Spiritual maladies can have a negative influence on everyone around us and on our ability to witness for Christ. Many people plod through their days with a sour, irritable spirit that is corrosive to themselves and others.
“An anxious heart weighs a man down” (Proverbs 12:25). This is not pop psychology, but the truth of God’s Word. We can’t run the race of life while weighed down by a bitter spirit. Constant worry robs many people of the spiritual resources God gladly provides. Eventually, anxiety crushes us under its weight.
The word for “anxious” is translated in the King James Version as “heaviness,” vividly depicting the burdensome effect worry has on us. Anxiety has taken a terrible toll on many people in the Body of Christ. Instead of walking by faith, we are prone to walk by worry. Our spirits trudge wearily through life instead of soaring like an eagle, as God promised they would. We are spiritually grounded by anxiety, which only worsens our situation.
Also, there is the “crushed spirit” of deep sorrow. The apostle Paul cautioned the believers at Corinth to comfort an erring brother who had been reprimanded by the church. This brother had repented of his sin, and Paul was concerned that he might now be “overwhelmed by excessive sorrow” (2 Corinthians 2:7). Another time, Paul expressed gratitude that God had kept an ailing associate minister from dying, sparing the apostle “sorrow upon sorrow” (Philippians 2:27). Paul knew the numbing and disabling effect of a heart swamped by sorrow.
God offers a cure for these maladies and it is simply the joy of the Lord. Real joy is not mere happiness, a feeling that fluctuates with our circumstances. Rather, it is a deep, inner delight in God that only the Holy Spirit can produce. This divine joy is more than medicine, it is our strength! “Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength” (Nehemiah 8:10).
Jim Cymbala began the Brooklyn Tabernacle with less than twenty members in a small, rundown building in a difficult part of the city. A native of Brooklyn, he is a longtime friend of both David and Gary Wilkerson.