Well, good morning. Is anybody dealing with the winter blues? Anybody at all? Be honest. Of course you are. Because it’s January, there is snow on the ground, it’s cold out there, and the Steelers are not going to be in the Super Bowl. We all experience the winter blues, but if you’re someone who experiences this ugly thing that we call depression, the winter blues can easily roll into the springtime blues, the summer blues, and even the fall blues. In other words, if you deal with depression, the blues can be an ongoing cycle of life that is very difficult to break free of. What we are going to do today, we are actually going to break free from talking about our four core values of worship, discipleship, outreach, community, and we are going to tackle this tough topic of depression. Hopefully, by the end of the sermon, you may see that some of the solution has to do with the four core values.
Anyway, before we get started looking at some scripture about depression, let’s see if we can come up with a definition of depression. This is right out of Webster’s Dictionary. It says “Depression- A psychotic 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.” I think that is a pretty good, well-rounded definition of depression, but it doesn’t really address the causes and the duration of depression that many people experience. Some of you know that depression can be caused by a variety of reasons. There is this thing called post-partum depression, which is also known as the baby blues. You might be experiencing in grief by loss of a loved one. Maybe you experience depression because of a job loss or some sort of a lifestyle-type change. Or maybe you experience depression because of a health situation or possibly even a biological situation, a hereditary-type thing. The bottom line is you can experience depression for a variety of reasons. The duration can be as short as a day or so to up to years at a time. A lot of people struggle with this thing called depression, especially in America. I was reading some statistics about depression, and apparently, 5-10% of Americans have experienced some form of major depression, also known as clinical depression, in their lives. And that approximately 15% of Americans are currently on some form of anti-depressant drugs. That is a lot of people.
No one is immune to depression. There is no one demographic that has not been affected by depression. Obviously, you have depression in adults. You have depression in teens. You have depression in the elderly. Even now they are finding depression in children. There is no social status that is immune from depression. The rich and the poor, even celebrities. I was doing some research and I found out that a ton of celebrities and even politicians deal with depression. Names like Harrison Ford, Oprah Winfrey, Dolly Parton, Ashley Judd, Jim Carrey, Winston Churchill, Boris Yeltsin, even Abe Lincoln have at one time or another struggled with depression, which also kind of debunks the idea that, if you’re depressed, you can’t be productive. See I would say that a lot of depressed people are very productive. Because when that cloud finally lifts up, you are going to work, you are going to make up for lost time. So you become very productive.
Anyway, as common as this thing depression is, it still has a stigma attached to it, especially in Christian circles doesn’t it? Some would suggest that a Christian should never get depressed. We are supposed to be happy. Some would even suggest that sin would be associated with depression or, at a minimum, lack of faith. After all, there is no place in the bible that uses the word depression. But if anybody has read the bible and you look back at the story of the saints the patriarchs, you would see that they were sure exhibiting the symptoms of depression. Think about King David. Think about the Psalms. If you read through the Psalms, you can’t help but see that, man, that guy had some low times. Think about Moses. Think about someone like Jonah. We studied Jonah last week. Jonah, I think, was experiencing depression. Other prophets like Jeremiah. One of my favorite stories of a prophet who was dealing with depression is the prophet Elijah. You may know back in 1 Kings that it tells the story of Elijah. He was a man of God. He decided he was going to go up against King Ahab and his 400 prophets of Baal. It was basically a competition to see whose god was bigger. Basically, God showed himself to Elijah. Elijah won the match. Then what happened to Elijah? Immediately he got afraid because Jezebel heard about it, and she was going after him. So this joy, this sense of victory, turned to despair and fear, and he ended up running into the desert. 1 Kings talks about this. It says, “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.’ Then he lay down under the tree and fell asleep.” (1 Kings 19:4-5) This is the language of depression. I want to die. A little bit of insecurity in there. I am no better than my ancestors, and I want to sleep. That is a symptom of being depressed. The desire to continue to sleep in the middle of the day.
