Tag: faith

The Hours

When clinical depression is “on-the-clock” it can be sheer agony. It resists and lingers, sometimes for days and days. (It can last for months if untreated.) But it seems that it is these “hours” that are scarcely endurable. It’s truly all this “wasted” time that can seem most unbearable to the afflicted.

“I was mute and silent,
I refrained even from good,
And my sorrow grew worse.”

–Psalm 39:2, NASB

Depressed people tend to suffer in silence and isolate themselves from the outside world. When you’re depressed, you feel less motivated to go out, make contact, socialize or participate in activities, or doing anything at all. It’s all you can do just to get out of bed.

Days, even weeks can go by without wanting to see anyone or talk to anyone. This aggravates feelings of isolation. Often depressed people do not want to talk about their problem or simply feel misunderstood.

Similarly, prolonged and intense feelings of depression can lead to loneliness. Treating the symptoms of depression may help resolve the problem but it isn’t a sure thing. Finding good relationships can push you out of a depression. Loneliness often fuels my depression. Find understanding friends that you can talk with.

unbelieving-believersBeating depression or loneliness does not start with having more friends, or a relationship, although it can help. It really starts from within and is a process that takes time and care. We can be tempted to scrap friendships because they’re a lot of work. But they maybe one of the keys to healing. Experience has taught me that humans go through life in patterns. (We ‘ll do the same thing over and over again.) Even in different situations, these patterns will be repeated and simply generate the same results. A friend can be a new and strategic solution to breaking free.

It is a good thing to know that Jesus Christ sees and understands. 

But it’s also good to have someone with “skin on.”  Someone you can see and touch.  That’s precisely why we have the Church.  People who believe and touch each other deeply, helping each other up.  Depression does not do very well in the true Body of Christ.

“Brethren, even if anyone is caught in any trespass, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness; each one looking to yourself, so that you too will not be tempted. Bear one another’s burdens, and thereby fulfill the law of Christ.”

Galatians 6:1-2

Dear broken believer, take solace in the people in the church. Learn to confide with those who understand. Sometimes I wonder if God has arranged my mental illness so that I will reach out to others. Perhaps He allows it to bless His Church?

“The church is not a select circle of the immaculate, but a home where the outcast may come in. It is not a palace with gate attendants and challenging sentinels along the entrance-ways holding off at arm’s-length the stranger, but rather a hospital where the broken-hearted may be healed, and where all the weary and troubled may find rest and take counsel together.” 

–James H. Aughey

aabryplain

 

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O Hang On, Dear One!

“He comes to us in the brokenness of our health, in the shipwreck of our family lives, in the loss of all possible peace of mind, even in the very thick of our sins. He saves us in our disasters, not from them. He emphatically does not promise to meet only the odd winner of the self-improvement lottery: He meets us all in our endless and inescapable losing.”

Robert Farrar Capon

For most of us, life is not an ecstasy of really wonderful things that roll unceasingly over us. Sometimes it attacks us. It can have teeth. Goblins and giants begin to encircle us, pressing to our very door. Several friends of mine have faced down divorce lately. Others have gotten very sick. I have some dear ones who battle with mental illnesses. Pain, pain, and more pain.

I certainly don’t intend to be excessively bleak. It was Job who described us as, “Man is born to trouble, as the ‘sparks’ fly upward.” Job was no pessimist, but he was neither an optimist. But he fully grasped that bad things will happen to good people. And I suppose sitting quietly, grieving with friends will adjust your perspective.

“Paul and Barnabas returned to Lystra, Iconium, and Antioch of Pisidia, 22 where they strengthened the believers. They encouraged them to continue in the faith, reminding them that we must suffer many hardships to enter the Kingdom of God.”

Acts 14:21, 22, NLT

These two heroes of the faith, Paul and Barnabas visit these cities. They now have an awareness of what their message is to be. It was one of encouragement, and of endurance, and of the ways of God. They both had the physical evidence to show that they “understood” the scope of their teaching.

Suffering is like learning another language. It is then you can minister deeply.

When I learned Spanish it was a new and vital way of communicating to millions of other people. Learning to speak “fluent” suffering will open up the world to billions of people. Learning to speak the language of pain will unlock many closed doors. Broken believers are in high demand for this “kind of work.”

A lot of us will never learn. We are sold on this exotic idea that God wants us healthy and wealthy. But health and wealth were never supposed to be ends in themselves. Jesus is to be all we seek and desire. When the bottom drops out, will Jesus be enough for you? Will you be encouraged by this revelation of suffering to enter the Kingdom?

“So do not throw away this confident trust in the Lord. Remember the great reward it brings you! Patient endurance is what you need now, so that you will continue to do God’s will. Then you will receive all that he has promised.”

Hebrews 10:36, NLT

flourish20

“You will know more of Jesus in one sanctified trial, than in wading through a library of volumes, or listening to a lifetime of sermons.” 

Octavius Winslow

“Adversity is always unexpected and unwelcomed. It is an intruder and a thief, and yet in the hands of God, adversity becomes the means through which His supernatural power is demonstrated.” 

