Blanket of Hopelessness, Part 2
By Scott A. Bishop
Have you ever arisen to a day that you did not want to face? I have, and I don’t like them.
How about having a day that seems to be endless or foreboding? I have, and those days are the ones that I would have rather stayed in bed with the bed covers over my head.
Have you ever seen days where nothing goes right, where nothing seems to be happy, and nothing but accidents seem to follow you around like a mad dog on the loose? I have, and I know the pain and the drain that comes over me when these days happen.
Days like these become more common as we allow the blanket of hopelessness to overrun our life and control our destiny. I know there are over 100 sources to accepting hopelessness that I have seen or experienced. Even hearing of these sorrows of hopelessness that my friends are going through activates this blanket over me.
Please do not let hopelessness close off your hearing, seeing, and understanding of the cause or sources of these blankets and their effects on your life. The harder an example or cause or source for hearing or understanding, the tighter you will find hopelessness locked around you.
This blanket of hopelessness is as real as the moon and as addictively deceptive as any drug available in the illegal markets today. Your will cannot control its attack, nor can your physical strength. God’s words spoken out can control it and stop it; your feelings, however, will simply encourage it to stay, or become stronger.
As we continue looking at these sources and examining the cause and effects of carrying this blanket of hopelessness, we need understanding. Condemning others for similar experiences that you have had will only strengthen the control of this blanket of hopelessness. We want you to recognize sources and turn them over to Jesus for your freedom.
So lets now look at #13. Being burdened with trying to honor your parents, especially when you see them divided, running by uncontrolled emotion, fighting with God and fighting with each other, is very unpleasant. In scripture, we read, Exodus 20:12: “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be prolonged in this land which the Eternal your God gives you.”
Most young people and teens really do want to obey God and honor their parents. However, living with parents that fight within themselves, fight God, and fight each other makes the desire seem unfulfillable. Thus hopelessness sets in. Parents in agreement, even when they agree on wrong choices, give a sense of security and hope just because of that agreement. Whenever children or teens feel overwhelming disruption in the family, their peace is destroyed and the security of boundaries and protection flee. This disrupts their soul, causing restless sleep, bad dreams, nightmares, and even traumas. We become sick more often, have more accidents, and see everything through the eyes of loneliness and abandonment. We cannot grow, try new things, study, concentrate on learning, nor can we enjoy the good things in life while fighting hopelessness.
This develops into a burden when we try to honor parents, elders and authorities. We want to honor them, yet their stakes of confusion bring us down so much that we start saying, “What’s the use?” or “Why bother?” This defiance yields hopelessness.
The 14th point that causes a teen to be blanketed in hopelessness is being given chores, duties, homework, and other burdens without support or relief. Being made to work or achieve something without time for fun, friends, family, and fellowship is exceedingly frustrating.
Chores and duties may play a part in developing some forms of responsible attitudes, but they are not the answer to every situation. A parent or teacher may have been taught to hide from reality in chores, or even school, but these are only distractions so that the real problems are not dealt with or even acknowledged.
A lack of desire means an attack of no motivation, purpose, and godly love; it does not mean we need more burdens to keep us in hostility and hopelessness.
You see hopelessness as a job, or chore, or duty that has no purpose, reason, or support in it. A parent or employer may have a need for something to be done, yet unless we see the purpose, become part of the reason, and have support in doing it, and then it is a burden that can only bring hopelessness.
No matter what you need to do, have to do, or are forced to do by circumstances of life, you still need relief. You need to be guided into fun and thanksgiving for everything that needs doing. Joy opposes the power that hopelessness exerts and fun breaks its monopoly and allows for thankfulness.
Point # 15 is a lack of fun time with one’s family and with God. When do we come out to just enjoy the day that God has given us, to just enjoy the time with our Father in heaven, or to just be at peace in his creation?
The more we see our parents so caught up in problems from job, home, and personal relationships, the more we see ourselves with a hopeless future. We need to have fun time with our parents; however, that fun time should be without the problems of job, money, and health considerations. Our parents need to be present in the fun time in body, soul, and spirit, because when they carry their cares, burdens, and problems into fun time, it pollutes fun time with death. This brings on that blanket of hopelessness.
I would like to suggest the following for stopping the effect of bringing death and problems into fun time.
- Get together as a family before fun time starts, and pray. Turn over to Jesus all problems that everyone is worried about, or that is putting pressure upon them. Have each member of the family and all friends who may be present turn those problems over to Jesus.
- Let every member give thanks for what Jesus has done for them and for taking those problems.
- Invite God into the fun time and have more play times.
