Depression Is Not Your Master, Jesus Is.

   Depression is a prison tomb where bravery melts into faintheartedness. Where ghosts and shadows romanticize with poor lost slaves about death. An oppressor that takes the very wind out of your lungs and hope from your belly.

Jesus knew about depression, and when the Father's wrath was poured out upon him like molten, refining fire, the sins that lead our souls into depression were baptized in the holy wrath of God.

  Jesus, the holy one of God, was forsaken by God for our sins and died. Yet when three days had past, the tomb had to vomit him out. He himself was the gold that had been purified in the refining fire of God's judgment. He was the sinless one, all our sins had melted away in the heat of God's wrath. Our Lord raised himself from the dead, and he set the captives free from the belly of dragon. From the very pit of Lucifer's stomach we were born in Christ.

Unholy angel's are always trying to lead us back into the dragon's mouth. Your warfare is a spiritual warfare. You need to remember Christ. You need to put on your holy armor.

DEALING WITH DOUBTS AND SELF HATRED

   If you have met the Lord, depression may cause you to doubt your salvation and your relationship to God.

An apathetic heart needs to be combated with the Word of the Lord. The Word tells us over and over again about the everlasting kingdom of God. The Psalms and Prophets tells us about God's mercy, justice, wrath, love, and grace. The Word shows us the righteous work the Lord has called us to as His children. Let it inspire your heart to look for practical ways to obey the Lord. How you live matters.

   Sometimes depression is not apathetic, it is simply overwhelming. When you cannot find the root or the cause of it, it can lead you down a wormhole of emotions. Too many feelings can lead us to lose sight of our Father as we get lost in ourselves. It is like playing gopher. You pop one gopher down and then two more pop up. You can't win. The importance of the Word is so vital during these times. We must understand the nature of faith, and faithfulness. Our faith is not a feeling. Feelings are fickle, they come, they go. As Toby Sumpter so aptly put it “Your feelings are a dark jungle.” Don't follow them, follow the Word of your God.

   One of the wormholes can take you down the path of self hatred. Self Hatred is unbelief. If you, like me, have asked Christ to forgive your sins, belief is the power of the Holy Spirit in you to raise you from death to life. You must believe that you are forgiven. This belief will be your freedom from the oppressive shadow of your sin. It is born of the Spirit, because it is only faith that leads us to believe anything God says about himself, or about us.

   As you grow in faith, your sins will be more contrasted against God's holiness. They will appear more wretched. You will see the distance between yourself and God is more than you could ever overcome. It is hopeless. But that same faith should help you see the cross of Christ is bigger, and it fills the gap. If you are found in Christ, if you believe him, your sins were left at the cross. They were burned away by the consuming fire of God's holy wrath poured out. Believe.

BE CERTAIN OF YOUR FAITH, BE IN THE WORD. If you are suffering from uncertainty about faith, about God, about whether you should even be part of the church, then read the bible. It is the reason any christian today believes anything. It is the sole foundation of belief in God. You can have a deep and abiding relationship with your Father, but you need to search him out and meditate on His Word, because he reveals himself to us there. The Word, the saints, and the Spirit sustain us and give us perseverance.

   Your relationship with God is not a feeling. Faith is not an abstract invention. It is a heart that loves Christ and obeys his Word. Faith and works are inseparable, James 2:22 says “You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works;”

If you are not in the Word, you are unintentionally making yourself vulnerable to every wind of doctrine that sounds or feels right. Like the doctrine of individualism.

INDIVIDUALISM

Depression is by nature individualist. Instead of going to Christ, we feed into secular lies like, ‘Broken people love the hardest’, or ‘If you haven’t experienced *fill in the blank* you have no right to speak to it.’ It is holier than thou and anti correction. These are not Christ like characteristics. In some sense, we all want to be our own god. We want to be king and everyone in our kingdom to treat us exactly how we desire. Individualism is born of our desire to be gods. Isn’t it peculiar that as we seek to expand our own individual kingdoms, depression should beset us like the blood hound of the devil.
The Word tells us that a wise person heeds reproof. It tells us to treat others as though they are better than we are. It leaves no room for us to hate reproof, or think of ourselves as better than others...

   Individualism persuades us that if we do things just right we can be enough, though we could never truly be enough and we know that, which is why we have to say it so loudly... I’m thinking of the phrase, “God helps those who help themselves.” It’s not biblical in case you were wondering. The Word tells us that our salvation is not works based, it tells us that all our good works are like dirty rags to God.
The gospel of salvation in Jesus Christ is that we could not help ourselves, and so God in his great mercy saved us from his own just wrath by bearing it for us himself. The world is full of self help mantras that cannot save your soul, or anyone else's for that matter.      

