Done With Depression

Done With Depression

Psalm 77

Buzz Aldrin went to the moon, He returned to earth and found that he couldn't cope with the life to which he returned. First he went into serious depression and then he went into print and on to the talk shows to share his experience. 

Winston Churchill, one of the greats of human history suffered terribly from depression. He said it followed him like a black dog.

Ernest Hemingway, the rugged all male he-man author of best sellers like For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Old Man and the Sea, had such a problem in this area that he eventually took his own life.

Abraham Lincoln, whose House Divided Against Itself speech helped to win him the presidency, knew awful divisive doubt and depression in his own life.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon, one of the greatest preachers of all time, who was known for his sparkling wit and quick humor, nevertheless had a lifetime battle with depression which was caused by gout, the disease which led to his death at the age of 58.

We are in the third of four sermons on the things that can lead to suicide.  Last week we talked about shame.  We discovered that shame shrinks away when we focus on the forgiveness that comes from the Cross of Christ.  Before that, we looked at anxiety and found a sure Savior who bids us to cast all of our cares upon Him.  Next week we’ll finish up by discussing fear.  Understand that anxiety, shame, depression and fear are not all of the factors that can lead to suicide.  You can make your own list and include more or perhaps less than these as contributing factors.  For this series we will focus on these four.

Today we’re going to the Psalms to talk about depression.  We could probably open up the Bible to any book and discover a lesson on this topic, as almost all of the Bible’s characters  knew, at one time or another, great discouragement and deep depression. Job is singled as a man of God, blameless and upright, whose staggering losses and long and painful illness brought him low: "My days . . . come to an end without hope . . . my eye will never again see anything good." (Job 7:6, 7)

Moses is described as the meekest man on earth (Numbers 12:3) and rises as one of the greatest examples of an ordinary man who, submitted to God, became one of the greatest of all of the Old Testament characters. He was faced with the arduous task of being the leader and general answer man for over a million Hebrew people, as well as the administrator of God's Law - a role to which he was assigned by God, but one made more complicated by the tendency of the Israelites to gripe, doubt God, and attack Moses. There came a time when Moses felt the crushing weight of this assignment and at last he cries out, "How can I bear [the] troubles, burdens, and disputes [of these people] by myself?" (Deut. 1:12)

Elijah, one of the greatest prophets of old, asked for his life to be taken. David, in his efforts to hide sin, made journal entries that speak of the total loss of strength, the ebbing away of all that is worthwhile in life, and groaning all day long (Ps. 32:2ff.). Jonah, the first foreign missionary, became deeply despondent when God did not destroy Nineveh. Jeremiah was so profoundly sad that he is known to this day as the weeping prophet and confessed that he wished he'd never been born. Then there's Nehemiah and Ezekiel and Peter and more in the pages of Scripture.

Psalm 77 is a intensely helpful passage when you're in the pit. Let me outline a few steps that give us a pattern we can follow to regain emotional equilibrium when life gets you down.

1. Body
1. Send an SOS to God - vv. 1-3, 7-9
1. "I cry aloud to God, aloud to God, and He will hear me. In my day of trouble I sought the Lord. My hands were lifted up all night long; I refused to be comforted. I think of God; I groan; I meditate; my spirit becomes weak.”
2. Right away we hear the hopelessness. Asaph draws pictures with words that depict desperation. For instance, the word trouble in v. 2 describes a feeling of being confined, of the walls closing in. Asaph felt like he was in a dark tunnel, only there is no light at the end. When he says his soul refuses to be comforted, he means he tried to shake this off by the normal means we all resort to, but it wasn't working. He closes v. 3 saying that when he meditates - when he ponders the situation, trying to think his way through his problems - my spirit becomes weak. His emotions sabotage reason. The escape of sleep eluded him. He stretched out his hand like a drowning man, longing to be saved.
3. Perhaps you can identify with Asaph's feelings. But don't miss what his first response. In his battle with depression, he doesn't pretend. He doesn't bury his disillusionment. He doesn't fake happiness. There's no indication that he turned to food or shopping, alcohol or gambling, pornography or any number of other means people commonly use to cope. Instead, he got honest with God. Really honest! I cry aloud to God, aloud to God. He shouted to God. He yelled his prayer. In v. 3, he describes this further: I think of God; I groan--and the word groan can mean everything from a quiet noise to a raging explosion.
4. Down in v. 7-9, Asaph fills in some of the content of his prayers: "Will the Lord reject forever and never again show favor? Has His faithful love ceased forever? Is [His] promise at an end for all generations? Has God forgotten to be gracious? Has He in anger withheld His compassion?”
5. Asaph cycled through a wide and uncontrollable range of emotions, but he didn't try to hide that from God. He was real and reverent, honest yet humble. He asked God the hard questions that depression raises. And we find no indication that God is put off by that kind of unvarnished truthfulness.
6. Now is the time to let the wisdom of one in the hard fellowship of depression come to you. Don't be ashamed to admit your inner turmoil, thinking that voicing your questions will offend God. He really wants to hear from you. In fact, the Bible promises that "the LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit." (Ps. 34:18) Pour out your heart, whether that be loud or soft. He's waiting to hear from you.

