The Redemptive Aspects of Depression (part 4)

One of the common ways I sin when I'm in pain is self-protection. My wife and I have been in one of the most trying times of our life and when I go to self protect mode it doesn't allow her to mourn or suffer well in this season we are currently in.  I often make my pain about me and how I hurt and I end up sinning against my wife by not protecting her.  You see, protecting myself means I am trying to stop the pain, or dull it the best I can, but protecting her means I am centered on how she is doing, or how she is feeling in the midst of her pain. So, these recent blogs are first a reminder to me. “It’s not about me”!

Paul spoke in 2 Corinthians 12:1-10 about receiving a revelation of God giving visions of paradise and to keep from becoming boastful he was given a messenger of Satan to torment him, to bring him pain so that he would not become prideful.  Verse 7 says “to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited.”  Paul says in verse 8, three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me.  Verse 9 God says, “My grace is enough for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness”.  Then Paul concludes, I will boast all the more gladly in my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.  For the sake of Christ, then I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities.  For when I am weak, then I am strong.  

What Paul is saying is what we all tend to say, I would be better off if the pain left me.  God’s reply to Paul and to us will always be God saying I am more powerful in your weakness.  Again, we tend to believe our powerlessness from the pain keeps us in more pain and that is why we tend to run from the pain.  In this case, in 2 Corinthians 12, Paul wanted to gain power by painlessness but found the power of God in the midst of his powerlessness. We are afraid of powerlessness because we believe a lie that says as long as I can have the power, I don’t get hurt.  We like to be in control, it keeps us from continuing to get hurt.  Again this is why we need to move towards our pain because the closer we get to our pain the more powerless we feel and the more powerless we feel the more powerful God is in our lives.  This is where we find our hope but one of the main opponents that keep us from going towards our pain is like Paul, going to self-preservation.  We have to see that Paul went from calling it a thorn to a delight.  I do not know if the thorn remained with him but what we do know is that he found satisfaction with God in the midst of his pain, so it was no longer called a thorn.  That is where we need to lead our people, to this same paradigm of hope in God, thirsting for God.  When we are weak is where we find the strength of God. 

So how does this comfort in the midst of pain work?  How can we find satisfaction in the midst of our deepest depression or darkness?  I am not saying we have to be pain mongers and go look for suffering or things to be depressed about.  I am saying we have a perfected identity in a fallen body, fallen world.  Scripture is littered with promises of hardships and difficulties, but God promises of His love and comfort in the midst of that, it is at the very center of the cross.  We have to know who we are as justified by Christ in order to understand how to traffic in our pain rightly.  As I have stated many times in these blogs, the reason why we run from our pain is that we don’t view our pain rightly and how we see our pain rightly is again through the centrality of the cross.  We know that the cross is central to our faith.  As I mentioned earlier, Satan and demons play a big part of not seeing the pain rightly so most of the lies that people hear in the middle of their pain is “where is your God?” and that is at the point of self-preservation. 

I mentioned the bruised heel in a recent blog and I think we should take a second look.  In Genesis 3:15, the first mention of the atonement where God proclaims of the seed of the woman, “he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”  This is a contrast of the Cross of Christ and the suffering of Satan, ordained by God.  In other words, Jesus crushed the head of Satan, as he bruised His heel, meaning Satan’s head bruised the heel of Jesus.  The bruised heel of Jesus happened at the Cross in contrast to the utter defeat of Satan at the Cross (1 John 3:8).  What an awesome truth!  The reward of a bruised heel is a crushed head, and I believe our reward is the comfort of God.  2 Corinthians 1:3-7 shows us that because we share in the sufferings in Christ, we also share in the comfort of God in the midst of our affliction, trials, and pain.  It gives us an imagery of resting in the victory of God. 

My point is, we cannot receive more destruction than what happened to Jesus on the Cross, and the Bible clearly states that that was a bruised heel.  We are not going to suffer more than what Christ suffered.  Although people can hurt our bodies, they cannot touch our soul.  A 16th century puritan William Grunell puts it like this: ‘Upon thy belly shalt thou go' (Genesis 3:14).  This prostrate condition of Satan assures believers that the devil can never lift his head - his wily schemes - higher than the saints' heels.  He may make you limp, but cannot take your life. And the bruise, which he gives, will be rewarded with the breaking of his own head.

Scripture shows us that we are going to suffer bruises but in the pain from the bruise are trust and belief that was given to us through the atoning work of Jesus Christ empowering us to worship the living God at the same time that we are in distress.  May you glorify God through your suffering!

