Subject: DEPRESSED, DISCOURAGED, AND DEFEATED: WHY?
Scripture: Romans 7:4-25; Matthew 12:25-26; 6:24.
Text: Romans 7:18: "...for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not."
I sat one night some years ago with a man in a pickup truck by the side of the road and listened as he opened up his heart to me. He was a defeated man. His business life was not going well. His home life was an up-and-down sort of thing with a lot of heartache in it. His physical health was beginning to break down. At one time he had been one of the most active members of his church and had known much joy in the Lord's house, but, like King David of old, he had lost the joy of his salvation and perhaps even salvation itself. He was discouraged and felt defeated. He took much of the blame upon himself, saying that be was not the man he should have been nor even the man that he had wanted to be. He summed it up something like this: "I've tried, and tried hard, but somehow I've never found the power to be what I ought to be and to do what I ought to do."
Have you ever felt that way - that you aren't what you ought to be nor even the kind of person that, in your best moments, you want to be? Most of us, I imagine, have felt that way at times. Most of us, I imagine, have said things that we should not have said and done things that we should not have done even though we may have previously resolved that we would not say or do those very things. Perhaps many of us know through personal experience something of how Peter must have felt when he said that he would die before he would deny Jesus and yet, before the sun arose the next morning, denied Him three times.
In the seventh chapter of Romans the Apostle Paul describes a person who knows what is right and good and pleasing unto God and who wants to do it, yet finds himself unable to do the good that he desires to do. Listen to these words: "...what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I...to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do... when I would do good, evil is present with me."
Do you know anything from personal experience about what Paul is talking about in these verses? I imagine that many of us do. Yet we also know that this defeated kind of spiritual life is as different from the way Christians are supposed to live as day is from night. In these verses we have the description of a person who seeks to keep the law of God and be just before God through his own efforts without Christ and the help that comes to us through the Gospel. It is a picture of the inability of human strength to measure up to the standard of God's law no matter how many good intentions one may have or how much one may hate evil and love the good.
Bible scholars differ in their interpretation of just who Paul is talking about in these verses - whether of his own experience under the law before He met Christ, or of his experience during some part of his stay in Arabia following his Damascus Road experience, or simply of anyone who tries to do the will of God apart from the indwelling Spirit of Christ in his life. Be these things as they may, we know that the Christian life is supposed to be a life of victory, not defeat, and we also know that there have been times in the lives of many if not most of us who profess faith in Christ when we have felt more defeated than victorious.
Why is it that sometimes after we have accepted Christ as our Saviour and Lord and started out on the Christian pathway, we walk and talk and act more like discouraged, defeated people who can't quite make the grade no matter how hard they try than like those who have won the victory in Jesus, who live on the mountain underneath a cloudless sky, who are drinking at the fountain that never shall run dry, who are feasting on the manna from a bountiful supply, who are living in Beulah Land here and now and looking to a home in glory-land that outshines the sun when earthly days are over?
The basic reason for the defeated life described in Romans 7 is that the person described here has caught, in the law of God, a vision of the holy and good life which is pleasing unto God, and he wants to live this kind of life; yet in his own strength he cannot find the power to do this. "...to will is present with me;" he says, "but how to perform that which is good I find not." While he wants to do good, he finds that there is sin dwelling in him that keeps him from doing it; and not until he brings Jesus Christ into the picture in verse 25 does he find the way out of his defeated condition.
This, of course, is a picture of any person who discovers in the will of God the holy and good way of life, and then tries to live up to God's standard in his or her own strength. No matter how much we may desire to live up to God's will, the self-centered, self-willed, worldly nature with which we are born is too much for us to handle and subdue by ourselves. It is only through Christ and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit that we can attain unto the righteousness of God and have the power to live the way God wants us to live.
This is why Jesus told the disciples, after His resurrection, to tarry in Jerusalem for the baptism of the Holy Spirit before going out as His witnesses. "Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you," He said.
From the crucifixion until the day of Pentecost, they were a pretty weak, fearful group, and certainly, at times, discouraged and defeated. Yet when the Holy Spirit came, He brought power, courage and victory. The life which has the power to do the good is the life indwelt by the Holy Spirit. In its simplest terms, the Christian life is really the life of Christ lived in and through us by the indwelling Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ.
