Cure #1 for Spiritual Depression

*The below transcript was generated and formatted by AI and may not accurately represent the recording.

Well, when I was in the business world a few years ago now, you could always spot the difference in your staff, especially in management positions, between those who you might call problem spotters and those who were problem solvers. And you always promoted the problem solvers. You see, they were both similar in the sense that they’d both come along and say, “Hey, there’s a problem.” And one of them would turn up and say, “Boss, I found a problem.” And so, well, thank you very much for letting me know there’s a problem. What are we gonna do about it? Whereas the proactive man or woman would come to you and say, “I found a problem, and I think this is the solution to it.” And that second category of people is far more helpful than the first.

And you might say that we can apply a similar type of logic to spiritual depression and our approach to Psalm 77. As helpful as it is to say spiritual depression is a reality, and this is what causes it, and this is what it affects or causes within us, it’s not very helpful if that’s all we say. Because all that leaves is a bunch of well-informed spiritually depressed people, and that’s not really good enough, is it? We want help. We need and we want to be able to help one another. And the only way we’re going to be able to do that is if we understand what some of the cures are for spiritual depression. And by God’s grace, the psalmist, Asaph, helps us see some of those.

It’s important for us to understand, though, how this cure sort of functions in Psalm 77. It’s not, “Here’s an option, here’s another option, and here’s another option.” It’s not meant to be taken like a medicine cabinet. You know, you open up a medicine cabinet and there’s maybe a plethora of different medicines in there, and you go, “Well, maybe I’ll try option A,” or, “I’ll try option B.” No, the idea is that we’re dealing with what you might call a cumulative cure, or to use an analogy, a ladder. If you want to climb up a ladder, you don’t start at the fifth rung, do you? You start at the first, and you go one rung at a time to safely ascend the ladder. And the same is true with the cure for spiritual depression. There is a ladder that we must follow, and each rung builds upon the previous one. And this morning, we’re going to consider that first rung, which is the need to seek God. The need to seek God.

Stop Running Away from God

And it begins by recognizing that we must stop running away from God. If you remember, I said to you spiritual depression is any number of states. It’s a state of being that tends to tempt us to doubt God’s character, question his ways, and ultimately culminate in blasphemy. And that a lot of it is surrounded by the lies of the devil who seeks to sow all of these things. And here’s the problem: when you’re spiritually depressed, when a person is spiritually depressed and they’re in that state, they begin to see God, and we’ve talked about this, as their adversary, right? They begin to see God as someone that is against them rather than for them. Now, if someone is an enemy, what do you do? You run away, right? You don’t stay and let an enemy keep hurting you. You run away from them. And so the temptation for us when we’re in this state or when people around us are in this state, the temptation is for them to run away from God. And so the first thing we must recognize is that we must stop running away from God.

But how does this manifest itself? Because God’s everywhere, right? You remember the words of David: “If I go to the highest mountain, you’re there. If I go to the deepest valley, you’re there. If I go to the bottom of the sea, you’re there. If I go into Sheol, the grave, you’re even there. There’s nowhere I can go that you are not present.” So you can’t actually physically run away from God, can you? Jonah found this out the hard way, right? “That’s it, I’m running away,” and he met God in the bottom of the ocean in a whale. Probably the least likely place you expected to meet the Lord, but he met him in the belly of a whale.

So how does this actually manifest itself then in a spiritually depressed person? Well, it’s hinted at in verse 3: “When I remember God, I moan; when I meditate, my spirit faints.” What’s happened in the mind of the psalmist at this point is that the concept of God to him has not just become adversarial, but has become negative, something that is heavy to him. If something is heavy and oppressive to you, the last thing you want to do is think about that thing—in this case, think about him, think about his ways—because when I meditate on him, it’s oppressive. When I think about him, it weighs me down. It seems to make me further depressed.

