Our society has pretty much embraced the American cultural icon of the cowboy. We revere those who ride alone and hard. We are rugged individualists and hardened men making our own way. Our society reflects this in subdued ways. No matter what happens, we are fiercely free and independent. We are ‘desperadoes’–we do whatever we think is best.
John Wayne, the ‘Alamo,’ and the biker with his Harley-Davidson on Route 66 have been our inspiration. Each are distinctly heroic and carry our hopes and dreams.
We must understand that the Bible is not an American book.
A cowboy did not die for our sins (which are countless). The way of discipleship does not take us through Luckenbach, Texas. We’re not desperados. We are Jesus’ disciples.
His Words to us are bold and entirely challenging in an amazingly fresh and different direction. We are told to wash feet, to repeatedly turn the other cheek, to surrender all our rights, and then take the lowest place there is in every situation.
Our lives truly begin when we come under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
Humility is to become the way we think and how we act, we have become slaves to righteousness. Our vaunted independence has been toppled. This selfish crown has slipped. My willfulness still wants to stand instead of kneeling. We discover this has been the truth all along. We have never ever been in control.
He has been the King since before time, and will always be, for an eternity.
“Many Christians have what we might call a “cultural holiness”. They adapt to the character and behavior pattern of Christians around them. As the Christian culture around them is more or less holy, so these Christians are more or less holy. But God has not called us to be like those around us.“
“He has called us to be like Himself. Holiness is nothing less than conformity to the character of God”.
Jerry Bridges
Our churches often struggle over our personal issues of pride and stubbornness.
I pose the following questions. Are we honestly in a condition of being weak? Can you serve with a basin and towel? Is your heart that of a child? Do we see the world through the ‘lens’ of a soft and broken spirit?
I write these things surveying my own life.
Self will and my hard heart fit ‘hand-and-glove’ with being that desperado. I ride alone, making my own way, and I don’t make any disciples. I jettison my cross— my cross of discipleship. I serve no one, unless it suits me. Am I His disciple, or am I a man of my own? Is He my Lord, or have I decided to claim that right for myself?
I only hope I have spoken the truth today. Forgive me if I offended.
“Lord, I am willing to receive what You give, to lack what You withhold, to relinquish what You take, to suffer what You inflict, to be what You require.” Amen.
“Lord Jesus Christ, you are for me medicine when I am sick; you are my strength when I need help; you are life itself when I fear death; you are the way when I long for heaven; you are light when all is dark; you are my food when I need nourishment.”
Our theology makes all the difference in fighting depression, writes Kathryn Greene-McCreight, Author of “Darkness, Is My Only Companion” and Episcopal priest.
Here is an excerpt where she introduces the depression of Christians:
In his Problem of Pain, C. S. Lewis says that suffering is uniquely difficult for the Christian, for the one who believes in a good God. If there were no good God to factor into the equation, suffering would still be painful, and ultimately meaningless.
For the Christian, who believes in the crucified and risen Messiah, suffering is always meaningful. It is meaningful because of the one in whose suffering we participate, Jesus. This is neither to say, of course, that suffering will be pleasant, nor that it should be sought. Rather, in the personal suffering of the Christian, one finds a correlate in Christ’s suffering, which gathers up our tears and calms our sorrows and points us toward his resurrection.
In the midst of a major mental illness, we are often unable to sense the presence of God at all. Sometimes all we can feel is the complete absence of God, utter abandonment by God, the sheer ridiculousness of the very notion of a loving and merciful God. This cuts to the very heart of the Christian and challenges everything we believe about the world and ourselves.
I have a chronic mental illness, a brain disorder that used to be called manic depression, but now is less offensively called bipolar disorder. I have sought help from psychiatrists, social workers, and mental health professionals; one is a Christian, but most of my helpers are not. I have been in active therapy with a succession of therapists over many years, and have been prescribed many psychiatric medications, most of which brought quite unpleasant side effects, and only a few of which relieved my symptoms. I have been hospitalized during the worst times and given electroconvulsive therapy treatments.
All of this has helped, I must say, despite my disinclination toward medicine and hospitals. They have helped me to rebuild some of “myself,” so that I can continue to be the kind of mother, priest, and writer I believe God wants me to be.
During these bouts of illness, I would often ask myself: How could I, as a faithful Christian, be undergoing such torture of the soul? And how could I say that such torture has nothing to do with God? This is, of course, the assumption of the psychiatric guild in general, where faith in God is often viewed at best as a crutch, and at worst as a symptom of disease.
How could I, as a Christian, indeed as a theologian of the church, understand anything in my life as though it were separate from God? This is clearly impossible. And yet how could I confess my faith in that God who was “an ever-present help in trouble” (Ps. 46:1) when I felt entirely abandoned by that God? And if this torture did have something to do with God, was it punishment, wrath, or chastisement? Was I, to use a phrase of Jonathan Edwards’s, simply a “sinner in the hands of an angry God”?
I started my journey into the world of mental illness with a postpartum depression after the birth of our second child. News outlets are rife with stories of women who destroy their own children soon after giving birth. It is absolutely tragic. Usually every instinct in the mother pushes toward preserving the life of the infant. Most mothers would give their own lives to protect their babies. But in postpartum depression, reality is so bent that that instinct is blocked. Women who would otherwise be loving mothers have their confidence shaken by painful thoughts and feelings.
