TPW 48 Depression Its Causes Symptoms and Cures

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Remember God's faithfulness to you. Look at all the things that He's done already in your life. Look at His track record.
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That's why He carries us through things, so we can see He is indeed faithful. Welcome to the
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Protestant Witness. This is Pastor Patrick Hines here at Ridwell Heights Presbyterian Church in beautiful Kingsport, Tennessee.
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And we set a record two days ago for the most snowfall in a single day.
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Over 12 inches. And it's beautiful, but a lot of folks were without power.
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Thankfully, the power lines in our neighborhood are underground, so we didn't lose power at all. But the kids have been having fun.
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The temperature got high enough to melt some of the snow, and I made a gigantic mountain right by the camper, so the kids were sledding off of the hill onto the snow.
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We had a lot of fun yesterday. But to this day, I'd like to post the next sermon in the series on depression.
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There's this one, and then there's one more. And this particular message is about the symptoms, the causes, and the cures for depression.
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This is a crisis. It's been a crisis, really, ever since man fell into sin.
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But there are a lot of people in our country today that are on antidepressant medications and things like that.
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So we need to understand this phenomenon biblically as much as possible, and understand what causes it and how we can, with God's help, overcome it.
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And sometimes with the help of certain kinds of medication can help get out of the hole to start dealing with some of the causes of depression.
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So I hope you find this edifying. Let's pray together, please. Our Heavenly Father, we come before you humbled by your glorious majesty and confessing our need to hear from your word.
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And we pray you would help us, Lord, to better understand the nature of depression and anxiety as there is so much in your word about these topics that we need to learn, that we need to receive with faith and love, lay up in our hearts and practice in our lives.
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And we pray that you would bless us to that end now, in Christ's name. Amen. Please take your
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Bible and turn to Psalm 42. This is our scripture reading for this morning. Psalm 42.
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Psalm 42. And this morning's message is not really an exposition of this particular psalm. We're going to look at a lot of different passages this morning.
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But continuing on, a sermon I've called, A Breakdown of Depression. A Breakdown of Depression.
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Sort of a continuation of last Sunday morning's message. Psalm 42, verse 1.
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This is God's word. As the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants for you,
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O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?
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My tears have been my food day and night, while they say to me all day long, Where is your God? These things
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I remember, and I pour out my soul within me. For I used to go along with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God, with the voice of joy and thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival.
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Why are you in despair, O my soul? And why have you become disturbed within me? Hope in God, for I shall yet again praise him for the help of his presence.
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O my God, my soul is in despair within me. Therefore I remember you from the land of the Jordan and the peaks of Hermon, from Mount Mizor.
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Deep calls to deep at the sound of your waterfalls. All your breakers and your waves have ruled over me. The Lord will command his loving kindness in the daytime, and his song will be with me in the night.
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A prayer to the God of my life. I will say to God, my rock, why have you forgotten me?
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Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy? As a shattering of my bones, my adversaries revile me, while they say to me all day long, where is your
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God? Why are you in despair, O my soul? And why have you become disturbed within me? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise him, the help of my countenance and my
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God. May God bless the reading of his infallible word. Well, this morning is a little different.
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I've given you the longest outline I have ever written for a sermon. So it is four whole pages.
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The front of that first page there, and then the whole inside in the back. So this is sort of your outline and thoughts for Sabbath meditation all rolled up into one.
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And I would encourage you to follow along in that outline. There's a lot of material I want to cover this morning. I think it's vitally important for us.
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Last Sunday we started looking at the topic of depression and anxiety from a biblical perspective.
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There is so much that has been written on this topic. Over the years by great men of God, the
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Puritans addressed these issues. Great men of the recent past, Jonathan Edwards, Martin Lloyd -Jones and many others, have addressed these issues.
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And it's very important that we understand these things from a biblical perspective. We looked at a number of key passages of scripture that show the remarkable transparency of the biblical writers with regard to the often very dark and very down ways that they felt.
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We also talked about the importance of understanding this issue from a biblical perspective in our day because depression and anxiety issues seem to be sharply increasing in our day due to the moral and spiritual collapse of our country.
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The apostasy, compromise and lethargy of the church and the almost non -stop barrage of bad news that we all hear on a daily basis from every media outlet.
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We looked at some of the causes of depression including poor thought control on our part as well.
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As well as the increasing knowledge that we have as we experience life. Remember Ecclesiastes 1 .11.
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As the knowledge of a human being increases, sorrow will increase as well. This morning we are going to consider the factors that can lead to depression as well as give a thorough biblical definition of exactly what is affected by depression.
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And before we do that I want to remind you of two great biblical weapons we've been given to combat depression in order to stop it from debilitating and ruining us.
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The first weapon was what Jeremiah did in Lamentations 3 .21. And this first weapon is we can control what we recall to mind.
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Remember Lamentations, you have Jeremiah looking over the ruins of Jerusalem after the
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Babylonians destroyed it and he's weeping and lamenting over the fact that nobody listened to him as a prophet.
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He kept calling them to repent, they would not repent. They destroyed the whole place, destroyed the temple and Jeremiah's lamenting chapter 1, chapter 2, the first part of chapter 3 and then chapter 3 verse 21 he says,
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This I recall to my mind and therefore I have hope. Through the Lord's mercies we are not consumed because his compassions fail not.
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So that first weapon that we have against the depression is we can control what we call to our minds.
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Remember God's long track record of faithfulness to you. Meditate on the ways in which he has convicted you of your sin, the hardships he's already brought you through in life.