And this gives birth to this running away that looks a little bit like, on one hand, seeking comfort in everything that isn’t God. It’s very, very common. Those who are struggling with spiritual depression—because God begins to feel like, wrongly, feel like he is in an adversarial relationship with me—I will find comfort somewhere else. Now, we can understand how this might take place because we see this in human relationships, right? The husband begins to neglect his wife. He stops showing love to her. He stops speaking with her. He begins ignoring her. He starts spending all of his time on other things, and the wife begins going out, and she meets someone who’s very kind and very loving. And what quickly begins to take place? She begins to find her comfort and needs met in someone that is not her husband. And we can do this with God. When we’re spiritually depressed because God appears to us to be adversarial and oppressive, we look other places for comfort. We look in the wrong places for comfort. For example, we begin to try and escape our grief by turning to things like alcohol. Well, I can numb the pain and the discomfort by drinking. It’s very common. Or I can escape the pain through pleasure, and so we begin to turn to pornography or to sexual sin, or with excitement, and so we binge on TV, or we spend all of our time in the movie theater, or we saturate ourselves in certain types of books. Anything that will distract my mind from my present situation.

But what’s the problem with this? It does not bring true, lasting comfort. Because when you wake up in the morning hungover, what’s the problem? You’re more depressed than you were the night before. And when you’ve finished binge-watching the latest episode of whatever TV show, you’re left just as hollow at the end. Or when you’ve finished spending the lust of your flesh upon pornography or men or women or whatever it is, you’re filled with now guilt and racked with the weight of that, and you feel even worse. All of these temporary, cheap comforts offered to us by the devil ultimately leave us more depressed and more hollow and more empty because we’re seeking to solve a problem with something that doesn’t fix it.

There’s another way that this running away from God manifests itself, and that is by withdrawing from God’s people. Have you ever seen this with a person before? They start struggling. Difficulty sets in. The overwhelming pressure and stress of life, depression kicks in, whichever it is, and then they’re not at church on Sunday. Why? Do you know what they say when you ask them? “It’s really hard watching all the happy people at church. I feel like such a phony. I don’t feel the same there as I used to.” And so they just skip out on one Sunday or one prayer meeting or one gathering, but then it’s two, and then it’s three, and then it’s seven, and then it’s been three months and now the weight of the guilt of not being among God’s people becomes so hard that you feel like you can never return, because of the guilt.

I remember sitting with a young lady many, many years ago and she had stopped coming to church and I said to her, “What do you think you should do?” And she was struggling. Massively. And I said to her, “The means of grace, God’s gathering of God’s people together, this is the place where you will find solace, and comfort, and encouragement. You need it because you’re trying to deal with your problems by yourself in isolation, and you’re exposed to the devil.” And she said to me, “I know.” And I said, “Fantastic. So what are you gonna do about it?” And she said, “Nothing.” “Why?” And she said, “Oh, it would just be too hard to return now. What would people think of me?” And here was the real thing that caught my attention. She said to me, “Everyone would be so nice to me when I returned.” “Well, that’s a weird thing to say.” But it’s not when you’re weighed down with guilt and the devil convinces you that what you really deserve is judgment. And you know that when you go to the house of the Lord, you will not be judged, but you will be welcomed home like the prodigal child. And so depression causes the individual to separate themselves off from other supports and other helps, from the things that God has given.

But there’s one more that we could note. We could note many, but there’s one more important one, and that is not just that we withdraw from God’s people, but actually we begin to refuse the means of grace that God gives us for our comfort. See, it’s not just “I’m away from God’s people” that’s the problem. What do you miss out on when you’re not with God’s people? Yeah, fellowship. Yeah, good baking. Carol’s cooking. Many blessings. You also miss out on “This is my body, this is my blood.” You miss out on God himself through the minister of Christ blessing you at the end of a service. That is not just a farewell, brothers and sisters. That’s not just a nice way of saying the service is finished now. It is literally by God’s Spirit, him putting a covenantal blessing upon you as you go out the door. You miss out on Christ himself saying to you, “Come and worship me.” You miss out on hearing brothers and sisters around you pouring forth worship and praise. You miss out on the preaching of the gospel, the reading of God’s Word, the offering up of prayers. And the most blessed reality of all of that is when you’re struggling and you find it hard to even open the Bible, someone else is doing it on your behalf, and you can sit and just be ministered to. We begin to refuse the very medicine that God gives us to deal with our spiritual depression.

