What is Spiritual Depression?

Depression is a polarizing topic. You might say it’s a bi-polarizing topic, if you wanted to make a pun. It’s a polarizing topic depending who you talk to. You’ll hear people say it’s not a thing, it doesn’t exist. You’ll have other people say it’s pretty much everything. If you go to the doctor, you can get diagnosed with depression extremely easily and manage to get yourself all manner of different medicines to fix it. If you go to a psychologist, they’ll tell you what your problem is, where the depression came from, and how you’re probably gonna have it for the rest of your life. It’s a very polarizing topic.

This was heightened for me—the reality of this sort of polarizing thing was heightened to me—when I watched a video a while ago, a discussion at a ministers’ conference between John MacArthur and John Piper. And they were asked the question about how they deal with discouragements. And John Piper, who’s a very emotionally wired type individual, shared that he found himself one day at the age of 40 sitting upon his deck on holiday just weeping uncontrollably, and his wife Noël came out to him and said to him, “John, what’s wrong?” And he said, “I don’t know. I’m just sad and overwhelmed with sorrow. I actually have no idea what’s wrong with me.” And he was just sitting there weeping. And he shared at this ministers’ conference that this frame of spirit, this state he was in, went on for two to three years, where he just found himself constantly in this state of overwhelming sorrow.

Meanwhile, as you look at the camera and you look at the other side, John MacArthur is sitting there absolutely perturbed and has no idea what John Piper is talking about. And John MacArthur goes, “Two years? You were in this state for two years?” And MacArthur effectively said, “I don’t have enough time to feel sad and discouraged. I’ve got too much stuff to do. I just do the next thing.” And then he went on to explain that, you know, he understands the feelings of sadness, but he just sets it aside, and he just carries on. And he had no ability to comprehend in any way what John Piper was talking about.

And here were these two sort of stalwart, reformed men that people look up to today with completely different frameworks of understanding of this reality. MacArthur’s been heavily critiqued in the past for his understanding of mental health and depression and those natures of things. But what it highlights for us is how easy it is for us to have drastically different understandings of the nature of depression, primarily based upon our experience, our upbringing, our generation, and just the different things that we’ve been surrounded by.

And there’s a danger in that, because what it means is when we come to think about the topic, when we hear of someone else talking about it, we come to it with a whole bunch of presuppositions, a whole bunch of assumptions. And what we quickly fall into the trap of doing is being conformed in our mind, not by the Word of God, but conformed by our experience, or conformed by what the society around us tells us, or by what our parents taught us, or our peers taught us, or what a psychologist told us. But what we want to do is be conformed by the Word of God, right? We want to think about these matters biblically.

And so I thought it would be helpful for us to do a small series on what I’ve called spiritual depression. Spiritual depression. Walking through a psalm which really helpfully unpacks it. It unpacks the reality of it, the causes of it, but also some of the cures, how to deal with it.

And you might ask the question, why? Why talk about spiritual depression? I mean, it’s a bit depressing. There’s a whole bunch of other things we could talk about. We could spend a series on Christology and talk about the glorious parts of Christ, the glorious aspects that we see in the Word of God about God. Why spiritual depression?

Well, let me give you three reasons, or maybe four.

Firstly, some of us have it. Some of us struggle with it, and we need help. We need to deal with our problems biblically.

Secondly, some of us don’t have it and don’t understand it, if we’re honest. Got no comprehension of what it’s like. We’ve never experienced it. We’ve never really dealt with people who have. And we need help to understand why.

Third reason why: because the first group of people who have it desperately need the help of the people that don’t have it. Sometimes people will tell you, “You can’t help a person unless you’ve been in their shoes.” You’ve heard this attitude. You have to be able to empathize with a person. What I want you to do is throw the word “empathize” in the rubbish bin. It’s not a biblical concept. Because if you have to be able to empathize with people, you’re in a lot of trouble, because you’ve never experienced the exact same thing that somebody else has experienced. But what you do need to be able to do is sympathize with somebody else. Empathy and sympathy are completely different concepts. Empathy is the idea that I have to be able to sit in your place, stand in your shoes, in order to be able to help you. No one can do that. Sympathy is the idea of coming alongside someone else and recognizing their problem and helping them, and we want to be able to do that.

