Category Archives: faith

Understanding Pastoral Anger and Healing

A Kind Word to the Angry Pastor

There’s a particular kind of Sunday morning you don’t forget. The sermon starts fine — maybe even tender. But somewhere around the third point, the volume climbs. The jaw tightens. The pulpit becomes less a place of proclamation and more a place of prosecution. And by the time the closing prayer comes, the congregation isn’t sure if they just heard good news or got scolded by a man who needed a nap and a counselor.

I know that pastor. I’ve sat under him. I’ve worked alongside him. And if I’m telling the truth, I’ve been him.

Anger in the pulpit is one of those open secrets of church life. Nobody puts it on the website. It rarely shows up in an elder report. But ask anyone who has spent a few years close to ministry, and the stories pour out. The blow-up in the staff meeting. The passive-aggressive text at 11pm. The sermon that felt less like Jesus and more like a man wrestling something the congregation couldn’t see. We don’t talk about it much, but it’s there. And the cost is enormous — to families, to churches, and to the watching world. Long before we had words like burnout or dysregulation, James said it plainly: “the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God” (James 1:20, ESV). That sentence has been quietly indicting pastors for two thousand years.

So let’s talk about it.

Most of Our Anger Isn’t Righteous

Pastors love to baptize their anger. You and I both know the move. We have a category for it: righteous indignation. Jesus flipped tables, after all. Paul rebuked Peter to his face. Paul did say “be angry and do not sin” (Ephesians 4:26, ESV), but the very next breath was a curfew on it — don’t let the sun go down on it. Most of our anger has been carrying us for years, not hours. So when your temper flares in a deacon’s meeting or your voice gets sharp with your spouse on the way home from church, you reach for the theological label that makes it holy. I’ve done it too.

But here’s the thing. Most of our anger isn’t righteous. Most of it is wounded. It’s tired. It’s afraid. It’s the slow accumulation of unmet expectations, financial stress, criticism we never processed, comparison with the bigger church down the road, sermons prepared late at night, and a prayer life thinner than we’d ever admit from the platform. We live in a culture that grades everyone on performance, and pastors step onto a stage every single week to be graded in real time. The gap between the man in the pulpit and the man at home grows wider until something has to give. Usually what gives is the temper.

The gospel is for the ungodly, and that includes you. You are not first a problem to be solved. You are a sinner loved by the same Jesus you proclaim. That doesn’t excuse the anger. But it locates it. You are not above your own sermons. You are their first hearer. And that is good news.

Your Anger Is Data

Three honest points, offered with care.

First, your anger is data, not destiny. When you snap at your wife, when you simmer through the staff meeting, when you preach with an edge you can’t quite explain, that’s information. It’s telling you something underneath is unhealed. Delight in God is meant to be the loudest thing about us. When anger gets louder, something underneath has gone quiet. Something else has slipped into the place joy was meant to hold — approval, control, vindication, being right. Anger is the smoke. Go find the fire. Jesus is not afraid of what you’ll find there.
Second, Jesus is not embarrassed by your need for help. Going to therapy is not a failure of faith. It is, often, an act of faith — the faith that says my soul is worth examining, my marriage is worth protecting, my congregation is worth a healthier shepherd. Talk to someone. A counselor. A spiritual director. A trusted friend who is not on your payroll. Pastors need other pastors in their lives who can tell them the truth. Find those people. And if you don’t have them yet, that itself is the first thing to fix.
Third, the people in your pews deserve a shepherd, not a prosecutor. Spurgeon once warned his students that a minister’s usefulness can be wrecked by his temper faster than by almost anything else. Your flock can forgive a clumsy sermon. They have a harder time forgiving the Sunday you made them flinch. Worship is the fuel and the goal of mission, and angry preaching does not fuel worship. It fuels fear. The nations will not be glad because we shouted them into submission. They will be glad because they met a Savior, often through a preacher whose own gladness in Christ was visible from the back row. Peter, of all people, told pastors to shepherd the flock “not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock” (1 Peter 5:3, ESV). The man who once swung a sword at a servant’s ear is the one warning us about the edge in our leadership. He knew.

What Actually Helps

Practically, a few things have helped me and other pastors I know. Get the sleep. Get the exercise. Get the Sabbath you keep telling your people to take. Anger thrives in exhausted bodies. Find a therapist who understands ministry, and go every other week whether you feel like you need it or not. Build one friendship outside your church where you don’t have to be the pastor. Confess your anger specifically — not the generic “Lord, forgive my sin” of the pastoral prayer, but the specific “Lord, I was cruel to her on Tuesday, and I need to apologize.”

