Discipline for Recovery

James 1:12 “Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him.”

I am writing this series for people who have a mental disorder of some kind. In my first post on this blog, I talked about the foundation for hope and change through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. In the second, I highlighted the importance of humility and that denial is an opposite of humility. Humility causes us to look to God for help. In the third, I discussed how to search for our own personal recovery plan. In order for that to work, God must give that to us and help us to follow it. I discussed how that works in general. If you missed any of those, go back and read them as they create the foundation for the next step I list now. My own recovery was made possible by doing a series of things that I am writing about here on this blog. I am covering the highlights of what I learned here. In order to recover, I had to embrace the path of Christian discipleship and do my best to stay with that day by day.

The fourth thing that I needed for recovery was perseverance. Another common word for that would be discipline. There can be no discipleship without discipline. I found that the path that led to real maturity in my faith was the same path my recovery was on. Up until this point in time, I have not seen any other way that has worked for anyone. And so I am personally convinced that the best recovery possible for anyone will involve real work towards becoming a loyal follower of Jesus. You might rightly call them true fanatics of Jesus. That is different than just following a preacher or priest, or a denomination, or a doctrine or set of them. Unfortunately, many Christians are following a cheap, easy substitute for true discipleship and they are not getting better because they have a form of godliness but they lack the power of the real thing. It is my testimony that the real thing does have power to help us in the times of our need.

Hebrews 5:12 “In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.”

One of the first major changes that I made, is that I started studying the word of God myself. I also started listening much closer to the sermons at the church I was attending. On this path I started by living on the milk of the “elementary truths” of God's good news to me. But had I stayed there, I do not believe that my recovery would have gotten very far. A big part of my recovery was discovering what I was doing that was keeping me stuck and unable to move forward. This was not the milk of God's goodness to me, but rather the meat that I needed to eat in order to get better. I accepted being responsible for putting my life into a ditch and I was the one who could do something about that. Repentance means to literally turn around 180 degrees and head in the opposite direction. It took humility for me to accept this. I had to take responsibility for finding out what was good for me and do it, as well as find out what I was doing that was hurting me and stop doing those things. This took real time as there were many things I needed to change. I could not do them all at once. I had to persevere with this process and keep moving forward.

I had to spend more time meditating on what was true in the word of God then I did feeling sorry for myself in self-pity, or focusing on what was confusing me, or worrying about things out of my control. I began practicing taking my thoughts captive, or controlling what I was spending most of my time thinking about. The more I did that the more I trained myself to be able to tell the difference between good personal choices and bad ones. This was a discipline I had to do. There was no pill to take that would do that for me. Jesus is The Life. On an extremely practical level, following Him brought me life. Having a mental illness is certainly a trial, but when I persevered I did find help. I also discovered that this crown of life James talks about isn't just something that we receive in the next life. I am still discovering that the more I focus on Jesus and the better I do at following Him in this life, the more of His life I experience. I have a crown now, and it just keeps getting better. I do not doubt that it will be much greater in the next life, but I did not have to wait until then to start receiving some of the very real benefits of it in this life.

I attend a weekly peer-support group where most of the attendees are bi-polar. I know that this perseverance and discipline is difficult for them because their emotions tend to bounce between extremes. It is currently easier for me because I am very emotional stable, but I did not start out in this state. I have never had a manic episode, but I was continuously clinically depressed at one time. I had my challenges in my recovery, and they will have some different ones then mine. We are all different but we can all pray to the same God. This we have in common: that the answer is the same for all of us. That answer is a person: Jesus Christ.

Romans 5: 3 “Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.”

Suffering is not a topic that is dealt with much in today's church culture, at least not talking about any positive benefit from it. When discussing it, most of the time someone is selling some “quick and easy way” for people to get out of it. And I have found that this kind of “Christian Teaching” is just scammers selling snake oil taking advantage of peoples desire to get rid of the things that bother us. But the Apostle Paul had a remarkably positive attitude towards suffering! He saw that walking through suffering hand in hand with Jesus was a discipline and that through that his own character kept improving and the result of that is that his faith was infilled with hope even in the midst of the worst circumstances. To non-Christians rejoicing and glorying in our sufferings does look like madness, but to those who choose to believe that God can bring good out of every trial we endure, there is a permanent benefit to it.

The character we build on earth, I have come to believe, is the same one we have forever in the next life. That is why our character is so very important to God. God's love lets us go through some terrible times on this planet, because those things, if we let them, build a permanent treasure that is worth more than all the gold on planet earth. My current character is much better now than I know it would have been if I were born without a mental health disorder. As talented as I am, I am certain that without all that I suffered I would be a jackass of an arrogant, successful man. Looking back, I have come to the place where I can thank God for all I suffered. The character that was developed is a gift I get to keep. I currently have a treasure that made it worth everything that I have been through. My hope is that others will eventually see what I have seen and reap the potential benefits from choosing Paul's attitude.

We cannot avoid all suffering in life, but we can choose what attitude we will hold towards it. Choosing a negative one just wastes the opportunity we have. My attitude has continued to get better with age. That has changed my thoughts, and by changing those my life has turned around 180 degrees. My old life and attitude are now far behind me. God made that possible as I was once severely mentally ill. God is not a respecter of persons. You can have this just as I have, if you really want it enough to do what is necessary.