I love the humble and empathetic Ty Pennington.

Empathy is said to be “feeling your pain in my heart.” Ty certainly does that and we certainly can see and feel his pain can’t we?

I am glad he is using his flock following assets to cast a positive or much needed light on Mental Illness. Maybe somehow he can take the negative stigma out of it to show that even beautiful and successful people suffer from debilitating brain malfunctions.

The apostle Paul talked about a thorn in his flesh that he asked be removed on three different occasions. We are not sure what the thorn was but we do know that it was a painfully, relentless, insidious, thorn-like irritant he wanted desperately relieved of.

In my opinion, mental illness is like a thorn in your heal. Everytime you walk you feel it and then are driven to sit down with needle, magnifined glass, and peroxide to dig and boil it out.

However with much of the ineffective psychiatric treatments and lack of knowledge, most of us have to just endure our thorns. That’s what Ty does, that’s what I do, and thats what Paul did–he said the following:

(2 Corinthians 12:7-10) . . .Therefore, that I might not feel overly exalted, there was given me a thorn in the flesh, an angel of Satan, to keep slapping me, that I might not be overly exalted. In this behalf I three times entreated the Lord that it might depart from me; and yet he really said to me: “My undeserved kindness is sufficient for you; for [my] power is being made perfect in weakness.” Most gladly, therefore, will I rather boast as respects my weaknesses, that the power of the Christ may like a tent remain over me. Therefore I take pleasure in weaknesses, in insults, in cases of need, in persecutions and difficulties, for Christ. For when I am weak, then I am powerful.

Did you notice Paul likened his thorn to an angel of Satan who kept slapping him? That would win a pulitzer prize for explanatory journalism!

Sometimes mental illness seems to be sadistic doesn’t it? Certainly mental illness classifies as an inherited weakness that wicked spirits could peck at.

I guess the final point is that we must endure our mental weaknesses because some just don’t presently have a cure. We have God’s help now and a Bible based, promised hope that in the near future all human disabilities will be permanently removed.

Notice the effective meds God will use at that time to heal us:

(Revelation 22:1-2) . . .And he showed me a river of water of life, clear as crystal, flowing out from the throne of God and of the Lamb  down the middle of its broad way. And on this side of the river and on that side [there were] trees of life producing twelve crops of fruit, yielding their fruits each month. And the leaves of the trees [were] for the curing of the nations.