Elijah – Defeater of Depression
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This has been a really different week for me.
I am normally not one to be depressed, but after the service last week I was feeling exhausted, like I just wanted to crawl into my bed and go to sleep.
I didn’t think much about it until Monday, when I still felt really tired and in fact downright depressed.
It seemed to get worse, and I really did not want to deal with anything, or even see anyone.
I just wanted to get in bed and stay there.
Throughout the day I began thinking about some of my ministries to people that seemed to be having little effect and even started questioning my call into ministry.
By Tuesday morning I just felt awful.
Jason asked me as I was about to head out Tuesday morning what I had going on that day, and my reply was that I didn’t even want to think about it.
That is how down and depressed I was feeling.
I didn’t want to think, I didn’t want to do, I just wanted to be alone.
Now from an outside perspective, there certainly appeared to be no reason for feeling like this.
I just did.
Transition
Have you ever felt that way?
Perhaps not a whole lot to explain why you felt or feel that way, but you just do.
This morning we are going to take a look at Elijah, who was an awesome man of God, but who also faced a time of terrible depression that had several causes and he was able to defeat that depression in his life as the Lord cared for him and led him through it.
It is my hope this morning that for those who may be here this morning struggling with depression, or for those who will struggle with it, that this will be a help to you to be able to defeat depression in your life.
Now before I begin, I want everyone to understand that there are sometimes medical and chemical reasons that can cause depression and we should consult a medical doctor when these feelings will not go away because you may need to treat those causes medically or recommend the help of a trained counselor to help you walk through this time of depression.
But even while there are times that people need to treat depression medically, there are also many times that we need to go through a process like Elijah because sometimes the causes can be due to spiritual issues.
And for anyone suffering from depression, these steps will be helpful.
Turn with me this morning to
1 Kings 19:1-18 (p. 255)
Slide
As you turn there, I want to give you some background on Elijah and the events preceding our reading.
Elijah has just finished being used in some extraordinary ways.
• He had prophesied to King Ahab, the king at that time, that there would be no rain in the land for the next several years except at Elijah’s command. And there was not any rain.
• Even though it caused a famine in the land, God cared for Elijah and provided for him.
• Elijah was even used to raise a boy of the widow he was staying with back to life from the dead.
• And now 3 years after he prophesied no rain, he confronts Ahab again.
• He calls the people of Israel to a contest between the prophets of Baal and himself to show everyone just who the true God is.
The contest
The prophets of Baal and Elijah are each to
prepare a burnt offering
but not set it on fire.
They will call on their god and Elijah will call on the Lord, God almighty to consume the offering by bringing down fire upon it themselves.
So that is just what they do.
The prophets of Baal build an altar and cut the bull into pieces and put it on the altar and call on Baal to reign down fire.
Nothing happens. They try harder.
Elijah even begins to taunt them.
All day this goes on, but no fire.
Elijah’s turn
Elijah repairs the altar of the Lord and puts on the bull.
He has the prophets of Baal pour 3 huge jars of water all over the bull and the altar
Then Elijah prayed and fire from the Lord consumed the sacrifice, the wood, the stones and dirt around the altar, and even all of the water that was poured on the sacrifice and altar.
Wow!
The people at that point all fall prostrate and proclaim the truth that…
“The Lord – He is God! The Lord – He is God!”
Elijah then has all of the people seize the false prophets and kill them.
And if that wasn’t extraordinary enough, Elijah tells Ahab that a heavy rain is on the way.
Elijah prays and it rains.
Then, just to let everyone know that Elijah really is a prophet of God, the Spirit of God enables Elijah to outrun Ahab who is being taken by horse and chariot.
Those are some truly extraordinary events that Elijah is involved in through the power and strength of the Lord.
Can you imagine the spiritual high you might be experiencing after all of these extraordinary events that the Lord has done through you?
I think I would feel on top of the world.
The people appear to be turning back to the Lord and are at least confessing that the Lord is God.
Your enemies are dead.
You have just prayed for rain after 3 years of drought and it rained.
And you outran a horse and chariot.
Wow. It is good to be used by the Lord.
Well let’s read and find out what happens next in 1 Kings 19.
1 Kings 19:1-18
1 Now Ahab told Jezebel everything Elijah had done and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. 2 So Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah to say, "May the gods deal with me, be it ever so severely, if by this time tomorrow I do not make your life like that of one of them."
