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Saturday, December 5, 2020

Purity 283: Encouragement for the Path of Christian Discipleship

 


Purity 283 12/05/2020 

Good morning!

Today’s photo was taken by yours truly earlier this week as I was working in Delanson NY.  I appreciated the fair weather and blue skies for the first day of December and quickly decided to take a few pics and see what I got later.  

I share it because it’s a peaceful scene and I wish all my friends to have a peaceful weekend.  Also with Alexa telling me that the local forecast is “rainy or snowy weather” with a high of 40 degrees, I think I might need to see a blue sky somehow!

It also reminds me that even when its raining we can focus on something good. We were never intended to place our focus on our surroundings and live a reactive life where something as silly as gray skies can bring us to despair.  Instead we are supposed to focus on God and live a life of peace even in the rain.  

After counseling a friend the other day for a few minutes, I realized we are not supposed to focus on “the storms” in other peoples lives either, especially when our focus turns critical.  

My friend has quite a few issues to focus on in their own life and their walk with God, but they were instead trying to do “the Christian thing” by:

  1. “Restoring” another member of the body of Christ to fellowship, and
  2. Pointing out the faults and failings in another member’s Christian walk.  

Not surprisingly, the responses of the two people they were interacting with were less than positive. 

While we are supposed to be encouraging and to speak the truth in love, we must make sure we are coming from a place of peace ourselves before we started trying to minister to others.  When we focus on our own problems and difficulties in our Christian walk, we rightly tend to our most important relationship, our relationship with God.

If we do that first, we will be less likely to find fault with others and when we do offer encouragement to those who are struggling we will do so compassionately and will come across as a fellow traveler on the path rather than someone who is judging or being condescending. 

Christ spoke on this in the Bible where he directed us to remove the log in our own eye before telling our neighbor about the mite in theirs.  

So this weekend, walk in the Spirit, bring your concerns to the Lord, and whenever possible try to make peace with those around you but remember to first make sure you have peace yourself before attempting to bring it to someone else.  

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This morning’s meditation verse was:

Psalm 103:6 (NLT2)
6 The LORD gives righteousness and justice to all who are treated unfairly.

Psalm 103 is a psalm of David where his main thrust is to praise the Lord for all the good things He does.  Psalm 103 is a great psalm to remind us about who God is and what He has done for those who put their faith in Christ. 

This verse points to God’s attribute of righteousness and being the creator and agent of justice. It also acknowledges the reality that some are treated unfairly.  This verse assures us that God will deliver righteousness and justice to all who are treated unfairly.  

This is great relief for those who suffer at the hands of their fellow man.  God will make it right, if not in this life, on the other side of eternity. Scripture says that vengeance is God’s business, and He will repay the wrongs done.  

This concept when examined in the context of the gospel of grace (being forgiven by placing our faith in Jesus) is somewhat paradoxical.  

Some may say that it isn’t fair for me to be forgiven of the wrongs I have done and rightly deserve to be sent straight to hell.  They would be right. It isn’t fair.  But the thing is, all of us have sinned and deserve hell.  Not one of us, is free of sin.  So if we wanted fairness, all of us would perish. 

But God made a way for us to be saved. The opportunity is there for all of us. We need to place our faith in Christ to receive forgiveness. If we don’t, we receive our fair treatment, are found guilty of sin, and are consigned to an eternity separated from God where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth: a fate, that if properly understood, we wouldn’t wish on our worst enemy.  Therefore Christ told us to pray for our enemies. Unless they repent and come to faith in Jesus, they are eternally lost.

So if we want justice, we better make sure that we have truly made Jesus our Lord and Savior because if we haven’t, we will receive the justice of God’s wrath for ourselves. 

This concept also plays into forgiveness.  If we have been forgiven because of our faith in Christ, some would say unfairly, we are to respond by forgiving others for what they’ve done, realizing that they will also be forgiven by placing their faith in Christ making them our brother or sister in Christ or they won’t and will receive a worse fate then we could ever dish out and we should pity them for their ignorance and hardness of heart.     

Today we begin chapter 5 of Anderson & Baumchen’s Finding Hope Again, where the authors begin discussing understanding ourselves and the battlefield of the mind.  

As always, I share this information for educational purposes and encourage all to purchase Anderson’s books for your own private study and to support his work:

Understanding Yourself

I am groaning under the miseries of a diseased nervous System; a System of all others the most essential to our happiness—or the most productive of our misery...Lord, what is Man! Today, in the luxuriance of health, exulting in the enjoyment of existence; In a few days, perhaps in a few hours, loaded with conscious painful being, counting the tardy pace of the lingering moments, by the repercussions of anguish, and refusing or denied a Comforter. Day follows night, and night comes after day, only to curse him with life which gives him no pleasure.

Robert Burns

See how great a love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God; and such we are. For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him. Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we shall be. We know that, when He appears, we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him just as He is. And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.

1 John 3:1-3

Mental health is typically defined as being in touch with reality and relatively free from anxiety. Those are acceptable criteria for a secular world, but anyone caught in a spiritual battle will fail the test on both counts.

To illustrate, suppose a client made an appointment with a secular counselor and shared that he or she was hearing voices and seeing things that others weren't. The secular counselor would conclude that the client is out of touch with reality. One person in that counseling session is probably out of touch with reality, but it may not be the client!

One cannot deal with all reality without taking into account the Creator and the god of this world. The Bible presents the unseen spiritual world as more real than the natural world we see. Notice how Paul ties the idea of not losing heart (i.e., not being discouraged or depressed because of external circumstances) with the truth of our eternal nature and the reality of the spiritual world:

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal (2 Cor. 4:16-18, NIV).

We have tried to establish that depression is primarily a software (mental programming) problem rather than a hardware (brain or neurological) problem. The Christian psychiatrists we have talked to estimate that medication is probably essential in 10 percent of all the cases diagnosed as depression, from mild to severe. Medication is most often prescribed for those who are moderately to severely depressed.

If the problem is primarily due to the software, then how much of the problem is mental and how much is spiritual? Is it best to understand depression as a mental illness, or as a battle for the mind? Can we win the battle by repenting and believing in God, or is there also a need to resist the devil and take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ (see 2 Cor. 10:5)?

The Primary Battlefield: The Mind

The answer is seldom either/or; it is usually both/and. Spiritual problems are also mental problems because the spiritual battle is waged in the mind. To solve the problem of depression, we need a complete answer that takes into account all reality. The least understood and therefore most often neglected piece of the puzzle is the spiritual battle that is going on in the minds of people around the world.

Scripture clearly warns us about the reality of the kingdom of darkness. Paul said, "I am afraid, lest as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds should be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ" (2 Cor. 11:3). He also wrote, "The Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines [teachings] of demons" (1 Tim. 4:1).

We have counseled hundreds of people who are struggling with their thoughts, who have difficulty concentrating or reading their Bible, and many others who actually hear voices in their heads. In the large majority of cases, these common symptoms are evidence of a spiritual battle for their minds. This spiritual battle requires spiritual protection and weaponry. Again Paul writes:

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might. Put on the full armor of God, that you may be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore, take up the full armor of God, that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand firm therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; in addition to all, taking up the shield of faith with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming missiles of the evil one (Ephes. 6:10-16).


Finding Hope Again: Overcoming Depression.

------------------------------more on Monday--------------------------

 

God bless you all!


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