Life in the Minor Key: Is Depression Sin? Bring my soul out of - TopicsExpress



          

Life in the Minor Key: Is Depression Sin? Bring my soul out of prison, that I may praise Your name; the righteous shall surround me, for You shall deal bountifully with me. —Psalm 142:7 Most of the Bible is in the major key—saints fearlessly witnessing, churches valiantly serving against all odds—and what a joy those sections are to our souls. But side by side with all that is the minor key. Gods Word contains true glimpses into the weaknesses and frailties that God understands and shows us in the lives of some of His greatest saints. These are men and women who were sad, discouraged, and depressed—yet the Lord did not correct them and tell them they were in sin. He just encouraged these great saints and helped them go on. Life in the minor key—is it always sin that makes us depressed? Is it always a sin to be depressed? No, it is not, is the answer from Gods Word. TAMING OUR STRESSED OUT LIVING In our highly stressed twenty-first century, more and more Christians are living a caveman sort of existence. For many, life amounts to a vicious swirl of getting up, working hard at a job, at school, or in the home, and then dropping into bed exhausted at the end of each day. As they fall further and further behind in their efforts to get ahead, life more and more feels like an endless pursuit of nothingness. Such daily struggles are a far cry from the expectations of those who heard this type promise before they became a Christian: “Just get saved and everything will be great from then on!” But that is not always true, is it? Even saved people can go through cave times like David experienced: family conflicts; losing a job; losing a home; moving to a new location under duress; working with a tough crowd; being betrayed by friends; being wronged in a business deal; suffering the sudden loss of a family member, friend, or finances, and so forth. Trials like that are not foreign to most of us. And, if we’re honest, we’ll admit that sometimes it is difficult to praise the Lord when we are going through a period of unending troubles. Feeling lonely and abandoned, as David often felt, may even lead to a struggle with overwhelming depression. Suffering from depression is a very common malady. In fact, although most of the Bible is in the major key (saints fearlessly witnessing as churches valiantly serve against all odds), side-by-side with all those wonderful testimonies is the minor key where God’s Word contains true glimpses into the weaknesses and frailties of some of His greatest saints. These spiritually mature men and women were recorded as being sad, discouraged, and depressed—yet the Lord did not correct them and tell them they were in sin. Why? Our compassionate God understood their pain. Therefore, He just lovingly encouraged them in their suffering and helped them persevere in His strength. So then, is it always a sin to be depressed? And is it always sin that makes us depressed? The answer from God’s Word on both counts is clearly no. A SHARED STRUGGLE What did Moses, Elijah, Hezekiah, Job, Ezra, Jeremiah, Jonah, and Paul all share in common with David as well as with us today? They were all Spirit-filled servants of the Lord who struggled with negative emotions. In light of this, we must be careful to never say that anxiety, depression, discouragement, and other negative emotions are in themselves sinful because we see these same emotions in some of God’s greatest servants. Even Jesus experienced negative emotions: In Christ we see anger that is not sin, deep emotional distress, grief, and anguish—all of which were perfectly displayed. In the Garden of Gethsemane, he “began to be very distressed and troubled. And He said to them, ‘My soul is deeply grieved to the point of death’ ” (Mark 14:33–34). Jesus, in coming to earth, took upon himself the form of a human with all its frailties, yet he did not sin [emphasis added]. The key is not to call each occurrence of a negative emotion sin—the key is to not stay there. That is what David explains to us. “The Christian who remains in sadness and depression really breaks a commandment: in some direction or other he mistrusts God—His power, providence, forgiveness.” DEPRESSION DEFINED Webster’s definition of “depression” gives us a fascinating insight into ways this negative emotion can also affect believers: 1. a state of feeling sad; a disorder marked especially by sadness, inactivity, difficulty in thinking and concentration, a significant increase or decrease in appetite and time spent sleeping, feelings of dejection and hopelessness, and sometimes suicidal tendencies 2. A reduction in activity, amount, quality, or force; a lowering of vitality or functional activity A ROSTER OF DEPRESSED SAINTS Each of the following servants of the Lord suffered from crippling and sometimes even paralyzing depression: • Moses: “I am not able to bear all these people alone, because the burden is too heavy for me. If You treat me like this, please kill me here and now—if I have found favor in Your sight—and do not let me see my wretchedness!” (Numbers 11:14–15). Moses was confessing that he could not humanly do what had to be done. But this state of mind was actually a blessing because when he felt squashed and depressed by his work, he came to an end of self-reliance and learned to trust the Lord more fully. • Elijah: He stood alone against an entire nation, an entire army. He also stood alone against the most heinous and wicked of all the corrupt religious people of the day, including Jezebel, whose name is synonymous with sin, the occult, and wickedness. But after all that life in the major key, after his greatest time of victory Elijah slid into depression: But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a broom tree. And he prayed that he might die, and said, “It is enough! Now, LORD, take my life!” (1 Kings 19:4). This despondency followed having 850 angry prophets of Baal destroyed on Mount Carmel and then outrunning a chariot! This took supernatural courage, strength, and faith. But when he heard the