Hi, and welcome to the Five Word Prayers Daily, a five-day-a-week daily devotional where we share the word, prayers, and our heart.

I'm Lisa Whittle, and I welcome you to just five minutes with me, which I trust and pray will be five minutes well spent.

Today's topic is a tough one, and I want to admit up front that I'm nervous to tackle it because I'm not an expert and I honor my limitations

in both what I know and what I speak about. So I want you to know going in that I do not come

as an expert, but rather as a friend. And also as a believer in Jesus who happens to believe

that the church should be talking about absolutely everything, even hard subjects,

maybe more so in that case.

We're talking mental illness today, so stick around because it's important.

A couple of months ago, I asked my faithful listeners what you wanted to hear about on the daily,

and many of you said you wanted to talk about mental illness. And I couldn't agree more that it needs

to be discussed. Now, before we get into it any further, let me say a couple of things. First,

we have to be realistic about a five-minute time

slot here and know that we're sort of shooting for the impossible in this discussion in this

time frame. Second, as I mentioned, I want to state clearly that I am no expert and I don't

pretend to be. And so my hope in the future is to get a mental health expert of some kind on my show to speak more about this.

I do have some counseling background, but it does not qualify for clinical advice.

But what I do have is lots of varying experience talking with many women from all over the country who suffer from different aspects of this.

So I am really sensitive to this, and I've done my own research a good bit.

I want to tell you what our five-word prayer today is early,

because I think it really defines what we need from the Lord on this subject on two different

levels, that of those who don't quite understand mental illness,

and those of us who are

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