But what would you say of a person—a person who’s very sick, they’ve got a disease, and they go to the doctor and they say, “Oh, we actually just discovered the cure for your disease. All you need do is take this simple pill every day for the rest of your life, and it will never affect you, and it has no side effects.” What would you say of that person if they lost their medicine and refused to take it? “Now, what’s the matter with you? Are you serious? What kind of fool would refuse the medicine that cures them?” And yet that’s exactly what we do when we’re spiritually depressed. We begin to set the Word of God aside and watch YouTube instead. We stop talking to God, and we start talking to all of our neighbors. We refuse the gifts that God has given us, and all of this is ultimately a result of believing the lie of the devil. What is that lie? That God is not good, that God does not comfort the afflicted, that God will not help you. And it’s exactly what we saw in the Garden of Eden.

What did Adam and Eve do after their sin? Or let me ask you a different question. What should Adam have done either when Eve sinned or when he realized he had sinned? What is the very first thing he should have done? He should have grabbed the hand of his wife and gone to God and said, “God, forgive me. Have mercy on me, a sinner.” What did they do? They hid, didn’t they? They hid themselves in bushes, filled with shame and guilt. Yes, of their sin, but also because they don’t feel like they can stand before God. I mean, who are they hiding from? They’re not hiding from the animals, are they? They’re not hiding from Satan. Who are they hiding from? They’re hiding from God. What have they forgotten? They’ve forgotten who God is. They’ve forgotten that God is a God of love, a God of compassion, a God of comfort, a God of mercy. Now, we shouldn’t be too harsh on them because we do the same thing. We forget the nature of God.

What’s the solution to that? I think one of the key solutions to that is to realize that God is the God who seeks. See, we often think about the fact that I need to go to God, and we miss the heart of God, which is that God is the one who pursues me. In his comfort, in his grace, in his mercy, God actually pursues me. And so who goes and finds Adam and Eve in the bushes? It’s the Lord. The Lord walks into the garden. It’s not by chance, brothers and sisters, that God walks through the garden and says, “Hey, Adam, where are you?” Of course, he knows where Adam is. “Adam, I’ve come.” He knows what’s happened. “Did you eat from the tree?” Of course, God knows he’s eaten. What’s he doing? He’s inviting Adam to repent. He’s inviting Adam to come back. It’s in his grace and his mercy and his compassionate, comforting love that he goes into the garden and pursues Adam.

But it’s not just in the garden, is it? I mean, is there any greater display of the seeking, compassionate love of God than in the incarnation of Jesus Christ? God would’ve been perfectly just to wipe out the entirety of the human race or just leave them in their sin to die and perish in hell forever, but he didn’t. He took on flesh. I remember I had a professor who was an expert in Hindu religion and Christian-Hindu engagement, and he said once upon a time he was traveling through India engaging with Hindu gurus. And he was talking to a Hindu about the incarnation, this guru, and this guru said to him, “Oh, you Christians, you’re so lame. You only have one incarnation. We have lots of incarnations. And I can tell you how to spot an incarnation.” Of course, my professor was intrigued. He said, “Oh, okay. How do you spot an incarnation?” He said, “If you lie down on the ground, if you just lie down on the ground and you look at the feet of an incarnated being, you’ll notice they never touch the ground. They’re so holy they walk above the ground at all times, and they’re never soiled by the earth.” And you know what my professor said, right? He said, “Well, we’ve got a far more glorious incarnated being than you do. Our God took on flesh and dwelt among us. Our God took on flesh and shared in our baptism, and was circumcised for us, and was clothed in misery and shame for us. He came to seek and save the lost, and he did it by dying on a cross.” It’s the greatest display of a God who would actively do something to bring comfort and solace to His people.

