What Hope Does God Offer in My Depression?

00:00:00.000 | As Christian hedonists, we're not unfamiliar with the pain of depression.

00:00:09.240 | And we get a lot of questions in the inbox about how to work through those unavoidable

00:00:13.100 | times in life when depression hits.

00:00:15.960 | There's often a physical and a medical side to depression, but there's also a spiritual

00:00:20.600 | side to these seasons too.

00:00:22.520 | And to that question comes an email from one female listener.

00:00:26.000 | "Pastor John, what scripture passages do you return to when you are suffering from depression?

00:00:31.520 | I'm suffering from depression pretty bad at the moment, and I need some help from scripture.

00:00:37.120 | Can you help me?"

00:00:38.800 | This is the central question for her to ask, namely, "Where shall I turn in scripture,

00:00:48.320 | in God's Word?"

00:00:49.880 | This is what God said we should listen to, His Word.

00:00:56.440 | I don't want to be naive here.

00:00:57.680 | To be sure, there are many dimensions to depression, from genetic to dietary to exercise to trauma

00:01:09.040 | to demonic harassment to relational stress to financial burdens to weather conditions

00:01:16.880 | to sinful entanglements to sleeplessness and on and on.

00:01:23.480 | I don't want to give the impression that I am oversimplifying the complexities of what

00:01:30.360 | might trigger a season of darkness or depression.

00:01:36.080 | Nevertheless, I say it again, under and over and through all these issues that may need

00:01:46.320 | to be addressed, and I would encourage her to address all of them that are relevant.

00:01:52.640 | The key question is, "What has God said to me?"

00:01:57.600 | That is, what does the scripture say?

00:01:59.960 | And the reason this is so key is that the Bible says faith comes by hearing, and hearing

00:02:06.320 | by the Word of Christ.

00:02:09.720 | Depression regularly involves a weakening of our faith and our hope, and God is clear

00:02:17.680 | that reawakening of faith, reawakening of hope, will not come if we're not hearing the

00:02:25.680 | Word of God.

00:02:27.920 | The scriptures do not present themselves as an automatic guarantee of emotional turnaround,

00:02:35.880 | because the scriptures themselves describe people who hear the Word of God and do not

00:02:40.120 | emotionally turn around, like the parable of the soils or 1 Corinthians 15.2, "You

00:02:44.600 | believed in vain," and so on.

00:02:46.000 | The scriptures aren't naive that they are the quick and easy panacea for every emotional

00:02:51.240 | blankness.

00:02:52.960 | But the point is, without the scriptures, there's no hope of a Christ-exalting turnaround

00:02:59.800 | of our emotions.

00:03:01.320 | Depression might turn us around emotionally, but by itself, by itself, without the Word

00:03:09.280 | of God, won't put us on a right footing with Jesus Christ.

00:03:14.520 | So it may feel good, but may not have done you any long-term good without the Word of

00:03:23.080 | God.

00:03:24.080 | So again, yes, yes, I wish I knew her name.

00:03:26.600 | Yes, thank you.

00:03:27.600 | I would have posed the absolutely right question without being naive about the complexities

00:03:34.840 | of how difficult and dark and multi-causal depression can be.

00:03:41.960 | So let me answer by giving five kinds of texts that she might turn to and that I turn to.

00:03:51.400 | Number one, take note of the scriptures that speak about the necessity of waiting for God.

00:04:00.160 | Psalm 40, "I waited patiently for the Lord."

00:04:04.880 | It doesn't say how long—days, weeks, months.

00:04:07.400 | "I waited patiently for the Lord.

00:04:09.200 | He inclined to me and heard my cry.

00:04:11.240 | He drew me up out of the pit of destruction, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon

00:04:18.440 | a rock."

00:04:19.440 | So the season of in the pit and in the bog and the assignment for us believers in those

00:04:27.760 | seasons is wait patiently for the Lord.

00:04:31.200 | Or Psalm 30, verse 5, "Weeping may carry for the night.

00:04:35.680 | Joy comes with the morning."

00:04:37.760 | And that's not literally intended like, "Oh, you only get one day of weeping and then you

00:04:44.480 | get another day of joy."

00:04:47.400 | That's not the point because this command might be read at 1159 p.m.

00:04:53.400 | Like, "Here, you get one minute of weeping and then 24 hours."

00:04:58.760 | The point is there are seasons and they're going to be followed for the believer with

00:05:04.360 | joy.

00:05:05.360 | Or Psalm 56, 8, "You have kept count of my tossings.

00:05:10.920 | Put my tears in your bottle.

00:05:13.360 | Are they not in your book?"

00:05:15.100 | So the point on this first group is that the Bible does not present our walk with God as

00:05:22.000 | uninterrupted brightness.

