In episode 19 we talked about times when God withdraws his presence from the Christian, and Pastor John, there you talked about Micah 7, verses 8 and 9 in that context. I think it's worth revisiting this theme to ask the question, what does Christian hedonism have to offer a depressed Christian?

Besides that Micah 7, 8, and 9 text, there's another beautiful text for people in darkness. In Psalm 139, that's the psalm, "Where shall I flee from your presence?" And in verse 9 it says, "If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me and your right hand shall hold me." And then it says this, "If I say, surely darkness shall cover me." Now notice it doesn't say, "If darkness covers me." It says, "If I say." So this is a person who is despairing and speaking to themselves darkness.

"If I say, surely darkness shall cover me and the light about me be night, even the darkness is not dark to you. The light is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you." I think that's picturing a person who is on the brink of despair and is saying, "Darkness is all over me.

It's just covering me. I don't see any light." And what it's calling us to do is say, "In that experience, in that very moment, feeling all of that desertion and all of that darkness, we say, 'This darkness is not dark to my God. He sees me. He knows me.

He's with me. And though I can't see Him, He can see me and there's nothing dark about my light to Him." So I would say we learn these things from the precious Word of God and we preach them to ourselves, even though the very moment of preaching, there is almost no feeling for them.

We assert them as true. We throw them in the devil's face. We stick him with the sword of the Spirit and then, like I said with regard to Psalm 40, we wait. We wait for the Lord. One more thing. This is a really, really crucial pastoral issue when it comes to dying.

There's a young woman in our church who died. She's about 40 some years ago. She had four kids. She got cancer and her death was just horrible. I mean, there was nothing beautiful about it. It was just horrible. She basically choked on her own vomit at the end and everybody around her would just say, "God, please, God, please have mercy and take her." She had made a video for our church and we did the funeral and everybody wanted some explanation or some word from the pastor about saying something about her suffering at the end because usually we think of suffering as having a sanctifying effect.

"Well, she's going to die in ten minutes. There's no life to be sanctified here. She's going to die." And what I said was the incredible triumph of her death is that she didn't curse God. In other words, she had no physical, emotional, mental wherewithal to sing a song. She's throwing up her own blood and guts and all she could do was hold on and not curse him and she didn't.

She just held on to him. So I think there are some moments of darkness where the most beautiful triumph is when Satan is probably screaming in your ear, "This is your God so much for your merciful God," and you just look back at him and say, "I'm not going to curse my God." I think that's what Job basically said to his wife, you know, when she said, "Curse God and die," he just said, "Look, we're going to receive evil and good at the hand of the Lord.

We're not going to curse him." That is a powerful testimony. Pastor John, thank you, and thank you for listening to this podcast. If you have a question for Pastor John, please send it to us via email at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org. Please include your first name and your hometown. You can find thousands of other free resources from John Piper online at desiringgod.org.

I'm your host Tony Reinke, thanks for listening.