When going through a phase of depression recently in my life, one of the things that was most helpful for moving through it was talking about the feelings, interestingly enough. Talking about the past, the repressed thoughts and feelings, the “forbidden secrets” and being transparent to those around you. Being able to admit that maybe something is wrong changed my whole life and path that I was going in.

I too really liked the line “When someone appears to start “becoming difficult,” they could actually be getting better.” And by becoming difficult we could really just say appears to be hitting the wall. Too often we don’t notice anything wrong with the people around us who we are close with until they are already working through it. Even when we do notice things, we are not bold enough to approach them on a situation, because we are too worried about how they might judge us for approaching them or what if they are wrong. In Psychology classes we are always taught “intervention always works” and I feel like Sharon noticing the changes and beginning to state things to you, started to change you. Although maybe not noticeable, it did make you question things. Very similar things had happened to me, where one particular person would tell me that I was not myself anymore and then I would question myself a lot after words and really attack my own emotional state. Ironically enough, the person who approached me was not a person I was close with, just a person I saw and said hi to regularly. A classmate who approached me and said that I didn’t seem like myself, but no close friends would admit to it.

Your article(s) on hitting the wall have really touched me and made me examine my own personal brokenness that I am currently faced with in a new light, a different light than the “this can’t be” borderline depression path I was beginning to face. Although not a leader in a church, I find myself going through the emotions or comparing myself to others in faith and feeling “stuck” with where I am at.

I am also, like many have said, encouraged by your honesty, by Sharon’s honesty and your ability to be transparent to the world.
Your transparency has given me hope and encouraged me to become more transparent in my own life to the people around me. I am thankful for you sharing this with me.

The biggest blessing of all of this is God is making us stronger and loves us through it all!!

Recently my heart was renewed when I found some old Christian music that I used to listened to in college, such as:

Psalms 51:17 “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” (NIV)

Joe, thanks for setting a good example of how to fight against judgment and false gossip: be honest.

I also used to think that the “right” kind of Christian was a soldier, invulnerable to his/her own emotions. To me, emotions were equal to sinful desires. But, as Joe pointed out to me, many of the fruits of the Spirit have a strong emotional component (e.g. love, kindness, self-control, joy…). Unless I’m in tune with my emotions, I’ll never be able to truly diagnose when I’m not living a spirit-filled life, and when I am. I think that’s a key: deep emotional change does not come from doing this/that. It comes from living by the Holy Spirit.

Joe, I’m thankful for your series on The Wall. I think I was stuck at the wall without even knowing it; so dead to my emotions that I did not realize the stall in my spiritual life. Such a refreshing wake up call.

My key verse for this year came from Galatians 5. But I am newly realizing how liberating and wonderful the direction to “live by the Spirit” is. No more legalism! No more dutiful soldiering on! I realize now that deep, personal, and emotional change doesn’t come from anything I do, but only when I really truly surrender, admit my own weakness and incapability, and let the Spirit take charge. This requires, as Joe demonstrated, complete honesty.

I’m eagerly looking forward to seeing the other side of the wall, along with all my UBFriends :)

Thank you also for your sharing your love between you and your wife. It’s amazing that your love grew even more. I’ve been learning over the years, and through your blog, that what God really wants from husbands and wives, children and parents, friends, churches, and everyone is to be honest and open with one another, just as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are honest and open with one another. Thanks again.

Surely, rather than be a spiritual “man of steel,” we, and especially I, need to be honest, open, transparent and real, while being prayerful and respectful. I think that a man of steel can’t really repent, because he is “better than that.”

May God bless this website to be a website for broken, wounded, vulnerable, helpless, sinful people, so that we may truly express how much we need Jesus, and Jesus only!

My turning point was when I watched the Passion of the Christ movie by myself. Watching my Lord and our Lord going through the betrayal, arrest, condemnation and crucifixion jump-started my heart. The reason is that I could see Jesus’ love, joy and hope in the midst of it all, as well as the love those around him had for him.

After watching that movie, I clearly understood why the first century Christians talked so much about the cross and made it the symbol of Christianity. It is so easy to see why the flame of the Holy Spirit ignited so many people’s hearts. And it become so clear that I had been living my life far from the cross.

I remember reading a sermon about how when we are spiritually bored we become fascinated and joyful by other things that lead us to become spiritually/emotionally dead. When we are fascinated by God and all that He is, then we experience joy.

Anyways, this is hard because we’re full of so many different emotions, we experience so many different things in our personal lives and react individually to them.

It is somewhat irrelevant, but your story reminds me of an excerpt from the Four Loves by C.S. Lewis.

“We must distinguish two things which might both be called ‘nearness to God’. One is ‘likeness to God’. God has impressed some sort of likeness to Himself, I suppose, in all he has made. Secondly, there is what we may call ‘nearness of approach’.

We see that these two do not necessarily coincide.

Perhaps an analogy may help. Let us suppose that we are doing a mountain walk to the village which is our home. At mid-day, we come to the top of a cliff where we are, in space, very near it because it is just below us. We could drop a stone into it. But as we are no cragsmen, we can’t get down. We must go a long way round; five miles, maybe. At many points during that detour we shall, statistically, be farther from the village than we were when we sat above the cliff. But only statistically. In terms of progress we shall be far ‘nearer’ our baths and teas.

At the cliff’s top we are near the village, but however long we sit there we shall never be any nearer to our bath and our tea. So here; the likeness, and in that state nearness, to Himself which God has conferred upon certain creatures and certain sates of those creatures is something finished, built in. What is near him by likeness [or resemblance] is never, by that fact alone, going to be any nearer. But nearness by approach is, by definition, increasing nearness.”

There is a lot I can learn from your experiences, and I’m sure many others in our ministry will agree that they can learn from them too. We all have past sins that we regret, including those of mine and my husband’s pasts, but thank God for Jesus’ blood that doesn’t just cover our sins but WASHES them completely clean. While I do not have any specific insights into improving our walks with God, I’ve suddenly found myself very humbled after reading your article and am deeply thankful for the grace of God upon sinners like us; that without His love, we would be drowning in sin and darkness.

Praise Jesus! And thank you, Joe.