JD Greear wrote a book called Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart: How to know for sure you are saved. He says that by the time he was eighteen, he had asked Jesus into his heart five thousand times. He acknowledges that he has OCD tendencies. I propose that those who keep giving their life to Christ over and over are doing what God wants them to do. Here’s why. In today’s reading in Oswald Chambers devotional book, My Utmost for His Highest, for December 28, the title is “Continuous Conversion.” Here it is:
“’Except ye be converted and become as little children…’ Matthew 18:3”
“These words of our Lord are true of our initial conversion, but we have to be continuously converted all the days of our lives, continually turn to God as children. If we trust our wits instead of to God, we produce consequences for which God will hold us responsible. Immediately our bodies are brought into new conditions by the providence of God, we have to see that our natural life obeys the dictates of the Spirit of God. Because we have done it once is no proof we shall do it again. The relation of the natural to the spiritual is one of continuous conversion, and it is the one thing we object to. In every setting in which we are put, the Spirit of God remains unchanged and our salvation unaltered, but we have to ‘put on the new man.’ God holds us responsible every time we refuse to convert ourselves, our reason for refusing is wilful obstinacy. Our natural life must not rule, God must rule in us.
“The hindrance of our spiritual life is that we will not be continually converted, there are wadges of obstinacy where our pride spits at the throne of God and says – I won’t. We deify independence and wilfulness and call them by the wrong name. What God looks on as obstinate weakness, we call strength. There are whole tracts of our lives which have not yet been brought into subjection, and it can only be done by this continuous conversion. Slowly but surely we can claim the whole territory for the Spirit of God.”
Grantley Morris has produced a website for Christians with OCD. He says that OCD continually afflicts the sufferer with false alarms. He suggests accepting this state of being as the apostle Paul accepted his thorn in the flesh. He said God can use OCD to make one spiritually stronger. Mitzi VanCleve wrote a book called Strivings Within – The OCD Christian, subtitled “Overcoming doubt in the storm of anxiety.” She says that she and a number of other Christians have or have had this problem with doubt of salvation. She says that John Bunyan. Author of Pilgrim’s Progress, had OCD and she quotes him. She says that he eventually made the decision that whether he was going to heaven or going to hell, he was for going on in his Christian life. She suggests Christian OCD sufferers make the same decision. I find that advice hard to take. I’d rather say, if I’m going to heaven, I’m for going on in my Christian life. But OCD is a neurological condition and it will not let up for the rest of the person’s life. The experts on Christian OCD say to learn to manage it, but not to expect it to go away.
Grantley Morris, like Oswald Chambers, talks about the connection between the natural and spiritual. He says that when Christ was tempted in the wilderness, Satan took advantage of an abnormal condition in the Lord’s body: extreme hunger. Morris says that the devil’s forces also take advantage of the neurological condition of OCD sufferers. But having just read Oswald Chambers today, I am adding a new thought to the matter of OCD and Christians. God uses OCD in Christians to drive them to continuous conversion. Continuous conversion of the type Chambers talks about.
I believe in salvation in a moment; that is thoroughly biblical. I believe in the eternal security of the believer; that is also thoroughly biblical. The New Testament repeatedly makes reference to believers having been converted once in the past. But just like the Bible talks about both predestination and free will – these are two sides of the same supernatural coin, which we cannot understand right now, at least - the Bible also presents other paradoxes of the supernatural realm. One is the Bible’s insistence on the believer’s eternal security versus statements in the Bible such as, “He who endures to the end will be saved.” We cannot figure out supernatural things with our natural minds; the supernatural truth is paradoxical. Just as the best advice is not to get caught up in thoughts about pre-destination, but rather to concentrate on “repent and believe the gospel,” (“God is willing that none should perish but that all should come to repentance”), the best advice for those driven to repeatedly give their lives to Christ is: keep it up! This is continuous conversion, which Oswald Chambers says God wants of all of us.
“’Except ye be converted and become as little children…’ Matthew 18:3”
“These words of our Lord are true of our initial conversion, but we have to be continuously converted all the days of our lives, continually turn to God as children. If we trust our wits instead of to God, we produce consequences for which God will hold us responsible. Immediately our bodies are brought into new conditions by the providence of God, we have to see that our natural life obeys the dictates of the Spirit of God. Because we have done it once is no proof we shall do it again. The relation of the natural to the spiritual is one of continuous conversion, and it is the one thing we object to. In every setting in which we are put, the Spirit of God remains unchanged and our salvation unaltered, but we have to ‘put on the new man.’ God holds us responsible every time we refuse to convert ourselves, our reason for refusing is wilful obstinacy. Our natural life must not rule, God must rule in us.
“The hindrance of our spiritual life is that we will not be continually converted, there are wadges of obstinacy where our pride spits at the throne of God and says – I won’t. We deify independence and wilfulness and call them by the wrong name. What God looks on as obstinate weakness, we call strength. There are whole tracts of our lives which have not yet been brought into subjection, and it can only be done by this continuous conversion. Slowly but surely we can claim the whole territory for the Spirit of God.”
Grantley Morris has produced a website for Christians with OCD. He says that OCD continually afflicts the sufferer with false alarms. He suggests accepting this state of being as the apostle Paul accepted his thorn in the flesh. He said God can use OCD to make one spiritually stronger. Mitzi VanCleve wrote a book called Strivings Within – The OCD Christian, subtitled “Overcoming doubt in the storm of anxiety.” She says that she and a number of other Christians have or have had this problem with doubt of salvation. She says that John Bunyan. Author of Pilgrim’s Progress, had OCD and she quotes him. She says that he eventually made the decision that whether he was going to heaven or going to hell, he was for going on in his Christian life. She suggests Christian OCD sufferers make the same decision. I find that advice hard to take. I’d rather say, if I’m going to heaven, I’m for going on in my Christian life. But OCD is a neurological condition and it will not let up for the rest of the person’s life. The experts on Christian OCD say to learn to manage it, but not to expect it to go away.
Grantley Morris, like Oswald Chambers, talks about the connection between the natural and spiritual. He says that when Christ was tempted in the wilderness, Satan took advantage of an abnormal condition in the Lord’s body: extreme hunger. Morris says that the devil’s forces also take advantage of the neurological condition of OCD sufferers. But having just read Oswald Chambers today, I am adding a new thought to the matter of OCD and Christians. God uses OCD in Christians to drive them to continuous conversion. Continuous conversion of the type Chambers talks about.
I believe in salvation in a moment; that is thoroughly biblical. I believe in the eternal security of the believer; that is also thoroughly biblical. The New Testament repeatedly makes reference to believers having been converted once in the past. But just like the Bible talks about both predestination and free will – these are two sides of the same supernatural coin, which we cannot understand right now, at least - the Bible also presents other paradoxes of the supernatural realm. One is the Bible’s insistence on the believer’s eternal security versus statements in the Bible such as, “He who endures to the end will be saved.” We cannot figure out supernatural things with our natural minds; the supernatural truth is paradoxical. Just as the best advice is not to get caught up in thoughts about pre-destination, but rather to concentrate on “repent and believe the gospel,” (“God is willing that none should perish but that all should come to repentance”), the best advice for those driven to repeatedly give their lives to Christ is: keep it up! This is continuous conversion, which Oswald Chambers says God wants of all of us.
