A Christian View of depression (Part 1)

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A Christian view of depression (Part 2)

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.
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No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the apostle
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Paul said, "'But we did not yield in subjection to them "'for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel "'would remain with you.'"
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In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.
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By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her king.
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Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. Off we go, another 25 minutes of biblical provocative messages.
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Today I'd like to talk about the subject of depression. Before I talk about depression, I want to make sure
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I plug and promote Pastor Pat Abendroth. Yes, you heard that correctly.
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Pat Abendroth sounds like my last name. It is, Pat is my younger brother. He is a pastor in Omaha, Omaha Bible Church, an expository teaching church, and Pat will be here live in the studio soon.
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He is gonna have a conference here at the church, Bethlehem Bible Church. You can go to our website, www .bbcchurch
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.org. Or you could register at info at nocompromiseradio .com. He's gonna have a conference about men, men acting manly.
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I'm pretty much tired, I'll say sick and tired, of the culture that says, whether it's on TV or in magazines or books, that all men are losers.
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The problems with men is they don't act like women enough, and the downfall of society is men.
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Men are bad at everything they do. Men are the reasons why marriages are bad, society's bad, the culture's bad, men are bad.
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It's just this constant refrain of men are being bad. On the one hand,
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I can't stand that. On the other hand, when men are bad, when men are acting effeminate, when men are acting not manly, when they're not leading like Christ did in a godly way, then there's problems.
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So this conference will help both those kind of people, all people, and it's for men and their young boys.
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Actually, their teenage boys. If you've got a young boy who could sit still for the morning, you should bring that boy. It's called
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Manning Up in Church, Home, and Culture. Men's Breakfast at the Church, March 27th.
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March 27th, eight o 'clock breakfast, three sessions to follow, so we'll start preaching around 8 .30.
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My guess, we'll try to be done around 11 .30, 12, three sessions. If you register now, $5 for the conference and breakfast.
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If you show up at the door, $5, no breakfast. So anyway, that will be
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Pastor Pat Abendroth, Men's Breakfast and Conference at Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.
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If you are listening to this on podcast or overseas someplace, we'll try to put those up online.
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Maybe we'll even put one on No Compromise Radio so you can hear Pastor Pat, biblical, enthusiastic.
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Pat would do good on this show because he is biblical and provocative, and in that order.
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March 27th, March 27th, info at nocompromiseradio .com. If you'd like to register, you can send us in $5.
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I don't know if the church website is able to do the PayPal thing there or not. Fine, you could even go to the
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No Compromise Radio website and donate online, five bucks, bring me your little donation slip, and that'll count.
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How about that? All right, well, I'd like to talk a little bit today about depression, the topic of depression from a biblical perspective.
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This is something that is now very common in people. Newsweek in 1987 even said that depression has been called the common cold of mental disorders.
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And even back then, they say it disrupts the lives of 30 to 40 million Americans. You will most likely have met somebody who suffers what the people call depression.
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You probably have had your ups and downs. And so how can we look at this from a biblical perspective? Certainly there is room for growth in people.
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There is maturation of the saints. I know that when I was in the hospital, well, let me get to that in a little bit.
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Number one, what is depression? What is depression? Many people use other words for depression, and they might use words like empty, alone, sullen, emotional numbness, guilt, unworthy feelings, hopelessness.
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Those would be some words that people might use. What does the DSM -IV use?
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This is a secular diagnostic manual. It's called the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the
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American Psychiatric Association. And this is what they would use if you go into a psychiatrist.
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They would open this up, and you have to meet the proper criterion, or they cannot give you any kind of medicine.
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You have to have five or more of these in two weeks. One, depressed mood most of the day.
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Two, markedly diminished interest or pleasure in all or almost all activities most of the day.
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Significant weight loss when not dieting or weight gain. Insomnia or hypersomnia nearly every day.
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Feeling physically restless or slowed to an extent that is observable to others.
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We're up to number six now. Six, fatigue or loss of energy nearly every day. Seven, feelings of worthlessness or excessive or inappropriate guilt.
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That's an interesting one. Maybe comments later. Diminished ability to think or concentrate.
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Recurrent thoughts of death. Recurrent suicidal thinking without a specific plan or an actual suicide attempt.
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This would be found on pages 161 to 164 in the DSM -4, Roman numeral four.
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I have two different ways to go about this. I know this is no compromise radio, and you probably like blunt, bold, direct statements, and I want to do that today.
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But I also am coming at this from a pastoral heart where I know people who suffer what's commonly called depression, and I feel for them, and I love them, and I don't want to just blast them and say, you know, get over it or else, and, you know, you're sinning in this area, so, you know, watch out.