3 Elijah was afraid and ran for his life. When he came to Beersheba in Judah, he left his servant there, 4 while he himself went a day’s journey into the desert. He came to a broom tree, sat down under it and prayed that he might die. "I have had enough, LORD," he said. "Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors." 5 Then he lay down under the tree and fell asleep.
All at once an angel touched him and said, "Get up and eat." 6 He looked around, and there by his head was a cake of bread baked over hot coals, and a jar of water. He ate and drank and then lay down again.
7 The angel of the LORD came back a second time and touched him and said, "Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you." 8 So he got up and ate and drank. Strengthened by that food, he traveled forty days and forty nights until he reached Horeb, the mountain of God. 9 There he went into a cave and spent the night.
And the word of the LORD came to him: "What are you doing here, Elijah?"
10 He replied, "I have been very zealous for the LORD God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, broken down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too."
11 The LORD said, "Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by."
Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. 12 After the earthquake came a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. 13 When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.
Then a voice said to him, "What are you doing here, Elijah?"
14 He replied, "I have been very zealous for the LORD God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, broken down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too."
15 The LORD said to him, "Go back the way you came, and go to the Desert of Damascus. When you get there, anoint Hazael king over Aram. 16 Also, anoint Jehu son of Nimshi king over Israel, and anoint Elisha son of Shaphat from Abel Meholah to succeed you as prophet. 17 Jehu will put to death any who escape the sword of Hazael, and Elisha will put to death any who escape the sword of Jehu. 18 Yet I reserve seven thousand in Israel-all whose knees have not bowed down to Baal and all whose mouths have not kissed him."
Wow, even after all of those extraordinary events that were accomplished through Elijah, he is down and depressed and wishes he were dead.
Well, praise the Lord that Elijah does defeat this depression with the help of the Lord and he goes on to effectively prepare Israel for the next leaders and then near the end of his ministry is blessed to be one of 2 people in history to avoid death, at least at this point and be ushered into heaven in a whirlwind led by a chariot of fire and horses of fire (2 Kings 2).
It is in the story we just read that we can find some principals that we can apply to our own life in which the Lord can help us defeat the depression that we face.
As we look at this, I want you to realize that
God cared about Elijah and
He cares about you.
He cares what you are feeling and wants to help you just like He helped Elijah.
Now even if you are facing a depression that has medical or chemical causes, I believe these principals even applied to your life will be a benefit in helping you to minimize some of the effects of the depression you face.
The first thing we see that God encourages Elijah to do and that you need to do as well is
Physically care for yourself
Slide
1 Kings 19:3-9a
In that first section when Elijah was running for his life and wanted to die, he found a tree and went to sleep.
Now there is no doubt that Elijah was probably exhausted from all that had been accomplished through him.
He was worn out.
Now notice that God did not say to Elijah at this point, “Hey, I have more to do through you. Get up and get moving.”
God is not dependant on us to do anything for Him.
And this is important –
God does not love you because of what you do.
He loves you because He made you.
And He cares about you and cares for you even when you don’t see it all.
Here we see Him care for Elijah’s physical needs.
He lets him rest and provides food for him because God knows he has created him to need rest and nourishment.
When we are not getting the rest and nourishment that our physical bodies need, it can affect our thoughts and feelings in real ways.
We see even babies when they have not had enough rest, get pretty crabby. And that doesn’t apply to just babies. That happens to adults as well.
And when we are pushing through with a lack of rest and proper nourishment, it can truly affect us and be one of the things that lead to depression and will hinder us from defeating depression in our lives.
So, first, if you are feeling depressed, it is ok to sleep and rest and take a step back from things.
Notice that God did not say to Elijah at this point, just get over it.
You just need to have more faith and your depression will be gone.
He didn’t say, Elijah, you shouldn’t feel this way after all I have done for you and through you.
God didn’t do any of that to Elijah, and we shouldn’t do that as the first thing we do to others who are facing depression.
The first thing God did was care for Elijah’s physical needs.
That is what we should do as well.
Physically care for yourself first when facing depression.
Well, the next thing we see is that God asks Elijah to
Verbally Express the Problem
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1 Kings 19:9b-10
And the word of the LORD came to him: "What are you doing here, Elijah?"
10 He replied, "I have been very zealous for the LORD God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, broken down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too."
God asks Elijah to tell him what the problem is.
