So here are some ways, off the top of my head, that the Bible gives us for responding to depression, anxiety, and worry:

1. Praying to God:

Be anxious for nothing, but in all things present your requests to God by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, and the peace of God which transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Phil. 4:6&7)

2. Meditation Upon God:

Thou shalt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed upon Thee. (Isa. 26:3)

3. Meditation Upon What God Has Give You:

For God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and love and a sound mind. (2 Tim. 1:7)

4. Meditation Upon God’s Love:

Perfect love drives out fear. (1 John 4:18)

5. Meditation Upon What God Has Done in History:

The enemy pursues me…he makes me dwell in darkness like those long dead. So my spirit grows faint within me… I remember the days of long ago, I meditate on all your works. I consider what your hands have done. (Psalm 143:3-5)

6. Rebuking Your Soul:

Why so downcast within me? Put your hope in God. I will yet praise him. (Psalm 42:5, Psalm 43:5)

7. Crying Out to God:

Father take this cup….And an angel strengthened him. (Luke 22:42&43)

8. Refreshing Others:

He who refreshes others will himself be refreshed. (Prov. 11:25)

9. Waiting on the LORD:

He who waits upon the Lord will…run and not be weary. (Isa. 40:31)

10. Obedience:

I will run in the path of your commands for you have set my heart free. (Psalm 119:32)  The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart…in keeping them there is great reward. (Psalm 19:8,11)

11. Fearing the LORD:

In the fear of the Lord is strong confidence and his children have a place of refuge. (Prov. 14:26)

12. Praising the LORD:

He has given us the oil of joy for mourning and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. (Isaiah 61:3)

I could go on and on. We are told to be not afraid, be not afraid, be not afraid.

One of the reasons we are to be not afraid is that God is our Father. He has not left us as orphans. He doesn’t forsake us. He won’t let us fall.

Every fear has its root in believing that God is either not good enough or not strong enough to save us. What other reason for fear can there be? We simply refuse to believe God. He tells us he’s good and he tells us he’s strong. What reason does a Christian have for fear?

Christians today look very much like nonChristians. We have the same fears, the same worries, the same depressions, the same ways of combating those bad feelings. We shop too much and eat too much and take medication to ease the pain. Is that because God has failed us? Is that because God is not able to deliver us and give us that joy that is beyond comprehension? Is that because God doesn’t really give peace when we pray?

Or is it because we don’t believe him?

Before I jump into why I think drugs, even ones prescribed by doctors, can become idols, I want to give some general thoughts I have on mental illness.

I have a thought about this issue for a long time. My father, I’m told by mental health professionals, was manic depressive. My brother is diagnosed as schizophrenic/manic depressive. My mother suffered from panic attacks. I had panic attacks for years. I have other brothers and sisters who use various means to medicate themselves and cope with stress. So I have considered mental illness, and I have watched different loved ones battle mental illness with a wide array of weapons.

And here are some things I have come to believe from observing people with mental illness and from reading the Bible:

• Mental illness is not sinful, but some of our treatments of it are sinful, and in mental illness there is a built-in temptation for us to handle our pain in sinful ways.




• I believe that worry, depression, and anxiety are not sinful in their first appearance because I believe that when Jesus said his soul was in agony unto death and when he sweat blood, he was in great distress. What kind of anguish was he feeling and what kind of raw terror was trying to grip him? It was obviously worse than any of us will ever feel. To be holy and to be faced with becoming sin and losing communion with the Father is beyond anything I can comprehend. But even though our sufferings are mild comparatively, I don’t believe that when we feel great anguish we are showing a lack of faith. I don’t believe that a strong desire to step out from under the pain God puts on us is sinful. If we follow Christ and go to God in prayer, asking him to remove the cup, but preferring God’s will to our own, I don’t think anyone can accuse us of sin.




• I believe that doctors don’t really know if depression is caused by a chemical imbalance, or if it causes a chemical imbalance. The chicken or the egg? I really wonder how they know there is a chemical imbalance at all. How do they weigh the chemicals in the brain? My brother has been on drugs for 38 years now, and the dosages of his drugs are varied, depending on how he feels and how prevalent his symptoms are, not according to any tests on his brain chemicals. Three doctors prescribed strong drugs for me without doing any tests on my brain. One of them took blood and tested my bladder. One did blood tests only. The other did no tests at all. All the tests that were done came back completely normal and yet the doctors wanted me to take drugs. None tested my brain chemistry.




