Hope. Without Hope I have nothing. Some days, though, Hope seems to have run so far ahead of me that I cannot catch up, I cannot grasp it, and hold on for some assurance and help. But do I have Hope as an abstract concept--"I hope my life gets better and that this despair for living will pass"--or Hope in the sense of having something tangibly realistic for my immediate future in the here and now? Hope, as a noun, is the "longing or desire for something accompanied by the belief in the possibility of its occurrence." This kind of Hope seems uneventful. I do not need a belief in the possibility of an occurrence. I need Hope with substance, assurance, confidence for a certain outcome. "Now faith is the confidence in what we Hope for and assurance about what we do not see" (Heb. 11:1). "I believe, Lord, but help my unbelief" (Mark 9:24).
CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT HOPE
In the happy-clappy, revivalistic, fundamentalist upbringing of my youth (the 1970s and 80s) there was no talk in Church about depression or mental health issues. If you were depressed, and you were a Christian, then there was something wrong with you. Such a person sought for pastoral help, or (God forbid!) the help of a licensed therapist, but being depressed for any length of time was seen, without exaggeration, as a derangement. The Christian was supposed to be "strong in the Lord and in the power of His might" (Eph. 6:10 NKJV), filled with the power of the Holy Spirit (Eph. 5:18), "more than a conqueror" (Rom. 8:37), clad in "the full armor of God" (Eph. 6:11 NASB; cf. Eph. 6:13), protected by Truth, Righteousness, the Gospel, Faith, Salvation and the Word of God (Eph. 6:14, 15, 16). How could such a fearless warrior be depressed?
This brand of toxic Christianity was fitting for that time: moralistic, outwardly righteous, clothed in Sunday's best! But this was the showy and flashy car-salesman-styled Christianity, the insipid Televangelist Christianity for the willingly gullible, the vacuous and inept Charismatic-tinged fundamentalism that was as hollow as the chocolate bunny my parents gave me and my brother on Easter morning before going to our perfect Southern Baptist Church--we were so holy and orthodox. Smiles, decked in new clothes, carrying our King James Bibles, singing those old hymns with fervor, women in hats and their June Cleaver dresses, men in their finest Ward Cleaver suits--and no one had any problems at all in our Leave-It-To-Beaver church. Except that none of this was real. For all the hue and cry that old-timers emote today about the fakery of "Reality" TV, they have forgotten that their culture was no more substantive, because all of us had problems to one degree or another.
CHRISTIANITY AND REALITY
While the Church in the U.S. is far from perfect--as far as it has ever been--one glimmer of Hope is that many genuine believers who have been saved by the grace of God through a gifted faith in the Lord Jesus Christ (Eph. 2:5, 8, 9) are speaking up that, yes, we too can have serious mental health issues and struggle at times with either bouts of or seasons of severe depression. This does not mean that the person is in sin. This does not mean that the person does not possess the indwelling Holy Spirit (John 14:15, 16, 17, 26; 16:13; Rom. 5:5; 8:9, 10, 11, 26; 1 Cor. 3:16; 6:19; 12:13; Gal. 4:6; Eph. 1:13, 14; 4:30; 2 Tim. 1:14). This, obviously, does not mean that the person is unsaved, has forfeited salvation, or is being demonically oppressed / possessed and in need of a proper exorcism. I am not ruling out the oppression of our spiritual enemy: "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms" (Eph. 6:12 NIV); "Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour" (1 Pet. 5:8 NIV). But there is not a devil under every single rock--a devil in every negative circumstance you face in life.
DEPRESSION IS REAL
There can be numerous reasons for someone being depressed for any length of time: biological (physical pain that causes emotional and mental turmoil and severe depression and hopelessness), genetic (inherited traits and predispositions), functional (psychological pain or distress), emotional (with various causes, whether self-caused due to self-hatred, or caused by the behavior of someone else), circumstantial (a traumatic event and its results effecting depression), etc., and there can be help offered by a trained therapist, counselor, or psychiatrist. My own depression is partly genetic, inherited from my mother's side of the family, and partly self-caused and circumstantial (reaping what I sowed, Gal. 6:7, 8, or receiving the consequences of past actions that have heavily limited my options in life). Both sets of causes often work in tandem, alongside each other, one giving life and strength to the other and then alternating the emotional and psychological torture.
