After
reading so many commentaries about Robin William’s suicide, his battle with
demons, and his overwhelming depression, I felt it time to share my view of the
picture. While I will leave it to others to handle what appears complex and
complicated about depression, I would like to add my contribution of hope. It
is something in the “simple-but-not-easy” category, with a solution anyone can
follow. For those who know that “he who
began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ,”[1]
this journey to hope is well worth the participation.
Whenever
people have shared their personal story of depression with me, or I have been
honest about my own, the same things surface. At the heart of our depression is
the awareness of some way that we do not yet know God. The depression is a
signal of something wrong because something is wrong. Depression is not the
problem, but it calls us to the problem. Facing the deepest problem opens our
hearts to the solution.
As
the struggle with depression uncovers ways that people do not know God in some
part of their lives, or in relation to certain life experiences, the solution
is to lead them into the experience of God that meets them where they are. Instead
of labels that affirm someone as a helpless victim of a hopeless condition, we
can encourage people to bring exactly how they are doing to the one person who
can and will do something about it.
Here
is my testimony of hope: anyone who brings anything to Jesus Christ with the
poverty of spirit that admits how poorly we are doing, with the mourning that
cannot escape the painful feelings surrounding this poverty, with the meekness
that admits there is no possible way we can fix these things ourselves, and
with the hunger and thirst for the righteousness of God revealed in Jesus Christ,
will not fail to experience the kingdom of heaven, the comfort of God, the
inheritance of the earth, and the satisfaction to our longings. [2]
How
do I know? Because Jesus said so. He said that those who face their poverty of
spirit are blessed with the kingdom of heaven, those who mourn are blessed with
God’s comfort, those who meekly face their inability to fix their lives are
blessed with a divine inheritance, and those who hunger and thirst for this
righteousness they do not have, this righteousness they cannot fabricate within
themselves, this righteousness they recognize in Jesus Christ, will experience
the true blessing of satisfaction and fulfillment as a gift of the riches of
God’s inestimable grace.
I
am so convinced that anyone struggling with depression (I speak from both faith
and experience) is at the edge of looking into some way they do not yet know
God, and that God shows us this poverty of spirit in order to bring us to know
him in the very ways we lack, that I present a personal hope-filled challenge
and invitation.
First,
let yourself enter that room of
depressing feelings and ask God to show you what it is about him you are
lacking. Read in the word and see what God shows you today that would be his
way of saying, “Here is a way you do not yet know me.” Both the circumstance of
how you are feeling, and the words of Scripture, will help you tell God what
you are missing in your relationship with him. And, yes, this has worked for me
every time I have ever been willing to face my poverty of spirit as I have
described.
Second,
begin praying that God would open your heart to know him in the ways you lack,
and in the ways he has revealed in his word. Take it by faith that God exposes
need in order to awaken our hunger for him. The same gospel that says all have
sinned and fallen short of the glory of God,[3]
and announces the hope that in Jesus Christ there is the forgiveness of sin,[4]
also shows us every nuance of how we are falling short of the experience of
God, filling us with the hope of a life of constant improvement that can only
be described as, “being transformed into
the same image from one degree of glory to another.”[5]
Part
of the way that this works is described by Paul like this:
…assuming that you have heard about him and were
taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which
belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires,
and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self,
created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.[6]
One
way God ministers to our depression is by directing us to stop trying to get
our old depressed selves better, but to put on that new self that is already
created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. Some problems with
depression harass us for such a long time simply because we are living in our
wrong self as we try to fix what is broken. The old self cannot be fixed. It
can only be replaced with a better model. The new self is already fully able to
listen to the words of Jesus so that his joy is in us, and our joy is made
full.[7]
Again,
I have never seen this fail for myself, or for anyone who has been willing to
join in such a journey. If we let God show us how our depressing thoughts and
feelings are exposing ways we don’t know him, and petition him to let us know
him in the ways we lack, he will simply never fail to meet that need.
