Motivation and Depression

When I thought to know this, it was too painful for me; (Psalm 73: 16)

Up to now I know many are associating motivation with a lack of confrontation with the world after following what I have been writing.

While it is that, I feel it is important to point to probably the most portent danger it poses to the innocent believer. And I say innocent because I am assuming that the said believer completely believes that the motivational narrative is the full counsel of God and so does not question it.

The Bible talks about taking poison that does no harm to us. We know Paul was bitten by a venomous snake and nothing happened to him. And motivation of course stresses the fact that no weapon fashioned against us will succeed.

Yet for that to take effect, we must be in the right context.

And the context is a life of total obedience. It is in the submission to the Lordship of Christ. It is in our doing what God has commanded us to do.

Weapons are rendered ineffective as an inheritance. An inheritance of what and from who?

It is an inheritance for the servants of the Lord. It is an inheritance from the Lord they are serving. It is an inheritance from God to His obedient children.

It is a serious error to suppose that I will enjoy an inheritance from someone I am not surrendered to. It is very foolish for someone to expect to be paid by someone they are not working for. It is ultimate folly to expect an inheritance from someone else’s father.

Yet that is the heart of motivation.

It focuses on what we should be getting as opposed to how we are supposed to live. Yet how we are supposed to live is the key to our accessing what has already been offered. What I mean by this is that we are not releasing something from someone holding it that must be convinced to release it. We are actually walking into the release that existed long before we came to the place it is.  We are walking through a shadow that was created long ago to shield us from the hot sun that is the world.

We are taught to receive instead of giving. We are taught to believe in what we are expecting to receive instead of believing to obey what we are commanded that will release what we have been promised.

Get to the point. I know someone is shouting.

What happens when motivation runs my life is that I will create a false reality, a reality that makes God my servant instead of my Lord. A reality that things exist for the sole reason of fulfilling me as opposed to being created for a purpose higher than me. A reality that makes me the master craftsman of my destiny and not a speck of light created by a magnificent God for His glory. I am therefore sorely in charge of my destiny since I am the one dictating the terms of my existence.

And that reality is extremely short lived since it has its foundation on the transient.

In short, motivation wants us to build our faith on things and experiences instead of the God who creates them. We want to build our expectations on the here and now instead of the eternal.

What then happens?

Since the temporal has no capacity of meeting eternal cravings, there will be frustration even if I was to get everything I was taught to expect.

And he gave them their request; but sent leanness into their soul. (Psalm 106:15)

But allow me to focus on those who do not receive.

Since God is the Lord and not our servant, we are wont to find ourselves in so much disappointment since He will never bend to our expectation.

The bigger problem will be that we will be seeing others living in the dreams motivators are talking about but unaware that they may be reaping from wickedness. But as also happens, in our spiritual infancy, God overlooked our folly since He wanted us to grow into His likeness. It is important to realise that God not only intends us to grow out of that childhood, He wants us to take responsibility for our maturity.

For example, assume you have been sacked because you challenged wickedness in your workplace and things become very difficult even as the preachers are prophesying prosperity for you. In the same meeting you will hear of testimonies of those blessings and breakthroughs you are being taught.

You will start wondering why you are being punished for your obedience while others are sailing so smoothly yet not as committed to Christ as you are.

Your house is locked for lack of rent, your children are sent home for lack of fees and there is nothing to feed them and nobody in your circles, even those with those breakthroughs, is willing to help you, only prophesying that breakthrough that has refused to come.

What will happen to your faith? What will happen to you?

All your walk in motivation you have been taught that abundance is your portion but that abundance has disappeared.

Then you get to learn that some of those testimonies you have been hearing were not actually breakthroughs.

Someone bribed to get that contract. Someone slept with the boss to get that promotion. Someone cut corners to access that opening.

You will get into the dilemma of Psalm 73. You will get into the challenge Job was in.

It will be worsened by the greater focus on the motivators helping you build your faith to be able to access that breakthrough even as the wicked continue prospering. Like Job’s friends they will preach themselves sore on the fact that your situation must be the result of some hidden sin or lack of faith.