The Redemptive Aspects of Depression (part 3)

As I continue this series of the redemptive aspects of depression, I hope you start to see that God doesn’t call us to run away from our pain, He calls us to run to it because our need for Him is made more real.  Psalm 42:3 my tears have been my food day and night, while they say to me all the day long, “where is your God?”  In addition, 42:10 says “As with a deadly wound in my bones, my adversaries taunt me, while they say to me all the day long, “where is your God?”  Satan plays a big part in our sinful response to suffering because the world that he rules over says that suffering is the proof that God does not exist or He is a terrible God for allowing His people to suffer.  Although I can spend the rest of this blog on the works and effects of Satan, I just want to highlight the destruction of Satan in the believer. 

Luke 10:18-20: says [18] And he said to them, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. [19] Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you. [20] Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” [21] In that same hour he rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. 

Satan has absolutely no power over us and is under the sovereign rule of God but apparently is still allowed to lie.  The lie itself has no power to change the truth of God of who we are in Christ Jesus.  The idea of “where is your God?” in the midst of pain and suffering either leads you to self-medicate because you do not believe He is there or to the same place of the Psalmist running to God and that vehicle of turning to God for his sustenance is hope. 

           

We see in Psalm 42:5, the Psalmist asks his soul “why are you cast down and why are you in turmoil within me?” and the answer was hope in God for I shall praise Him, my salvation and my God.  We also see this in 42:11, he asks the same questions, “why is my soul cast down, why is their turmoil within me?” and the same answer “hope in God”.  As I stated earlier, our pain and suffering or depression produces thirst and hope, spelled out in Psalm 42.  The question is where do we go to get the thirst quenched and what do we put our hope in?  In the Hebrew and Greek text, hope means expectation.  In our generation, hope has lost meaning and has been reduced down to wishful thinking.  For example, if someone says I hope I’m saved, we might be alarmed because it sounds like that person is unsure.  Expectation is like a woman that is expecting a child, the birth of that child is imminent meaning it is going to happen.  So as a woman-expecting child, we expect from God.  God loves when we expect from Him; it means we believe and have faith in Him.  We not only believe what He said, we believe He said it and will always fulfill His promises.  Wherever you see hope in the bible, it means expectation.  For example, in Colossians 1:27 when Paul says “God is going to make know the riches of His glory by this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory”.  What he’s really saying is “Christ in you, the expectation of glory”.  Again God loves when we expect from Him, because that means we believe in Him, so hope is not wishful thinking.  If someone is depressed or suffering, hope does not answer their pain because they do not know what hope is.  That is why it is important as I stated earlier, to lead the believer to the pain and see the true hope or expectation of God’s promises for them.  It has to be a true belief only given to us by God.

Paul writes in Romans 4:18 recalling the Abraham story where God called Abraham to sacrifice his own son.  He says that Abraham believed God when He told him that He was going to make a nation out of his son Isaac.   When he was called to sacrifice Isaac,  Abraham had enough faith to believe that God was still going to build a nation out of his son Isaac.  We see this faith spelled out in Genesis 22:5 when he tells the two helpers “stay here, the boy and I will return”.  Again, somehow Abraham knew that God was going to keep His promise.  Abraham hoped in God!  When people are in their darkest corner with an immense pain and the enemy whispers the lie “where’s your God?”, do they really believe that God is going to comfort them or believe the lie that I must self-preserve or self-protect? 

I want to make sure that you know I am not minimizing the pain but wanting to maximize our expectation or hope and our thirst for God.  Paul understood pain as he talks about in 2 Corinthians 4:7-10, we are afflicted in every way but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.  In addition verse 16-18, says we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.  For this light momentary affliction, is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparisons, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen.  We have to not let our eyes deceive us into believing there is a better answer in the midst of pain and the better answer is generally not experiencing or allowing ourselves to enter into the pain.  Instead, it is the very pain that produces and exercises our faith in hope of God.  We also see this in Romans 5:3-4: More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces HOPE! 

The Redemptive Aspects Of Depression-Psalms 42 (Part 2)

Again God is glorified through our faith because we believe in Him in uncertainty. Faith is like walking into a dark void and landing on a rock.  When you walk into the dark void, you do not know there is a rock there, but time and time again you land on the rock.  The dark voids are the uncertainties of life; we don’t know what the outcome will be.  For example, how to pay the rent during unemployment or if my child is going to survive this illness that looks like certain death, but God constantly shows us that He is for us! And that is the landing on the rock. 

So my question is, who darkens the void so that you can’t see the rock?  I think most people would say Satan because it seems mean to not reveal that there is a rock there.  Without a doubt, it is God that darkens the void because if He shines a flashlight into the void to show that there is a rock there, there would be no room for faith. 

