Moods

Do you know how happy I was when I realized that I don't have to be controlled by my moods? I have been a person given to depression all my life. And now that I am not, I almost forgot what it was like to be depressed continually-like the way you don't notice that you are not cold anymore in your car until the heater has been running and you have been warm for some time.

A mood is a funny thing when you think about it. Colorless, tasteless, and sometimes coming out of nowhere-like the way Jesus describes the comings and goings of the Holy Spirit in John 3, except that this may be a bad spirit. Remember King Saul's dark moods: "Now the Spirit of the LORD departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the LORD tormented him" (1 Samuel 16:14).

Maybe there is more than meets the eye behind our foul moods too, something more than physiology. Even a wonderful man of God like David Brainerd (1718-47), missionary to the Native Americans of New Jersey, was so afflicted that the first thing Jonathan Edwards writes about him in the preface to his biography is that he was "by his constitution and natural temper, so prone to melancholy and dejection of Spirit."

But faith-filled friends are a godly infection, and by their influence I started coming against moods with the simple weapons of prayer and declaring Christ's power over them. I would say (usually aloud): "Lord, let me not be controlled by anything but your Holy Spirit!" This has proved more long lasting than King Saul's practice of summoning the court musicians.

Do you know what I think? Since Satan is defeated (he is filled with fury because he knows his time is short-Revelation 12:12), his main power over us is the power of the bluff. As long as I thought I was powerless, I was.

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