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Very often when we come to a situation that makes us depressed it's almost like we forget all of the ways
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God has already shown himself to be faithful to us. Recall the ways that he's carried you through things already, all the ways that he has loved you and protected you and provided for you.
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We have a choice when it comes to what we set our minds upon and Jeremiah shows us that in Lamentations.
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The second weapon that we have is self -rebuke, self -questioning, self -instruction.
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In other words, tell yourself the truth. Tell yourself the truth. In Psalm 42 we see a great battle between depression and self -rebuke.
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Did you hear it in verses 5 and 11? What does the psalm writer do? Why are you so downcast? He's talking to himself, he's rebuking himself.
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You have no reason to feel this way. Hope in God, he's commanding himself, confronting himself, rebuking himself.
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So those are the two great weapons we learned last week. We can control what we're thinking about and if your thoughts have turned dark and have stayed dark for a long time, remember
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God's faithfulness to you. Look at all the things that he's done already in your life. Look at his track record.
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That's why he carries us through things so we can see he is indeed faithful. And then the second weapon, rebuke yourself.
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Command yourself. Hope in God. Why are you so downcast, oh my soul? Hope in God.
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Now, one of the major points that needs to be understood and emphasized about this topic of depression is this and here's the first major heading in your outline there.
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We need to avoid being dogmatic about what's causing it and we need to be humble in the way that we evaluate ourselves and others.
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Folks, the worst thing that a doctor can do is misdiagnose someone's illness and then treat them for the wrong thing.
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That's one of the most dangerous things that can happen in the medical profession is thinking someone's actually got some condition when they've actually got something else wrong with them.
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So it's critical that we do that, that we have a proper diagnosis of what's causing the depression.
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And so that's the first point in your long outline there, the causes of depression. And here are three extremes that we need to avoid as we diagnose what's causing depression.
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The first one is that the cause is entirely physical. The cause is entirely physical.
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Now, if that was always the case, then the only real and effective treatment for depression would be medicine.
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And I want you to think about why this is the perspective that dominates our society and culture today. Does anyone understand why?
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You know why? It's called evolution. It's called materialism. We are naturalist materialists.
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That is the worldview that dominates our society and culture. And so we look for a materialistic solution to everything.
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If I feel sad, if something's wrong with my life, if something is wrong with my personality, if I've got some issues where I'm down or depressed, the issue has got to be a chemical one.
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It's got to be a chemical solution because that's what that worldview says we are. All we are is matter and motion. You and I, all we are, are a bunch of atoms banging around.
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We're just chemistry and physics going on. And so it makes sense that the solutions would just be more chemistry and physics.
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Now, while there is much scientific study that has demonstrated that the brains of many depressed people have a different chemistry, which can be helped with drug therapy of some kind, it is a colossal error to think that such imbalances alone are what cause depression.
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And there are people who think that that's the case. And that's a big problem in our society. There's been an increase in emphasis upon the physical dimension of depression lately because of an overreaction to J.
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Adams' view that the causes are almost always exclusively sinful and spiritual. But like I said, we want to avoid extremes.
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What we need to take seriously is the fact that most depressions do, in point of fact, have some kind of a physical component to them, which could be helped with medicine.
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So that's the first extreme. The first extreme is the cause is entirely and only always physical.
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The second extreme we want to avoid is this. The cause is entirely spiritual. Now, there are two forms that this extreme can take.
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The first is, among many charismatics and Pentecostal types, especially in America, depression is seen to be caused by demonic possession, and thus it requires an exorcism or something like that.
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And therefore the treatment is to affect some kind of spiritual deliverance in the form of the expulsion of demons.
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And the scriptures do speak of our ongoing battle against demonic forces in the spiritual realms,
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Ephesians 6, many other places talk about that. But some people erroneously think that nearly every malady a human being can have, not just depression, but everything from financial difficulties to marriage difficulties, is attributable to a demon.
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And therefore you need to get rid of the demon of this or the demon of that. And surely that's an error too. And while I think demon possession is extremely rare,
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I think it can happen on rare occasions. So that's the first error. Many people think it's demonic, and therefore we've got to have an exorcism over you if you're depressed.
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The second one is more common. Depression is caused by sin. Therefore rebuke, repentance, and confession are the answer.
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While this can often be the case, for those suffering from depression, through no unconfessed sin or on their part, for them to be rebuked and called to repentance can be a rather devastating line to take with them.
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I would cite as an example Job. Remember Job? Job was very, very depressed.
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He was very down and sad because of his losses. And we know from the book of Job that the loss of his children, his wealth, his wife, and his health were not because of sin in his life.
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And yet what do his three counselors do to him constantly? They're rebuking him over and over and over.
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And most of the book is Job saying, but I didn't do anything. I'm not aware of anything that I did.
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Why are you guys doing this to me? I don't need repentance. I need sympathy. I need you guys to show some concern and compassion to me.
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So the rebukes of Job's friends for sins, which Job had not committed, were nothing more than throwing salt into his gaping wounds.
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And while the cause of depression can be physical in part and spiritual in part, we must not err in holding that the causes are always the same or that they're always only one thing.
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And there's a great man of God that all of us should be very thankful for, J. Adams is his name. He has been a pioneer in what is called the
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Newthetic counseling movement. That term Newthetic is from the Greek verb newthetao, which means to admonish or to confront.
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And that is an extremely useful way of doing counseling. We need to confront others very often with their sin.
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We need to confront ourselves with our sin. And J. Adams has done incredibly helpful work in teaching us how to confront ourselves and how to confront others with sinful behavior, which can dramatically affect how we feel.