It is through Christ and His Spirit that one finds deliverance from the defeated condition described in Romans 7. Contrast Romans 7 with the plain statement of the Apostle Paul found in Philippians 4:13: "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me."
We can understand, therefore, why a person who is not a Christian may will to do good, yet find no way to perform it and become defeated.
But how about those of us who profess to being Christians and thus to having been born of the Spirit? Why do we sometimes become defeated in our spiritual lives and fail so sadly to become what we ought to be and to do what we know we ought to do?
Perhaps it is simply because we may forget sometimes that the power is of God and may go back to depending on our own strength again. Human pride is a hard thing to kill, this desire to do it ourselves and get some of the glory rather than simply letting Christ work in and through us to will and to do His Own good pleasure. No matter how spiritual we may become, we seem never to be far from the temptation or tendency to drift back towards trying to do things in our own strength rather than through the power of God.
When I was appointed to my first church as a student pastor, I was straight off the farm and had preached only two sermons. When Marian and I came down to Hickory to see about my enrolling in Lenoir Rhyne College and to find a place to live, I was surprised to hear that Dr. Joe Armbrust, superintendent of the Statesville district, wanted to see me, and even more surprised to learn that he wanted to appoint me to serve a church as pastor. When we moved into the Grace Chapel parsonage, to say that I felt inadequate was to put it mildly. I got down on my knees in the living room, and prayed something like this: "Now, Lord, I didn't ask to be called into the ministry, and I didn't ask to be sent here. I don't know how to do the work, but You put me here, and I'm available for you to use but whatever's done, You've got to do it."
During those months I leaned heavily on the Lord, and He did do some work the fruit of which abides unto this day and I hope will abide throughout eternity. But across the years and down to this present moment I find the tendency keeps hanging around to try to do some things myself rather than simply letting the Holy Spirit do what He desires through me.
I imagine that a lot of our spiritual failures come because we try to live the Christian life and do the good in our own strength rather than in the strength of the Lord.
Some years ago a friend of mine who was a professing Christian and active in the church came to feel that he ought to quit smoking. Those of you who have tried to travel that pathway know something of how rough and difficult it can be. He quit, but was having a struggle with it and it began to look as if he would not be able to hold out. He said that one day when it was really rough and it looked as if he weren't going to make it, in desperation he cried out, "Lord, why don't You help me?" And he said the answer immediately came back in that still small Voice, "You didn't ask Me." He realised that he hadn't even asked the Lord for His help, and he said, "Lord, I'm asking you now to help me." The Lord did, and he got the victory.
Do you remember the words of the Poet along this line?
"I got up early one morning,
And rushed right into the day;
I had so much to accomplish
That I didn't take time to pray.
"Problems just tumbling about me,
And heavier came each task;
'Why doesn't God help me?' I wondered.
He answered: 'You didn't ask!"
How many of our failures and defeats in life could be traced back to our dependence on our own selves rather than leaning on the Lord and asking Him to guide us and help us and use us? More perhaps than we would like to admit; but if we are defeated in the living of the Christian life, this is perhaps the first place we ought to look to discover the reason why.
I like the way Reverend Frank J. Stough, in the February 3, 1977, issue of the NORTH CAROLINA CHRISTIAN ADVOCATE, explained the success of the early Christians on the day of Pentecost and the effectiveness of Peter's sermon.
He said they spoke better than they could speak, and that Peter said more than he knew, did more than he could, and became more than he was.
Certainly when we are in the Spirit and the Spirit of Christ lives in and through us, we can speak more effectively than we could otherwise speak, we may express truths that we had never fully known before, we can do more than we otherwise could, and we become more than we are when separated from the life and power of Christ. When the Spirit of Christ dwells within us and we go forth in His strength, we need never become defeated for greater is He that is in us than he that is in the world.
A second reason for a defeated life is set forth for us in our Scripture verses: namely, a division within us, a divided loyalty or opposing factions within our own lives.
Jesus says that a kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation and a city or house divided against itself shall not stand. We are familiar with the sayings, "In unity there is strength" and "Divide and conquer." These principles hold true in the spiritual realm as well as in the military.
