August 21, 2014

Depression

Depression is a hot topic in our world today, especially when people who are loved by so many are so overcome that they take their own lives.

Depression is spiritual. Depression cannot be cured by pharmaceuticals but instead, the root of it needs to be addressed and healed by the love of Jesus.

When we moved to Alabama in 1993, I did not want to go.  My husband wanted to be connected with The Mises Institute, whose offices were on the Auburn University campus, while he got his PhD in  Economics.  I did not want to leave my beautiful Colorado, my friends and church.

The first year there, my husband now calls, "The Year Your Mother had her Breakdown."  lol?

Our daughter, Laura, was seven and our first son, Matthew, was 18 mos old.  We only had one car and my husband would take it to school each morning which left me home without any transportation.  I was homeschooling Laura and when I would try to take Mark to school in the morning, it ruined our productivity with school.  So often I was home all day with two children.

I didn't have any friends, of course.  People were speaking a language I couldn't understand (Southern drawl - lol) and the weather, the bugs, EVERYTHING!! felt foreign and just plain wrong!  I hated the house we'd bought.  Our house in Denver had high ceilings, tons of windows and a very open floor plan. And it was always sunny in Colorado.


Our house in Opelika, Alabama was not open, was surrounded by trees and there was at least three- 3" long wood roaches on my kitchen floor every morning when I got up.  It even smelled wrong.  Colorado has a very dry climate and it's very hard to get anything to mildew.  But anything that was damp in Alabama (and everything was damp) started to stink like mildew.  I felt like every 'fact' I'd ever known was challenged by this new life.

It took us several months to find a church that we 'liked' and so I continued for the first year with really no connections.  I volunteered at a crisis pregnancy center which meant my mom would have to hurry over those afternoons to watch the kids and loan me her car.  One day when I was scheduled to work I finally had to call them and tell them I couldn't come in - I was too depressed to get dressed.

I approached my husband, who was very happy with what he was doing in life, and told him we had to do something.  We had to sell this horrible house (my daughter still says it was haunted and gave her nightmares!), or move back to Colorado or something.  I was not doing well.

My husband looked at me and very kindly told me that if I was depressed, I was in sin.  He told me that Jesus gave us everything we needed for victory and I needed to repent.

Well!!  That was NOT what I wanted to hear!  I wanted someone to DO something!  I wanted someone to lay hands on me and fix me!  I wanted someone to DO something!

I went upstairs, locked myself in the bathroom in the middle of the afternoon, and took a bath.  I sat in that tub of hot water and cried and cried and cried.  I ranted and raved and shook a wet fist at God and told Him that HE needed to do something!

And God spoke to me.  He told me the scripture, "Submit to God.  Resist the devil.  And he will flee from you."  (James 4:7)

As I sat there crying, my heart began to yield.  I asked God to forgive me for rebelling against what He was doing in our lives, even though I did not understand why, even though I felt like my heart was breaking.  And I told Him I would do my best to yield to His will and live this life He had given me.

The next morning, even though I had no car, no friends, and nowhere to go, I got up, got 'cute' and did my best to have a productive day.  The next day I did the same thing.  And the next day.

One day we heard a strange noise coming out of our fireplace.  We soon realized that the chimney was full of birds.  The local exterminator told us that they were Chimney Swifts, they were 'protected' and they would not come and kill them for us.

The next morning I got up before everyone else, as I usually did, and walked in the kitchen to find a bird sitting on the molding of the cabinet.  It was flattened up against the cabinet like a bat and was a good sized black bird.  Then I heard another one flying around the living room.  I ran upstairs to get my husband and with a healthy amount of drama, he managed to get them out of the house.

The next afternoon I was folding laundry in the bedroom when I heard a 'flap,flap,flap' coming from downstairs. Laura was at a neighbor's house playing and Matt was taking a nap.  I walked quietly down the stairs to find another bird going crazy in our house.  It was flying frantically around the living room, dining room and kitchen, looking for a way out.

I was terrified.