And Elijah tells Him
God, I have been working my butt off for you but nobody is listening. In fact they not only aren’t listening, they are rejecting you and killing your people.
I am now all alone, the only one left.
Now if you were listening to the beginning, you know that some of the things that Elijah is thinking is a problem is not completely true.
At the end, people were beginning to listen. They fell down and confessed that the Lord is God.
Also, Elijah was not the only one left, but he sure felt that way.
When we can express the problem verbally, it will give us a place to start in knowing what to deal with.
And often times, there are things that are not completely accurate that are causing us to feel depressed. When we verbally express those things, it will help us to deal with the truth of them at the appropriate time.
But notice that God doesn’t just correct Elijah’s false thinking here.
Understand sometimes that speaking the truth, even in love, immediately to someone is not always the thing that needs to be done.
Before we do that, they need to be in a place that they can receive that.
God recognizes that Elijah first needs something different.
If Elijah is going to defeat this depression, if we are going to defeat depression in our life, we need to
Spiritually Connect to the Lord
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You need to be in the presence of the Lord. That is what Elijah needed.
1 Kings 19:11-13
11 The LORD said, "Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by."
Now, this is probably exactly what we don’t feel like doing. We just want to get under the covers in our bed and not be around anyone, including the Lord.
And for a time, this may be just the thing we need, not that the Lord departs from us, but we just need some time to rest as we have already discussed.
That could be our first priority.
But it can’t go on forever.
We need to use the strength from that rest to take some steps to overcome this and that means us coming into the presence of the Lord.
Ultimately, for us to truly defeat depression, we need to have the Lord in our life.
James 4:8 tells us to “Come near to God and he will come near to you.”
Now for some who have never trusted Jesus as your Savior, this means receiving Him, believing in Jesus as God in the flesh, the Son of God, the One who died for your sins and rose again to life and now offers forgiveness of your sins.
When we believe in Him and receive Him as our Savior, we have the presence of the Lord indwell us through His Spirit.
Ephesians 1:13-14
13 And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, 14 who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession-to the praise of his glory.
So if you have never consciously received Jesus as your Savior, that is absolutely the first step. You need to have the indwelling presence of God in your life.
We will have a chance to do that at the end of the message.
But is that it?
If we are a Christian and have Jesus in our life, will we not be depressed?
No.
There are times that for even the believer in Jesus Christ, that we not only need God’s indwelling presence, but His empowering presence.
And while His indwelling presence will never leave us once we have trusted Jesus as our Savior, there are times in our life when we need the empowering presence of the Lord in our life.
We see this for the disciples as well.
After Pentecost, when they had already received the indwelling presence of the Spirit, we see them be filled with the empowering presence of the Spirit.
When the persecution of Christians was beginning from the Jews, the early Christians prayed for God’s power to work through them.
And in Acts 4:31 it says, “After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly.”
We need the empowering presence of the Lord to Defeat Depression.
This is what Elijah needed too.
How do we spiritually connect with the Lord to receive this empowering presence?
Often we think that this is going to be some huge experiential movement of God.
I will tell you that it is not.
I totally disagree with those who believe that this would mean being slain in the Spirit.
Or that there will be some visibly physical effects in a person’s body when they are being empowered by the Spirit of God.
More likely it is going to be in the ordinary.
Look at 1 Kings 19:11b-13a
Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. 12 After the earthquake came a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. 13 When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.
The Lord was not in any of the mighty and physically experiential phenomena.
He was in the gentle whisper, the still small voice.
We are going to hear that still small voice in the ordinary ways we hear Him now, through reading the Bible, through prayer, through worship, and through fellowship.
In Acts 4, it says they were praying when they were empowered to preach the word boldly.
With Elijah, it is through the word of God that he connects to His empowering presence to defeat this depression and continue on living the life God gave him.
So once we have cared for ourselves physically, we need to verbalize the problem and come into the presence of the Lord and by reading and praying and worshiping and fellowshipping.
Now those last 2 things we spoke about
Verbally expressing yourself and
Spiritually connecting to the Lord
Will probably be happening at the same time.
Physically caring for yourself will almost always be the first thing you need to do.
Now the last two things I am going to talk about are not necessarily in order either. They could be at the same time as well, but the next thing we see in the text if we are going to defeat depression in our life is to
Obediently follow His Leading
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1 Kings 19:15-17
The Lord give Elijah some things to do. Go anoint 2 kings and Elisha as the next prophet to eventually succeed you.