We see that happening in the Bible, even in the New Testament. Think about the Apostle Paul. Some of you know that the Apostle Paul was said to have a thorn in his side. That thorn was never identified but scholars believe it was some sort of an affliction, possibly the affliction was depression, that Paul was a depressed person. To be honest, he had reason to be depressed at times. He was on these missionary journeys, and he is dealing with churches that are just filled with people that don’t want to follow Christ, and they are causing trouble and divisions. He is being persecuted outside from different sources. Sure, he is going to feel down. You see that language of depression especially in his letters, like 2 Corinthians 1:8-9, “We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death.” (2 Corinthians 1:8-9) That is the language of depression, isn’t it? If you had heard somebody speak like that today, you would be calling up Western Psych and say get over here and get this guy because he is about to kill himself, wouldn’t you?
My point is that even the greatest saints, the people in the Bible that we hold up to be the saints of the Old and the New Testament, they dealt with this depression in a very real way. So, consequently, it would make sense that even today Christians would have to deal with this thing called depression. A lot of people deal with it, a lot of Christians deal with it. I was doing a little research and I thought, for fun, what I would do I would put a little post on our church Facebook page, and I just posed the question, “Is anybody here struggling with depression or know anybody who is?” and I got a whole list of comments. I got a lot of people that were looking at it but weren’t commenting, but I think they were agreeing with what was going on there. The thing was, it was all women. All women. So there are people within this congregation who are dealing with depression and are willing to talk about it.So at this time, what I would like to do is have a person in our congregation, her name is Jessica, I am going to have Jessica come up and kind of share her personal story about depression, how it came about, what she experiences when she is in the midst of depression, and what she does to cope with it.
Jessica: What I wanted to explain real quick, like Chuck mentioned, there are different kinds of depression. The one that I personally have, I was officially diagnosed when I was about 21, so about six years ago when I was in college, and I don’t want to say my struggles are worse than anyone else, but I probably have the worst kind. I have the clinical depression. The depression that is the chemical imbalance in your brain, physical causes, things that have nothing to do with what you say. It took me a while, but I had to admit that none of it was actually my fault. It was all physical. So you can be having the best day of your life and pause for one second and then your brain decides, okay I’m done, and you feel like sitting, not talking. I think one of the weirder experiences that I had because of this is that, I mean I’m normally an extremely social person, I love being around people. I am an extreme extrovert, okay. It’s not hard to figure out, but I could be in midsentence talking to someone or even talking to a crowd, and like I said, my thoughts are like, oh you’re done, and I feel like I can’t even finish the sentence. I forget what I’m saying. I forget what I’m talking about. I kind of have to restart, like to a jump to my head to try and figure it out. People can mistake it for being uninterested, something being seriously wrong, me not wanting to be there anymore, like that you could have said something to upset me. It has nothing to do with you guys or anybody I run into. It is very random when the chemicals, the norepinephrine and the serotonin, decide that they want to stop working or they are not going to connect the way they want to. I want you guys to know more than anything that there are ways to deal with it. Some of my ways are very generic that will be very useful to you and some are very specific to me but what has really helped me. You know in the beginning I was very angry, very numb. I was like, God, why is this happening to me? There has to be a reason. I was angry at Him for a little while, but I realized that one of the best things you can do is pray to Him even when you don’t feel like it. It doesn’t matter if you are numb, if you are ticked off, if you feel nauseous, if you’re confused and thoughts don’t even happen in sentences anymore, they are just random words, or if you’re completely exhausted. God can handle it. He can handle you cussing him out, I promise. I’ve done it; I am still alive, okay. So I want you guys to know that that is one of the first things you have to do is that the enemy may not have put you together and caused your body chemistry, but he uses that depression, he uses that condition against you. So if you are praying and letting God move and letting God in, then that is one less thing you have to worry about because he cannot be there any longer. He has no choice, he has to leave. Secondly, what I want you guys to know is whether you are introverted, whether you hate being around people even when you are not depressed or whether you love being around them, do not deal with this alone, ever. Don’t ever think that you are doing something wrong. Do not think that you are a failure. Do not think that you caused this or that because you are a believer you can’t let other people know because they will look down on you or make fun of you. If anyone does look down on you or make fun of you, they don’t know what they are talking about, and you shouldn’t listen to them. Okay? It may hurt for a little bit but then brush it off and, heck, pray for them because there is something wrong with their thinking. Some key lies that you really want to fight against are lies that the enemy will tell you that you are a failure because you are unproductive and falling asleep and not getting everything done so that there is something wrong with you. Don’t believe that. Don’t believe that no one will want to listen to you. Yes, every once in a while, you’ll run into a very jerky person who doesn’t know how to respond to you and doesn’t know how to handle you, but if you find the right people, if you find the real people of God, they will be willing to listen more than you think. I sent out a Facebook email to 40-50 some people that I knew back home and here out of desperation because I was getting to the point where I was getting so depressed and in so much pain that I would go a whole week without taking a shower. I would maybe eat once a day or the next day I would eat six times a day. Nothing was regular. Nothing was working out. Nothing felt good. Nothing would help. So I finally reached out and the response I got, heck, within an hour, was incredible from this church. I have a Bible verse for you guys. I have plenty more for you to look up if you want to come to me after the service, whether you want them for a friend or whether you want them for yourself. I have more chapters for you to study on your own, but the one I really want to read is from Isaiah 40:27-30, “Why do you say, Israel, my way is hidden from the Lord; my cause is disregarded by my God. Do you not know and have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God. The creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and His understanding no one can fathom. He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall, but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles, and they will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not be faint.” For someone like me, and I know I am not the only one, whether it is temporary or long-term, who have to push just to live, the thought of being able to run without getting tired is a very inviting feeling. So no matter what, go to God, and he is going to take care of it, even if it takes a while. Try and trust me. Thanks guys.
