Dr Paul Allen

David Murray When a friend or family member experiences mental illness, it can often be a time of great confusion. What’s happening? What should I do or say? What should I pray for? I want to give you some specific petitions to bring to God, but our attitude in prayer is as important as our words, so I want to encourage you to pray with hope, patience, and love. Pray with hope because we are praying to the God of hope (Rom. 15:13), who encourages us to believe in his power when we and the sufferer feel powerless. God can fully heal mental illness, or he can give varying degrees of improvement, or he can give help in managing the condition better. As Jesus said, “What is impossible with man is possible with God” (Luke 18:27). Pray with patience because changes for the better can take a long time, and we can easily give up praying when so little change is evident. Praying for someone with mental illness is more like a marathon than a sprint. It will develop your patience muscles more tha...

On the last day of his vacation, Rob Moll leaned in to kiss his wife, Clarissa, before heading out for a hike in Mount Rainier National Park. “Have fun,” she whispered. “I will,” Rob said. He never returned.  On July 19, 2019, Rob Moll fell to his death on that mountain. Clarissa was left to raise four children alone. She writes, “All of the life we loved together vanished in a moment.” In the three years since Clarissa has walked honestly with Christ and pointed fellow sufferers to the hope that is both here and now as well as for heaven. In her book Beyond the Darkness: A Gentle Guide for Living with Grief and Thriving After Loss, Clarissa Moll offers the bereaved much-needed empathy and seeks to show them and those who would walk beside them how grieving souls can flourish after loss. Sorrow is a dark and painful road. You don’t need to walk it alone. The Bible says that “God is near to the brokenhearted,” but what does that look like when you’re lost in the darkness of agonizin...