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There's a way to go about things. And so I don't know which direction to take today, either the kind, compassionate way, or the way that I would look at this secular diagnostic manual and say, five or more in two weeks,
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I guess I'm clinically depressed. Because like everyone else, I have my ups and downs, and I look at this and I think
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I've had bad moods most of the day, sometime in the last 14 days, for sure.
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Markedly diminished interest in pleasure or activities, yes. Weight loss one, insomnia, yes.
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Restless, yes. Fatigue, yes. Inappropriate guilt,
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I won't talk about that quite yet. Ability to think, diminished ability to think or concentrate, yes.
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The suicide ones, no. But the other ones, I've pretty much had, and I'm sure I could walk into the doctor and easily get a prescription if I just said a few of these things.
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Reminds me of the time when my wife was going through some issues after her, let's see,
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I think it was after Maddie was born. She just felt down and depressed and just lethargic.
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Listless, as Lucy would say, Lucy Ricardo. And she went in and basically they said, here's the medicine, here's the psychosomatic medicine that you need.
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And come to find out, after we said no to that, more testing was done through another doctor and it was her thyroid.
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And so there can be real feelings, real issues, real organic things underlying them.
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But already when I look at the DSM -IV, people are quick to medicate folks.
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And by the way, medication is not always bad. It's for the reasons. I remember when I was having my esophagus problems in the hospital and I said,
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I basically was choking for about 12 hours. I won't bore you with all the details of saliva and spittle and all kinds of other things.
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But here I am in the hospital waiting for them to do the procedure. And when you choke, it's not a good feeling. Now just imagine choking for about nine hours.
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And so with a little bit of medical background that I've had, I said, I need some kind of medicine to calm me down.
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And they said, well, we don't want to give you anything that make you sleep because then the choking would be exacerbated. And I said, well, how about some
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Ativan? Ativan is something that's for anxiety. And so they said, that's a good idea.
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And so they gave me, I'm telling them what to prescribe me. It's a bad deal. They gave me some
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Ativan and an IV because I couldn't swallow. And instantly I felt better. Now the problem still existed.
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I still had something stuck in my esophagus, but I felt much better about it. I could feel the warmth.
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If I was extreme hyper charismatic, I probably was feeling the presence of the Holy Spirit. I think that's what they think the
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Spirit feels like. This warm, calming peace came over me.
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I really had a peace about it. And then they did the procedure in the morning. So this is not some screed against all drugs all the time.
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That's not what I'm after. But what I want to say to start with this topic of depression is all too often people are over -prescribing medicine and diagnosing them as depressed.
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And so whether you use words like sullen and empty or you have these DSM -IV things, you want to be careful.
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I think there are some godly ways to define depression. The godly ways, biblical ways to describe what we call depression.
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What people say hopeless, they're hopeless and there's feelings of dejection. Ed Welch, Dr.
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Ed Welch defined depression as suffering. He said it's best diagnosed as suffering.
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Well, that's interesting. I want to make some comments about that. Jay Adams says, depression comes as a result of a failure in self -control and self -discipline or to fail to handle setbacks
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God's ways. And so Welch comes across a little bit more, this is how people suffer.
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Adams is basically they're suffering based on a lack of something that they're doing, whether it's self -control or self -discipline.
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How about Robert Smith, a medical doctor, how does he describe it and define it? Quote, a feeling that is used as an excuse to stop handling some area of life.
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See, Smith is a little more along the lines of Adams versus Ed Welch. Depression is that debilitating mood feeling or air of hopelessness, which becomes a person's reasons for not handling the most important issues of life.
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In discouragement, a person keeps going, but in depression, a person stops.
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Depression is a contemporary term. It used to be called melancholy or are you ready for this one?
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According to Dr. Smith, a medical doctor who's involved in nuthetic counseling, NANC and all those kinds of things.
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He said it used to be called melancholy and then the generation before that, depression used to be called slothfulness.
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So depending on how you want to look at things, according to the DSM -IV, according to common pop culture, emotional numbness, or some definitions from godly people, you can see this as either something that is in relation to suffering or something that is basically caused by a person's behavior.
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Biblical descriptions, I probably like these the best. Having a broken spirit,
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Psalm, excuse me, Proverbs 17. Sadness, Proverbs 15. Despair, Psalm 42.
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Brokenheartedness, Psalm 147. Burdened by the weight of sin. Having grief, losing heart, becoming faint or weary,
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Hebrews 12 or Ephesians 3. But probably the best thing that I can see in scripture that codifies or quantifies maybe depression.
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By the way, this is Mike Abendroth. You're listening to No Compromise Radio on WVNE 760, wvne .net.
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By the way, great shows on VNE, from Tom Krauss to Al Mohler to MacArthur to Beg, all kinds of great preachers that you ought to listen to.
