For the Day of Trouble
How the Lord delivered me from severe depression and my own hypocrisy.
Years ago, I found a little cartoon in our church bulletin that had a picture of a person indulging in a huge ice cream Sunday, with the verse Psalms 37:3 below it, which is where the Lord tells us to feed our faith. I had that cartoon posted up on my bathroom mirror for years because it helped me so much, well when I actually did it!
I have a friend who, to her, the best way that ministered to her to feed her faith was to look at the wonders of creation, and be newly inspired at how amazing our God is because of His ability to create everything. To me, I like to think about people written about in Scripture and see how faithful God was to them. Consider Noah building an ark for 120 years, warning others of the judgement to come, never having seen rain before. Ever! Think about how Daniel may have felt as he was being thrown into the lion’s den just for being faithful to pray to his God, rather than worship the king.
The whole Jesus movement in the 70’s led by the late Pastor Chuck Smith of Calvary Chapel drew the hippies as they realized Jesus was anti-religious!! Sorry to have to say though, not every Calvary Chapel Church is still a beacon of truth anymore!!! But people like Keith Green (an awesome musician) and Greg Laurie who now does Harvest Crusades were just 2 skeptics who were willing to listen!!! The movie, “What If” starring Kevin Sorbo has a great message on that topic as well.
Did you know that the Hebrew people in the wilderness were responsible to gather their own manna? (The miraculous food that fell from heaven, sustaining them for 40 years!) When you start to realize Scripture is food for the soul, that kind of gives you a new perspective. One of the names of Christ is the Bread of Life. As well as the Lover of your soul!
Another powerful lesson toward spiritual survival, as well as “thrive-al” is about the power of praise in Scripture. Over and over again we are encouraged to rejoice in the Lord always… or to count it all joy when we fall into various trials (see James 1:2-4). That certainly is not our natural man’s response and can only be done by a sheer act of faith! Knowing God’s promises and taking Him up on them just because He said so is a powerful, lifesaving, challenging thing!!!
The author, Merlin Carothers has incredible things to say about what he learned about that power in his book series starting with “From Prison to Praise.” The testimonies he has written that happened to people out of their sheer obedience (NOT their feelings!) are surely things only our God could do!
Praise the Lord
Put on Your Wings
There was one man in the Bible whom in particular we are invited to see from the perspective of God rolling back the veil and allowing us to see what was going on behind the scenes as we are told that God allowed the devil to test.[1] Read the book of Job if you haven’t, realizing he had no clue his problems and his reactions to his problems would be written out for all the world to see!!
Knowing that, I was amazed by this man’s faith because of what he did right after learning all of his children suddenly had died in an accident. It’s in Job chapter one, verse 20. I can sure tell you that wouldn’t have been my response! But we can always ask God to help us get to the point of being so assured in our faith, that it can be our response as well!
Ultimate Make Over
I remember the Lord helping me find a treasure of an insight. When we have the Holy Spirit, sometimes a verse or even just one word will seem to stand out or even pop off the page when we’re reading the Bible, in a way to get our attention to teach us. I started noticing something about the word “believe”… how it is often put in the current tense, rather than the past tense. For some reason, as I alluded to earlier, I’d become comfortable feeling like I was secure and going to heaven as a Christian, because years ago, I had decided to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ as my Savior. I HAD BELIEVED, when I had trusted God to take me to heaven, I had received the Lord… but was I trusting and believing upon Him now? (I taken my FIRST step of faith… but here, was I taking another??) My eyes were starting to open!
Nancy Missler, one of my favorite authors refers to this as current tense faith. Makes me think of an electric current. Either it’s on, or it’s off. She also describes how faith choices are not feeling choices, and how faith choices usually fly directly in the face of our feelings!! Her study, Be Ye Transformed really focusses on this topic.
Another way to think about current tense faith is what the Scriptures refer to as our choice (if we are saved) to walk in the Spirit or walk in the old man, the flesh. We can usually tell, as well as those around us, which one we are choosing to walk in. For the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience… vs. the fruit of when we are walking in the flesh. What do you think those fruits of the flesh might be? The ways that come natural to us… You can read all about them in Ephesians chapter 5. Lust, check. Envy, check. Greed, check. Outbursts of wrath, guilty, guilty, guilty. Oh what a refreshing thing it is that Jesus, and only Jesus, can save us and change us from that!
Here is another blessing I found as I fed on this verse… “But those who wait for the Lord (who expect, look for and hope in Him) will gain new strength and renew their power.”, Isaiah 40:31. There are many names of God used in Scripture, and I found it insightful to wonder why the choice in this verse was Lord. As I thought about that, I started thinking of the verse as saying, those who wait for the One in Authority shall renew their strength. The One who decides what’s going to happen in your life. Pairing that truth with Psalm 84:11 sure has a way to inspire us toward seeking and drawing closer and wanting to be right with God! “No good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly.”