And remember whose pulpit it is. It was never yours. When you preach like the church belongs to you and the people are failing you, the edge comes back. When you remember the church belongs to Jesus and you are all being met by him together, your voice settles.

One Last Thing

Here’s the thing. The gospel is not less true for pastors who struggle with anger. It might actually be more obviously true, because we of all people know how much we need it. The good news you preach on Sunday is the same good news you need on Monday when you replay the argument in your head and feel the shame creep in. Jesus did not call broken men into ministry by accident. He called you on purpose. And he keeps calling you, and he keeps healing you, slowly, one honest conversation at a time.

If you’re reading this with a knot in your stomach because you know — really know — that this is you, here’s the truth your anger has been drowning out: Jesus is not angry with his people. Jesus is not angry with you. Not the version of you who finally gets the temper under control. You, right now. The Savior you preach described himself with two words: gentle and lowly (Matthew 11:29, ESV). Not gentle with everyone except his pastors. The same gentleness you keep trying to offer your congregation is the gentleness already being offered to you. So before you step into the pulpit, or even into your week, let the gospel be preached to your own soul first. Before the visits, the meetings, the outcomes you’re chasing — let Jesus speak to you. And then, with curiosity instead of pressure, ask, what it might look like to step in this time without the same edge?

Is Your Faith Community Enabling Unhealthy Patterns?

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Olivia had been volunteering at church for twelve years—leading worship, organizing events, counseling members—sometimes staying until midnight and skipping meals. When she mentioned burnout, her pastor reminded her that God rewards sacrifice. So she stayed. Every time she thought about quitting, a voice whispered that real Christians don’t abandon their calling, that love means giving everything. Her identity became completely wrapped up in being the church’s dependable servant. It took a physical collapse for her to realize her church had taught her that her worth depended on what she produced, and saying no felt like spiritual failure.

Maybe that’s not your story. But if you’ve ever felt torn between your faith and your need to advocate for yourself, you’re not alone.

The Question So Many Christians Ask

Many Christians struggle with a nagging question: Does my religion actually support unhealthy, codependent dynamics? The answer is more nuanced than a simple yes or no. Christianity itself doesn’t inherently encourage codependency—but certain interpretations of Christian teachings absolutely can. Let’s break down what’s really happening and why it matters.

The Core Issue: Context Is Everything

Here’s the truth: Christianity contains profound teachings about love, sacrifice, and caring for others. The problem arises when these beautiful principles get twisted into justifications for staying in harmful relationships, ignoring your own needs, or accepting mistreatment. It’s not the faith itself or the bible; it’s how some communities teach and apply it.

Think of it like a knife—a knife can be used to injure or heal. A tool isn’t inherently good or bad, but how you use it matters enormously. The same is true for Christian doctrine.

Four Christian Teachings That Can Enable Codependency (When Misapplied)

1. Sacrificial Love and Self-Denial Gone Wrong

Christianity places a high value on agape—selfless, sacrificial love. Jesus taught radical self-denial and putting others’ needs before your own. Sounds beautiful, right? It is—in balance.

But here’s where it gets dangerous: when this teaching is applied without nuance, it can morph into a justification for endless self-sacrifice. If you interpret “turn the other cheek” or “love your enemies” as meaning you must tolerate abuse, stay in harmful relationships, or completely ignore your own wellbeing, you’ve crossed from virtue into self-harm.

The codependency trap: Prioritizing someone else’s emotional state above your own safety, staying in a relationship because leaving feels “selfish,” or believing that suffering in a relationship demonstrates spiritual maturity.

2. Forgiveness Without Healthy Boundaries

Christianity emphasizes forgiveness—and this is genuinely a beautiful teaching. But there’s a critical misunderstanding many people have about what forgiveness actually means.

Forgiveness is not the same as reconciliation. Forgiveness is an internal process where you release resentment and bitterness. Reconciliation is rebuilding a relationship with someone. You can forgive someone without trusting them again. You can forgive someone without staying in their life.

Yet many churches teach forgiveness as if it requires unlimited second chances, unconditional trust, and continued closeness with someone who hasn’t changed. This creates a spiritual trap: if you set boundaries or end a relationship with someone who hurt you, you’re accused of being unforgiving, judgmental, or unchristian.

