Its all in the mind - or not

I believe Depression is fully treatable, not with chemicals, but with sound application of biblical truth. I believe many psychosomatic or autoimmune disorders are as treatable. I believe we can enjoy more vibrant, fulfilled lives. I believe we can truly experience the power of the cross.

There I have said it. Take me apart if you must, but hear me first.

A friend today reminded me of a book written by Spurgeon, somewhere as far back as the 40’s and 50’s, in which he highlighted a disturbing rise in extra-biblical teachings.

That coincided with a plethora of mind-science books and teachings. Before NLP spread, my Toastmaster’s club invited me to a presentation on NLP. They argued that our mind are misprogrammed by the thoughts, attitudes and experiences of our past.

Well, yes, I guess that is valid, but their remedy wasn’t. They argued that if we could just change our confession and speak different mental patterns into our minds, anything was possible.

Ironically, there is also some truth in that. However, there is also an insidious trap there for such confessions can replace one stronghold for another. That will leave us with a resolute mind that excludes faith. It presumes that we can cope, independently of God – and that is a lie.

In the theistic community, another lie was doing the rounds. It lay at the other extreme, by assuming that our thoughts patterns are just demonic and can be rebuked out of us. I have no wish to offend, but I find very little biblical support for such spiritual warfare teachings.

Thus, Spurgeon saw an emerging deflection to either side of biblical truth. The first went down the road of excluding God and coping on our own terms by changing our thought patterns, whilst the other over-spiritualized our problems. Both were naïve positions that did more harm than good, yet both skirted truth by borrowing selectively from the biblical oeuvre. 

That begs the question: can we really find healing? It is a fair question given how much the confessions of our faith so often fall short of solving our deepest problems. I refer to God-fearing souls caught in the dark web of depression, disease and related dependencies.

Jesus never died to leave us broken. For ten years, I have walked the hills, crying to God for a resolution of my greatest dilemmas, namely that the God we confess so often fails to be the God of our experience. My disquiet over the impotency of theology grew into a deep resentment.

We have all the language, Christianese and liturgy, but a faith that denies the power thereof never put meat on my table or settled my debts.

With time, I began to see light at the end of the tunnel.  En route, I did the whole nine yards. I tried spiritual warfare, dug deep into my soul, examined my heart, went for counselling, agonized over my dilemmas - I did it all. I even managed my health, but the fundamentals remained in play.

Then, God broke through my thick skin to reveal that the answer lay right between the two divergent paths I referred to earlier. It certainly involved a different confession, a reflection on the good things of God and of things above.

However, that confession was not mind over matter, or an act of coping and bracing of my mind. That said it did involve a form of warfare, what I would regard as real spiritual warfare. 

It involved a deflection away from own self-ness into a robust faith. God used a specific incident to channel me and focus my fight into one, specific objective, just as Israel once concentrated all her energy on Jericho and the Allies deployed all their resources into the beaches of Normandy.

He used that single, strategic moment to lead me into a new confession and a vital faith. For weeks on end, I reminded myself each day that God was at work in my Jericho and that walls would fall, but I felt I could not do much more than go around that day-by-day.

He urged me to keep trusting Him, which I did. I persisted, held my ground, and having done all else I could, I stood firm. It got harder to hang on. I so wanted to step in, do something more and take back the reins out of frustration with heaven’s pace, but therein is the stuff of real spiritual warfare.

I had to stand, stand, stand and keep standing in the belief that walls would fall and God would prevail. James rightly said, “Resist the Devil and in due course he will feel”. He didn’t advise us to rebuke or shout. Rather we need to resist the temptation to revert to old ways.

In the process, I silenced my thoughts: the gainsayers of my mind. I literally told my thoughts to shut up as I focused on just believing that it was in God’s hands, not mine.  

Then the wall fell. It really was miraculous and my son witnessed my tearful breakdown as the breakthrough came at last, to confirm that God is faithful and true.

Since then, I have witnessed a calmer, clearer mind and a better cooperation with God through my life challenges – in which I do the so much that is mine to do, whilst listening as He shows me when to act and when to hold back as I quietly trust Him to do impossible.

Thus, Paul said in 2 Corinthians 3, “I have sowed, another watered, but God added the increase”.  I will say more on this subject, but for now I argue that faith in God is the direct antidote to the faith in self that is a major root cause for mental and depression problems. 

(c) Peter Missing: bethelstone@gmail.com