I opened the front door to give it a way out, closed some other doors to keep it from going all over the house, grabbed a few 'weapons' and walked into the room.  The bird flew straight at me.  I screamed like I'd never screamed before and waved my rug beater in the air and the bird flew straight out the front door!

I then spent about an hour putting everything  I could find to block off the fireplace opening to keep any other birds from coming into the house! lol

About a week later I had a dream.  I was in our house and the house was completely empty.  I could tell the former owners had just moved out.  There were remnants of their lives (trash) laying around here and there. The house was dark and shadowy and sad.  All over the walls were the outlines of pictures of their family that used to hang on the walls. (The husband and wife had suffered a divorce several years earlier and the wife had stayed living in this house until her teenage boys had grown up. Then she sold it to us as we arrived in Alabama.)

The LORD spoke to me in this dream and told me that there had been three spirits in the house - three birds - and my husband had put two of them out.  The third one, depression, had attacked me.  My sin of not submitting to God had given it a legal right to attack me.

When I woke up, my depression was completely gone!  I was filled with the joy of the LORD.  I even realized that I might have been a little depressed my whole life.  The LORD had set me free!  My submission to God and repentance of my attitude had closed the door to this attack and I was healed.

Most people would be able to tell you the root of their depression - the loss of a loved one through death or divorce, a trauma, an illness, a job loss, etc.  It's our response to these things that opens the door to depression.  A doctor or psychiatrist cannot cure us.  They often prescribe pharmaceuticals which are highly addictive and can even cause psychosis.  I'm always horrified that one of the 'side-effects' of these drugs is suicide!

God's Word tells us that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace... the exact opposite of depression! Depression has to have a legal right to enter our lives and that's sin.  All of us have sinned.  My heart is not to condemn anyone as obviously I am telling you about the sin that was in my life in this season.  My heart is to tell you that there's a way out.  Taking pharmaceuticals may drug you into not feeling depressed but it does not cure you.  And it still leaves you 'in sin' before God.

And sin will bring further problems into our lives and our health.  We need to look at our sin honestly and let God correct us and redeem us.

1 Corinthians 1:30 says, "But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption."


August 19, 2014

My Sheep Hear My Voice

God wants us to hear His Voice.  I am always fascinated that the Bible tells us in Genesis 3:8 that Adam and Eve heard the 'Voice of God' walking in the garden.  God created the world with His Voice.  The Prophetic Word spoken to us not only brings truth and wisdom but it empowers us to change.  When Jesus said to the adulterous woman, "Go and sin no more" this was more than a command, it was an empowerment!

I hear God's voice daily.  If I don't, I feed my spirit and correct what I'm doing so I will.  I want to always stay aware of what God's saying and what's going on in the spirit realm.  This is relationship with God.   Here are some of the ways of communication with God that I have experienced.


1.  I hear God's voice through His Word.
God and His Word are 'one.'  John 1 says, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God. ...And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us."  Jesus is the Word.  Before He lay down His divinity and became a man, He was the Word.  To hear God's heart, we need to know His Word.  It builds a filing cabinet, a boundary in our understanding, and causes us to recognize His Voice.  God will never speak anything contrary to the principle of His Word, therefore, should we ever hear anything that's outside His character, we know it's not God speaking to us.  If you want to hear God's voice more clearly, you have to renew your mind and your thinking with His  Word.
Sometimes when I am studying or reading the Bible, God will put a neon sign around a scripture - at least it seems like that that - and I know that God is drawing my attention to that truth and telling me, "This is for you."  I then meditate on that scripture wanting to glean all the understanding that I can out of what God is telling me.

2.  God speaks scripture to mind.
Often times God will bring a verse to my mind as I'm going through my day.  This is His loving way of keeping us in line with His thinking, giving us answers to our questions or giving us something to share with someone else.  I have loved when He has brought a thought to my mind that I didn't recognize as a scripture and then found it reading days later!

I want to add to this that bread becomes stale after a short period of time.  God does not want us eating stale bread but wants to feed us fresh manna for this season.  We need to be sensitive to what God is saying 'now' and not hang on inappropriately to what He said 'yesterday.'  We need fresh manna, Living Water, and to be willing to move forward with God's leading.  To do this, we will need to hear His Voice daily.

