As Christian hedonists, we're not unfamiliar with the pain of depression. And we get a lot of questions in the inbox about how to work through those unavoidable times in life when depression hits. There's often a physical and a medical side to depression, but there's also a spiritual side to these seasons too.

And to that question comes an email from one female listener. "Pastor John, what scripture passages do you return to when you are suffering from depression? I'm suffering from depression pretty bad at the moment, and I need some help from scripture. Can you help me?" This is the central question for her to ask, namely, "Where shall I turn in scripture, in God's Word?" This is what God said we should listen to, His Word.

I don't want to be naive here. To be sure, there are many dimensions to depression, from genetic to dietary to exercise to trauma to demonic harassment to relational stress to financial burdens to weather conditions to sinful entanglements to sleeplessness and on and on. I don't want to give the impression that I am oversimplifying the complexities of what might trigger a season of darkness or depression.

Nevertheless, I say it again, under and over and through all these issues that may need to be addressed, and I would encourage her to address all of them that are relevant. The key question is, "What has God said to me?" That is, what does the scripture say? And the reason this is so key is that the Bible says faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of Christ.

Depression regularly involves a weakening of our faith and our hope, and God is clear that reawakening of faith, reawakening of hope, will not come if we're not hearing the Word of God. The scriptures do not present themselves as an automatic guarantee of emotional turnaround, because the scriptures themselves describe people who hear the Word of God and do not emotionally turn around, like the parable of the soils or 1 Corinthians 15.2, "You believed in vain," and so on.

The scriptures aren't naive that they are the quick and easy panacea for every emotional blankness. But the point is, without the scriptures, there's no hope of a Christ-exalting turnaround of our emotions. Depression might turn us around emotionally, but by itself, by itself, without the Word of God, won't put us on a right footing with Jesus Christ.

So it may feel good, but may not have done you any long-term good without the Word of God. So again, yes, yes, I wish I knew her name. Yes, thank you. I would have posed the absolutely right question without being naive about the complexities of how difficult and dark and multi-causal depression can be.

So let me answer by giving five kinds of texts that she might turn to and that I turn to. Number one, take note of the scriptures that speak about the necessity of waiting for God. Psalm 40, "I waited patiently for the Lord." It doesn't say how long—days, weeks, months.

"I waited patiently for the Lord. He inclined to me and heard my cry. He drew me up out of the pit of destruction, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock." So the season of in the pit and in the bog and the assignment for us believers in those seasons is wait patiently for the Lord.

Or Psalm 30, verse 5, "Weeping may carry for the night. Joy comes with the morning." And that's not literally intended like, "Oh, you only get one day of weeping and then you get another day of joy." That's not the point because this command might be read at 1159 p.m.

Like, "Here, you get one minute of weeping and then 24 hours." The point is there are seasons and they're going to be followed for the believer with joy. Or Psalm 56, 8, "You have kept count of my tossings. Put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your book?" So the point on this first group is that the Bible does not present our walk with God as uninterrupted brightness.

We feed in green pastures, yes, and we walk through the valley of death, yes. We experience the shining of His face and we experience the hiding of His face. So in the scriptural prescription, what we find is that when His face is hidden, we are to wait and pray.

That's the first group. Second group of texts for her to look at with me. Turn to passages that show how to experience gutsy guilt. Love this phrase. And I'm thinking of Micah 7, verses 8 and 9, where it describes in a most phenomenal way how sinful people like us under the darkness of God are to be gutsy and in our justified standing as we deal with God.

Listen to these words. This is Micah 7, 8, "Rejoice not over me, O my enemy. When I fall, I shall rise. When I sit in darkness," now that's what I would call depression, "When I sit in darkness, the Lord will be a light to me. I will bear the indignation of the Lord because I have sinned against Him." And all of us have sinned.

I'm not saying every darkness is a specific punishment for sin. I'm just saying we've all sinned and therefore there's no point in trying to play goody-goody while we're under the darkness like, "Oh, he's treating me worse than I deserve." No, no. We've all sinned and it says, "I have sinned against Him until He pleads my cause and executes judgment for me." Not against me, for me.

"He will bring me out to the light." So that's what we say when we're in the darkness. Last phrase, "I shall look upon His vindication." That's an amazing and wonderful passage. There is nothing sentimental or naive about it. It is utterly realistic in dealing with our own sin and God's grace.

This is the way a justified sinner talks. We do not despair and we do not feel presumptuous. Our confidence is in God and His vindication, which leads now to a third group where seeing that vindication worked out by God in history is absolutely crucial. This may be the most important group of text to look at.

