How to Build Mental Resilience: 3 Key Factors for Kids and Adults (Biblical and Scientific Insights)
What helps people become resilient during life's challenges?
The Bible reveals a concept of resilience for all kinds of challenges, and research consistently points to three key factors that strengthen resilience in both children and adults: supportive relationships, practical coping skills, and a meaningful faith foundation. These factors help people recover, adapt, grow, and flourish even in difficult circumstances.
1) Resilience Over Diagnosis Inflation: Why Mental Health Recovery Is the Conversation We Should Be Having
Resilience - the learned skills giving us the ability to cope, adapt, and manage through challenges — to understand, face, and withstand, to bounce back, and bounce forward through adversity. Resilience is what helps us flourish regardless of any limiting condition.
Resilience works amazingly in mental health challenges — often called “mental health recovery.” We should be talking about this more than the “problem” itself.
One of the challenges today is pop-culture’s preoccupation with using mental health diagnostic terminology for everything. This has led to “diagnostic inflation,” where everyday human experiences (stress) are “pathologized” and “medicalized,” and has led to the rise of “self-diagnosing” without knowing the spectrum of those conditions, nor being properly evaluated for them. (1) And this overgeneralization can easily lead to unjustly labeling others and their (normal insecurity) behaviors with them (i.e., narcissist — but it’s about “narcissism” on a spectrum).
Naturally, this also gets into what I call “spiritual diagnostics.” The thinking goes … “When in doubt, it must be sin, weak faith, and/or spiritual warfare issues.” Mental health challenges get lumped into this “spiritual diagnostic inflation” without proper evaluation (psychologically and spiritually).
A good discourse to have. Overall, can you see how social and spiritual stigma sneaks in and perpetuates? Stigma keeps people in a victim mentality. That’s why I say breaking stigma is not a campaign issue (numbers and diagnostics); it’s a dignity (story) issue. I’ve written more about “breaking stigma” in the church here.
2) Beyond Victimhood: Cultivating Resilience, Recovery, and Flourishing
On the flip side, I’m glad we have more mental health-informed resources, and applaud the experts who balance these topics beyond victimhood, toward resilience and growth. Many of these neuroscientists and psychologists will tell you …
"Resilience" is the most common outcome observed ... it is more the norm than not.
Thus, we should always be expanding the mental health conversation to include “resilience” … mental health recovery. Much like a business professional needing to upskill their profession, we should be talking about upskilling “resilience” in mental health to learn to overcome - where we can flourish regardless of the condition. It’s the core of what we’ve seen in our ministry work — with research proof of transformed lives.
3) Resilient No Matter the Scars: The Biblical Foundation of Mental Health Recovery … Biblical Resilience.
“God gave us His Holy Spirit not only to withstand pressure but to overcome — to be resilient no matter the scars — as Jesus overcame and still has His scars from the cross.”
Biblical resilience is spirit-led, not human white-knuckling faith.
The New Testament was written for the early church living counter-culture, and as a persecuted, minority “religious” group. For example, 2 Timothy 3:12 (amplified):
“Indeed, all who delight in pursuing righteousness and are determined to live godly lives in Christ Jesus will be hunted and persecuted [because of their faith].”
Thus, Biblical resilience, as you will see in the research below, is built upon and sourced in/with secure relationship “in Christ — Christ in us” by the Holy Spirit
In the Old Testament, God often reaffirms His presence in suffering and holding by the right hand or hand through life and challenges (see Isaiah 43:1-5 and Psalm 37:23-24).
Jesus knew His Body, the Church, would suffer and promised not to leave them alone, but give them His peace for this life full of its “challenges.” This context is the giving of the Holy Spirit (John 16:27, 33-34).
Jesus was led and doing everything by the Holy Spirit; ministry and suffering (see Luke 4:1, 14; John 19:30, Acts 10:38, and Hebrews 9:14).
The apostle Paul uniquely expressed transformation through tribulation because of the Holy Spirit within us — bringing hope (see Romans 5:2-5).
The apostle Paul clarifies being steadfast in all pressures with a “filling” with God’s might and hope for steadfastness, endurance, faith, and patience/hope (see Romans 15:13 and Colossians 1:12).
The apostles were “filled” with all joy and the Holy Spirit in the face of rejection (see Acts 13:52).
