Circus performers have my enthusiastic admiration– especially the tightrope walkers! They move with such grace and courage. Their work above the crowds must be perfect, or else. I don’t even want to consider their failure. (I hope they can bounce).
To be a mentally ill or disabled Christian is just as formidable. We must walk out our condition 24/7, 365 days a year. It is relentless. We struggle with a weakness that pits us against symptoms and gravity of a spiritual kind. We get little support from others– sometimes criticism. It often is a very solitary feeling. We are often overlooked or scorned.
My particular rope is depression. Everyday I mount up and walk out on to it, holding my breath. I still fall a lot, but have a good safety net, and the Holy Spirit is my strength. Losing my balance happens. I pick myself up and climb up the ladder for another go at it.
“In fact, we expected to die. But as a result, we stopped relying on ourselves and learned to rely only on God, who raises the dead. 10 And he did rescue us from mortal danger, and he will rescue us again. We have placed our confidence in him, and he will continue to rescue us. 11 And you are helping us by praying for us.”
2 Corinthians 1:9-11, NLT
We must rely on God. It is His “job” to keep us, repeatedly. So day by day I “walk the line.” My meds are my balance pole, and I don’t need any special attention. I do whatever the day brings, and even that is from His hand.
There are different ways God uses to hear your heart. Your voice, actions and attitudes are all subject to His evaluation and analysis. He is continually watching us. He uses His divine stethoscope to know us.
“Yet even now,” declares the Lord, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; 13 and rend your hearts and not your garments.” Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and he relents over disaster. 14 Who knows whether he will not turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind him,”
Joel 2:12-14
The Old Testament prophet Joel is also interested in the human heart. His words make that a central issue. He diminishes the outward that doesn’t include the inward. (Unfortunately, it is easier “to be seen” rather than “to be.“)
“Rend your hearts and not your garments.”
This is God’s very real word to a wayward people. To “rend” means to tear and it is perhaps the most critical attribute for a wayward heart.
I’m convinced that we must learn what it means to repent everyday. It is never completely done–never once and then you’re finished with it.
We also seem to have this strange tendency to reduce repentance to outward actions. We however must stress the inward rather than the outward. We must go deeper, and take repentance right down to the deepest core.
True repentance must go as deep as you can go, and be truly proven before we claim a victory.
God desires to hear your heart. The Holy Spirit is going to insist on it. (But He will also be a loving Guide.)
“Blessed are those who mourn [especially them], for they shall be comforted.”
Matthew 5:4, Emphasis mine
“To do so no more is the truest repentance.” —Martin Luther
“Bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.”
Colossians 3:13, ESV
Since this blog originates in Alaska, and since winter is upon us, this post seems fitting. It’s cold. And, well, I’ve been thinking about things that have happened to me recently.
We have a sinful tendency to “freeze” people that offend us.
We do it with our words, attitudes, actions. It is called unforgiveness, or stigma, or just plain contempt. It locks another person in a place were they will stay forever, and you won’t ever have to deal with them.
We glaciate others with extraordinary ease.
Someone offends me, or irritates me and I blast them. In my mind I solidify them into one spot, and there they are locked. Sealed away, and out of my thinking. I sometimes call it “discernment.” And then I can avoid those pesky urges to humble myself.
I have been frozen by others, and to be quite honest, I have been the ‘freezer’ as well.
The sad part is that we ourselves are so far from perfect. When we zap someone we will never, ever ‘receive’ from that person. We can even preclude them as outside of the grace of God. (And usually that’s what happens.)
“You offend me, and I will never forget it, and you will never be more than an evil miscreant to me.” My rationale is “life is too short for hassling with jerks like you.” But yet I can’t fully accept that idea. That is not God’s will for me, and I know it.
We end up debasing ourselves by our own unforgiveness.
We restrict others from the Holy Spirit’s transforming ability. In our mind’s eye, the wicked person will never be able to offer up anything of value. We freeze–locking them into a place. And a vast amount comes from an unforgiveness that is ‘fallen,’ and an unbelief in God’s grace and power.
Furthermore, any use of our ‘freeze gun’ freezes us as well. Unforgiveness turns on us (which we didn’t count on) and the effect is cumulative. We can only absorb so much an we get hard and cold.
One more thing. We do this to whole groups of people. The alcoholics, the mentally ill, other races. This can be called prejudice or stigma. Ask yourself this–have you ever been stigmatized or demonized? You will usually know it. But we cannot afford to be controlled by our unforgiveness.
There is far too much at stake.
“And whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgivehimand let it drop (leave it, let it go), in order that your Father Who is in heaven may also forgiveyou your [own] failings and shortcomings and let them drop.”
“For you are all children of the light and of the day; we don’t belong to darkness and night.”
1 Thess. 5:5
This is my personal testimony of the grace of God.
A year before I received Christ as my Savior, I was hospitalized in a U.S. Army psychiatric ward. My uniform was replaced with the distinctive attire of a mental patient. Ironically, I’d been attached to the same hospital working on the pediatric floor.
And to make things only slightly more surreal was that a medic there on the psych ward was someone I bought drugs from!
Previous to this hospitalization, I had dropped two hits of LSD and found myself in an awful mess. It was night out and I was hallucinating badly. I had lost control of my thoughts. I had pretty much flipped out and it entered my drug-saturated brain that the darkness would kill me, that very night!
Utterly convinced I was going to die, my mind seized upon the street lights outside.
If I could stay in that illuminated circle I would escape dying. Somehow I knew that the light would save me. So I remained under that street light for several hours. As I stood I could see very clearly the boundary between the light and the dark. I knew I was safe as long as I didn’t wander, I knew I would stay safe.
But despite that very traumatic experience, the drugs and my mental instability continued to slide.
I was now shooting up cocaine, crossing my “no needle rule.” I also became quite the heavy drinker, with whiskey for breakfast. I had one basic rule though. As a medic who worked in maternal/child health, I had one of the best assignments in the Army. Many people coveted it, and I was not going to endanger it with drugs or alcohol.
I never went on duty loaded. That was my rule. I would be the best medic the Army ever had.
Shortly after my psych ward discharge, I was reassigned to Labor & Delivery on the night shift. One slow time I was pulled from my duty there to go on an ambulance run as the medic in charge. We were called to the officer’s housing where an older man had died in bed. This got me thinking. Back at the hospital, I returned to L&D. But on the way back I took a shortcut through a ward on another floor. That’s when I found it!
On a waiting room table was a small book called,“More Than a Carpenter” by Josh McDowell. I picked it up, reading it right on duty because there was no one in the delivery room. By the end of my shift, I was well on my way to becoming a Christian. It was a book solidly speaking of the light, and of the dark. And I knew beyond a doubt that I couldn’t remain in the dark anymore.
I was honorably discharged from the U.S. Army in June of 1982.
I became a born-again believer shortly after that. I went to Bible College that October. Life has become radically different, and over time, I became a missionary, pastor, and Bible college instructor.
I married my sweetheart and I now have a wonderful family. I attend a great and wonderful church faithfully.
I want to tell you that Jesus is real, He is alive and the Bible is true. I have been lifted from the dark and I am not afraid anymore. Jesus is my light.
“The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light. And for those who lived in the land where death casts its shadow, a light has shined.”
There are different ways God uses to hear your heart. Your voice, actions and attitudes are all subject to His evaluation and analysis. He is continually watching us. He uses His divine stethoscope to know us.
