Spiritually Bi-polar?

It is a question of faith in God - the rarest thing; we have faith only in our feelings. I do not believe God unless He will give me something in my hand whereby I may know I have it, then I say - "Now I believe." – Oswald Chambers.

Sometimes I feel like I have developed a bi-polar relationship with Jesus. From what I’ve read about bi-polar, uncontrollable swings of emotion are one of its key indicators. The difficulty in diagnosing bi-polar is determining when normal mood changes cross the line to abnormal. Lately my faith walk has me wondering how close I am to that line. I’ve started to suspect I’m spiritually bi-polar.

Those who follow after Jesus usually desire to live a life defined by faith. The growth of our faith reveals the depth of our relationship with Jesus. For the past two years, Jesus has called me into a deeper walk of faith. Specifically, He has asked me to trust Him for provision. I’ve learned that there are different levels of trust. Up until this point, I was trusting Jesus to provide for me and my family’s needs. I know that He’s in control and I trust that He’ll not only provide for me, but He’ll teach me my role in the whole process. But following after Jesus into this new way of living is testing my idea of how God provides.

I’m talking about my life’s rhythm. The need for provision is always there; it is never fully satisfied. I’m not sure it’s even partially satisfied. It’s more like it’s staved off for the day or shoved into the next week. I wonder why it is that we look to be fully sated. Every month there are bills to pay. Every day there is dinner to make. There is always a demand for resources, always. It never goes away. So I’ve come to learn that there is a rhythm to our provision that we come to trust. A rhythm of life that when it repeats itself with enough consistency we begin to trust the rhythm; we find peace in the consistent repetition of the pattern.

Until Jesus called me into this deeper faith walk, my provision rhythm was a three month pattern. I had learned to trust this pattern and trusted that Jesus would provide as the next three months were “taken care of”. Sure there were times when we wondered if we would be able to make it through that three month cycle. Surprises came up. Finances were strained. And God always seemed to meet our needs and I have lived in that life rhythm for most of my adult life.

The life I’ve been called to lead now is like living on a spiritual roller coaster. I’ve spent the past two years trying to figure out the rhythm. I listen for it, look for it, and ask for it, but so far it’s been very elusive. It certainly isn’t the three month rhythm I had grown to depend on. It’s day to day. Week to week at the most. But the same bills need to be paid. Dinner still needs to be made. The demand for resources is just as strong as it always has been. It’s in this current rhythm of life that I feel bi-polar. The cycle starts with the need. I trust God to provide for this need, I live as though He will meet it, being careful to ask what a need is and what a want is. Then comes the waiting. Waiting tests my faith. God knows the need. He understands my willingness to do whatever is necessary to be part of meeting the need. He totally knows the bill’s due date. I understand waiting builds my faith and I attempt to rest in the belief that God will meet my need, and as time ticks away the fight to rest becomes harder and harder until the night before the bill needs to be paid and I’m fighting the 11th hour panic. Actually if I’m honest, I start fighting panic around the 9th hour, so when God chooses to meet our need in the 11th hour, there is a rush of relief. The peace, panic, relief rhythm is very taxing, and since it seems to be the rhythm for the past two years, I’m finding that the relief at the end of the cycle is slowly turning to anger.

Here is where I feel like a spiritual bi-polar. I start a month in faith and peace and end it in anger at the One who provided the month before. I can’t seem to control my emotions in this. My desire is to remain peaceful through the ride, trusting that the One who promised my provision will provide, but I quickly come to the end of my faith and the resulting emotional swings are wearing me out. It’s sobering to face your lack of faith on a monthly basis. Each time I slam into the end of my faith I realize with more clarity that I really don’t trust God; I trust His provision for me. Oswald Chambers says it so well. “We have faith only in our feelings. I do not believe God unless He will give me something in my hand whereby I may know I have it, then I say - "Now I believe."” Over and over again I’ve been brought to the point where unless it’s in my hand and I know I have it, I wonder if God is going to meet my needs. I struggle thinking that my sin is keeping God from providing, or I’m not hearing from God correctly, or I’m missing something that keeps God from providing for me. I fight the enemy’s suggestions that God doesn’t care, or isn’t capable of meeting my needs. The uncomfortable reality is that God doesn’t meet my needs as I expect and I get mad.