No worry or problems should occupy these times. These fun times should be:
- Mealtime
- Singing together times, dancing times, reading aloud times
- Special events, birthday parties, anniversaries, celebration times for thanks for what God has given
- Vacation times
- A walk by the river or lake times
- Sabbath days and church times
- Bed times need to be fun times and thankful times
A mealtime is a covenant time that can either good or bad results, depending on how we use it. When we are forced to eat alone, we are more prone to make a covenant meal with hopelessness unless we are seeking God and His blessings upon that meal.
If fighting, bickering, howling, or screaming enters into mealtime, then fun time is gone, and we make a covenant with hopelessness. This requires a communion meal with God the Father to break off the wrong covenant meal.
It becomes exceedingly important to have at least one mealtime together as covenant fun time with God and as a family, and to have it each day.
Most children learn by example, not by screaming, or hollering, or threats. In fun time we learn the fastest and the most, and we develop a security in the love of our family and in God. Therefore the building of security and the weakening of hopelessness come from proper fun times.
The 16th point comes into play when we as teenagers come under attack and no one seems to notice or care. Parents, teachers, or relatives get so caught up in their own thing or affairs of life that they have no time to talk and hear a problem or trouble that is bothering us. Teens need to hear the solutions from adults to find the right way to go. Every problem we have may be old hat to you parents, and a flippant, non-involved answer does not cover it, nor does an answer that is so involved, so confused or technical that only a lawyer understands it.
When a teen comes under attack, for example a teacher problem, we need you to hear our side of the story, and maybe even the teacher’s side if necessary. When we are under attack, we need the solution method, not the wrath of Khan. A parent’s anger/rage or violence is not what we want or need. What is the solution? Let us know how to handle the attack and not how to be the retainer of it. The blanket of hopelessness reduces its weight when caring is shown by solutions.
Remember, an attack is a type of abuse on our psyche. It affects how we see ourselves and how we allow others to see us. How such attacks are dealt with is all-important to you and us.
The 17th point involves promises broken without loving concern, future consideration or even recognition of pain and disappointment. They are a major cause for distrust and the blanket of hopelessness.
As teens we see leaders from all levels in our life break promises, twist promises, and annul active promises as easily as we see changes in the wind and weather. We cannot have any confidence when everyone and everything around us is so unstable; however, broken promises are agitators to increase instability and hopelessness.
Politicians make promises everywhere, for everything, and yet how much confidence do they inspire? Do you really trust them when only 1 in 1000 promises made are actually brought to reality? Yet parents are expecting teens to overcome their spirits of hopelessness without help, guidance,or direction, based on unfulfilled promises.
Teachers are also promising great results and fun in their courses, yet we never see it. All the reasons for taking a course easily disappear into justification for them keeping a job and not for us in getting a job and keeping it. Hopelessness comes quickly when the wrong reasons for doing something are given and even more speedily when they support a lie.
Doctors give exams and needles and say, “Oh this won’t hurt a bit; I promise you.” Then they go about poking and pushing at you until they make some area sore. Dentists always seem to cause more pain than they heal with their needles and jaw manipulations. If their activity does not hurt a bit under their promises, I never really want to meet the situation in which they promise it’s going to hurt a lot.
Have you ever considered the promises announced by businesses? “We will match any lower price found in 14 days,” they say. But when you show them a lower price, you get the response, “Oh that’s if it shows up in our store.”
They say, “Our prices are the lowest.” Then you find a flyer with a lower price, only to be told, “This refers to regular priced items only -- not weekend specials.”
“ We have a 30 day money back guarantee,” they say. Then you bring back a defective item, and they tell you this does not apply to electronic equipment unless it is in its original package and unopened. How can you tell if it works or not if you don’t open the package?
Another mystery of promises is: “Join our team; we offer the highest pay benefits.” Upon applying for a job, getting it, and working hard for a month for what you thought was $16.00 per hour, you get a cheque for partial hours that equals $10.00 per hour. Then they tell you the rest was consumed with benefits which were the free water and coffee at the job site, the cream and sugar charged as extras. The missing hours will be made up on the next cheque, which never comes.
All these types of broken promises make us cynical, untrusting, and hopeless. We treat everything in life with contempt and hopelessness thereafter.
Jesus had a reason for telling everyone to let their yes mean yes and their no mean no. It’s why he told us to keep our promises and vows, even to our own hurt. Broken promises produce broken hearts, and broken hearts bury a person in hopelessness.
Have you ever read Proverbs 3:27-28? “Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, When it is in your power to do it. Do not say to your neighbor, ‘Go, and come back, And tomorrow I will give it,’ when you have it with you.”
When you withhold good, you are breaking a promise. It does not matter whether or not it is your child, mate, friend, or neighbor. They may accept your excuse, or forgive the broken promise, but it does not ease the pressure and weight of hopelessness.
