Hi there,
Introduction to Madness
Imagine if you will, that you have dealt with sin and no longer have need of being tempted; you understand that with perfection comes the temptation to be irrational and you have a ready word, with which to defend yourself (from the Devil's attacks). Then the crunch happens: you find you are tempted again, for what seems like no reason at all. What is going on? The answer is that sometimes, the root of the problem, is the madness, that goes with the sin. What do I mean?
Extreme behaviour
I mean that you may not have been sane to begin with, you may have had a skewed perspective on reality and once you reached a point where you were not tempted, instead of resting in God's purity, you started to think "maybe I can make this life of sin better; maybe I can start to eliminate temptation altogether!" Now I'm not saying that is good or bad, in fact you might as well get ready to get robbed by the Devil, because the one thing he finds the biggest obstacle is someone who knows sin's days are running out. The Devil will take a share in the direction you are headed, if you will let him - that's true, but how many know how to do that? The difficulty is picking a wise path to go down: if you are planning to eliminate sin, you are taking on something that even God's best are reluctant to go down ("fools rush in, where angels fear to tread" sort of thing). And that brings on madness.
Madness intertwining with Sin
Madness, is deciding to return to sin, no matter how many times you sin. If we are attempting a degree of perfection that we don't know how to manage, the fact that we may sin, becomes a lesser problem - managing madness itself, becomes the greater (problem). You haven't just dealt with the sin and moved on, you've become madly intent on maintaining the level of perfection, that only invites more madness (more irrationality). The only way to deal with this is to reduce the madness, and limit your ambitions. But how do you do that? Part of it is to do with patience, respect and settling. Patience because you need to clear your head of madness and sin; respect, because God is able to perfect what you can't and to endure what you won't; and settling, because making demands of your salvation limits, possibly harms or possibly injures your relationship with the Holy Spirit. And that really is the cut!
Deliverance by the Holy Spirit
The cut, the cut is that you have to settle with God, before the relationship you have with the Holy Spirit does you any good. The Holy Spirit does not invite sin, the Holy Spirit does not invite madness. This is the power of God, that even before you have a relationship with Him, you have to be in the right place, to both have faith and recieve joy, by which you are able to serve Him. If we are embarrassed about sin or madness, there is a hindrance in our coming to Him, which cannot be enjoyed. You may want to enjoy it, you may even want to enjoy it without sin, but as I said and am trying to say here: madness might still be getting in the way. Who deals with madness?
Faith secured by Jesus
The answer to who deals with it, is Jesus - Jesus deals with the demonic, the unclean, the filthy. These are the things that affect madness! The demonic makes you tempted with madness; the unclean amplifies madness, that you don't properly escape; the filthy causes us to settle with madness, even though it is likely it will make us weak to temptation in future. Thus, we are beholden to pray to Jesus and to seek of Him, a way out of the madness, that these things aggravate. This gives Glory to God, that we could escape madness no other way than to trust Jesus! Yet though the path back to sin is laid by madness, yet the faith of Jesus washes the path clean, within Us. If we praise Him, in this, we will start to be delivered, first of the sins we can cope with, then with the sins that bring death, then with the sins that keep us in death, through madness.
The struggle between Madness and Madness
The heart of the problem then, is not "how mad do I become?" (the more you sin) but "how much do I trust Jesus, despite madness?" If you can find strength to do the works of God, in relation to Jesus, you will (by faith) find your deliverance. If you can even praise God, just a little, for delivering you from madness, you will be delivered for eternity. This is something that the Holy Spirit is able to do in you, because you have kept the testimony of Jesus and have not held on to your life. Facing it, is facing the cross; believing it, is believing the resurrection. These are all parts of what you come to believe (and trust) when your sin, the death and madness of it, are all limited by the Cross. This is precisely why Jesus went to the Cross - typically you will be told "it was to ransom sinners" "it was to resurrect the dead", but believe me when I tell you "it was also give reprieve to the mad". I'm trying this now, as I write, my madness needs to find its limit in the Cross - the Reprieve is mine!
Living for the Reprieve (from Madness)
I'm not sure if I've really given you a sense of the continuity, behind a commitment to share in Jesus' Reprieve, usually you would pray something, or change something in your life - Jesus told the man with a legion of demons "go home and tell your friends what God has done for you" when He gave him his "reprieve". I guess that is what I am saying: "if this has hit a familiar note, in your life, let the unclean go, be renewed and tell your friends what God has done". Don't fear the demonic, which is to feed madness, rather than limit it; don't stay in your old way, which is to have no praise for God nor new place to stay; and don't give up on the difficulty of bringing madness into subjection to the will of Christ, which is to free you - His Word will cleanse you.
I hope these words have been of some encouragement to you, and that you flourish spiritually knowing madness is unable to reach you (at the resurrection).
