31 Oct Struggling with Depression in Christ

Can I still be a Christian if I’m depressed all the time? Can I still be a Christian if I’m not feeling this great “joy” that the Bible keeps talking about? All I ever hear is how happy God will make me, and how he’ll take away all my pain and make me wanna live again.

My loneliness is real. My brokenness is real. Loss is real. A lot of times getting up in the morning is out of habit, not because I’m particularly looking forward to anything. I’ve look forward to plenty in my life, all has have ended in disappointment. Just when I think i’m about to turn the corner, or a situation is about to go in my favor, it doesn’t, and I’m back right where I started. If you listen to all the world renown Preachers discussing how God will bless your life, I have to wonder if God wants to bless me.

When your life does not reflect at all, what the Preacher is speaking about, you have to wonder if what you are doing wrong. Maybe I’m not believing enough. Maybe I’m not tithing enough. Maybe my prayers are not explicit enough. Or I’m not fasting long enough. Whatever the reason, my life does not reflect one of great prosperity and joy. I have suffered some horrendous things!

And I still suffer from some old things that I just can’t seem to get relief from. They linger and have never went away. I’ve suffered from some things for so long, I don’t remember how it feels to not suffer from them. Unless you’ve been there, you will not understand what I’m saying. The pain doesn’t stop. Gods word subsides it, but it doesn’t eliminate the pain that I feel.

So if you are struggling to continue on in your life at this moment, due to great loss, brokenness, loneliness, failing health, or any other kind of hardship, where you are finding it difficult to go on, then you are in the same company as one of the most powerful Apostles. Paul. In Paul’s 2nd letter to the Corinthian Church, he confesses as much. In second Corinthians 1:8, the Apostle writes “We do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the hardships we encountered in the province of Asia. We were under a burden far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life“. If you are not familiar with the definition of the word “despaired”, please get acquainted with it.

Paul was such a powerful Apostle, that people were being healed by the passing of his shadow. This same Paul, writes to Corinth and confesses to them that he and his fellow disciples suffered such hardship, that they had a complete loss of hope. The hope that things would get better was absent. That is despair. That is being depressed. That is being broken to the point where you cannot see the light at the end of the tunnel. God’s faith is amazing! It does not stop when we do. When you come to a place where you can no longer believe, God’s faith continues.

It continues on even in the times that we cannot. Paul also admits this in his letter: “Indeed, we felt we were under the sentence of death, in order that we would not trust in ourselves, but in God, who raises the dead”. When all hope has abandoned you, and you have no one you can turn to who can who can fix your problem, and you have use up all your resources, you are forced to rely on God and him alone.

God will put you in a place beyond your resources, and when you get beyond your resources, he is there. That is the domain in which he resides, in the “beyond”. Your trials and tribulations are not a sign that God has left you, if you are following God, these are signs that he has not! “The servant is not greater than the master”. Matthew 10:24, is the warning Jesus gave all his disciples. I believe, because we’ve been taught and indoctrinated today by prosperity Preachers and teachings, that anything in your life that is “bad”, is the devil, and anything “good” is God. We forget, that nothing can be done to you by man or by satan, if God isn’t willingly allowing it to take place in your life. There are many people who despise God who seemingly have the world at their finger tips. Was it God who gave them their riches?

Because God resides in the domain of “beyond” we would save a lot of time and effort with trying to figure him out. He is not only “in” the beyond, he is also of the beyond. He is beyond our comprehension. Familiarize yourself with the story of Joseph, Job, and Hosea. Study their lives. If you are suffering from depression and or brokenness, you will see yourself in the lives of these people. They felt brokenness. They felt depression. Like the song by Michael Jackson, “you are not alone”. So why does it always feel like you are alone? Because we have become accustomed to hiding. And we are really, really good at it.

Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the United States. It is the 2nd leading cause of death for people between the ages of 10-24. The next time you go to Church, their is someone to the left, right, front or back of you that is full of the spirit of God on the inside, and at the same time battling depression and brokenness on the inside. You don’t know who they are. You won’t be able to point them out. They dress just like you dress. They recite the same Church phrases as you do. All the while battling something deep within their spirit. They won’t speak out. Too afraid of what others will think of them. Family, Friends, even you.