You will be challenged to fast and even then, nothing happens. You will be challenged to give even the little you have since as motivators teach one cannot outgive God without any context and that is when your house gets locked since you had taken that portion of rent to bribe God.

You will confess all your sins, and like me even create a few more to repent of. Some will go as far as digging out the sins of their forefathers to repent. Nothing happens.

What will happen to you?

The truth is that your faith will crash. And that crash will be accelerated by all the motivation you continue feeding on, especially since in a crisis one will normally increase the intake of what they have been feeding on. Or what is bulimia?

That is what leads to depression.

I have all along been talking about the material prosperity dimension. But I feel it is important to touch another dimension of the whole prosperity gospel dynamic.

And that is health. This because health is probably more difficult to unravel than wealth.

That is the reason the devil dealt it to job as probably his master stroke.

The prosperity gospel error treats sickness as Job’s friends did. And I say this because that is where I came from.

Ill health is therefore a very clear indication of a spiritual problem and lack of faith.

Sickness hitting you therefore means that something is wrong with you spiritually. As we see in John 9, they associate sickness with some sin somewhere, either of the sick or somewhere deep in their past.

A miracle that does not happen can only be attributed in the lack of faith of the one seeking it or the lack of confession of the sin causing it even if it is unknown to the sick.

You realise that is the whole foundation of the generational curses doctrine which has no basis in the Bible, both the Old and New Testaments. That was Jesus’ response in the passage I have mentioned.

Even when He dealt with sickness that was the result of sin, He never went into the interrogation mode motivators love. He forgave, healed and told the person to stop sinning.

Rahab the harlot was not taken to the interrogation room to clear her of any generational and occupational curses she had incurred. Ruth was not isolated to ensure her generational curses (mind you her nation was exempted from Israel) were dealt with. Naaman the Syrian general was not given a course on generational curses and deliverance to deal with before he was healed.

The Bible talks about the judgment for sin going down generations. That is abundantly clear when you read the Bible. As I have written elsewhere, there are habits we pick from where we have come from when I wrote about the single mother (the independent woman) and the Moabites and Ammonites.

But I have not seen anywhere in the Bible that a curse jumps from a generation to the other. I have not seen anywhere sin jumps from a father to a son.

As Ezekiel was told, it is the soul that sins that will die.

Otherwise Rahab the harlot could never have qualified to join in Christ’s bloodline as were Tamar and even Bathsheba among many others.

Otherwise someone coming from witchcraft needs a few months to exorcise all those demons and curses before they can be transformed.

I have seen dreaded street urchins instantly transformed when they came to Christ. I have seen hardened criminals instantly transformed when they received Christ. I have seen a completely drunk character becoming instantly sober and never ever desiring a drink when they get saved.

But that is not what motivation believes though they may profess it

They will resort into the generational curses or unrepented sins of the past when their doctrine hits a road block because they have no coherent scriptural response.

Why am I writing all this?

When I am suffering for my faith, or what we call persecution, it is not because there is something wrong I have done. The contrary is actually true. I am suffering because I have chosen God’s instead of the world’s way.

John 16:33 is very clear about that.

It is therefore very dangerous to encourage someone who has lost his job for standing for his faith to dig into his past looking for generational curses or hidden or past sins.

Can you imagine a motivator encountering Paul and Silas after they had been flogged and jailed going the generational curses way? Can you imagine telling John the Baptist’s disciples to examine their pasts after their leader is beheaded?

Yet that is how motivators look at hardship and sickness.

I am forever grateful to God that I was alone and not surrounded by motivators when God was taking me through His training, or what we call hardship, especially the most intense. I am grateful to God that He isolated me when I was going through His silence. Because I do not know whether I could have gone through it successfully.

But many are not able to access that solitude. Many are unable to be still without miserable comforters seeking to defile their spirits with the motivational folly like Job’s friends.

That is what makes depression a very easy conclusion to come to.

Or what do you think will happen when nothing makes sense and then all your friends desert you because your sores (physical, emotional, spiritual) refuse to stop stinking to those motivator friends?

Or do you not remember that even Job’s wife deserted him? And that because from her last statement she was as motivational as those friends who remained.

I hope I have made my point.

But as usual I will share more as God releases it.