In the story of Joseph in Genesis 37-50 we see that God had a plan to save many people through a famine using Joseph.  Joseph went through excruciating hardship but throughout the story he did not let the sin against him define who he was.  We see that God gave Jacob favor for Joseph in Chapter 37 in addition gave Joseph dreams that his brothers were going to bow down to him.  So his brothers in jealousy sold him into slavery.  In Chapter 39 we see that Joseph gained favor with Potiphar but was falsely accused by Potiphar’s wife of seducing her.  In 39:9, Joseph says how could I do this great wickedness and sin against God? He ends up going to prison for 14 years for doing the right thing.  Then again was betrayed by two other prisoners that were Pharaoh’s workers until Joseph interprets Pharaoh’s dreams in 41 and is then put second in command in all of Egypt.  In 42:21, the brothers of Joseph admit they heard the distress of Joseph’s soul.  So we know that Joseph was in pain and sorrow but never lost sight of His God.  In Chapter 45, we do not see Joseph taking revenge on his brothers but instead blessing them.  In Chapter 46:5, he says don’t be angry with yourselves because God sent me to Egypt even though you sold me into Egypt. 

The point I want to make with Joseph’s story is that in the midst of pain and adversity, Joseph always believed that God was leading him, even if it was into pain.  Joseph did not know the end of the story; he was always walking into a deep void knowing he would always land on a rock.  So his pain caused more hunger and thirst for the righteousness of God and because his pain caused thirst and he found satisfaction in God in that thirst, Joseph was always satisfied in the middle of his pain. 

You may say, what if I’m suffering from the sin I’m causing rather than sin committed against me?  2 Samuel 12:10: After Nathan rebuked David for killing Uriah and taking his wife, God said now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite for your wife.  Meaning, calamity will be upon you.  David still found hope in God.  Throughout all the trials and tribulations, his daughter being raped, his son murdering his son, he himself being hunted down to be murdered by his own son; David still cried out to God even though some of his suffering was self-inflicted.  The repentance is the same, turning to God because of pain from sin and suffering.  We are now post cross and the sin we commit has been laid upon our Savior Jesus.  We do not get to feel guilty for our sin because the guilt of sin was laid upon Jesus.  As we notice in part of the criterion for clinical depression, excessive guilt is a common symptom of the diagnosis.  If anything, because of the cross of our Savior, our sin through the love of God should draw us even closer to Him.  It is not about how bad we are it is about how good He is. 

The Redemptive Aspects Of Depression-Psalms 42 (Part 1)

            Depression in the secular world is considered a disorder and is often treated as a disease, meaning the secular view is that there is no cure for depression, only management.  Depression is something you have to live with, like diabetes.  You have to learn how to live with your disease so you can best manage it.  In the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), the following are criterion for clinical depression: 1) depressed mood most of the day 2) a diminished interest or pleasure in daily activities 3) weight loss or gain 4) sleeplessness 5) agitation or restlessness 6) fatigue or energy loss 7) feelings of worthlessness or excessive guilt 8) diminished ability to think or concentrate 9) recurring thoughts of death without a specific plan.  According the DSM-IV, if you have five or more of these symptoms, you can be diagnosed as clinically depressed.   The scope of this blog is not to critique the secular world’s view of depression, but rather to show how it has seeped into the church and what has God revealed to us on how to respond to depression.  What I hope to show is that depression, when rightly looked at, causes hunger, thirst and a hope for God.

Psalm 42 and 43 gives us a great picture of a godly response to a person who is downcast.  King David was very aware of pain and sorrow; we see evidence in these Psalms that through David’s pain and sorrow he drew closer to the Lord. My contention is that our pain brings us closer to the Lord.  Since the secular way of dealing with depression has seeped into the church, we have been taught by clinicians to move away from the pain rather than towards it.  I believe the secular clinical side of depression wants to lead us away from pain and the Gospel leads us to our pain because our need for God is made most real in those dark places and we experience the true redemptive love of God.  Let us move to a closer look at Psalm 42.

[42:1] As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. [2] My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? [3] My tears have been my food day and night, while they say to me all the day long, “Where is your God?”

