You left service on a high. The song wrecked you, the word landed, you cried good tears and felt lighter than you had in weeks. Then Monday came, and the same heaviness was sitting on the edge of your bed waiting for you. And a thought you have not said out loud shows up with it: if my faith were stronger, I would not still feel like this.
Here is the short of it, so you have it before anything else. Yes, you can love Jesus and go to therapy. Minister Maliek Blade puts it plainly: God made counselors, doctors, and medicine, and a powerful church moment was never meant to be the whole answer to what you carry. Faith and a therapist are not rivals. Treating them like rivals is what keeps a lot of believers stuck.
A content note before we go further. This piece talks about depression and mentions suicide among pastors. If you are in a dark place right now, you are not alone, and you do not have to white-knuckle it by yourself. In the US you can call or text 988, any hour, to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. Talk to your pastor and a trained professional. Reaching for help is not a failure of faith. It is faith using the hands God gave it.
When does a worship high stop helping and start hiding?
Start where Blade starts, because he is not attacking the worship. He loves it. He grew up in lively Black churches and he means it when he says the emotion is real. The release is real. The problem is what we do with the release.
Blade names a quiet trap. A great sermon or a great song gives you a genuine release, and then you quietly file that release as the resolution. The high becomes the answer instead of a step toward one. You feel better Sunday, so you tell yourself you are better, and you never do the harder work the rest of the week.
“Sometimes our emotional experiences in church are a release, but we also tend to use them as our resolution. And that, I believe, is a mistake.” (Maliek Blade)
Someone will push back here, and fairly. Are you saying my worship is fake, or that the Holy Spirit cannot actually meet me on a Sunday? No. Blade is not saying the encounter is not real. He is saying a real encounter and unaddressed pain can live in the same person at the same time. The cry that breaks you open is a beginning. It was never meant to be the whole healing. Mistaking the doorway for the destination is how good worshipers stay wounded for years.
Isn’t getting help a sign your faith is weak?
This is the objection under all the others, so let it stand at full strength. If God can heal anything, and he can, then needing a therapist or a pill looks like a vote of no confidence in him. Real faith should be enough. That is the logic a lot of us absorbed without ever being taught it on purpose.
Blade believes God can heal anything too. He also believes the rest of the verse. Faith without works is dead. Sometimes the faithful work, the actual obedience, is to go get help.
“The person with diabetes should pray, but also take their insulin. The person with a broken bone should pray, but they should also wear their cast.” (Maliek Blade)
Notice nobody questions the diabetic. We do not tell her the insulin means she does not trust God. We let her pray and take the medicine, and we call that wisdom. Blade is asking why the mind is the one organ we expect to heal on prayer alone. Some problems are spiritual, and they need spiritual answers. Some problems are not only spiritual, and pretending otherwise is not faith. It is neglect with a Bible verse on it.
Dr. Anita Phillips, a therapist and minister who has sat with this on the Jude 3 Project, refuses the either-or completely. She does not pick a lane. She names the whole toolbox.
“Plead the blood of Jesus, cast out the devil, go to therapy, take the medication, get the exercise, spend time with friends. There is no one approach to being well.” (Anita Phillips)
And she names the lie underneath the stigma, the one that does the real damage:
“Don’t let the enemy trick you into abandoning your God because you got help from something that God provided.” (Anita Phillips)
Read that again slowly. The trap is not the therapy. The trap is being shamed away from a gift God himself put in the world.
Why does “just pray about it” sometimes make it worse?
Because it is sometimes the cruelest thing a hurting person can hear, and Blade does not soften this. He has heard mental illness called a demonic issue from the pulpit. He has heard grieving people told everything happens for a reason. He is direct about where that comes from.
It did not come from the Holy Spirit. God made the church, and God made the professionals, and leaning on a counselor does not rob God of one ounce of his power.
“God has provided us with counselors, therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, and medication to deal with the realities of this life that come with the fall.” (Maliek Blade)
Pastor Otis Moss III, who lost his own sister to suicide, presses the same nerve from the other side of grief. He points out how differently we treat the body. You would never tell someone with cancer or COVID to simply pray it away, he says, so why do we say exactly that to someone whose illness happens to be in the mind. Moss is honest about how deep the stigma runs even in him. For a long time he could not say out loud that his sister took her life. When people asked, he told them she had a terminal illness. That is what shame does. It puts a cleaner word in your mouth and leaves you alone with the real one.
The objection here is sincere, so answer it kindly. Doesn’t “pray about it” honor God’s power? It can, when it sends a person to God and to the help God provided. It wounds when it is used to end the conversation, to get an uncomfortable pain out of the room. Prayer that closes the door on help is not high faith. It is fear wearing faith’s clothes.
Where does the strong one go when he’s empty?
Blade has a particular burden for men, and he backs it with his life. He runs a nonprofit, the Whole Brother Mission, that connects men to mental health care and helps cover the cost. He is trying to break one specific silence.
Men get cast as the strong ones, the steady ones, the ones everybody else leans on. So the question Blade keeps asking is the one nobody asks back:
“Where does the pastor go when he’s not feeling hopeful about the future? Where does the encourager go?” (Maliek Blade)
He says naming that can save lives, and he says it in the shadow of real pastoral suicides, not as a hypothetical. The encourager is running on empty in front of a full room, and the room has no idea.
Dieula Previlon, in her own Jude 3 conversation on this exact question, guards the balance so it does not tip into therapy-as-savior. She will not separate the healing from Jesus.
“I don’t know how you can go about the healing journey without Jesus.” (Dieula Previlon)
And she will not let therapy carry more than it can bear either. On therapy, she says plainly, “It’s not the end all be all.” Her instruction for living in the tension is four words long.
“Hold both, and don’t let go.” (Dieula Previlon)
That is the whole answer in miniature. Not Jesus or the therapist. Jesus and the help he provided, held in the same two hands, neither one dropped.
Quick answers
Can you be a Christian and go to therapy? Yes. Blade says faith and therapy are not rivals. God made counselors and medicine for life in a fallen world.
Isn’t needing therapy a sign of weak faith? No. Blade compares it to insulin for diabetes or a cast for a broken bone. You pray, and you get the help you need. Anita Phillips warns against being tricked into leaving God because you used a gift God provided.
What does Blade mean by church as escape? Using a worship high as the resolution to your pain instead of a step toward real healing.
Why does “just pray about it” sometimes hurt? Otis Moss III notes we would never say it to someone with cancer. Used to end the conversation, it shames the hurting instead of helping them.
Why focus on men? Men are cast as the strong ones and often have nowhere to be weak. Blade’s ministry exists to break that silence, especially after recent pastoral suicides.
Does seeing a professional dishonor God? No. Blade says God created both the church and the professionals, and a miracle can come through a counselor or medication.
If you are carrying something heavier than a sermon and a song can hold, that is not a verdict on your faith. It is information. Pray, yes. And make the call, book the appointment, tell one trusted person the truth. In the US, 988 is there any hour. The God who met you on Sunday is not offended that you need more than Sunday. He is the one who put the help in reach.
This piece draws on minister Maliek Blade’s Jude 3 Project conversation on faith and mental health, with added voices from Dr. Anita Phillips, Pastor Otis Moss III, and Dieula Previlon. Listen to the full episode to hear Blade talk through his own work normalizing mental health care for men.