's really what gratitude has done in my life.

Yeah, very well said. You you speak these things very well. You articulate it uh from the heart in a really good

way. So I appreciate that. Yeah. Well, I Mark, I have so appreciated this conversation honestly

and I I feel like we we went very high level and I know you do a lot of work in very specific struggles that people deal

with. Uh I do want to point people to your website because I think this is where people can find all of what you do

and blogs and videos and resources and books. markdus.com. We will put it in the intro. I will

mention it in the show notes. All the all the places. But this is where people can find really specific practical

resources that we have to have another conversation. I'm already I'm gonna commit you live here so that you can't

say no. You got it. Um and we can get more specific, but I I think it was really an important 10,000

foot that that we were able to touch. But are there any other places you would send people to or thoughts that they you

know if they I don't know how how can they get more from you? That's great. um my website there. I do a lot of work on YouTube and Rumble and

uh I I live stream on Sundays and I I do a lot of um uh question answering. You

know, I get tons of questions every week. And when I was in the trenches, uh feeling like I I didn't know where to

turn. I would have wanted, you know, somebody I could ask. And so I that's part of my

journey. I've committed myself to just doing the best I can to be available to the battles to speak into them and some

of the nuances of the the the difficulties of it. So, um, so yeah, and I do weekly podcasting video content.

I've got books on on various topics. I'm continuing to get specific in uh mental

health aspects of Battlegrounds. Right now, it's been a lot of OCD, intrusive thought kind of stuff, but I also have a

lot of resources on anxiety and and and other areas too, depression, all that kind of stuff. So yeah, that's great.

Thank you for re for um for sharing that. Yeah, mark markdazus.com. Like I said, we'll put it everywhere. I

I absolutely love what you do. I know there are people in my life who have been massively encouraged by you. One of

my good friends. He's like, "You've got to have Mark on the podcast." So this is like awesome. That's so nice. A bucket list of his. He's he's actually

the guy that edits this. So his name is Steve and he will be editing this and I'm sure he'll be loving this

conversation. And so if it was just for him, uh, he's a good dear friend of mine. He's been in ministry with me for

17, 16 years, something crazy like that. That's awesome. Tell Steve to write to me. I'd love I'd love to just write him

back, you know. Yeah. Yeah. And he's one of the most phenomenal musicians. Cuz it sounds You were in worship, right? Worship leader.

Yeah. Yeah. He's one of the most amazing musicians you will you will ever meet. So maybe you guys should be friends. But

that is phenomenal. Awesome. Mark, thank you. Like I said, I'm going to hit end record here and let

this file upload. But I know our listeners are going to be blown away by this. Um, thank you. Thank you for your

work. Let's do this again. And uh, absolutely. Let's uh, let's talk soon. Thank you.

Thanks for watching Provoke and Inspire. If you enjoyed this content, could you do me a favor and hit that like button,

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