Over the last few years, but most especially this year, I don't want to live anymore. I don't mean that I want to die and go to Heaven, where I'm renewed, fixed and finally whole. I mean I don't want to exist. There are days, and weeks, in which I wish that God would cause me to not exist--no consciousness, no dream-state, no existence. I don't want to be knocked out and unconscious. I want to be non-existent. I want to not be and I want this life to continue as if I never existed. I have nothing to live for anyway: no purpose, no goals, no future. All I am doing right now is existing to pay bills--and especially my student loans that are crippling me beyond comprehension. If I have no purpose for living then I'd just as well not live. But I can't make myself non-existent. God doesn't seem willing to help me not be. So, here I am, blogging like a fool.
CALM DOWN
Before you try to contact me, or some Psych Ward, understand that I have no intention of taking my life. I could not do that to my mother, my father, and my brother. Nor could I do that to whomever would be the unlucky one to discover my dead body. Have no fear: I assure everyone that I would never take my life. Moreover, if I did, my student loans would be the responsibility of my parents and that would cripple them financially. So, not only would I crush them with my suicide, but I would also crush them financially. I just could never do that to these people who have loved me unconditionally all of my life--and especially when I caused them social shame when I ruined my life back in 2012. I could not cause them any more shame, any more trauma, than I have already. But what to do about this pain, this depression, this utter despair.
KEEP ON KEEPING ON
Hope. I think the one reason I can get out of bed every morning--and there are mornings that I don't want to get out of bed at all--is that somewhere deep, deep within me there is Hope, even if I don't fully understand what that even means in my life. I was always a very warm, bright, sunny and optimistic boy. I've grown a bit more cynical in my mid-50s, I admit, but there is some kernel of Hope somewhere deep at the core of my humanity and I keep clinging to that Hope--even on days when I'm guessing that Hope is holding on to me rather than vice versa. "I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us" (Rom. 8:18 NIV). I really do believe this because I really do believe the Word of God--and that is a gift of God. Scripture, if you will, gives warrant to Hope. Obviously God my Father, Jesus my Lord and Savior, and the Spirit of God within me is my Hope. The Word of God, though, is the revelation of this Hope.
I keep on keeping on even when I don't feel like keeping on. Lately that has been every single day. I don't feel like keeping on. But this life-giving Word of God prods me: "We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit [2 Cor. 1:22; 5:5; Eph. 1:14], groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for [the final realization of] our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. For in this Hope we were saved. But Hope that is seen is no Hope at all. Who Hopes for what they already have? But if we Hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently" (Rom. 8:22-25 NIV). I have been taught by God's Word that I don't live my life being dominated by my feelings (2 Cor. 5:7)--no matter how intense or seemingly overwhelming they sometimes can be (and I mean quite intense). But just reading that passage in Romans 8 gives me the Hope I need to keep on keeping on.
MY GRACE IS ALL YOU NEED
Don't let anyone make you feel bad, or unspiritual, or unChristian for your depression or grief or sorrow. This life is tragic! This world is not yet as it should be (Rom. 8:20, 21). But God will make all things new one day (Isa. 43:19; 65:17; Rev. 21:5). Life is not what it should be and we are not what we should be. But thank God that one day we will be what God has made us to be in Christ (2 Cor. 5:17, 21; Eph. 2:10)! The day may seem dark but the morning light is on the way (2 Pet. 1:16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21). You may think that sounds rather optimistic for someone who doesn't want to exist. But I'm telling you: this comes not from me, obviously, but from the living and breathing and active and convicting Word of God (2 Tim. 3:16 NIV; Heb. 4:12). When the apostle Paul was suffering, he asked God three times to relieve him of it, but God said no.
God responds to Paul in the midst of his pain: "My grace is sufficient for you" (2 Cor. 12:9). My grace is all you need to punch through to the other side of your depression, your anxiety, your despairing of your life, your failures, your sorrow for the career / ministry / future you lost. My grace is all you need for your grief, your sorrow for your lost loved one, for your turmoil and your constant self-hatred and your haunting trauma. My grace is even enough for the sins you've committed against others, and for those sins of others committed against you, and even those sins you've committed against and toward a holy God! Where sin increased, and increased even more, God's grace increased all the more (Rom. 5:20)! You can't out-sin the grace of God! You can't hate your life more than God loves your very being! If God wants you to live with Him forever, and for evermore, then He will sustain you minute by minute until He brings you to Himself. His grace is all you need.
WHAT ABOUT?