That’s what makes Jesus Church, us, different in overcoming challenges, regardless if they be mental health or anything else. God gave us His Holy Spirit, not only to withstand pressure but to overcome — to be resilient no matter the scars — as Jesus overcame and still has His scars from the cross.
For example, look at this “resilience” concept in Romans 8:31-39.
“Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors and gain an overwhelming victory through Him who loved us [so much that He died for us] . . . . nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the [unlimited] love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (v. 37, 39, Amplified)
You have to understand this in the context of the whole chapter (Romans 8) — Spirit-led life produces life (in suffering, groanings too deep for words, with His Spirit and Jesus interceding for us). The context is “relational,” not separation faith.
Suffering and mental health struggles don’t have to hold us back or ruin us, but we can learn and grow from them.
The Bible reveals a God in and with us — celebrating victories and with us through messy events, setbacks, and downfalls. God is always looking to help his own “arise” (see Isaiah 60:1-3). The mistakes and setbacks don’t ruin us, but teach us. Resilient skills help us truly lament and grieve, but also reinterpret our struggles into a more meaningful life and build new strengths.
You’ll even see the Psalmist saying, "It was good for me to be afflicted, so that I might learn your decrees” (Psalm 119:71). If you explore the research and studies on post-traumatic growth, you’ll see this concept spelled out, too.
Hopefully, you can see a broader picture of how resilience is highly relational, empowering new skills, and all part of your faith experience (as you will see below matches the research).
4) God Never Promised Happiness — He Promised Something Better: Peace.
Jesus didn’t promise “happiness”; He promised peace for tribulation — severe suffering, distress, affliction, and persecution. This peace is in relation to the Holy Spirit being present with us in “tribulations.”
Studies on “happiness” often reveal that the more you chase, strive, pursue, or try to achieve “happiness,” the worse you feel. It impacts overall mental and emotional health.
“Valuing happiness was associated with lower hedonic balance, lower psychological well-being, less satisfaction with life, and higher levels of depression symptoms.” (2)
This striving for happiness overlaps with a psychological concept called the “arrival fallacy.” Dr. Tal Ben Shahar created this theory, meaning, “Life will be better only when …” The “happiness” studies will explain that you can’t have “happiness” without “unhappiness.” Thus, when someone’s faith is directly tied to this “happy God, happy life,” it can lead to a lot of doubt with God and self-doubt, because the equation-belief is off.
It’s not that God doesn’t want us to be happy, but it’s better as a benefit along the way, not the goal. I know a lot of people with mental health challenges who are happy and know their resilience when life is not so “happy.”
5) What Builds Resilience at Any Age: Relationships, Mastery, and Faith.
When looking at studies on kids healing from trauma (adversity), here are three key factors and how they relate to any adult: (3)
(1) Relationships
Having positive influences (family, adults, older peers) operating effectively “stacks the scale” with positive weight and optimizes resilience. Without them, it "creates the conditions for poor outcomes and diminished life prospects."
(2) Mastery skills
"Helping children build a sense of mastery over their life circumstances. Those who believe in their capacity to overcome hardships and guide their destiny are far more likely to adapt positively to adversity."
(3) Faith
The supportive context of affirming faith or cultural traditions, and children solidly grounded within such traditions, are more likely to respond effectively when challenged by a major stressor or a severely disruptive experience.
The research shows that in the face of adversity, these same key factors work for anyone. The study points out, "the capabilities that underlie resilience can be strengthened at any age." (3)
As you can see, while others are talking about symptoms — you can add in, “Yes, and let’s also talk about ‘arising’ and ‘overcoming’ with resilience.”
We cover many of these principles throughout our resources and make sure to access them for free and tell others (Grace and Thrive).
What do you think? Feel free to comment below.
Joe Padilla | Grace Alliance
(1) Tse, J. S. Y., & Haslam, N. (2024). Broad concepts of mental disorders predict self-diagnosis. SSM: Mental Health, 6, 100326. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmmh.2024.100326
(2) Mauss, I. B., Tamir, M., Anderson, C. L., & Savino, N. S. (2011). Can Seeking Happiness Make People Happy? Paradoxical Effects of Valuing Happiness. Emotion (Washington, D.C.), 11(4), 807.
(3) National Scientific Council on the Developing Child. (2015). Supportive Relationships and Active Skill-Building Strengthen the Foundations of Resilience: Working Paper 13.http://www.developingchild.harvard.edu