The codependency trap: Staying in contact with emotionally draining or abusive people because leaving feels like you’re failing spiritually. Feeling guilty for protecting yourself.

3. Submission and Obedience Taken Literally

Traditional Christian teaching on submission—particularly the passage where wives are told to submit to husbands—has been used for centuries to justify power imbalances and suppress voices, especially women’s voices.

When submission is taught as unquestioning obedience rather than mutual respect, it creates a hierarchy where one person’s needs consistently override another’s. This can enable abuse, silence complaints about mistreatment, and normalize staying in unhealthy marriages “for the sake of the vow.”

The codependency trap: Accepting mistreatment because you’re told it’s your spiritual duty to submit. Feeling unable to leave a harmful relationship because religious leaders tell you that divorce violates God’s will.

4. Guilt and Shame as Spiritual Weapons

Some Christian traditions wield guilt and shame as motivators for spiritual growth. While conviction can be healthy, weaponized guilt is corrosive.

If you’re made to feel that setting boundaries is selfish, that prioritizing your mental health is faithless, or that leaving a bad relationship means you’re failing God, you’ve entered a guilt-based system. This keeps people trapped because their own survival instincts conflict with their spiritual identity.

The codependency trap: Believing that taking care of yourself is inherently sinful. Feeling morally deficient for having needs or limits.

What Christianity Actually Teaches About Healthy Relationships

Here’s what often gets overlooked: Christianity has powerful teachings that support boundaries, self-respect, and healthy relationships.

A. Human Dignity and Worth

The foundation of Christian anthropology is that humans are made in God’s image. Your worth isn’t conditional on what you do for others. You’re not valuable because you’re useful or helpful—you’re valuable because you exist. Full stop.

This belief directly contradicts the core of codependency, which is the idea that your value depends on meeting others’ needs.

B. You are a Steward of Your Body

Paul wrote that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. This isn’t just about avoiding substance abuse—it’s about respecting and caring for your own body and mind. You’re called to steward your physical and mental health. That includes rest, boundaries, and protection from harm.

C. Wisdom Includes Discernment

Biblical wisdom literature, especially Proverbs, is full of warnings about recognizing harmful people and avoiding entanglement with them. “The prudent see danger and take refuge, but the simple keep going and pay the penalty” (Proverbs 22:3). The Bible isn’t calling you to naively accept mistreatment; it’s calling you to be wise.

D. Love Your Neighbor As Yourself

This is the big one. The greatest commandment includes loving your neighbor as yourself. Notice what that implies: love of self is the baseline. You’re supposed to love others with the same care and respect you give yourself. If you don’t respect or care for yourself—if you allow yourself to be harmed, controlled, or drained—then you’re not actually following this commandment.

So What’s the Real Problem?

The issue isn’t the Bible or the Faith. The issue is how it’s taught and interpreted.

A church that emphasizes unconditional submission, guilt-based spirituality, and forgiveness without boundaries will absolutely enable codependent thinking. The same religion taught by a pastor who says “boundaries are biblical,” “you’re worthy of respect,” and “forgiveness doesn’t mean tolerating abuse” will support healthy dynamics.

What to Ask Yourself

If you’re wondering whether your faith community is enabling unhealthy patterns, consider these questions:

Are you being encouraged to ignore your own needs for the sake of peace or spirituality?
Are boundaries framed as selfish rather than wise?
Are you made to feel guilty for wanting to leave a harmful relationship?
Do leaders emphasize submission and obedience more than mutual respect?
Are you told that your suffering demonstrates spiritual maturity?

If you answered yes to any of these, it might be worth finding a faith community—or a therapist—that teaches a healthier integration of spirituality and self-care.

The Bottom Line

Christianity doesn’t require codependency. But poorly taught Christianity can absolutely enable it. The good news? You can hold onto your faith while also respecting your own needs, setting boundaries, and leaving unhealthy relationships or communities. In fact, that alignment—faith that supports your flourishing rather than your suffering—is where spiritual health lives.

ADHD Prayer Habits: 6 ways to stay consistent in your walk with Jesus

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Faith & Neurodiversity

On ADHD, the spiritual life, and the grace that holds us together

You open your Bible with every intention in the world. You find the passage. You settle in. And then — somewhere in the first two verses — you’re mentally replanning your entire week, or wondering whether that thing you said at lunch on Thursday came across wrong, or noticing that the ceiling fan is slightly wobbly. By the time you surface, the devotion is over, and whatever God might have been saying has dissolved like morning mist.