• I believe that exercise, petting cats, having friends tell us they love us, good music, a good diet, a good night’s sleep, a compliment from a stranger, a smile from someone you’ve helped, sex, porn, funny movies, church, prayer, reading the Bible, preaching to your soul and telling it not to be downcast, praising God, good sermons, watching the sun set over the ocean, shopping for a new toy, money in the bank, a nice car, a good book on a rainy day, candlelight, certain scents, a glass of wine, and any number of other things…have the power to change our mood for the better. Some of these things can contribute to our long-term well-being. Others of them, because they are unlawful, make people feel better short-term, but then they contribute to a long-term depression (because sinning in an attempt to feel good for a while always causes the depression to worsen).




• I believe most doctors and most of our friends, because they live in a hedonistic society, have an anti-biblical slant. Doctors will often prescribe drug therapy, talk therapy, or exercise. None of these may be wrong, but why go to them first? And we hear from people in the church, things like, “You have to learn to say, ‘No.’” Or, “If you don’t take care of yourself you can’t take care of anyone else. You have to make sure your needs are met, so you will have strength to meet the needs of others.” But the Bible says he who refreshes others will himself be refreshed and we should put the interests of others ahead of our own interests. The Bible tells us one thing and society tells us the opposite thing.  (People who tell us to take care of ourselves first don’t usually mean we should make sure we take time to pray and read our Bibles before we set about our days. They usually mean we should take time for a pedicure or a bubble bath, I think.)




• I believe that there are some serious downsides to taking drugs for mental illness. Some of the drugs cause people to be lethargic, to lose their sex drives, to lose their ambition, and to lose their joy. They alter personality. And they are hard on the liver. You can’t put toxins into your body long-term and not pay a price. Long-term usage can utterly destroy a person’s ability to function normally in society. Besides the physical side-effects, if the drugs make a person numb to pain, they may be making him numb to what God wants to do in his life. So before we take drugs, I think we should try a bunch of other things first. We could get a puppy. Or take a walk on the beach every day. We might try getting eight hours of sleep and giving up the coffee. We can jog or swim or ride our bikes an hour a day. We might look for a new friend or take up a new hobby. But even better than all of those, I believe, is to look in scripture and see what God prescribes for depression, worry, and anxiety.

I’ll look at that next time.

Someone wrote to tell me that my post on Knowing God made me sound…um…a little less than compassionate. And like I am giving a simple solution to a complex problem.

I’m sorry for being less than compassionate. The truth is that I am incredibly self-centered and not nearly as compassionate as I should be. It’s an ongoing sin problem I have. I really think about myself more than I think about anyone else. I put my own interests above the interests of others. I am far from having the mind of Christ.

And I’m not making light of that. It’s a terrible failing and I’m very sorry for it.

I’m not sorry that I’m giving a simplistic solution here, though. I do see God’s word as being very easy to understand in regards to stress and how we should deal with it. And I see very clearly in the Bible that if we wait on God in suffering instead of trying to solve it ourselves, we will grow to know him better. I can’t take that back right now. You’re welcome to write and correct me, if I’m wrong.

But I’d like to make one thing clear: I am not a doctor or a theologian. I’m simply a woman spouting off on a blog with things that God has taught me through his Word and the way that word has come to bear in my experience. If I ever say something that doesn’t apply to you, please feel free to ignore me. Treat my words like that curse in Proverbs: if it’s undeserved it finds no place to land.

OK, I know that sometimes people injure us with words even when we aren’t guilty of the sins they accuse us of. Jesus was sinless and he was injured when people taunted him and accused him of evil. I get that. And if anyone reading this blog was injured by my words, please forgive me. If you are not sinfully taking drugs or drugging your child, then my post wasn’t directed at you. It was never meant to land on you. It was never meant as a judgment on you.

I have quite a few acquaintances and friends who are now, or have been in the past, on anti-depressants. And I have never once, when they’ve told me they were on drugs, thought, “Well, she’s sinning.” Nor have I ever once prayed to God, asking him to stop a friend from sinning and using anti-depressants. It’s absolutely none of my business if you are on anti-depressants. I’m not your husband and I’m not your doctor and I’m not your pastor. I am, as your sister in Christ, called to gently restore you if I see you in sin. But taking anti-depressants is not sinful in and of itself. It might be sinful. But how would I know if it was sinful for you?

