God’s Remedy for Depression

Transcript

GRM 819
11/17/2002
God’s Remedy for Depression
Philippians 4:4-9
Gil Rugh

We were talking this morning, particularly from Matthew 6 regarding our relationship to material things and the freedom from anxiety that is to characterize the followers of Jesus Christ because we have our eyes and our hope fixed not on the things of this world, but on the glories that He has promised to us -- the righteousness, not only the positional righteousness we’ve received in Christ, but the righteousness that is ours to live out day by day that we are to manifest in our daily conduct. I want to talk a little bit further about that theme of our freedom from anxiety and so on, in our study this evening.

There was an article, the cover story of Newsweek, October 7, 2002. Teen depression, 3 million kids suffer from it. What can you do? There has been a rash of these kind of articles and issues brought before us in news magazines, newspaper, on talk shows. I want to read you a couple of comments from the article. Three million teenagers suffer from depression. They call it an epidemic. Starts out by giving an example of a teenager, young woman, 9th grader. Listen to what it says, “The overwhelming sense of hopelessness that enveloped her in 9th grade she described as a cloud that followed me everywhere. I couldn’t get away from it.” We have a 9th grader who has a sense of hopelessness characterizing her life. She started drinking, experimenting with drugs, was caught shoplifting and ended up trying to commit suicide.

Now I don’t want to make light of the problems here, the serious issues that have to be grappled with. You can see there is a characteristic of sin that begins to take possession of a life. The Bible calls it being enslaved. We want to realize there is a truth to the hopelessness that some young people confront early in life. You understand outside of Jesus Christ and apart from Jesus Christ life is hopeless. There is a reality to the hopelessness that they are experiencing and confronting.

And the solution to that is the life that comes in Jesus Christ. Jesus said, I came that you might have life and that you might have it more abundantly. We don’t want to minimize the despair and hopelessness that is there, but you see what happens. The reality of the hopelessness of life apart from Christ leads to what? The solutions the world offers. So you begin drinking, you begin taking drugs, shoplifting. And what you’re looking for is what? Something in my life, there is a thrill and excitement. Ends up there is despair because you experiment with one thing and another and there is no solution. Where does that leave you?

Remember Francis Schaeffer? Some of you have read some of Francis Schaeffer’s works. And he talked about the danger of pushing people without Christ to the hopelessness of their existence, because you are backing them up to that point where they confront the emptiness and hopelessness of their life. Can drive them to radical solutions in their despair if they don’t turn to Christ. And I think that’s some of what we see. After 3 years of therapy and antidepressant medication, this young girl who is now 19, thinks she’s on track.

But you know there’s no real guarantee that she won’t go over the brink. Makes her mother nervous but proud of the progress she’s made. Years of talk therapy, years of drug medication, and we hope there’s been an answer. Perhaps we’ve compounded the problem because we’ve masked the true hopelessness that is there. And hopes this young person won’t confront it again in such a way that will drive them over the edge again. Have we helped them? Because you know with the presentation of the message of Christ the despair and hopelessness of life is a good thing, is it not? Is it not a good thing for a person to come to the end of himself and despair that life is meaningless, hopeless? Difficult to reach people who haven’t come to that point. You have to come to the end of your rope so to speak, to be ready for the gospel. You have to confront your lost condition.

So I’m concerned about the solution we’ve given. And this person, this article says, is one of the lucky ones. Most of the nearly 3 million adolescents struggling with depression never get the help they need because of the prejudice about mental illness and other inadequate mental health resources and ignorance and so on. The National Institute of Mental Health estimates that 8 % of adolescents and 2 % of children, some as young as 4 years old, have symptoms of depression. And some of this I think goes beyond… we’re reaching down now into the earliest years. Some of just the reality of life, now we have identified with witch doctor kind of approaches. It’s becoming alarmingly increasingly common, some even use the word ‘epidemic.’

