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Saturday, August 16, 2014

30 Day Challenge: Depression ~ Day 1

          As a sequel to my recent post on depression, here is the way I would apply my time with God to the corresponding 30 Day Challenge. The day after writing that post, the things God was dealing with in my life were a clear example of a way I did not yet know him, followed by wonderful teaching from his word that built up my faith in how I could and would know him as I followed him step-by-step through life. For me, this is all about Jesus’ picture of himself as the Good Shepherd, his church as his flock of beloved sheep, and his people following him wherever he leads.[1] I hope that this encourages you to consider how our relationship with God grows as we let him expose our needs, and his satisfaction to those needs, even on a daily basis.

Day 1 Scripture:

24 By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, 25 choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. 26 He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward. (Hebrews 11)

1.  Ways I do not know God

          What I discovered about myself is that, whenever I have that feeling of needing something so strongly that “I can’t live without it”, there is a way in which I am not experiencing God as my supreme pleasure. It doesn’t matter whether this is about a material possession that I think will make me happy, or people I can’t let go of because their disapproval and rejection has shattered something inside me, or people I cannot stand up to out of fear of the repercussions, or someone I can’t share Jesus with for fear of losing them, the root issue is that, at least in those particular areas of my life, I do not know the feeling of God as my highest satisfaction.
          To clarify, when God exposes these things in our lives that we haven’t thought of before, it does not mean that it nullifies other ways we do know him, or other relationships in which he is our highest treasure. Rather, he is putting his finger on the next thing he wants to build-up in our lives so that we can know him on any particular day better than we have ever known him before.

2. Ways I could know God

          What Moses’ example gives me is the longing to know God the way he knew God. I want to be able to face temptation with that sense that I would rather suffer hardship than “enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin” in any way whatsoever. I would rather feel like bearing “the reproach of Christ”, including people despising me because I believe and live the whole counsel of God, is “greater wealth” than all the treasures of the world.
          I also feel a longing to know “the reward” that is ahead with such passionate experience that I would not fall even in the face of the murderous work Satan is doing in the world to destroy Jesus’ Church. God’s word assures me that, even though “the devil has come down to you in great wrath, because he knows that his time is short!”[2] the Church itself will go out “conquering, and to conquer,”[3] until the day of Jesus return, no matter how many Christians are martyred in the process.[4]

          The conclusion for me is that, whenever God exposes that either possessions or people feel like a greater satisfaction than he does, he wants me to feel the poverty of my experience of him as “the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”[5]He wants me to let myself mourn that a possession or person could feel more important to me than the presence of the Holy Spirit in my inner being. He is working to bless me with that meekness that stops trying to fix what is broken inside me. And he is working to awaken within me that hunger and thirst for the righteousness of knowing him as my supreme joy.[6]
          All the while that Moses was blessing me with his example, there was the second witness of the apostle Paul who declared things like, “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain,”[7] and, “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”[8]
          As God exposed ways that I need to know him like that, I am fully assured that this is exactly the work he is doing in me, and that I will experience this more and more as he daily transforms me to be like Jesus “from one degree of glory to another,”[9] heading towards that day that “he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.”[10]
          I know that this testimony is longer than required for the 30 Day Challenge. It is my way of attempting to give a clear example of how this works. I assure you that even a line or two of observation would be enough to track the work of God in our lives, and to see how a month of this journey will be like puzzle pieces coming together to give us a clear picture of how God will meet us in our most depressing thoughts and feelings, and consistently work for the healing of our broken hearts, and the binding up of our wounds.[11]
          I hope and pray that his helps you to know God, through faith in Jesus Christ, by the personal presence of their Holy Spirit, even better than you have ever known him before. One day we will “know fully,” even as we have been “fully known.”[12] This sharing, and the 30 Day Challenge it illustrates, is to help each of us take daily steps in that direction.

LINKS:

© 2014 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.)



[1] Jesus gives us this beautiful picture in wonderful detail in John 10:1-42
[2] Revelation 12:12
[3] Revelation 6:1-2
[4] Revelation 6:9-17
[5] Philippians 3:14
[6] Based on the Beatitudinal journey of Matthew 5:1-12
[7] Philippians 1:21
[8] Philippians 3:8 (read Philippians 3:1-21 as the context for Paul’s testimony of how the treasure of knowing Jesus Christ was greater than his old life of self-attainments in religion, and than holding on to his earthly life in the face of impending martyrdom)
[9] II Corinthians 3:18
[10] Philippians 1:6
[11] Psalm 147:3
[12] I Corinthians 13:12

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