Why would I even consider whether you are sinning or not when you use anti-depressants? Why would that be my business? If I know you are sinning, then I’ll tell you that you are sinning. If I don’t see sin in your life, then I’m not staying up nights trying to figure out whether your drug use is sinful or not. I’m just not that interested in what you are doing. What you decide about drug use is between you and your husband and God. Unless I knew the history of your depression and knew how much you had prayed and knew what your therapist had told you and knew what the Holy Spirit had convicted you of, I couldn’t possibly make a determination regarding your personal situation. If you are on drugs and I’ve never said I think you’re sinning by using drugs, then you can believe that I don’t have an opinion on your drug use. It doesn’t even enter my mind to think you’re sinning.

The same goes for my many, many friends who have put their children on drugs for behavioral issues or for depression. I simply have never once thought, “Well, isn’t she sinful and lazy for drugging her child,” about any of my friends when they’ve told me they have decided to go with the drug therapy. I just can’t know whether you’re sinning or not and so I assume that you aren’t. Believe me, I have enough trouble trying to ferret out and fight my own sins. I don’t have time to try to discover yours.

Why then did I say if you want to know God you should get off the drugs? It’s not that drugs are always sinful or that shopping or TV or plastic surgery or money in the bank all are sinful things. It’s that these things often are the idols we look to for security and comfort, instead of waiting upon the Lord.

More on this next time.

Present your requests to God with prayer and petition with thanksgiving. (Phil. 4:6)

In everything give thanks. (1 Thes. 5:18)

Rejoice always. Again, I say, rejoice. (Phil. 4:4, 1 Thes. 5:16)

Is it possible to obey these commands? In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus. God wants us to give thanks in everything. Not necessarily FOR everything, but IN everything. Rejoice always. Stand firm in the Lord, Philippians 4:4 goes on to say. And then present your petitions to God. Go ahead and tell him that the circumstances are hard and ask him to change them. But rejoice in those circumstances. Rejoice in what God is doing in all of your circumstances.

That is not only possible but it is what Christians delight to do. Why? Because when darkness is all around, God shines bright.

In the tough times we see God for the hero he is. We feel his comfort and bask in his love. It’s like snuggling up inside on a stormy day. We are safe and warm in Christ.

When you obey these commands to rejoice always, some people will think you are odd. They’ll accuse you of having no emotions—of being stoical, cold, unloving. But mostly, I think, they’ll simply  believe you’re lying. They’ll think you really are angry at God, and hurt, but you won’t admit it. They’ll think you’re phony and pretending to be holy.

If we believe that God is all loving and all powerful (Psalm 62:11,12), then it’s natural for us to rejoice always. If God loves us and if he is able to do anything, what reason can we have for not rejoicing?

We may weep when we’re hurt. Sin is painful. The evils in this world are so awful and hurtful. You can’t watch the news without mourning for fallen humanity. And correction is not pleasant as we suffer through it, even if it does later produce the peaceable fruit of righteousness. So I am not saying that Christians love pain. What I’m saying is that in the midst of pain it is always possible to give thanks from your heart.

God loves you. He will never, ever punish you for your sins. Can you grasp that? When you suffer it is not because God is punishing you for your sins. He is not angry at you for sinning. Ever.

He will never direct one iota of anger toward you. If you are covered by the blood of Christ, then God threw all the wrath you deserve at Jesus on the cross. There is no more wrath in God for you. All he has for you is tender love. Do you believe that?

Sometimes he corrects us, but he is never angry at us. He corrects us because he loves us and he wants us to live in peaceful and happy communion with him. So he corrects us and drives our sin from us. But he is never angry about our sin. He’s already spent his anger at the cross. All he has left for us is love. It is never his desire to hurt us. His heart toward us is one of love beyond any love we can understand.

Sometimes I think God looks at us with disappointment. We can grieve the Holy Spirit. But his grief is not because he’s offended by our actions but because he is sorry for us. He’s disappointed FOR us, not AT us. He’s no longer offended by us. We are his beloved children in whom he delights.

If we want to live with joy in Christ we have to grasp this. Whereas before we are saved we can do nothing to please God and he is constantly offended by our sin, when we are covered in Christ’s blood, we can do nothing to move away from God’s love and he is never offended by us.