If that’s you — and if you have ADHD, there’s a very good chance it is — I want you to hear something important before we go any further: that isn’t a faith problem. It’s a brain chemistry problem. And God, who designed your particular brain down to its last neuron, has never once been thrown off by how it works.

God wasn’t surprised by the diagnosis. He isn’t disappointed by the distraction. And he has not put your spiritual growth on hold until you figure out how to sit still for thirty minutes.

What ADHD actually does to your devotional life

ADHD affects something called working memory — essentially the brain’s short-term scratchpad where you hold information while you’re using it. For many of us with ADHD, that scratchpad has a slow leak. You read a verse that genuinely moves you, and by the time you’ve reached the end of the paragraph, the feeling is gone and you can’t quite remember what sparked it.

It also affects dopamine — the brain’s primary motivation and reward chemical. Stillness and silence, which are often held up as the ideal of Christian devotion, can actually be some of the hardest environments for the ADHD brain. Without enough external stimulation, the ADHD mind generates its own noise. The quiet that is supposed to help you hear God can feel like standing in the middle of a busy intersection.

I say all of this not to give you an excuse to skip your quiet time, but to help you stop carrying the weight of unnecessary shame. Understanding what’s happening neurologically is the first step toward building a spiritual life that actually works for you — not against you.

“Be still and know that I am God.” The Hebrew word translated “be still” is raphah — it means to let go, to release, to cease striving. That’s an invitation to surrender, not a command to sit motionless. There are many ways to let go.

You might be more spiritually wired than you think

Here’s something worth celebrating before we talk strategy: the same ADHD brain that makes a traditional quiet time hard is often the same brain that, when it locks onto Jesus, produces a depth and intensity of worship that is genuinely extraordinary. The capacity for hyperfocus — that tunnel-vision state where the ADHD brain is fully lit up — is a remarkable gift when it gets pointed at the right thing. The big-picture, pattern-seeing, connection-making tendencies that come with ADHD are the exact same tendencies that help people grasp the grand sweep of the gospel in ways that take many years to see.

Many of the most passionate, creative, movement-starting people in church history — the ones who couldn’t stop talking about Jesus, who pioneered new ways of reaching people, who refused to sit still for the status quo — would almost certainly meet the diagnostic criteria for ADHD today. Your wiring isn’t a liability. It just needs the right outlet.

Six practical ways to build a consistent walk with Jesus

1. Write it down before it disappears

Don’t try to remember what God says to you in your quiet time — your working memory will almost certainly drop it. Instead, keep a journal open while you read, and write one sentence before you close your Bible. One takeaway. One prayer. One word. It doesn’t need to be deep. “He is with me today” is enough. The act of writing it externalises the thought and gives it somewhere to live outside your head.

2. Pray with your body, not just your mind

Walking prayer isn’t a consolation prize for people who can’t manage “real prayer.” For the ADHD brain, physical movement actually regulates the nervous system and can quiet the mental chatter that silence alone makes worse. Pray out loud on a walk. Pace your room. Do the dishes while you talk to God. Your body and your soul are deeply connected, and when one gets engaged, the other often follows.

3. Go short and frequent instead of long and rare

One forty-five-minute quiet time might be working against your neurology. Three or more five-minute touchpoints spread through the day might serve you far better. Set phone alarms with encouraging labels. Use transition moments — the shower, the commute, the few minutes before bed — as quick on-ramps to awareness of God’s presence. With spiritual habits, consistency across the week matters far more than duration in a single session.

4. Engage more than one sense with scripture

Read it out loud. Listen to the audio Bible while you drive. Use a Bible with room to underline, circle, and doodle in the margins. When your visual, auditory, and physical systems are all engaged with the text at once, the information has more entry points into your memory. A passage heard three times is far more likely to stick than a passage read once in silence.

5. Build your prayer life into your environment

Stop relying on yourself to remember who and what to pray for — your working memory is not a reliable filing system, and that’s okay. Put sticky notes where you’ll see them. Keep a small whiteboard with names on it near your desk. Record a voice memo to God when something hits you. The goal is to move the weight of remembering out of your head and into your physical space, where it can prompt you without effort.

6. Don’t try to do this alone

One of the most neurologically effective things you can do for your spiritual life is to tie it to other people. A prayer partner, a small group, a regular Sunday rhythm — all of these provide external structure and social accountability that your own executive function genuinely struggles to generate by itself. You were designed for community. Leaning into that isn’t weakness; it’s wisdom.

