Common sense can cure some depression but folks who renege at receiving God’s grace may be the source of their own problem. Common sense often requires no spiritual insight, and unchristian men and women may handle their depression by simple coping. They understand things like “no sense crying over spilled milk.”
Here are some more common sense sayings:
“Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.” Edmund Burke blrainyquote.com
“The best preparation for tomorrow is doing your best today.” H. Jackson Brown, Jr.” brainyquote.com
How could these men know these things?
Martyn Lloyd Jones said this,
“Christianity is common sense and much more, but it includes common sense.”
He goes on:
“Let us then lay this down as a principle…We must never for a second worry about anything that cannot be affected or changed by us…It is a waste of energy…if you can do nothing about a situation, stop thinking about it, never again look back at it, never think about it.” M.L.J. Serenity Prayer?
People verbalize regrets, “if only (I could get back) the time I have wasted!”
What I (Jones), say to him is this: Are you making up for the lost time?”
If you are suffering from this condition: take your self in hand and
- examine yourself from an ordinary common-sense point of view
- you are behaving like a fool
- you are irrational
- you are wasting your time and your energy. M.L.J.
Let’s Pause: People who have no spiritual resource may still function in a kind of grace, but it is a grace based on a self-imposed righteousness that measures up to a self fabricated image or standard. These folks have a few moral conditions which they keep up (such as not killing, stealing or rape). Sometimes, through sacrifice for others and their good moral character, they create in themselves a sense of self-acceptance. With their high position, they operate anxiety-free.
However when a new standard is imposed on them from another source, such as a tragic business loss or sickness, they may get depressed. Why? Because the “have-to” mode of operation disables their “grace” and they are found wanting and ineffective. Their swagger takes a hit.
Some resilient ones adjust to the new standards in time and regain the cool flow of that “self-grace” again.
But,
Who’s kidding who? graced-out folks can use common sense because of God’s grace, but the same is not true for nonspiritual folks, Christian or not.
So, what about the issue of depression? This happens when a self-graced person becomes confronted by a “have-to” from another source, gets anxious but never overcomes in the challenge. Instead, this one keeps trying but failing, and never finds the true grace that comes from God alone to release the pressure.
They cope and repress thoughts and widen the parameters of their false grace. They fight, but their self attention only complicates their depression.
Nevertheless:
The book of Joel teaches: ” And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpiller, and the palmerworm…”
This is true Grace!
Brothers and sisters and every person alive, we never need to cry over spilled milk because God can fix our failed thing, fix us, fix our lost time. The last hired worker in the vineyard got the same as the all-day laborer. Matthew 20:9. “It is Christ who died, yea, rather has risen.”
That bloody cross takes us above common sense. No, it doesn’t make complete sense to us, but blood was shed for you and me.
Proverbs 11:13 teaches that “he that is of a faithful spirit conceals the matter! Friends, do the little thing, do your best today and forget the spilled milk. Don’t moan, bemoan, what can’t be changed, Let your eyes look right on (Him), Ponder the path of your feet, turn not to the right hand or left, take thy foot out from evil. love ya
