And the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with singing, everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away! ~ Isaiah 51:11
A bit of a warning: I think this post is as much me trying to work through things as it is try and edify others. I’ve been in a bit of a funk lately—emailed Dave and told him I was taking a break from writing blog posts and commenting. Didn’t think I’d be back this soon, but lo-and-behold, I get caught up in a comment stream…so I figured I might as well write.
I have a calendar with all the individual and families of my church divided across 28 days. I pray through it monthly, and every other month I mail (yes, I said “mail”) prayer cards letting them know I prayed for them and giving them an opportunity to share requests. Each card contains a verse—the one for May and June is above, Isaiah 51:11. I hand write these verses at least once almost every day, and just finished doing it four times today (Monday)—I slacked on card writing over the weekend.
Isaiah 51 then has been dwelling daily on my mind for the past two weeks. It is a beautiful passage describing how as we look to God and the promises he gave to the father of our faith, Abraham, he will build up our wastelands and give us comfort. He is God, after all…the righteous one, the one who put his law upon our heart, the one who defeats his enemies (and thus ours), and who dries up seas so the redeemed can pass through. He stretched out the heavens and put his words into our mouth. And he spoke to us through Jesus, “You are my people.”
Thus when we come into our eternal Zion it shall be with singing and everlasting joy…
But joy is not merely something that is coming. Somehow, some way, in our struggles through our broken lives in our broken world we are to be joyful people now. Jesus prayed, “I am coming to you [Father], and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves” (17:14).
Sometime I feel like a statistic—just look at the number of pastors who struggle with depression. I’m there. Funny (sad?) how joy can be so hard to find sometimes in the one “profession” where we should have no trouble being completely centered on the Gospel message of God’s word.
Reading blog comments certainly doesn’t help when you’re in a funk—I’ll admit to some hypertensity (I don’t think that’s a word) when I feel my beliefs are under attack. Look, when it comes to the doctrinal subpoints, I don’t believe what I believe because I’m having daily devotions out of the Institutes or Piper…I believe what I believe because I believe it’s what the Bible teaches.
I have been Southern Baptist all my life, and have been taught over and over we are to be people of the Book. So that’s what I’m trying. I need to learn to be more gracious at all times and also to take my own advice here: if we disagree on the subpoints, let’s let iron sharpen iron and work out our salvation in fear and trembling by actually talking the Scripture, and let’s leave the strawmen and the hyperbolic language in the dirt where they belong.
Permit me to come back from that bunny trail…and since I did mention Piper…
For someone who fits into a young, quasi-restless, and reformed camp (that’s YQR as opposed to YRR, btw)—I have only read two of Piper’s books and only listened to maybe four of his sermons. I think he’s a godly man with a passion for Jesus and the Gospel, but frankly his stuff doesn’t personally excite me that much. But one thing (the main thing) he said in Desiring God does resonate, even if I still struggle with how exactly to live that out. Changing one word of that old catechism to read, “The chief end of man is to glorify God by enjoying him forever.” You can find several places in the Bible where it speaks about God delighting in his people, and we as his people are to delight in him and his word.
Delight…
That goes along with that joy thing.
I’ve been trying something new. I know the language of “I preach the Gospel to myself, daily” sometimes gets a bad rap, but it seems to be what we need. In the funk, I’ve been trying to return to that central core message of all that I believe.
In my sin, I was dead (Ephesians 2:1-3), I was enslaved (Romans 6:17), I was an enemy hopelessly under God’s wrath (5:6-10), I would never seek God (3:11), and I was completely and utterly unwilling and unable to submit to God and please him (8:6-8). Yet as that beautiful passage in Ephesians 2:4-10 begins, “But God…” He is the one out of his mercy and love who made us alive in Christ, raised us up, and seated us in the heavenly places, bestowing his rich grace to save us through faith as a gift and transform us into his workmanship.
Everything that made us dead, enslaved, and an enemy in complete rebellion against God was placed upon Jesus on the cross, “So that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). I don’t always feel righteous, I certainly don’t always act righteous, but I am righteous because of Christ.
In Matthew 3:17, after Jesus came up out of the waters of baptism, the Father’s voice thundered from heaven, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” As God looks at us through the righteousness of Jesus and what he accomplished on the cross, God says of us, “This is my beloved son (or daughter), with whom I am well pleased.” Beautiful.