Where Can I Find
Buried Treasure
Gold and Jewel
Romans 15:4 states, “For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope.” This helped me to be willing to study historical accounts recorded in the Old Testament that at the time I wasn’t really getting much out of.
Here is one that really challenged and impacted my life in a great way!… Before I tell you what I found, want to try it yourself? Read the book of Numbers chapter 21 and compare it to John chapter 3, especially verse 14. Go on, try it! I dare you!
In Numbers, we encounter the Hebrew people while on their journey the wilderness, being given yet another opportunity to learn and be changed! What was their sin? Complaining! Did you even know that was a sin? I didn’t for a long time. A very long time!! What brought this lesson home for me was when the Sunday school teacher asked us, “What do YOU do, when YOU run across bitter waters in your own life? Hmmm…. I honestly couldn’t think of any other response BUT complain! Most of the time we tend to think of sins as the things we can see that we do. But can you even imagine how life would be if you were inspired every time you had a problem to handle it differently than by complaining? Now mourning… mourning is a different thing.
But anyway, back to their journey… After personally experiencing the miraculous plagues in Egypt (which didn’t affect them but only the Egyptians by the way), and after walking through the Red Sea on dry ground and seeing God destroy their enemy as the army drowned… they ran into yet another problem in life. This time it was bitter water. So instead of acknowledging there was a problem and taking it to the Lord with the attitude that they were sure He could do something about it, they complained. So what did God do? God sent firey serpents to kill them. I hope you are paying attention because this is one of the most amazing lessons that applies to you and me today. Not only do we have the benefit of history and seeing what God did for them, we have God’s Son coming just as promised and giving His life for us on the cross, which is something they hadn’t seen yet.
But they complained and thus had God’s discipline, and as always, they cried to Moses, who as always, turned to the Lord for the answer. Do you know what God told Moses to do? It was a strange sounding cure, indeed! God simply told him to make a brass serpent and hang it up on a post, and then instruct the people that if they were to look to it, they would live.[1] What’s THAT all about?[1] Why WOULDN”T anybody be willing to do that? Well as we often see, the answer lies in the New Testament, especially in John chapter 3. Did you look to see for yourself?
It adds a lot to the meaning and personal application of the story if we understand that brass was a metal signifying judgment, so in essence, the people, by the very act of looking up to that brass serpent, were having to humble themselves and admit their guilt. And their need for help. Just like what WE need to do too! That’s why we are told, “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man (Christ) be lifted up.”, now that is John 3:14. Christ, our judge! Will WE look up?
Never as Bad
Next Step
Not only have we had the benefit of history of seeing the promised Messiah come, ride into Jerusalem on a donkey, betrayed for 30 pieces of silver, born in Bethlehem (which literally means the house of bread), and hung on a cross for our sins and not His… (just of few of the things about the coming Christ or Messiah that were specifically prophesied)… we also live in the generation which has seen the nation Israel regathered! What other ancient peoples spread throughout the earth has been regathered as a nation after 2,000 years? Not to mention all the signs of the end of the times happening right before our eyes now!!!
Plus another benefit most of us share, we are actually able to have the Word of God, or Bibles which tell us of all these things, actually in our own language and to the time of this writing, at least where they are still are legal to own!
Here are just a few examples of why I like the Amplified version the best.
Psalm 27:8, “You have said, Seek My face [inquire for and require My presence as your vital need]. My heart says to You, Your face (Your presence), Lord, will I seek, inquire for, and require [of necessity and on the authority of Your Word].”
Psalm 37:5, “Commit your way to the Lord [roll and repose each care of your load on Him]; trust (lean on, rely on, and be confident) also in Him and He will bring it to pass.”
John 3:16 and 17 may be the best known verses in the Bible, saying also in The Amplified version, “ For God so greatly loved and dearly prized the world that He [even] gave up His only begotten ((unique) Son, so that whoever believes in (trusts in, clings to, relies on) Him shall not perish (come to destruction, be lost) but have eternal (everlasting) life. For God did not send the Son into the world in order to judge (to reject, to condemn, to pass sentence on) the world, but that the world might find salvation and be made safe and sound through Him.”
We have all of this, on top of Christian radio stations, movies and so very many churches, but of those, the ones preaching truth are quite rare!!! Sin is always wrong, no matter how hard some may try to twist the truth! Even if that’s being done from our pulpits! God warns us to be aware of false teachers, especially as a sign of the last days!!
For a good example of the kind of preaching we need to hear, I invite you to watch a movie, a true story on You Tube, simply by the title of Sheffey. There are many online as well, such as Mark Biltz at El Shaddai Ministries.us, or Pastor Jack Hibbs of Calvary Chapel, Chino Hills, California. And of course any teachings by Chuck and or Nancy Missler with many on You Tube Koinonia House or King’s Highway websites. Deer Flat Church out of Caldwell Idaho also packs a good punch! (Speaks the truth in ways that we all need to hear it!)
- [1] Numbers 21:8