3.  God speaks words to my mind.
I love when God says my name!  A few years ago, I was putting laundry into the washing machine and God said to me, "Lynda, I want to bless you in every way."  I fell to my knees under the heavy presence of the LORD.   This was not a scripture but follows the character of God.  As we commune with God, getting to know His character and presence, we recognize His Voice more clearly.
I've know my mom for a long time. (I won't tell you how long -lol.)  When she calls me on the phone, even without caller I.D., she doesn't need to tell me who's calling.  I recognize her voice.  I recognize her voice because I've talked to her every day of my life.
It's the same with God.  The more time we spend in His Presence, in His Word, the more easily and clearly we will hear His Voice.  There is nothing more precious to me than God's Voice!

4. God gives me visions.
God has given me many visions.  It's like He pulls back a curtain and lets me see into the spirit realm.  He has shown me the River of Life, He has shown me 'as far as the East is from the West', He has shown me what happens in the spirit realm when I worship Him with dance.  He has shown me angels delivering His Word and His gifts to people.
Sometimes I will see myself doing something, like a movie in my mind, and I will understand that that's what God wants me to do.  I have seen demons on people and know to command them off and what repentance needs to take place in this person.  Very recently I saw the word 'WORD' written on a woman's throat as we were praying for her before she taught the congregation.  She then taught on 'The Word!'  (love it!)
When I told my daughter what I had seen, she immediately responded with, "Your Word have I written on my heart!"  The Word is written on her heart also.

5. God 'downloads.'
I don't know what else to call this.  Sometimes God just 'downloads' something into my spirit.  One minute I don't know something, then God does something and a few minutes later, I know and understand something completely.  He doesn't tell me something in words but I can feel something happening and when it's done, I have a fresh revelation of something new.  I always do my best to write it down and as I do, God gives me the words for what He just taught me.

6.  Dreams
I often have prophetic dreams where God is showing me a truth or what's happening in the spirit realm. Again, I do my best to write them down as soon as I wake up and study them to let God give me greater understanding.  I have found things I've written down from years past that God lead me to read again and that were very timely for what was happening now, years later.

7.  God speaks to me through 'tongues'
In Corinthians it talks about the gift of tongues and the gift of interpretation.  I heard a wonderful teaching a few years ago by Beverly Sheasby.  She and her husband, John Sheasby, have a ministry called Liberated Living that you can listen to on line or receive monthly CD's.  Mrs. Sheasby shared how the LORD taught her to interpret her prayer language and understand what she's praying!  I have the most success with this when I first wake up in the morning, before I ever get out of bed.  While my mind is still quiet, I begin to pray in the Spirit and let my mind 'listen.'  It's during this time that I have had some of my most life-changing visions and Words from the LORD.

God wants to give us wisdom for every situation.  He wants to spend the day with us, sharing all that we experience and show us His perspective on everything.  He wants us to think like Him, act like Him, speak like Him.  He wants to fill us with His love until we overflow onto every person we come in contact with. He wants us to be so in-tuned to His Spirit that we have a 'Word' for everyone we come in contact with - a life-changing, empowering Word to heal and equip the people He loves.

God wants us to hear His Voice.

The Plumb-line of God's Word

The LORD spoke to me two weeks ago and told me there is KNOWLEDGE, UNDERSTANDING AND WISDOM.  The foundation of our faith is knowledge, based on His Word.  When that knowledge is skewed or 'off' then our understanding and wisdom is also wrong.

Many Believers in  Christ are not rooted and grounded in the Word of God.  Their knowledge is skewed by the world's values and even the false teachings of the 'church' that they've received. The LORD is wanting to call us back to the plumb-line of His Word;  His perfect knowledge.

There is not short cut to renewing our minds in the Word.  However, we spend countless hours focused on things that feed us lies - television, internet, books.  The less time I spend being entertained  and instead focusing on God's Word and teachings, the more clearly I hear His Voice and perceive the Kingdom Realm.

This is a choice that we make daily.