God bless.
Introduction to Madness
Imagine if you will, that you have dealt with sin and no longer have need of being tempted; you understand that with perfection comes the temptation to be irrational and you have a ready word, with which to defend yourself (from the Devil's attacks). Then the crunch happens: you find you are tempted again, for what seems like no reason at all. What is going on? The answer is that sometimes, the root of the problem, is the madness, that goes with the sin. What do I mean?
Extreme behaviour
I mean that you may not have been sane to begin with, you may have had a skewed perspective on reality and once you reached a point where you were not tempted, instead of resting in God's purity, you started to think "maybe I can make this life of sin better; maybe I can start to eliminate temptation altogether!" Now I'm not saying that is good or bad, in fact you might as well get ready to get robbed by the Devil, because the one thing he finds the biggest obstacle is someone who knows sin's days are running out. The Devil will take a share in the direction you are headed, if you will let him - that's true, but how many know how to do that? The difficulty is picking a wise path to go down: if you are planning to eliminate sin, you are taking on something that even God's best are reluctant to go down ("fools rush in, where angels fear to tread" sort of thing). And that brings on madness.
Madness intertwining with Sin
Madness, is deciding to return to sin, no matter how many times you sin. If we are attempting a degree of perfection that we don't know how to manage, the fact that we may sin, becomes a lesser problem - managing madness itself, becomes the greater (problem). You haven't just dealt with the sin and moved on, you've become madly intent on maintaining the level of perfection, that only invites more madness (more irrationality). The only way to deal with this is to reduce the madness, and limit your ambitions. But how do you do that? Part of it is to do with patience, respect and settling. Patience because you need to clear your head of madness and sin; respect, because God is able to perfect what you can't and to endure what you won't; and settling, because making demands of your salvation limits, possibly harms or possibly injures your relationship with the Holy Spirit. And that really is the cut!
Deliverance by the Holy Spirit
The cut, the cut is that you have to settle with God, before the relationship you have with the Holy Spirit does you any good. The Holy Spirit does not invite sin, the Holy Spirit does not invite madness. This is the power of God, that even before you have a relationship with Him, you have to be in the right place, to both have faith and recieve joy, by which you are able to serve Him. If we are embarrassed about sin or madness, there is a hindrance in our coming to Him, which cannot be enjoyed. You may want to enjoy it, you may even want to enjoy it without sin, but as I said and am trying to say here: madness might still be getting in the way. Who deals with madness?
Faith secured by Jesus
The answer to who deals with it, is Jesus - Jesus deals with the demonic, the unclean, the filthy. These are the things that affect madness! The demonic makes you tempted with madness; the unclean amplifies madness, that you don't properly escape; the filthy causes us to settle with madness, even though it is likely it will make us weak to temptation in future. Thus, we are beholden to pray to Jesus and to seek of Him, a way out of the madness, that these things aggravate. This gives Glory to God, that we could escape madness no other way than to trust Jesus! Yet though the path back to sin is laid by madness, yet the faith of Jesus washes the path clean, within Us. If we praise Him, in this, we will start to be delivered, first of the sins we can cope with, then with the sins that bring death, then with the sins that keep us in death, through madness.
The struggle between Madness and Madness
The heart of the problem then, is not "how mad do I become?" (the more you sin) but "how much do I trust Jesus, despite madness?" If you can find strength to do the works of God, in relation to Jesus, you will (by faith) find your deliverance. If you can even praise God, just a little, for delivering you from madness, you will be delivered for eternity. This is something that the Holy Spirit is able to do in you, because you have kept the testimony of Jesus and have not held on to your life. Facing it, is facing the cross; believing it, is believing the resurrection. These are all parts of what you come to believe (and trust) when your sin, the death and madness of it, are all limited by the Cross. This is precisely why Jesus went to the Cross - typically you will be told "it was to ransom sinners" "it was to resurrect the dead", but believe me when I tell you "it was also give reprieve to the mad". I'm trying this now, as I write, my madness needs to find its limit in the Cross - the Reprieve is mine!
Living for the Reprieve (from Madness)
I'm not sure if I've really given you a sense of the continuity, behind a commitment to share in Jesus' Reprieve, usually you would pray something, or change something in your life - Jesus told the man with a legion of demons "go home and tell your friends what God has done for you" when He gave him his "reprieve". I guess that is what I am saying: "if this has hit a familiar note, in your life, let the unclean go, be renewed and tell your friends what God has done". Don't fear the demonic, which is to feed madness, rather than limit it; don't stay in your old way, which is to have no praise for God nor new place to stay; and don't give up on the difficulty of bringing madness into subjection to the will of Christ, which is to free you - His Word will cleanse you.
I hope these words have been of some encouragement to you, and that you flourish spiritually knowing madness is unable to reach you (at the resurrection).
God bless.
