I wonder if the concept of using the promises of God to fight certain chronic occurrences of things such as despondency and lust is being used in an attempt to deflect off of more deeply rooted issues that need to be addressed. Perhaps despondency and lust are sometimes symptoms of something else, and using particular promises of God which are suited to the manifested symptoms will not cure the disease since they are directed at the symptoms instead of the disease itself.
Don't get me wrong, the disease is always unbelief, but perhaps it is not an unbelief that there are greater pleasures in God when lusting, for example, but an unbelief in God's goodness that compels you to avoid focusing on your past abuse so you don't have to struggle with God over why He would preordain it for you if He loves you.
That is one of my greatest struggles. What kind of God are you, God, that You say You love me and then You design a world where there will be sin and suffering so You will be more glorified?
I can fight lust 'till I'm blue in the face (and, evidently, I will) but that is not the real issue; it is a symptom of another even greater problem.
For example, someone is abandoned, abused and neglected, and instead of allowing herself to be vulnerable to that kind of soul-crushing pain again, she disconnects from relationships and represses her desires and longings. As Jenelle Hallman explains in The Heart of Female Same-Sex Attraction: "These women were never meant to endure such hiddenness, division and relational deprivation. Their desperation - arising out of the lack of integration and unmet relational need - will eventually be revealed, leaving even the strongest of women feel like putty under the loving gaze or hug of another..."
What is the enemy here? It is not the lust...lust kind of just came riding in on the back of the enemy. The enemy can be found disguised in the denial: The refusal to accept the world and the life that God has allotted for whatever reason - a refusal to step into the pain and trust that Jesus is sufficient - and another world is constructed instead which isn't so hard to grapple with. An unbelief, yes, but in something entirely unrelated to the lustful feelings yet which provoke and fuel them.
Or by attempting to move forward, bypassing the valley of the shadow of death in the soul, the woman is able to keep on for only so long before the shadow of death in her soul gets to be too much again, and she falls into another depression.
What am I saying...sometimes things aren't always as clear-cut as we would like them to be. We would be more effective in encouraging one another if we would stop treating people as if they were all generic. Encouragement has to be tailored to each individual in the context of a long-term, trusting relationship where we know the person well enough that we can identify different patterns of relating and other destructive behaviours which arise out of countless variations of unbelief and are usually intricately linked with or overlap other symptoms. We can't just see and attack a visible sin, isolating that sin from the complexities of the individual's personality and background. And we have to stop reinforcing the very ungodly idea that it is unnecessary for Christians to step into their pain, wrestle with God in it, and let God heal them like Jacob found healing in God after their wrestling match. We have to stop sending the message "if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come" means that upon conversion all of our baggage has been removed with the wave of a magic wand, and this is for the glory of God. This idea fails to distinguish between justification and sanctification.
As Dan Allender puts it: "...the Holy Spirit's "normal" process of change involves both the dramatic and the mundane. The Spirit knocked Paul to the ground, blinded him, and sent him to be ministered to by frightened Christians who would have preferred to have avoided him. Then he was sent to "seminary" for several years, assumably to read, ponder, and form his understanding of the gospel. The spectacular work of his first encounter was not invalidated by the need for more homework and change. God's work of sanctification is slow, progressive, tailor-fit, and unfinished at every point during our earthly life....the normal work of the Holy Spirit produces crippled warriors who are used because of their brokenness, weakness, and powerlessness, and not because their struggle-free existence draws good press and large crowds."
If we are teaching each other any different, we may be fighting against God. And we need to stop judging each other; we are all in the same boat. If you don't think so...you may just have an even bigger problem than the more outrageously sinful.
Don't get me wrong, the disease is always unbelief, but perhaps it is not an unbelief that there are greater pleasures in God when lusting, for example, but an unbelief in God's goodness that compels you to avoid focusing on your past abuse so you don't have to struggle with God over why He would preordain it for you if He loves you.
That is one of my greatest struggles. What kind of God are you, God, that You say You love me and then You design a world where there will be sin and suffering so You will be more glorified?
I can fight lust 'till I'm blue in the face (and, evidently, I will) but that is not the real issue; it is a symptom of another even greater problem.
For example, someone is abandoned, abused and neglected, and instead of allowing herself to be vulnerable to that kind of soul-crushing pain again, she disconnects from relationships and represses her desires and longings. As Jenelle Hallman explains in The Heart of Female Same-Sex Attraction: "These women were never meant to endure such hiddenness, division and relational deprivation. Their desperation - arising out of the lack of integration and unmet relational need - will eventually be revealed, leaving even the strongest of women feel like putty under the loving gaze or hug of another..."
What is the enemy here? It is not the lust...lust kind of just came riding in on the back of the enemy. The enemy can be found disguised in the denial: The refusal to accept the world and the life that God has allotted for whatever reason - a refusal to step into the pain and trust that Jesus is sufficient - and another world is constructed instead which isn't so hard to grapple with. An unbelief, yes, but in something entirely unrelated to the lustful feelings yet which provoke and fuel them.
Or by attempting to move forward, bypassing the valley of the shadow of death in the soul, the woman is able to keep on for only so long before the shadow of death in her soul gets to be too much again, and she falls into another depression.
What am I saying...sometimes things aren't always as clear-cut as we would like them to be. We would be more effective in encouraging one another if we would stop treating people as if they were all generic. Encouragement has to be tailored to each individual in the context of a long-term, trusting relationship where we know the person well enough that we can identify different patterns of relating and other destructive behaviours which arise out of countless variations of unbelief and are usually intricately linked with or overlap other symptoms. We can't just see and attack a visible sin, isolating that sin from the complexities of the individual's personality and background. And we have to stop reinforcing the very ungodly idea that it is unnecessary for Christians to step into their pain, wrestle with God in it, and let God heal them like Jacob found healing in God after their wrestling match. We have to stop sending the message "if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come" means that upon conversion all of our baggage has been removed with the wave of a magic wand, and this is for the glory of God. This idea fails to distinguish between justification and sanctification.
As Dan Allender puts it: "...the Holy Spirit's "normal" process of change involves both the dramatic and the mundane. The Spirit knocked Paul to the ground, blinded him, and sent him to be ministered to by frightened Christians who would have preferred to have avoided him. Then he was sent to "seminary" for several years, assumably to read, ponder, and form his understanding of the gospel. The spectacular work of his first encounter was not invalidated by the need for more homework and change. God's work of sanctification is slow, progressive, tailor-fit, and unfinished at every point during our earthly life....the normal work of the Holy Spirit produces crippled warriors who are used because of their brokenness, weakness, and powerlessness, and not because their struggle-free existence draws good press and large crowds."
If we are teaching each other any different, we may be fighting against God. And we need to stop judging each other; we are all in the same boat. If you don't think so...you may just have an even bigger problem than the more outrageously sinful.
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