{Spiritual Health} The Danger of Spiritual Isolation – Marie’s Story

by Carla Collier

I was glad when they said to me, “Let us go to the house of the Lord.” Psalm 122:1

A common mistake of Christians is to try to “go it alone” spiritually.  There can be many excuses for not joining a church, but the bottom line is that it is a prescription for trouble. The third “spoke” in the Spiritual Wheel*, as we continue our series, is fellowship in a community of believers–a church. Jesus, our Good Shepherd, established the church to care for his followers, His sheep (see John 10:11-16). The Lord Jesus knows that we need the teaching, fellowship, accountability and spiritual protection that we find in a church.  Just as sheep that get separated from the flock are more vulnerable to attack, Christians who are isolated are more susceptible to the attacks of our enemies: Satan and our own sin nature.

This is Marie’s powerful and moving testimony of straying from the church and the way the Good Shepherd rescued her and brought her back:

A couple years into our marriage and with a sweet young baby to play with, I was sure we were living the life.  My husband was in graduate school and doing quite well. He was often gone and busy, but that is life in graduate school. We had a little house to call our own and two cars in the garage. It was lonely living away from our families, but again, that is life when you are chasing your dreams. There was really nothing to mar our happy little existence, and yet I increasingly found myself thinking sad thoughts and feeling as if life was empty.

My pantry initially seemed like a good place to fill the void. No surprise, I soon found I was in need of exercise which I hoped would also serve to take away the terrible emptiness. But it didn’t. While I became more physically fit, my emotional self remained sickly and weak. Television became my friend, as I certainly was in no state to maintain real friendships. It sounds a little pathetic, but I actually purchased items from QVC and became a fan of the painter guy with the big hair. You know, the one who always painted landscapes and evergreen forests and had the soothing monotonous voice.  And still something was missing and life was growing more and more unbearable.

I had grown up in a Christian home and had sincerely trusted in Jesus Christ’s payment for my sins as a child. But I admit that I tend towards spiritual laziness. At various times in my life I have experienced a great deal of growth in my relationship with God, but if I am not careful I fall into a lazy attitude and stop working on my friendship with God. I kind of coast on past experiences and before I know it, I have stopped moving forward, stuck in place, disoriented and confused. And those words describe this horrible time in my life exactly.

We were not attending church at this point in our life. We were really too “busy” to take the time and effort required to find one anyways.  I also was not in any type of Bible study.  We prayed before our evening meal, a habit from our growing-up years, but that was probably the extent of my prayer life. As I look back, it is really no wonder I was slowly drowning in sadness. I had disconnected my heart from communication with the single most important person in my life, Jesus Christ.

And here is the amazing part of the story. Though I was the one being inconsistent and lazy, though I was the one who was ignoring our relationship, Jesus was not willing to let this go any longer. Into this depressed and sad existence, my Savior lovingly stepped back into my life and began drawing my heart back towards His heart.

One morning sitting at my kitchen table a profound series of thoughts struck me so forcibly they could not be ignored. “My life stunk! Something had to change!  I need to open my Bible and read it…every day.  And I need to get a pen and notebook to write out my prayers to the Lord…every day”.

As I followed through on this spiritual plan of action, I gradually saw a change in myself emotionally. I realized I wasn’t just a little sad, I was depressed. It became clear that the source of my depression was the fact that I had stepped away from God rather then towards Him. As I grew more emotionally and spiritually healthy, my prayer life began to also focus on others, specifically my husband. It wasn’t long before I began to see a difference in him as well, and we eventually decided together to attend a church even if it wasn’t the “perfect” church.

In some ways my story is a familiar one. Many women live day in and day out under the weight of desperate sadness and know the ache of emptiness. And in other ways my story is unique. Not everyone is able to find healing for their depression only through moving their spiritual life back on track…they also deal with hormonal or chemical imbalances in their bodies that have to be addressed. But I feel very sure of this: the Lord knows exactly the causes of depression for each individual. He loves to save us from hardship and He can lead us to just the right plan of rescue from that grip of sadness.  He then will journey with us through each step of that plan.

Through this challenging time in my life almost twenty years ago, I learned the depths to which my mind could plunge and the unhealthy patterns that I could fall in to. And I have vowed to never, ever willingly go back to that place. To that end, I have committed to stay engaged with church wherever we live and stay involved in Bible study and personal prayer. Since that time in graduate school, my husband and I have had several more children, several big moves and job changes, and plenty of stress to challenge my emotional well-being.  There have been times when depression has hovered over my life threatening me.  But now, whenever I begin to sense that old battle coming on, I have learned to run fast toward my Savior and He has not once failed to rescue me.  ~Marie

How about you? Are you an active member of a caring, Bible-teaching church? Or have you, like Marie, wandered away from the church and God is stirring your heart to come back? I hope that Marie’s story encourages you to make a spiritual plan of action that includes prayer, Bible reading and joining a fellowship of believers.

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