1 Kings 19:1 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.
Elijah had just witnessed some mighty miracles, hadn’t he? He had seen God’s power revealed over the prophets of Baal....he had witnessed the miracle of God sending rain.......he had seen all the prophets of Baal hunted down and killed......he has JUST seen it! I want to speak to you today about a subjct that I believe has been oppressing Christians since the inception of time....and I believe that it is getting worse and worse as we live in these last days. Satan is working overtime and using whatever tools he can to steal Gods people from their true place in Christ! I want to talk to you about depression! It is a touchey, delicate subject....but we need to know how to battle it as Christians!
I know more about this subject than I ever thought I would. My youngest son was diagnosed with severe depression at 14 yrs old. I felt a large responsibility for that depression. There were problems in our home life and I didn’t do what I should have been doing. I will tell you that this is hard for me to speak to.......there are scars inside me.....but I know that God wants us to come to terms and understand how His children need to deal with depression..to realize that everyone deals with it differently...and to try to see how God would have His children deal with it.
Jezebel send Elijah a message, didn’t she? Basically, she swore to kill him! By the next day! WOW! And sometimes we think we suffer for the Gospel.....so what did Elijah do? Just what a lot of us would do...he ran off! Do you ever feel so over-whelmed that you wish you could just take off? Elijah did just that.....but it didn’t help much, did it? Because we see in vs 4 that he finally gave up. The Bible says he sat down under a tree and prayed that he might die. And I think what he said next is something that many say still..."I have had enough, LORD,".....take me on, I’ve HAD it! And then he laid down and went to sleep. I can tell you that excessive sleep is a sure sign of depression.....and that total resignation and giving up is something Satan uses against us. Have you ever advised someone or heard the words "keep the faith?"
This is definitely a case of depression - Elijah’s depression. There is a stigma in the world regarding mental illness; that stigma, is also found in the church. In James 5:17 we read that Elijah "was a man subject to like passions as we are". In other words he had a nature like our own - a human nature. Therefore, if it can happen to him it can happen to us because we have the same nature - human nature. It would seem from the context that Elijah and, of course, every other child of God, never expected this to happen to him. He was taken by surprise by his own actions, by his own way of thinking.
What we must remember at the beginning is that human nature is a unity of soul or spirit, and body. It is clear from the context that Elijah was exhausted - mentally and physically. We don’t read in the earlier chapter that he was eating and we don’t read that he was sleeping. Sometimes the believer is so lifted up by the Spirit in spiritual activity that he or she forgets these things - that we have a body. When the body goes down the mind may fight to stay up, but it cannot fight against what we call ’gravity’ within the human nature. If the body goes down it will drag down the mind with it. The mind begins to experience a loss. Have you ever gone w/o sleep for an extended period or seen someone with sleep deprevation? That person is, as they sometimes say, not himself any more. There is an experience of losing control of the situation, of your own mind, of movement and even of perceptions. It would seem that Elijah’s disappointment and the threat of Jezebel, acted as a trigger upon his already internal state of exhaustion. It was, so to speak, the last straw which tipped the balance.
When a person is depressed they are no longer perceiving things in a rational accustomed manner. We read: "when he saw that..." (v.3). When he saw Jezebel’s threat to himself "he arose and went for his life" (v.3). This was irrational. He had already stood against greater odds than one woman and many threats. They had tried to hunt him down for many years and he stood before them all because he was conscious of standing in the presence of God. But you see how irrational his perception of this threat was: if God had protected him all these years why should he suddenly turn and run now? But he did. Probably as soon as he did, he wondered what he had done. He surprised even himself, you might say.
There may have been, we can not rule it out, there may have been some satanic activity involved. There is a world of unseen evil spirits as well as good spirits. Satan attacks a Christian not only at his weakest point but he will sometimes attack at his strongest point. He will sometimes wait for over-confidence, or he will sometimes wait until the person reaches a state of exhaustion - like Elijah - and then he will attack at the strongest point. Elijah’s strongest point was his faithfulness. He took a stand and now he flees for his life. A great change had occurred in him: he was exhausted and yet look at the activity. A person who is depressed, although they are in a sense exhausted in their body, they are very restless. They look for rest but they can’t find it. Sleeping flees away or they may have a little sleep and waken up very early in the morning and be alert when everyone else is sleeping. So you see, although he was exhausted he was restless and he wanted to get away. These are his actions. Fear can produce energy: the urge to get away from a perceived threat. Yet, the threat was perceived irrationally because God had shown him that He would help him against greater numbers than Jezebel and her threats.
What were his feelings? First of all he was disappointed. He felt all alone, didn’t he? Despite all the applause on Mount Carmel, nothing had changed. He was disappointed; but he was also disappointed in himself. He felt like he had really done something for God and still....nothing had changed. Believe me, that IS depressing! When a person is depressed their desires and perceptions are not rational; they are not in a state to make decisions which are good for themselves. That is also why it is helpful to have other people’s counsel, but he wanted to be alone. And often that’s what we do to deal with depression.and that’s THE wrong thing to do!
