Category: mental illness

Our Post-Pit Life, [Choosing Well]

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“Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits,
 3who forgives all your iniquity,
   who heals all your diseases,
  4who redeems your life from the pit.”

Psalm 103:2-4, ESV

You can’t help but respond to His deliverance of your soul.  Stop and think.

You have been lifted to a place of safety.  He has poured on you extraordinary blessings.  Complete forgiveness, total healing, and a secure redemption–you’ve been purchased off “the slave block.”  So much has happened to you since you met Jesus. Plus he loves you, present-tense. He has gifted you with the premium salvation package!

Our deliverance wasn’t just “once upon a time,” way back then. I suggest that it is for now, in this present moment. Do you remember when you first understood Jesus’ sacrifice for you? Can you recall the joy and peace when he “broke you out” of your miserable cell?

Dear one, a pit was dug to trap you.  If you’ve fallen into it, you won’t be able to escape on your own. It will do its work, grimly and completely.  Falling into it should not be part of your plan, it is a dark place. But there are many living who reside in this pit.  It most evil and desperate place, and fully destructive to the souls of men.

In the light of this “atrocity of the pit,” deliverance is monumental.  When we are lifted out of the darkness, we start for the first time living a life of worth and meaning.  This alone should generate an overflowing heart. If you will only start to walk in understanding, you will start to find victory!

Forgiveness, healing and redemption: This triumvirate bores into our heart.  These three words create salvation deep inside us.  Each concept shapes us into ways that could never happen unless the Father wanted it. And He delights in delivering people from their darkness.

He lifts us out of that wicked trap. Look! He is coming to free us!

Our simple response must only be to worship.  For many of us, it will take time and practice.  Worship needs to be learned, we simply don’t do it naturally.  But, thats ok.  Simply put, we just need to start, and not forget all that He has done.  Please, don’t forget.  But remember all that He has done for you!  Psalm 103 will teach you, and bring you to a special place.

Whom should we love, if not Him who loved us, and gave himself for us?

“Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance. The smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which, a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed of. An apparently trivial indulgence in lust or anger today is the loss of a ridge or railway line or bridgehead from which the enemy may launch an attack otherwise impossible.”

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

 

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Gold Fears No Fire, [Comfort]

Things fall apart

“He comforts us every time we have trouble, so when others have trouble, we can comfort them with the same comfort God gives us.”

-2 Cor. 1:4, NCV

“The sinners in Zion are afraid;
    trembling has seized the godless:
“Who among us can dwell with the consuming fire?
    Who among us can dwell with everlasting burnings?”

Isaiah 33:14, ESV

There has to be some sort of confusion here. Some discrepancy, some incongruity, something overlooked. But things are never what they seem, and that is accentuated when we are in real pain. We think that whatever trouble we get enmeshed in, can’t have any real redeeming value. Or does it?

After a period of time walking with God, whose presence is true fire, we should process this prominent thought. Suffering is part of God’s idea. He has plans that hinge on our pain. It has been deliberately placed into our lives.

A competent pharmacist will be extremely aware of the drug he is filling for a patient. Never too much, nor too little. God is even more meticulous and acutely alert when it comes to suffering and pain. He has an intense love for you through it all. He drops in the proper amount needed for that moment.  It is confined and designed to heal, grow, and strengthen. Never to harm or destroy. He is not punishing you.

“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experiences of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.”

Helen Keller

Keller understood. She was both deaf and blind, since infancy. From this dark and complete isolation, she broke through. Helen Keller became a potent and significant woman. She would graduate from college and became a famed public speaker of international renown.

“God never allows pain without a purpose in the lives of His children. He never allows Satan, nor circumstances, nor any ill-intending person to afflict us unless He uses that affliction for our good. God never wastes pain. He always causes it to work together for our ultimate good, the good of conforming us more to the likeness of His Son” (see Romans 8:28-29).

Jerry Bridges

Gold fears no fire.

We must believe pain has purposes. Life teaches us how to love. Some seem to go through life “charmed”, they are really not hurt in any substantial way. If that is the case, reach out and help someone else, for there’s certainly enough pain and evil to go around. (We should find ourselves actively sharing in the trials of others.)

I think that when a believer finally arrives in heaven, they will be ushered in limping, wounded, leaning on an angel for support. They will bring it all to Jesus, their scars remembered, and their sins forgiven. And we will be transformed, fit for heaven.

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Life in the Desert, [Grace]

download (2)“Lord I crawled across the barrenness to you with my empty cup uncertain in asking any small drop of refreshment. If only I had known you better I’d have come running with a bucket.”