Jesus says further that no one can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. "Ye cannot serve God and mammon" or the riches of this world, He says.
Historians tell us that the great Roman Empire finally fell, not because of the strength of its enemies, but because of those things within that took away its strength and left it weak and lacking in power. Again and again are we told that great nations fall, not because of the overwhelming strength of their enemies but because they lose their unity and have divisions within that war against each other rather than uniting against the common enemy. The greatest enemy our nation has is not another country but is those things that divide us, rob us of our moral courage, and take away our will to resist evil. The divisions and conflicts within a nation can so weaken it that it may go down in defeat before an external foe that is smaller than itself.
Now, psychologists tell us that this same sort of thing can happen to us as individuals. We may have inner conflicts and tensions that so weaken us that we may go down in defeat in the battle with temptation and evil where we should have won the victory. It is the inner conflict of the person described in Romans 7, not the outward forces of evil, that brings him to the place that he cries out, "0 wretched man that I am: who shall deliver me from the body of this death?"
One of the most serious and difficult mental illnesses to deal with is schizophrenia, a split personality, the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde kind of condition, where a person has such conflicting attitudes that there seem to be two kinds of personality living within his or her physical body.
Yet all of us know something through personal experience of what it is to try to hold on to conflicting attitudes, to try to travel in opposite directions, to have such inner turmoil and conflict that our spiritual lives are weakened by it.
Do you remember the little poem that describes this so well?
"Within my earthly temple there's a crowd:
There's one that's humble, one that's proud;
There's one that's broken-hearted for his sins,
And one that, unrepentant, sits and grins;
There's one that loves his neighbor as himself,
And one that cares for naught but fame and self.
From such perplexing care I would be free,
If I could once determine which is me."
Pilate, on his judgment seat, was a weak man because he was torn between his conscience and pleasing the crowd. Since he was without a full commitment to do the right no matter what it was, the multitude had no great difficulty in getting him to yield to its demand to sentence Jesus to death.
We should realize that the great battleground of the soul is at the place where the struggle takes place between self-will and doing the will of God. As long as we are struggling over this matter of who is going to be in control, us or God, we have inner turmoil and division that weakens us. This issue is supposed to be settled in conversion, with self getting off the throne and Jesus being crowned as Lord and Master. Yet sometimes we may let this and other issues that should have been settled once and for all come back up and start a conflict within us all over again.
Dr. E. Stanley Jones, in his book, CONVERSION, tells of a missionary who was about to be sent home from the mission field. "What do you think is the basis of your trouble?" he asked her. She replied, "I'm sitting on a powder keg." "What is the powder keg?" "Myself. I'm two persons - one a person who didn't want to come to the mission field and the other, one who was afraid I'd be lost if I didn't."
If we aren't extremely honest, careful, and complete in our commitment to Christ, we may find a lot of things coming up that cause inner conflict that should have been settled once and for all. We may find ourselves continually having to refight the old battles between self-will and God's will, between self-glory and glorifying God, between pleasing men and pleasing God, between earthly things and spiritual things, between worldly treasures and heavenly treasures, as well as the basic inner conflict between the flesh and the spirit or the carnal mind and the mind of Christ.
Many years ago, Dr. Schofield described what he thought to be the basic cause of spiritual weakness and futility among professing Christians in the following words.
"We want to be Christians. Yes. But we want to be comfortable.
"We want to be Christians. Yes. But we want to do as we please from moment to moment. All discipline is irksome. Obligation is odious.
"We want to be Christians. Yes. But we do not intend to forego any opportunity to increase our profits or multiply our possessions.
"We want to be Christians. Yes. But we want to cling to our cherished prejudices."
Most of us know only too well what it is to have divided loyalties, to be torn between conflicting desires, to try to travel in opposite directions at the same time, to try to serve God with one part of our lives and to try to serve mammon or worldly riches with another. And we should know that inner conflict is going to weaken us against the outward forces of temptation and evil.
How do we deal with these inner conflicts? Jesus tells us that no man can serve two masters. If we would avoid much of the inner conflict, we need to make up our minds once and for all whom we are going to serve, who is to be our master, and then give Him our wholehearted devotion.
