For me…
my problems surfaced in the guise of a determined discouraging spirit and, have you heard Winston Churchill’s description of his depression as ‘the black dog’, well mine wasn’t a black dog, it was utter blackness, a pain under my sternum so intense that the voice whispering to me that if I would ‘just do it’ the pain would go away, making it sound like a good idea. When you realize the voice is a liar, the pain still persists and so you turn to alcohol in hopes to shut it all off, and if your blacked out you don’t have to deal with anything, you may still be upright, walking and talking but you don’t feel a thing or remember it for that matter.
But then you sober up and the wet, itchy wool, blanket of guilt wraps itself around you and… here we go again! It is truly a vicious cycle.
Romans chapter 7 even before I knew God, I would go through this pattern, sometimes daily.
21 So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me.
22 For in my inner being I delight in God’s law;
23 but I see another law at work in me, WAGING WAR against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me.
24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?
25 Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!
Galatians 5 “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm,then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.”
Haggai 1:13 “Then Haggai, the Lord’s messenger, gave this message of the Lord to the people: “I am with you,” declares the Lord.
Psalm 55:18 “He ransoms me unharmed from the battle waged against me, even though many oppose me.”
All of these verses now have a personal meaning to me in my life. God has saved me through His Son Jesus.
That is a fact. So much so that he has shown me how confessing my sins to His light is the same as His Presence going before the Israelite’s into Canaan. He says “I will go before you and drive them out.” When God comes to dwell in you, he does not want to share you, especially with unholy things, so he drives out our sinful natures and fills us with His Spirit and His ways. Little by little.
It is miraculous.
God always has the best and last word, I leave you with Psalm 32.
Psalm 32
Of David. A maskil.[a]
1 Blessed is the one
whose transgressions are forgiven,
whose sins are covered.
2 Blessed is the one
whose sin the Lord does not count against them
and in whose spirit is no deceit.
3 When I kept silent,
my bones wasted away
through my groaning all day long.
4 For day and night your hand was heavy on me;my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer.[b]
5 Then I acknowledged my sin to you
and did not cover up my iniquity.
I said, “I will confess
my transgressions to the Lord.”
And you forgave
the guilt of my sin.
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