If
nothing else, God’s promise is that those who keep asking to know him in the
ways we have never experienced will receive what we keep asking for. Those who
keep seeking to know God in the ways that seem foreign to us will grow to know
him in those ways until they become familiar experiences of comfort. Those who
keep knocking at the door of hope that stands constant on the edge of our
inability, will find God opening the door to that joy that is “inexpressible and filled with glory.”[8]
I
write of things that are simple, but not easy. However, I am writing about a
work God is doing in us, not a work we must do for ourselves. When we want Jesus
to be Lord over our depression, or mental illness, or emotional brokenness, or
bondage to sinful habits, or that friendly enemy, our sark (flesh), he will
show such grace to us that we will want to be with him constantly, getting to
know him better every day of our lives.
After
all, if Jesus can drive out a legion of demons from a man the world would
presently label as mentally ill, and display him to the watching world as “in his right mind,”[9] he
can surely keep his promise to heal the brokenhearted and bind up our wounds.[10]
Sometimes,
when I feel like giving up, not caring, numbing myself with distractions, or
anything else that is directed by my sark instead of God’s Spirit,[11] I
have to remind myself that there is something God would do in my life that
would show his glory to me and others, while working everything for good in the
lives of all of us who love him, who have been called according to his glorious
and gracious purposes.[12]
If
you struggle with depression, and believe its stories that you are its helpless
and hopeless victim, I offer you the opportunity to give this a try. Let me (or
anyone who believes as I do) know your story, and let’s see if, underneath the
last and deepest thing you have come to, there is some way that you do not yet know
God. Then, let’s present to God our hunger and thirst to know him in the
righteousness of faith, and see what happens in the coming days that would
never have occurred if we had played it safe, stayed in our sarks, and left
things as they are.
If
nothing else, I leave you with God’s promise: “But from there you will seek the Lord your God and you will find him,
if you search after him with all your heart and with all your soul.”[13]
If your “from there” is depression,
or something else labeled as a mental illness, seek him from there (not from
all around there). I have never failed to see this work that, when people seek
God from their “from there," he
always grants them the grace to know him better than they have ever known him
before.
It
is a simply-stated plan that if we face how
we do not know God in our inner being, and hunger and thirst to know him in the
way we lack, he will ALWAYS bring us to know him in the ways Jesus promised to those
who receive his gift of eternal life.[14]
The
part that is not easy is that our sarks really hate to travel outside of
fleshly comfort zones. Our flesh loves labels that take away the pressure to
change, and to face the unknown, and to be orphans in the hands of the adopting
God of love, and grace, and glory. God will not help our flesh get free of
depression, but he will fill our new nature with his Spirit so that our new
heart keeps growing up in the joy of the Lord, no matter how our flesh argues
and complains that it is not getting its way.
To
clarify, I cannot help anyone unravel the complications of labeling mental
illness, or graph how much of their depression is caused by body, soul, or
spirit. I simply contribute something that will work for anyone who opens their
hearts to this hope-filled work of God. Face the ways you don’t know him,
express even a mustard seed amount of faith that you could know him in the
midst of those dark and despondent feelings, and join God in whatever he does
next to bring you to himself.
I
have noticed that people’s responses to messages of hope about God’s promises
of mind-soundness include a great number of rebukes for suggesting that
depression is something God can (or needs to) fix. For those who want to let me
have it, or hand me their proof that their depression is too big for God, give
me what you’ve got, and let me show you how that is one more evidence of a way
you do not yet know God. I would be happy to help you with that.
From
my heart,
Monte
© 2014 Monte Vigh ~
Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise
noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible,
English Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway
Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.)
PS: If you would like to try this in a
practical way, see my blog post, “The Thirty-Day Challenge: Depression."
It may be just what you need to face what your depression is revealing about
you and your relationship with God, and surprise you with ways God would speak
to you exactly as you need to hear.
[1] Philippians 1:6
[2] Matthew 5:1-12 is Jesus’
grand and glorious introduction to his Sermon on the Mount.
[3] Romans 3:23
[4] Matthew 26:28; Luke 24:47; Acts 2:38
[5] II Corinthians 3:18
[6] Ephesians 4:21-24
[7] John 15:11
[8] Matthew 7:7-8; I Peter
1:3-9 (vs 8)
[9] Mark 5:1-20 (vs 15)
[10] Psalm 147:3
[11] Romans 7 and 8 show
how the limitations of the flesh must be met by the Spirit of God living and
moving in our lives
[12] Romans 8:28-30
[13] Deuteronomy 4:29
[14] John 3:16; John 17:3
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