The grace that doesn’t depend on your focus

Let me close with the most important thing I want you to take away, because everything else I’ve said is just strategy — and strategy without gospel is just self-improvement with religious vocabulary.

God’s nearness to you isn’t a reward for successfully completing your quiet time. His love does not rise and fall with your ability to stay focused on a passage. On the mornings when your devotions are rich and full and you feel like you could hear the Lord clearly — and on the mornings when you opened your Bible and immediately disappeared into a thirty-minute thought spiral about something completely unrelated — in both of those mornings, you are equally held, equally seen, equally loved.

The gospel isn’t “try harder and God will meet you.” The gospel is that Jesus came all the way to us, in our distraction and our weakness and our inability to get it together, and he said, “I want to walk with you anyway.” That’s the foundation everything else is built on.

If your brain makes traditional forms of devotion hard, you are not disqualified from depth with God. You may simply need a different path to the same destination. And the God who made your wiring is happy to walk that path with you — at whatever pace, in whatever shape, your beautiful and particular mind can manage.

7 Steps to Overcome Self Defeat

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Faith & Mental Wellness

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Scripture have more in common than you might think. Here’s how to use both to get out of your own way.

We’ve all been there — paralyzed in front of a task we know we need to do, talking ourselves out of starting, drowning in “I can’t,” “I’ll fail,” or “what’s the point?” Procrastination and self-defeating behavior aren’t laziness. They’re the fruit of distorted thinking. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) teaches us to identify and correct those mental distortions — and remarkably, the Bible has been making the same case for millennia. Here are seven principles to live by.

1. Identify the thought, then question it

CBT’s foundational move is catching automatic negative thoughts before they drive your behavior. When you think “I always fail at things like this,” pause and ask: Is that actually true? What evidence do I have? What would I say to a friend who said this? Most self-defeating thoughts collapse under honest scrutiny.

“We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” 2 Corinthians 10:5

2. Replace catastrophizing with realistic thinking

Catastrophizing — imagining the worst possible outcome as certain — is one of procrastination’s favorite tools. CBT calls this a cognitive distortion. The remedy isn’t blind optimism; it’s honest, grounded appraisal. Ask: “What is the most likely outcome?” rather than “What if everything falls apart?” Accurate thinking, not wishful thinking, is the goal.

“For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.” 2 Timothy 1:7

3. Break tasks into small, concrete steps

Procrastination thrives on vagueness. “Work on the project” is paralyzing. “Open the document and write one paragraph” is doable. CBT encourages behavioral activation — the practice of taking small, specific actions to disrupt avoidance cycles. Momentum builds from motion, not the other way around.

“Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin.” Zechariah 4:10 (NLT)

4. Challenge the “I’m not good enough” story

Core beliefs are the deep, often unconscious convictions we hold about ourselves — and “I am fundamentally not good enough” is one of the most common. CBT works to surface and restructure these beliefs with evidence and healthier alternatives. You are not your worst performance or your harshest critic’s verdict.

“I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.” Psalm 139:14

5. Renew your mind daily — literally

CBT works through repetition. Correcting a distortion once doesn’t rewire a neural pathway; doing it consistently over time does. This is why journaling, thought records, and daily reflection are central to the practice. The mind changes through sustained, deliberate attention — a truth therapy and faith share completely.

“Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Romans 12:2

6. Act despite the feeling — don’t wait to feel ready

One of CBT’s most liberating insights is that action doesn’t have to wait for emotion. You don’t need to feel motivated to start — starting creates motivation. Self-defeaters often say “I’ll do it when I feel like it.” But feeling like it often comes after doing, not before. Emotions follow behavior more than they lead it.

“Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might.” Ecclesiastes 9:10

7. Practice self-compassion, not self-condemnation

Beating yourself up for procrastinating doesn’t produce action — it produces shame, and shame produces more avoidance. CBT encourages you to treat yourself with the same grace you’d offer a struggling friend. Acknowledge the setback, understand what drove it, and redirect without punishing yourself into paralysis.

“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Romans 8:1

The bottom line

CBT and the Bible both insist that transformation is possible — not through willpower alone, but through the consistent, courageous work of reshaping how we think. Whether your support comes from a therapist’s office or a morning devotional (ideally both), the invitation is the same: examine your thoughts, reject what’s false, choose what’s true, and take the next small step. That’s where freedom begins.