It’s been a while since I posted anything. Not that I haven’t had anything to say. As you probably know, I ALWAYS have something to say. Life has been entirely too busy for someone who is retired. Every week I find myself thinking the next week will be slower – only to find it isn’t.
I’m going to try to be transparent. Don’t be shocked. I know I always keep quiet about what’s going on in my life. (Says she with tongue in cheek.) Along with being busy, I find that I have also been struggling – emotionally, physically, financially, and even spiritually. As you can imagine, the spiritual struggle comes from disagreeing with God about the other three. As always, He is determined to teach me a lesson.
Just this week, I realized something important about myself. Not something good. It has to do with that sense of entitlement in our culture today. I realized that I felt entitled to certain things from God since I lost my job for my faith. Yes, that sounds really ugly – even to me. Although I believe most people feel that they’re entitled to certain things for one reason or another, it didn’t help me feel better when God showed me what was lurking there.
One of the things I felt entitled to was financial support. Being forced to take early retirement was a bigger hit than you can imagine – than I expected. The hard part is, barring God’s intervention, it’s not going to go away. Oh, I can sub or get another job, but I’m nearly 63. That won’t last long, and when it’s over, the retirement will still be the same. Bill desperately needs to quit work and, right now, he just can’t. Every day I go to the mailbox hoping for good news only to find more medical bills. I can’t be the only one in this position.
Expectation number two is for God to keep my mind at peace when I find it running rampant – said medical bills being the most frequent path. Bill’s health being second. Expectation number three follows hard after that: Bill’s health. We’re still young. I want us to be able to live like it, and I somehow believed that we were entitled to that.
The next area of entitlement will take a bit of explanation and will lead into God’s message to me. When I was young, before God healed me of the residual effects of child sexual abuse, I struggled with depression and fear. Along with that healing came lessons on how to overcome those things. I have two foundational Scriptures in those areas. The first is Psalm 8:2. It says, From the lips of infants and children you have ordained praise because of the enemy to silence the foe and the avenger. In straight forward terminology, I learned that praising God shuts the devil up. It follows then that if the devil is harassing me in any area, including depression and fear, if I praise, it will silence him. And it does. I have proven this in my own life over and over.
The second is a declaration that I make every day – sometimes more than once. You can find it in 2 Corinthians 10:3-5, but I’m going to share it the way it would sound in my declaration. “Although we live in the world, the weapons we fight with are not the weapons the world uses. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. I demolish depression, fear, anxiety, discouragement and ANYTHING that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, and I take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” Does this work? Absolutely.
Here’s where the problem comes in. When I don’t live out what I know to be true from my own experience. The truth of that was made clear the last two days. I woke up Sunday morning anxious and depressed with my thoughts swirling as I have repeatedly for the last few weeks. Because of the aforementioned sense of entitlement, I believed that this should not be happening – that God should keep me above it. However, that wasn’t what was happening, and I was irritated. I thought about skipping church, but we had been on the road last week, so I went out of guilt and habit. I struggled on the way to church, but before the first worship song was over, my hands were in the air and my heart uplifted. Remember what praise does to the devil!!!
Monday, I stuck to a commitment I made with God. It was to get up early. That’s 8:30 for me. I’m more of a 10:00 person. About 11:00, I hit the wall. I felt tired and wrung out. I was doing a Bible study, but I set it aside and went up and laid down on the bed. Thankfully, God is relentless. He reminded me of a chapter in the study I wrote for women struggling with past abuse. It is on overcoming depression. There were several things He pointed out in that study including starting to praise at the first sign of depression – which for me is unexplained tiredness. Then He said quite clearly, “PRACTICE WHAT YOU PREACH!” So – I got up, went downstairs and turned the music on to Darlene Zschech’s version of “Fight My Battles,” where I reminded the devil that this is the way it’s done. I then worshiped my way through several songs and out of the depression and discouragement into which he tried to drag me.
In the midst of it all, my eyes overflowed with thankful tears as I recognized that, regardless of how difficult life gets, how heavy the burden, how weighted my heart, He has not abandoned me. He is right there at the first lifting of my hands and voice and the praise I offer to Him is returned to me many fold. Unlike so many in the world today, I have found an escape route from the snares of the enemy. His name is Jesus and praise leads me out.
I wish I could tell you that the devil won’t harass me anymore – even with those same old weapons. But all the way back in the 1990’s, God healed me and gave me a path to sustain it. Sometimes I forget, but God is relentless in His pursuit of me. For that I am most thankful, because it is His relentless pursuit that allows me to walk in freedom.
Judah Means Praise 