Anybody stop and think why is it epidemic in our prosperous, affluent society? Now we’ve got to start treating children as young as 4 with powerful drugs that this article says we really don’t know what the long-term impact will be on developing brains. Because at that early age the depression (and this is such a serious matter), you know, you have to treat it early or it will begin a lifetime pattern. And parents are afraid, if I don’t do something,.. is my 4-year-old depressed? And they give you symptoms and you’re looking and pretty soon I’d better get an expert. I fail to see, when I read this article, how this differs from what we would call darkened societies where they take the children to the witch doctor for his input. We have learned authorities who have no idea what is going on, but they speak with the voice of authority and we are willing to turn our children over to them. I’m not saying they don’t have good intentions, I think the witch doctors often have good intentions. Doesn’t make it truth.

Talks about, this is a huge change from a decade ago when many doctors considered depression strictly an adult disease. Without treatment depressed adolescents are at a high risk for school failure, social isolation, promiscuity. You see what it’s saying, promiscuity, sexual looseness, is really a result of depression. Sin compounds itself. Self-medication with drugs and alcohol. When everything gets turned around, it’s not irresponsible or sinful behavior. They get into drugs and begin to drink and become drunk. It’s self-medication, you’re just trying to mask the pain you can’t deal with.

The third leading cause of death among 10 to 24-year-olds is suicide. The National Institute of Mental Health recently launched a major 12 city initiative called “Treatment for Adolescents with Depression Study” to help determine regimens. What are we going to do with depressed teenagers, what kind of regimen should they be put on? Prozac? Talk therapy? Some combination? What works best for 12 to 18-year-olds? And there’s another study by this group, “Looking at Newer Medications Including…” It mentions the different medication that may help kids who are resistant to Prozac.

And do we not have a concern that now we’re talking about putting millions of teenagers on drugs that control their behavior? Well, the article even here admits we don’t really have any idea how these drugs work, what they do to the brain. We just know we can alter behavior with drugs, but you know that’s not new. They mentioned alcohol as a drug earlier; get someone drunk and see if their behavior doesn’t change, some become uncontrollably happy and some become viciously mean. Well, you just have to decide. I guess if getting drunk makes your husband happier, get him drunk. Is that what we’re saying? You know drunkenness is bad if it makes you mean, but if it makes you happy, get him drunk. That’s what we’re saying with the drugs. We don’t know what they do.

Remember a man, he was older, but not a teenager when I was dealing with him. Used to attend here with his wife. Was frying his brain with drugs. Spent hours talking with him, the last I heard he was in a mental facility, just destroyed his brain with all the drugs and combination of drugs he took over years. We don’t know what we do, but we can control behavior. There is another article, an editorial, in the paper this weekend. Don’t know if it was the Omaha or Lincoln paper. Talking about a drug now that they’re working with that can help with post traumatic stress syndrome. Because you give this drug and people don’t feel bad about what’s happened.

But you know the article said there’s a fear, what do we do with this drug? Now we find out we can do this, we can give it to soldiers and send them out to commit atrocities and they wouldn’t feel bad about having committed the atrocities. And yet there’s no stop because we find out we can do a variety of things to people and their behavior with drugs and we not only have isolated incidences of young people who are having difficulties, it is an epidemic and we’re talking about millions.

“There’s not much evidence,” listen to this, “about the effects, about the long term use of these medications on developing brains.” “There’s not much evidence about the effects of the long term use of these medications on developing brains. Most antidepressants are not approved by the FDA for children under 18, although doctors routinely prescribe these medications to their young patients. This practice called ‘off-label use’ is not uncommon for many illnesses. Sad thing,” this article says, “there are only about 7,000 child and adolescent psychiatrists around the country, far fewer the mental health experts say than are needed.” Then the article later says, “The link between this brain activity and depression isn’t clear.” I mean, let’s just admit it, we don’t really know what causes depression, we don’t know why they’re depressed. All we know is if you give certain drugs you can deal with the symptoms of depression.