And so as you’re tempted to run away, what you need to remember is that the one you’re running away from will pursue you in His love for you. And we see this in the love of God’s people, don’t we? I’ve been so encouraged by our elder who has proactively gone and visited Mo and Chrissy—five weeks in a row. Drove out there, they’re not there. Drove out again, they’re not there. Drove out again, they let me in. Drove out again. Pursuing. What is that? It’s a picture of the God who reaches out to people. Says, “I’m not gonna leave you in misery. I’m not happy or contented to leave you in your misery, but I will pursue you, and I will help you because I love you.” I think there’s an encouragement in that for you and I, isn’t there? Especially for those of us that don’t struggle with these things. To be like a dog after a bone. Don’t leave the struggling, depressed spiritually person alone. Seek them out. As they begin to withdraw, pursue them and love them and lavish grace upon them. Not to give up, not to tire, not to grow weary, but to have the heart of God for every struggling saint.

And so we must learn not to run away from God, not to run away from His helps. But what we must do is start running towards Him. We must start running towards Him.

Start Running Towards God

You know, in Jeremiah 29 and in Deuteronomy 4, the Lord declares, “Those who seek me will find me. If you seek me with all your heart, I will be found by you.” That’s a promise. That is an essential characteristic of God, that if you seek Him, He will be found by you. And we must learn to seek God. We touched on this very briefly at the end of last week’s sermon about the wonderful hope that in the midst of all of the despair and the borderline blasphemy that comes out of the mouth of Asaph, what he does do right is he calls out to God. We see him ultimately seeking God. Yes, he’s saying some things that make us scratch our head. Yes, he’s struggling, but he seeks God. His face is towards God. It’s not away from God.

Matthew Henry talks about this quite well. He says, “In the day of his trouble, Asaph did not seek the diversion of busyness or the recreation to shake off his trouble that way, but he sought God and His favor and grace. Those that are under trouble of mind must not think to drink it away or laugh it away but must pray it away.” And he goes on, “Days of trouble must be days of prayer. Days of inward trouble especially when God seems to have withdrawn from us. We must seek Him and seek Him till we find Him.” It’s like Jacob. You lay hold of the angel and what do you cry out? “I will not let you go until you bless me.”

But to understand this, we need to consider how Asaph seeks the Lord. How does Asaph seek God in his time of spiritual depression?

Well firstly, Asaph seeks God with expectancy. Have a look at verse one. “I cry aloud to God, aloud to God, and he will hear me.” Now, you can interpret “He will hear me” in different ways, but ultimately it’s a heart attitude that believes by faith that at the end of the day, my words, my prayer, will ascend to God and He will bend his ear down and listen. He seeks by faith. Like it says in Hebrews 11:6 of Enoch, where it says that anyone who seeks God must believe that there is a God who hears and rewards. That’s what Asaph’s doing, right? In the midst of his despair, he’s turning his voice to God because as dark as it is, he believes that ultimately there is one that listens. He is not alone in the world. And a seeking of God begins here with faith expectancy. Not the hope that we have in the word “I really hope someone listens to me.” It’s like when Carol had her fall, 6:30 in the morning, you’re on the side of the road, and she said to me, “And I just cried out. And I had no idea if anyone would be able to hear me. And I just cry out, ‘Someone help me. I can’t get up. Help me.’ And you have no idea if there’s anyone around, ’cause it’s 6:30 in the morning.” That is not what this is like. We call out with a profound assurance, knowing that there’s a God who hears us. So you cry out with all boldness and expectancy.

