In the same way that we attend to our physical health with some simple principles – regular exercise, a balanced diet, doctor visits when needed – and our spiritual health – taking solo time for Bible reading and prayer, being involved in a church, reaching out to serve and speak about Jesus – there are parallel principles that apply to our emotional health.

Eternity is giving me an opportunity to share some of the very practical tips and principles that I have learnt over my three decades of work as a Christian clinical psychologist in this new series called ‘Well on the Way’. And I am excited! This stuff really matters and it can make a difference in your life.

We have an extraordinary message; an extraordinary Person to introduce to our friends and neighbours.

As followers of Jesus, we have work to do. We have an extraordinary message; an extraordinary Person to introduce to our friends and neighbours. As a teenager, an idea was planted in my head that I continue to find helpful. The reason we aren’t zapped back to heaven when we are converted is that God has two fundamental roles for us to play on this earth. The first is telling others about him and serving in his name. The second is that our growth and change, our transformation into the likeness of Jesus, brings glory and honour to him. They are two big topics but they keep life in perspective.

They keep the hard stuff in perspective too. The suffering, the conflict, the pain – it actually has a purpose. God can bring purpose out of it. He is using it.

I know I walk a fine line here and that some readers will have been through unimaginable hardship and heartache, but it is a fundamental Christian idea, that our suffering is not meaningless. As Tim Keller writes (in Walking with God through Pain and Suffering) suffering is not optional on this planet, but it has the capacity to make you or break you, as a person and as a Christian.  It will harden your heart to him or soften it.

And I don’t have to tell you that good emotional health will make all of this easier. Good emotional health will allow you to function, to cope with whatever life serves up, to keep perspective and to stay on track; to stay ‘well on the way’.

We have to find skills to cope, ideas to guide us through and back to God, our one constant source of bread and water and love and life.

My intention is to share, not only some insights from my work as a Christian clinical psychologist, some of the relevant research and lots of Biblical principles, but also some bits from my own life. As that will keep it real! I turned 60 this year and have two of our three adult children living under our roof. My husband got a cancer diagnosis last year, so we are on that journey, of chemo, scans, doctors, prayer, unknowns … but none of that changes any of the above! It just makes it more honest. We are on our own emotional roller-coaster and leaning into the skills and strategies that we have learned, in a whole new way.

Because it is a battle, it’s spiritual warfare until we finally get Home, and there is nothing Satan likes more than to immobilise and paralyse servants of the King with cords of emotional dysfunction – crippling anxiety, desperate depression, relentless conflict, tortured addictions, crushing trauma, miserable marriages, grief and loss and pain.

We have to find skills to cope, ideas to guide us through and back to God, our one constant source of bread and water and love and life. So, stay tuned for more of this Well on the Way series! My hope and prayer is that this series will be really useful, practical, accessible, relevant, biblical and applicable, with ideas and strategies to equip and empower us to stay as healthy as we can on this all-important journey called life.

Sue Bartho is a clinical psychologist who runs Well on the Way Psychology in Sydney. To read more articles in this series, click here.