This is part 3 of a 3 part series. You can find part 1 and part 2 here: Part 1 Part 2

(Originally published on March 7, 2016)

Practicing Priesthood

In the previous posts in this series, we looked at the need to set the culture in regards to depression, as well as provide training for the church. Now we come to the third aspect to consider, namely, we are a royal priesthood and are called to act as priests toward one another (1 Pet. 2:9). These are the trenches of one-anothering. Our maturing and training is lived out within a culture for the purpose of aiding one another in growth. A person struggling with depression feels isolated and alone. They scream out into the darkness, “Why?!” not, “How?!” He or she is not looking for steps but for meaning. We can easily err in this priestly role and try to be engineers—dealing symptomatically to restore normalcy. In walking with someone who suffers with depression, the priest seeks to help with the deeper struggle.

Recently Jennifer (not her real name), who battles depression, told me that, “It feels like I can’t live, but I can’t die either. My heart is continually ripped out over and over again.” Such words echo Bunyan’s Giant Despair in The Pilgrim’s Progress, “Why should you choose life, seeing it is accompanied by so much bitterness?” The Proverbs tell us that, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick” (Pro. 13:12). Such hearts need voices of hope, to speak into their pain. In endeavoring to impart hope, we must ensure that the hope we impart is Gospel hope.

We can easily impart false or trite hopes in an effort to lighten spirits. Gospel hope, however, is the sustaining wind that carries us through the storm to our desired haven (Psalm 107:30).

Below are four different ways we can seek to unveil this hope:

Befriending

Just this week, I spoke with Edward (not his real name) whose neighbour committed suicide. Edward, oblivious to his neighbour’s depression, assumed his neighbour was simply avoiding relationship. While he may have been avoiding relationship, it was expressive of his isolation. But the greater our suffering, the greater will be our sense of feeling alone. Hope says, “You are not alone.” “A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity” (Pro 17:17). Befriending one who suffers, brings Christ near to them through his Body. God said he would never leave us nor forsake us (Deut 31:6). He declares us His friends (John 15:15). We can model the hope of God’s presence in befriending those struggling with depression.

Remembering

Second, when we remember people, it tells them that, even though we are out of sight, they are still in mind. In Ed Welch’s book, Side by Side, he says, “If we are affected by someone’s suffering, we will remember it, which is one of the great gifts that we give to each other” (pg. 103). The Apostle Paul certainly communicated this in his prayers for the church, “I always remember you in my prayers” (I Tim 1:3, see also Eph 1:16; Phil 1:4). Remembering communicates,“You matter.” It is certainly true that we are created for a purpose, and we are meant to be shaped by one another (Pro 27:17). Remembering brings solidarity, and there is beauty in solidarity, “Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them… since you also are in the body” (Heb 13:3).

Sufferers of depression often feel that they are incapable of expressing their anguish. Our remembering their anguish says that at some level, “I feel your pain.” Knowing another feels their pain helps unbolt the doors of solitude. This too is a reminder that we have a high priest who can, “Sympathize with our weaknesses” (Heb 4:15). The fact that weaknesses is plural means we cannot exclude a category of weakness (such as depression), from Christ’s sympathies.

Grace Hunting

Third, as we enter into their pain, we obtain a new vantage point. Our first response tends to be going on an idol hunt. We want to find the sin or the idol that is at the heart. Whilst there is a place for this, the depressed person is likely heavily engaged in morbid introspection and thus would be greatly helped seeing signs of God’s grace at work in them. Saying something like, “You are so courageous. God has given you grace this week to get out of bed and get the kids to school.” We want to commend manifested grace where we see it. For those who feel hopeless and alone, this is a reminder that God is near and working even in the mundane.

Jesus’ Suffering

Fourth, the suffering of Jesus is both our example and help. We may want to speak of the glories of heaven obtained by Jesus’ suffering. But there is also consolation in Christ’s suffering itself. Spurgeon, who suffered from depression, said, “It is an unspeakable consolation that our Lord Jesus knows this experience.” Zack Eswine, in his book Spurgeon’s Sorrows writes, “To feel in our being that the God to whom we cry has Himself suffered as we do enables us to feel that we are not alone and that God is not cruel.” Here we can begin to see our burden as belonging to him.

When Amy Carmichael struggled with an unbearable burden in India, she considered Christ and his burden bearing in the Garden, “Under one of those trees our Lord Jesus knelt, and He knelt alone. And I knew that this was His burden not mine. It was He who was asking me to share it with Him, not I who was asking Him to share it with me.” She found great comfort knowing that she was partaking in the sufferings of Christ. Jesus not only knows our pain, he endured it, and we kneel beside him in it.

