Now is Not Forever
“Now is not forever.” I can still see my grandmother’s handwriting, splotched on the page by her favorite ballpoint pen. I had just received her letter during my own struggle with mental health. I had lost faith in God’s forgiveness and had isolated myself from my faith community. In response to my letter outlining the despair and doubt that had overtaken my faith, my grandmother replied in her typical candor, “Remember, now is not forever.”
While I did not realize it then, these words would remind me in many situations that life has its rhythms and seasons. While sorrow may last for the night, joy comes in the morning (Psalm 30:5). There is a time for mourning and a time for dancing (Ecclesiastes 3:4b). Sometimes burning precedes beauty rising from the ashes (Isaiah 61:3). We see this cycle of life in the Book of Esther through the alternation between times of feasting and times of fasting:
Why is This Happening to Me?
The first two chapters of Job give us the large-scale scope of what is happening to Job: He is stuck in a cosmic tug-of-war between God and the Accuser, Satan. Satan argues that God has blessed Job, and this is the reason he is righteous. If God would take away everything that Job owns, he would curse God. Job loses his livestock, his servants, and his children, but still does not blame God or sin in any way (Job 1:22). Satan then argues that if God were to strike Job’s flesh, this would surely cause him to curse God, so God allows Job to be infected with terrible boils from the soles of his feet to the top of his head (Job 2:7). Amid all this happening, Job has no knowledge of the machinations behind the scenes. His only reality is the pain and suffering he is experiencing. His wife urges him to curse God and die (Job 2:9). His friends sit silently with him for seven days and seven nights (Job 2:13). But Job must eventually give voice to his anguish.
A Picture of Job
One of the most well-known Biblical stories about depression has to be the story of Job, a man who lost much but refused to curse God, a man who steadfastly upheld his innocence even when accused by his friends of sin, and a man who was humbled by a direct response from the LORD. Usually, a Biblical patriarch is introduced with a genealogy. However, Job is merely placed on the scene with no fanfare or even a reference to what time he lived in. Job is important not because of who he was related to but because of what he will experience. Therefore, Job represents anyone who suffers. The CSB characterizes Job as a man of “complete integrity” (Job 1:1). The ESV translates this phrase more literally: “blameless and upright.” What did the author of Job intend for us to know about Job from this first sentence?
The Nearness of God’s Presence
God has two more commands for Elijah: “Go out and stand.” He calls Elijah out of the cave where he has spent the night—again a symbolic as well as literal call to change like “Arise and eat.” But this time, God doesn’t command a doing but a being: “stand on the mountain.” Mountaintops were often where God met His people in the Old Testament. In fact, Mount Horeb where Elijah ended up is the same Mount Sinai where God gave Moses the Ten Commandments in Exodus 19 and 34. This mountain in particular was primed to be a place of revelation. But Elijah’s role is merely to stand—to stay put. Where? In the Lord’s Presence. God would do the revealing while Elijah would do the standing as God’s Presence came down.
God’s Questions
God’s questions invited a place where Elijah could freely express his feelings, but they also called out the irrational beliefs that held him captive and redirected him toward the truth. When I struggle with depression, I am bombarded by thoughts like “I’m not good enough. Everyone would be better without you.” “It doesn’t matter what I do. Things will stay like this forever.” “I am alone in this. There is no one to help me.” But I have found the truth in God’s Word that tells me I am chosen and adopted by God. The hope of the Gospel rests on the life-changing power of the Spirit not on my own strength. And God is my ever-present help in trouble, even when the rest of the world abandons me.
What is your answer to God’s question today? Why are you here? Pour it all out to Him—the unvarnished truth of your dark thoughts. Then allow Him to redirect you with the truth of His Word. Challenge those irrational thoughts with the reality God has shown you. His redirection will lead you out of the mire of your own thoughts and into the freedom of following Him with abandon.
Arise as a Call to Change
Scripture teaches us that there is a season for everything under the sun (Ecclesiastes 3:1). God’s call to arise is His compassionate indicator to us that this season has ended. God does not allow us to wallow in our feelings. Rather, He calls us to wake up after sleep, to choose life after what feels like death, to let go after grief, to get up after falling down—to face those things that we need to heal. Depression can make it easy to succumb to any or all of these things just because we no longer care about the things that used to matter to us. When God commands us to get up, it is both a physical command and a spiritual one. God wants to close the book on this chapter of overwhelming depression in your life and start a new one.