B. Choose to redirect your thoughts - vv. 4-6, 10-12

1. During one of many sleepless nights, Asaph concludes that God was keeping him awake for a reason: "You have kept me from closing my eyes, he says in v. 4. He lay there in the silence, unable to speak and his mind drifted back to sweeter times. Verse 5 says, I consider the days of old, years long past. At night, I remember my music; I meditate in my heart and my spirit, ponders.”
2. Asaph deliberately focused his thoughts on those past times when God seemed so near and he could push back the darkness with song. Down in v. 10, he talks about how he did this: "Then I said, 'I will appeal to this, to the years of the right hand of the Most High" (ESV) "I'm going to make force my thoughts out of this dungeon back to the years when I saw God doing great things." In v. 11, he writes, I will remember the LORD'S works; yes, I will remember Your ancient wonders. I will reflect on all You have done and meditate on Your actions.
3. What an important step when you feel locked down by depression! Oh how you need to regain perspective! You know it to be true: when troubles crowd in and just getting up in the morning seems like a chore, where does your mind lean? It leans toward how bad it is now, and it's easy to conclude that the future will probably be too. That's when it's important to call a mental time-out and take a long look in the rearview mirror at God's past blessings.
4. Chip Ingram even suggests doing what he calls "the napkin exercise." "Whenever you feel yourself starting to go downhill, put a ballpoint pen in your pocket, go to a restaurant, get a soda, and pull out a napkin. Begin to list all the specific blessings that happened that day . . . that week...that month . . . that year. These are facts, not feelings. Write down what God has done for you. List the top ten answers to prayer in your life. List five people who love you. Write down the best things that have happened in your life." (Quoted by Chip Ingram, I Am Always With You, p. 110.)
5. Don't think this a pointless exercise. Remembering is a biblical prescription that is central to worship and fuels your faith in God for the future. When you mark God's faithfulness in the past, you condition your weary heart with hope for tomorrow. Send an SOS to God. Choose to redirect your thoughts in order to stoke your hope for the future.