Continuing Work

God is a redeeming God, who continually works his redemption into us. As we walk with depression sufferers, God is not only continuing to work in them, he is continuing to work in us. We mutually grow, building one another up in our most holy faith, as we await the day when all sin, sickness, and death gives way to the glorious liberty of the children of God (Rom 8:21).

This is Part 2 of a 3 part series. You can find Part 1 here:

The Church & Victims Of Depression

Providing Training

In our last post in this series, we looked at promoting culture. This is almost like saying, “Imagine what could be,” and then making steps in the direction of what could be. However, such things will never be without those of us in church leadership providing training for the saints. This is Paul’s call to the Ephesian church, so every joint is outfitted with the training they need for redemptive up-building in love (Eph. 4:11-16). These verses teach us that ministry is a participation sport.

In my experience with Anita, I began to think that people who suffer with things like depression could only be helped by highly skilled professionals. Whilst professional involvement may be needed, this should not relegate the body of Christ to the sideline. The leadership of the church can empower the church to help and not harm people further. We harm them further when we toss out trite sayings like “Let go and let God,” or “If you were trusting Jesus, you wouldn’t be depressed.” Many of these types of responses see depression merely through the lens of sin rather than the lens of both sin and suffering.

If we as pastors are going to shepherd well, we need to think about how we can help our congregations incarnate into people’s sufferings.

We must help them to think biblically about the role of suffering in a Christian’s life. In some cases, such as my own, I had to begin studying these things at a deeper level in order to aid my congregation. Much of this training will boil down to helping the church walk in humility, preferring one another, and walking alongside one another. One way I have learned to help train my congregation is to apply the sermons with the understanding that 1 in 5 of my congregation will suffer from depression, and the other 4 in 5 will have the opportunity to walk with someone who suffers from depression.

If we bring this struggle out of darkness into light, the sufferer is better enabled to run to Christ, and the church can help point the way. This helps give the body of Christ something to grab hold of. And since we are more alike than different, the church will learn more about ourselves as well in addition to truths we already know, just applied more deeply.

Originally published on February 29, 2016

The phone rang at 2am again. I knew who it was before answering. In recent weeks, Anita (not her real name) often called in the middle of the night.

She claimed to feel the fires of hell all over her body with no desire to live.

My wife or I would drive to her home and sit down and pray with her. We would speak to Anita and rally the church to pray for her. After a couple suicide attempts through overdoses, she was hospitalized for several months. We rallied around Anita as best we could. We would encourage her and read her Scripture, but it felt like talking to a wall. It was a discouraging time, but also a time when my wife and I felt utterly helpless. We were frustrated with Anita for not listening, and yet, grieved for her inability to listen. We felt defeated as if we had let Anita down.

Anita is not a unique case.

Although her depression was severe, 1 in 5 people in the UK will suffer depression. This highlights the importance of the role of the local church in helping sufferers of depression. But how do we help? Should we feel as helpless as my wife and I felt with Anita several years ago? There are many ways the church can approach depression.

In this three-part series, I would like to briefly look at three things we can do as the church by: Promoting Culture, Providing Training, and Practicing Priesthood.

Promoting Culture

A culture is the way in which groups of people live and think.

Everyone brings their culture into the church, and as the church, we have developed an Evangelical culture that is more based on moral excellence and stoicism than on the realities of our humanity. On Sundays, it is not uncommon for a family to be falling to pieces, yelling at one another in the car, and then walking into the church building with smiles, hugs, and handshakes. Typical church culture relegates life’s hardships and sufferings to behind closed doors. The emperor’s new clothes are “I’m ok, you’re ok.”

Any sufferer in that context can scream on the inside, but fear being viewed as inferior for having a quivering upper lip. In many ways we have an anti-suffering (and anti-depression) theology within the church.

The purpose of suffering is often not considered, and so when suffering strikes (and it will), many find difficulty weathering the storm. Suffering seems an obscure stranger, and our legalistic bent suggests that intense suffering comes upon those who are not trusting God. David Murray is right when he says in his book Christians Get Depressed Too that, “There is still a stigma attached to mental illness and to depression in particular.” Sometimes that stigma is not just that a person does not seem to be coping well, but that he/she fails to trust God.

In promoting a biblical culture, the local church must promote a culture of progressive sanctification. In other words, we are all in process.

We put on a sanctified show for others to see whilst ignoring the fact that we are not as together as we portray. Truly, we make sure the scaffolds of sanctification are erected on the inside of the building rather than the observable outside. This is why D.A. Carson wrote his book on suffering, How Long, O Lord? Carson begins by saying, “This is a book of preventative medicine. One of the major causes of devastating grief and confusion among Christians is that our expectations are false.” Suffering is a human problem, and depression is a form of suffering. People suffer from depression because of others (abuse, expectations, etc.), Adam (the curse, physiological factors, misery in work, death, etc.), and Satan (conspiring with the curse, spinning lies, etc.). These contributors work along the grain of our sinful hearts.

