Depression | Theocast.org

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00:01

Hey, this is Jimmy. Today on Theocast, the guys talk about depression. It's something that's more common than we like to believe, even within the lives of Christians.

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We hope to bring some helpful definitions around what depression is and what it is not.

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We also look at various scriptures and see just how common it is, even within the broad narrative of the

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Bible. In our members podcast, we talk about how we can helpfully counsel people who are working through depression.

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We hope you find this conversation helpful. Thanks for listening. Hey guys, as a quick reminder, if you'd like to join

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01:14

Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ. Conversations about the

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Christian life from a Reformed perspective. Our hosts today are John Moffitt, pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee.

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Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina. And myself,

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Jimmy Buehler, pastor of Christ Community Church in Willmar, Minnesota. Gentlemen, good to see you.

01:39

John, it sounds like you have some updates for us and the listeners, so why don't you take it away? It does sound that way.

01:46

Well, we've been, yeah, we've been working hard here at Theocast. We've been trying to raise some donations and some support so that we can provide more services for you, the listener, and for churches around the world.

02:00

One of the things we've been working on is primers, just simple introductions to some pretty heavy theological concepts.

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So one of the ones we have coming out here soon, it may even be out by now, we're working on a primer on assurance, which is probably the number one question we get, questions around assurance, concerning assurance, works and salvation.

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So that was something that we're providing, but we're going to do some more primers, just simple, real small booklets for you to whet your appetite on things like redemptive historic understanding of Scripture, law gospel distinction,

02:34

Christ -centered preaching. These are the kind of subjects that we wanted to put into your hands so that you can, one, benefit from them, but two, share them.

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They're super easy to hand out, and we can begin to help more and more people find rest in Christ.

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So you can go over to the website and find that. By now, our Ask Theocast podcast is up and running, and we're working through all the bugs of that.

02:59

Anytime you start something new, theoretically in your brain, it sounds fantastic, and then when it goes down to paper, you see all the ink blotches, and so we're all feeling that right now.

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Execution is another thing, that's right. Something I like to say is, at some point, every good idea just becomes work, so certainly that's where we are.

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Although we are excited for these new resources. That whole reality of trying to actually execute the vision can really be depressing at points,

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I think. Absolutely. I go to bed at night and I tell my wife, hey,

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I got this new idea, and every time she says, so who's going to do that? I'll figure it out somehow, we'll find a way.

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That's why John brought us on the podcast, so we would just do it. That's right.

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That's right. Can you work? Great. Can you write? You're in. Yeah. All right. Excellent. Well, JP, you gave us a little hint towards it, but what are we talking about today?

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Yeah. Dad joke. I tried. I tried, Jimmy. John wasn't taking it. No, he wasn't. That's fine.

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Today, he wasn't. It's fine. It's fine. I'm used to it. We just roll right on through. Today, we're talking about something that is going to be,

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I think, relevant for many people. We're going to be talking about mental and emotional health, and in particular, we're going to be talking about depression, which is a common struggle for people, for many of us.

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The Bible, we're thankful, is not silent on these matters. We know that because of sin and the fall, our entire personality, meaning not just our bodies but also our minds, our hearts, all of the realities of the psychosomatic union and everything wrapped up in being a human being, all of that has been affected by sin.

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We tend to struggle mentally, and we tend to struggle emotionally in terms of how we're thinking and how we're feeling.

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Many of us find ourselves in places where we're feeling flat.

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We're feeling gray. We're feeling discouraged, despondent, despairing. It's not altogether unreasonable in a fallen world where death and suffering and all of these kinds of things are the norm, and bad things happen.

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To be depressed is not insane in a Genesis 3

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Ecclesiastes world. We're glad that the Bible speaks to these realities. God's people through history have lamented and have despaired about their condition and the things that they experience.

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We're also thankful that the Bible points us to the steadfastness of God and his utter faithfulness.

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We want to have a good conversation today from a Reformed biblical perspective about depression. We're going to get into a number of things and touch on a number of things.

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We want to try to describe depression and what it might be like for people that fight it, that experience it.

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What is it? What is it not? I think there are some misunderstandings that we want to point out. We want to talk about where it comes from.

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Then we want to recalibrate the perspective and the thinking with respect to depression in the church.

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How do we go about handling these things pastorally? How do we go about encouraging one another as brothers and sisters in the faith?

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How do we think well about God's faithfulness even in the face of depression and sorrow and despair?

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We hope this is obviously an encouraging conversation, but we hope that this is clarifying for some people and hope -giving in the midst of battling sorrow and the dark night of the soul and melancholy and those kinds of things.

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Let's begin the conversation with what depression is and maybe some of the things that it is not.

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Justin Perdue Yeah, that's really helpful, Justin. I recently put out an article on Theocast, on the website, about my own experience with depression.

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Mayo Clinic, a large, influential research hospital here in Minnesota, they describe depression as a mood disorder that causes persistent feeling of sadness, loss of interest.

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It affects how you feel, think, and behave. It can lead to a variety of emotional and physical problems. You can struggle with doing day -to -day things, day -to -day thought patterns, things of that nature.

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Now, what I wrote in that article that is on Theocast .org, that's certainly a great definition.

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I think it does help kind of bring frame around the topic. One of the things that I like to say just really simply, kind of a layman, lady definition is depression is just a monster.

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It feels like there is a consistent weight on top of you. I think one thing that I want to be very clear, overly and abundantly clear from in the beginning is depression does not equate to mere sadness.

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I can be sad over the death of a family member.

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I can be sad over a particular circumstance, but I can ultimately know that these things will pass, where depression almost feels like an inescapable weight, that it's really difficult to pinpoint feelings.