Never.

No condemnation. Ever.

God is for us. Always.

Nothing can remove us from God’s love. Nothing. Not our sin. Nothing.

How can we not rejoice if we have grasped the good news that is ours in Christ? How can we not be always thankful if we understand how much God loves us?

In the comments yesterday, Becky brought up an interesting point. Taking up the cross means we have to intentionally deny ourselves:

I just assumed the daily sufferings, which I believe encompass things like Paul’s thorn in the flesh or Job’s multiplied losses, are different from the intentional denial of self that I believe taking up my cross entails.

This is a very good observation.

Maybe I need to refine my beliefs and clarify my expression of them.

Becky is right that the cold and the cancer and the flat tires in our lives don’t count as times we have intentionally denied ourselves.

When Jesus tells us to take up our cross and follow him, he is telling us that no man can find his life unless he loses it. He is telling us to count the cost of discipleship. There’s an initial taking up of the cross. And then there is the daily taking up of the cross. We are to crucify the flesh and to count ourselves dead to sin. Daily. We are to deny ourselves. Daily. We are to offer up our bodies as living sacrifices. Daily.

I still think that when we deny ourselves in trials we are bearing the cross. When we respond well to trials we haven’t chosen—trials put on us by God or man—we are taking up the cross and following Christ.

Crosses are not just hard things we decide to do. Jesus said that no man took his life—he laid it down of his own accord—but we are also told that it pleased the Father to bruise him. The Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all. The cross was put on Jesus by his own free will (John 10:18), by God the Father (Isaiah 53:10), and by sinful men (Acts 2:23).

Our crosses are also laid on us by God the Father and by sinful men.

When those crosses are laid on us we can bow under them of our free will or we can refuse to carry them.

When we are reviled by men we can forgive—if we do, we are bearing our cross and following after Jesus. If we forgive we are crucifying our flesh, denying ourselves, and counting ourselves dead to sin. When the economy takes a turn and we lose everything, we can praise God, knowing that our hope is in Christ not in money. When we do that, we are putting to death our desire for wealth. When we find out we have cancer and we praise God, we are putting to death our desire to be filled with self-pity and anger at God. We are going quietly to the cross.

I think to take up the cross means to put to death the flesh with its desire to be first, to be served, to be pampered, to be entertained, to be loved. It means to deny our earthly desires in favor of doing eternal good. It means to do God’s will instead of our own will. To deny ourselves in favor of obeying God. If that’s true, then every time we respond well to a trial we are bearing the cross. When Job lost all his children and all his servants and all his wealth and said, “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, blessed be the name of the Lord,” he was bearing the cross. He was not a robot. He had just lost all of the children that were so precious to him. We know he loved them—he sacrificed for them all the time. So he loses them all and instead of ranting and raving and screaming at the God who would allow so much pain to be heaped on him, he worshiped God. He refused to indulge the flesh. He took up the cross.

Yes, we can carry the cross in good times, too—not only in times of trial. When I gossip about someone I am not putting to death the flesh and I am not carrying my cross. I am, instead, indulging the flesh. Refusing to engage in gossip is a taking up of the cross. Spending time with God daily is a cross we must bear sometimes, because often our flesh wants to ignore God. Praying for others is bearing a cross, as is preaching Christ in a hostile world.

But we also bear the cross when we sing praise to God and smile and encourage others from our wheelchairs instead of giving in to self-pity. Because praising God and loving our neighbors when we are in pain is contrary to our sinful nature.

I’ve been listening to an audio book by Francis Chan, Forgotten God: Reversing Our Tragic Neglect of the Holy Spirit. (Get it free this month by clicking here.) I went into it a little warily because I think the Holy Spirit wants me to love and obey Jesus. I think if I love and obey Christ then I am not neglecting the Holy Spirit at all. Rather I am listening to him and obeying him. I don’t think the Holy Spirit wants me to spend a lot of time pursuing him. I do pray, often, that my life will be full of the Holy Spirit and that his presence in my life will be seen by the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, perseverance, and self-control. I pray for an increase in this fruit in my life.

And I agree with Chan’s belief that the church has tragically neglected the Holy Spirit. But that tragic neglect is not more prevalent in, say, Reformed circles than in Charismatic circles. You can say you’re serving the Spirit when you are really just seeking a thrill ride. We can see that the church is neglecting the Holy Spirit not because the people don’t dance in worship, but because the people of the church are self-centered and ignorant of scripture and sinful.