I really appreciate Jessica’s willingness to share because she put a face on depression. A lot of times it’s easier to talk about something you don’t see a face attached to it, so you really don’t have an interest in it. You don’t have care. You don’t have concern. As I implied, a large percentage of people, a large percentage of Christians, are currently dealing with depression. If statistics are right, I would say that within this congregation there are a good 45-50 people that are currently on some form of anti-depressants. That they are dealing with some form of depression, including me. I think I might have shared before that I have struggled with depression for probably about 30 years. Not to the degree that Jessie has. Mine has been mild but consistent. It is kind of these up and down patterns that I haven’t been able to really pinpoint what it is. Originally, when I lived out in the Pacific Northwest for 20 years, I think it was weather-related. Out there in the Pacific Northwest, the sun doesn’t come out a lot. So I think I was experiencing a lot of depression. I knew it back then. But there are other things that contributed to it. Personality types. I tend to be more of a melancholy type so they are more prone to depression. It’s situational. Obviously, being a pastor, I have a lot of things that weigh heavy on me. But to be honest, I honestly say, that being able to identify with depression has made me a better pastor. I think it’s made me a better preacher because a lot of the sermons that I get come from down in the depths. If I just always lived up here and could never get down there, I would not be able to relate to the things that some of you people are going through. So I am saying there is a benefit to it. There is a little bit of a benefit to being depressed, but I say that all the while knowing that as a man, I don’t like sharing that. Because there is still this stigma of shame especially for men. Because men are supposed to be the strong guys. We are supposed to be able to handle anything. We are supposed to be able to deal with these problems head on. That is a nice thought, but as Jessie said, depression is not something that you control, at least the initial onslaught. You are going along and all of a sudden something happens. Somebody I was reading about compared it to your brain suddenly being hijacked. You’re going along and everything is fine and all of a sudden your brain is gone. You don’t even know how you got there. So what I think people that struggle with any sort of a mental illness or depression want people to know is they don’t want your pity. They want your understanding. They want you to get it. We have been doing a lot of work with Allegheny Behavioral Health for some time and we have done some mental health workshops. In the near future, I think in March, Matt at The Shepherd’s Door, he is going to put together what he calls Mental Health First Aid. It is a workshop to help educate the public on the myths of mental illness or mental health and how to respond to people that are dealing it. Matt will have some more information in a few weeks on that.
The question we have now is how do we deal with it. How should Christians deal with this idea of depression? Before we look into how Christians should deal with it, let’s just revisit how the secular world deals with it. Basically, they deal with it in three ways. Jessie has already kind of alluded to some of them. You have medical treatment, also known as meds, Psychological treatment, and what’s called Complementary treatment. The meds is self-described. Basically, it’s medicine. I am amazed at how many anti-depressants are on the market. I read a statistic, I don’t know if it’s true or not, apparently American people spend 12 billion dollars on anti-depressants every year, 12 billion dollars. Even if it is off a million or so that’s a lot. That is a lot of meds. The second way they deal with depression is through psychological treatment. It involves things like counseling. It involves this thing called CBT, which is cognitive behavioral treatment, something like therapy, which basically involves changing your thought patterns. And then there is a third way called complementary treatments, which is all the other ways that you want to deal with depression such as lifestyle changes, do more exercise, eat right, drink less coffee, or possibly some herbal-type things that you can get.