But secondly, he cries out with immediacy. Have a look at verse 2. “In the day of my trouble I seek the Lord; in the night my hand is stretched out.” What’s the picture of? He doesn’t say, you know, I was troubled, and then after a while I eventually decided to pray. It’s in the day of my trouble. It’s immediately. I didn’t delay. He’s not like David in Psalm 32. You remember those words? After David’s sin, he says, “I tried to bind it up within me. I held onto it.” And what happened? It rotted my bones until I confessed my sin. We’re tempted to bottle it up. I don’t wanna let it out. I don’t want anyone to know I’m struggling. I don’t even want God to know I’m struggling. And so we hold onto it in the day of our trouble. And the psalmist is showing us a picture of immediacy. As soon as trouble hits, as soon as sorrow overwhelms us, as soon as spiritual depression comes, we cry out to God. Our immediate response is to seek God. And yet isn’t it so true that so often that’s not the case? What do we do? Let’s be honest, brothers and sisters. What do we do? Or if you’re not a person who struggles with this, what do people do? Well, first I’m going to go and speak to my doctor, my friend, my counselor, my specialist. Secondly, I’m going to try X, Y, and Z. And when all of that fails, what do I say? Well, I suppose all I’ve got is prayer. The first thing to do in trouble is to cry out with expectancy to the one that listens.

The third way that this man, Asaph, seeks the Lord is with persistency. And so he says in verse 2, second part, “In the day of my trouble I seek the Lord; in the night my hand is stretched out without wearying.” Now, that picture is twofold. On one hand, it’s a complaint. “I’m still praying and nothing’s changing.” But on the other hand, it’s the picture of persistency, isn’t it? It’s Jacob. “I will not let you go until you bless me.” He’s like the parable Jesus tells in Luke 18. Do you remember the parable of the persistent widow? Jesus says—well, Luke says, “Jesus told a parable to teach the people to pray without ceasing.” And he says, “Once upon a time there was a widow. And this widow needed justice. And so she went to the judge. And the judge refused to listen to her.” And so she came back the next day and she made her case known again, and he refused to listen to her. But she came back over and over and over again. And eventually, the judge got so sick and tired of her coming, he realized the only way he was ever going to get rid of her was if he just gave her what she wanted, then she’d stop pestering him all the time. And you think to yourself, “Well, what a fabulous picture of God. Apparently we have to pester him into helping us.” But that’s not the point, because Jesus says, “How much more will God help his children who cry out to him night and day?” What’s the point? God’s nothing like the judge who you have to arm-twist to get him to do anything. God is speedy to help his children. So cry out with all more persistence. I mean, it’s really hard to persist with someone who doesn’t like you. It’s really hard to persist with someone that doesn’t wanna help you. But when you know someone loves you? I mean, it’s not a burden for me to ask my wife for something on a persistent basis. Why? Because I know she’ll never spurn me. I know she’ll always love me. And so I can just pour forth my heart’s desires to her day in and day out, and I know it will never return to me. How much more with God, brothers and sisters? The infinite God of love and compassion and mercy. And so we persist night and day until we get what we need. We do not give up.

Fourthly. So firstly, we need to seek God with expectancy, with immediacy, with persistency, and then lastly, with exclusivity. Have a look at verse 2 again. “In the day of my trouble I seek the Lord; in the night my hand is stretched out without wearying. My soul refuses to be comforted.” Now that statement—there’s a few different interpretations of that. And one of them, and I think it’s helpful and I think it’s right, is that Asaph’s not saying, “I just refuse to be comforted.” He could be saying, “I just don’t wanna be comforted.” And some people do do that. We have to beware of that. There is a spiritual depression which actually begins to self-feed itself and love itself and not want to be helped. That is a thing. I don’t think that’s what Asaph is saying, because Asaph is coming to God. Asaph wouldn’t be coming to God if he didn’t want to be comforted. What he’s saying is, “My soul refuses to be comforted by anyone except you.” What’s he refusing? He’s refusing the false comforts, isn’t he? He’s refusing escapism into pornography. He’s refusing drinking it away, as Matthew Henry would say, or laughing it away. He’s refusing all of the other cheap alternatives that the devil tries to give to him, and he says, “I will only come to God.” Why? Because there are good comforters in the world. There are good counselors. I work with people that struggle with this. But at the end of the day, only God can change my heart. I can point you to the Lord. I can remind you of biblical truths. But only God can actually work on your heart. And so he says, “I am coming to God and God alone.”