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According to the author David Murray, quote, Adams was reacting against the humanistic view that explains sinful addictions like alcoholism as sickness or that blamed immoral behavior on one's genes or that tried to remove people's guilt feelings by encouraging them to deny personal responsibility for their actions and simply accept themselves as they are.
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J. Adams' emphasis on the need to accept personal responsibility in these situations was necessary.
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He was also right to expose the overprescription of psychiatric drugs and to demand that counseling actually deal with the problem of unbiblical behavior rather than simply make people feel better in their sins.
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Doesn't it make some sense to you, however, that's the end of the quotation, doesn't it make some sense to you that there would be a dramatic increase in prescribing psychotropic drugs in a culture dominated by an evolutionary worldview?
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Of course it would. And Adams is saying, look, most of the counseling I've done, if you ever get a chance to read
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Adams, he says, look, most of the time it's just people sinning. People are being put on drugs when the fact is they just need to stop these sinful behaviors and then they'll feel better.
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And so he was right. And very often he's right about that and people just need to repent, but that's not the exclusive cause.
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And folks, we are certainly a culture of victims and blame shifters, aren't we? So we like to say, well, it's not really my fault, so just give me some pills to fix it.
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Just like Adam and Eve, we prefer to point our finger at something else. I have a condition. I've got this problem.
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I inherited these genes instead of having to admit I am the way I am because I'm evil. And because I'm a bad person.
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And because I'm wicked. That's a little harder to deal with, isn't it? J. Adams returned to biblically dealing with personal sin is much needed in our time, but again, we want to avoid extremes in looking at the causes of depression.
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Oftentimes, it is sinful behaviors that cause depression. But not always. Charles Spurgeon, a man who suffered terribly from depression, wrote this very profound paragraph.
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Please listen carefully to this. Quote, it is all very well for those who are in robust health and full of spirits to blame those whose lives are sicklied or covered with the pale cast of melancholy.
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Always remember, when you read people in the 1800s and 1700s, they call depression melancholy. But the malady, the sickness, is as real as a gaping wound and all the more hard to bear because it lies so much in the region of the soul that, to the inexperienced, it appears to be a matter of fancy and diseased imagination.
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Reader, never ridicule the nervous and hypochondrical. What is a hypochondriac?
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Someone who's convinced they're always sick, even when they're not. And Spurgeon says, don't ever ridicule those people.
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Their pain is real. Though much of the malady lies in the imagination, thought processes, it is not imaginary.
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End quote. In other words, they really do feel these things, and it really is painful to them.
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And we need to have a culture of compassion on people who have these issues. Think of it like this.
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If you say that the cause of all depression is exclusively sin, and so no matter what depressed situation you look at, we've got to get this person to repent and change their behavior.
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Think of it like this. Let's say that Adams is correct, and a person is experiencing very dark depression as a result of sinful behaviors that he needs to repent of.
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But a side effect of his depression is that vital brain chemicals are now depleted because he's been suffering in this condition for a while.
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Because of this, the man is now in a black hole of depression. He can't do anything, and he can hardly function at all.
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Now, although this condition was brought on by sinful actions, telling this guy to repent of his idolatry is not going to help him.
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Medicine therapy could, in this case, be the initial step to restoring his brain to normal levels so that he can then address the sinful behaviors.
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You see, very often it's going to be a combination of things, and we don't want to err in being extreme.
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It's rarely exclusively physical, or exclusively sin, or exclusively something else.
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What caused his depression was sinful behavior, but drug therapy can be a lifeline for people to stabilize their minds enough to start addressing sinful actions and behaviors.
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Usually, depression is a somewhat complicated matrix of causes and issues. It's rarely just one thing in a person's life.
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It's a mistake to categorize the cause of all depression to be heart idolatry, and repentance about heart idolatry always to be the only cure.
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David Murray said this, and I quote, listen to this paragraph, I think this is very profound. He says, quote,
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We would never take this view that sinful cause slash spiritual solution when counseling people with cancer, strokes, broken legs, diabetes, or Alzheimer's.
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As reformed Christians, our default position is that these physical problems are most likely the result of living as fallen creatures in a fallen world.
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When you see someone that has a physical injury, you don't think, well, he needs to be called to repent of something. Well, he might have just slipped and fallen, and that's not a sin, is it?
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Murray continues, Why should our default position with the brain problems be any different? Are we saying that the brain, the most complex organ in our body, is somehow exempt from the effects of the fall?
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My skin is broken down by psoriasis. My eyes are broken down with short -sightedness. My nose is broken down with rhinitis.
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My joints are sometimes broken with arthritis. My bowel has required two operations. My legs are broken down with varicose veins.
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My body is covered with dangerous moles, two of which have been removed. But I'm actually very healthy.
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I do not believe any of these ailments are the result of personal sin, but simply the consequences of being a fallen creature, living in a fallen world, or of inheriting genes from my mother and father, who have also had similar health issues.
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Why, then, should we always have to conclude that brain disorders are the result of personal sin?
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Why are our brains messed up? The same reason our bodies are messed up. The same reason my knees hurt.
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The same reason my hearing is starting to go away. The same reason my eyesight is getting worse. We live in a fallen world.
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It makes sense that they would affect our brains, and yet sometimes it seems that people really think that our brains are unaffected, and if there's anything wrong, it's a personal sin problem.
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But that's not always the case. So we want to avoid the extremes of believing that personal sin is always the cause of depression, and we want to avoid the extreme of thinking it's all physical and all chemical and can be solved that way.