"What about all my failures?" Well, what about them? That's in the past. "The past can so easily haunt us. It is [often] difficult to escape the tentacles of the past, for the past can reach out and destroy the present. ... Often the consequences of the past will still have to be tolerated," and that is what I've been living for the last twelve years, "but the power of the past is eliminated."1 Dr. Ian Markham is right, the power of the past may be eliminated, but the remaining consequences can really be a daily punch in the gut. But, even better, he is right that "God has dealt decisively with the past. God has absorbed our past into the act of God in Christ."2 My sinful and heinous past has been obliterated in Christ!
So why do I keep bringing up the past? How can I still live in the past? Is it just the remaining trauma-inducing consequences of the past that are causing me such grief, depression, and hopelessness? Perhaps, but the past is still a done deal, a page in history. God, however, is the I Am (Exodus 3:14, 15), not the I Was, so He knows nothing about all my failures (Ps. 103:12; Micah 7:19). Pastor John Thorne used to say: "You don't let God down because you don't hold God up!" God knew all about you from eternity past: all the mess, all the tragedy, all the stress; all the sin and all the hypocrisy and all the self-righteousness and all the self-justification and all the worries and all the depression and all the lust and all the laziness and all of the out-of-control spending and all the repetitive sins and all the cussing and all the prayerlessness--He knew it all.
There is nothing He doesn't know--He knows everything (Isa. 46:10). He has known all that can be known from all eternity past. Do you really think that your problems, horrible as they may be sometimes, are still any match for His eternal love, His eternal power, and grace, and mercy, and forgiveness? Do you not understand the tortures of Jesus Christ upon that Cross? Do you not know that, for the first time in history, the Son of God, in and through His human body and in His human nature, understood by experience what being forsaken by God was like because He became sin incarnate (2 Cor. 5:21)? This was done so that God the Father could bring you to Himself (Eph. 1:5 NASB) through God the Son, Jesus Christ (Eph. 1:4 NASB), by the work of God the Holy Spirit (John 3:3, 5, 6, 7, 8; 16:8, 9, 10, 11; Titus 3:5). He did all this, moving Heaven and Earth to get to you personally, out of His own love (John 3:15, 16, 17; 1 John 4:8), in order to secure your redemption, your salvation, your regeneration, your justification, your sanctification, and your glorification (Rom. 8:29, 30). This is real love (1 John 4:10).
SO YOU'RE SAYING I HAVE SOME HOPE?
In my nearly three decades of being in Christ, by the sheer grace of God, I have learned this: You must preach the Gospel to yourself--and I mean often! You have to remind yourself of all that God has done for you, and in you, to help you along this pilgrim journey. You have to learn how to encourage yourself in the Lord (1 Sam. 30:6), and not rely on someone else to do so, and this by diving into the Word of God. You say that it's not easy. No, it isn't easy, and I know that full well! A few days ago I was so depressed that the only prayer I could pray that day was "Lord, I just need you to love me today." That's all I could say. I didn't speak much the entire day. I couldn't. God knew it. He saw me through it. Here I am. But I've learned that if I will just make the smallest effort to open His Word, before I know it, I'm beginning to feel better. I gain a sense of Hope. I begin thinking to myself that I just may survive this life after all--in spite of me, and because of Him, and for His glory.
IN CLOSING
Odd: I actually feel better for having written this. I think that the Holy Spirit perhaps nudged me to write, and in the writing I was driven into the Word, and the Spirit of God used the Word of God to minister to me in the process for the glory of God. That, simply, amazes me.
UPDATE
Two days later, and then on the third day as I write this on a lonely and desparing Sunday evening, and I am deeply depressed, hopeless, and still don't want to exist. So I understand how difficult "preaching the Gospel to yourself" or "preaching yourself happy" is in reality--in everyday life. Sitting on my bed crying, staring at the computer screen typing this out crying, depression and the believer is real, my friends, painstakingly real. I know God is good. I know Jesus saves. I know the Spirit of God dwells within me. I know I am saved solely by the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ by the effectual work of the Holy Spirit. But depression, regret, and hopelessness can still reside within the psyche of someone who, at the same time, trusts that God is good, that Jesus still saves, and the Spirit of God will, somehow and in some way, carry me through these dark days of grace. If you've ever been through this, or if you're in it now, I truly and completely understand.
__________
1 Ian S. Markham, Liturgical Life Principles: How Episcopal Worship Can Lead to Healthy and Authentic Living (New York: Morehouse Publishing, 2009), 19.
