At the Frontier

If you struggle with mental illness, you are not alone.

In fact, 1 in 5 U.S. adults and 1 in 6 children experience mental illness each year.

Which can ripple into further issues: a higher risk of developing cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, substance abuse, higher unemployment, high schoolers are more than twice as likely to drop out of school.

Alarmingly, the suicide rate in the U.S. has increased by 35% since 1999.

Is it different in the Church? Are Christians free from struggling with mental illness?

What happens when loving Jesus doesn't cure you of depression, anxiety or suicidal thoughts?

Maybe you're told to "choose joy" or "pray more" and you beg God to take away the pain, but nothing eases the ache inside. So you just want a way out.

That's what Sarah J. Robinson had to fight through as a person of faith—someone in ministry. Now she's out with a new book, titled: "I Love Jesus, But I Want to Die: Finding Hope in the Darkness of Depression" to help you discover that mental illness doesn't disqualify you from living a rich, beautiful life in Christ. That there is hope.

This episode discusses depression, self-harm and suicide. If you need someone to talk to when you feel overwhelmed, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is available 24/7 at 1-800-273-TALK.

EPISODE SHOWNOTES

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FIGHT FOR GOOD. Give to The Salvation Army.

Have you ever heard of Arsinoe? Or Salome? or Susanna? or Joanna? or Mary of Clopas for that matter?

These are just a few of the female disciples of Jesus who were well-known for their ministry in his day, yet we barely know of today.

Recognizing the inconsistency of how women were named in the gospels and how those stories were preserved helps us to understand just how ignored or suppressed the stories of women have been.

That's why Cara Quinn started Know Your Mothers, a project that seeks to unearth the buried stories of Christian women over the centuries to reveal encouragement and fresh insight.

Cara spent 15 years working in advertising as an art director and designer, and graduated from Fuller Theological Seminary in 2019 with a master's in theology. A mother herself, and a lover of church history, she set out to not only empower us today but to correct misunderstandings about how God equips women to lead in our midst.

The Know Your Mothers project features a different woman each week, diving into her story, personality and impact on the church...and in this episode, Cara shares a name I've never heard.

EPISODE SHOWNOTES

WHAT'S YOUR CAUSE? Take our quiz.

STUDY SCRIPTURE. Get inside the collection.

GATHER WITH CARING MOMS. Join the group.

BE INSPIRED. Follow us on Instagram.

FIGHT FOR GOOD. Give to The Salvation Army.

Men lead. Women follow. The Bible tells us so.

Or does it?

Is there a divine order when it comes to men and women?

What if so-called "biblical womanhood" isn't biblical at all but arose from a series of clearly definable historical moments?

What if there is a better way forward for the contemporary church?

Dr. Beth Allison Barr lays out clear evidence that there is in her new book, "The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth."

Barr is a professor of history and associate dean of the Graduate School at Baylor University.

She's been teaching world history for more than two decades while also a pastor's wife. And as she'll tell you, there's more to the story when it comes to those verses on women's submission and silence.

In this episode, she shares some of the evidence, calls to flip the Christian narrative around patriarchy and offers a vision for a truly biblical view of womanhood.

EPISODE SHOWNOTES

WHAT'S YOUR CAUSE? Take our quiz.

STUDY SCRIPTURE. Get inside the collection.

GATHER WITH CARING MOMS. Join the group.

BE INSPIRED. Follow us on Instagram.

FIGHT FOR GOOD. Give to The Salvation Army.

Take a quick inventory:

• Do you often feel tired when you wake up in the morning?
• Have difficulty concentrating?
• Are your emotions easily affected by the actions of others?
• Have headaches, muscle aches, or generalized fatigue with no known medical diagnosis?
• Do you depend on quick energy fixes like caffeine or sugar to help you get through the day?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, chances are you're in need of genuine rest.

How can you keep your energy, happiness, creativity and relationships thriving in the midst of never-ending family demands, career pressures and simply the stress of everyday life?

Here's the doctor's orders: Rest is not optional.

Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith is an author, speaker, and board-certified physician with an active medical practice in Alabama.

And she's found seven types of rest lacking in the lives of those she treats: physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, sensory, social and creative. Plus, she knows firsthand the toll a deficiency of rest can take.

Her book combines the science, spirituality, gifts and resulting fruit of rest. And she's on the show to share how you can find and embrace true rest today to live the good life we're all after.

EPISODE SHOWNOTES

WHAT'S YOUR CAUSE? Take our quiz.

STUDY SCRIPTURE. Get inside the collection.

GATHER WITH CARING MOMS. Join the group.

BE INSPIRED. Follow us on Instagram.

FIGHT FOR GOOD. Give to The Salvation Army.

The New Republic observed in 2019 that "America seems to be in the midst of a full-blown panic attack."

And then came 2020...and with it, an exhausting instability.

By the end of March 2020, 45 percent of Americans said stress from worrying about the virus was negatively affecting their mental health.

In April 2020, a government emergency hotline for emotional distress heard from 20k people—compared with just 1,800 in April 2019.