But what is missing here, as Matt pointed out when he sent these over to me, the spiritual element. There is no spiritual component. There is no faith treatment going on here. So what I think happens in the world is you have counselors, doctors, whatever it is, and they are out there looking at the people that come in their office as basically just walking brains. You walk in and their goal is to fix your brain. To fix whatever is going on in there. They are not thinking about the spiritual component. As Christians, we know that there is a spiritual aspect to our being. We are not just body and brain. We have a soul. We have a spirit. Consequently, there is a spiritual element to depression. In fact, the word depression, I looked it up. It started back in the 14th century. It meant a depressed spirit. A pressing down of the spirit. So if there is a spiritual element, to be honest, it would make sense for Christians anyway, that they would occasionally be depressed because we are living in a fallen, broken world, and we see how bad things are getting. It would be natural that our spirits would be pressed down. In fact, I heard somebody say it’s surprising that there are not more people depressed. I’ve also heard somebody say that, you know what, depressed people actually live in reality because they understand how bad things are. The people that are always going around that are always bubbly, always happy, they are in denial. The world is a depressing place. Turn on the news. You see it. If there is a spiritual component involved, the answer is not more drugs. It’s more God. Can we get an Amen? Amen.
Having said that, I want everybody’s attention because I don’t want emails or blue cards written to me. Chuck is not saying stop your meds. Repeat after me: Chuck is not saying stop your meds. One more time. Chuck is not saying stop your meds. But what I am saying is include God in your treatment plan. Now I am not a doctor of medicine, a doctor of psychology. Someone called me a doctor of the soul one time. I’ll take that. But I cannot explain what is going on in a brain of a depressed person. I’ve got an idea, as Jessie alluded to, it’s got something to do with this imbalance in your brain. I’d try to explain it but you’ve got these nerve endings or whatever in your brain and then you’ve got messages that go back and forth and the serotonin is what brings the message from one side to the other. Those messages I guess are the happy thoughts. I don’t know what they are but when there is a low quantity of serotonin in your brain, the happy thoughts can’t get to the other side and so the brain is sad. That is basically what is going on, isn’t it? So the answer is more serotonin, right? More drugs. So you take the drugs, you run for the medicine cabinet, you get it, and pretty soon the brain is happy again. And everybody else is happy around you because now you are in a good mood again and even the drug companies are happy because you just upped their profits for the quarter. Isn’t that awesome? Everybody’s happy. Now hear me out. I’m not saying that medication is not important in some cases, especially when you are dealing with major clinical depression. Hear me out, but listen to this. Is it possible that God created us in a way that maybe occasionally we are supposed to have a little shortage of serotonin because he wants us to feel sad, even that he wants us to feel depressed? So what happens, if you’re used to always going to get the drugs the minute you are sad, you miss out on what God is trying to say to you. Maybe he is trying to teach you something. What happens when you go to the drugs, you are masking over the real problem which often has a root in the spiritual. Do you see what I’m saying? It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out. Go back and read the Bible. It talks about King David when he wrote the Psalms. Think about when he wrote the Psalms. Psalm 51 about Bathsheba and his sins with Bathsheba. So he starts to write this Psalm and he goes to the medicine cabinet and pops some Zoloft. What would the Psalm look like? There would be no remorse. It would be flat. It would be dry. It would be nothing, and you wouldn’t get the benefit of that Psalm. Think of the Apostle Paul. Paul is out in the mission field, and he is experiencing every form of pressure and persecution imaginable. God could have dealt with it. He could have just popped down some Cymbalta or whatever and said here take this, you’ll feel better Paul. No, he wanted Paul to experience the pain because he wanted us to see the connection between persecution and faith. What about Jesus? If you know your Gospels, you know that Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane. He was in there and he was in such agony that he sweated blood. If he took medication of any sort, we would never know what Christ went through before he went on that cross. Sadness is okay. Occasional sadness and even depression is okay. What I am saying is there is a spiritual element to depression and that medicine simply often masks over that.
