Christian Recovery

CHAPTER 1 OF MY NEXT BOOK ‘CHRISTIAN RECOVERY, GIVE US THIS DAY’

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil, for You are with me;
Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.
(Psalm 23: 4)

call on me in the day of trouble;
I will deliver you, and you will honour me.
(Psalm 50: 15)

Anxiety, stress and worry are linked with a common bond we all know as irrational FEAR.  We often reflect our fears away by judging others. Pointing the finger prevents us from speaking up about our innermost thoughts. We condemn or praise in order to slip away undetected. I could lay in the gutter and still point the finger.

“You therefore have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another you are condemning yourself because you who pass judgment do the same things.  Now we know that God’s judgment against those who do such things is based on truth.  So when you, a mere human being, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God’s judgment? Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, forbearance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance”? (Romans 2: 1-4)

Many of us experience fear in every day of our lives and to cope we hang onto varying schemes to deal with this difficult emotion. All systems fail nevertheless, so we carry on developing our personalities around a pretentious stance while attempting to struggle up the stream of our hardening lives. We battle on regardless believing wholeheartedly that we have become strong in our devotion to facing our fears, rather than disposing of them in totality using the redemptive spiritual methods that are given to us from within the Bible.  Being so convinced of ourselves, we could pass a lie detector test when asked “how are you”?  Fine! ….READ MORE…..

“For those who eat and drink without discerning the body of Christ eat and drink judgment on themselves.  That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep”.
(1 Corinthians 11: 28-32)

Many believe we experience fear in different ways because everyone is afraid of different things, making the outcome individual to each of us. Fear becomes our own personal concept. To think of fear in this way, as I did many years ago, leaves us looking for an individual solution to solve our very own personal problems, which enhances the fear itself leaving us in an isolated position.  We yell ‘you’ll never understand’ and when we meet people that we believe do understand, it isn’t long before we find disagreement with them too.

Many of us search through the labyrinth of spiritual books to find a solution that is so simple, that we make difficult. There are shelves full of such books, but fear breeds confusion and elaborates on our ‘special case’, ‘individual needs’ and ‘personal story’. We focus on our story when all along we should be focusing on His, the Jesus story.  It is what He had done and not what we are doing that can guide us toward more peaceable lives.  The energy from God is the same as it was back then when Jesus walked the earth. The same Jesus yesterday, today and forever Amen. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are a constant same frequency that can never change. The same must be said therefore, for the bad energy that we know as fear. It is the same today, yesterday and from time immemorial, even before you were born the fear energy was around.  It just waited for us to invite it in via our sickness. We must remember!

We are not individuals regarding fear, the energy in all of us is identical. Fear is the same energy source that began in the Garden of Eden all those years ago delivered by a talking snake.

When wrapped in fear, we are in a common energy that tells us it’s uncommon and unique. Fear has an innate ability to fake individual mutation depending on each specific situation, making you believe that only you alone can feel this way. We are led to believe that the fear in you is different from the fear in me, when it isn’t. The fear energy is a constant source in whoever it resides.

The cause of fear may come from varying situations yes, but the energy source is the same and cannot be different. Fear is like electricity; it is the same whenever and wherever! The fear energy in you regardless was the same energy that flowed through me many years ago. We are inseparably twinned by the fear energy that has settled within us, that came from without.

I gave my fear to God via prayer, the Bible and many discussions with Christians who share a universal loving energy (The Holy Spirit) that can deal with such fears far easier than I ever could. The expansive fear that heated up in my head like a burning match was snuffed out by the simple embrace of Gods hand, which was delivered through Christian prayer. The scars that are left over from the burn are still there, and God tells me to show them to others who still suffer, but with a smile and with the same hands-on embrace that God gave me.

“Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom”. (2 Corinthians 3: 17)

To counterbalance fear, we must recognize the energy force that drives fear, a devilish energy that is universally the same in you as it was in me, that there are no individual fear factors at all. Your problem alas is my problem, the same energy source, so we can share in the delight of conquering our fear together in harmony with Gods love. Jesus said that with a little faith we can move mountains. To be sure, the mountain of fear that is in you, at this moment, will be gone in that moment once you grasp the Words of our Lord Jesus Christ, which are both in the Bible and faithfully flow out from the mouths of mature Christians. Many of us could stop our obsession, but we could not stay stopped.  For that we need divine intervention, we need the Love of Jesus. To begin our spiritual journey, the smallest amount of faith will be more than enough.

“Jesus replied, “Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” (Mathew 17: 2)

Very few of us set out our day to harm ourselves or others, and yet by the end of each day we are right bang in the middle of our sickness.  We soon become abusive in one way or another. We fail to complete a single day without fear hindering us at some point. Subtle fear glossed over with pride, or fear dressed up as determination rehashing the same old sentence every morning ‘I won’t do that again’ over and over until it becomes easier to drink, drug, gamble or whatever it is we do, just to stop the repetitive and dogged madness from raging in our heads.  Why on earth do we do so much damage to ourselves and have little control over what we do?  We are so determined to do the right thing, but on impulse we are flung once again into disarray.

“I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my addictive nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.” (Romans 7:18)

Anxiety and worry dispel the idea of having ‘one day at a time’ based on our spiritual condition.  Jesus tells us in His prayer;

“Give us this day our daily bread”. (Mathew 6: 11)

We must allow the seed to be planted in us first and allow growth to take place from God directly into our hearts. Saint Paul tells us;

“I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow”.(1Corinthians3: 6-7)

Seed equals word. Once we get the idea of God through Jesus, we can only then allow the sprinkling and eventual saturation of the Truth via Biblical words that come from God, to enter into our hearts and minds.  What seemed to be a labyrinth of unapproachable Biblical pages finally become settled on our laps in an orderly fashion.

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid”. (John 14: 27)