Hi everyone. It's my first time posting. I'm Christian and I am a mom to a ten year old, been married for a while now. A few years ago I moved to an area far from my immediate family. While I enjoy our life here, I've been really lonely and depressed at the same time. I'm being treated for that.
??? Being lonely and depressed isn't an illness to be treated. It's just the normal human response to being isolated from loved ones. You miss your family. This isn't an illness that needs "treatment."
This may seem an off-point question, but let me ask it anyway: Are you walking daily in conscious, explicit submission to God?
Bear with me for a minute and let me explain why I'm responding to your situation with this question. It's
only in a place of submission to Him that God will move into every "room" of the "house" of your life and transform it. God won't ever force His way into these "rooms," but waits upon
your explicit agreement to His entering and making them His own.
Your agreement is given in your submission to God throughout each day.
James 4:7-10
7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
8 Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
9 Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.
10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.
Romans 12:1
1 I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.
Romans 6:13
13 Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.
1 Peter 5:6
6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you,
If you aren't submitted to God, then you're
a rebel toward Him. This is the only other position to occupy when you're out from under God's control. There's no neutral place to sit in relative to God, no fence to straddle, only submission or rebellion (though Christians like to imagine otherwise). When we try to live in our will and way and God's at the same time, thinking to follow Him at certain points and ourselves at others, we are "doubleminded," trying to serve two masters (ourselves and God) and, as the apostle James has said, "are unstable in all our ways." (
James 1:8).
This instability is marked, in part, by fear. We know, on a subconscious level, at least, that when we aren't submitted to God, we are "out of joint" with Him, in
rebellion to Him, actually, and until this is remedied, the peace and joy that He is will be absent from our lives. In the resulting vacuum, anxiety, doubt, depression and various neuroses always crowd in.
The fruit of the Holy Spirit, we're told in Scripture, is "love,
joy,
peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, etc." (
Galatians 5:22-23). His "fruit" develops in us, filling and transforming us, only as we are yielded as living sacrifices to God. This kind of yielded living is what the apostle Paul called "walking in the Spirit" (
Galatians 5:16, 25). Paul pointed out in
Galatians 5 that a believer can be "living in the Spirit," that is, they are a born-again child of God, in relationship with God through Jesus Christ, but not "walking in the Spirit." "If we live in the Spirit," Paul wrote, "let us also walk in the Spirit" (
Galatians 5:25), establishing that one can be in a
relationship with God but not living in submission to Him and controlled by the Spirit by which
fellowship with Him is enjoyed.
But it's only in fellowship with God that all of the amazing things He is may be fully enjoyed by His children.
This brings me 'round to your particular situation - finally. When a child of God is chronically anxious, lacking peace and joy, enduring prolonged, unrelieved depression and fear, they have proof-positive that they aren't "walking in the Spirit." For if they were "walking in the Spirit," the "fruit" of the Spirit - love, joy, peace, etc. - would be growing in increasing measure over time in their life as the Spirit was working to transform all the "rooms" of the "house" of their life so that they were properly reflecting him.
So, then, I ask again the question I asked at the start of my post to you: Are you walking in daily, conscious, explicit submission to God? What does your inner state indicate?
I've always been incredibly empathetic and thoughtful about others, ever since I was a child. A year and a half ago, I started to do mediumship readings for other people, but it was short-lived because I realized that DUH, we as Christians just shouldn't be doing that. So, I stopped. I realized I had been sucked into something that we just shouldn't be messing with. During the time I was engaging in mediumship, I started to get really bad anxiety, even worse than before. And now I'm constantly worried terrible things are going to happen to my immediate family.
We are warned in God's word about "giving place to the devil" (
Ephesians 4:27) by our attitudes, thinking and conduct giving him right to ground in our lives. On such ground, he always erects "strongholds" of devilish influence, hindering prayer, deadening interest in Bible study, church attendance and Christian service and plaguing the believer with fear, anxiety, obsessions, dark, sudden impulses and evil imaginings (among other things). I'm afraid you've thrown wide the door of your life to the devil by taking up the role of medium and you can be sure the devil has taken advantage.
How to deal with the result? When you've let the devil set up a spiritual "stronghold" in your life, what do you do to tear it down? Here's what God in His word says to do:
1.)
Repent. (
James 4:7-10)
The faulty thinking, the false beliefs, that moved you into sin and under the influence (not possession, which is impossible for a Spirit-indwelt believer) of the devil have to be recognized, abandoned and replaced with God's truth.
2.)
Confess. (
1 John 1:9)
Agree with God that your sin is the sin He says it is. Admit to Him that you have, indeed, been in rebellion to Him and have sinned.
3.)
Submit. (
James 4:7; Romans 6:13-18; 2 Corinthians 10:3-5)
Consciously, explicitly place yourself under the Spirit's control as often as it occurs to you to do so during each day, but particularly when you realize you're operating according to your own will and way, not God's, or are faced with an opportunity to step out from under God's control and steer your own course.
Luke 22:42
42 ...“Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.”
2 Corinthians 10:3-5
3 For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh.
4 For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds.
5 We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ,
When the devil approaches you with the temptation to depart from God's will and way, from His truth, bring that temptation to God, submitting to Him and His way rather than to the devil's, asking God to take captive to Himself the thoughts that the devil has insinuated into your thinking. When the World presents you with distractions, and enticements, with false values and philosophies that oppose God and His Truth and divert you from Him, refuse them by yielding yourself to God as His vessel, sanctified and prepared for His use (
2 Timothy 2:21). When your own flesh rises up, urging you to illegitimate satisfaction of some physical impulse - overeating, illicit sexual activity, laziness, etc. - turn to God in surrender to His will and way, and refuse to move from this place of surrender into evil indulgence of your flesh, surrendering as often as the impulse to satisfy the flesh confronts you.
4.)
Divine Retrieval. (
Matthew 6:13; 2 Thessalonians 3:3; Hebrews 2:14-15)
Finally, ask God to retrieve the ground in your life you've given to the devil and to dissolve any bondage to the devil doing so created.
These are the necessary steps to returning to fellowship with God. Remember, though, they only return you to Him and put you in the place with Him that permits fellowship. God expects His children to develop certain spiritual habits, a way of living, in order to nurture and deepen that fellowship. Of course, they are enabled to do so by the Holy Spirit who fellowships with the child of God by transforming them such that they take on the image of Jesus Christ (
Romans 8:29).
So, you've been offered God's truth, His way, to the kind of life with Him that will relieve you of chronic fear and depression. Will you take it? I hope and pray so.