So how does a Christian deal with it? Really, it’s quite easy. I am going to give you four quick ideas that Jessie already kind of implied. The first one is spend time in worship. Now I know this sounds so easy, but really if you think about it, the last thing somebody wants to do that is going through a bout of depression is praise anybody, let alone God. Lying in bed and your first thought is I’m going to get up and just sing to Jesus. It’s not, but if you think about it, it should be the first thing you do. We have precedent in God’s word. In fact, the guy Job. Everybody knows the story about Job. He was the one who had all these kids, ten kids, and cattle and sheep and all this land, and God said to Satan, hey have you ever considered Job? You can’t mess with his mind. And Satan said well watch me. He destroyed everything. He destroyed his home, his kids, his shelter, everything. Instead of going to the medicine cabinet, he went to his knees. It said, “Job fell to the ground in worship and said: ᾿Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised.” (Job 1:20-21) You can’t get any worse than what Job was experiencing. His response was not to pop the pills. It was to drop to his knees. That’s what it was. So again, we have to think about our first response is usually opposite of what we are feeling like doing. What is it about praise and worship that lifts us up? Well, it’s simple because all of our problems are down at this level. All of our problems that have to do with the people around us, the circumstances around us, the things we don’t have and the things we’re told we should have, whatever it is. When we start lifting our eyes up above this level, everything comes into perspective. David writes in Psalm 121, “I lift up my eyes to the hills-where does my help come from? My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth.” (Psalm 121:1-2) That is the answer right there. Lift your eyes up. Get your eyes off the worldly problems. That is the first thing; spend time in worship.
The second thing is discipline your mind. As Jessie implied, when you get depressed, there is something that grips your mind. Your mind is hijacked, so you have to figure out, how do I hijack it back? You know it is eventually going to happen if it’s happened before, so you have to be prepared to deal with it. The way you get prepared when your mind is being hijacked is to know the word of God. What is happening when your mind is in hijack mode is all this stinking thinking starts happening and you start to cycle. I’m no good, and I don’t do this, and I don’t do that. You keep going around in a circle of despair. There is a scholar, N.T. Wright, who writes about this. He says, speaking of depression, “Depression is what happens when one particular clutch of fears gets together in a circle. It forces us to go round and round the circle worrying about one thing, which leads us to blame ourselves for the next thing, which leads us to be anxious about the third thing, which takes us completely back to the start of the circle and round we go again.” – N.T. Wright. Anybody relate to that? He goes on to say, “One of the key features of depression is that we put ourselves on trial, produce lots of evidence for the prosecution and none for the defense, find ourselves guilty, and pronounce sentence.” – N.T. Wright. Isn’t that right? We get all these condemning thoughts. These thoughts of condemnation. That is why you need to know the word of God. You need to have it in your heart. You need to have it in your mind so when you are beginning to feel those thoughts of condemnation, you begin to use them against the lies that are being fed to you. That is why a passage that I always hold dear is Romans 8:1 “There is no condemnation for those that are in Christ Jesus.” If you are dealing with issues of your past. If you are reminded about your past failures. Think about 2 Corinthians. I think it is 5:17. It says “If anybody is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old is gone. The new has come.” You need to know the word of God. That becomes your tool against the lies that are being thrown at you. Sometimes you need to discipline your mind because some of the things that you are thinking actually you have originated. You know the story of Jonah. At the end of the story, Jonah is at this tree, and he is being very depressed and angry. He is angry at God because all the Ninevites turned to God. He was mad because he didn’t like the Ninevites. So he was moping out around the tree. He had an attitude that God had to deal with. And God didn’t say, here, take your Zoloft today. He was walking outside God’s will and sometimes God will allow you to be depressed when you are walking outside of God’s will. He is really going to allow you to be depressed when you are in the middle of sin, and you know it, and you’re not doing anything about it. We say, oh we’re depressed; I don’t know what’s bothering me. Well, examine your life. Is there something you’re doing in your life that is inconsistent in your life? Whether it is in an inappropriate relationship. Whether it’s an addiction. Whether it’s hanging around people you shouldn’t be hanging around with. If you spend some time, God will reveal it to you, but you’ve got to let him reveal it to you. In fact, the passage that David wrote is Psalm 139. He says “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” (Psalm 139:23-24) In other words, reveal to me this area of sin because I don’t like living like this. I don’t like being depressed because of my sin. Again, I am not saying that depression is a sin, but what I am saying is that sin can cause depression. You get the difference? Depression is not a sin, but your sin can cause you depression. I would say that there are a number of people in here that are depressed because they are not living according to the will of God, and they are living in a clear violation of God’s word.