The lead researcher in one of these studies that I’ve referred to is a professor of child psychiatry at Duke University. Said “There is already evidence from other studies supporting short-term behavioral therapy with drugs like Prozac and Paxil. But that regimen only works in about 60% of cases. Almost half of these patients relapse within a year of stopping treatment.” I was reading an article by a doctor, and I don’t want to get into the physical, it’s just an illustration. But he’s saying as a medical doctor one of the things that concerned him was some of the medications he put people on became lifetime. Because he says, “We put you on this medicine, if your situation improved that proves the medication worked. And if it didn’t improve it just proved you needed more medication. Except I began to wonder. I said, ‘There’s no hope’ because,” he says, “once we decide you need medication it’s just a matter of us adjusting and you’re on it for life.” And here, that’s what they’re doing. What they’re saying is, what happens? What? Well, over 50 percent of these go right back to their depression when you take them off their drugs. So what we have to do is find a combination of drugs they can stay on for life. It gets to be, you know, one of these science fiction things that you have a whole society walking around like zombies drugged out but think they’re happy. There are many other things in the article, I would say get the article, read it, make a copy.

Here’s what’s going on in college. (We have to move on.) What do you do with kids who are starting at 4 on drugs, now they’re going off to college? Here is a college counselor. Her first appointment last Monday was with a severely depressed sophomore. He’s a severely depressed college sophomore. He’s worried he’s being too promiscuous. You know, there is no connection with people being depressed and being immoral, so they have to go talk to a counselor. I’m depressed because maybe I’m being too promiscuous. We say, well, you know the Bible indicates that in sin one thing leads to another and our lives get so confused and so much in turmoil that we can’t sort out top from bottom. Today acknowledging their role on the front line of teen depression crisis, counselors and psychologists at the nation’s colleges and universities are doing more to try to help the rising number of students they see with clinical depression and other acute mental illnesses.

You know, why is this a tide in the last 30 years, or whatever? They give statistics that are 1988, how numbers have mushroomed. Why is this a tide in our society with our affluence and prosperity in everything? We feel bad for people in other countries. I was in one of those countries and talked to some of the leading Christians there. And they said, we don’t even deal with those kind of problems, they’re non-issues for us. What are they? They are problems associated with our prosperity and maybe with our prosperity comes a recognition there is not answer as this young person found when they got into drugs and alcohol and promiscuity, I still had emptiness.

The Bible deals with matters very directly. Turn to Philippians 4, a passage we go to often. But you know I’m still amazed by it. I turn on Christian radio and I still listen to the psychologists spewing their empty-headed advice to Christians. And I say, what’s wrong with the Word? I appreciated a comment made by Dave Breese, who went home to be with the Lord this past year, I was reading something he said. He was saying, I hope people will stop writing books about marriage, family, relationships. And you know I agree. It is just endless. And these authorities, and they’re always quoted as authorities, and yet in the same article they say they don’t have any idea what they’re talking about, but they are authorities that tell us what to do. They are authorities that tell you your child needs to be put on these brain-changing drugs. Now I can’t tell you for sure that in 10 years their brain won’t be destroyed, but you ought to trust me. I scratch my head and say, how are they different than the witch doctor in the jungle? We paddle around because we put the name “Expert,” “PhD.”

Why don’t we just come to the simplicity of the scripture? Look at Philippians 4:4, “Rejoice in the Lord…” as often as you can, “Rejoice in the Lord…” as much as you feel up to it, “Rejoice in the Lord…” if you don’t have bipolar disorder. “Rejoice in the Lord always.” You know, that verse is given as a command, present imperative, be always rejoicing. How can I always be rejoicing when I’m depressed 62¾ % of the time? You know, the very fact God commands me to do something is a great encouragement. Paul is addressing believers here. You know where he is writing from? Roman imprisonment. And he’s writing to them about joy, and that joy ought to be the characteristic of their lives as God’s people. If you didn’t hear the command, the Spirit of God repeats it through Paul, “again, I will say rejoice.” Just a foundational issue. It is God’s intention, it is God’s plan, it is God’s requirement that His people have joy characterizing their lives.