#18 involves not having our feelings acknowledged. Even when bad feelings attack us, and we are not given help learning how to deal with them, hopelessness sets in and cripples us.
The Bible tells us to dwell on all the good things, the righteous things, the promises from God and even the covenants that God has given us. The problem is, how do you dwell or meditate on what is good if you have never seen it happen in your life? And if your parents, friends, and authority figures in your life are living a lie and dwelling on the negative, dwelling in the perverse or even dwelling in vendetta, where do you get the right example for living God’s way?
At times it is very easy for a teen to be caught up in the negative because of hormonal swings and pressures from the world. While parents may be hit hard by stress, pressures, and financial concerns that are more prominent now than ever before in the history of man, that does not justify broken promises.
In spite of these pressures against our parents, we still need to see the positive solutions acknowledged so that we as future leaders can live in control of our feelings and not have our feelings control and destroy our life. Hopelessness gains power when there is no one teaching us how to get control of our emotions and feelings and how to dwell on positive thoughts instead of negative.
In #19, we recognize that put-downs are bad enough when they come from a member of our own peer group. But put-downs from church members, parents, relatives, teachers, and authority figures are so serious that they cause mental, spiritual, and even physical abuse. Put-downs cause people to hate their bodies, hate those who should be loving them, and even hate God. The trouble is that put-downs are builders of the blanket of hopelessness.
When people are constantly being put down, they first try to ignore it; then they start to hate everyone who issues a put-down at them, and finally they burn with hate in their heart because of the accumulating hurt, pain, and hopelessness.
We all know how much we love being nagged at, yelled at, or being berated in public. Put- downs are like these assaults, but with attitude. There is contempt in a put-down that cuts at the soul of a person like a saw in the hands of a berserk, rampaging killer. Every cut with the saw leaves you weak and wounded and ready to be wrapped in the blanket of hopelessness.
I believe that all put-downs stem from a lack of love and from wickedness in one’s heart that one does not want to deal with or confess. Lets look at Proverbs 8:7-8: “For my mouth will utter truth; And wickedness is an abomination to my lips. All the utterances of my mouth are in righteousness; There is nothing crooked or perverted in them.”
Everyone has become accustomed to lying and being lied to. We do not encourage ourselves or others to speak the truth in love. Put-downs are lies of wickedness that perverts the heart of the issuer and hearer, and that happens even when the put-down does not apply to that person. A put-down is an opposite to a blessing in that it is like a curse or a label, yet different in that it destroys the purpose and motivation in a person’s life. Hopelessness will eventually overpower you in a blanket.
In point #20, we see that another source to hopelessness is being caught in circumstances and accidents where no one is available to rescue you. No one is there to advise you and no one wants to bother to heal your wounds.
Think of having to travel a long empty road home and your car breaks down. It’s after midnight and everyone you call either won’t answer or says no to your plea for help. Even the tow truck driver can’t get to you for another 8-10 hours. It’s cold, dark, and lonely, and your mind is playing out how hopeless your situation is and how helpless you are because no one is willing to rescue you. The blanket smothers all thoughts of ever being loved or cared about.
As another example, think of having to go to court. You have lined up all your witnesses, your evidence, and your lawyer. And you find that no one bothered to show up on the day of the trial to defend you. So even though you are innocent, you get ten years in jail.
I would bet that you would feel not only betrayed but you would have a firsthand experience of being caught up in circumstances that weigh you down by the blanket of hopelessness. This blanket keeps telling you that nothing can be changed, and that your future can only get worse, not better.
Point #21 is the “maybe” answer . I have often thought that when I ask a question and someone (who you are counting on for guidance) says to you, “maybe,” and not a yes or no. Hopelessness overwhelms you with torments. Maybe is not a patience maker; it is a word of worthlessness that afflicts the soul.
Words like “maybe, we will see, possibly”, and other similar words all bring in worthlessness and hopelessness. It would be better to hear, “Give me a hour to think and pray about this,” or “Let’s talk about this after supper.” Coping with the words of doubt is quite difficult. All planning, positive thinking and moving forward with a goal and purpose stops. The words of doubt activate fears. Fear is torment, and torment destroys peace, faith, trust, and hope. The blanket of hopelessness only grows stronger by such words. Whether you think about it or not, by not saying yes or no, you disobey what Jesus has said about having your words mean yes or no. Everything else is of the devil. Seeding doubt words into a child or teen is abusive, breeding insecurity and allowing the endless torments of the blanket of hopelessness.