But—pandemic or not—this rise in anxiety isn't all that surprising. It could be expected, in fact, when our unchanging faith collides with a changing culture.

That's what authors Sarah Zylstra and Collin Hansen explore in their new book: "Gospelbound: Living with Resolute Hope in an Anxious Age."

The influence of Christians with hearts tangled up in the gospel seems to be waning just as we're needed most. But there's another story unfolding, too.

Sarah, senior writer and faith-and-work editor for The Gospel Coalition, is on the show to counter growing fears with a robust message of a gritty, real, resolute hope for anyone hungry for good news.

EPISODE SHOWNOTES

WHAT'S YOUR CAUSE? Take our quiz.

STUDY SCRIPTURE. Get inside the collection.

GATHER WITH CARING MOMS. Join the group.

BE INSPIRED. Follow us on Instagram.

FIGHT FOR GOOD. Give to The Salvation Army.

Love others.

I imagine you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who'd disagree with this sentiment in theory. But what about practically speaking, when it comes down to actually loving others?

We're back today with part two on loving others with Lt. Colonel Dean Pallant.

If you missed last week, listen to part one for what it means to love others with Dean Pallant. He's the Communications Director for The Salvation Army United Kingdom with the Republic of Ireland Territory and recently spoke at a virtual Salvation Army holiness retreat about loving others. In part two today, he gets into details of really loving others.

As he says: "We need a practical, perfect love that can thrive in the gutter. We must be able to love others when the rubber hits the road of life."

So how do we do it?

EPISODE SHOWNOTES

WHAT'S YOUR CAUSE? Take our quiz.

STUDY SCRIPTURE. Get inside the collection.

GATHER WITH CARING MOMS. Join the group.

BE INSPIRED. Follow us on Instagram.

FIGHT FOR GOOD. Give to The Salvation Army.

Love your neighbors.

Lt. Colonel Dean Pallant says he believes this is one of the most challenging aspects of the greatest commandment.

There's people we don't agree with—maybe even don't like. People who've wronged us—maybe even gotten away with it.

And yet, Mark 12:30-31 says this: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these."

Dean Pallant is Communications Director for The Salvation Army United Kingdom with the Republic of Ireland Territory and author of the book, "To Be Like Jesus: Christian Ethics for a 21st century Salvation Army," addressing many of the big issues challenging Christ-followers today.

And as he says, to learn how to love others, we must look to Jesus.

Dean Pallant recently spoke at a virtual Salvation Army holiness retreat about loving others. His exploration is powerful and practical, so we're bringing it to you here in two parts.

First, what does it mean to love others?

EPISODE SHOWNOTES

WHAT'S YOUR CAUSE? Take our quiz.

STUDY SCRIPTURE. Get inside the collection.

GATHER WITH CARING MOMS. Join the group.

BE INSPIRED. Follow us on Instagram.

FIGHT FOR GOOD. Give to The Salvation Army.

When The Salvation Army began responding to COVID-19 in March 2020, there simply was no way to know the sheer breadth the response would take.

Now, a year later, the need remains great, and the response isn't over. The Salvation Army is still providing food, rent and mortgage and utility assistance, lodging and emotional and spiritual care, and more. To date, The Salvation Army has provided more than 6 million to those in need in the Western U.S. during the pandemic.

And yet many of the needs The Salvation Army has met over the last year weren't unique to the pandemic.

Hear 10 new ways The Salvation Army met old needs over the last year—and then, how you can go about finding your why, too.

EPISODE SHOWNOTES

WHAT'S YOUR CAUSE? Take our quiz.

STUDY SCRIPTURE. Get inside the collection.

GATHER WITH CARING MOMS. Join the group.

BE INSPIRED. Follow us on Instagram.

FIGHT FOR GOOD. Give to The Salvation Army.

What are your plans for the New Year?

Will it depend on how things are going in the moment?

It doesn't need to. You really can trust God's plan for your life—in all things, no matter what your life looks like right now.

That's what Megan Fate Marshman explores in her new book, a power-packed, biblical look at Jeremiah 29:11-14—a familiar passage that begins: "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, …

So how is God inviting us to practically trust him through Jeremiah 29?

How can we take active steps to trust God regularly?

And how does trusting God's plans for our lives change the way we live?

Megan is on the show to share just that.

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Story may be the most compelling way to deliver information, which we can assume is why Jesus delivered so many of his messages in parables—story.

Russ Ramsey explores the narrative arc of the Bible from Genesis through Revelation in a new way in his three-part series: Retelling the Story. While staying true to Scripture, Russ shares these familiar stories with visual, compelling language allowing us to connect with God's word through our imagination.

As one endorser wrote, Russ helps us "rescue truth from the jaws of familiarity."

Russ is a pastor at Christ Presbyterian Church in Nashville, and allows his own life experience to influence his storytelling—as a father, for instance, exploring how Joseph must've felt as his wife delivered a baby in a barn.

He's on the show today to share more about the series, and especially part one: "The Advent of The Lamb of God." He's also going to read an excerpt from it as a gift to us.

I hope you can sit somewhere quiet, and allow your imagination to picture each little detail of this beautiful story.

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