Now I’m not dealing with the unbeliever. I think the unregenerate person ought to be on drugs, they ought to drink themselves into a stupor. You know what the Bible says, “Give strong drink to him who is perishing,” [Proverbs 31:6]. You know, if I was going to open my eyes and confront reality, if I didn’t have the Lord I’d want to be drunk. Now you can understand the context of which I am talking. The world is perishing. The person apart from Christ lives his life without hope. The Bible says, they live without hope in the world.

Any wonder you read about teenagers who have a sense of hopelessness? That’s reality. That’s why it’s so important we carry the message to them. You know that sense of hopelessness and despair you have? There is a reason. You feel hopeless because you are without hope. Your life is lived in a dark cloud because you live in darkness, spiritual blindness. But I want to tell you there is an answer that will change your heart and mind and bring to you joy and a fullness of life that will overflow. It will be like rivers of water flowing out of you, as Jesus described the Spirit who would indwell those who would believe in Him.

“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice!” Nehemiah 8:10 says, “the joy of the Lord is your strength.” That’s been God’s intention, always, for His people, that He brings His blessing, His joy. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace. Come to that! So you understand there is a difference. I read an article like this, I don’t say that the world can understand this. What concerns me is do we as believers understand the solution that in Christ there is true joy?

We can live lives of rejoicing. A man who has been beaten, who has been betrayed, who has spent years as a prisoner unjustly and unfairly can write about joy filling his heart and life, can write commanding by the power of the Spirit for believers to be rejoicing all the time. That’s our privilege. I Thessalonians 5:16 says the same thing, “Rejoice always,” “Rejoice always.” I mean, stop and think about it. Wouldn’t you like to have a life that’s filled with joy all the time? That’s what we have in Christ. I get up in the morning and say, oh no, not another day. I get up and say, oh Lord, thank You for another day. Even when I don’t feel like it, it’s true. Even when things aren’t going well, it’s true. “Rejoice always.” And I have lots of verses that we’re not going to talk about on joy because we don’t have time.

You’ll note, it is “Rejoice in the Lord,” in verse 4. I think we do a disservice when we try to mask the pain of the unregenerate person. I think it’s an act of cruelty to dull their senses to their true situation so they can go to hell feeling good. I think the hopelessness and despair that seems to be coming, as this article said, like an epidemic through our society provides a wonderful opportunity for those of us who know the Lord. Because in the Lord there is constant, unending joy that won’t just die with this life. It is a joy for time and eternity, it will only get better. Can I as a believer have a sense of hopelessness, despair, gloom, in that sense?

“Let your forbearing [gentle] spirit be known to all men.” There is a series of six commands given here. “Let your forbearing [gentle] spirit be known to all men.” We know the Lord, we have His joy, we can be flexible so to speak, forbearance, kindness, gentleness, one said sweet reasonableness, generosity, a willing to yield our rights, to show consideration, gentleness, to others. The wisdom that is from above, James 3:17 says, is first gentle; you know, a sign of the Spirit of God working in my life.

You know some of these things… you read the article these people are wound up like a top. They talk about stress and what we have to do to reduce stress. And on a college campus they have a time when you can come and pet animals that come from the shelter, try to relieve your stress, and they pass out Hershey’s kisses. It’s called ‘kisses and petting.’ Now we’re not talking about a little kindergarten game, we’re talking about college students. They come for a time of kissing and petting, and its Hershey’s chocolate kisses and petting animals. And then this person says we’re just willing to get anybody in to help relieve the stress and pressure and get to talk to them. And the world is reduced to silly games. But you know we as believers don’t have to live our lives under that kind of stress and tension and pressure.

So “Let your forbearing [gentle] spirit be known to all men. The Lord is near.” We live in the shadow, if you will, of the return of the Lord. That conditions everything for us as God’s people. It’s what we were talking about in our study of Matthew 6. The things that frustrate the world and consume their attention, they are major things to us. I live on the brink of the return of my Savior. I just can’t be too consumed about the things of this life, I shouldn’t be. “Let your forbearing [gentle] spirit be known to all men. The Lord is near.”

