Put on your insect repellant!

What's it all about?

Great start to a blog... not! The thing is, when I look around, I don’t see anybody with it ‘all together’. But then again why should there be? I see people battling with anger, bitching gossip, bad attitudes, low self-esteem, jealousy, greed, illness, fatigue, stress, and loads of other crap. Stuff that is evident to us day in day out.

I was thinking about this depression I’m going through and I figured it isn’t really that bad. I mean it could be worse! I hate the way people keep on trying to ’fix’ me with these worldly answers. I should be this way, coping with things like this, glorifying God like that. I realise that this depression is a complete bitch for everyone around me not only myself and I am quite obviously in need of help so I‘m not blaming people for pointing out the obvious and looking for solutions. I hate to think of myself as being as annoying as I know I am, but then again I can’t just put a stop to it and at the end of the day I need to learn to not be such a people-pleaser and to be more of a God-pleaser. Sometimes I just need time alone with God and I rarely take advantage of it.

I mean people break their leg and you don’t tell them that if they walk a certain way it won’t hurt. People are disabled and you don’t tell them to get their act together. People are vomitting and you don’t tell them to hold it in. People get old and frail and nobody says to them that they need to change their attitude, it’s all a part of the consequence to sin, an ongoing consequence to the Fall of mankind.

I do believe God wants to see everyone healed, but I also believe that he wants to see everyone saved to him and when we look around we have to admit that that doesn't seem to be happening. Although there is an awesomely beautiful and potentially perfect world around us, it’s been broken by us and things don’t run how God intended it. I think although God is concerned with seeing us happy and fulfilled, his number one concern is actually love. He won’t just spoil us if we’re gonna take this life for granted and live in a selfish way. We all have such a long journey ahead of us in becoming more godly in our attitudes and as it says in Romans 5, ‘not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope…’ - oh crap! It’s much more important to God to teach us godly attitudes than to let us have a hunky dorey life. Not saying my God isn't compassionate, coz he is, massively, but I reckon his compassion actually shows more in teaching and correcting us than pandering us.

I was thinking as well about how even if you don’t know you’re sinning it still has consequences. Say nobody told you smoking was bad for you… you smoke 50 a day and then you get lung cancer - makes no difference that you didn’t know, the consequences are still there. A bit like, even if you don’t accept the truth about God it doesn’t change the truth. We don’t each have a truth of our own, the purpose of life isn’t just what you fancy it being from one day to the next. It’s a one size fits all, one answer, one truth kinda world. We all only have one truth to live to whether we know it/ like it/ accept it or not and we adapt to fit with it rather than trying to change everyone else to suit our ideas and goals.

I dunno why this is all so aparent to me today, and quite why I feel the need to tell everyone about my random thoughts, but when I think of Job in the Bible and how God allowed all this destruction in his life for no real reason other than to make HIS point and to make HIS voice be heard. He had a reason, a sovereign reason, but Job couldn’t see it until God chose to reveal it to him, and why should he, God calls the shots at the end of the day and if God wants to speak through me with depression as he spoke through Job with sickness then who am I to argue. Not that that’s what God’s necessarily doing and I wouldn’t claim it I’m just making a point. God let all sorts of things happen so that his voice would be heard. He condoned battles, allowed illness, let people writhe in their own sin, dried up rivers, stopped the harvest… but at the end of it all, God sent Jesus. Bad things happen and they always will until Jesus returns… in fact if we go by what the Bible says then it’s only gonna get worse:

‘Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places, and famines. These are the beginning of birth-pains… because those will be days of distress unequalled from the beginning, when God created the world, until now - and never to be equalled again.’ (Mark 13:8-23)

I think this depression is something that’s been allowed by God because I’ve got things in my life that I hate and God hates, and it ain’t easy or comfortable sifting them out, but I can be sure that he doesn‘t hate me, just the sinful things and attitudes associated with me. I think that depression is one of those inevitable consequences. I might well be a new creation, but that doesn’t take away the consequences, it just means I don’t have to live with them forever and that my home is in heaven and not on this sin-filled earth. We are being painfully birthed out of our temporary dark womb (earth), into our permanent brightly lit home in heaven with the Father and our Lord.

It also means that I have the Spirit of God dwelling inside me and that he is all the power I need. This depression is like a huge bundle of temptation all come at once. It reminds me of the verse, ‘take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ’ and makes me think of swarms of pesky mosquitoes all flying at me and me armed with just a single swatter. That’s what it feels like, it's not the reality though of me as a new creation, in my own strength maybe, but not with God fighting for me. God has me covered in insect repellent and clothes that protect me from being bitten. It’s my choice whether I’m gonna run around screaming and panicking even though I’m fully protected or whether I choose to get on with life wearing my constant protection. It’s the armour of God isn’t it! I need to put on my protection daily coz there’s a swarm around at the moment, well constantly actually.

I can’t keep on like this, but I also know there isn’t an easy answer which happens to be what I’m looking for. I’ll keep you posted, that’s all for now…