Charles Stanley

“He knows when we go into the storm, He watches over us in the storm, and He can bring us out of the storm when His purposes have been fulfilled.” 

Warren W. Wiersbe

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Are You Too Righteous?

“Do not be excessively righteous and do not be overly wise. Why should you ruin yourself?”

Ecclesiastes 7:16

I’m thinking out loud about something, so I should alert everyone.  Anyway, I’m thinking about “scruples”.  The dictionary defines scruples as “an uneasy feeling arising from conscience or principle that tends to hinder action.”

The malady developed in the middle ages.  Among the saints who were not yet labeled saints, there developed a particular syndrome of hypersensitivity toward sin and holiness.  You might say that they got stuck in the proverbial “hamster wheel” and couldn’t get off.  Run, run, run and they developed an irrational fear of somehow missing God.  Many a zealous saint has turned obsessive and superstitious. Suicide would happen.

Wikipedia says this about “scruples”– –“an obsessive concern with one’s own sins and compulsive performance of religious devotion.”   It is essentially the doubt and fear that you will do or say something that is not right.  It locks you up inside to the point you can’t do anything.  Scruples can be one of the occupational hazards of the devout believer.

Ecclesiastes postulates the idea of being overly devout.  “Do not be excessively righteous and do not be overly wise. Why should you ruin yourself?” (Eccl. 7:16) This verse, suggests that one can be excessive, or, too good.  That might rankle some, as it did me.  How can you be too righteous?

Luther once said, “Be a sinner and sin strongly, but more strongly have faith and rejoice in Christ.” That intrigues me. I once heard a sermon entitled, “Does Your Christianity Include You?” (I can remember the title, but not the message.)

I guess we sometimes develop a sense of wanting to please God to the extent of denying our humanity. 

At least that’s where my own battles with scrupulosity originate.  I am thinking that “Pharaseeism” is kind of like its cousin; they are closely related. I think we start to have issues when we start to become obsessive about our holiness and our discipleship.  If a little is really good, then a lot is even better; this is our rationale, but it doesn’t work that way.

There are several examples in the Word.  I think of Jephthah and his over-the-top vow to the Lord.  In Judges 11, Jephthah vowed to God that if he were victorious in battle, he would give to God whoever came through the doors of his house upon his return from battle. In verse 34-35  we read that his only child a daughter came out first upon his return from battle. Jephthah was crushed.

This wasn’t necessary, or even required, but if we look at his life it seems that he had an impulse to overcompensate.  He was blown away by his daughter’s appearance when he returned home.  Saul was another, with Jonathan and the honey.  Just something to think about.

“If there be anything that can render the soul calm, dissipate its scruples and dispel its fears, sweeten its sufferings by the anointing of love, impart strength to all its actions, and spread abroad the joy of the Holy Spirit in its countenance and words, it is this simple and childlike repose in the arms of God. “

S.D. Gordon

ybic, Bryan

 

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A Message from the Playground

Old Merry-Go-Round

“I can do all this through him who gives me strength.”

Philippians 4:13, NIV

I was thinking about this today, remembering the playground as a child.  I absolutely understood “the merry-go-round.”  I believed deep-down that it had been invented for just me.  It fit me, very well.  I like pushing around and around, and when it started to get beyond me, I would fling myself on to the spinning platform.

If I made it, the battle was only half-done.  Now, I had not only had to stay on, but I also had to avoid all other kids being spun off.  Just getting to your feet was a major undertaking. As the centrifugal force began to increase, the faster it went, the greater our momentum, and the more kids were thrown off; they tumbled into the mud.  There would be kids strewn all over the place, in heaps, crying. Clothes ripped, and knees bleeding. This wasn’t for ‘the faint of heart.’ This was war!

If somehow, you could make it to the center, you were the king of the “merry-go-round!”  For me at the ripe old age of 7, it was amazing!  I would exult and crow of beating my mechanical nemesis and blowing away the laws of physics.  But there are parallels here (surprise!)

Sometimes, life is a difficult ride.  But I know this.  If I can make it to the center, everything will be ok.  The dynamics of discipleship and mental (or physical) illnesses make it different.  We are all trying to find our way.  We stumble and fall (even hurled into the mud.)  But the center is right were we need to be.  It is the center that compels and calls. We were made for this.

We must continually fight to be at the center.  If you fall off, you can get right back up, and try again.  Nothing gets easier. Everyone scrapes their knees. I think one of the reasons that “heaven” is not talked about on every page of the Bible is we all would ‘mutiny,’ and head for its glorious shores. It’s going to be that good.

We will struggle.  But, we can struggle well with our illnesses if we we know His presence.  I get so my edges are frayed, and I feel like everything around me is dissolving.  My “fight or flight instinct” kicks in, and I feel frantic trying to hold together.  Being mentally ill is like flying a plane that has engine problems.  There is no escape; all you want it to cower and hide.  But you can’t. There is no place to go, but Jesus.

But there is a certain place, and when you battle to get to the center, you will find freedom from the pull of outward things. It is good to rest in Jesus, and abide in the center with him. Spiritually, you have been infused with His presence.  And you rise up!  You now discover that you have wings.

And the ‘merry-go-round’ has served its purpose. aabryscript

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