Depression is not just sadness or sorrow.
When I am depressed, every thought, every breath, every conscious moment hurts.
And often the opposite is the case when I am hypomanic: I am scintillating both to myself, and, in my imagination, to the whole world. But mania is more than speeding mentally, more than euphoria, more than creative genius at work. Sometimes, when it tips into full-blown psychosis, it can be terrifying. The sick individual cannot simply shrug it off or pull out of it: there is no pulling oneself “up by the bootstraps.”
And yet the Christian faith has a word of real hope, especially for those who suffer mentally. Hope is found in the risen Christ. Suffering is not eliminated by his resurrection, but transformed by it. Christ’s resurrection kills even the power of death, and promises that God will wipe away every tear on that final day.
But we still have tears in the present.
We still die. In God’s future, however, death itself will die. The tree from which Adam and Eve took the fruit of their sin and death becomes the cross that gives us life.
The hope of the Resurrection is not just optimism, but keeps the Christian facing ever toward the future, not merely dwelling in the present. But the Christian hope is not only for the individual Christian, nor for the church itself, but for all of Creation, bound in decay by that first sin: “Cursed is the ground because of you … It will produce thorns and thistles for you …” (Gen. 3:17-18).
This curse of the very ground and its increase will be turned around at the Resurrection. All Creation will be redeemed from pain and woe. In my bouts with mental illness, this understanding of Christian hope gives comfort and encouragement, even if no relief from symptoms. Sorrowing and sighing will be no more. Tears will be wiped away. Even fractious [unruly, irritable] brains will be restored.
“Darkness: My Only Companion”
Kathryn Greene-McCreightis assistant priest at St. John’s Episcopal Church in New Haven, Connecticut, and author of Darkness Is My Only Copanion: A Christian Response to Mental Illness (Brazos Press, 2006).
I see that you are trying to be
just as good as you can be
but what you clearly do not see
is you can’t do this without Me
I know that you are wondering why
I do not stop what makes you cry
but if on Me you will rely
every tear that falls I’ll dry
I love you more than you’ll ever know
in your holiness, I want to grow
and though your progress may seem slow
the path you walk in the way you must go
I will comfort you when times are tough
I will watch over you when life is rough
I will rescue you when you’ve had enough
What’s too big for you, to Me is small stuff
May the Father’s grace and peace be yours, now and forever,
“We like to talk about having the faith to be healed – what about the faith to be sick?”
Mike Mason
God heals. Of that I have no doubt. We have many promises and see so much actual healing in Scripture. Jesus’ ministry would connect with hundreds of people who would be physically touched. The Lord would pass the baton on to His Church. We’re called to “lay hands on the sick,” (James 5:14-15).
But not everyone who is sick will receive physical healing. Even those who were active in ministry knew sickness.
Timothy, given a remedy for stomach issues, (1 Tim. 5:23)
Paul had to suffer his “thorn in the flesh,” (2 Cor. 12:7)
In the second episode of season 3 of “The Chosen,” Little James, who we’ve seen walks with a limp, comes to Jesus after He commissions the Apostles. He tells him he finds it hard to believe that he will be healing people, given that Jesus hasn’t healed him.
“Do you want to be healed?” asks Jesus.
“Yes, of course,” James says, “if that’s possible. Why haven’t you?” he asks Jesus—again, a question some of us would’ve asked.
“Because I trust you,” Jesus says. “Little James. Precious Little James. I need you to listen to me very carefully, because what I am going to say defines your whole life to this point and will define the rest of your life. Do you understand?”
Jesus tells James that he will heal many people, and they will have a good story to tell.
“To know how to proclaim that you still praise God in spite of this—to know how to focus on all that matters, so much more than the body—to show people that you can be patient with your suffering here on Earth, because you know you’ll spend eternity with no suffering—not everyone can understand that. How many people do you think the Father and I trust this with? Not many.”
“But the others,” James says, “they are so much more … stronger, better at this.”
“James, I love you,” Jesus says, “but I don’t want to hear that ever again.”
“I know how easy it is to say the Psalm of David, that I am beautifully and wonderfully made, but it doesn’t make this any easier,” says James, begins to weep. “It doesn’t make me feel like any less of a burden.”
“When you pass from this earth,” Jesus says to James, “and you meet your Father in Heaven, where Isaiah promises you will leap like a deer, your reward will be great. So hold on a little longer. And when you discover yourself finding true strength because of your weakness, when you do great things in my Name in spite of this, the impact will last for generations. Do you understand?”
James cries, and says, “Yes. Thank you, Master.”
I believe that there are two truths that every Christian can count on. These are solid, and completely trustworthy. They are forever fixed and will never change.
One: God strengthens every believer.
“Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” Isaiah 41:10
Two: God will ultimately heal every believer.
“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” Revelation 21:4
“I will trust Him. Whatever, wherever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him; in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him; if I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. My sickness, or perplexity, or sorrow may be necessary causes of some great end, which is quite beyond us. He does nothing in vain.”
Broken Believers 