Thinking of Job

Well, this has been a blockbuster week for me, to say the least. As I speak, I have shoulder pain, kneecap pain, foot pain, a toothache, and hacking and sneezing with almost no smell or taste, and ear cloggage.

For those who are keeping track, I am now in my 11^th week of wearing a medical “boot” on my left foot and my podiatrist told me Tuesday to wear it another 4 weeks!!!

Just yesterday, I came home from work with a swollen kneecap and shoulder due to an undetected slippery water spill ( I now figure it had to have been from a maintenance worker letting soapy water slop out of his bucket, but you certainly can’t even suggest that to management) that was like skating on ice since my boot was the first to engage with it.

Then after work, while making dinner for me and my mom, I had a sudden “whoosh” of pain in my good foot (the right) that I can now only assume has something to do with the bone spur I was diagnosed with a month ago during treatment for my Plantar Fasciitis. That heel is now sore too, giving me every reason to be fearful.

Not that I should go on, but I will, I still have the lack of smell and taste as I continually cough up phlegm and also have my ears filling up, on and off.

A bright spot today, as usual for Sundays, has been the teaching I’ve heard, starting with Ben Wanda in Louisville, OH, and then immediately followed by great messages from both my pastors (Alex Kurz and Richard Jordan) at Shorewood Bible Church.

Oh, yeah, and then there's the tooth pain. I have a molar in the very back of my mouth that is sensitive when unusual pressure is applied, and sure enough, my brother made "roasted green beans" for our Sunday dinner as a family and they were too tough for my taste (al dente, as they like to call it in the restaurant biz) and a bite of them hit the "sweet spot" for my poor dilapidated molar.

I would post more but, once again, I am overcome with tiredness, which makes me suspect I have COVID.

Here’s some old stuff until tomorrow:

Life is lived in your perception of reality, and if you focus on what you have to be thankful for, choosing to see the good in every personal situation, you’ll be better for it.

If you think you’re just going to thank God for all the (troublesome) things in your life, you’re nuts. I’m sorry. God never told you to be grateful for all those things that come into your life. He says in them, in all things, give thanks. How do you do that? You look away from yourself to who God’s made you in Christ, says Richard Jordan.

The common theme that runs through all forms of depression is self-pity. I don’t care what it is, where it came from, or how it’s induced, depression always has an element of self-pity in it. 

You know, your emotions have no intellect; no thinking capacity of their own. They’re going to respond to what you’re thinking as if that’s really what’s happening, and there’s a formula for depression that’s as accurate and as consistent as anything in algebra or geometry, and it starts with bad, erroneous thinking. 

When the problem, the injury, or the insult comes, and they do come, you respond with disappointment. And if you take an injury, insult, or rejection, plus anger, multiplied by self-pity, you’ll get depression every time without exception. You’re on the road. It will first be despair, and then it’ll be depression. 

And as long as you’re thinking about it, brooding about it, remembering to remember it—remembering to be hurt, angry, insulted and rejected—you get blinded by self-pity, and you’re blinded to the resources God has provided for you. And the difficulties you face get to be overwhelmingly large, and it becomes like the (refrain) from Hee-Haw: "Gloom, despair and agony on me. Deep, dark depression, excessive misery. If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all. Gloom, despair and agony on me." 

*****

Unrealistic expectations and misplaced dependencies represent the antithesis of grace. 

Realistic thinking is to understand where you are in the program of God, who you are, and just what is meant by the grace of God—to live in the reality of God’s grace to you in Christ, and to have grace thinking dominate your life instead of the unrealistic thinking of a performance system. 

When you don’t have grace thinking, and you have unrealistic expectations, you’re not really thinking about what God’s really doing; you’ve just got ideas of your own. And you have misplaced dependencies. You’re trusting your sufficiency or someone else’s; you’re walking in unbelief 

Life’s a lot tougher in its reality than most evangelicals and the Charismatics want you to believe it is. 

*****

Whatever you depend on to give you purpose and meaning and life, that’s what’s going to control you. 

Really the only real sin that you constantly have to deal with is the sin of unbelief. The sin of not trusting the sufficiency God has given you in Christ.

All the other things—all the sins of the flesh Paul names— adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings—all of those are really symptoms of your lack of faith in the sufficiency of who God’s made you in Christ. 

The way you cure depression is not by focusing on the symptoms, it’s focusing on the source. The battle’s in your mind, first and foremost. 

Imaginations are designed to be programmed by our conscious mind and it’s the things in our imagination that effect our emotions. 

The devil doesn’t program them, you program them. Or you allow them to be programmed by the intake your mind is having. They can be re-programmed, re-directed by your conscious thinking. So you cast down all this uncontrolled involuntary thinking that comes into your mind. Cast it down, "bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ."

The way you re-program your imagination is through the conscious application of sound doctrine. That’s the objective of sound doctrine. And that’s the only way you’re going to control what Paul calls our "vain imagination." Vain means empty, useless thinking. Not based on truth, but based on error.

*****

The radio has FM and AM dial and we can choose which band we’re going to listen to.

The one band is error, and it says, "Worry and worry early." God says, "Be careful for nothing." Don’t be anxious or worried about anything. Which station do you listen to? Truth or error? 

God says He’s perfected forever all those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus. How are you going to get any better than that? You’re complete in Christ, "blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places." This is who God’s made you. 

Which are you going to believe? You say, "But look at what I’ve done," and God says, "Yeah, I know, look at what I did."

Where are you looking? What station are you listening to? He says, "Reckon yourselves to be dead unto sin, but alive unto God."

Bottom line, godliness with contentment is where it’s at. As Paul says, "I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content."

You can’t worry and trust God at the same time. So when you’re worrying, you’re not trusting God. It’s impossible to be depressed and thankful at the same time. All you need to get out of depression is to be thankful. 

Understand that neither height, nor depth, or anything can separate you from the love of God and say, "I’m going to be thankful to God, in whatever happens, for who I am in Him" You bring those thoughts into captivity to the reality of truth, and that’s a depression-buster. The path to freedom is first you decide you want to be free. 

*****

Jordan tells an inspirational story of a blind teen-aged girl’s testimony at a Bible youth camp: 

“She’d been blind from birth. Had never seen the light of day. She’d heard the gospel and gotten saved. The last day of youth camp, we were having a camp fire, and all the teens were giving testimony for what they thanked God for. 

“One was thanking Him for the trees, and for getting him up that morning, and all that stuff, and somebody was thanking God for this and that, and this young girl got up and said, ‘You know, I want to thank God.’ 

“Everybody was looking at her, thinking, ‘What could this blind girl be thanking God for?' Blind from birth and has to live all of life blind to all around her. 

“She said, ‘I’ve been listening all week, and I’ve learned about how much God loves me. I’ve learned what He’s done for me in Christ, and what a wonderful future He’s assured me, and how He’s equipped me right now to live a resurrected life in its details.’

“She added, ‘You know, I thank God I was born blind. Because that means I have virgin eyes. The first thing I’ll ever see is the one who loved me and gave Himself for me.’ 

“When I heard that story, I thought, ‘You know, there’s a girl who’s got it!’ She’s so filled with the love and grace of God that self-pity is turned to thanksgiving, turned to joy unto a ‘peace that passeth all understanding.’ That’s how you have victory every single day.”