He echoes the words of Job. Remember those harsh words, but fair words, of Job in chapter 16 where he says, “Miserable comforters are you all.” What does Job ultimately want? He says, “I want God. I want God to answer me.” Now, you’ve gotta critique some of the things he says, but his heart’s desire is, “I want to be with God. I wanna know what God has to say about my situation. I wanna know what heaven’s doing.” And that’s a right heart. It is good and right to say, “No, I don’t want these other helps. I want the Lord to help me.” Now, we do that recognizing that the Lord sends helpers, right? He sends us helpers to point us to himself. So this is not a blind exclusivity that says, “Well, I’m gonna refuse the means of grace. I’m gonna refuse my brothers and sisters. I’m gonna refuse Christian counselors. I’m gonna refuse what I need. I’m just gonna sit around passively waiting for God to zap me.” It’s not what we’re talking about. It’s not the old story of the lady who’s lost in the ocean. You’ve probably heard this before. There’s a lady lost in the ocean, and she cries out to God, and she says, “God, save me. Save me.” And all of a sudden, a boat pulls up next to her and says to her, “Grab the lifeline.” And she says, “Nope, God’s gonna save me.” And on she goes, crying out, “God, save me.” And another boat comes past and says, “We’ve got a dinghy we can let down for you.” She says, “Nope, God’s gonna save me.” And then she drowns. And what would God say to her as she walks in the gates, if there were gates, and she says, “God, you didn’t save me”? What would God say? “I sent you two boats.” But we recognize that even though God sends us helpers, who is the helper? It is our Lord and our God. And so we hear the words of good counselors and good pastors and elders and brothers and sisters, and we use those things to raise up our hearts and minds to the living God. Because otherwise, you know what happens? Spiritually depressed people become dependent upon others. They become dependent upon a husband or a wife, or a child or a parent, or a friend or a brother, instead of being dependent upon God. And what they’ve ultimately done is made their loved one their god. They begin to look to a human, believing the human can provide them with what they need, when what they must do is seek God and God alone.

You see, seeking God, yes, means saying no and stopping running away from God, but it also is an active faith that lays hold of God in spite of our senses. Do you remember verse 3? “When I remember God, I moan. When I meditate, my spirit faints.” What’s he saying? Everything around me that I see with my eyes, feel with my heart, and experience around me causes me to question God. So my physical eyes fail me, but by faith I seek the Lord anyway. While the devil says to us, “He’s not worth seeking,” while the world says, “There’s other comforters,” while our own flesh gives out, yet the heart of faith continues to lay hold of God.

And that’s the first rung, brothers and sisters. It’s not the only rung, but it’s the first rung of the ladder of cures for spiritual depression. It’s laying hold of God and God alone as he’s found in the Lord Jesus Christ. This is what’s so wonderful about the Book of Hebrews, saying, “We don’t have a God who is untouched,” but our God’s incarnated himself, and he’s become the high priest. Why? So that he can sympathize with us. So that he can comfort us. He’s the God of all comfort with skin on so that we can find help in our hour of need.

Now, one of the commentators said, “There are times in the life of every believer when God and his ways become unintelligible to him.” Do you know what I mean by that? There are times in every believer’s life when you look at what God seems to be doing and you think to yourself, “This makes no sense. I don’t get it. If God’s A, why B? It doesn’t make sense to me.” And he says, “They get lost in profound meditation, and nothing is left to them but a desponding sigh.” That’s all that’s left. And yet, Calvin would say, “However much we may experience of fretting, sorrow, depression, we must persevere in calling on God even in the midst of these impediments.” Or to say it differently, the first cure is to turn your face to God, and God alone.