Now you stop and think about it. If you really live in light of the fact that the Lord is near and I say, the Lord’s coming at 9:45 tomorrow morning, I can give on a lot of things, a lot of things that would bring pressure to my life. All of a sudden that’s dissolved. Sure, sure we can do it that way. You feel better? Sure, I can give on that, sure. You want the car? Sure, take it, it’s all right. Mind dropping me off at home on the way tonight? You know what? All that pressure dissolves. Just think about it, if you know the Lord is coming the next 12 hours, how much of the pressure in your life dissolves? How many of the things that just seem to have you consumed, all of a sudden what do I have to be concerned about? Lord’s coming in the morning. Well, “the Lord is near.” “Let your forbearing spirit,” yielding, gentle, kind spirit “be known to all men.”

Be anxious for nothing, verse 6. There’s our word we talked about in Matthew 6. Jesus, three times at the end of Matthew 6, remember, instructed his disciples, be anxious for nothing. In effect don’t be anxious for this, don’t be anxious for this, don’t be anxious for this. Here we summarize it, don’t be anxious for anything, “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” I don’t have anything to worry about. You know, the scripture repeats this. I Peter 5:7 says, we are to be casting all our worries, all our anxieties, on Him because He cares for us. That’s what Paul says here, “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving.”

Because when I bring it to the Lord I thank Him for hearing, I thank Him for the knowledge that He will work it all out for my good and His glory and that’s a settled issue. So I don’t bring it to the Lord and then fuss and fret to see if He’ll get it done. I let my “requests be made known to God,” “Let your requests be made known to God,” take it to the Lord. I need somebody to talk to, I have to get it off my chest. I’m not minimizing how much we appreciate Christian friends and those who are there at difficult times and the way the Lord uses them in our lives. But, you know, we ought not to forget we have one who is a wonderful counselor, He is the mighty God. I don’t go to Him as last resort, I go to Him first. I let my requests be made known to Him, what would concern me, take it to the Lord. We have the song, “Take It to the Lord in Prayer.” And it’s true, why would I worry about it when I could just give it to the Lord? I could roll it over on Him, what He commands me to do. Don’t worry about it, give it to the Lord.

“Let your requests be made known to the Lord.” Cast all your cares, all your anxieties on Him. Isn’t that nice? You know, I have somebody to take care of it all. It’s like these people you see that are very rich and the people walk around waiting to do whatever they need done. I’m going to buy this, pay him. Okay, do that; Lord, I have this looming ahead of me, probably much more than I could consider handling, I don’t know what to do, I just have to place it in Your hands. Thank You for taking it, thank You for taking it off my hands, thank You that I can leave it with You. And now I’ll leave it there and get on about my work.

“And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, shall guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” You know, there is an order here. We are to be a people filled with joy -- we have a forbearing spirit that denotes we are not living our lives on the brink of snapping -- we don’t have to worry about anything, anxiety, fear, they don’t have to be part of us -- we give it to the Lord. Again, these are privileges given only to believers. We only who know the Lord come into His presence, have the privilege of calling Him our Father. We come before a throne of grace because we have a high priest who represents us before the throne of grace. But the provision is the peace of God which cannot be explained by simple human explanation. It surpasses all comprehension. How do you tell a person of the peace that God brings to your heart and life, in the midst of turmoil, in the midst of uncertainty, in the midst of tragedy with tears pouring down your face? I don’t know how to explain it. I have peace in my heart, sadness in the situation, sorrow, but I have peace that surpasses comprehension. There’s no human way to explain it.

The world doesn’t have that. “ ‘There is no peace,’ says my God” to the wicked, [Isaiah 57:21]. Understand that, those apart from the living God have no peace of heart and mind. Some of these young people are just confronting reality. Their life is turmoil. They are all stressed out, just begun earlier. “ ‘There is no peace,’ says my God” to the wicked. Any peace they have is artificial, contrived. That’s the danger of drug-induced peace. That lack of peace, that hopelessness, becomes something that can be used of God to drive us to our knees. We don’t want to mask that with artificial things.