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The third extreme we want to avoid, it's there in your outline, the third one, is that the cause is entirely mental.
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It's all in the mind. This view argues that depression is actually not real at all, and that it's just an illusion we make up.
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It says that only the weak -minded experience depression. Those who think this way, I just would give you this warning, 1
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Corinthians 10, 12, therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.
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Some people who have never experienced depression, never had a panic attack, will be humbled by God by being carried through a season of it.
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So always be careful that you don't look down at others who experience these kinds of issues. So to summarize the first section here, we want to avoid those three extremes, that depression is entirely physical slash chemical, that depression is entirely sinful, or that depression is just an illusion.
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We want to avoid all three of those. Murray wrote this, just as no two hearts are identically diseased, and just as no two cancers are the same, no two depressions are the same in cause, symptoms, depth, duration, and cure.
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Therefore, we must avoid making our own experience the norm for others.
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Even great Reformed and Puritan theologians who have addressed this issue through the ages, have cautioned against simplistic answers to what is, in fact, a very complex condition that people really do suffer from in this world.
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Martin Lloyd -Jones said this, quote, Christians do not understand how physical, psychological, and spiritual realms interrelate because Satan muddies the boundaries.
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Many of our troubles are caused because we think a problem is spiritual when it is physical, or we think a problem is physical when it is emotional or spiritual.
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500 years ago, William Perkins, the Puritan writer, recognized the same exact distinction, quote, sorrow that comes by melancholy, or depression, arises only in that sickness annoying the bodies, meaning there are some forms of this that are physical.
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It's just a kind of illness. And then he says, but this other sorrow arises from man's sins.
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See how he saw the distinction? Some of this is chemical, some of it is sinful and spiritual. And he says, for which his conscience accuses him, depression may be cured by medicine, says
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Perkins. This sorrow cannot be cured by anything but the blood of Christ, end quote. Even Jonathan Edwards followed
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Perkins' line of thought and said, the famous Mr. Perkins distinguishes between those sorrows that come through convictions of conscience, in other words, sin, and depression, passions arising only from mere imagination strongly conceived in the brain, which he says usually come on a sudden like lightning into a house, end quote.
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And so, just to sort of summarize the first big heading here, David Murray says this, for Christians, there will often be need to be a balance between medicines for the brain, rest for the body, counsel for the mind, and spiritual encouragement for the soul.
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Recovery will usually take patience, perseverance, over a period of many months, and in some cases, even years.
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Now, the reason I took the time to go through all this introductory material here is I think that some of those extreme tendencies exist in the church.
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I myself have held to some of them before. We tend to label depression cases as nearly always one thing or always another and always needing the same reaction from us.
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But we need to recognize that depression is a very complicated phenomenon. And because of this, which is, and this is a sad part, very often, people are not being helped in the ways they need to be.
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To misdiagnose the cause, you're not going to get the proper treatment. And so, we need to evaluate case by case and evaluate ourselves case by case as well.
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Okay, so that's the first major point. Number two, depression itself. And here's the main, the heart of this morning's message to you.
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With these things in mind, let's look at the condition itself. What exactly do we mean when we say depression?
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What exactly, biblically speaking, is depression? David Murray answers this question in a very helpful way by looking biblically at five areas of our lives that are affected by sadness or depression.
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The first is our life situation. Two, our thoughts. Three, our feelings. Four, our bodies.
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And five, our behavior. Excuse me. Now, under the second heading, under thoughts, there are ten sub points and under the third heading, our feelings, there's six questions.
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But first, let's look at life situation. Life situations affect the way we feel.
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There's no question about it. By this we mean job loss, moving, marriage difficulties, family difficulties, financial difficulties, the deaths of loved ones when we lose people that used to be in our lives that were important to us.
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That can seriously impact our emotional and mental health. People can be down and never really think of their life situation in the way that that's affecting the way that they feel.
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If you're experiencing great sadness, evaluate first your life situation. Has something big changed recently in your life?
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Is there a relationship that was part of your life now over? Is someone that was very important to you now dead?
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And so forth. Have you ever endured big changes, big losses, big stresses, et cetera? If you haven't, you will.
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While some people have a natural tendency towards depression, there are almost always providential trigger points of them.
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And just because we've successfully dealt with depression in the past does not mean that we will always successfully do so in the future.
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David Murray said this, we age, our hormones and brain chemistry change, and our responsibilities increase as marriage and children come along.
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Sometimes an adverse reaction to life events will be delayed even for some years. You need to look at depression.
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If you are experiencing a bout of excessive sadness and heartache in your life, has something changed in the last three, four, five, six years that maybe now is just starting to manifest itself?
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Life situations are very often out of our control. So that's the first one, our life situation.
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The second one, our thoughts. And folks, this is the key. I want you to remember these things. That's why
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I've given you this outline. I truly hope that you will walk through this stuff. If you have experienced depression, are experiencing it now, or know someone else who is,
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I hope that you will minister to them with these things. Our thoughts. Our thoughts are really the key to depression.
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Proverbs 23, verse 7. For as he thinks in his heart, so is he. As you think in your heart, so are you.
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As a man thinks, so he is. Thought patterns are really the most obvious symptoms of depression.
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Thoughts in the depressed person tend to distort their view of reality in a false and negative way, which only makes the depression worse.
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Now folks, we cannot change God's sovereign decree and his providence for us. We don't know what's going to happen.
