Christian Depression

A friend gave me a book that I have started reading. Spiritual Depression by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones. This topic is near to my soul and the book has been a challenge to me and I just started. Here is a snippet from the book that impacted me.

“But there is another and more important reason, which is that we must face this problem [depression and Christians] for the sake of the Kingdom of God and for the glory of God. In a sense a depressed Christian is a contradiction in terms, and he is a very poor recommendation for the gospel. We are living in a pragmatic age. People today are not primarily interested in Truth but they are interested in results. The one question they ask is: Does it work? They are frantically seeking and searching for something that can help them. Now we believe that God extends His Kingdom partly through His people, and we know that He has oftentimes done some of the most notable things in the history of the Church through the simple Christian living of some quite ordinary people. Nothing is more important, therefore, than that we should be delivered from a condition which gives other people, looking at us, the impression that to be a Christian means to be unhappy, to be sad, to be morbid, and that the Christian is one who ‘scorns delights and lives laborious days.'”

Understanding depression is an immense task. Feeling overwhelmed with a cloud of darkness and despair which debilitates the senses and causes the spirit to suffer in quiet anguish is not helped by glib responses like “get over it” or “don’t worry, be happy.” But I thank God that His Word is not trite nor glib, but truly provides answers to our fleshly depression. Depression for the Christian is just that, it is not the result of the Holy Spirit or the renewed life, but the remnants of the fallen flesh and sin nature. God save us from ourselves! I pray that God will teach me through this book which is really a sermon series by the late D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones.