285
May 1927
T h e
K i n g ’ s
B u s i n e s s
Depression— Exposed and Conquered B' y W alter G. S t A lley , B ournemouth , E ngland
M ANY of the Lord’s people are passing through times of severe personal trial and testing, and I want to pass on a special word to them. Read prayerfully and repeatedly the Holy Spirit’s message in Hebrews 12:5-12, and pause over verses 7, 10, 11, until you catch the Glory of your Heavenly Father’s purpose in it all. There are many things we shall not understand until the Day when everything shall be made manifest, but we know that Romans 8:28 is true now, “that all things work together for good to them that love God; to them who are the called according to His purpose.” It would seem, as one reads the articles arid corres pondence in Christian newspapers, and compares them with the experience and testimonies of many of God’s own people whom we know, that the object of the enemy of our souls is to get Christian workers down under depression. He knows that temptations from without no longer have the effect on us that once they had, and that the worker in the vineyard will not likely be tempted away from his appointed post by the attractions or opinions of the world. So he is attacking us in the very experiences which God desires should lead us to Himself. I f we view the trial permitted (not always sent) by God as a calamity, self-pity will begin to operate. The Adversary will do all he can to bring this about. Nothing will make us turn our eyes away from Jesus quicker than this. We are down at once then into the lower plane— the self plane; then the Holy Spirit is hindered in His working, and we cannot see God in our experience. The workings of the flesh will at once begin—-we shall find ourselves criticising and blaming people who may, con sciously or unconsciously, be the human instruments of some of our troubles, and we may forget the evil powers that can use these individuals. We shall then find ourselves grieved and vexed, and burdened about things we cannot deal with without causing complications, and about people we cannot help without risk of misunderstandings; trifling things will be magni fied, irritation and discord will spring up and vex us still more, until everything and everybody seem wrong. That is depression, i.e.pcoming under the power of the enemy. It is the most effective strategy of Satan in these last days. His attempts to rob our Blessed Lord of His Deity; to repudiate by ridicule the efficacy of His Aton ing Death; to blunt the edge of the Sword of the Spirit by Modernist attacks on the authority of the Word of God have all been met by a wonderful spiritual union of tes timony and purpose on the part of the true members of the Body of Christ around the fundamental truths. Those tactics served to arouse the soldiers of Christ, and the attack from that quarter failed. The new attack is more wily. The arch-enemy is after getting the Soldiers self-occupied, discouraged, suspicious of each other by questioning God’s dealings, by getting us down on a lower plane where the Holy Spirit cannot operate, and where we cannot see that the Enemy of God is not flesh and blood, but unseen powers (Eph. 6:12). A depressed Christian is a prisoner of war, under the
power of the Enemy, unable to efficiently serve his right fu l King. Satan knows ito—it is what he is after in every attack of depression that comes to us. Refuse all Discouragement. . Be doubly on the watch when words critical of the sayings or doings of others spring to your lips in your discouraged moments. Decline either to be under depression, or to be in any way an instrument to depressj|others. TALK to your fellow Christian instead of about him. PRAY with him rather than criticize him. INSIST on your rights in Christ Jesus, such as Ephesians 2 : 6 , “Put on the whole armor of God,” and “stand,” and “withstand,” : instead of going under, in the evil day (Eph. 6:13). Say:—“If I cannot be much of a worker for God, at least I will refuse to be a tool of the enemy.” “GLORIFY YE THE LORD IN THE F IRES .’’ Isaiah 24:15. Read again those verses in Hebrews 12. It may well be that the exceptional testings of God’s people in these days are the final purgings before our Lord comes to “present us faultless before His Father/’ What a shame it would be if His intentions of love are surrendered by us to fulfil the enemy’s purpose! Certain it is, that God is counting on His people in these closing days of oppor tunity. Can we, will we, stand the test? The actual trials, that beset u s ; the sorrows we endure; the pressure we get and will continue to get from the enemy, all matter to Him. We may count on Him, and cast our cares upon Him. Hear what He says:— “W a tch ”— “ E ndure ”— “ O vercome ” “To Him that overcometh will I grant to sit with Me in My Throne, even as: I also overcame, and am set down with My Father in His Throne.” Revelation 3:21. Heaven Below In the rugged hill country of Northern Scotland lived an old man, Ronald Macdonald, of whom a writer in “The Watchman” says, “He never saw a railway train, never heard an organ play, never owned a five-pound note and never doubted a word of the Bible.” Yet “in his humble cottage with its peat fire he was supremely happy in the Lord.” . How many people today are traveling in palace cars and limousines all over the country, have heard the finest music and listened to the world’s most renowned singers, and have money by the millions—all to make them happy, if possible, but yet are not happy! Why? Because they lack one thing, faith in the Wqrd of God. Without Christ a palace can not make the owner really happy. With Christ a humble cottage is Heaven below. After all is said and written of this world’s beau tiful things it yet remains true that “Christ is all, and in all.” “The world passeth away and the lust thereof but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever.”
Made with FlippingBook flipbook maker