So I went into the book carefully, hoping Chan wasn’t going to tell us all we needed to play tambourines or bark in worship. But I also went in wanting to learn more about the Holy Spirit. I want to be filled with the Holy Spirit. I want to have a better a relationship with God the Spirit. I want to hear him well and obey him quickly.

I’m happy to report that Chan wants us to love and obey Christ. He does think that the Spirit tells us to follow Christ. He wants us to crucify our flesh and to obey God. Very good stuff.

One thing I heard last night, though, reminded me of a way I see suffering differently than some, I think. I’m not going to go searching for an exact quote, but he said something about how we can’t say we’re following Christ in suffering because we lost our job, or have some illness. Sharing in Christ’s suffering is not about running out of gas, or being unable to sell our home, or…having pain from surgery on your jaw, I suppose (I had surgery yesterday and, yowsers, it hurts!). Those things are not taking up the cross, I think Chan was saying, because those are sufferings that all people have. Unsaved people suffer with cancer just as saved people do. When the Holy Spirit calls us to suffer for and with Christ he is asking us to lay down our lives for the gospel. He wants us to be willing to be stoned or burned at the stake for the sake of identifying with Christ and furthering his cause. We need to be willing to be insulted and persecuted if we want to share in Christ’s suffering.

I get what he’s saying and love Chan for encouraging us to give up everything for the sake of following Christ. But I’m not convinced he’s completely right about the daily troubles in life not being crosses for us to bear.

I believe that even though we all suffer, Christians suffer differently than unbelievers, and Christians are blessed when they suffer well. It doesn’t matter if my suffering is that I can’t sell my house or that my boss fires me because I won’t renounce Christ. All suffering is sharing in Christ’s suffering if we suffer well.

Jesus suffered by giving up heaven and his grasp on equality with God and taking on the form of a servant. As he walked on earth, he obeyed his Father. He didn’t respond in anger to irritations, he didn’t kick the cat in frustration. So every time I’m irritated by life and I refrain from kicking the cat, I’m following Jesus and sharing in his suffering, I think. The truth is that as God’s child I shouldn’t have to suffer any irritation. Life should be perfect. God created us to live in a very good world. And we long for that. We should long for that. We should groan, with creation, for redemption. We weren’t made for suffering. Trials are not part of the “very good” God created. Trials are not good.

When we recognize that all trials are evil and when we then bow in obedience to God in the midst of trials and even rejoice in trials, believing God is using them for our good and his glory, then we are following Christ.

When the house doesn’t sell and I praise God, I’m following Christ. When we get cancer and we rejoice in God’s will, we are sharing in Christ’s suffering. Jesus never got angry at his Father. He never yelled at God. He never shook his fist at God. We need to approach common trials as Christ approached the cross, I think. As holy callings.

I believe that in every place of suffering we can obey God or disobey. We can praise him or curse him. We can bask in his comfort and love him more, seeing how faithful he is, or we can seek to end our suffering by filling our lives with something other than God. We can fill our days with TV or drugs or novels or shopping or the Internet. Or when we suffer the things common to man we can show our families and our neighbors how to suffer as Christ did by suffering as he did on the cross. By saying, “Into your hands I commit my spirit.” By allowing God to be God and agreeing that he’s doing right even when we feel forsaken.

Chan says that not being able to sell your house is no cross because he wants us to understand that crucifying the flesh is really strong language and crucifying is painful, not superficial. I agree with him. I just think that we need to be careful to not belittle our daily trials and we need to see how important they are to our growth and our relationship with God.

I think every burden, every disappointment, every sorrow is a cross. God created us for pure, joyful communion with him and every sorrow is both a punishment for sin (original or ongoing sin) and a temptation to doubt God’s love and goodness. Every sorrow is a cross that we can bear well or that we can mutter about. At every cross we face that crossroad—we must decide whether we will love God in the midst of our suffering and trust that he is doing right or whether we will doubt his love and power and seek a way to relieve our suffering on our own.

Every day that answer to prayer is delayed is time for us to be tempted to lie with Hagar or to dress up like our brother and try to manipulate God or trick him into giving us the blessing we think he’s withholding. Every day the house doesn’t sell we must choose to wait patiently on the Lord or to complain against him or to help him out and end our suffering by some means he has not appointed.