It is often the strongest people who come into depression, not the weakest. The strong person tells himself that he has gone through it before and he can go through the pain barrier, or whatever, again. It is rather like driving a car. If you are driving a car and a red light starts flashing on the dashboard, if you stop immediately you will have a minor repair; it wont; take long. But, if it is flashing and you keep going on and on, you are not going to have a minor repair but a major one. And it will take a long time before that major repair is completed. That is why we say that it is often the strongest people who end in depression, because they have the strength to fight against it for longer. Little do they realise they are actually going down more and more into a trough from which they will not be able to extract themselves by their own strength.
Elijah’s strength came from God. That is a rebuke to any who think they can go through this life without depending upon God minute by minute. If we are going to get through this wilderness we have to lean on our Beloved and leaning means continuous leaning. But, you see, sin or unbelief within us will tempt us to say, "I can manage this without God. It is only a small thing. I can use God for the bigger things in life but this little thing, I can manage by myself." That is the beginning of going astray. When the Lord said, "without me ye can do nothing" He meant every word of it.
Elijah wanted to die. He said, "It is enough" (text). In other words he felt he could do no more, that his situation was hopeless. A depressed person is filled with negative thoughts and you see him in his language expressing his hopelessness - "I", "I". He is looking at himself and he sees nothing in himself to bring him any confidence or hope. There is a real connection in the Christian life between hope and devotion to God - strength, motivation. Where there is a lack of hope there is a lack of spiritual motivation. Sometimes we are just afraid to do anything for fear that everything we do ends in failure...and we certainly don’t want another one!
If we are not trusting in God, if we are only looking to ourselves, then we will be cast down. However, it is not a case of saying we will ’snap out of it’. It is not a case even of saying you will pray yourself out of it, or pick yourself up. That is the very thing you cannot do. If you could do it, you would do it.
A person in despair, absolute despair with an absence of hope, cannot live. He or she will take his or her life. Elijah would not; he had not reached despair. He had, however, probably come as close as any Christian could to the edge of it: "take away my life" (text). He felt he was useless, that he had not only disappointed himself but that he had disappointed God and could no longer be used because he had turned away from the Lord’s service: he "sat down under a juniper tree: and he requested for himself that he might die; and said, It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life". The desires, decisions and even prayers of a person who is depressed are irrational. This was the man who would never die but he could not see that. The depressed person is limited by depression to the here and now and to the past. They find it difficult to look beyond their present circumstances, they find it difficult to hope that God can change things; let me die, he says, it is enough. That is a brief description of a Christian in depression - their thinking, feelings, actions and language. Let’s see how the Lord treats his children when they are in a depressed state.
First of all the Lord cared for the body. There in vs 5! Some people would find that unexpected. We are soul and body. God cares for the body and we should care for it too. Our body affects our mental state. Whether it be bodily vitamins, glands or hormones - it does have an effect on our mental state. The Lord’s care, you notice, is always in His wisdom, according to our needs. The primary need that the Lord saw was the need for Elijah’s body to recover strength: to sleep, to eat, to drink.
When a person isn’t sleeping - sleep deprivation - their mind is certainly affected; we need sleep. (Sleep Apnea). Psalms 127:2 says that God grants His beloved sleep! We need sleep...in the right amount (not too much, not too little).
After, the bodily strength was restored - which would affect the mind - Elijah then had the capacity, the strength, to hear what God was going to say. If you talk to a depressed person and they are still in weakness and exhaustion, they will not take in what you say. You are speaking to a person who does not yet have the capacity to act rationally and to respond acceptably to what you say. Indeed, they will not accept what you say because they are so convinced that their perception of things is right. But when they are restored to strength, then God speaks.
Sometimes we speak of therapy as a talking cure. The word ’therapy’ simply means care or treatment. We have spiritually a talking cure in the Bible. Notice that God did not rebuke him. He asked Elijah a question then He did something that we would be wise to follow - He listened. He let Elijah talk about his feelings, thoughts and disappointments. Then He asked him another question and listened again. It is very comforting that the Lord does not cast off His people for their failures. (Whew!)
You can go through periods of isolation and despondency but God can change things. Psalm 30:5 Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning" God can change things and according to Eph 3:20 He can "do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think"
In conclusion, He restores our soul. It is not work we can do, or even believe we can do, but He can do it. God enabled Elijah and He enables us to endure to the end. And it is endure, it is persevere. It means that we continue under something that is a great burden to us.
Statistics tell us that one out of two people who are depressed will have a relapse at sometime and that’s endurance: knowing it will come back perhaps, and when it does you will be cast down again. There is perhaps more comfort the second or the third time because God brought you through it the first time; you have experienced His faithfulness. You have also learned that you need patience because when you come into this condition there is not a quick cure - you need patience. It can take months or even years before you begin to come back up out of the trough. God enables us.
Now then, my friends, if it is so difficult for a Christian to endure depression, what must it be like for those who are without God - for those "having no hope, and without God in the world" For those who are suffering - not only physically but mentally and spiritually, you are not alone! God told Elijah in vs 18 that there are MANY like him.....he wasn’t by himself!
Ps 42:5 Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and 6 my God.
Cast your cares upon Him......Psalms 107:20 He sent forth his word and healed them; he rescued them from the grave.