Now, what people will often say is, if a depressed person needs help, a depressed person is the perfect person to help them. No, it’s quite opposite. You know, if you get a group of depressed people in a room together, you know what happens? They get more depressed. There’s a place for depressed people to help depressed people, but what depressed people more often need is a cheerful smile, is a person who gets up in the morning and actually sees the sunshine. And so those of you who are strong and have no idea what depression even means, the strugglers need you. We need one another, and if we’re going to be conformed as a family into the word of God, we need to understand this well.

The part of the problem is, though, because we have so much different sort of rubbish around us when it comes to thinking about this topic, it makes it really hard to think clearly about it. And so it’s really important for us to sort of step back before we begin digging into some of the concepts we find in the Psalm, and sort of lay some foundations down, lay some understanding down.

And let me just encourage you on one thing as we begin this series. You’re probably gonna have a bunch of different questions that come up. I cannot deal with everything, because Psalm 77 is not gonna deal with everything. And if you have questions come up, let me encourage you, write them down, and when we get to the end of 77, ask me. I mean, you can ask me straight away. Write them down. See if they get addressed, and if they don’t get addressed, come and ask me. Ask Matthew. Deal with those things.

But we need to lay a foundation, and so it’s good for us to start by asking the question: what is the definition of spiritual depression? How do we define spiritual depression?

You know, often when I get asked questions, my favorite thing to do is to make people define what they’re asking. I do this at the market all the time. People will challenge me on something or say something, or one of you will ask me a question about something, and the first thing you’ll get back from me is, “What do you mean by that? Define what you mean by that.” Why? Well, because if we don’t define what we’re talking about, we end up talking past each other, right? You might be asking one thing, and I think you’re asking a different thing, and so I answer that. And meanwhile, I’ve completely missed what you were actually asking. And so it’s good for us to stop and define, especially a topic like this, which is so packed with assumptions.

So let’s maybe start with sort of the technical definition of depression—not biblically, but just sort of medically, psychologically. How do books define depression? And I sort of grabbed a few and compiled them together, and you might define it like this.

Depression is any of several moods or disorders marked by a loss of interest or pleasure in life and living. So that’s the sort of borderline definition. It’s a type of mood or disorder marked by a loss of interest or a loss of pleasure in life or living. But then it goes on. It says, “And it’s marked by,” this is how it sort of is seen, “it’s marked by a frequent and all-encompassing sadness,” which is commonly also followed by either weight loss or weight gain. So it affects us physiologically. And it leads to either loss of sleep or way too much sleep. It’s also seen in either agitation—you know, a person who just can’t sit still and they’re constantly agitated—or, forgive the terminology, but retardation, meaning a person who just becomes overwhelmingly lethargic and does nothing. Not the mental type. It’s also marked by feelings of worthlessness, a loss of mental processing power, which ultimately, all of these things ultimately culminate in a perpetual set of thoughts for pain, death, or suicide. And so when it gets to its highest, it culminates in a proactive sort of thinking pattern which can’t be turned off, which desires either pain, which eventually leads to a desire for death, which eventually leads to a desire for self-murder.

Now, on one hand, that’s not helpful because it’s so incredibly vague. On the other hand, it is reasonably helpful because it helps us understand the variety of ways that a depressed heart and mind actually expresses itself, that it’s not clear-cut.

But I wonder if you noticed what’s missing in the definition. I wonder if you noticed what’s missing, what’s not there. Sometimes it’s helpful to ask yourself when someone’s defining something, “What didn’t they say?” I wonder if you observed that there’s nothing in there in relation to the soul or the spirit. Nothing spiritual whatsoever. Everything is physical of nature, right? Physical, mental, emotional.

Now, to be fair, we probably wouldn’t expect much from a secular society defining the reality of mental illness, if they call it that, or depression, to use something spiritual. But we must recognize we’re not purely physical people, are we? I mean, that’s what the atheists taught in communist Russia, that we’re purely matter, nothing more. Nothing more than matter. But we don’t believe that, do we? What are we? We’re body. We’re also soul. We have a spirit within us. We love the Lord, not just with our body and our mind, but our body, our mind, our heart, our soul, our strength.