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God knows it. He's planned it out from before the foundation of the world. But as we have already learned from Lamentations chapter 3 and Psalm 42, we can change the way we think about what happens in our lives.
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David Murray in his book lists 10 very helpful and biblically addressed thought patterns that are key pointers that people are depressed and which also contribute to people becoming more depressed.
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Now before we walk through these 10 things, I want to tell you something that's very important. All 10 of these things are violations of the 9th commandment.
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What is the 9th commandment? You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. All 10 of these thought patterns are us lying to ourselves.
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Now it's not just lying about someone else that's forbidden in Scripture. It's not just lying to someone else.
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We can violate the 9th commandment by lying to ourselves. By having these false thought processes going on in our minds.
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So let's go through some of these and see if any of these sound familiar to you. Number one, false extremes.
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Depressed people tend to see things entirely as black and white. There are no gray areas at all.
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For each of these 10 false thought patterns, I want to try to give you a life example, a spiritual example, and a biblical example of all of them.
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For example, a life example of false extremes. If you're making cookies and you accidentally burn a batch, your conclusion is you're the worst cook in history and you should never make cookies again.
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You are praying. Another example, you're praying and your mind is distracted with a very sinful thought. Your conclusion,
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I must not be a Christian at all, I'm not going to pray anymore. Think of Job. Despite the fact that the vast majority of his life, the vast majority of the man's life was characterized by God's blessing, by prosperity, by health, by personal godliness.
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When he was going through terrible suffering, he concludes, I am an enemy of God now. I have a question.
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Was Job an enemy of God? No. At no point was he an enemy of God. God's love for the man never wavered.
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Not once during the whole book. And yet he says, I'm his enemy now. False extremes.
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Depressed people tend to be very black and white. One thing goes wrong, they think everything in the world is wrong. Second thing, and just remember, that's a violation of the ninth commandment.
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That's lying to yourself. False generalizations. Here's another thought pattern that's false.
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Depressed people, when they experience anything negative, will conclude that such will always be what they experience in that situation from then on.
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For example, a young man has feelings for a woman. He expresses those feelings to that woman and she rejects him.
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In his conclusion, I will never get married and no one will ever love me. And sharing the gospel with someone, another example, they become hostile to you and mock you.
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And your conclusion to that experience is, everyone I ever share the gospel with is going to mock me and make fun of me so I'm not going to share with anyone anymore.
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Remember Jacob in Genesis 42? Although God had already shown Jacob his incredible faithfulness in protecting him from Laban and providing for his needs and giving him everything he needed.
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Although God had shown him how faithful he was. When Jacob was at a low point in his life, he concluded his son
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Joseph was dead. He wasn't. That Simeon was captive in Egypt. He wasn't. And that his son
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Benjamin was also taken captive. And he wasn't either. And Jacob's summary statement in Genesis 42, 36 is,
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All things are against me. That's a false generalization, Jacob. God is still for you.
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God still loves you. You still know him. You still have all these other sons with you. And by the way,
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Joseph's not dead. And you're going to see Benjamin again. You're going to see all these people again. But he falsely generalized.
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Depressed people falsely generalized that one negative experience with something means that that thing will always be negative in their life.
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And folks, that is a lie. That's not true. Another thing, false filters. Depressed people will pick out the negative in every situation and think about it alone to the exclusion of everything else.
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For example, an excellent student gets a 99 % on a test and spends the rest of the day bummed out about the 1 % she missed instead of noticing that she got 99 % of the test right.
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I had a college roommate that was like that. He was the number one student in the College of Engineering. I'll never forget him up there with the calculus professor.
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I actually took calculus for reasons I will never understand. I took calculus. And he was up there.
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He got a 49 .5 out of 50, the highest grade in the class. And he was up there arguing with the guy. He had the highest grade in the class.
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He had never gotten an A - in college. And he's up there arguing with the professor. I'm like, are you seriously arguing about half a point?
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And this Indian professor with real thick accent, I remember hearing him say, he said, Mr. Gibbs, this will not affect your grade.
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And he was all upset. I said, I'd be doing car wheels if I got 49 .5 out of 50 on a test.
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Depressed people filter out the good and focus on the bad even if the experience is almost entirely positive.
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They focus on the negative. The negative will be the only thing they notice and fixate upon. When Elijah defeats the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel and the people of Israel see an incredible display of God's supremacy over Baal by the fire that consumes the offering.
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Jezebel makes it known she wants to kill Elijah. And that threat and his seeming aloneness in knowing
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God, that's all Elijah can see. And he filters out the good and only sees the bad. So much so that he prays that God will kill him.
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False filters characterize the depressed person. And remember, every one of these is a violation of the ninth commandment.
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They are all lies that we tell ourselves. The fourth one, false transformation. Depressed people will find a way to turn neutral or good experiences into negative ones.
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People pay us a compliment and we assume ah, they're just flattering us with some sinister reason in their mind.
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We feel very close to God and are being blessed in our study of his word and we assume we're just deceiving ourselves.
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We will turn completely positive blessings into negative experiences. Jonah should have rejoiced at the very positive outcome of his preaching.
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I would love to see the biggest revival in the history of mankind. And yet, what's his response?
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Anger to the point of he prays for death too. I am so angry that you saved these people that I want to die.
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So false transformations. Depressed people will turn even good experiences or neutral ones into negative ones.
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And that's lying. That is false. Fifthly, false mind reading. This is a big problem. Depressed people tend to think that if the people around them have any thoughts about them at all, those thoughts will be they hate us and they think we're shallow or foolish.