   These mantras are easier to believe than that we do nothing to gain God's favor. We do act righteously, yes, but we do it because we love our God for who he is and what he has accomplished in us and in this world; and we do it in the power of the Holy Spirit. The doctrine of self help is a band-aid for a mortal wound. Stop trying to help yourself, you are not enough, and you will die trying to be.

Stop thinking, “if I just change my thought pattern then I’ll overcome this and then I’ll be able to get right with God.” Confess it in all it’s grim details to God right now, and follow him through repentance. Your mortal wound is sin. You are reaching for false hope if are trying to help yourself with these doctrines of self.

   Individualism is not the way of the Lord, or his saints.

Families are designed by God to remind us that our personal preferences, ideas, and desires are secondary to caring for our brothers and sisters and the unity of the family. It is important to understand that God already knows you, far better than you know yourself. Your desire shouldn't be in knowing yourself more fully, rather in knowing your heavenly Father and walking in obedience to him you will more fully understand who you are made to be. Your church family is both there for your encouragement, and your sanctification.

The things you know about yourself will almost always turn out to be false, unless it is a sin issue. Sin is our nature apart from Christ. The gifts we have of goodness, generosity, compassion are born of God. Don't zero in on those things like they have something to do with your deserving. You are as justified by your gifts as much a sex offender is justified because of his ability to work in a soup kitchen for a few weeks.

   Are you alone? Don't wait for someone to come and find you any longer. Find a church family, find friends who will remind you of what is real and what is false. Don't worry about being a bother, you need them. They are a gift from God for you. Their prayers are vital, their exhortations are vital, their love is vital.

Depression is all too happy to cut you off from the church, it is a lone wolf and you and an individualist sheep. It will separate you and you will go happily until you find yourself completely alone with the wolf. You might be going to church with the saints, thinking no one cares about you. You need to confess, and repent. Call out to the Shepherd. It is not the saints job to read your mind. You need to approach someone. Your spirit might be willing, but your flesh is weak. Pray, that you will not enter into temptation to think evil of your brothers and sisters in the Lord. The church is the body of Christ, and it is your family, embrace it.

Remind yourself of the truth of Christs free grace to you, believe his forgiveness, find believing friends to encourage and admonish you, put your hope in Christs Kingdom, fix your eyes on his Word, and don’t let modern evangelicalism hijack the meaning of faith.

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   The joy of the Lord is found in obedience to his Word, especially obedience in terms of simply learning thankfulness. I’m not talking about drudgery when I talk about obedience. I’m specifically referring to your desire to grow and mature in the Lord, because if you have been born again, this desire will manifest itself in your heart. Even if it seems like an unattainable desire, or a very distant one, it’s still there. Your faithful obedience leads to your sanctification.

   Sanctification requires death. That means what you need to do to be sanctified in Christ will be very hard. It will be like death, because the old man actually dies. And he dies hard. He is burned away as Gods unquenchable wrath was poured out on him. We feel the effects of that burning, because we suffer in Christ, who died under the stroke of justice.

The Word of God is like a sword, cleaving joints and marrow. That means it doesn't just cut skin deep. It kills. The process is indescribably painful. It would be less painful and easier to physically die, but far less rewarding.

   The reason it's so painful is that you are wearing depression like a skin. You are in love with it because you see it as part of who you are. You want to keep it. At the same time you may also despise it and become ensnared in self hatred, wishing and praying for a magical awakening, yet knowing that the way out is clearly going to hurt even more than that. It will feel like death, and choosing to die is never easy for anybody. This is part of the cost of following Christ, and I hope you counted it. Counting the cost means that you understand you will never be fully sanctified in this life, and yet you give yourself to it’s purifying fire again and again, letting it burn away the parts of you that are not worthy of Christ because you desire to be like Christ.
You were made to glorify God and praise him forever. Depression leads you to wallow in self pity, and live without living. Don't be so in love with it that you won't consider the alternative.

   I was reminded recently of the story of Eustace from the Voyage of the Dawn Treader. He had put a gold band on his arm, and it had turned him into a dragon. The band was causing him great pain and he had tried to get it off, but could not succeed. The following quote is from the book.

“Then the lion said — but I don’t know if it spoke — You will have to let me undress you. I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now. So I just lay flat down on my back to let him do it.

“The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off.  You know — if you’ve ever picked the scab off a sore place. It hurts like billy-oh but it is such fun to see it coming away.”

“I know exactly what you mean,” said Edmund.

“Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off – just as I thought I’d done it myself the other three times, only they hadn’t hurt – and there it was lying on the grass, only ever so much thicker, and darker, and more knobbly-looking than the others had been. And there was I smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been. Then he caught hold of me – I didn’t like that much for I was very tender underneath now that I’d no skin on — and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious and as soon as I started swimming and splashing I found that all the pain had gone from my arm. And then I saw why. I’d turned into a boy again. . . .”