But genuine peace, the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, shall guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” That inner peace, my emotions, my thoughts, they’re protected. Something’s on guard. People say, aren’t you worried, aren’t you afraid, aren’t you worried about raising your kids in this society, aren’t you afraid to do… aren’t you…? Not really. Are you able to sleep at night? Yeah. Don’t you sit and fret or worry about what’s going…? No. Why? The peace of God. And what is the fruit of the Spirit? Love, joy, peace. I just scratch my head and think, now we’ve got an artificial Christianity out there, and many of those claiming that Christianity have no peace, have no joy. And our solution is to provide Christian psychologists. Because when the world has no peace and no joy, they go to non-Christian psychologists. So when Christians don’t have peace and joy they should go to Christian psychologists.

Doesn’t anybody make a connection here and say something’s wrong? When you turn on Christian radio and so much of the time is taken up with this Christian psychologist and this Christian psychologist, we say now we have created a Christianized version of the world and the world’s solutions. What do I need them for if I am rejoicing always, I’m always filled with joy, and I always have peace. I fail to put this together. I think what we have is people who have named the name of Christ and never experienced His transforming power, and now they’re frustrated. So the problem must be I need what the world has. We never stop to think, well, wait a minute, the fruit of the Spirit is joy and peace. Let’s just get down to the root issue, why do you not have the fruit of the Spirit in your life? We’re not talking about someone who needs psychological training here, we’re talking about somebody who needs to know the Word of God.

“Peace,” “guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus,” “in Christ Jesus.” I want to settle this. Are you in Christ Jesus? If you are not in Christ Jesus then you can’t rejoice in the Lord always. Then the peace of God does not guard your heart and mind in Christ Jesus. Let’s not play a game. You know, I don’t want to go to someone and say, you know, I have a pain in the side of my head -- and he says, oh, I have a pill for that -- when the reality is I have a tumor. You’re not my friend because you gave me a pill that took away the pain. I need a brain surgeon who can say, the pill is only causing you problems. Because now the pain is gone, you won’t deal with the situation. I don’t want the surgery, just give me a pill to take the pain away. Well, wait a minute, you haven’t solved anything. People aren’t in Christ, they don’t have His joy, they don’t have His peace. And sometimes the pressure reveals the true condition.

I don’t know. It’s the Word of God, is it not there? Your Bible should be getting worn at this passage, we come to it fairly often because I guess I have a fear that we lose our grip on this. You know, it just becomes such common accepted practice that we begin to accept it as the Church. We no longer even deal with it as an issue, this is just reality. We don’t even come back and sift it through the scripture any longer because everybody knows ‘this is.’

All right, we’ve resolved the problem, “Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is anything of excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise,” then you fix you mind on these things, let me tell you how to think. You know how we as Christians get distracted and off-track? We fill our mind with things that don’t fit the standard and then we begin to get confused. And the devil is working to what? Unsettle us, distract us, put us into turmoil. I have to do a check. What’s the problem here? Am I thinking about things that are true, things that are honorable, things that are right, things that are pure, things that are lovely, things that are of good repute, anything of excellence, anything worthy of praise?

Think about these things, another command, you know, you “dwell on these things.” You know, we fill our minds with the things of the world -- we oughtn’t to be surprised we begin to have more and more troubles like the world has. So it’s not like I can go and think about whatever I want and be sure that I’ll always be rejoicing and not be anxious and have God’s peace. Well, back up and think, what have I been thinking about? Well, I think about the potential tragedies. Did 9/11 change your life as a believer? I have to say, it didn’t make any difference in mine. What difference would it make? We talk about the world says, oh, 9/11 has changed us forever. So empty! Sounds so solemn and so dramatic. Just what do you mean by that? I look around and people are still doing basically the same things they always did. They went to church a little more for a few weeks and they quit that pretty quickly. We have these dramatic things that sound so solemn, 9/11 has changed us forever. And I guess World War II changed us forever, World War I changed us forever, the Civil War changed us forever, I guess we’ll throw in the Spanish American War changed us forever, and I guess you can just keep on making your list of what changed us forever. And what we’re really saying, is nothing has really changed at any of those times -- and life goes on.