rumor that Jezebel wanted to kill him, he became dejected. In spite of his great victories, Elijah wasn’t perfect; when wearied and drained emotionally, he was subject to being overcome by complete discouragement. However, God didn’t rebuke him for that negative emotion; He first dealt with the physical causes of Elijah’s depression before teaching the spiritual lesson he needed to learn. • Hezekiah: When facing a terminal illness, he turned his face toward the wall, and prayed to the LORD, saying, “Remember now, O LORD, I pray, how I have walked before You in truth and with a loyal heart, and have done what was good in Your sight.” And Hezekiah wept bitterly (2 Kings 20:2–3). Turning his face to the wall was an act of desperation, but God didn’t say his bitter weeping was wrong. Instead, He responded to Hezekiah’s prayer with patience and gentleness and added fifteen years to his life. • Job: “Why did I not die at birth? Why did I not perish when I came from the womb?” (Job 3:11). Job felt like he couldn’t go on any longer! So he poured out his woes to the Lord: I cannot eat for sighing; my groans pour out like water. . . . My life flies by—day after hopeless day. . . . I hate my life. . . . For God has ground me down, and taken away my family. . . . But I search in vain. I seek him here; I seek him there, and cannot find him. . . . My heart is broken. Depression haunts my days. My weary nights are filled with pain. . . . I cry to you, O God, but you dont answer me (Job 3:23–24; 7:6, 16; 16:7; 23:8; 30:16–17, 20 LB). In his depression over losing his property and children, the Bible said that Job did not sin nor charge God with wrong (Job 1:22). As he suffered through trial after trial, feeling abandoned by even God, Job was never rebuked for having negative feelings. However, the Lord did reprove his three friends for accusing him of sin and for failing to speak what was right about God, as Job had (Job 42:7–8). • Ezra: His was a stellar personality! Tradition records that he memorized the entire Old Testament, wrote one chapter, and another ten chapters were about him. But look at his testimony in Psalm 119:25: My soul clings to the dust; revive me according to Your word. Note that he didn’t say, “In my wicked sinfulness I’m clinging to the dust.” No, he simply said, “That’s how life is!” If you study Psalm 119 closely, it is filled with what I believe are Ezra’s constant struggles with both people and his emotions. He also made a wonderful prayer request—“revive me”—because he knew the Lord was his only hope and source of strength to get through his struggles. • Jeremiah: Look at his painful declaration: “See, O LORD, that I am in distress; my soul is troubled; my heart is overturned within me, for I have been very rebellious. Outside the sword bereaves, at home it is like death (Lamentations 1:20). What was he talking about? Jeremiah didn’t like what he saw happening to Jerusalem! He was rather like a CNN on-the-spot news correspondent watching Nebuchadnezzar destroy the city and butcher the people. Thus, as he wrote about the smoke rising and the carcasses being piled up, he cried out to the Lord, “I don’t like what’s going on!” Being “rebellious” didn’t mean that Jeremiah was fighting against the Lord; he was just struggling greatly with acceptance of what the Lord was allowing in Jerusalem. In his heartbreak, he was freely expressing that grief to God. • Jonah: This incredibly empowered prophet of the Lord, whom the Lord rescued from death in the midst of the sea, probably saw the single greatest evangelistic impact that anyone has ever had—Nineveh’s hundreds of thousands of people who all turned to the Lord and repented. But after that amazing ministry, he crashed emotionally: And it happened, when the sun arose, that God prepared a vehement east wind; and the sun beat on Jonah’s head, so that he grew faint. Then he wished death for himself, and said, “It is better for me to die than to live” (Jonah 4:8). • Paul: His comments on troubled times are insightful: When we came into Macedonia our flesh had no rest, but we were afflicted on every side: conflicts without, fears within (2 Corinthians 7:5 NASB). What was Paul going through here? He was depressed. Was that a sin? No, it was a common result of his having “had no rest.” He was in the most Roman of the Roman Empire, just coming from Asia Minor where the pagan idolatry and emperor worship was very strong. Like David, Paul was constantly pursued, so he eventually became weary and fearful for his life. But, as he wrote Timothy, he understood that fear is always the realm of Satan: God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind (2 Timothy 1:7). Although Satan buffeted a vulnerable Paul with conflicts and fears until depression set in, he refused to remain in that state. How did this mature saint, who had mastered much of the Old Testament and wrote books for the New Testament, find comfort in his distress? Through the ministry of another believer! He testified: God, who comforts the depressed, comforted us by the coming of Titus” (2 Corinthians 7:6 NASB). By this, we can conclude that the Lord is grieved if we find fault with a brother or sister in Christ who is feeling “down.” The God of All Comfort wants us to be encouragers of His suffering children—not discouragers! In later centuries, have God’s servants fared any better than these from the Bible? Let’s look at three of the world’s best known saints: • Martin Luther (1483–1546): In perhaps his deepest depression, this Reformer wrote one of Christendoms greatest hymns—“A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” Like other great saints, he recognized the spiritual warfare involved in his struggles. In 1527 he wrote: “For more than a week I was close to the gates of death and hell. I trembled in all my members. Christ was wholly lost.” In his journal he said that at this point he picked up his ink well and threw it at the devil! Satan was so vivid to him that he not only felt his presence in the room but could also see him. If you go to Lutherstadt in Wittenberg, the ink’s black stain is still visible on the