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Transcript 380B — Interceding for a Troubled Friend
HC: Good evening. Welcome to Open Forum.
CALLER: Yes. Brother Camping, I have a friend who has a problem and I was wondering if you could give me some insight on it. Several years ago she became involved in fortune telling and had her fortune cast through Tarot cards. And since then she's been the victim of depressions and nightmarish type dreams. And just very recently she became a born again Christian, and since then she stopped taking the anti-depression type drugs that she was taking to counteract the depression. But when she stopped taking the drugs these manifestations have intensified. And I was wondering if you could give me any insight as to whether there is a Biblical reason for anything like this happening in this day and age and what I can do to help this person.
HC: One thing of course you can do is to pray that God will intervene in her life. The Bible teaches that God's perfect love casts our fear. This person, of course, has been living very close to Satan for a while, with her Tarot cards and the kinds of things that she got into. And so this really made a very severe impact upon her life.
Now if she is truly born again, if she is truly born again, now remember, to be born again means that we are hanging our whole life on the Lord Jesus Christ. It means that we've placed our whole trust in Him. It means that we don't fear hell or damnation. We know that Christ has paid for our sins. But neither do we fear Satan any longer.
CALLER: She knows this, and she wants to seek relief from this. I was there, and another person who was a good friend of mine was there when she did come to know the Lord. And we truly believe that she is a born again person. And she needs relief from this thing that she's undergoing right now.
HC: The relief will come only as she trusts in the Lord. Remember what Philippians 4:6 & 7 says? "Don't be anxious," or "Be careful for nothing. Be anxious for nothing. But with prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to the Lord, and the peace of God that passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus." That's a faithful promise of God.
The anxiety will hit her again and again. Every time she becomes anxious, she should go to the Lord, "Oh God, have mercy on me. Take this fear out of my life. Help me to remember how I stand before Thee. What a wonderful thing has happened in my life, that I belong to Christ, that I am a child of His, that I have all of the promises of the Bible that He will leave me nor forsake me, that even though I go through the valley of the shadow of death, He will be with me, that nothing can happen to me outside of His control and keeping."
She should feed on the Word of God. Just read the Psalms. Read Psalm 23 over and over and over again, making this really a part of her life, that her trust is in Christ. Right now she's at the sixty-four dollar question: Is this matter of being a Christian only good for people who don't experience anything serious in their lives?
You see, it's very easy to be confident, I'm a believer when all is going well, when there is no particular stress that we are facing. But if we're really a child of God, if we're really born again, it should stand the test when we're undergoing severe trauma or severe testing. This is what God is really helping her to see, "Is my trust really in God, or am I only paying lip service to this?"
If my trust really is in God, if I really believe that God means what He says, that He will not leave us nor forsake us, that He will give His angels charge over me, that I have no fear of Satan at all, then what am I fearful about? Then what am I fearful about?
CALLER: Well, she expressed the opinion that it was possible that she was suffering for the salvation of some other, or something like this.
HC: I don't know of that in the Bible.
CALLER: Well, neither do I. And I tried to point her to Ephesians 6:10-18, where we take on the armor of God, and verses like this, where she can, through reading the Word of God and filling her mind with the Word of God, come closer and closer into unity with Him, and by this alleviate her fear. I've tried to point out to her that in her mind is where this battle is taking place. This is the means which Satan uses to attack us, through the medium of our minds.
HC: Satan will not attack through her mind, if she belongs to Christ. Satan has no hold on her of any kind. Satan can't tough her. The whole question is, where does she stand in relationship to Christ? It is her old nature that has been identified with her past life, which has been seared and hurt by her past life, that is not willing to trust.
But in her new soul, where she is born again, there ought to be this confidence in Christ. Now it can be demonstrated, in the face of the experience she's going through right now. She must recognize, ''Okay. In my old body there is this fear that keeps creeping up on me. But I'm to crucify the flesh and its desires, its lusts. I'm to put it down. I'm not to listen to that. Oh God, have mercy on me when I begin to feel fearful. Forgive this sin. Forgive this sin, because ultimately it is the fact that I'm not trusting in Christ the way I ought to. Oh Lord, strengthen me in my trust. Help me in my unbelief."
This is the cry of the believer. And keep going back to the Lord, and thank Him for His blessings. And then the moment that anxiety begins to develop, go back to the Lord, "Oh Lord, forgive me. Now I'm beginning to sin all over again. I'm not trusting the way I ought to. Oh Lord, forgive me. Strengthen me in my trust. And encourage me to turn away from this kind of fear."
This fear develops because we take our eyes off Christ. Fear develops because we're not really sure whether God is going to care for us all the way.
CALLER: I tried to explain to her that perhaps this was a testing of her faith, and that she should turn to the Lord for release from this, and just absolutely put her trust in God.
HC: But to put feet under that is very difficult, isn't it?
CALLER: Right. Absolutely.
HC: It's one thing to hypothetically say, "Yes, this is what you ought to do," and it's another thing, when you've lived close to fear for a long time, to let go. But you see, this is characteristic of any besetting sin.
A person who by nature is addicted to alcohol, and there are certain people who very easily become involved in alcohol. They become drunkards. It doesn't mean that in five seconds after they become saved they'll never have any desire for alcohol again. This may trouble for a little while.
The same is true of any besetting sin. If a person has a vicious temper, that is always there. And they've really delighted in just letting it fly when things went badly. They don't, in five seconds, get victory over that. But if they recognize this is rebellion against God, then there can be victory. There will be some failures, but there will come victory.
The same is true of someone who has a lustful desire to desire, or is subject to evil desire, a sexual desire that is wrong. All of these sins that are deeply besetting sins, we have difficulty getting victory over. Now the path is always the same. We must repent. We must turn away from it. The path of turning away from fear is not an easy path. But if we'll deliberately concentrate on those passages in the Bible that indicate that God cares for us if we'll feast on these verses and remind ourselves of this, and cry out to God for forgiveness, when we do become anxious, then we're going to begin to get victory over that sin, too.
CALLER: One other thing. Would it be efficacious at all for myself and perhaps three or four other Christians to gather together to pray for this person in this specific regard? Is there any Biblical basis for that?
HC: The Bible teaches, "The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much." It however does not mean necessarily that you have to gather with others to pray. The fact is, Christ insists that prayer ought to be done in our inner closet, where nobody knows what we're praying. It's wonderful when we can encourage others to pray with us. That's why we have Prayer Time on Family Radio. We don't do this, however, to assault the throne of God, like getting as many signatures as possible to Congress, to sway their decision one way or another. We do this only because this is the Christian fellowship that we have one with another. We pray for one another.
However, if one person is praying, or two persons or twenty persons, the question is, what is going on in my heart? Am I really bringing this to God, as an earnest desire, and letting His will be done?
CALLER: Well, do you think it would be good for me to pray with this person herself?
HC: It could be, it could be. There's no formula for this, you see. There is nothing that's indicated. If you did pray with her, this may be helpful to her. But her trust cannot be in you. Her trust has got to be in Christ. It has to be in Christ.
And she has to look at herself very honestly, "Is my trust really in Christ, or am I really just paying lip service to this? Am I just intellectually trusting Christ? Am I in fact not really trusting Him with my whole heart?" That's the big question.
CALLER: Okay. Thank you very much, Brother Camping.
HC: You're welcome. Good night.