I don’t think we should despise our small sufferings. When we learn to obey in small sufferings that equips us to obey in big sufferings. All obedience and praise to God in the midst of any suffering is sweet to God.

I don’t want to compare my crosses to others’. I don’t want to compare my blessings to others’. I want to just walk each day on the path God sets before me, praising him for the things that are fun for me and also for the things that are hard for me.

How do we distinguish between what God is doing in our lives and what Satan is doing?

That may sound like an odd question. How can I confuse God’s work with Satan’s? But I think we do confuse the two.

I believe God is doing everything—that he’s behind everything that happens to me. I believe that God ordains every sniffle, every sneeze.

Well, where does that leave Satan? Doesn’t the Bible say that Satan is like a roaring lion seeking to destroy? Doesn’t it say I’m to be on my guard against him?

I think we need to ask how Satan destroys. Does he destroy people by making them suffer with illness and poverty? Or does he destroy them by giving them riches? Or does he destroy by using both circumstances and whispering in the ear, “God doesn’t love you, he’s letting you suffer.” Or, “You don’t need God, he’s a tyrant. You’ve worked hard for this money, you deserve to enjoy it.”

Satan does not destroy us by giving us different outward circumstances, I don’t think. Wasn’t that one of the main lessons in Job? Satan cannot steal a man’s faith by stealing a man’s wealth and health. We don’t have to fight the demon of poverty or the demon of wealth. We don’t have to give any thought to whether we are healthy or wealthy. If we are in Christ, we are healthy and wealthy beyond our wildest imaginings.

I agree with the posts I put on here by Bob Vincent (here, here, and here), but I also think that physical health and wealth is minor in light of eternity.

God does give me the health and wealth I need to do the things he asks me to do. I don’t need to chase after the things the pagans chase after. I don’t need to worry about what I’ll eat or what I’ll wear. (Matt. 6:31&32)

I think I have to beware of Satan not because of how he buffets me on the outside but because of how he buffets me on the inside. I think I have to flee from Satanic thought—from temptation to hate God because I’m poor or to forget God because I’m rich.

This is important: Temporal stuff is passing away and it can’t harm us. It’s like food that goes into the body and out. An excess of money today can’t hurt us. A lack of money can’t hurt us. Money is not the root of all evil—the love of money is. It’s not the money and the health that are so dangerous to us, it’s the way we idolize them.  And we idolize money and health whether we are rich or poor, healthy or ill.

So I don’t pray for health and wealth or for illness and poverty. I pray in health and wealth and in illness and poverty, asking God not to change my outward situation, but to make me gain from my outward situation. Give me more of Christ. Make me more like Christ. This is what I ask of God when I am sick and poor.

I do ask God to give me food daily—physical as well as spiritual. I do ask him to meet my needs. But for years and years I prayed regularly that God would give me neither poverty or riches. (Proverbs 30:7-9)

I still think that’s a good prayer. I want to lift my eyes off of the lack or excess of today and look into eternity. I want to use my wealth and my poverty, my successes and my failures, my prosperous times and my times of suffering, to praise God for his mercy to me and his willingness to mold me and make me after the image of his Son.

So who gives cancer and who gives health? God gives both and Satan gives both. Ultimately God, because he’s the big dog in charge. But I don’t think I need to look at every instance of suffering or prosperity in my life and try to discern who gave it and whether I should pray against it or be thankful for it. I think I am to give thanks in all things, for this is the will of God in Christ (1 Thess. 5:18). I think I am to rejoice always, and again, I say, rejoice (Phil. 4:4). I think Satan can’t crush me under suffering because I see all suffering as a good gift from God, and Satan can’t lure me away under riches because I see all riches as good gifts from God.

Clear vision is what we need, not health and wealth.

I’ll tell you what I don’t see: I don’t see a down side to saying, “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, blessed be the name of the Lord.” (Job 1:21) My prayer against Satan is not that God will keep him from harassing me in the physical realm but that he’ll keep him from sending fiery darts of doubt and bitterness and worry and fear and pride and greed and self-righteousness and self-sufficiency into whatever situation I find myself in physically.

This, my friends, is the secret of being content in all things. Knowing that God gives all things—the temporal good and the temporal evil¹—for our eternal good and his eternal glory.