Application

So what uses can we draw from this?

Well, firstly, let’s think about for those of us that struggle with spiritual depression or melancholy or whatever you want to call it. I think firstly, this encourages us to refuse all false comforts and devilish promises. The devil will promise to you, “If you give yourself to A, it will get better. If you give yourself to pornography, alcohol,” whatever it is, “it will get better.” You must refuse them. We do not give ourselves to the works of the flesh, Colossians 3, right? Escapism is a deadly danger that only leads to further spiritual depression. You must refuse everything that this world offers you that is not of God.

Secondly, you must seek God. That’s easy to say. But how do you seek God? Well, firstly, you seek God in the word of God. This is where you find God. You will not find Him in the forest. You will not find Him through some mystical experience. You will not find Him by going to the Power Ministries Crusade. You will find Him in the Word, because the Word declares and sets before us the Lord Jesus Christ, in whom the full deity of God is found. And so, you don’t just come to the Word and read a book. You come to the Word and you seek Christ in the Word. You seek His person and His work. Who is He? What has He done? And you mine the Word of God to find Christ, because in finding Christ, you find God, who is the only help for you.

Second, you pray. Or third, I guess we’re up to. Third, you pray. Without ceasing. And even when the soul and the heart is barren, you cry out all the more. And if the only words you can utter out is, “God, help me,” well, the wonderful thing is, Romans 8 says that when we don’t know how to pray or what to pray, the Spirit groans within us. The Spirit who knows the mind of God cries out within us on our behalf.

Also, you need to gather with God’s people. You know, there’s a reason the letter to the Hebrews says, “Do not neglect gathering together.” It’s not just ’cause it would be really helpful for COVID. Do you know what the rest of the verse says? Most of us remember, “Don’t neglect meeting together,” right? Do you know what the rest of the verse says? “Do not neglect meeting together, but encourage one another all the more as the evil day approaches.” Well, that’s a much fuller verse, isn’t it? Why? Well, because when someone’s plundering all of your stuff, it can be really easy to get discouraged. When you’re rejected by your whole family for believing in Jesus Christ, and you lose your inheritance, and everyone forsakes you, and you’ve got no one left except for the church, it’s really easy to despair. And so the solution: keep getting together with God’s people. Why? So that God’s people can help you. This is the blessing of two services, brothers and sisters. You get it twice. This is the blessing of midweek. You get it a third time. And then this is the blessing of inviting someone over for dinner, going out with someone for a coffee, finding time to meet with God’s people. Why? Because we need to encourage one another, because life under the sun is hard, and sometimes life sucks, doesn’t it? Sometimes it’s brutal. But there are God’s people there.

What about for those of you who don’t struggle with this? You know, just, it’s always sunny, even when it’s raining. You’re just wired differently. These people are there. I know for those of you that struggle with spiritual depression, this just seems like a foreign concept. But some of us just can’t even begin to understand being sad. You know, even when things are sad, they’re still happy. How do you utilize this text?

Well, I think firstly, it really encourages you not to give cheap fixes to people that are struggling. One of the temptations when we’re faced with someone who’s struggling, who’s low, who’s sad, is just to put Band-Aids on them. You know why? Because if you put a Band-Aid on them, they’re going to leave you alone. I know that sounds bad, but let’s just be honest. It’s really hard dealing with spiritually depressed people, anxious people, fearful people, sad people, sorrowful people. And so the temptation is just to say, you know, “Romans 8 said it’s gonna work out for your good.” “Sweet. Thanks, guys. See ya.” And they just walk off. Or to say, “Why don’t you just go find a local counselor and get some medicine? That’ll fix you.” Or, “Have you thought about watching TV?” Or, “Maybe we should go to the pub.” You know, those simple fixes just to stick something on the festering sore, so I don’t have to look at it. There’s a temptation to do that. Don’t be part of the problem, brothers and sisters. You will drive spiritually depressed people further into a hole in the ground by doing so. They will come to you and say, “I’ve tried X.” You have to be courageous enough to say, “Don’t do that again.” You have to be courageous enough to call something folly. I’ve had to do this with many people where they said, “Well, I tried X,” and I have to say to them, “Never do that again. That is pure folly and will only lead in your demise.” Sometimes you have to rebuke them. It’s hard. Don’t be part of the problem by offering cheap solutions.

