Spring is in full bloom and I am enjoying the flowering trees and explosions of baby birds here in Huntington Beach. It is great to be able to bless the Lord and think on things that are pure and lovely after months of battling with depression. I want to openly share with you about this time and pray that the Holy Spirit will minister to your heart in a strengthening way. For a long time, I have been in circumstances which, apart from God's grace are far beyond my ability to endure, and for a while I lost heart. I knew the depression was from the enemy and I rebuked him, got prayer from others and cried out to God for deliverance, repenting of self pity. Again and again, He delivered me only I quickly found myself right back in the pit. Have you ever been delivered only to discover things to be worse than before? Have you wondered why sometimes God's deliverance doesn't seem to last? Let me share what God revealed to me. It is not enough to discern and resist the Devil! We must first be submitted to God (James 4:7). I often rebuke the Devil when the problem is actually stemming from my own heart. Yes, the depression was from the enemy but he was feeding on a part of my carnal nature that was not submitted to God. What makes this hard to discern is that the form of attack may be unrelated to the "gap" in the flesh which allowed it. The heart is deceitful (Jer. 17:9) and it is not so much in surface attitudes and actions but in the deep motivation of the heart that we walk in darkness. It is impossible to discern these things ourselves. That is why we must ask the Spirit of God to test our hearts (Ps. 139:23 24) and allow the Word of God to divide the soul and spirit and reveal the true motivations of the heart (Heb. 4:12). The things God revealed about my heart were not done consciously or with intent to sin. My deceived heart had said "if only God sees how completely devastated I am, that I am unable to endure another moment, He will heal me now." I was trying to manipulate God! I was refusing His gift of endurance and His fruit of long suffering and patience while unknowingly inviting depression in. Although God has clearly shown me healing is His will, I was exerting my will in an effort to bring it to pass. Through this experience I became aware of a whole area of my heart in which I was walking in darkness the area of manipulation. Only as I repented of this was I released from depression's grip for the enemy could no longer return to a heart that not only resisted him but was subject to God. His stronghold was my wrong thought pattern which had to be brought captive to obedience to Christ before I could be free (2 Cor. 10:4,5) I praise God and stand in awe of His ways. He causes the enemy to be caught in his own snare while teaching us how to better walk in the Spirit. Very quickly God renewed His Grace to endure and my fellowship was restored with Him. He wanted me to experience Him as God in the midst of trouble (Ps. 91:15), to know how precious to Him the testing of my faith is (1 Pet. 1:7), to allow Him to glorify Himself in the fire not just in the day of deliverance. Isaiah 43 says we will go through deep waters and fires of oppression things we often blame on the enemy. But we need to remember we are only passing through and God is with us in our troubles and ready to give us gifts and produce fruit just as precious and enduring as what we will receive in the deliverance. He is a Redeemer and a Transformer. Very often the trouble itself becomes the means of a greater deliverance.
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