[Repentance is] consciousness of spiritual poverty dethroning pride, a sense of personal unworthiness producing grief, a willingness to surrender to God in genuine humility, and a strong spiritual desire developing into hunger and thirst, enter into the experience of one who wholly abandons sin and heartily turns to Him who grants repentance unto life (Byron Dement).
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Depression

Depression

DEPRESSION

Many of the Lord’s people are passing through times of severe personal trial and testing, and I want to give a special word to them. Read prayerfully and repeatedly the Spirit’s message in Hebrews 12:5-12, and pause over verses 7, 10, and 11 until you catch the glory of your Heavenly Father’s purpose in it all.

There are many things we shall not understand until the Day when everything shall be made manifest, but we know that Romans 8:28 is true now, “that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose.”

SATAN WANTS CHRISTIANS DEPRESSED

If we view the trial permitted (not always sent) as a calamity, self-pity will begin to operate. The adversary will do all he can to bring this about. Nothing will make us turn our eyes away from Jesus quicker than this. We are down at once then into the lower plane – the self plane; then the Holy Spirit is hindered in His workings, and we cannot see God in our experience. The workings of the flesh will at once begin, we shall find ourselves criticizing and blaming people who may consciously or unconsciously be the human instruments of our troubles, and we may forget the evil powers that can use these individuals.

We shall then find ourselves grieved and troubled about things we cannot deal with without causing complications, and about people we cannot help without risk of misunderstandings. Trifling things will be magnified, irritation and discord will spring up and burden us still more, until everything seems wrong and we no longer have hope of things being right.

That is depression, i.e., COMING UNDER THE POWER OF THE ENEMY. It is the most effective strategy of Satan in these last days.

The arch-enemy is after the Christians who are self-occupied, discouraged, suspicious of each other, by questioning God’s dealings (which was the original sin in Eden), by getting us down on a lower plane where the Holy Spirit cannot operate, and where we cannot see the Enemy of God is not flesh and blood, but unseen powers (Eph. 6:12).

A DEPRESSED CHRISTIAN IS A PRISONER OF WAR, UNDER THE POWER OF THE ENEMY, UNABLE TO EFFICIENTLY SERVE HIS RIGHTFUL KING. He is helpless. He can neither resist the wiles of the enemy himself, while in this state, nor can he prevail for others. Satan KNOWS THIS, IT IS WHAT HE IS AFTER IN EVERY ATTACK OF DEPRESSION THAT COMES TO US.

WHAT TO DO

REFUSE ALL DISCOURAGEMENT

Be doubly on the watch when words critical of others spring to your lips in your discouraged moments. Decline to be either under depression or to be in any way an instrument to depress others. TALK TO your fellow Christian instead of ABOUT him. Pray with him rather than criticize him. Claim your rights in Christ Jesus such as Ephesians 2:6: “And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Ephesians 6:11 says, “Put on the “hole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.” Stand and withstand instead of going under in the evil day. Say, “If I cannot be much of a worker for God, at least I will refuse to be a tool of the enemy.”

GLORIFY THE LORD IN YOUR TRIALS

Read again those verses in Hebrews 12. It may well be that the exceptional testings of God’s people in these days are the final purgings before our Lord comes to “present us faultless before His Father.” What a shame it would be if His intentions of love are surrendered by us to fulfill the enemy’s desires. Certainly God is counting on His people in these closing days of opportunity. Can we, will we, stand the test?

The actual trials that beset us; the sorrows we endure; the pressure we get; and will continue to get from the enemy, all matter to Him. We may count on Him and cast our cares upon Him. Hear what He says:

WATCH – ENDURE – OVERCOME

“To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne.” Rev. 3:21

Walter G. Stalley

“He giveth power to the faint; and to those who have no might he increaseth strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall, But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint”. Isaiah 40:29-31

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