Again, we talk about spending time in worship, disciplining our mind, and the third thing is reach out to others. If you’ve ever been depressed, when you are in your mode, who are you thinking about? Yourself. You’re in your own little world. Your own little pity party and all the planets are revolving around you, and you are thinking about me, me, me. How bad my life is. My life sucks. He is saying think outside of yourself. And the way you do that is by going out and serving someone. Going out and being involved and helping somebody that may be less fortunate than you. This is in line with what the secular counselors tell you. When I was doing my research, I came across a page called thirdage and the author writes “When you volunteer or do something for someone less fortunate, your whole sense of well-being is enhanced. Check out the nearest church soup kitchen or go all out and sign up for a volunteer vacation.” Source: thirdage.com. They are telling us to do what I have been telling you to do all along. Go out and serve somebody. They even have a term for it. I think it is this helping high. The good feeling that you get when you help somebody else. We know why we get the good feeling because that is what we are supposed to do; love God and love others. They are just telling you the same thing. You have to be willing to get out of your comfort zone and serve others. Get out of yourself.
The last thing you need to do is participate in the community. One thing that is clear, when you are down and having your bad day and you’re in the middle of your deep depression, just like worship, the last thing you want to do is be around people. Right? You don’t want to be around people. I know there are people not here today because they are in the dumps. I can tell you when somebody isn’t here for several weeks, there is nothing going on other than their in a depressed mode. That’s all it is. They’re not traveling. They are just in a funk. Because they are in a funk, they don’t want to be around anybody because they know they have to act a certain way or they have to act happy or whatever, and that is the problem with the church. Everybody’s got to act nice and happy all the time. Again, what rulebook says that? So you have to be willing to participate in community. Why? Because if you go back to the definition, you know that a key part of depression is a feeling of hopelessness. So when you are feeling hopeless, where do you go? You go to the place that provides hope, which is the church. The church is the body of Christ on earth, which means when you come in those front doors, if it is a spirit-filled church, your spirit should begin to rise. It should rise, and we design our service so when you come in slowly with that music, your spirit should be lifted up. You get to the sermon and you should be feeling uplifted. You get to the sacrament; you are being uplifted by that. The whole service is designed to give you a sense of hope. There is nowhere out in the world that anybody in the world that is dealing with depression can go to deal with hopelessness but the church. So you are blessed to have this church. If you ignore the church community, you’ve got no one to blame but yourself. You need to get out. You need to be with the people who love you, accept you no matter what you look like, no matter what mood you are in, and I believe this is a church that does that.
As we think about it, once again, what is it that it requires to get out of depression for a Christian? It is spending time in worship. It’s the willingness to discipline the mind. To reach out to others and participate in community. As I thought about that, and hopefully you’re paying attention, there is kind of a connection between what I just said and those values. When you think about the four values think about what I just said, spend time in worship, discipline your mind, reach out, outreach, participate in community. I know some of you are thinking, well, Chuck you worked that out pretty good didn’t you? To be honest, this is totally honest, when I knew this was the fifth Sunday and I wasn’t going to preach on the values because we only have four values, so once in a while a fifth Sunday falls in our calendar, I say what am I going to preach on? We were going through the Jonah study and for some reason depression came into my mind. Then I ran into somebody at a hospital the other day, a man that has been struggling with depression for years. I read something else about depression reading a book that was totally unrelated to depression. So it began to weigh hard on me. What I realized was that, you know, okay, it doesn’t connect. There is no connection to the community. But as I sat down and I started penning out the spiritual treatment that gets you out of depression, this is what came up. It really wasn’t contrived. To be honest, it is consistent with what Jessie said, and she didn’t even know what I was going to preach on. So again, this ties real neatly to the core values. I suspect that some of you are saying, well, that’s nice Chuck, but that’s just the simple Christian contrived answer. It’s just a little bit too simple for me. And my response is bunk. You know what’s simple is popping pills. It’s very simple to pop pills. This is the hard stuff. If you don’t believe me, try it. I would say that most people dealing with depression don’t do a very good job on the values.