The Fear Spiral
While we might expect Elijah to see the miracle at Mount Carmel as a victory, the intervening circumstances pulled Elijah’s focus away from what God had done to what he feared. And that fear overwhelmed him into avoidance, isolation, despair, and eventually, depression.
A Lack of Faith?
As believers, we often see a depressed Christian, or even an unhappy Christian, as an oxymoron. There must be something lacking in their spiritual life. When I have voiced my own struggles with depression, other well-meaning Christians have asked, “But doesn’t Scripture tell us to be joyful in the Lord?” This kind of reminder comes from a reductive explanation for the root cause of depression: If only you had more faith, you wouldn’t feel so depressed. It is easy to use this thinking on ourselves to conclude that if we are depressed, we just don’t believe enough in God’s power to heal us. But a lack of faith is not the cause of depression for those in Scripture. In previous weeks, we picked up the story of Elijah at his worst suicidal moment, but how did he find himself in this position? Was it because he did not have enough faith? Was there some major weakness or deficiency in his faith-walk that led him to struggle with depression?
Arise and Eat—Part Two
God’s second command to Elijah is the same as His first one: “Get up and eat.” As much as I would like to say that the cure for depression is to get up and have a good meal and then get some sleep, that is not what modern science or Scripture teaches. Overcoming depression is a day-by-day battle, especially once that depression has progressed to the point of contemplating suicide. Our God isn’t a one-and-done God. We have to keep resting, keep getting up, keep eating, and keep doing those small things to take care of ourselves. It is in the practice of doing so that we teach ourselves that we have value. We are worth the effort. God knows and appreciates our value already. He has to lead us by the hand to discover it for ourselves for us to be in the right state of mind for the journey of overcoming depression.
Arise and Eat.
Our first Biblical example of depression comes from the story of Elijah in 1 Kings 19. We will return to the background of this story to discover the reasons behind Elijah’s depression in this case, but today, we are going to focus on how God’s response to Elijah’s depression demonstrates His character. For you, especially if you are struggling with depression today, God does not have a hollow message of “Cheer up.” In fact, what God asks of Elijah is much more practical and attainable for someone weighed down by depression. God gives us a prescription, a pattern, and a purpose for His way of treating depression: Sleep. Arise. Eat. And repeat.
Does the Bible talk about depression?
In therapy, I discovered many cognitive-behavioral tools that helped me progress in my healing. As I compared these tools with what I was studying in Scripture, I realized that the Bible did have some practical application for depression in the stories of other saints who had faced this very human struggle before. People like Elijah, Job, David, Paul, Naomi, Tamar, several of the psalmists, and so many more had all dealt with depression in some form. So here are some things that I learned about depression in Scripture and what God really has to say about the realities of this mental health disease.
Resurrection Life in Depression
I became a Christian when I was six years old, but I have struggled with depression for my entire adult life. Many times, those two truths feel like they conflict with one another; it seems like what my faith requires of me is something that is impossible when I am depressed. My depression feels like an oppressive cloud of sadness that never abates. But the Bible says, “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! (Phil 4:4)” How can I rejoice when I am numb? My depression says, “You have nothing to offer. You’d be better off dead.” But Jesus says, “I have come so that they may have life and have it in abundance. (John 10:10b).” How can I have abundant life when I am barely surviving? This disparity between Scripture and my own experience has often led me to be ashamed of my depression. And that shame has led me to isolate from my church community and to avoid God for fear that He is disappointed in me. If I were truly a Christian, I should not be struggling so much.
An Act of Desperate Faith
I think my cat knows my routine better than I do. As soon as my feet hit the floor, he is chirping and rubbing on me, guiding me into the kitchen for his breakfast. If I happen to be trying to sleep in, then all bets are off. He will jump on me and run zoomies across the bed. If that doesn’t work, he will make himself throw up in the hallway because that sound will always get me up. You’d think the poor cat was starved for how desperately he begs for food in the mornings.
When God Doesn’t Give Me Strength
I was already fifteen minutes late to work, but I was stuck in my car, hyperventilating and crying harder than I ever have in my life. Having a panic attack is not unusual for me as someone who struggles with anxiety, but I had just prayed that morning for God to help me overcome my anxiety and make it to work. If God is my strength, why can’t I do this small thing? I berated myself.