Another help: lead them by the hand. You know, blind people need to be led by the hand, right? Mrs. Cockrell and I, we go to the rest home service and Anne Harkins comes with us, and she’s fully blind. It’s strange. If you’ve never led a blind person, what do you do? Like, you know, what would happen if we turned up there and we just walked off and left her behind? Now, sometimes she gets a little bit lost. You can understand it, right? We’ll go into the actual lounge where the piano is, and all of a sudden she’ll just pause. And you can tell she hasn’t quite got her bearings right, and she doesn’t quite know where the piano is, and she’s sort of stumbling around a little bit. A spiritually depressed person is a little bit like a blind person. Sometimes they actually do know what to do. They know where they’re meant to go, but they don’t know how to quite do it. And what they need is someone like you to come along and just grab their hand and say, “Let me help you seek the Lord. Come with me. I know where God is found.” And take them, literally take them to God. Bring them to church. Gather with them. Read the scriptures with them. Pray with them. And when they’re really bad, do you know what you need to do? You need to seek God on their behalf, because sometimes people are so bad they can’t even be helped to seek God. They just need someone to do it for them. This is the picture of Spurgeon that I told you about, right? Remember? Spurgeon comes home from church. He’s so depressed, he’s so low, that he just literally casts himself down on the ground, and he just says to his wife, “Just read from the good book.” Just read from the good book. He can’t even read it himself, and there is Susannah Spurgeon just reading the Book of Psalms to him. Just reading, and reading, and reading, until he’s able to drag himself back up off the floor again to then go and preach in the Sunday evening service. Sometimes someone needs you just to say to them, “Let me pray for you. Let me read to you.”

Yet, you know the wonderful thing about this? You don’t have to be qualified. You don’t need a degree in psychology or counseling. What you need is the word of God in your hand, and you sit down with a person and you say, “Let me take you to the book,” and you read the word, and you pray. And then you look at them, and you think to yourself, “They look just as depressed as when I started.” And so you read another Psalm, and you pray again, and you read another Psalm, and you pray again verbally for them. You intercede on their behalf until God brings them help. You know, to be like Aaron and Hur. Remember Aaron and Hur? That story where Moses holds the staff above his head, and as he tires, he drops the staff, and what happens? As he drops the staff, Israel starts losing the fight. So what do Aaron and Hur do? They sit him on a rock, and they stand next to him, and they hold his arms. They just hold him up. As he grows weary and tired, they hold him up. You need to be this for your brothers and sisters. You need to stand with them and hold up their arms and say, “I will not let you go. I’m here with you till the end.”

Brothers and sisters, spiritually depressed people, their faith may be perplexed at times, but their faith is never dead. Sometimes what it just needs is kindling. You know, your fire gets low, what do you do? You gently blow on it. You gently blow on it and bring it back to life. This is what the faith needs sometimes, is just to gently and tenderly minister to them. In Isaiah 55, the Lord says to His people, “Seek me. Seek me out, and I will restore you.” This is the first rung of assistance, and ultimately, it begins with forsaking all lesser comforts. Forsaking all lesser comforts, and seeking God alone. And yet the wonderful thing is, what does He say in Deuteronomy and Jeremiah? “If you seek me, and seek me with all your heart, you will find me.” So seek Him out, brothers and sisters, for your every comfort.