Insights from Day 3 at CN705
- God is not so much interested in what you do but who you'll become.
- Surviving ministry is a matter of surviving depression.
- It is a high priority for pastors to prepare the people to deal with loss.
- Within 5 to 10 years, every teenager will be on antidepressant.
- Spurgeon: "Repose is as needful for the mind as sleep is to the body. Our Sabbaths are our day of toil, and if we do not rest upon some other day we shall break down."
- Disillusionment is inevitable when we “idealize” a calling.
- Abuse and misuse of our physiology is too easily “justified by our cause”.
- Everybody needs to be an expert in sleep. Seriously.
- Sometimes God do not prevent us from the consequences of our stupidity, but this is not for punishment but for discipline.
- Exercise plays a critical role in the regulation of our cortisol level.
- Some sleeping pills are just anaesthetics. They are not giving you sleep but are just shutting down your brain, which doesn't bring rejuvenation.
- Chronic stress can reduce the size of the Hippocampus in our brain by 30%, which reduces our ability to learn and to forget. Yet this is reversible by physical exercise, and by experience of love.
- Stress relates to the issue of control. To what extent do you have control over your life? We feel stress when we feel lack of control (helpless and hopeless). Therefore, the janitor is more stressed then the CEO, and the pastor is more stressed then the janitor (because s/he has the most bosses)
- If you surrender to the symptoms of depression, you will probably get through reactive depression sooner.
- Female feels their depression; male acts out their depression (such as through rage and addiction).
- Most male depression cases were misdiagnosed because all tests and assessment methods are female-based.
- We have adopted a theology and psychology of "feeling good" and it is tragic. Feeling good is of lowest priority. Survival is.
- Studies show that just by talking to a patient can change the biology of his/her brain. That's why psychotherapy works. That's also one of the reasons why preaching works.
- An observation: The classroom projector is not working but it is ok, because only 2 person in our class of 25 do not have a laptop in front of them with the powerpoint file already distributed to them through the class online forum. The 2 person who don't have a laptop use iPads. So we don't actually need the projector. It has become obsolete.
Labels: Reflection