I believe one of the things that will always help us to defeat depression is purpose.
The Lord gives us purpose to continue on.
As the Lord leads us through His word and through prayer, He will give us purpose.
We need to follow his purpose.
We need to trust that in his strength and power, even in our weakness, the Lord will work through us.
But at the same time he is telling you what He wants you to do, He may be correcting some false thinking you have.
When that happens
You need to
Rationally receive the Truth
Slide
1 Kings 19:18
18 Yet I reserve seven thousand in Israel-all whose knees have not bowed down to Baal and all whose mouths have not kissed him."
Do you remember when Elijah verbalized the problem?
One of the things that he said was he was the only one left.
God corrects this false thinking by telling him the truth.
Often it is a truth we already know, but Satan has clouded our thinking that we are only seeing the lies.
Elijah should have known he was not the only one left anyway.
He knew that there were at least 100 other prophets of the Lord.
When he went to confront Ahab, Obadiah told him he had hid 100 of God’s prophets.
1 Kings 18:13
13 Haven’t you heard, my lord, what I did while Jezebel was killing the prophets of the LORD? I hid a hundred of the LORD’s prophets in two caves, fifty in each, and supplied them with food and water.
But so often, even though we have known the truth, we get deceived by the evil one into believing falsehoods and lies.
After we have connected to the Lord we need to receive the truth to correct our false thinking.
Elijah received this truth, obediently followed the Lord’s leading and defeated the depression that had incapacitated him and stopped him from living the full life.
Application
Is depression incapacitating you from living life?
When I arrived in my office on Tuesday, it certainly was incapacitating me.
I was sitting in my chair and I started talking to God, verbally expressing the problem.
Lord, I feel worthless in what you have called me to do.
There were a couple things right in front of me that made me feel like a failure in ministry.
I began praying and asking what am I and the church really all about.
It didn’t seem like I was being very effective and I wasn’t recognizing the life transformation that I thought should be going on in some people’s lives.
This was a continuation of verbalizing the problem.
I certainly don’t want to lead a church into just having a new facility and having more people without seeing people’s lives transformed by the Lord.
Now the reality is that there really is good things happening in people’s lives, but in that moment, I could not see it.
I wasn’t thinking about all of the people stepping up to serve in Awana
I wasn’t thinking about the record number of people that were signing up to be part of a Connection group where they could be growing in their relationship with the Lord.
I wasn’t even thinking about my own life and the multiple others that the Lord was growing through this sermon series we have been doing.
I was believing the lie of Satan that nothing was happening, therefore I was worthless.
But as I was expressing this problem and praying I knew I needed to be in God’s word, so I figured I should just read the about the next person I planned on talking about in this
Series – Elijah.
And as I began reading about just the things I was experiencing, I realized that God was speaking to me through His word and showing me He cared about me and for me.
It was in those moments, that God also revealed 2 truths to me.
1. There were some good things going on in the church that were helping transform people’s lives.
2. Life transformation is not my responsibility, it is God’s. My responsibility is to be faithful in following Him regardless of what is happening.
God’s presence and His truth, nearly miraculously lifted me out of the pit of depression I was experiencing and strengthened me to live on and defeat the depression that was incapacitating me.
David wrote in Psalm 40:1-3
I waited patiently for the LORD; he turned to me and heard my cry.
2 He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire;
he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand.
3 He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God.
That is just what the Lord did for me.
That is what the Lord wants to do for you.
If you are here today and are feeling depressed, I want you to leave here today with hope.
The Lord cares about you and wants to help you defeat depression, just like He helped Elijah defeat his depression, just like He helped me.
First, you may need to just take some time and rest and care for yourself physically. Then verbalize the problem to the Lord and enter into His presence, connect with Him.
Then follow His leading and hear the truth of the situation.
The truth is that God loves you and cares about you and has a purpose for you.
This morning, if you have never consciously received Jesus as your Savior, I want to encourage you to receive Him as your Savior so you can have His indwelling presence and experience his empowering presence as well.
To receive Jesus, you need to
recognize your need because you are a sinner,
recognize Jesus as the Christ, God in the flesh,
Believe in His death for your sins and his resurrection for your life
And confess that to God.
Romans 10:9 says, “That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
If you would like to receive Him now, express your hearts belief in prayer with me now.
Pray.
