A dark room that reeks of
the musty smell that accompanies rot. Alone here, your mind wanders
nowhere yet everywhere at the same time. A feeling of dread, loneliness
or something wriggles through your bones. A sucking feeling in your gut
tips you off that you are hungry but you are not sure. It might just be
anxiety. All of this happened because of a keen experience of separation
from God. A sort of spiritual anxiety. The Puritans described this
feeling with the phrase, “the dark night of the soul.” They knew well
about the malady of spiritual depression.
Spiritual stagnation is a problem that will
bombard everyone at one point or another. Depression, fears and anxiety
gush out, because we feel “separated” from God, from grace. We feel
alone, sinful, dirty and unloved—or perhaps unloving.
Part of reason spiritual depression occurs, I am convinced, is
because we have a wrong view of Biblical Change. We go to God and ask
for ways to overcome our problems, our worries. We look to ourselves and
our problems and then to God’s word for helps to our problems. Being
lost in our issues, we seek help from God.
Not to throw out the baby with the bath
water, one should admit a mixture of good and bad rises in this recipe.
The good comes when we seek God in our distress. The bad comes about
when we try to find the right “trick” to overcome spiritual depression.
These tricks are sometimes hidden under the guise of “practicality” or
“practical helps” in Scripture.
Sometimes, however, reading the Bible in order to attain “practical”
helps or seeking only what is “practical” (a very popular word these
days) becomes an Achilles heal for spiritual athletes. That which
promises hope results in further disappointment. These aids crush the
runner’s sternum causing a desperate gasps for air instead of the
promised jolt of energy so-called practicality promises. Continue at
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