And what we recognize is that I’m not parts. It’s important for us to remember this. I’m not part mind and part body and part soul and part heart, like I can distinguish those and separate them. I’m one person, right? God has made you intricately woven as one being. Though we talk about different aspects of the human, God hasn’t divided you up. And what that means is when the emotions are affected, the body is affected. And when the body is affected, the mind is affected. Well, I mean, we know this. When you’re active, living an active life, you think better. And when your mind is engaged, your body functions better. And when your mind and body are functioning well, you feel better. I mean, why do you think people talk about the winter blues? Because it’s cold and miserable, and everyone just feels a little bit blue. But when the sun is on your face and the warm wind is blowing, you feel better. You feel like you can conquer the world. Because we’re one being.

And this is why when I come to this topic, I’m not saying, “Let’s talk about depression.” I’m saying, “Let’s talk about spiritual depression.” Because the nature of depression is always spiritual. There’s always a spiritual component to it. It’s not purely spiritual, because we’re not purely spiritual beings. Our state can be affected by our health. If you’re trapped in a bed every day of your life, no one’s gonna blame a person who starts feeling a bit sour. So it’s not only spiritual, but it is spiritual, and so we wanna think about spiritual depression.

Now, the difficulty of providing a definition—I’m going to—the difficulty of providing a biblical definition is that the Bible doesn’t give us definitions, does it? The Bible’s not like a textbook that says, “Okay, by the way, here are all the biblical terms at the end of the book.” You know, you turn through to the index, find the term, and look up the definition. No, the Bible doesn’t necessarily define things. What does it do? It describes them, doesn’t it? The Bible gives us demonstrations from which we must pull together our understanding, and this is why the second point, the second part of the first one really, is the demonstration or the description, the biblical description of spiritual depression. Or to say it differently, what does spiritual depression even look like? And what does it look like biblically? Because we wanna conform ourselves to the scriptures.

Am I cooking something up in a lab? Are we really dealing with a human problem that society has manufactured and it’s not something present in the scriptures? ’Cause some people would say that. There’s no such thing as mental illness. It doesn’t exist. It’s just sin, nothing more, nothing less, and the Bible doesn’t deal with it. Let’s consider the description. Is there any description of spiritual despair, spiritual depression in the scriptures?

Let’s start with Asaph. Spurgeon captures Asaph really well. He says, “Asaph was a man of exercised mind and often touched the minor key.” You know what touching the minor key means? Touching the minor key on a piano, it just sounds a bit sad. He was thoughtful, contemplative, believing, but with everything, there was a dash of sadness about him, and this imparted a tonic to all of his songs. You find his Psalms in Psalm 50 and then Psalms 73 through 83. Now, not all of them are like 77, but most of them have a tendency to lean towards a sorrowful-type disposition.

Now, what I wanna do is read the first half of 77 to you, but not in the ESV. What I’ve done is I’ve translated Psalm 77 in a very what’s called a wooden way, a literal way. I think it captures the heart of Asaph and enables the poignancy and the potency of what he’s saying really shine through. If any of you would like a copy of this, let me know, and I can just throw it in the encouraging chat afterwards. But just listen and try and capture the heart of Asaph in the first 10 verses.

“My voice to God. I cry out with my voice to God. He will listen to me.
In the day of my distress, I sought the Lord.
It was stretched out at night, and it did not grow weary. My hand.
It refused to be comforted. My soul.
I remember God. I make tumultuous noise, loud lamenting.
It becomes faint, my spirit.

You seized my eyelids of my eyes.
I am disturbed. I do not speak.
I considered the days from ancient times, years long ago.
I remember my song in the night with my heart lamenting.
It searched my spirit.

Will He reject forever? Lord, will He not add favor again?
Is it at an end, His steadfast mercy?
Has it come to an end, His promise from generation to generation?
Has God forgotten favor?
Has He shut up in anger, compassion?

I said, ‘My grief, the change of the right hand of the Most High.’”

I wonder if you hear the anguish, the spiritual anguish in the heart of Asaph. He’s overwhelmed with sorrow, with a sense of abandonment. I wonder if you hear the sort of heart cry of what we read in Psalm 22: “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?” It’s the cry of brokenness, and yet, brothers and sisters, Asaph’s not alone in the Bible.

