Day 12: Release from Mental Torment

We have considered some of the mental torments and pressures that we can experience in life. Frequently, and related to these pressures and torments, there is a voice that speaks to your mind which can form another source of pressure. Sometimes it is even an audible voice, but many times it's just an inner voice. Yet the things it says can be formulated in clear and specific sentences.

Many times, the voice we hear in such situations accuses us or torments us in some way. If the voice that comes to our mind accuses or torments, then we know for sure one thing: behind that voice there is a person and that person is Satan. Bear in mind, he, Satan, the devil, is the accuser and the tormentor. When you have an accusing, tormenting voice in your mind, in your life, pressuring you, driving you, goading you, you know without further evidence that the devil is at work in your life.

Let me give you examples of common forms of accusation and torment that the devil brings against people's minds. Each one of the examples I have given you I have met, more than once, in counselling with people who are under mental pressure and experiencing mental torment.

One common accusation is: God doesn't love you. You feel rejected and lonely. Other people seem to be able to relate to God, God seems to have a plan for other people's lives, but you are the exception.

Or, "You will always be a failure." Maybe that voice not only comes to you just directly to your mind, but it comes to you through another person. Maybe through your parents or through your life's partner. "You will always be a failure." "You have failed so many times that there just doesn't seem to be any alternative for you in life but failure." And there's this voice telling you that you will always be a failure.

Or, "You are going out of your mind." In counselling sessions, I have been astonished how many people have a voice that says to them, "You're going out of your mind." It usually says something like this, "You know your aunt died in a mental home and there's something strange with your grandmother, and you're going to be the next one." I don't think that it's possible to put in words how agonizing that kind of torment is.

And then there's the torment that's associated with physical pain, symptoms of disease. Like, "That pain is caused by cancer." You have a pain somewhere in your abdomen, and you are too frightened to go to the doctor and get an X-ray or an examination, but continually there's this thought that's formed in your mind, "It's cancer that's causing that pain." Quite possibly there's very little wrong with you, but you're just tormented and too frightened to face up to the challenge of your tormentor.

Now there's a description in the Bible of a man who underwent that kind of torment, and he summed it up very vividly in a few words that I'd like to share with you. The man was Job, and these words are found in Job 3:25-26. Listen to what Job says:

"What I feared has come upon me; what I dreaded has happened to me. I have no peace, no quietness; I have no rest, but only turmoil." (NIV)

That is true of countless thousands in our contemporary civilization. "What I feared has come upon me." Your fear can open the door to the very thing that you are afraid of. Probably one of the things that causes some people to get cancer is simply a morbid fear of cancer. Certainly, one of the factors in people losing their mind is the fear of losing their mind. So the devil uses the fear as a lever to bring something else upon you that follows the fear. "What I feared has come upon me; what I dreaded has happened to me. I have no peace, no quietness; I have no rest, but only turmoil." Is that your condition? Does that describe you? I want you to know there is a remedy.