00:05:25.120 | We feed in green pastures, yes, and we walk through the valley of death, yes.

00:05:32.780 | We experience the shining of His face and we experience the hiding of His face.

00:05:40.560 | So in the scriptural prescription, what we find is that when His face is hidden, we are

00:05:47.460 | to wait and pray.

00:05:50.220 | That's the first group.

00:05:51.220 | Second group of texts for her to look at with me.

00:05:56.420 | Turn to passages that show how to experience gutsy guilt.

00:06:03.700 | Love this phrase.

00:06:05.720 | And I'm thinking of Micah 7, verses 8 and 9, where it describes in a most phenomenal

00:06:13.620 | way how sinful people like us under the darkness of God are to be gutsy and in our justified

00:06:23.980 | standing as we deal with God.

00:06:27.000 | Listen to these words.

00:06:28.000 | This is Micah 7, 8, "Rejoice not over me, O my enemy.

00:06:33.080 | When I fall, I shall rise.

00:06:36.780 | When I sit in darkness," now that's what I would call depression, "When I sit in darkness,

00:06:43.540 | the Lord will be a light to me.

00:06:46.420 | I will bear the indignation of the Lord because I have sinned against Him."

00:06:51.460 | And all of us have sinned.

00:06:52.460 | I'm not saying every darkness is a specific punishment for sin.

00:06:56.900 | I'm just saying we've all sinned and therefore there's no point in trying to play goody-goody

00:07:01.900 | while we're under the darkness like, "Oh, he's treating me worse than I deserve."

00:07:05.420 | No, no.

00:07:06.420 | We've all sinned and it says, "I have sinned against Him until He pleads my cause and executes

00:07:15.100 | judgment for me."

00:07:17.300 | Not against me, for me.

00:07:18.700 | "He will bring me out to the light."

00:07:22.700 | So that's what we say when we're in the darkness.

00:07:26.620 | Last phrase, "I shall look upon His vindication."

00:07:30.500 | That's an amazing and wonderful passage.

00:07:33.100 | There is nothing sentimental or naive about it.

00:07:37.300 | It is utterly realistic in dealing with our own sin and God's grace.

00:07:42.700 | This is the way a justified sinner talks.

00:07:46.020 | We do not despair and we do not feel presumptuous.

00:07:50.860 | Our confidence is in God and His vindication, which leads now to a third group where seeing

00:07:59.540 | that vindication worked out by God in history is absolutely crucial.

00:08:03.380 | This may be the most important group of text to look at.

00:08:06.220 | So fix your attention, especially on the passages that describe the stunning work of Christ

00:08:16.140 | on the cross, outside yourself, to provide your vindication as a justified sinner before

00:08:23.980 | an all-holy, all-loving God.

00:08:27.220 | For example, Romans 5, 6, "While we were still weak at the right time, Christ died

00:08:33.700 | for the ungodly.

00:08:35.140 | For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person one

00:08:40.020 | might dare to die."

00:08:41.500 | And here it is, verse 8, "But God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners,

00:08:50.340 | Christ died for us."

00:08:52.540 | Oh, look to that text again and again.

00:08:55.420 | Or Romans 8, 3, "God has done what the law weakened by the flesh could not do, by sending

00:09:02.060 | His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin."

00:09:06.220 | Here's what He did.

00:09:08.020 | He condemned sin in the flesh, that is, in the flesh of His own Son, not your flesh.

00:09:15.000 | Or Galatians 3, 13, "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a

00:09:22.460 | curse for us."

00:09:24.980 | Oh, amazing promise.

00:09:27.700 | Or 1 Peter 2, 24, "He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, that we might

00:09:35.420 | die to sin and live to righteousness.

00:09:38.080 | By His wounds you have been healed.

00:09:43.720 | For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned."

00:09:48.340 | So the great healing is, you were headlong heading for the cliff of destruction, and

00:09:52.940 | the shepherd dying reaches out to you and pulls you back, and it says, "You have now

00:09:59.500 | returned to the shepherd and overseer of your souls."

00:10:02.940 | Let it sink in.

00:10:04.100 | My soul has a shepherd.

00:10:06.300 | My soul has an overseer.

00:10:08.400 | And there's so many more texts like that.

00:10:10.860 | 2 Corinthians 5, 22; Philippians 3, 12; Philippians 1, 6; Isaiah 53, 4-6.

00:10:17.580 | That's the third group of texts to look at.

00:10:20.660 | And the fourth group is, "Recite scriptures of thanksgiving and praise, even though you

00:10:27.540 | do not feel them."

00:10:30.060 | Here's one example, Psalm 86, 8-13, "You are great, O God, and do wondrous things.

00:10:37.860 | You alone are God.

00:10:39.620 | Teach me Your way, O Lord, that I may walk in Your truth.