Let’s look at a few case studies whether Asaph’s by himself.

Have a look at, consider the Book of Job, Job chapter 3. Now, of all the men who suffered, Job is a prime example, right? And unjustly. He didn’t do anything. And yet all of his belongings were taken, all of his children were put to death, and he was covered in boils, scraping himself with pottery, sitting in ash. And in chapter 3, he says these words:

“Let the day perish on which I was born,
and the night that said, ‘A man is conceived.’
Let that day be darkness!
May God above not seek it, nor light shine upon it.
Let gloom and deep darkness claim it.
Let clouds dwell upon it;
let the blackness of the day terrify it.
That night—let thick darkness seize it!
Let it not rejoice among the days of the year;
let it not come into the number of the months.
Behold, let that night be barren;
let no joyful cry enter it.
Let those curse it who curse the day,
who are ready to rouse up Leviathan.
Let the stars of its dawn be dark;
let it hope for light, but have none,
nor see the eyelids of the morning,
because it did not shut the doors of my mother’s womb,
nor hide trouble from my eyes.

Why did I not die at birth,
come out from the womb and expire?
Why did the knees receive me?
Or why the breasts, that I should nurse?”

That’s darkness, right? Why couldn’t I just be born still? The stillborn child is better than me. Sorrow upon sorrow.

But there’s others. Consider David in 2 Samuel. In 2 Samuel. Now, David’s done some bad things, right? He’s done the Bathsheba thing, and his son’s turned against him. And in 2 Samuel chapter 18, we find David hearing the news of the death of Absalom. Chapter 18, picking up at verse 31:

“And behold, the Cushite came, and the Cushite said, ‘Good news for my lord the king! For the Lord has delivered you this day from the hand of all who rose up against you.’ The king said to the Cushite, ‘Is it well with the young man Absalom?’ And the Cushite answered, ‘May the enemies of my lord the king and all who rise up against you for evil be like that young man.’ And the king was deeply moved and went up to the chamber over the gate and wept. And as he went, he said, ‘O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!’

It was told Joab, ‘Behold, the king is weeping and mourning for Absalom.’ So the victory that day was turned into mourning for all the people, for the people heard that day, ‘The king is grieving for his son.’ And the people stole into the city that day as people steal in who are ashamed when they flee in battle. The king covered his face, and the king cried with a loud voice, ‘O my son Absalom, O Absalom, my son, my son!’”

Sorrow. Overwhelming sorrow that causes a man to wish his own death in the place of his son.

Consider Elijah. You don’t have to turn there, but you remember in 1 Kings when Ahab’s wife Jezebel says, “May God do so to me and more also, if I do not make your life as the life of one of them by this time tomorrow.” What does Elijah do? He runs out into the wilderness, he sits on the ground, and he cries, and he says, “Lord, I’ve had enough. Just kill me. I can’t do this anymore. I can’t deal with this constant pressure. Just end my life.”

Or think about Jeremiah as he sees the judgment of God upon his people. He says, “Lord, what are you doing?” Jeremiah 8, he just lays his complaint out to God. He says, “Lord, what are you doing? Just end my life. I can’t deal with this anymore.”

Even more striking is maybe the Apostle Paul. We often think about the Apostle Paul as this just stalwart, strong figure, right? He gets beaten, and shipwrecked, and flogged, and he’s just strong, and he gets up and preaches the gospel. And he gets beaten, and he sings in jail.

Turn to 2 Corinthians with me. We’ll start in chapter 1. 2 Corinthians 1:8: “For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death.” What do you think he means by, “We were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself”? This is not just a physical oppression. This is something far deeper than that.

Have a look at chapter 4, verses 8 to 9: “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.” It’s not just Paul saying, “We’re so strong that in spite of all these things, we’re still good.” He’s saying, “No, we are afflicted. We are struck down. We are perplexed. We are persecuted. Those are our realities. This is my lot.”

And in 7:5–6, he says, “For even when we came into Macedonia, our bodies had no rest, but we were afflicted at every turn—fighting without and fear within.” Where’s the burden? Within me.

