You’re a Human, Not a Lone Wolf

Greetings, my friend,

Welcome to The Arsenal, your weekly newsletter designed to train and equip you for living a set-apart lifestyle.

Let me ask you a question: What’s one of the worst things you can do when you’re going through difficulties in life, especially when it has to do with sin holding you back from reaching your true potential?

Aside from not running to The Father and gravitating toward coping mechanisms that do nothing but make things worse, arguably the worst thing you can do is this: 

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And also this:

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Do you understand what I just said there? No? Good. What I just demonstrated is a little thing called silence, used to keep struggles private. And sadly, it’s what many of us resort to even when we’re in the midst of struggling with mental health problems or sin we keep in secret that we want to be free of deep down, but end up keeping bottled up inside of us. 

Why is this? If keeping quiet about your problems is something you find yourself doing, that’s a question only you can answer. But for most people, it typically boils down to a couple things:

#1: Fear of judgment from others – Specifically, becoming an outcast/black sheep among friends and family, losing those relationships altogether, or having to deal with reputational damage that may not be able to be reconciled. As humans, we all desire healthy relationships with others, and we often need them in order to maintain good mental health. Many people don’t want to risk losing relationships they’ve spent years building over issues they think aren’t a super big deal (when they actually are) or that they can handle themselves eventually. This blends perfectly into the other big problem:

#2: Overconfidence in your own ability to overcome (pride) – As part of the guilty feeling we get if we’re masking a secret sin, or if we feel insecure about something we’re going through mentally or emotionally, our coping mechanism for it often resorts to thinking we’ll fix it ourselves and that others don’t need to think lesser of us for our problems. This is especially true among men, where we often feel like we’re supposed to know everything and have it all figured it out for ourselves and/or our families. While this is quite noble and many smaller issues can solve themselves simply by the passage of time, many problems are not so simple, and may not be something you can conquer without some insight from others.

Interestingly, mental health is also one of the least-discussed issues in the church today, but simultaneously one of the largest problems it has within individual believers today. And that’s because we've let our pride run amuck, and we’ve all forgotten the truth of the Word to some degree. And that truth is, whether you like it or not, there’s so much healing in confessing your problems (or sins) to others. This applies both vertically (with Yahweh) and horizontally (with man) as the Scriptures tell us. For example, in our relationship with Messiah:

Talking to Yeshua about things should always come first and foremost, especially with sin as this passage says. Getting ourselves right with The Father through Messiah should be our top priority and step one in the restoration process.  

After this, we should seek to humble ourselves by swallowing that pride and allowing others around us to help us work through the rest of it. Because the truth is, at the end of the day, we’re no better than the person next to us, as we all sin and fall short of Yah’s glory, as Paul talks about (Romans 3:23). So why should we feel like we’re so much worse than other people and that we can’t or shouldn’t be helped by others? And as the Body, we should also be reflecting Messiah through the love He has for the church (Ephesians 5:25). 

A great example is as James wrote:

The relationships we have within the Body of Messiah aren’t just for having a good time with like-minded believers and learning and studying the Word together occasionally. Yeshua designed them to be so much more than that. He wants us to lean on each other, learn from each other, and love each other as we love ourselves, even in our sin and lowest moments. As He said,

Everything that Yah has commanded us to do and has spoken concerning His people through the Scriptures has the core message of love behind it, consisting of loving Him and loving others. And that kind of love we should have for each other as we seek healing through the Body should be as follows:

So, let us not silently suffer in the shadows from the sin we’ve committed or the struggles we have to endure. Rather, let us reflect the love Messiah has for us, whether you’re the one being helped or if you’re helping others through prayer and encouragement. I believe confession of sin within the Body and the subsequent healing that should come from that are a core function of the Body we as believers often neglect. Just as the human body works as a whole to eliminate waste and toxins from it, we should be doing the same within our communities to help bring the Body into a state of becoming the Bride Yeshua deserves.  

And in summary, remember this, my friend:

Behind the Screens: My Weekly Learning

I’ve found myself dwelling on the second half of John chapter 2 the past few days. If you’re not familiar with the content of that passage, within it is the story of Yeshua exhibiting some righteous anger as He overturned tables, poured out the changers’ money, and drove merchants out of the Temple in Jerusalem using a whip He made, all while proclaiming not to make His Father’s house a “house of merchandise.” 

As I was reading this, I noticed the text said He proclaimed this to “those who sold doves.” Where this gets interesting is that we know from Matthew chapter 3 that the Ruach (Holy Spirit) descended on Yeshua “like a dove” after He was baptized. Another important point to note is that we also know that we’re the Temple/Dwelling Place of the Holy Spirit, as Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians chapter 6. 

So going back to the merchants in the Temple story with these metaphors in mind, I think it’s no coincidence that Scripture specifies Yeshua rebuked those selling doves in the Temple. In this world, people sell lots of things, both in a monetary and metaphorical sense. And people, especially with today’s communication and connectedness via the Internet, often “buy” into a lot of ideas, philosophies, and man-made religions that aren’t the best for us. These can twist our mindset and allow false “spirits” (represented by the doves being sold in the Temple) of both emotional and demonic nature into our minds (part of our Temple of the Holy Spirit). What’s worse, we may eventually begin “selling” our ideas that we have in our minds (our Temple) to others, and the process starts all over again with someone else.

From a metaphorical standpoint, this story in John chapter 2 reminded me of an important principle: As believers, we must be incredibly careful what ideas we buy into regarding lifestyle, theology, or whatever else. While many of these ideas often look or sound good on the surface (just like how the Holy Spirit and the doves the merchants were selling looked the same way physically), in reality they can penetrate much deeper into our being and change the way we think and feel about ourselves or the world around us. So many of the world’s ideas today go very much against Scripture and are quite dangerous in a spiritual sense. As Yeshua said to us to help guard ourselves:

I encourage you to meditate on these things and think about what “merchandise” you’re bringing into your Temple, and what you’re also selling from your Temple. As the light of the world in a world full of darkness, we can’t afford to let our light go out. 

Be blessed, my brothers and sisters.