So fix your attention, especially on the passages that describe the stunning work of Christ on the cross, outside yourself, to provide your vindication as a justified sinner before an all-holy, all-loving God. For example, Romans 5, 6, "While we were still weak at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly.

For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person one might dare to die." And here it is, verse 8, "But God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." Oh, look to that text again and again.

Or Romans 8, 3, "God has done what the law weakened by the flesh could not do, by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin." Here's what He did. He condemned sin in the flesh, that is, in the flesh of His own Son, not your flesh.

Or Galatians 3, 13, "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us." Oh, amazing promise. Or 1 Peter 2, 24, "He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By His wounds you have been healed.

For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned." So the great healing is, you were headlong heading for the cliff of destruction, and the shepherd dying reaches out to you and pulls you back, and it says, "You have now returned to the shepherd and overseer of your souls." Let it sink in.

My soul has a shepherd. My soul has an overseer. And there's so many more texts like that. 2 Corinthians 5, 22; Philippians 3, 12; Philippians 1, 6; Isaiah 53, 4-6. That's the third group of texts to look at. And the fourth group is, "Recite scriptures of thanksgiving and praise, even though you do not feel them." Here's one example, Psalm 86, 8-13, "You are great, O God, and do wondrous things.

You alone are God. Teach me Your way, O Lord, that I may walk in Your truth. Unite my heart to fear Your name. I give thanks to You, O Lord my God, with my whole heart, and I will glorify Your name forever, for great is Your steadfast love toward me.

You have delivered my soul from the depths of Sheol." Psalm 86. Now, if you are honest with God, and with yourself, and with others, about the absence of your feelings, then the recitation of these thanks are not hypocrisy. They are expressions of longing, and a belief that God alone is worthy of thanks and praise.

Here's what Richard Baxter says about what I'm asking you to do. This is a pastor from the 1600s. "Resolve to spend most of your time in thanksgiving and praising God. If you cannot do it with the joy that you should, yet do it as you can. You have not the power of your comforts, but have you no power over your tongues.

Say not that you are unfit for thanks and praises, unless you have a praising heart and were the children of God. For every man, good and bad, is bound to praise God and to be thankful for all that he hath received, and to do it as well as he can, rather than leave it undone.

Doing it as you can is the way to be able to do it better. Thanksgiving stirreth up thankfulness in the heart." It doesn't have to be hypocrisy, in other words, for you to read the Scriptures and say them back to God about thanks and praise, all the while knowing your heart is aching to feel them and doesn't yet.

Here's the last group of texts. "Turn to texts that cry out to God for the restoration of life and joy." Psalm 51.12. "Restore to me. The joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit." Psalm 85.6. "Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you?" And the reason for turning to texts like these is not only that they are prayers which God may be pleased to answer soon by restoring your joy, they are also evidences that the seed of joy in God is still alive in your soul.

Let me close with this, and this is so crucial, because you may feel—I don't even know if I'm a Christian, because I feel so blank—the marks of that seed, there are four things that characterize that seed of joy that is still alive in you. See if these are there.

Number one, you can still see objectively that God is the supreme treasure of the universe, even if your feelings about Him are very flat. Number two, you can confess that objective sight of God with your lips, that God is supremely valuable. And three, you can cry out for the restoration of true joy, and that very cry is the seed sown by the taste of the joy.

And four, you can refuse to turn away from God and embrace idols. So may the Lord use those five kinds of Scripture to give you patience and bring you through the season of darkness. An amazing wealth of counsel in this episode, Pastor John. Thank you for that response. And over at our online home, you can explore all 1,250 of our episodes that we've released to date.

You can scan a list of our most popular ones, read full transcripts, even sit as a question of your own. That's at youdesiringgod.org/askpastorjohn. And to get new episodes delivered to you three times per week, subscribe to the Ask Pastor John podcast in your favorite podcast app. Well, what role does our faith play when we are praying for the salvation of others?

It's an important question related to our prayer lives, and the question about our own faith and our prayer lives comes from a listener. Really good question. We're going to tackle that one next time on Wednesday when we return. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. We'll see you then. 1 Pastor John, we're going to tackle the question of our prayer lives.

We're going to tackle the question of our prayer lives. We're going to tackle the question of our prayer lives. We're going to tackle the question of our prayer lives. We're going to tackle the question of our prayer lives. We're going to tackle the question of our prayer lives. We're going to tackle the question of our prayer lives.

We're going to tackle the question of our prayer lives.