And in chapter 11, verse 28, he lists his sufferings: “And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches.” Remember the command of the Apostle Paul? “Don’t be anxious.” “My anxiety for all the churches.” The word there is like an overwhelming sense of struggle and trouble.

They’re all different causes, right? They’re all different contexts. They’re all brought about by different things and expressed in different ways, but what is present in the heart of all of them is this overwhelming sense of troubled soul, troubled heart, spiritual depression.

But there’s one more you have to consider, and that’s the Lord Jesus Christ. And this is really important, and you need to see this clearly.

Have a look at the Gospel of John. John chapter 11. John 11:33. You know these words: “When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled.” Now, that “deeply moved” is very hard to translate. It’s like a heart or soul in turmoil. Deeply troubled. “In his spirit, greatly troubled.” And what was the outcome? “He wept.” Now that weeping you can interpret in a bunch of different ways, but none of it changes the fact that he wept. He was deeply sorrowful in his heart, troubled in his heart, and he wept.

And have a look at chapter 12, verse 27: “Now is my soul troubled.” You might say spiritually depressed.

Chapter 13, verse 21: “After saying these things, Jesus was troubled in his spirit.” Why? Because one of his disciples is gonna betray him. Have you ever been betrayed? Feel the soul-overwhelming burden of betrayal? That’s what Jesus had.

But of course it’s seen nowhere more brightly than in the garden, right? The garden of tears, the vale of tears, the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus travels and He goes out further than His 12, with the 3, and then He goes further again and He says to them, “Pray, for my soul is overwhelmed.” And He falls before God, and He weeps, and He sweats drops like blood from His forehead as He’s overwhelmed in His soul with the pressure of what’s looming before Him.

You know, there’s a reason the book of Isaiah, chapter 53, describes Jesus as a man of sorrows. We sing it, “Man of sorrows, what a name.”

Why is this important? Why is this absolutely essential to lay hold on as we try and get a grasp on the reality of spiritual depression? The reason this is absolutely vital to lay hold of is that Jesus was perfect, and Jesus struggled with the reality of what we’re looking at in Psalm 77, which means spiritual depression is not always or necessarily sin. The state that you enter into in spiritual depression can be a result of sin, and you can—and we’ll talk about this in a second—you can sin while in it, but it’s not necessarily sin or a result of sin. And you must lay hold of that because otherwise every single time you feel sorrowful, you will begin to plague yourself and persecute yourself. Because if I was perfect, I wouldn’t feel this way. And maybe you’ve been exposed to that type of teaching before, where a person says, “If you were a real Christian, you wouldn’t feel that way. You would rejoice.” Because real Christians rejoice. Because that’s what the Bible tells you to do.

Brothers and sisters, it’s possible for the godliest person that ever walked on the face of the earth to be cast down, if you want to use the label, in spiritual depression. The question is not whether these things may come to us; the major question is what we will do when we’re in it.

And here is where we need to now try and draw some form of a definition of spiritual depression. So we’ve seen there’s this depression that gets labeled in society, which is somewhat helpful, but unhelpful because it neglects the spiritual reality. We’ve seen in the scriptures that it’s present in the life of humans as they live life in a cursed and fallen world. It’s a reality of life under the sun this side of glory, as we live in a fallen and fragile world with fallen and fragile bodies. How could we spiritually define it?

Let me suggest this to you. Spiritual depression is a state of mind, body, soul—state of the whole person. It is a state of mind, body, heart, soul, which—and here’s the key—it’s expressed in numbers of ways, it’s felt in different ways, but here’s the key: it tempts us to doubt God’s character, question God’s way, and ultimately blaspheme God’s name.

Spiritual depression is felt in a myriad of different ways. It’s pointless to sit here and try and describe and define exactly what spiritual depression looks like, because it’s different for every person. The key is the danger—third point—the danger that is present in spiritual depression, because spiritual depression always tempts us to malign God. And the greatest expression of this is self-murder. Is there any higher form of the blasphemy of God than to kill the image of God in yourself?