I have to think, what do I think about as a believer? Did I think differently before 9/11 than I did after? I mean, my standard for what I think and how I think and what I think about is in verse 8. The circumstances of the world don’t determine my thinking. The God that I serve determines my thinking and He’s given me clear instructions. If I don’t think biblically I’m going to have trouble. It’s a starting point. So I want to fill our minds with the Word of God. Think on those things consistent. And then, “The things you’ve learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things.” You know, very simple. The truth of the Word of God, put it into practice. You think about those things consistent with the Word of God and you do those things consistent with the Word of God. And that means you’ll be rejoicing in the Lord always -- you’ll be anxious for nothing -- you will be turning your requests over to God, making them known to Him -- His peace will be guarding your mind -- and the process goes on. And I’ll be thinking about His truth, the things consistent with His character, His will, His purposes, His plan. I’ll be doing those things that mark me out as a submissive slave of the living God, one obedient to His Word. I practice these things, and I have His joy all the time -- and the process just goes on.

And the devil wants to intervene, and often the way he does it is start with my mind. So I’m probably not thinking of what I should be thinking about, in verse 8. Then I’m not doing the things I ought to do because my mind’s not in the right place. Then I find I don’t have the joy of the Lord like I should, and I don’t have His peace in my heart. And it’s just not my pattern to come to Him in prayer with these things, and now I’m worried. And you know, that begins a cycle and pretty soon I’m in turmoil. And it seems I get more confused and more confused. And pretty soon I think I need a counselor and then I place myself in his hands and he decides. And all of a sudden, what? What the psalmist said, Your Word, that’s my counselors, that’s where I go for counsel. No, I need men’s ideas, men’s training, you have to have that specialized what? We’re saying, God is good for people who have the normal problems. When you get into big things and your life has had traumatic experiences you need something more than God? He’s not sufficient for those? If He’s not sufficient for the most major situations, then He’s not sufficient. Do we realize we deny our theology in so much of our practice today?

So in all of this, I read the articles, I look and say, does this cause me despair? No. I say, what opportunities are ours! You know, there are some of these young people, many of them I assume, in our own city, our schools, rub shoulders with these kids, our kids do, we rub shoulders with their parents. Are we any different? We can share with them, oh yeah, I have the same concerns, I have the same fears, yeah, I know, and I’m going through the same thing. Well, wait a minute, wait a minute, you know, I’m human like they are, it would be natural for me to have that. But, you know, I have something they don’t have, and I have something they must have, if they are ever to have the answer. Here we find out more and more our salvation is complete and full. We have received everything necessary for life and godliness [2 Peter 1:3], everything necessary for life and godliness. You believe that? Everything necessary for life and godliness. I don’t know what this week holds, but do you know what I do know? I’m going to be filled with the joy of the Lord, I’m going to have His peace, there won’t be anything I have to worry about. Everything I can turn over to the Lord, I can focus my mind on His truth, and I can put His truth into practice. What more could I want? And in all of that I know, “The Lord is near.”

Let’s pray together. Thank You, Lord, for the blessings of our salvation. It’s good for us to be reminded, this is not just salvation from sin and its penalty, this is salvation from sin and its power. Lord, we have been set free, if the Son shall make you free you shall be free indeed. Lord, we have glorious liberty and freedom in Christ. We are no longer bound by the fears, anxieties, despair, hopelessness of the world around us. But we are children of the living God, and Your character has been placed in us, is being developed in us. Lord, may these truths grip our hearts, may our minds be filled with those things that are right and fitting. May we put into practice the truth of Your Word as we’ve learned -- may indeed we be rejoicing always -- manifesting a gentle, forbearing spirit -- without anxiety -- bringing all of our requests to You -- enjoying the comfort of Your peace every moment of every day. We praise You, in Christ’s name, amen.