Devotional: Take Your Medicine!

Take Your Medicine!

When adversity comes -- and stays a little while -- how quickly our heart is revealed! Consider Job. When destruction and calamity fell upon him and his household, he remained quiet. Scripture tells us, "In all of this, Job did not sin by blaming God" (Job 1:22). His wife, on the other hand, was not handling the situation quite so well. She angrily said to him, "Do you still hold fast to your integrity? Curse God and die!" But he said to her, "You speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we indeed accept good from God, and shall we not accept adversity?" (Job 2:9-10a).

Most of us can handle a dose of adversity. It's when it stays, with no end in sight, that our true feelings are revealed. Jesus once said, "Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks" (Matthew 12:34). In other words, on the surface we can fake it for awhile; but eventually that which is in the depth of our heart will rise to the surface. I once heard someone say it like this: what is down in the well comes up in the bucket!

After Job addressed his wife, the Bible says, "In all this Job did not sin with his lips" (Job 2:10b). It doesn't say Job didn't sin. It says he didn't sin with his lips. The conclusion is: it was an issue of the heart.

A short time later, after adversity had stayed longer than Job could manage, weariness of life and despondency set in, and his true heart was revealed. "At last Job spoke, and he cursed the day of his birth. He said, 'Cursed be the day of my birth, and cursed be the night when I was conceived'" (Job 3:1-3). There is such a thing as being weary to the point of wishing for death; and Job was not alone in his feelings. The writer of Ecclesiastes said, "Therefore I hated life because the work that was done under the sun was distressing to me, for all is vanity and grasping for the wind. Therefore I praised the dead who were already dead, more than the living who are still alive" (Ecclesiastes 2:17, 4:2).

When Jeremiah was overwhelmed, he said from the depth of his soul, "Then death shall be chosen rather than life by all the residue of those who remain of this evil generation..." (Jeremiah 8:3). Even Jonah said in his trial, "It is better for me to die than to live" (Jonah 4:8). How depressing! And they're not the only ones... Moses, Joshua, Elijah, David, and even the disciples of Jesus, struggled with despondency in the course of their lives. So what is the conclusion?

For starters, put your hope in God! And secondly, change the course of your thoughts! For all the examples of weariness in the scriptures, there are far more that testify of hope, faith, and deliverance! Jesus said the things He spoke were for our peace because "...in the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world" (John 16:33).

Hope is a confident expectation in things beyond this world. And hope is a choice. The psalmist told his heart, "Put your hope in God" (Psalm 42:5). Abraham, "Who contrary to [natural] hope, in [spiritual] hope believed, so that he became the father of many nations, according to what was spoken" (Romans 4:18). "Now hope [in God and His word] does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us" (Romans 5:5).

If we will listen to the Holy Spirit, he will not allow us to stay weary. The hope of truth will be stirred in our heart. But what will we choose? Will we choose the emotions caused by adversity? Or in faith, will we rise from the ashes and choose to believe God's Word? "For whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that we through the patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope" (Romans 15:4).

It is true, at times we are "hard-pressed on every side, YET NOT CRUSHED; we are perplexed, BUT NOT IN DESPAIR" (1 Corinthians 4:8) -- if we choose hope over weariness, and cheerfulness over despondency! "A merry heart makes a cheerful countenance, but by sorrow of the heart the spirit is broken" (Proverbs 15:13). So how do we overcome the sorrow caused by trial and tribulation? We CHOOSE to take our medicine! "A merry heart does good like a medicine, but a broken spirit dries the bones" (Proverbs 17:22). In those times when we are succumbing to similar feelings as Job, we must change the course of our meditation by finding a source of joy.

I remember hearing a true story of a man diagnosed with a terminal illness who was sent home to die. He asked for videos of his favorite childhood show, "The Three Stooges." Over and over, he watched and laughed, and laughed, and laughed. He was feeling so good after three weeks of this, he went to see his doctor. After running some tests, it was discovered he was completely healed! A merry heart does good like a medicine! This man could easily have gone home and fallen into deep depression. Instead, he chose to fill his heart with laughter.

In our state of depression, we can choose to focus and meditate on gloom and doom - even in the scriptures. OR... we can choose to focus and meditate on the joys and promises of this life. I desire to have the same faith as the Apostle Paul who said to his soon-to-be-shipwrecked companions, "Take heart, men; for I believe God that it will be just as it was told me" (Acts 27:25). Because he chose to believe God and keep his head up despite his surroundings and circumstances, the Bible says they were all encouraged and saved. Joy is contagious!

So when adversity comes -- and stays a little while -- put your hope in God! And carefully choose the course of your thoughts!