2 Ibid., 18.
CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT HOPE
In the happy-clappy, revivalistic, fundamentalist upbringing of my youth (the 1970s and 80s) there was no talk in Church about depression or mental health issues. If you were depressed, and you were a Christian, then there was something wrong with you. Such a person sought for pastoral help, or (God forbid!) the help of a licensed therapist, but being depressed for any length of time was seen, without exaggeration, as a derangement. The Christian was supposed to be "strong in the Lord and in the power of His might" (Eph. 6:10 NKJV), filled with the power of the Holy Spirit (Eph. 5:18), "more than a conqueror" (Rom. 8:37), clad in "the full armor of God" (Eph. 6:11 NASB; cf. Eph. 6:13), protected by Truth, Righteousness, the Gospel, Faith, Salvation and the Word of God (Eph. 6:14, 15, 16). How could such a fearless warrior be depressed?
This brand of toxic Christianity was fitting for that time: moralistic, outwardly righteous, clothed in Sunday's best! But this was the showy and flashy car-salesman-styled Christianity, the insipid Televangelist Christianity for the willingly gullible, the vacuous and inept Charismatic-tinged fundamentalism that was as hollow as the chocolate bunny my parents gave me and my brother on Easter morning before going to our perfect Southern Baptist Church--we were so holy and orthodox. Smiles, decked in new clothes, carrying our King James Bibles, singing those old hymns with fervor, women in hats and their June Cleaver dresses, men in their finest Ward Cleaver suits--and no one had any problems at all in our Leave-It-To-Beaver church. Except that none of this was real. For all the hue and cry that old-timers emote today about the fakery of "Reality" TV, they have forgotten that their culture was no more substantive, because all of us had problems to one degree or another.
CHRISTIANITY AND REALITY
While the Church in the U.S. is far from perfect--as far as it has ever been--one glimmer of Hope is that many genuine believers who have been saved by the grace of God through a gifted faith in the Lord Jesus Christ (Eph. 2:5, 8, 9) are speaking up that, yes, we too can have serious mental health issues and struggle at times with either bouts of or seasons of severe depression. This does not mean that the person is in sin. This does not mean that the person does not possess the indwelling Holy Spirit (John 14:15, 16, 17, 26; 16:13; Rom. 5:5; 8:9, 10, 11, 26; 1 Cor. 3:16; 6:19; 12:13; Gal. 4:6; Eph. 1:13, 14; 4:30; 2 Tim. 1:14). This, obviously, does not mean that the person is unsaved, has forfeited salvation, or is being demonically oppressed / possessed and in need of a proper exorcism. I am not ruling out the oppression of our spiritual enemy: "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms" (Eph. 6:12 NIV); "Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour" (1 Pet. 5:8 NIV). But there is not a devil under every single rock--a devil in every negative circumstance you face in life.
DEPRESSION IS REAL
There can be numerous reasons for someone being depressed for any length of time: biological (physical pain that causes emotional and mental turmoil and severe depression and hopelessness), genetic (inherited traits and predispositions), functional (psychological pain or distress), emotional (with various causes, whether self-caused due to self-hatred, or caused by the behavior of someone else), circumstantial (a traumatic event and its results effecting depression), etc., and there can be help offered by a trained therapist, counselor, or psychiatrist. My own depression is partly genetic, inherited from my mother's side of the family, and partly self-caused and circumstantial (reaping what I sowed, Gal. 6:7, 8, or receiving the consequences of past actions that have heavily limited my options in life). Both sets of causes often work in tandem, alongside each other, one giving life and strength to the other and then alternating the emotional and psychological torture.
Over the last few years, but most especially this year, I don't want to live anymore. I don't mean that I want to die and go to Heaven, where I'm renewed, fixed and finally whole. I mean I don't want to exist. There are days, and weeks, in which I wish that God would cause me to not exist--no consciousness, no dream-state, no existence. I don't want to be knocked out and unconscious. I want to be non-existent. I want to not be and I want this life to continue as if I never existed. I have nothing to live for anyway: no purpose, no goals, no future. All I am doing right now is existing to pay bills--and especially my student loans that are crippling me beyond comprehension. If I have no purpose for living then I'd just as well not live. But I can't make myself non-existent. God doesn't seem willing to help me not be. So, here I am, blogging like a fool.