            We see in verse 1 and 2 our pain and suffering, when rightly looked at, cause hunger and thirst.  This is even spelled out in Matthew 5:6; “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied”.  If we do not trust God, we will tend to run from our pain and suffering and then wonder why we never thirst for God.   There are all kinds of reason why we can be depressed; environment, job loss, relational conflict, loss of loved one, or sometimes you just wake up and gravity seems heavier.  I would like to draw a distinction on depression.  The right biblical view of depression would be walking and enduring suffering and experiencing joy at the same time.  That joy is knowing who you are in Christ, that God is in the middle of your suffering and is holding you and walking with you in the midst of your pain.  The correlation is my pain causes me to need or in this case thirst; now do I go find something else to drink, or do I drink in the living waters of God?  Going someplace else to drink, and that can be literally drinking (alcohol) or some other type of pain reliever which may actually cause a temporary relief of the pain.  Ironically if we do not focus on the suffering and keep running from the pain, it will still be there.  It’s like God wants us to trust him in the midst of our pain.  I believe in adversity, meaning when you are squeezed from the wounds of others or self-inflicted wounds, what you reach for or what you cry for is your gospel that brings you satisfaction.  When you squeeze an orange, what comes out?  Obviously, whatever is on the inside; likewise, when suffering squeezes us, what comes out?  What ever your heart clings to for pain relief. 

It is clear throughout scripture that God does allow adversity but that adversity should build our character and hope.  With more godly character and godly hope, we are in a better place to please God.  We see in Hebrews 11:6, without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever draws near to God must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who seek Him.  Our faith, given by God, plays a huge part in this paradigm of moving towards our pain rather than away from it.  Romans 14:23 says whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.  God is making it very clear, we must relate to Him with our faith.  Faith is where our concrete existence meets the eternal God.  It is the point of relationship for visible people communing with the invisible God.  In addition, God has perfected our identity through this beautiful exchange at the cross of our Savior, my sin for His righteousness. God has chosen to give me His perfected identity in a fallen body that lives in a fallen world.  I believe this is where God gets most glory, is when a believer is suffering but worships God in the midst of pain and suffering.  The scriptures aren’t clear “why” God lets us suffer, but we know that He gets glory when we choose Him in the midst of pain rather than medicating.   

From Woe to Go- Isaiah 6

One of my favorite scriptures for understanding what transformation looks like when the believer sees God is Isaiah 6:1-8. These versus give us a perfect picture of the believer’s response when God is seen.  God’s grace took Isaiah from “Woe is me!” to “Here I am!” Isaiah had a four-fold experience–conviction that led to a confession that led to his cleansing that led to his commission.  This is how transformation happens—conviction to confession to cleansing to commission.

The moment Isaiah saw God’s holiness (Isaiah 6:1-4), he was convicted.  He said “Woe is me!  For I am lost…”  As when Peter first met Jesus, and he knew it was the Lord, his first reaction was, “depart from me.  I am filthy.” (Luke 5:8) The glory of God reveals your filth, your uncleanness, while at the same time you see God’s love for you.  In addition, when you see God it puts Him as holy Creator and you as creation.  It puts God where He belongs as Creator and us where we belong as creation. The beautiful thing is that God meets you where you are but doesn’t leave you where you are. Isaiah gives us this picture of a man who was in sin, saw God, and was transformed by the glory of God.  We see in verses 1-4 that Isaiah, a sinner and unclean, was able to see God.  He didn’t have to clean himself up beforehand, he didn’t have to sing the right song, or dance the right dance.  He saw the Lord high and lifted up.

The conviction then led Isaiah to the confession, “I am a man of unclean lips.” (Isaiah 6:5)  We see a right lamentation over sin, as David proclaimed in Psalm 51:16-17.  God doesn’t want a work.  He finds pleasure in a broken and contrite heart, a holy agony over sin.  If you mourn over sin your soul is alive.  Scriptures tell us there is a difference between godly sorrow and worldly sorrow (2 Corinthians 7:9-12).  Worldly sorrow is mournful over the result of sin.  Godly sorrow is mournful over sin and this is only achieved through the Holy Spirit.  In this godly sorrow you experience the cleansing power of God through the blood of Christ. 

Isaiah 6:7 demonstrates the cleansing in both expiation and propitiation, “your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.”  “Guilt taken away” is expiation; “Your sin atoned for” is propitiation.  Once you embody the forgiveness and redemption of God through the blood of Jesus Christ, it empowers you to the commission, like Isaiah 6:8.  God asked, “Who are we going to send?”  Unlike Moses, who doubted his ability when God commissioned him to His work, Isaiah—without even asking what he was being called to—said, “Here I am!  Send me.” (Isaiah 6:8).

So the cry of “Woe is me” is not shame or condemnation, it is a reverent fear of God that helps you understand how much you need a Savior and how much you need God’s grace.  I also equate “Woe is me” from Isaiah with Romans 7:24-25, “Wretched man that I am.  Who will deliver me from this body of death?  Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”  Seeing God reveals to you how bad you really are and at the same time it lets you see how good God really is.  It lets you see His grace as you transform into His image and likeness.