Posts Tagged ‘soul’

Depressed Christians

Posted in Anxiety & Stress, Bible Study, Christian Living, tagged , , , , , , on January 14, 2016| 2 Comments »

Spiritual Depression #1  “General Consideration,” by  Dr. Martyn Lloyd Jones.  This is a series of sermons given by Dr. Lloyd-Jones back in the fifties.  To make it easier for you to follow I’m putting at the top of my posts the lesson number, title and author.  I’m doing this because I am also featuring some sermons by my pastor and I don’t want to confuse you.  My thoughts are below.

 

Are you a Christian?  Are you depressed?  Do you think that Christians should get depressed?

psalm34_18Or, do you think we should be joyful all the time?  Some Christians think we should run around with a big smile on our face no matter what.  It is my opinion that Christians do get depressed at times because we are human, and that we can be overcomers of depression because we have the Lord.  I know fellow believers who battle depression.  In fact, I know quite of few of them. I also find myself depressed or feeling down at times, and I don’t like it.  Lately, I’ve had many issues in my life and I sometimes find myself getting really gloomy, and feel like a big weight is on my shoulders.  That reminds me of  scripture:

Mat 11:28-30 KJV Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. (29) Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. (30) For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

Jesus is calling me to give him my burdens and He will carry them for me.  Isn’t that wonderful?  He will do that for us.

Recently, I came across a series of sermons by Martyn Lloyd-Jones given back in the mid-fifties called, “Spiritual Depression.”  I thought it might be helpful to listen to these 24  sermons and see what I can glean from them. Why don’t you join me?

I just listened to the first one, but the audio was not very good at all.  It was difficult to hear so I used my ear buds and that helped some.  Hopefully, the next one will be easier to listen to. You can listen if you wish by clicking on the bar below. Then, it would be awesome if you would share your thoughts in the comment section of this post.

There is also a book you can purchase with these sermons.  Here is a link to that: Spiritual Depression: It’s Causes and It’s Cure

The first sermon, “General Consideration,” is actually an introduction to this series.  It is based on Psalm 42:5.

Psalm 42:5   KJV Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance.

The first thing that jumps out to me is that David sounds depressed.  So, I see that men of God got depressed.  We are not so different. In this Psalm David is having a conversation with his own soul.  He is actually talking to himself, and asking his soul why it is so down. He asks why he is not at peace. Then he tells his soul to hope in God.  Isn’t that where we need to put our hope? And he says he will praise God.

So, in a nutshell we can see that David became depressed in his lifetime.  He had to have a talk with his soul, and get himself back on the right track.  I have to do that myself at times.  This is a good illustration of how David handled his depression.

In this first sermon Martyn Lloyd Jones talks about the general causes of Christians becoming depressed.  They are temperament, (introvert or extrovert) physical conditions, and reactions.  With the primary cause being unbelief.

My takeaway:  The devil uses our “self” in order to depress us.  We must take control.

Hope you enjoy this study along with me.

 

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Is Christ at Home in You?

Posted in Christianity, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 1, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Ephesians 3:16-17  that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith...

Paul, the Apostle, wrote this  prayer for the believers at Ephesus, and for us today also.  When we become Christians we are  new creations.  We are born again.  Our old dead self  (we were dead in  sin) is raised to new life.   The Holy Spirit comes and lives within us.   It is truly a miracle work of God.                                               Ephesians 3;17a

We are studying Ephesians 3 in church, and I’ve been thinking about this verse a lot this week.  What was very interesting to me, as our pastor unpacked this verse, was the word “dwell.”   In the Greek this word means settled down in you, or comfortable there, or at home in you. It also indicates a permanent residence. Is Christ at home in you?  Is He comfortable, or do we make Him feel uneasy and unwelcome?  Those are good questions, so I’ve been pondering what would make Christ NOT feel at home in me.  The short answer:  sin.

Even though I’ve been born-again and am now a new creation, I still live with the old flesh. I can still sin. And as the Bible tells us the heart is very deceitful. I might think I’m a pretty good person as I haven’t committed adultery, and I’ve never murdered anyone. But, in reality, I actually sin every day. I think we sin mostly in our minds and attitudes.  Sin is born in the mind. Temptations surround us all day long in this world.  We hear gossip and even partake in it. We watch things on television that corrupt our minds.  We need to be careful of what we watch and listen to.