And these things, they move, right? It begins with a questioning of the character of God, and we’re gonna see this in Psalm 77. It begins with questioning the character of God, beginning to doubt that He’s good, that He truly loves me. There is a questioning of the ways of God. “God’s not for me, God’s against me.” And it leads to a blaspheming of God. “God clearly hates me, and so there’s no point in living.” There is an immense danger, and this is why we must, brothers and sisters, we must deal with this. We must deal with the reality of the sorrow that we face and struggle through in life.

But there is blessed comfort here. You know, it would be really sad to send you home pondering only upon the sorrow of sorrow. But, you know, there is some wonderful hope in what we’ve actually just looked at.

Remember the words of Hebrews: the Lord Jesus Christ, our great high priest, is able to help us when we are tempted. Why? Because He has been tested in every way and has stood firm. Jesus Christ, the man of sorrows, is your high priest. And so if you find yourself, when you find yourself filled with sorrow, filled with spiritual depression, there is one who is able to help. There is one who stands by your side, who can say, “I know.” There is one who has been tried, one who has been pushed to the brink of where a person would say, “It’s time to end my life.” I mean, you can’t find many more darker pressure than the Garden of Gethsemane, right? And yet he did not do it. He never questioned God’s character. He never doubted God’s goodness. He always trusted his Father’s ways, and he never blasphemed his God, no matter how deep he was pressed. And that one, He is at your side.

When the darkest of night sets in, when the deepest of sorrow rolls over you, the Lord Jesus Christ, Hebrews says, never leaves us nor forsakes us. You remember the words of the Apostle Paul at the end of his life? He says, “Everyone else has forsaken me. Demas has gone off with the world and everyone has forsaken me, except for Luke.” He says, “But Jesus Christ is with me.” And let me tell you, that is true for you as a believer. There is no sorrow—even sorrow caused by your own sin—will not cause Him to abandon you, because sometimes our sorrow is due to our foolishness. Sometimes our grief is due to our sin, and yet Christ will still never forsake us.

And so that’s a deep comfort for those of you, those of us, that are overwhelmed with sorrow. But I tell you, it’s a wonderful gift to those of us that don’t. Do you know why? Because it means that when you go to help a struggler, it’s not your job to fix them, because you can’t. You can’t heal hearts. You can’t get rid of the pain. You can’t fix the situation. But you know one who can. And so the greatest aid you can be is to sit with a Job in his sorrow and suffering for seven days, and then not say, “Let me tell you what you did wrong.” But to say, “I have no idea what you’re going through, but I know one that does. Let me take you to meet Him.”

And you know, this is so wonderful, even in outreach. You know the amount of people who don’t believe in God. Why? Why do they say that? They say, “Oh, I don’t believe in God.” Why? “’Cause He’s never done anything good for me. My real life’s horrible. How could there be a God if my life’s this bad? So much pain in the world, so much misery in the world. How could there be a God?” What can you say to that person? “How about I lead you to a man of sorrows who understands misery far greater than you do?”

Brothers and sisters, the reality is causes for sorrow are going to come into our life. Causes for spiritual depression that leads to the temptation to blaspheme God are going to come into our life. Some of us have a greater proclivity to it than others, but it will come to all of us, either directly or to the person sitting next to us. And it’s essential that we know how to be delivered.

You say, what do we pray? What did Jesus teach us to pray? “Father, lead me not into temptation, and deliver me from evil.” So lead me not into the place of sorrow where I will blaspheme the name of my Father. And if I’m there, deliver me. And we get to be that person. We get to pray that prayer for one another to guard ourselves against sin.

And so ultimately, my prayer as we work through Psalm 77 is twofold. One, for the struggler, that as one commentator put it, that you would obtain consolation and peace in the severest distresses of your life by plunging into the earlier manifestations of the grace of God. That you would find relief by plunging yourself into the grace of God. And secondly, that we would be equipped to walk alongside and help brothers and sisters in states of spiritual depression, to be equipped to sympathize with one another so that we can all walk in the footsteps of the man of sorrows. So that we can all take up our crosses and follow Jesus Christ.

The Christian life—and I’ve said this before—the Christian life is not a bed of roses. It’s not lived in an easy chair. It’s on a narrow, hard path. And we desperately need one another if we’re gonna get out the other end trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ.