This morning we talk briefly about honor, and we compare it to healthy and unhealthy shame. Healthy shame can help us avoid behaviors which destroy ourselves and our communities, leading us to humility and appropriate dependence on others.

This morning we talk about what our fear tells us about ourselves.

In today’s class, we talk about the root causes of anger and how we can learn to express our anger in ways that do not harm ourselves or others.

Today we review what we talked about in the month of April, and then we discuss how giving true expression to our sadness allows us to honor the people and relationships we have lost. God, too, grieves when humanity’s thoughts are constantly on evil, or when the newly-freed Israelites rebel time and again in the wilderness, or when Jesus sees Lazarus’s tomb. God’s grief at the (self-)destruction of humanity shows us how much He truly values us.

In today’s class we talk about the feeling of loneliness. Sometimes our loneliness can let us know something isn’t right and maybe we crave relationships and connections we don’t have or have been avoiding. By listening to our loneliness we can grow in knowing ourselves, others, and God.

Today we discuss Hurt, the experience of emotional and spiritual pain. Not dealing with our pain can lead us into denial, masking our pain with self-destructive behaviors, and resentment. We can begin healing from Hurt when we acknowledge our pain to ourself, ask for help, take responsibility for our feelings through the healing process, and trust and hope God will heal us. 

In today’s class we look at why we are inherently valuable: God made us in His image to be His representatives on earth. We are also made to need relationships: this is not a sign of weakness but an acknowledgement who we are created to be.

In this first class of our series “Deep Calls to Deep: Spiritual Health for Men,” we discuss the psalms of King David help give us language for communicating our emotions to God, to ourselves, and to each other.

In today’s class we review the major points we’ve covered over the last three months. In summary: Although humans were created in God’s image to work with Him to rule creation together, we squandered that privilege and rebelled against God. Through baptism into Jesus’s death, burial, and resurrection, the indwelling Holy Spirit empowers us to fulfill Jesus’s ministry of bringing the world back under God’s reign and rule.