Jerry Bridges wrote an excellent book for Christians called, Respectable Sins: Confronting the Sins we Tolerate.  Some of the sins he tackles are:  Ungodliness, anxiety and frustration, discontentment, unthankfulness, pride, selfishness, lack of self-control, impatience and irritability, anger, judgmentalism, envy, jealousy, sins of the tongue, worldliness.  That is quite is list isn’t it?  I see myself  there do you?  I highly recommend this book.  It will help you see things that are sinful that you might not have never thought of before.

So, what happens when a Christian sins?  Well, we don’t lose our salvation, but Christ does not feel at home in us that is for sure.  I wonder how many times a day I make him feel unwelcome.  It makes me sad to think that I offend Christ in me.  When I realize it I do pray and ask forgiveness.  In order to have victory in our lives we must keep that connection with Jesus open.

When I know I’m having company I work hard to clean up my house and have everything in order.  Then, when they are with me I try very hard to make them feel welcome.  I entertain them and don’t do or say things that might upset them.  But,  just think, the God of all creation, the King of Kings, comes and resides within us. He doesn’t just come for a visit, but he sets up a permanent residence in us.  What an awesome thought!

Joh 14:23 Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him.

I need to work on making our wonderful, blessed, Savior at home.  We are told that our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit.

1Co 6:19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?

Is my body fit for a King?  I think it needs cleaning up on a daily basis in order for the King to feel at home.  What about you?

Maybe that is why we don’t feel like we are living the victorious Christian life. Maybe there are things blocking us from having an intimate relationship with Christ.  We lose our power when we grieve the Holy Spirit.

You may be asking:  “This all sounds great Bonnie, but what can I do to make Jesus welcome in me?”

You can start by taking inventory.  First think about what you think about. Sounds kind of odd right?  Take a look at Philippians 4:8 and you will see that God has already told us how we should think.

Php 4:8 Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.

Check yourself this week and determine what you are thinking about.  Are they things that this scripture tells us we should be thinking about, or is your mind full of other things.  You might be spending a lot of time with thoughts about someone you are angry with rehearsing over and over what you would like to tell that person if you got a chance.  Or, you might be letting your mind wander into impure thoughts.  Maybe you watched something on television that started your mind in that direction and now you are dwelling on them.  There are so many things we think about that we shouldn’t really.  They are things that tear us down and don’t build us up in the Lord in any way.  When we struggle with our thought life and entertain thoughts that we shouldn’t sooner or later we give birth to sin.  Our Precious Lord cannot feel at home in these kinds of situations.  I don’t think we realize how much of an effect we have on Christ in us.

Other ways we hinder God’s power in us include:  not yielding to Him, not studying the Word on a daily basis, and neglecting prayer,

Someone has said:

 “Some of us only have visits with our Lord that are short and far between.  We drive Him away.  How? Our hearts are foul with sin.”

Oh Lord, please help me to understand the deep things Paul is trying to teach me, and help me to have a clean heart, so that Christ can dwell in me and be comfortable.  Help me not to offend Him.   In Jesus Name.  Amen.

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Jesus Paid It All

Posted in Christian, Hymns, inspirational, tagged , , , on February 17, 2010| Leave a Comment »

JESUS PAID IT ALL

“Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow.” Isaiah 1:18

Click on MIDI to hear this hymn.

Words: Elvina M. Hall, 1865.