There is no single cause for depression.

Every one of us finds him/herself living amongst the same brokenness vulnerable to its effects. When Paul speaks of overcoming temptations, he points out that they are common to all (1 Cor. 10:13). Thus we must promote a new culture in the church—a culture that recognizes our likeness to one another. Truly, our struggles and temptations are more alike than different. That means that we are not a church that loves to help people with problems, but a church of people with problems.

In other words, we need a church culture that locates ourselves in the community of sufferers, rather than the community of the perfected.

Practicing such a culture would help invite openness about struggles, including depression, so that the sufferer receives care. In many cases, it may provide a preventative dynamic as the community can help hear and carry one another’s burdens before they break an individual’s spirit! This allows us to see ourselves included as sufferers; thus, we can enter into the world of the depressed without excluding them from our world.

Of all the problems in the world, suffering is the hardest to face. Why is there so much suffering in our world, and why does God allow it?

Recently, Psalm 91 has been helping me to understand suffering in a new light.

It might strike you as a little strange because Psalm 91 would seem to indicate that we will never suffer any harm at all. It says things like, “A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you.” No “disease,” no “pestilence,” indeed, “No harm will befall you” at all.

It can be a bit confusing to read this psalm in light of the suffering that many of us go through in life. It might even lead us to ask the question: “Am I doing something wrong?” But this is not the correct way to read this psalm. In fact, the only way for us to understand this psalm correctly is in the light of the cross of Christ.

Let me explain that a bit more. It is interesting that the main extended metaphor in this psalm is the image of a mother bird. For example, “He will cover you with His feathers and under His wings, you will find refuge.” This image is one of a God who draws close to us, who pulls us in under His wings and protects us. This is God’s heart toward us. The whole psalm is God’s heart toward us. But, we live in a broken and fallen world, filled with pain and suffering; how can God ultimately protect us from all of the evils of man? Well, there was really only one way, and Jesus did it.

I’m speaking of the cross.

The way God comes through on His promises in Psalm 91 is on the cross. There is a story of a farm in the Midwest of America that suffered through a terrible hail storm. The hailstones were so big they destroyed many of the crops. When the farmer went out to check the damage the next day, he found a bird’s nest knocked to the ground. In it was a mother bird with her wings spread wide. When the farmer lifted her from the nest, he realized she was dead, but he found all her little chicks under her totally unharmed. How does God protect us from all harm the way He tells us He will in Psalm 91? He does it by dying for us. He did it on the cross.

In Luke chapter 4, when Jesus is being tempted in the desert, Satan quotes Psalm 91 to Jesus, saying, “Throw yourself down from the temple; the angels will catch you and not let you strike your foot against a stone.” Satan was trying to tell Jesus that nothing bad had to happen to Him, and He didn’t need to suffer. God wouldn’t let Him harmed, never mind sent to the cross. But suffering had to be a part of Jesus’ story, and sometimes, of ours too. Thankfully, Jesus didn’t succumb to Satan’s temptations. He stayed the course and walked bravely to the cross so that the promises of Psalm 91 could truly be fulfilled one day, and He could “wipe every tear from their eyes” so, “there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain” (Revelation 21:4).

Suffering is a bitter pill to swallow. But we serve a God who also ate the bitter pill. He suffered. He did it to defeat sin; He did it for you; He did it for me. When we read Psalm 91 in light of the cross, we realize that all of the promises of God’s heart to us in that psalm are “yes” and “amen” in Jesus Christ. No matter what befalls us on this earth, we can never be snatched from His hand.

Death itself has been defeated.

Jesus said in Mathew 23:37, “How often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.” Jesus suffered; we suffer. But there is comfort in the suffering. There is comfort in the knowledge that our eternity is secure. Let us come close to Jesus and allow Him to gather us under His wings. Let us find peace in our Savior who gave everything for us.

Dominic Done wrote, “When we choose gratitude, we aren’t denying our frustration and pain; we’re planting seeds of hope in the midst of those fractured places. Gratitude leverages life’s brokenness to allow the light in. Gratitude is the soul’s war against despair.” In Christ, we have so much to be grateful for. He is our high tower, our ever-present help in time of need.

If you are in the midst of a broken and fractured place, know you are still surrounded by the love of God. Draw close to Him, and let Him draw you to Himself. He is a God who truly understands your pain. He is with you in your trouble, and one day, He will literally wipe every tear from your eyes.