CALM DOWN
Before you try to contact me, or some Psych Ward, understand that I have no intention of taking my life. I could not do that to my mother, my father, and my brother. Nor could I do that to whomever would be the unlucky one to discover my dead body. Have no fear: I assure everyone that I would never take my life. Moreover, if I did, my student loans would be the responsibility of my parents and that would cripple them financially. So, not only would I crush them with my suicide, but I would also crush them financially. I just could never do that to these people who have loved me unconditionally all of my life--and especially when I caused them social shame when I ruined my life back in 2012. I could not cause them any more shame, any more trauma, than I have already. But what to do about this pain, this depression, this utter despair.
KEEP ON KEEPING ON
Hope. I think the one reason I can get out of bed every morning--and there are mornings that I don't want to get out of bed at all--is that somewhere deep, deep within me there is Hope, even if I don't fully understand what that even means in my life. I was always a very warm, bright, sunny and optimistic boy. I've grown a bit more cynical in my mid-50s, I admit, but there is some kernel of Hope somewhere deep at the core of my humanity and I keep clinging to that Hope--even on days when I'm guessing that Hope is holding on to me rather than vice versa. "I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us" (Rom. 8:18 NIV). I really do believe this because I really do believe the Word of God--and that is a gift of God. Scripture, if you will, gives warrant to Hope. Obviously God my Father, Jesus my Lord and Savior, and the Spirit of God within me is my Hope. The Word of God, though, is the revelation of this Hope.
I keep on keeping on even when I don't feel like keeping on. Lately that has been every single day. I don't feel like keeping on. But this life-giving Word of God prods me: "We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit [2 Cor. 1:22; 5:5; Eph. 1:14], groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for [the final realization of] our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. For in this Hope we were saved. But Hope that is seen is no Hope at all. Who Hopes for what they already have? But if we Hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently" (Rom. 8:22-25 NIV). I have been taught by God's Word that I don't live my life being dominated by my feelings (2 Cor. 5:7)--no matter how intense or seemingly overwhelming they sometimes can be (and I mean quite intense). But just reading that passage in Romans 8 gives me the Hope I need to keep on keeping on.
MY GRACE IS ALL YOU NEED
Don't let anyone make you feel bad, or unspiritual, or unChristian for your depression or grief or sorrow. This life is tragic! This world is not yet as it should be (Rom. 8:20, 21). But God will make all things new one day (Isa. 43:19; 65:17; Rev. 21:5). Life is not what it should be and we are not what we should be. But thank God that one day we will be what God has made us to be in Christ (2 Cor. 5:17, 21; Eph. 2:10)! The day may seem dark but the morning light is on the way (2 Pet. 1:16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21). You may think that sounds rather optimistic for someone who doesn't want to exist. But I'm telling you: this comes not from me, obviously, but from the living and breathing and active and convicting Word of God (2 Tim. 3:16 NIV; Heb. 4:12). When the apostle Paul was suffering, he asked God three times to relieve him of it, but God said no.
God responds to Paul in the midst of his pain: "My grace is sufficient for you" (2 Cor. 12:9). My grace is all you need to punch through to the other side of your depression, your anxiety, your despairing of your life, your failures, your sorrow for the career / ministry / future you lost. My grace is all you need for your grief, your sorrow for your lost loved one, for your turmoil and your constant self-hatred and your haunting trauma. My grace is even enough for the sins you've committed against others, and for those sins of others committed against you, and even those sins you've committed against and toward a holy God! Where sin increased, and increased even more, God's grace increased all the more (Rom. 5:20)! You can't out-sin the grace of God! You can't hate your life more than God loves your very being! If God wants you to live with Him forever, and for evermore, then He will sustain you minute by minute until He brings you to Himself. His grace is all you need.
WHAT ABOUT?
"What about all my failures?" Well, what about them? That's in the past. "The past can so easily haunt us. It is [often] difficult to escape the tentacles of the past, for the past can reach out and destroy the present. ... Often the consequences of the past will still have to be tolerated," and that is what I've been living for the last twelve years, "but the power of the past is eliminated."1 Dr. Ian Markham is right, the power of the past may be eliminated, but the remaining consequences can really be a daily punch in the gut. But, even better, he is right that "God has dealt decisively with the past. God has absorbed our past into the act of God in Christ."2 My sinful and heinous past has been obliterated in Christ!