wall of Luther’s study. Here is Luther’s testimony of the great discoveries he made about God while he described himself as being in melancholy, heaviness, depression, dejection of spirit—downcast, sad, and downhearted: A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing; Our helper He, amid the flood of mortal ills prevailing: For still our ancient foe doth seek to work us woe; His craft and power are great, and, armed with cruel hate, On earth is not his equal. Did we in our own strength confide our striving would be losing; Were not the right Man on our side, the Man of God’s own choosing: Dost ask who that may be? Christ Jesus, it is He; Lord Sabaoth is His Name, from age to age the same, And He must win the battle. And though this world, with devils filled, should threaten to undo us, We will not fear, for God hath willed His truth to triumph through us: The Prince of Darkness grim, we tremble not for him; His rage we can endure, for lo, his doom is sure, One little word shall fell him. That word above all earthly powers, no thanks to them, abideth; The Spirit and the gifts are ours through Him Who with us sideth: Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also; The body they may kill: God’s truth abideth still, His kingdom is forever. For nineteen years after Luther wrote that hymn he still battled with persistent melancholy, discouragement, and depression. But his hope was always in the Lord. He shared his struggles with negative emotions so that believers could come beside him and encourage him. That is what his life was—a testimony—not hidden in a cloistered cell of anguish, but a saint sharing with other saints his need for their compassion and help. In what we call the Reformation, Martin Luther translated the whole Bible into the language of the people and, by God’s grace, single-handedly turned the tide of Romanism’s darkness to shed light on the Scriptures. His faithfulness to God, no matter what, led to restoring the heart of salvation—justification by faith—which down through the centuries produced the true church’s adherence to Scripture! • Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834–1892): This famous preacher lit the fires of the nineteenth-century revival movement. His poor health caused Spurgeon to struggle so severely with depression that he was forced to be absent from his pulpit for two to three months a year. In 1866, at the age of 32, he told his congregation of his struggle: “I am the subject of depressions of spirit so fearful that I hope none of you ever get to such extremes of wretchedness as I go to.” Spurgeon’s marvelous ministry in London made him perhaps the greatest preacher England ever produced. Having a unique photographic mind, he knew the Bible inside and out plus the contents of all 25,000 volumes in his library. I’ve been in his church and seen his library, which has been enshrined. And this God-hearted servant left a legacy of inspired writings that still blesses us today! • Dr. John Henry Jowett (1864–1923): After Spurgeon, he was the next great man of God who was also called in his day “The Greatest Preacher in the English-Speaking World.” He pastored leading churches, preached to huge congregations, and wrote books that were bestsellers. In a message he confessed: “You seem to imagine that I have no ups and downs, but just a level and lofty stretch of spiritual attainment with unbroken joy and equanimity. By no means! I am often perfectly wretched and everything appears most murky.” If you’ve likewise felt “murky,” you can empathize with God’s stellar luminaries who led the way in doctrine and preaching after refinement periods that prompted struggles with negative emotions. The “Who’s Who of Ministry” is chock-full of such testimonies. As we look back on history, many of these saints, like Spurgeon, suffered because their physical conditions led to depression. One Christian medical doctor who has spent his lifetime helping people shares this example: Consider this thought experiment. Give me the most saintly person you know. If I were to administer certain medications of the right dosage, such as thyroid hormone, or insulin, I could virtually guarantee that I could make this saint anxious with at least one of these agents. Would such chemically induced anxiety be explained as a spiritual sin? What if the persons own body had an abnormal amount of thyroid hormone or insulin and produced nervousness? Though willful sin should never be condoned, we ought to accept that a number of saints suffer from emotional symptoms not related to unconfessed sin. And some godly believers—especially those with an “up and down” type temperament like David’s—will always struggle with periods of feeling “down” because, by nature, they tend to live in the minor key. So then, it’s possible to feel horrible and be in great emotional anguish and yet be obedient to the Lord. David, God’s sweet psalmist, often testified to that very truth in his inspired writings. So let’s go back in our minds to 3,000 years ago and the harsh conditions of the cave of Adullam to see what else God was teaching David in his “Cave of Troubles.” David’s Testimony on How to Overcome Depression At this point, David was at the depth of loneliness. He had been on the run for years and was now hiding in a desolate cave in the midst of a crowd of malcontents—feeling very much alone. He had two choices: (1) stay in the cave of loneliness and descend into self-pity and sin, or (2) look up to God and use this time alone to grow in the Lord. David—a man so prone to doubt, discouragement, and depression—chose to look up to God for strength to overcome his battles with negative emotions. Psalm 142 reveals what kept him from being sidelined and paralyzed by depression in the cave of Adullam. Drawn from Chapter 13 of my book on the life of the most written about human in Scripture: amazon/Davids-Spiritual-Secret-Life-Serves-ebook/dp/B001Q3KB22/ref=la_B001K8Y0SE_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1420571833&sr=1-7
Posted on: Tue, 06 Jan 2015 19:21:48 +0000

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