Music: John T. Grape (MI­DI, score):

Our church was un­der­go­ing re­pairs, and the cab­i­net or­gan was placed in my care. Thus af­ford­ed a plea­sure not be­fore en­joyed, I de­light­ed my­self in play­ing over some of our Sun­day school hymns. I de­ter­mined to give tan­gi­ble shape to a theme that had been run­ning in my mind for some time, to write, if pos­si­ble, an an­swer to Brad­bu­ry’s beau­ti­ful piece, “Jesus Paid It All.” I made it a matter of pray­er and stu­dy and gave to the pub­lic the mu­sic now known as “All to Christ I Owe.” It was pro­nounced ve­ry poor by my choir and friends, but my dear wife per­sist­ent­ly de­clared that it was a good piece of mu­sic and would live. Time has proved the cor­rect­ness of her jud­gment. Soon af­ter, the Rev. George W. Schreck called on me to se­lect an­y­thing new that I had to of­fer. On hear­ing this piece he ex­pressed his plea­sure with it and stat­ed that Mrs. El­vi­na M. Hall had writ­ten some words that would just suit the mu­sic. I gave him a co­py of it and it was soon sung in sev­er­al church­es here in Bal­ti­more [Mar­y­land] and well re­ceived. At the sug­gest­ion of friends I sent a co­py to Pro­fess­or The­o­dore Perk­ins and it was pub­lished in Sab­bath Car­ols. Un­der the pro­vi­dence of God it has been go­ing ev­er since. I trust that it has not failed to ac­comp­lish some good to my fel­low-men for the glo­ry of God.

Here’s a story about the song:

On New Year’s night, 1886, some mis­sion­ar­ies were hold­ing open-air serv­ic­es in or­der to att­ract pass­ers­-by to a near-by miss­ion, where meet­ings were to be held later. “All to Christ I owe” was sung, and af­ter a gen­tle­man had giv­en a short ad­dress he hast­ened away to the miss­ion. He soon heard foot­steps close be­hind him and a young wo­man caught up with him and said:

“I heard you ad­dress­ing the open-air meet­ing just now; do you think, sir, that Je­sus could save a sin­ner like me?”

The gen­tle­man re­plied that there was no doubt about that, if she was anx­ious to be saved. She told him that she was a serv­ant girl, and had left her place that morn­ing after a dis­a­gree­ment with her mis­tress. As she had been wan­der­ing about the streets in the dark, won­der­ing where she was to spend the night, the sweet mel­o­dies of this hymn had at­tract­ed her, and she drew near and listened at­tent­ive­ly. As the dif­fer­ent vers­es were be­ing sung, she felt that the words sure­ly had some­thing to do with her. Through the whole serv­ice she seemed to hear what met her op­pressed soul’s need at that mo­ment. God’s Spir­it had showed her what a poor, sin­ful and wretch­ed crea­ture she was, and had led her to ask what she must do. On hear­ing her ex­per­i­ence, the gen­tle­man took her back to the mis­sion and left her with the la­dies in charge. The young, way­ward woman was brought to Christ that night. A si­tu­a­tion was se­cured for her in a min­is­ter’s fam­i­ly. There she be­came ill and had to be tak­en to a hos­pi­tal. She ra­pid­ly failed and it became ev­i­dent that she would not be long on earth. One day the gen­tle­man whom she had met on New Year’s night was vis­it­ing her in the ward. Af­ter quot­ing a few suit­a­ble vers­es of Script­ure, he re­peat­ed her fa­vo­rite hymn, “All to Christ I owe”…and she seemed over­whelmed with the thought of com­ing to glo­ry…Two hours af­ter­ward she passed away.

Sankey, pp. 110-1

If you have ac­cess to a pic­ture of El­vi­na Hall or John Grape that we could put on­line, please click here.

I hear the Savior say,
“Thy strength indeed is small;
Child of weakness, watch and pray,
Find in Me thine all in all.”

Refrain

Jesus paid it all,
All to Him I owe;
Sin had left a crimson stain,
He washed it white as snow.

For nothing good have I
Whereby Thy grace to claim,
I’ll wash my garments white
In the blood of Calv’ry’s Lamb.

Refrain

And now complete in Him
My robe His righteousness,
Close sheltered ’neath His side,
I am divinely blest.

Refrain

Lord, now indeed I find
Thy power and Thine alone,
Can change the leper’s spots
And melt the heart of stone.

Refrain

When from my dying bed
My ransomed soul shall rise,
“Jesus died my soul to save,”
Shall rend the vaulted skies.

Refrain

And when before the throne
I stand in Him complete,
I’ll lay my trophies down
All down at Jesus’ feet.

Refrain

10/21/2007 15:40:11

For more hymns and stories visit the site: www.cyberhymnal.org

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