So why do I keep bringing up the past? How can I still live in the past? Is it just the remaining trauma-inducing consequences of the past that are causing me such grief, depression, and hopelessness? Perhaps, but the past is still a done deal, a page in history. God, however, is the I Am (Exodus 3:14, 15), not the I Was, so He knows nothing about all my failures (Ps. 103:12; Micah 7:19). Pastor John Thorne used to say: "You don't let God down because you don't hold God up!" God knew all about you from eternity past: all the mess, all the tragedy, all the stress; all the sin and all the hypocrisy and all the self-righteousness and all the self-justification and all the worries and all the depression and all the lust and all the laziness and all of the out-of-control spending and all the repetitive sins and all the cussing and all the prayerlessness--He knew it all.
There is nothing He doesn't know--He knows everything (Isa. 46:10). He has known all that can be known from all eternity past. Do you really think that your problems, horrible as they may be sometimes, are still any match for His eternal love, His eternal power, and grace, and mercy, and forgiveness? Do you not understand the tortures of Jesus Christ upon that Cross? Do you not know that, for the first time in history, the Son of God, in and through His human body and in His human nature, understood by experience what being forsaken by God was like because He became sin incarnate (2 Cor. 5:21)? This was done so that God the Father could bring you to Himself (Eph. 1:5 NASB) through God the Son, Jesus Christ (Eph. 1:4 NASB), by the work of God the Holy Spirit (John 3:3, 5, 6, 7, 8; 16:8, 9, 10, 11; Titus 3:5). He did all this, moving Heaven and Earth to get to you personally, out of His own love (John 3:15, 16, 17; 1 John 4:8), in order to secure your redemption, your salvation, your regeneration, your justification, your sanctification, and your glorification (Rom. 8:29, 30). This is real love (1 John 4:10).
SO YOU'RE SAYING I HAVE SOME HOPE?
In my nearly three decades of being in Christ, by the sheer grace of God, I have learned this: You must preach the Gospel to yourself--and I mean often! You have to remind yourself of all that God has done for you, and in you, to help you along this pilgrim journey. You have to learn how to encourage yourself in the Lord (1 Sam. 30:6), and not rely on someone else to do so, and this by diving into the Word of God. You say that it's not easy. No, it isn't easy, and I know that full well! A few days ago I was so depressed that the only prayer I could pray that day was "Lord, I just need you to love me today." That's all I could say. I didn't speak much the entire day. I couldn't. God knew it. He saw me through it. Here I am. But I've learned that if I will just make the smallest effort to open His Word, before I know it, I'm beginning to feel better. I gain a sense of Hope. I begin thinking to myself that I just may survive this life after all--in spite of me, and because of Him, and for His glory.
IN CLOSING
Odd: I actually feel better for having written this. I think that the Holy Spirit perhaps nudged me to write, and in the writing I was driven into the Word, and the Spirit of God used the Word of God to minister to me in the process for the glory of God. That, simply, amazes me.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort. He comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any kind of affliction through the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as the sufferings of Christ overflow to us so, also, through Christ our comfort overflows. If we are afflicted it is for your comfort and salvation. If we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings that we suffer; and our hope for you is firm because we know that as you share in the sufferings so you will also share in the comfort (2 Cor. 1:3-7 CSB).I suppose, then, that we should never waste our sorrows and anxieties and depression but, rather, use them in helping others. If this little post helped only one person in this life get through another day, and reach out to the Lord for help, then making myself vulnerable was so very worth the potential backlash from the self-righteous and judgmental. May we fear God and not mortals. To God be the glory--always.
UPDATE
Two days later, and then on the third day as I write this on a lonely and desparing Sunday evening, and I am deeply depressed, hopeless, and still don't want to exist. So I understand how difficult "preaching the Gospel to yourself" or "preaching yourself happy" is in reality--in everyday life. Sitting on my bed crying, staring at the computer screen typing this out crying, depression and the believer is real, my friends, painstakingly real. I know God is good. I know Jesus saves. I know the Spirit of God dwells within me. I know I am saved solely by the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ by the effectual work of the Holy Spirit. But depression, regret, and hopelessness can still reside within the psyche of someone who, at the same time, trusts that God is good, that Jesus still saves, and the Spirit of God will, somehow and in some way, carry me through these dark days of grace. If you've ever been through this, or if you're in it now, I truly and completely understand.
__________
1 Ian S. Markham, Liturgical Life Principles: How Episcopal Worship Can Lead to Healthy and Authentic Living (New York: Morehouse Publishing, 2009), 19.
2 Ibid., 18.
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