 -Nancy Spiegelberg

“Come, everyone who thirsts,
come to the waters;
and he who has no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without price.
2 Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,
and your labor for that which does not satisfy?
Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good,
and delight yourselves in rich food.

Isaiah 55:1-2, ESV

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Despair and despondency will often drive us to extremes, we are compelled to find some kind of help– and we’ll take it wherever.  But as human beings we seldom exercise any kind of discernment.  Rarely do we ever consider to whom, or at what we are looking to. We often just want relief from the pain.

It really seems we are drawing from poisoned wells, but we unable to discern what we will receive.  We come with our tin cup, and will stand in line to accept a meager couple of swallows.  Experience has taught us not to get our hopes up too high.  After all, the next well will probably be dry.

In contrast, the Spirit of God is a cool, and lush oasis.  There is an abundance of fresh water for all who find him.  Everything is green, and it is a bit overwhelming to us who have struggled so long, with so little.  It seems like we’ve been transported to another world.

But this is what God’s grace and love is like.  We’ve searched and scavenged for so long.  We have become jaded and cynical by our meager success.  Disillusioned by all that life has offered us, we can barely look up to this next possibility.  It just seems to be to good to be true, and we don’t want to be taken in again. But know this:

  1. Grace is a wonder.
  2. God Himself is the only One who can satisfy you.

His very character is life-giving and refreshing.  He constantly gushes up fresh, sweet water.  It is there for us, and he assumes that we will draw on it.  Some of us take a lot of it, but some who are hesitant to stretch out their battered tin cups. They receive what they think they just might deserve (or somehow get away with.)

The wonder of it is that God considers himself to be the exclusive source of “water that refreshes.”  There are some who will ‘point and shout.’  Some claim, “exclusiveness!”  They consider all those who come to the real fount, to be manipulated into coming. But that is seldom the case.

God and His grace is unchanged.  There are no tickets to punch, and we can’t generate enough of any kind of righteousness that lets us draw from the well.  But the well is a gift– not a reward.  It is free, and never a reward for good behavior.  We all must come to the water, crippled and thirsty, or we will never come at all.

Dear one, rest in this place of refreshment.  Drink your fill.  Grace is extravagant, and you can fill your belly.  Throw away that battered cup, and get a pail. His presence is all our heart is looking for.

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Hearing Voices

 

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I guess I’m in a wandering/wondering frame of mind.  I’ve been hearing voices off and on.  They are clear, distinct and I suppose  rather commanding.  Previously I’ve dealt with ‘tinnitus’, but this is definitely different.  The voices are not incredibly sophisticated–its usually just one or two words.  Quite simple actually.

Perhaps the full reason of why this is a problem,  because I wonder about some sort of ‘mental degradation’.

  • Am I getting worse?
  • Are the ‘voices’ the sign of the end for me?
  • Will they take over?
  • Will I turn into a blathering idiot?
  • Could they be ‘demonic’ or worse?

I have this image of a stark raving crazy guy, hung up on religion and ‘right-wing extremism’, foaming at the mouth and ‘heading for a bunker up in the mountains.’  But I am none of these things.  Maybe that’s why it scares me so.  I cannot relate to any of this, and I don’t want to.  I am not that person. This is not me.

The voices by themselves, not extrapolating their content, are disruptive enough.  They don’t have to be specific, all they have to be is loud and insistent.  It really doesn’t matter if I obey them.  They disrupt me just by speaking. (I hope they never decide to expand their vocabulary!)

I have a new insight to my brothers and sisters who struggle with schizophrenia/bipolar.  Many are on the streets, and they are desperately homeless.   On almost a ‘medieval’ level they battle with dragons.  Sometimes they push back the beastie, and then sometimes they themselves are slammed back.  But no matter what will happen that day, God’s love meets the warrior, and He lifts them up.

Voices.  These are not dredged up, or manipulated.  I definitely do not ‘manufacture’ them.  I certainly not doing this for attention.  But when they do press me (with an order or command) I do know that it is an alien voice, coming from outside of me.   I know the presence of Jesus pushes them away. I call on His name and they flee.

I have to believe, that God is holding on to me with both hands. 

He will not let me slide into the night, alone.  He has determined that darkness will never claim me.  I turn as I can, to look at Him, face-to-face by faith.  “He has come to heal the broken-hearted.  A bruised reed,  He will not break.  A smoking wick, He will not quench” (Isa. 43:3). What an awesome promise! We serve a gentle and protective God.

There may (or may not) be spiritual warfare issues. I believe that there is a magnificent power in the name of Jesus. The blood and the cross are for my protection. I shelter in all He is and all He has done, If anything, they push me toward the Lord Jesus and He protects me.

 

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