00:10:42.620 | Unite my heart to fear Your name.

00:10:44.540 | I give thanks to You, O Lord my God, with my whole heart, and I will glorify Your name

00:10:52.300 | forever, for great is Your steadfast love toward me.

00:10:56.380 | You have delivered my soul from the depths of Sheol."

00:11:00.260 | Psalm 86.

00:11:02.180 | Now, if you are honest with God, and with yourself, and with others, about the absence

00:11:10.120 | of your feelings, then the recitation of these thanks are not hypocrisy.

00:11:18.060 | They are expressions of longing, and a belief that God alone is worthy of thanks and praise.

00:11:27.420 | Here's what Richard Baxter says about what I'm asking you to do.

00:11:31.780 | This is a pastor from the 1600s.

00:11:34.300 | "Resolve to spend most of your time in thanksgiving and praising God.

00:11:40.700 | If you cannot do it with the joy that you should, yet do it as you can.

00:11:46.980 | You have not the power of your comforts, but have you no power over your tongues.

00:11:53.160 | Say not that you are unfit for thanks and praises, unless you have a praising heart

00:12:00.140 | and were the children of God.

00:12:03.540 | For every man, good and bad, is bound to praise God and to be thankful for all that he hath

00:12:11.340 | received, and to do it as well as he can, rather than leave it undone.

00:12:18.600 | Doing it as you can is the way to be able to do it better.

00:12:26.200 | Thanksgiving stirreth up thankfulness in the heart."

00:12:30.060 | It doesn't have to be hypocrisy, in other words, for you to read the Scriptures and

00:12:34.940 | say them back to God about thanks and praise, all the while knowing your heart is aching

00:12:42.380 | to feel them and doesn't yet.

00:12:44.500 | Here's the last group of texts.

00:12:46.780 | "Turn to texts that cry out to God for the restoration of life and joy."

00:12:56.100 | Psalm 51.12.

00:12:57.460 | "Restore to me.

00:12:59.700 | The joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit."

00:13:04.300 | Psalm 85.6.

00:13:05.860 | "Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you?"

00:13:13.380 | And the reason for turning to texts like these is not only that they are prayers which God

00:13:22.380 | may be pleased to answer soon by restoring your joy, they are also evidences that the

00:13:30.620 | seed of joy in God is still alive in your soul.

00:13:38.620 | Let me close with this, and this is so crucial, because you may feel—I don't even know

00:13:43.180 | if I'm a Christian, because I feel so blank—the marks of that seed, there are four things

00:13:50.980 | that characterize that seed of joy that is still alive in you.

00:13:56.540 | See if these are there.

00:13:57.580 | Number one, you can still see objectively that God is the supreme treasure of the universe,

00:14:05.820 | even if your feelings about Him are very flat.

00:14:09.400 | Number two, you can confess that objective sight of God with your lips, that God is supremely

00:14:18.420 | valuable.

00:14:19.420 | And three, you can cry out for the restoration of true joy, and that very cry is the seed

00:14:29.260 | sown by the taste of the joy.

00:14:33.820 | And four, you can refuse to turn away from God and embrace idols.

00:14:41.060 | So may the Lord use those five kinds of Scripture to give you patience and bring you through

00:14:49.660 | the season of darkness.

00:14:52.340 | An amazing wealth of counsel in this episode, Pastor John.

00:14:56.300 | Thank you for that response.

00:14:58.340 | And over at our online home, you can explore all 1,250 of our episodes that we've released

00:15:02.940 | to date.

00:15:03.940 | You can scan a list of our most popular ones, read full transcripts, even sit as a question

00:15:07.420 | of your own.

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00:15:16.060 | John podcast in your favorite podcast app.

00:15:18.500 | Well, what role does our faith play when we are praying for the salvation of others?

00:15:24.060 | It's an important question related to our prayer lives, and the question about our own

00:15:28.300 | faith and our prayer lives comes from a listener.

00:15:30.660 | Really good question.

00:15:31.660 | We're going to tackle that one next time on Wednesday when we return.

00:15:35.300 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.

00:15:36.300 | We'll see you then.

00:15:37.060 | [END]

00:15:38.060 | 1

00:15:38.060 | Pastor John, we're going to tackle the question of our prayer lives.

00:15:39.060 | We're going to tackle the question of our prayer lives.

00:15:40.060 | We're going to tackle the question of our prayer lives.

00:15:41.060 | We're going to tackle the question of our prayer lives.

00:15:42.060 | We're going to tackle the question of our prayer lives.

00:15:43.060 | We're going to tackle the question of our prayer lives.

00:15:44.060 | We're going to tackle the question of our prayer lives.

00:15:45.060 | We're going to tackle the question of our prayer lives.

What Hope Does God Offer in My Depression?

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