C. Magnify God to diminish your problems - v. 13-20

1. There is something about worship that recalibrates the soul. But worship is not the natural instinct of the depressed person. When gloom closes in and all that once drove our life fades, we tend to want to pull the blanket over our head and bail out on God and everybody else.
2. But Asaph willed himself to come to worship. There are deeply helpful benefits to gathering with God's people.
3. Kathryn Greene-McCreight, in her book Darkness is My Only Companion describes her tortured journey through ten years of extreme depression and bipolar disorder and how gathering with God's church helped her. " . . . it is so important to worship in community - to ask your brothers and sisters in Christ to pray for you . . . Sometimes you literally cannot make it on your own, and you need to borrow from the faith of those around you. Companionship in the Lord Jesus is powerful." (Kathyrn Greene-McCreight, Darkness Is My Only Companion: A Christian Response to Mental Illness, Brazos Press, 2006, p. 88; submitted by Lee Eclov to PreachingToday.com.)
4. Asaph concentrates on the benefits that come from God Himself in v. 13ff. First he proclaims God's holiness: "God, Your way is holy (that is, unique, one-of-a-kind, set apart from the ways of men). What god is great like God? Down in v. 16-18, he throws down the gauntlet against the false Canaanite gods of the sea, the thunder and the storm. "The waters saw You, God. The waters saw You; they trembled. Even the depths shook. The clouds poured down water. The storm clouds thundered; Your arrows flashed back and forth. The sound of Your thunder was in the whirlwind; lightning lit up the world. The earth shook and quaked.
5. This doesn't sound like the downcast Asaph we started with, does it? Worship moved him from a self-imploded funk to a God-enthralled declaration of faith!
6. Then in v. 14, Asaph extols the miracle-working power of God: "You are the God who works wonders; You revealed Your strength among the peoples. He cites the example of God's deliverance of Israel from the Egyptian army through the Red Sea in v. 19-20: "Your way went through the sea, and Your path through the great waters; but Your footprints were unseen. You led Your people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron." God is holy. And God is able. He has no trouble altering the natural order of things if necessary to deliver you.
7. Finally, Asaph locks in on God's redemption of His people in v. 15: "With power You redeemed Your people, the descendants of Jacob and Joseph." God cares for me. He knows what's happening in me and to me. He has the supernatural ability to do all that is necessary to fulfill His promises, and He loves me enough to come after me.

1. Conclusion 

1. In the summer of 1527, plague struck Wittenberg, Germany. Martin Luther was one of its first victims. Sickness spread with such speed that Elector John of Saxony closed the university in Wittenberg and ordered Luther and his family to leave the city. Luther refused, insisting on the church’s responsibility to care for the sick and dying. Even more threatening was the melancholy that assaulted the Reformer. Spiritual depression and anxiety were familiar nemeses: Luther’s earliest battles with doubt and temptation in the monastery had nearly driven him mad. His discovery of justification by faith alone saved his life.
2. Luther’s depression was always marked by the same features: a feeling of profound aloneness, a sense that God was singling him out for suffering, a loss of faith that God is good and good to me, and a resulting inward self-reliance. Luther’s depression only intensified under the burden of the Reformation’s unforeseen fruit. The more that regularly hurting Christians sought him as a physician of souls, the more acutely he felt the weight of responsibility for his teaching and writing. He couldn’t shake the notion that the reforms he advocated might destroy—rather than revive—the church. Sickness, unbelief, and anxiety conspired and drove him to the brink of despair. In a letter to his friend Melanchthon on August 2, 1527, Luther wrote:
1. I spent more than a week in death and hell. My entire body was in pain, and I still tremble. Completely abandoned by Christ, I labored under the vacillations and storms of desperation and blasphemy against God. But through the prayers of the saints (his friends), God began to have mercy on me and pulled my soul from the inferno below.
3. Luther understood this to be more than simple temptation. He referred to it as anfechtung, “assault.” Hell, the Devil, the shadow of death, and the forces arrayed against gospel progress all combined in an insidious assault, reducing Luther to unbelief, depression, and despair.
4. His response is instructive.
5. That terrible summer, Luther focused on battling unbelief by bringing his fears and anxieties to God in prayer, an act he connected to meditation on Scripture. “I dispute much with God with great impatience,” he wrote, “and I hold on to his promises.” He turned again and again to the Scriptures, meditating on the faith and persistence of the Canaanite woman (Matt. 15:22–28) as paradigmatic for his own response.
6. Amid his turmoil, Luther practiced the discipline at the Reformation’s heart: meditation on Scripture. His focus fell (as did ours today) on the Psalms. Luther seized on God’s promises, appealing to him for their fulfillment, and applying Scripture’s comfort to his troubled soul. As his depression lifted, Luther used prayerful meditation to benefit others, capturing biblical truth in song. Out of his troubles came the famous Reformation hymn “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.”
7. So too, our Psalmist today - Asaph began with a huge problem and a little God; but he kept sending up SOSs to God. He forced himself to rehearse the past blessings of God's faithfulness, where hope for the future is strengthened. And he worshipped. For Asaph, God is big, and his problems aren't. Now it's your turn!