In much younger days as a young Christian I wanted to do the right thing and while I am tremendously thankful to my parents for bringing me up in a church where I heard God’s message of salvation, our church did have a few legalistic tendencies. One of which was that we were made to feel guilty if we weren’t regularly “witnessing” for the Lord. That meant we were supposed to be always telling someone about Jesus and how they could get saved. The idea was fine, but the methods and motives were awful.

I did my best to be a good witness but as I look back, most of those bumbling attempts at witnessing probably did more to drive people away from the Lord than to draw them to him. At those times I was so scared and uptight that if someone would have stuck a pin in me (graphically speaking), I probably would have burst.

There were a few other “shoulds” too. It was like this little voice inside my head saying, “You have to do this … you have to do that. You mustn’t do this. You mustn’t do that,” and so on. I used to think this voice was God telling me what I should or shouldn’t be doing. In fact, if the little voice in my head would have told me to stand on my head, I probably would have done it—at least where nobody would have seen me!

Fortunately, I was also taught to “test the spirits” which I did and discovered that this little voice inside my head was a compulsion from within, rather than a conviction from without; that is, it wasn’t from God. It can be difficult to discern the difference between a compulsion and a conviction, but simply put, a compulsion is where one feels relentlessly driven while a conviction is where one feels more a gentle drawing. With a compulsion the little voice in your head drives you nuts until you do what it tells you to do. With a conviction that comes from God, there is always a sense of freedom because “where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty.” One is always free to say, “No.”

Just because a little voice inside your head “speaks” to you is no guarantee that it is from God or from God’s Spirit. If this “voice” is continually plaguing you, it may be OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) which may need professional help and medication to bring it under control. It could be associated with one’s need to be a people pleaser in order to feel loved by one’s leaders and/or peers (I’m pretty sure this was a part of my problem). It could also come from one’s need to get attention from one’s peers and feel important because “God speaks to me.” Or it could be from the evil one who knows he can’t pull us down into a life of sin and degradation, so he seeks to “push us over the top so we become so heavenly minded we are of no earthly use.”

I’m not saying that God doesn’t “speak” to us or that God’s Spirit doesn’t lead us. Not at all. But we need a discerning spirit to know the true source of these inner “voices” or convictions whether they are from God, the evil one, or from our own neurotic tendencies. It begins by learning to pray the right prayer such as the following:

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please give me a discerning spirit so that when I hear an ‘inner voice’ I will know whether it is from you, the enemy, or from my own self. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. 1 John 4:1 (NIV).

NOTE: See also the Daily Encounter on “Arm-Twisting for God” at: https://learning.actsweb.org/daily.php?id=141

“A woman has a dream where she wanders into a shop at the mall and finds Jesus behind the counter.

“Jesus says, ‘You can have anything your heart desires.’

“Astounded but pleased, she asks for [the fruit of] peace, joy, happiness, wisdom, and freedom from fear. Then she adds, ‘Not just for me, but for the whole earth.’

“Jesus smiles and says, ‘I think you misunderstand me. We don’t sell fruits, only seeds.’”²

It’s true … what we sow is what we reap. If we sow seeds of bitterness, we will reap bitterness. If we sow seeds of disharmony, we will reap disharmony. But if we sow seeds of joy, we will reap joy, and if we sow seeds of love, we will reap love.

So whatever you do, be sure to plant the seeds of whatever it is you want to reap.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please help me to plant seeds of love, joy, peace, gentleness, and kindness everywhere I go. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Galatians 6:7 (NKJV).

2. Bruce Mc Nichol and Bill Thrall, The Ascent of a Leader, Jossey Bass, 1999. Cited in Encounter magazine (Australia) June/July 2004

“Loneliness,” as Karen Carpenter used to sing so sadly, “it’s such a sad affair.” Indeed it is. It’s one of the plagues of modern Western society.

Dr. James Lynch, a former medical researcher at John Hopkins, contends in his book, The Broken Heart, that loneliness is the number one physical killer today. It can literally break your heart.

“Using actuarial tables from ten years research, Dr. Lynch says that those who live alone—single, widowed, divorced—have premature death rates from two to ten times higher than individuals who live with others. Living alone, he says, does not necessarily produce loneliness, but the two are often related. Among divorced people, suicide is five times higher, fatal car accidents four times higher.

“People who live alone visit physicians more frequently than married people, and they stay in hospitals twice as long for identical illnesses.”²

It may not be the most desirable for everyone but we can live without romantic relationships, but none of us can live healthily without at least one or two healthy, close, loving relationships. Without such we limp along in the shadows of life, eking out a lonely existence … and die a little every day.

Dr. Lynch also reminds us that, “If we fail to form loving human relationships, our mental and physical health is in peril.”

Besides one’s family (if one has one) there’s no better place to find love and a sense of belonging than in a healthy, non-legalistic church where unconditional love, acceptance, and friendship are expressed in open, positive, and practical ways. In such a church God does set the lonely in families—that’s one reason God has designed the church as a family—the family of God.

Here, too, one can find God—the only one who can satisfy our innate sense of spiritual loneliness. “To live apart from him,” says psychologist, Dr. Norman Wright, “is the most pathetic loneliness of all.”

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, in my loneliness help me to always look to you and to a church where the people are loving and friendly—and never to any false substitute which would only end up increasing my sense of loneliness. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”
‘

1. Psalm 68:6 (NIV).

2. From Perceptions—Observations on Everyday Life by Maxine Dunnam

Before I started publishing on the web, a man spoke to our ACTS board of directors seeking to have my writings rejected. Displaying several outreach brochures that I had written, he said to my board, “Are you going to allow this literature to be published? It has psychology in it and psychology is of the devil.” Our board obviously didn’t heed his advice.

Just recently I was asked, “Are you aware that psychology is based on the teachings of godless, and in some cases, Anti-Christian men?”

Sure, some psychology and counseling can be godless and some of the devil—so can some theology and preaching. There are plenty of both but does that make all psychology and all theology bad? Of course not.

As theology is the study and understanding of God, psychology is the study and understanding of man’s psyche—that is, the study of his mind and inner self, which involves his emotions and motives. Keep in mind, too, that God “desires truth in the innermost parts,”² which includes personal honesty with one’s emotions and motives.

The book of Proverbs urges us to seek wise counsel. And Jesus, more than any person ever, always understood what was going on in the mind and heart of his hearers—as well as that of his opponents—which made him the Master Psychologist par excellence.

Actually, if we don’t have a well-balanced understanding of people (psychology), it is all too easy to use theology and the Bible to manipulate people and keep them bound in denial and trapped in their problems. Such teachers have little or no understanding of the human mind and heart and can do considerable harm to the psyche of the people they seek to counsel. They are usually stuck in denial themselves. The religious Pharisees of Christ’s day were a classic example of this and we all know what Jesus had to say to them. It wasn’t nice!

The heart and soul of good psychology and counseling is to seek personal honesty—being honest with one’s self, with God, and with at least one trustworthy, non-judgmental and safe person. It involves the confession of sins, of buried and denied super-charged repressed negative emotions, and acknowledging our motives and seeing the reasons behind many of our negative behavior patterns and impaired relationships. Besides teaching personal honesty and integrity, it emphasizes the necessity of personal responsibility and growing towards wholeness. I’d say that’s about as biblically sound as one can get.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please help me to face reality about myself and be ruthlessly honest so I can see both my strengths and my broken parts and bring the latter to you for your healing and recovery. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

P.S. True, we are all sinners by nature but unresolved personal issues cause us to act out in even more self- and other-destructive ways.

1. Proverbs 15:21-22 (NLT).

2. Psalm 51:6.