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Such is rarely supported by facts. For example, a friend passes you in the hallway without saying hello and your conclusion is they hate me.
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They don't like me anymore. When the fact was they were just late for something and their mind was fixed on something else.
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You know the psalm writers rebuke themselves for their hasty thoughts. You know that all the way through the psalms.
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You find psalm writers rebuking themselves. The psalm writer in Psalm 116 verse 11 says apparently had had some interactions with people and had made the conclusion all men are liars.
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Now I have a question for you. Are all men liars? Is everything anyone ever says to you a lie? And yet the psalm writer says
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I said in my haste all men are liars. But in the very same verse admits that he was thinking too quickly.
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We've had bad experiences with people not telling us the truth or mistreating us. We conclude all people are terrible.
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All people are disloyal. All people are liars. All people are evil. Depressed people falsely engage in mind reading in the worst possible way.
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And that's also a violation of the ninth commandment. Sixthly false fortune telling. Depressed people live always expecting the worst and they proceed believing that catastrophe is as good as fact in their life.
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For example you're certain that you will always be depressed and anxious and will never be at peace again. Despite the fact that you have recovered from it before.
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Because of past failures you believe that things you would like to do and accomplish will never be done or accomplished.
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When considering the opposition Jesus would face in Bethany the disciple that we all belovedly call
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Doubting Thomas falsely predicts that not only is Jesus going to die in Bethany but that all of them are going to die too.
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He says in John 11 .16 Then Thomas who was called the twin said to his fellow disciples let us also go to Bethany that we may die with him.
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You can almost picture the other disciples looking at him with a bit of bewilderment and saying being a bit of a downer today aren't we
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Thomas? It's not a foregone conclusion we're all going to get killed there. Let's all go and die with him.
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Well Thomas you don't know for sure that's going to happen. But depressed people falsely and negatively predict very bad futures for themselves and this contributes to their sadness.
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Seventhly a false lens and what this really means is a false magnifying glass. Depressed people view their failures through a magnifying glass and see them as much bigger than they really are.
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For example a seminary student with a perfect grade point average misses one Greek vocabulary word on a quiz and concludes
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I must not be called to the ministry. A spiritual example which I know happens a lot would be this despite your having received forgiveness from God and from all the people involved in your past sins that sin constantly comes up in your mind and it leads to debilitating guilt self condemnation and a horrible feeling that you don't deserve for anything good to ever happen to you or in your life so much so that you even feel guilty when you have every right to be happy.
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Think about Peter's threefold denial of Jesus he seems to have decided that he had permanently alienated himself from the
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Lord and so he returns to business as usual it's an amazing thing John chapter 21 verse 3
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Simon Peter said to the rest of the disciples I'm going fishing it's basically see you guys oh well
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I messed that up pretty bad didn't I I'm going fishing later but we know the grace of God that Peter was restored and God raised him up to do great things for the cause of the gospel but we also know that Peter messed up again after that too didn't he in Galatians when he stopped eating with Gentiles because he feared the
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Jews you see grace is not our license to sin but brothers and sisters grace covers and holds us perfectly because it's impossible for us never to sin we're always going to be constantly receiving forgiveness from God and constantly falling on our face so I want to encourage you do not magnify sin into being insurmountable or unforgivable and don't turn small things into huge things with that false lens when you sin when you fail don't make it bigger than it is you know that really is an altered form of pride the 8th way that we lie that we break the 9th commandment to ourselves false feelings based reasoning this is really important and I share
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I say that because when I was a teenager this was my biggest problem right here depressed people will take their feelings to be absolute truth they allow their feelings to determine facts for example you feel like you have no gifts to share in your church therefore you conclude you have no gifts to share in your church you feel like you have no gifts therefore you must not have any and that is of course false you feel guilty about your past sins and conclude that your guilt feelings must indicate how
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God sees you because you see yourself and you feel guilty therefore you believe God sees you as guilty and that God has cut you off and the psalmist
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David rebuked himself for hastily thinking that very thing in Psalm 31 -22 for I said in my haste
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I am cut off from before your eyes now why is David saying I said that in my haste because David knew that God would never cut him off I get the sovereignty of God I understand
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His electing grace I know that He preserves His people and so why do I lie to myself and say He's cut me off He's discarded me when part of His very character is to never do that to glorify
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Christ by never cutting us off never sending us away but false feelings based reasoning can often dominate a depressed person depressed people will take their feelings to be indicators of absolute truth and folks that's a lie don't let your feelings dictate to you what's true you let
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God dictate what's true 9thly false should false should depressed people allow their lives to be dominated by the shoulds or oughts laid upon them by others they can never say no because they think they have to do everything everyone thinks they should do depressed people feel that because they can do something they should do it and if they don't do it they're a failure one person in my life and I've told you about him before who never had a problem saying no to the things he was asked to do was my father
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I've never seen anything like it the man as far as I could tell never felt guilty about saying no to anything and he had to warn me constantly about getting myself over committed said son learn to say no and don't let it bother you it doesn't bother me
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David Murray uses this example quote the busy mother who tries to keep her house as tidy and orderly as if there were no children is putting herself under undue pressure to reach unattainable standards the fact is we can never meet every should or ought in our lives that's something all of us have to deal with but often the depressed person
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I've got to do everything I should do and so they do a whole bunch of things not very well depressed people try and fail and feel badly in scripture for example
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Martha felt deep frustration that Mary was not doing what she should be doing and ought to have been doing but you see the problem was
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Mary's priorities were correct remember the story in Luke 10 40 but Martha was distracted with much serving but hey aren't we supposed to serve?