Point #22 involves one of the hardest things to deal with, which is to be made invisible or forced to wear the cloak of invisibility. As a child or as a teen we expect to be hugged and blessed. Parents, grandparents, uncles, and aunts need to initiate the hug and the blessing. If we have to initiate the hug, we do not see that any love is present. It always results in the impression that we are just leftovers — scraps after a meal set aside for the dog.
The absence of a hug tells us:
- We are not loved.
- We are not part of the family.
- We are not accepted.
- We are not wanted.
- We are not seen as valued.
- Our contributions are not appreciated.
- Our opinions are unimportant.
- Our feelings do not matter to anyone, especially our family.
- Our tears and our joy are empty songs with no one to hear.
- Our life is meaningless, and death is a reasonable alternative.
I have often asked myself the question, “Do my relatives want to make me hopeless by putting on this cloak of invisibility? The lack of hugs tells us to question our acceptance and position in the family and makes us feel we don’t’ truly have a family. I think that it can be summed up as living with someone who screams all the time, and the screaming is always saying that you are not wanted and only fit to be buried in a blanket of hopelessness.
Point #23 poses an interesting question. Have you ever found that people often want you to do something in an absolutely wrong way or a very incompetent way? The very fact of being asked to be incompetent without ever being allowed to question, suggest, or try to use your imagination to come up with a new, more effective solution sets in place the blanket of hopelessness.
Suppose you want to make a sandwich, and you are told there is no bread, and you will have to make some. You are given all the ingredients for making bread. Most of the ingredients are not available, so you will have to go to the store and buy them. You go to the store, see ready-made bread, buy a loaf, as well as the other ingredients. Upon returning home you are declared a hopeless fool because you bought a loaf of bread that satisfied your desire for a sandwich. Using reason, logic, or common sense to solve an immediate problem often makes future communication seem hopeless, useless, and unreasonable.
As Proverbs 1:2-6 tells us, we are to use wisdom, discernment, understanding and instruction in wise behavior. These verses do not say that wisdom lies in following family instructions and naive directions. Yet teens take on hopelessness when forced to submit to screaming, foolishness, condemnation, and twisted riddles. With the appropriate instructions, the use of sound wisdom, good examples, and the prudence of listening, hopelessness can fade to oblivion, but consistency in these domains is reuqired to make the changes.
The last blanket maker, # 24, is where a person is persecuted for being an individual or for the unique talent God the Father has given to them. The root of this type of persecution is in fear, jealousy, envy, and sabotage. These spirits attack alone or in various groupings so that they leave you unprepared.
Consider these examples:
Fear: Suppose you are baking a cake and you ask someone to preheat the oven to 350 F, but they turn it on to 450 F. This error is caused by a spirit of fear. They fear your success and your recognition; they fear everyone will enjoy the cake, that they might not get enough, and that they might be asked to help clean up the dishes used in making the cake. None of these are conscious fears yet they are in control when the wrong temperature is preset.
Fear and Sabotage: Suppose you are repairing your car. A person has volunteered to help you but they fear you are going to get injured driving or even have a mechanical breakdown on some lonely country road. So in their helping, the spirit of sabotage causes them to leave bolts and screws undone, or causes them to forget to put in the adjustment washers and shims. When you suffer breakdown after breakdown, their fears are highly activated while you suffer a sense of hopelessness over not being able to drive. Everything keeps turning up failure.
Envy - sabotage: Suppose you just buy a new car and all your friends love it. While looking at the motor, someone adjusts numerous things that are the cause of future problems. These deliberately caused problems make the blanket of hopelessness overpower you. Your car fails you, your friends fail you, and you no longer trust yourself or your God given judgment.
Also, when jealousy - sabotage are at work you find people ask you to let them drive the car. Then they hit every speed trap in town trying to get as many photo radar tickets as possible so that you cannot afford to drive or your balance from your summer pay is used up. There’s no gas money. Jealousy - sabotage will also get you to open it up so that they can see how fast it will go so the police will see you and impounds your car. Even worse, this spirit can cause an accident to happen in which your car is a write-off.
Fear - envy: A person with fear-envy will constantly curse you and your car. They often do it in such an innocent manner that you do not realize what they are saying at the time -- things like “Good luck with this car”, “ I wish you luck with this car”, “I hope you do not regret this purchase,” or “Why did you have to purchase the very car I have longed to have?”
For a teen all sources of this blanket of hopelessness are trouble. Hormones may be overactive and out of balance but hopelessness sends us into despair, discouragement, anger-rage, abortion, suicide, and murder in extreme circumstances.
Putting on a blanket of hopelessness retards growth and mental development, causing trauma and building bitterness and resentment. A teen has not learned to deal with this level of attack. We need support, encouragement, and love.
I pray blessings of knowledge, understanding, and wisdom on all readers.
READ: Blanket of Hopelessness, Part 1