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!
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