That is the Gospel I am now “preaching to myself” each day as I remind myself of it.
The “funk”—that struggle for joy and against depression is more complicated than looking in a mirror, smiling, and saying, “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggoneit, people like me.” There are layers upon layers, some emotional, some physical, some spiritual, and some bio-chemical. I don’t know how long mine will last (let alone yours when you go through those down times), but even writing a brief glimmer of the reality of that Gospel truth (reminding myself today of what Christ accomplished through God’s loving plan) is enough to give a glimpse of light through a break in the clouds…
…and that’s what we constantly need.
Good thoughts. Depression is under-conversed among SBC colleagues for the usual reasons – no one wants to be seen as weak, non-bullet proof, or damaged goods.
Mike,
Our name is the same. Our struggle seems to be about the same. And our rescue is the same.
Great words.
One Piper book that I have found very helpful is When I Don’t Desire God and also the little book that came from that one When the Darkness Doesn’t Lift. I think you can get both free in pdf format at the DG website.
Mike, praying God pours out His Spirit in you and fills you to overflowing with His goodness and mercy so that your joy is refreshed, and restored in Him. I understand well your “funk”. I also understand well, how you feel when others attack what you believe and when words seem like clumsy chunks of clay in communicating what your heart knows and your mind understands as truth. I personally think Satan and his demons spend more time in an unseen realm between my words and another’s eyes and ears than any other place. Their job is to confuse, confound,… Read more »
Mike, I can so relate. I often will present myself as “doing just fine” when in reality I am struggling to find joy in this life we call Christian. You said, “…but even writing a brief glimmer of the reality of that Gospel truth (reminding myself today of what Christ accomplished through God’s loving plan) is enough to give a glimpse of light through a break in the clouds…” Exactly! We need to constantly remind ourselves who we are in Christ and what He has done. Not always easy, but always needful. Besides the scriptures, the best book help I… Read more »
‘Depression’ for me, following childbirth, was as close to hell as I ever wish to come. It was bio-chemically due to hormonal changes, but it was severe enough to trigger anxiety, another fearsome foe, which a young mother had never encountered. I am sure that the suffering of depression is far greater than any physical suffering, and I know that it is something that those who are around you cannot understand, but I think there must be some good work of God that depression does in us, to make more of us than we were able to be without that… Read more »
As the others have said, I can certainly relate to this post. I find my funk comes in often in ministry when I fear something going wrong or that person coming towards me who always seems to have something negative to say. It seems as though one negative statement can undo anything good that happened earlier that day. I often need to remind myself of Psalm 112:7 “He is not afraid of bad news; his heart is firm, trusting in the Lord.” It amazes me how easy it can be for me to lose my joy. It’s a constant battle… Read more »
“But one thing (the main thing) he said in Desiring God does resonate, even if I still struggle with how exactly to live that out. ” How do I live that out? Well, I think we all live it out as sinners…and saints. We are declared righteous for Jesus’ sake, we take that on faith. We live as broken people in a broken world…that is pretty much fact. We all have dual natures. This is the great thing about the small congregation that I’m a member of. We realize that. There’s no (not much) phoniness. We realize that so often… Read more »
Mike: You have written a brilliant, inspiring, and helpful blog. The night I was converted, Dec.7,1957, I cried tears of joy for the first time in my life. that is one reason why I can appreciate C.S. Lewi’s autobiography, Surprised by Joy. Then in the Fall of 72, when the Lord visited me one morning, while getting ready for school, I cried tears of joy for a solid half hour. Then during the week of the loss of my mother and family (Oct.29-Nov.3), in the midst of the most intense grief, there was the strangest sense of joy at the… Read more »
Thanks Mike. It’s exactly what I needed today.
Excellent, Mike. I’ve been through a few of those moments and what you say is very true.
Thanks for ministering to me this morning, Mike. I loved the Stuart Smalley quote. The gospel tells us just the opposite!
“I’m NOT good enough, I’m NOT smart enough, and dog gone it people DO NOT like me.”
The good news of Stuart Smalley is not the good news of the Bible. We wandering saints too often want to exchange the Smalley gospel for the gospel of Jesus Christ.
May we continue to preach the true gospel to ourselves every single day.
That may be the first Stuart Smalley sighting at SBC Voices.
I hope it is not the last.