So I would challenge you, if you are dealing with depression, spend the next 90 days and say I am going to seriously consider what Chuck said. I am going to consider these core values. I am going to be here every Sunday even if I have to tell somebody to call me at 6 o’clock in the morning every Sunday; I’m going to be here. I am going to be here on First Wednesday. I’m going to be here anytime there is an opportunity for prayer. I’m going to be involved in worship. I’m going to discipline my mind. I’m going to focus my mind on memorizing scripture, meditating on scripture, taking it all in so I have it available for me when I need it. I am going to serve others. I am not just going to occasionally greet at the front door or whatever. I am going to find people of need and I am going to go out and reach out and be intentional about meeting the needs of others to see if there is some sort of a helper’s high involved in that. Finally, I am going to be a participant in community. I realize that I need people. I need to be around people. I need to be around the people that can comfort me. I need to be around the people that can encourage me. There is a passage we skipped on by, but it is in Hebrews that says do not ignore the gathering together with other people because those people are the ones that encourage you. That is a paraphrase but basically what he is saying in this time of persecution, in this time of chaos, in this time of a depressed world, a depressed economy, you need the church to be there for you. You need the church to be an encouragement for you.
In closing, God did not design you or anybody to live in darkness. If there is one theme in the Bible, it is the theme of light. Genesis 1:1. In the beginning God said “Let there be light.” In John, we see Jesus saying “I am the light.” In Colossians, I believe it is 1:13, what does he say? He says people that have accepted Christ have been transferred from the dominion of darkness to the kingdom of the Son. We see in 1 Thessalonians that “You are all sons [daughters] of the light and sons [daughters] of the day. We do not belong to the night or to the darkness.” (1 Thessalonians 5:5) Which means don’t buy into it. Don’t buy into the lie that this is the way you are always going to be. Don’t buy into it. Don’t accept that. Fight against that. Take this as your identity. Don’t let depression define you. This is what defines you and begin to live it out in worship, bible study or disciplining the mind, reaching out to others, and participation in community. I guarantee that those winter blues will eventually give way to the springtime joys. You’ll have that springtime joy of knowing that you are now in the presence of God now and forevermore.
Let us pray. Gracious God in heaven, Lord, I thank you for this day. Lord, it is a tough subject. One that, I have to admit, I did not want to preach on. But Lord I just pray that the words I spoke were true. That if there is any falsehood in it, Lord, that you would dismiss it, that you would take it out of the people’s minds, even right now, Lord Jesus. Lord, I pray that if I did speak true that you would take it and you would take those truths and you would let them sink to the very hearts of the people. That the people would know that depression is not something to be ashamed of but is not something that you desire that they stay in. Again, Lord, that you desire us sometimes to be low, to be sad, whatever it is Lord, because oftentimes what you want to do is teach us something about you or teach us something about ourselves and our character. Lord, I pray for each person here, Lord. I pray that they take seriously the challenge. Do not settle for this depressed state, and when they are feeling low to make the effort, to spend more time in worship and praise, more time into your word, more time serving others, and more time in the community that you call the body of Christ. We love you and praise you. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
At this time, I am going to do something that is a little different. I have been feeling that, if I speak on this, there are people in the church, I know there has to be at least 50 people here today that are dealing with some form of depression. So at this time, I invite you to come forward, get on the steps, get on your knees, and just allow somebody to come forward and pray for you. I was worried about doing this because there is a risk. The risk is what if some poor soul comes forward and decides they are going to be open about it, be open about their depression, and nobody comes and prays for them. I thought that would be awful. I don’t think that would happen though, but I realized that the benefit is worth the risk. You see, we need to put a face on these things because until there is a face on it, we don’t even know how to do church. We don’t know how to participate. We don’t know how to really be what I refer to as an authentic community. So I would say, if you are dealing with depression and you know who you are, and I know who a lot of you are, be bold. Take a risk. Come forward and get on your knees and allow people to come and minister. If you are one of those people who have your whole act together and you are never feeling depressed, and you cannot understand it, then come up and pray for the ones that are dealing with it. Demonstrate that you are leaders in the church. Demonstrate that you are the church and that you are willing to step out of your comfort zone and minister to your brothers and sisters who are hurting. Let’s go right now and do it.