The Apostle Paul lived a victorious spiritual life. How did he do it? He said, "...this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." - Philippians 3:4-15.
"This one thing I do!" A unity of goal and purpose in life! Inner conflict weakens us. A unified purpose gives us strength.
There is one other major cause of spiritual defeat that we need to consider for a few moments. It is this matter of trying to be victorious Christians without doing those things that make for spiritual strength and victory. It is this matter of trying to be holy without taking time to be holy; of trying to be spiritually strong without eating the spiritual food that supplies spiritual strength; of trying to be mature Christians without doing those things that make for spiritual growth; of trying to be spiritual people without learning how to live and be in the Spirit; of trying to be good soldiers of the cross without putting on the armour of Christ; and of trying to do the work of the Lord without studying the Training Manual the Lord has provided for His workers. In short, it is trying to succeed as a Christian without doing the things that build up spiritual strength.
Do you remember the occasion when Jesus, Peter, James and John were on the mountain and Jesus was transfigured and Moses and Elijah came and talked with Him? When they came down the mountain to where the people were gathered, a man came to Jesus and kneeling down said, "Lord, have mercy on my son: for he is lunatick, and sore vexed: for ofttimes he falleth into the fire, and oft into the water. And I brought him to Thy disciples, and they could not cure him." Jesus cured the man's son. Later the disciples asked Jesus why they could not cure the lad. Do you remember the part of Jesus' answer where he said to them: "Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting." The indication is that had their faith been stronger and had they prepared themselves with the proper prayer and fasting, they might have succeeded where they failed.
And across the years, many times when I have not been as effective as I felt I should have been, the thought has come to me, "Have I not prayed as I should have prayed? Have I not fasted? Is the failure simply because I have not properly prepared myself?"
And then there was Jesus in Gethsemane with three of His disciples including Peter. He asked them to watch with Him and pray, but they were tired and sleepy. "Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation:" Jesus said, "the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." They went to sleep rather than watching and praying, and that night they forsook Jesus and fled and Peter three times denied Jesus.
How many of our spiritual defeats come because we fail to do those things that build spiritual strength and that prepare us for the battles and temptations of life?
Dr. George W. Truett used to tell of an outstanding businessman who at one time under his ministry found Christ, professed faith in Him, and started out on the Christian pathway. Yet some years later he travelled a long distance to talk about his spiritual life with Dr. Truett. He was spiritually discouraged, depressed and defeated, and he wanted to know why.
Dr. Truett asked the man some questions and then said that he could not find even one religious habit in the man's life that he lived up to with even one day's consistency. Sunday had become, for him, not the Lord's Day but another day for business. The man said that he had not read his Bible for months, that he went to church with awful irregularity, and that he could hardly tell when he had gone alone and prayed.
It was no wonder that he was spiritually defeated! None of us can stay strong spiritually if we neglect those things that build us up in the faith and build spiritual strength. None of us can be victorious Christians if we neglect the things that strengthen the spiritual life and help us stay close to the Lord. Wool, dacron, polyester and double-knit clothing may be all right for the physical body, but it takes the armor of God to be able to stand against the wiles of the devil and the enemies of the soul. "Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all to stand." We are told in Ephesians 6 what the whole armour of God is, and if we mean to be victorious Christians, we need to take the time to put it on.
So much of the time we become defeated spiritually simply because we do not do those things that make us strong in the faith and strong in the Lord!
The person described in Romans 7 was a spiritually defeated person. We can be sympathetic with him because some of us have had our spiritual defeats, too.
But I am glad the Apostle Paul does not stop in the 7th chapter of Romans. He lets us know that there is a way to spiritual victory.
"0 wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord...There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His Own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit ... we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us." Then in his letter to the Christians at Philippi, he not only says, "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me," but he goes on to say, "my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus."
Jesus can give us victory. Through faith in Him and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, we can come to do the good that we would do.
Through a full and complete commitment to Him and the doing of His will, we can get rid of a lot of the inner conflicts that weaken us.
And by making use of the means of spiritual grace that God has provided, we can be built up in the holy faith, made strong in the Lord, and become clothed in the whole armour of God. Let us pray...