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isn't that something we should do? yes but not when the son of God is in your living room
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Mary was doing the more important thing listen to the rest of the passage and she approached Jesus and said Lord don't you care that my sister has left me to serve alone?
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tell her to help me and Jesus answered and said to her Martha, Martha you are worried and troubled about many things but one thing is needed and Mary has chosen that good part which will not be taken away from her depressed people are loaded with guilt because they can't do everything that they think they should do and while yes there's always much that we ought to do there's much that we should do but no one can do everything that they should do 10thly finally false responsibility this is another way we lie that we break that commandment depressed people blame themselves for everything if something negative happens in their life they believe they are responsible for it somehow
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I stubbed my toe on my way to the bathroom when I got up out of bed that must be punishment for something
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I am responsible for something when a child fails a class in school or gets in trouble we conclude we're terrible parents if a child's wayward towards the
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Lord we conclude we have failed them Moses blamed himself for Israel's sinfulness toward God and even praised for his own death because of it in scripture so those are 10 thought related symptoms of depression and always remember those are 10 lies those are all false ways of thinking train yourself not to violate the 9th commandment by telling yourself things that are not true and by allowing those false things to pass through your mind thirdly our feelings our feelings feelings follow directly from what we think and if we are always thinking about problems folks
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I know this is this is deep stuff if we're always thinking about problems only see the negative and what are mostly positive things believe everyone around us hates us and always count on the future being bad and hopeless you're going to feel bad most of the time remember
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Proverbs 23 7 as a man thinks in his heart so is he and if all those false ways all those lies that you tell yourself if that's always what's swirling around in there you're going to feel sad and that's why you can rely on those weapons of what you meditate upon your thought patterns you can recall to mind the goodness of God the mercy of God the passion of Jesus Christ his cross the gospel you can control how you feel if you control what you think now what are some of the emotional symptoms of depression here are six key biblical ones number one six questions do you feel overwhelming sadness everyone feels sad from time to time but depression is overwhelming in long term depressed people are often tearful and often have long bouts of sobbing depressed people often do not even enjoy what they used to love anymore listen to Job describe his sadness
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Job 6 2 oh that my grief were fully weighed and my calamity laid with it on the scales for then it would be heavier than the sand of the sea therefore my words have been rash
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Job 16 16 my face is flushed from weeping and on my eyelids is the shadow of death bags under his eyes his eyes are sinking into his head his face is flushed with weeping have you ever seen that kind of thing in the mirror looking at yourself or looking at someone else
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Psalm 42 3 my tears have been my food day and night while they say continually to me where is your
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God notice David speaking of what he used to do but no longer does what he used to enjoy but no longer does
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Psalm 42 4 I used to go with the multitude I went to them I went to the house of God with the voice of joy and praise with the multitude that kept the pilgrim feasts yes he used to do that I used to do those things second question do you feel angry with God or others depressed people often feel angry and are very and easily irritable
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Jonah 4 4 then the Lord God said is it right for you to be angry and God said to Jonah is it right for you to be angry about the plant and he said it is right for me to be angry even to death
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Numbers 20 verse 10 and Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly together before the rock and he said to them hear now you rebels must we bring water for you out of this rock then
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Moses lifted his hand and struck the rock twice with his rod was that what he was told to do why did he do that he was mad he was angry and water came out abundantly in the congregation and their animals drank always remember that's why he wasn't allowed to go in the promised land but do you feel angry with God or others third question do you feel your life is worthless when you sit alone with your quiet thoughts do you feel that your life is worthless
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I have a fact I want to replace that lie with your life is highly valued by the people in it and you do have gifts that are very useful to God but the depressed person's distorted view of themselves and their distorted view of everything around them they feel worthless and in fact may even feel that you are that they are nothing but a burden to everyone that knows them you ever felt like that I am a burden to everyone that knows me do you ever think that everyone in your life would be better off if you had never been born what a statement of mistrust and the providence and goodness of the
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God who made you and the way you are for his glory you think that you're worthless you think your life is not valuable that you have nothing to contribute to this world and to the people that know and love you when
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I was 18 years old I told my mother I wanted to be dead and she looked at me with tears in her eyes and said do you know what that would do to me and your father and everyone that loves you you see that was the biggest problem utter self centeredness your life is created by God you are useful you are important you have gifts that he wants you to invest for his glory another question four do you feel extreme anxiety or panic you know there's lots of examples of this in scripture 1st
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Samuel 21 12 now David took these words to heart and was very afraid of Achish the king of Gath Matthew 8 25 then his disciples came to him and awoke him saying
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Lord save us we are perishing do you feel extreme anxiety and panic fifth question do you feel that God hates you and is far from you one symptom of depression is that the bible becomes almost dead to you prayer is nearly impossible and you feel abandoned by God all together
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Job 6 verse 4 Job summarizes it well the terrors of God are arrayed against me
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Job 13 24 asking God the question why do you hide your face from me and regard me as your enemy have you ever asked
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God why have you made me your enemy what have I done why do you hate me six final question here do you feel suicidal or do you have a longing to die
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Psalm 88 captures this morbid and terrible feeling quite well and we've already read examples of godly men godly men in scripture who prayed that they would die
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Moses prayed it Elijah prayed it and Job prayed it God just kill me