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And so what do we want to do is look at a biblical description of depression.
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Psalm 38. This is Psalm of David. O Lord, rebuke me not in thy wrath and chasten me not in thy burning anger, for thine arrows have sunk deep into me and thy hand has pressed me down.
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There is no soundness in my flesh because of thine indignation. There is no health in my bones because of my sin, for my iniquities are gone over my head.
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As a heavy burden, they weigh too much for me. My wounds grow, foul and fester, because of my folly.
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I am bent over and greatly bowed down. I go mourning all day long, for my loins are filled with burning and there is no soundness in my flesh.
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I am benumbed and badly crushed. I groan because of the agitation of my heart.
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Lord, all my desire is before thee and my sign is not hidden from thee. My heart throbs, my strength fails me, and the light of my lips, excuse me, the light of my eyes, even that has gone from me.
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Excellent description of someone who I think often when I meet is someone suffering from what they call depression.
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Well, who can experience feelings of depression? We've defined depression a little bit from a variety of different sources.
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Who can experience this? Well, as I just inferred, the Bible doesn't use the word depression, although it describes people that we might now call depressed.
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Humans, by the way, are frail, finite, weak, and even
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Christians still sin. And so this is something that can come on anyone. It can come about in a variety of different people's lives.
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People can feel down or depressed. While I don't want to say Elijah was clinically depressed,
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I'm not trying to do that, I am saying when you read 1 Kings 19, you have
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Elijah reacting wrongly to Jezebel's threats, and then he despairs and he flees.
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He's afraid and he runs for his life, and he is downtrodden.
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You have David who commits the sin of adultery and murder.
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He doesn't repent, and you get that description that we just looked at in Psalm 38. You get
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Jonah who becomes angry at God and displeased at God, and then the result is he feels like he wants to die.
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So there's a variety of people that I wouldn't say in the Bible are clinically depressed, but they have experienced this kind of feeling of less than a tranquil heart.
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Proverbs 14 talks about a tranquil heart is life to the body. They felt something less than Proverbs 17.
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A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.
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C .H. Spurgeon in London had all kinds of feelings of what we now call depression.
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Arnold Dalimore said in the biography of Spurgeon, what he suffered in those times of darkness, we may not know.
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Even his desperate calling on God brought no relief. There are dungeons, Spurgeon said, beneath the castles of despair.
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Now how much that was brought about by the gout that he had, we will not know on this earth.
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But there are many people in the scriptures and other godly people who have had some kind of times of downness or despair in their life.
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Three, we've talked so far about how to define it, who can experience it, and number three, what are some of the possible factors that might lead to what we call depression?
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Certainly, there are organic causes to feeling down.
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Maybe it's some kind of physical factor when it comes after childbirth or surgery, some kind of hormonal imbalance, some kind of thyroid issue, some kind of sleep loss might affect things, the diet, some kind of premenstrual syndrome or the menstrual cycle, ups and downs, hypoglycemia, diabetes, glandular dysfunction.
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One of the factors for what we call depression can be physically related.
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And by the way, according to Welch, Ed Welch, who's written an excellent discussion on this topic, and is a trustworthy man,
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I might not agree with all his conclusions, but he's got some great things. He's no psychologist, secular psychologist, humanistic, you know, man is a good psychologist.
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He said, one of the number one causes of feeling down and moody is side effects to prescription drugs.
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Did you get that? Side effects to prescription drugs. These days, I'm getting old enough, I'm almost 50, and when
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I go to the doctor, I've been to the doctor in the last week, please bring a list of all the medications you're on.
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Now, for me, I've always prided myself in there's no medications that I regularly take, and so the list has begun, you know,
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Prilosec. And I think that's the only one I take regularly. But still, I don't have a list. I sat the other day in the
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GI lab, and I saw the guy filling out the forms, and he had basically an Excel spreadsheet of all the things he was on.
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If you're down and depressed and moody and lethargic and crushed spirit, as Proverbs 17 says, the first thing you might wanna do besides going to the doctor, by the way, that's what you should do,
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I mean the real doctor, not the psychiatric doctor, but the medical doctor, and get a full checkup.
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Blood work, sugar work, any kind of thyroid work that you might need, and then have them look at the drugs that you're on.
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Maybe you're on high blood pressure medicine, maybe you're on Lipitor, I don't know what you might be on, but have them look at those drugs and say, you know, are there any side effects that cause depression?
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That would be a great thing to find out. Now, there's another factor, though, that can lead to what we call depression, and that is,
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I think Jay Adams is right, to some degree, when he says, when you respond unbiblically to situations, you can have depression, and that is true, even if there are other causes besides organic and besides this one.
