Choose instead to dwell in my disasters

Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old.

Isa 43:18

The title for this chapter is surely a give away to its contents, indeed I lifted the phrase from a song I have listened to a lot in the past year by Ray Lamontagne. Rays music is most certainly not Christian by any means but conveys a strong feeling burning within most of us.

His song ‘empty’ is the narrative of a broken man who seems to recall situations in battles in his life experience, in between smoky and beautiful expression he soulfully delivers for me the key line of the song.

“I never learned to count my blessings
I choose instead to dwell in my disasters”

For the character in question perhaps blessings were very different to the blessings given undeservingly to Christian people worldwide, however it so apparent that we tend to relive over and over the painful and shocking moments in an otherwise wonderful life.

If you are not a Christian and by this I define as having been born again (John 3:6) and saved (Acts 16:31) by Gods grace (Eph 2:8) it would be my earnest call to you that you come to the saviour for salvation. You see in this world many pray to God in a symptomatic way asking for our deliverance from illness and pain, indeed one of my good friends suggested that every man will drop to his knees if the flight he were on suddenly plummeted from its course in the clouds but a small percentage want God to take the reigns of their lives and walk with him.

Perhaps you are contemplating becoming a Christian because you believe you could be healed from a long term illness, maybe you see televangelists who have an uncanny resemblance to the arena of over the top WWF personalities who claim you can gain your healing and anointing by calling 1- 800 – SCAM and giving your donation.

The fact is that the most worrying problem we all have is sin and that it must be dealt with, it has many similarities with a cancer which can be cured and have seen that to my delight in some people I know and love. The bible states that the wages of sin is death a spiritual death with a destiny in the never ending lake of fire.

However the bible also clearly states that God Is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. The bible states all have sinned and that our righteousness is as filthy rags, we all deserve to be judged in our sin but the Lord Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins that we might be reconciled to God.

If you would like to know of lasting peace with God which I can only scratch the surface of in this book, then you must realise you are a sinner and be willing to turn from your sin and accept the Lord Jesus as your personal saviour. If you have already done this then you are truly blessed! If not please consider the problem of sin before addressing anything else in your life because of its urgency.

Even as I contemplate exploring the blessings of being a Christian I admit my failure to apply them to my own walk in life. How preoccupied am I with this world and its problems and trials and never seek to look at the saviour.

Helen Lemmel penned the beautiful hymn with the following words

Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
Look full in His wonderful face,
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim,
In the light of His glory and grace.

If I am occupied with the saviour and get to know him personally through prayer and an invigorated and fruitful walk (please see chapter) then I will cease to worry about things far from my control. As I just wrote the last sentence I realised that this was merely a concept or an ideal that I have never managed and I must admit I struggle with.

This wonderful saviour has been the author of our salvation and God the father has given us too many blessings that far outweigh any of our struggles.

Abundant blessings

The moment I placed my trust in the saviour in July 2001 I was a so called man of eighteen I had been saved from a place of torment but much more I was instantly given the holy spirit within my being, and I was from that moment a partaker of umpteen theological terms which meant I was now right with God and I was now his child and was destined for heaven at the end of life’s journey.

But now for the inevitable, in the next few days I wrestled within my being as to the fact and reality of my salvation and then I found solace in the scripture I turned to the evening I found the saviour. John 3:36 states “he that believeth hath” what a blessed assurance indeed no other argument no other plea or so I thought!

You see it wasn’t very long into my walk with the saviour I realised something serious there would be attacks from the one who would seek to rob me of the real joy I had in Jesus, indeed a joy found in nothing else the world after all only offers pleasure.

In my own experience it seems to be the what if’s and maybes that seem to sink my heart into despair a lot has been said in many publications about the detriment to health caused by stress, anxiety and depression leading to many people not working or a loss of productivity and in some cases some are imprisoned in their homes with real fear.

I remember some circumstances that would change my life and in some ways would leave a mark on me, a few years whilst I was backsliding far from God I had to be rushed to hospital with an anaplaytic shock caused by something I ate within an hour I could not breathe and the skin in my body had broken out in a rash making me look like an extra from a poor b horror movie.

For awhile afterwards I would relive it over and over until I was ridden with anxiety attacks and panic and to make things far worse I was prescribed exactly the opposite of what I needed, which might I digress led me to strange and alien thoughts which would obsessively cycle in my mind out of my control. It wasn’t long till I was taken of them but frequently I would play back some memories in precise detail and in a way project my anxiety to today’s John McBride.

You see what I just did? I said today’s me you can insert your name there but maybe that’s just what you have been doing like me. Is there a remedy to this problem? Perhaps you have been reliving traumatic events, failure in parenting, marriage, friendships, loss of job, loss of health, what do we do when all round us fails?

As human beings we have an innate desire within us to try and resolve the problem ourselves whether we go to the bullies parents house and confront them on the doorstop for picking on ‘our boy’, or maybe we try and self diagnose and pump ourselves full of vitamins until or skin has turned orange, or maybe we simply believe in our inner being and its power. The question then needs to be answered what do we do when all else fails?

The cycle of anxiety seems to be endless were you begin to worry about worrying. Maybe you are like me and consign yourself by saying ‘Well im just a worrier!’. Where do we turn in times of need? To the one who alone is able!

Dale Carnegie a popular author on life issues and who often cites the teaching of the Lord Jesus entitled one of his chapters ‘live in day tight compartments’ he draws this ideal out by using the example of William Osler a professor who had been on a liner months before giving his students the following sage advice he had learnt from his experience.

What I urge is that you so learn to control the machinery as

to live with 'day-tight compartments' as the most certain way to ensure safety on the

voyage. Get on the bridge, and see that at least the great bulkheads are in working

order. Touch a button and hear, at every level of your life, the iron doors shutting out

the Past-the dead yesterdays. Touch another and shut off, with a metal curtain, the

Future -the unborn tomorrows. Then you are safe-safe for today! ... Shut off the past!

Let the dead past bury its dead. ... Shut out the yesterdays which have lighted fools the

way to dusty death. ... The load of tomorrow, added to that of yesterday, carried

today, makes the strongest falter. Shut off the future as tightly as the past. ... The

future is today. ... There is no tomorrow.

Of course this wisdom is derived in some shape or form from biblical principles we shall explore.

Manna from heaven

The children of Israel were a blessed nation who after there deliverance and exodus from the hands of pharaoh in Egypt spend 40 years in the wilderness sojourning and received divine sustenance in the form of manna. From Numbers 11:7-8 we can deduce it was a useful and practical form of nutrition and it could be used to make cakes or it could be boiled.

If too much manna was gathered on a given day it become corrupt and was of little value, this simple illustration can be used to show that if someone did not rely on God for just the day ahead and went on his own steam and gathered more on his own initiative it would corrupt. Is this not like our thought life if we become entangled In the affairs of yesterday and the past or we look within ourselves and look to far into the future it will not be long until our minds are a battlefield for the great adversary more of which I will talk about in the next chapter.

The past may be painful and hard to cope with, and indeed some seem to be almost fixated with it recalling the good old days of health and strength and prosperity however we must be mindful that we cannot change the past! Maybe you are like me and have a head like a calendar and can recall dates and times, months and seasons, smells, music, atmosphere from your memories a blessing indeed if used in the wrong hands indeed! It isn’t long before I begin to analyse my decisions and begin to explore my own experiences like a Christopher Columbus of my own cerebral cortex.