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I don't want to be alive anymore just take my life these are the feelings that often accompany wrong and simple thought patterns of a depressed person folks if you spend your time lying to yourself this is how you're going to feel and the scriptures tell us to tell the truth do not bear false witness and when you see those lying thought patterns in your life when you notice there's big life changes there's big life situations that have changed that have contributed to the way
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I feel and the way that I think learn to think biblically and truthfully about what's real and about yourself and you won't feel as bad fourth our bodies another very important facet that is affected dramatically by depression there is a proverb that we all ought to bear in mind as we consider our life circumstances our thought patterns and our feelings and here it is
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Proverbs 17 22 a merry heart does good like medicine but a broken spirit dries the bones it is physically unhealthy for a person to be depressed it is bad for us the scripture says it dries our bones doesn't that make you think of bones that are just about to break from the weight that's on them
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Proverbs 14 verse 30 a sound heart is life to the body but envy is rottenness to the bones we are physically affected by our life situations by the way we think and the way we feel
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Proverbs 15 30 a good report makes the bones healthy Proverbs 16 24 pleasant words are like a honeycomb sweetness to the soul and health to the bones
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David Murray said this listen to this quote this is very good every day doctors are faced with patients complaining of various physical symptoms whose root problems are their depressed thoughts and feelings end quote think about it folks when we are depressed and wracked with all those distorted thoughts all those lies which lead to all those hopeless feelings here are just a few of the physical the physical effects of those things that are mentioned in scripture every one of these is mentioned in scripture number one disturbed sleep you can't sleep failing strength and physical weakness loss of appetite weight fluctuations you know
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Job speaks of his limbs looking like shadows he's getting skinny he doesn't eat sore eyes sore throats from crying
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Psalm 69 speaks of those physical weakness and overall bodily pain
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Psalm 38 speaks of those things depression affects our bodies and our health too and finally fifthly our behavior depressed people will very often stop doing the things they used to enjoy or things that they are good at and that are good for them to be doing for others they might withdraw from church attendance not contact family and friends much anymore stop their hobbies and other beneficial leisure interests like hiking or exercise they also tend to do things that make them feel worse like staying inside abusing alcohol or other substances listening to music that makes them sad and isolating themselves from people and becoming reclusive now
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I know we've covered a lot this is a lot of material but let me try to summarize briefly we want to avoid extremes when it comes to understanding the causes of depression it is rarely exclusively physical requiring medication exclusively spiritual requiring a rebuke or exclusively imaginary depression is complex and we need to be very careful observers of ourselves and others in dealing with it to understand what depression is we need to understand those five key biblical categories of our lives our life situation our thoughts we look at those ten false ways we lie to ourselves our feelings those six key questions our bodies and our behavior are we withdrawing from life are we becoming reclusive do we no longer do the things that we used to enjoy doing just remember what is perhaps the key to everything related to depression whether it is being contributed to by chemical imbalances in the brain or sin in our lives
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Proverbs 23 7 for as he thinks in his heart so is he and remember the great weapons the scripture gives us when it comes to our thoughts
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Lamentations 3 21 this I recall to my mind therefore I have hope
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I recall the faithfulness of God the goodness of God the mercies of God that are new every morning and therefore
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I am not depressed I have hope Psalm 42 5 why are you cast down oh my soul that is a self rebuke and why are you disquieted within me hope in God for I shall yet praise
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Him for the help of His countenance folks tell yourself the truth God's mercy and His goodness never change we do what our minds fixate upon can be chosen by us we can recall to mind
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Philippians chapter 2 and its marvelous hymn to Christ we can recall to mind the wondrous grace of Christ shown in 2
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Corinthians 5 or Isaiah 53 or John 6 or Colossians 3 we can rebuke ourselves with those questions why are you cast down oh my soul we can self confront with the command hope in God for I shall yet praise
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Him as a man thinks in his heart so is he I will not think on things that are lies that are false
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I will not magnify small things and make them big I will not focus on what is negative fill your mind with God's word
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His promises His character and put your energy into seeking Him feast on His faithfulness and His wonderful redemptive works on the
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Lord Jesus' cross His death His resurrection His righteousness that is put in your account your adoption as a child of God remember that God's mercies are new every morning no matter how you feel fight the good fight against the lies that you tell yourself and learn to tell yourself the truth let's pray oh
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God in heaven we thank you that your word speaks a lot to this issue of excessive sadness excessive down feelings and thoughts and everything else and you've given us these great weapons help us
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Lord to remember that our brains have been just as affected by the fall as our shoulders and our elbows our knees ankles and hips and all the other parts of our body that get sore and ache with age and the effects of sin and we pray you'd help us not to be extreme but to recognize that we are complex creatures that people can be helped with drug therapy that so often times we need to be rebuked we need to change what we're feeding into our minds and we certainly need to change the way we think and stop violating the ninth commandment of bearing false witness when we think about ourselves and think about others help us to tell ourselves the truth to confront ourselves with the truth and to do as Jeremiah did to recall to our minds in the midst of often very terrible sadness to recall to our minds your faith your faithfulness your mercies the shed blood of Christ the gospel your promises help us to tell ourselves the truth that we might stand firmly on that foundation as we fight the good fight against this ailment of depression we ask in Christ's name
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Amen This is
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Pastor Patrick Hines of Brittle Heights Presbyterian Church located at 108 Brittle Heights Road in Kingsport, Tennessee and you've been listening to the
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Protestant Witness Podcast Please feel free to join us for worship any Sunday morning at 11 a .m. sharp where we have where we open the word of God together sing
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His praises and rejoice in the gospel of our risen Lord You can find us on the web at www .brittleheightspca
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.org and may the Lord bless you and keep you the Lord make His face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you the