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Instead they suffer in silence. Not knowing that the person next to them is also struggling with their own battles. In the body of Christ we have millions of people suffering in silence. Too afraid to open up and share that what’s going on on the inside. Most Preachers today aren’t equipped to address problems like these. Most Preachers today have been raised up to satisfy the itching ears (2 Timothy 4:3) of their members. They’ll tell you to pray more

Most Preachers today aren’t equipped to address the pains of depression.  Most Preachers today have been raised up to satisfy the itching ears (2 Timothy 4:3) of their members.  The prescription is usually the same.  Pray more.  Read more.  Believe more.  But they have no to little interest in going beyond the former.  If your praying more and reading the more, the problem must be you’re not believing more.  It must be your “faith” that is preventing you from getting well? 

We proved that not to be the case in Paul’s confession in his second letter to the Corinthian Church.  If you believe God and you trust God, it is not your faith that is the problem, just as it was not Paul’s, we will be put in very painful situations and circumstances.  It is not Gods will to deliver us from all things.  Somethings are necessary for us in order for God to see the change that is needed from us.  I’m going to tell you something that hurts me to say, because it affects you as it does me.  But, pain changes people.  Without it, people don’t change.  Israel only changed when God allowed them to be led into captivity.  Israel only repented when they were under the rule of tyrannical rulers.  When we pray to God to change our hearts, it is an honest prayer that God hears.  But we never ask God what is the cost!  It cost.  It will cost plenty. 

You are not suffering depression for the sake of suffering.  God would never do such a thing.  He is purpose driven.  All ways remember that.  He is not like us.  He does not just do things to pass the time, or to entertain himself.  He looks beyond you when he’s thinking about you.  He’s also thinking about those you know, and those you will soon know. God will use your existing and future relationships, to minister to those who need.  In order to help those God has called you to minister too, you often times must go through what they’ve gone through so you can minister from a place of compassion. 

That’s what compassion is.  The ability to connect to a person’s pain due to experience.  Compassion will always cause you to act.  It will always cause you to sacrifice something.  We all know that there are people starving all over the world.  And everyone sympathizes with it.  But only some actually do anything about it.  That’s were compassion comes in.  Sympathizing accomplishes nothing.  Christ wants us to practice compassion not sympathy. 

If your suffering from the pains of depression in Christ, and know for certain now that God does nothing without purpose, then what better person is equipped to minister to those being broken by depression, then you or me?  Because we have the compassion to understand.  We’ve been there.  We know what it’s like.  The depression that kept you crippled for so long, didn’t kill you.  It was for a reason.  To help those who are suffering.  There’s someone who lost a child 10 years ago, and they still haven’t moved pass it for 10 years. 

They don’t know how.  Their stuck.  Crippled by the pains of depression. There’s someone who’s lost a spouse 20 years ago who’s still struggling with the pains of depression.  Someone who was bullied and target in Elementary School, Middle School, and High-school that is still struggling with the pains of depression, of something that happen 30 years ago.  People who were abandoned as a child or abandoned as an Adult.  Still struggling to this day.  Looking for a reason not to give up today. 

I don’t think people that commit suicide want to die.  What they want is to make the pain go away.  And that’s the only thing they believe will do it. If your struggling with depression the pain is real.  It had to be.  Compassion can’t be taught in a seminar.  It’s not something that you learn in a textbook.  The only way you get it is through life experiences.  I want to tell you God has not forgot about you.  He has not let you be afflicted by things with no cause or purpose.  Your pains of depression are the preparing grounds for your compassion.  Don’t get stuck there!  All God needs for his people to be effective is compassion.  If you have that, God make up what you don’t have. 

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A Minister without compassion, is like a Carpenter without tools.  Anyone can point out Bible verses and recite them.  That’s not what moves people.  What moves people is Compassion.  When you can use your own LIFE as the verses.  That’s what people need.  They need to see that God didn’t allow the pain in order to destroy, but he allowed it in order for others to be comforted in their brokenness. When you sacrifice yourself for others, the pains of your depression become minimized.  It becomes “muted”.  Always there, just turned down.  It will never go away, less you one day forget what Compassion is….