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When you respond incorrectly to situations, you ought not to feel great. You ought not to feel at the top of the world.
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You should be like Cain, and when Cain did the wrong thing, his countenance did what,
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Genesis 4? It fell. That's what it's supposed to do. You touch the oven with your finger that's on the stove, ouch, burn, and when you dig, plant corn, corn grows.
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When you're sinfully responding to a situation, you have a conscience, and that conscience feels guilt.
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That conscience feels something that it's supposed to feel. Why, because God's mean?
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No, so you can recognize that feeling and say, I repent, and I forsake, and God, please forgive me. People can have all kinds of bad feelings as they respond unbiblically.
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Maybe you have some kind of loss of a loved one. Certainly there's grief that should be there, but not grieving like those who have no hope.
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You can have a fight with your spouse and respond wrongly. You can have children leave the house and go off to college and respond wrongly.
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Some kind of trauma, some kind of crisis, some kind of medical issue, cancer in the family, and you can respond wrongly.
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You can respond wrongly, and things can happen, and you should feel not good, and you can say, well,
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I haven't been trusting in the Lord, and now I feel anxious. The opposite of trust is anxiousness, and you have some kind of spirit of unforgiveness.
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I don't mean it's a real spirit, but you've got an unforgiving spirit. You're lustful in your thoughts.
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There's a consequence to wrong thinking, sinful thinking. You don't have a faithful prayer life.
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You don't have faithful devotional life. You don't have faithful church body life, faithful worship in the corporate sense of the saints.
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There's a problem. You abuse substances, drugs, and alcohol. You feel bad.
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That's just A plus B is C. J. Adams says, God has so constructed us that when we fail to handle responsibilities properly, our consciences trigger bad feelings.
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These, if not heeded early, ultimately lead to depression. David looked at depression as a merciful warning sign.
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By the way, I wonder if you thank God that you feel depressed, that it's a merciful warning sign. That'd be a good thing for you today if you are depressed.
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From God intended to goad him to repentance, and a change of attitude or behavior.
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When he had sinned, he said, day and night, your hand was heavy upon me, Psalm 32. The guilt, J. Adams says, that underlies depression comes from the failure to handle the problem or set back
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God's way. Therefore, any treatments, excuse me, therefore any failure to heed this warning or any attempt to silence it by shock treatments, the use of antidepressants, by homebrew, et cetera, constitutes an additional failure that only compounds the guilt and increases the intensity of the bad feelings that stem from it.
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As a result, depression grows and grows in a cyclical manner. So Adams is saying this.
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By the way, we're gonna talk about medicine I think next time. So don't you dare just say I'm stopping all the medicine.
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We're gonna talk about how you need to go talk to your doctor and work through all those things with him. I'm not a doctor.
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I'm not giving you advice to stop your medicine without talking to your doctor first. But what Adams is saying is, if you mismanage your trial, you are going to feel bad.
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So you sin and that leads to guilt and depression. And then you sinfully handle that and then it gets sticky and it complicates everything.
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And before you know it, the helix goes straight downward and you are stuck.
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One man said, depression does not result directly from one thing, but rather comes from a cyclical process in which the initial problem is mishandled in such a way that it is enlarged in a downward spiral that eventually plunges one into despair.
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And that just reminds me of Proverbs 5 where it says his own iniquities will capture the wicked and he will be held with the cords of his sin.
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Now the context there is sexual sin of an unbeliever, but as the sin of an unbeliever can strangle him and get a foothold, so too can the sin do the same thing when it's not responded to correctly, that is with confession and forsaking and asking for forgiveness.
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Welch said, guilt is not a sin in and of itself, but it is a signpost pointing to a spiritual problem.
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Guilt is clearly an expression of the heart and conscience. J. Adams said, you might not be responsible for the initial problem, illness or a job loss, but you are responsible for handling this initial problem
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God's way. Well, my name is Mike Abendroth. No Compromise Radio. We're talking about depression.
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We're gonna talk about medicine next time and things like that, as I play this part two probably next week.
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But if you've got questions about depression and medicine, again, don't stop your medicine. You need to go talk to your doctor that prescribed you your medicine.
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This is not medicine, you know, some medical show. But you do when something comes up and you respond, do you respond sinfully, righteously?
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And when you respond sinfully, do you remember the cross? Do you remember the cross? Jesus Christ came to die for sins like that and he's been raised from the dead and he gives you power now from the
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Holy Spirit to live victoriously. And so you ask for forgiveness and he's faithful and just to forgive you.
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God bless you, we'll talk about depression next week. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.
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Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's word through verse by verse exposition of the sacred text.
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Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston.
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You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.
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The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE its staff or management.