WHAT JAY ASKED

Anonymous said...


"Sometimes one just has to stand alone by themselves and learn to not be depressed."

Can you tell me how/when you learned this? I need to!

Jay


Jay's question comes from a couple of blogs ago.  While I usually let the comments be the comments without response, he has hit on something we might want to pursue.

I don't know that I can design a sufficient answer.  Maybe you can add significant elements to my mixture and come up with a fulfilling concept. 

Standing alone was not my old-life nature.  I am a people-person and I need to be hunkered down in a crowd.  I need people around me to the extent I was seldom alone.  Stuck by myself tended to be found only when I was blue.  To be clearer, in my first ten to fifteen years of ministry I spent about a third of the time severely discouraged and depressed.

For some reason by His marvelous grace, I have learned to be attentive to our Joseph's Pit experiences for God is using these moments as training to take future hills.  I don't know why....but I knew I was in the doldrums to learn something special about kingdom life.

What I learned in these depressing moments is God wastes nothing including the time I waste.  He uses everyone of my scraps to build a kingdom moment.  God never fails....never. 

I learned to believe He was working when I was completely clueless and this gave me purpose, meaning, and enormous hope.  A major point of conversion to this idea was when I read E. Stanley Jones' little book (big message) The Divine Yes.  This book was written after suffering a paralyzing stroke.  Jones lived out his final fourteen months showing the world that even though half of his body was painfully, shamefully withered....with God everything is a Yes....II Cor. 1:18-20.

EVERYTHING is a Yes....not most....not a few....not some.  Eventually I realized I was spending time discouraged over matters which were a Yes in His sight. 

A few examples?  When my car was stolen.  A Yes.  When my office was robbed?  A Yes.  When my house was robbed...nine times...a Yes.  Health challenges?  Yes.  Threatened to be fired about four times by unhappy groups...very tough...but Yes.

Regardless of the pain or the disorientation or the cluelessness or the threat....everything in our midst is a God-Yes....and I believe Him.  I really believe I went to school in the pits that one day I could encourage others living in the same place a way of escape.

Live free!