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Even in my own experience with depression, there were days where I certainly laughed and joked and smiled and played and experienced good time, if you will, but there was always this gnawing sense underneath that something was definitely off.

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I want to be very careful to say that depression is not necessarily sadness as much as it is kind of a heaviness of spirit.

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Melancholy is kind of the old word that was used. Charles Spurgeon uses that word a lot, having a melancholic state.

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Wondering if you guys want to jump in and kind of frame that definition a little bit more as well.

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I think you're right, Jimmy, in pointing out a common misconception that depression just means that you're sad all the time.

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I think that's a flattening of it. It can be sadness, but there's a lot more to depression than that.

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A lot of times, it's a feeling of flatness. I'm just emotionally gray and I'm devoid of feeling even.

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Sometimes it's deep anguish and agony of the soul. Sometimes it is just this, like, I honestly don't know that I feel anything about anything.

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It's been said before, not just by me, and it sounds hyperbolic, but for people that have experienced the throes of depression, it's not.

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You're thinking to yourself, if somebody honestly were to kill one of my children, I don't know that I would feel anything.

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I just feel that devoid of emotion, and I'm just that flat and that gray.

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I think even Abraham Lincoln, I know we're going to recommend a book here in a minute.

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Jimmy and I are probably fighting over who gets to recommend this particular resource on depression first. Jimmy Buehler You can have it.

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You can have it, man. Dr. Justin Marchegiani We're both waving around, and we might even do it for those of you who are on YouTube.

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We're waving around this book here, Spurge and Sorrows by our brother, Zach Eswine. It's, I think, the most accessible, really good treatment of depression that I've ever read from a biblical theological perspective.

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He quotes Abraham Lincoln in the book, and it's absolutely excellent. What Abraham Lincoln even said about his own depression, he says,

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I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would be not one cheerful face on earth.

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Whether I shall ever be better, I cannot tell. I awfully forebode that I shall not. To remain as I am is impossible.

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I must die or be better. It appears to me. It's a gripping quote that I don't know if I'm going to get better, but if I don't get better,

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I just need to die because I can't remain as I am. Because this is how just really perplexed and troubled in my soul

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I am. I think this is the experience for many people. Last thing I'll say about the existential piece of this is that sometimes this is related to circumstances, and sometimes it is completely unrelated to anything circumstantial.

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My life is actually going okay. My job's going well, and my family's healthy, and we're pretty stable.

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I really don't have a lot to complain about, yet I am depressed. Then there are other seasons where it's obvious that some of these circumstantial realities are contributing to my melancholy.

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It's a strange thing to know exactly where this comes from for people, and it's not just this one -to -one, oh, well, this is why you're depressed.

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This doesn't work quite like that. Justin Perdue I myself have never, nor have

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I ever met anyone who wants to be depressed or wants to remain in that state as if there's some kind of benefit to it.

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There are some sins that people do because they enjoy it, and I'm not calling depression a sin, but there are causes.

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One can find themselves in deep depression. David did at times find himself in deep depression because of his own sin, and then other times he can't point to a sin that's causing the melancholy of the soul that he is experiencing.

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I would say that what's hard for many is that they aren't given a category for what they're feeling.

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The church has unfortunately completely dropped the ball on how it is that we have communicated this to the church.

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Justin Perdue I agree. One quick interjection, John, just to maybe clarify. I'll at least speak for myself, and you brothers may very well agree.

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Like you said, I'm not calling depression a sin. I think that depression is something that comes upon people as a result of the fall, which

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I know we're going to talk about in just a moment. There can, of course, be sinful responses to that in terms of how we handle and deal with the depression that comes upon us, and I know we'll clarify those things.

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I just wanted to interject briefly. John Dickerson Yeah, and we will. We'll get into that in just a minute, but the relief that I'm hoping to bring for some people is that they are unwilling to admit, and some may not be able to clinically define it or even be able to point out, hey,

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I am depressed. I had a good pastor friend of mine who we were meeting with, and at one point, the doctor we were with finally just said,

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I don't think you know this, but you are depressed. You are clinically depressed, and he began to describe what depressed people experience.

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It wasn't until someone told him that he was depressed and he was willing to admit it that he could begin to now work on maybe what caused it or what's leading to it.

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Sometimes depression sounds like an unspiritual state, that if you admit that you're in this position that there's something wrong with you spiritually or there must be something wrong with you.

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Then, of course, people always assume, well, you just need to think about all the benefits of life that you have, and then they go down this list of every reason why you shouldn't be depressed.

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Justin Perdue Or it gets worse theologically. People are like, oh, you're depressed. Don't you understand the sovereignty of God? Don't you trust the

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Lord? Don't you know that He's faithful and good and that He's going to work all things for your eternal good?

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Don't you know that? The answer to that question would be, yeah, I absolutely do know that, and I am still battling depression and despondency.

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What do you have for me? Jimmy Buehler There certainly are a barrage of bad treatments out there.

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Again, as much as I can emphasize for the listener, something to be ever so mindful of is that depression often is not,

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I feel sad about this experience or I feel sad about this aspect of my life.

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Considering my own experience, beautiful wife, beautiful children, beautiful home, during the time that I was going through my depressive state, there was very little in my life circumstantially that gave me good reason.

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But if you mix some of the things that I was working through personally as well as some of the things, just the natural dispositions that I have as a person, it's so much more than just a feeling of sadness.

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I do like the word despondency. I just often just felt numb.

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I would see something positive and I'd be like, yeah, that's great, but I don't have this overly emotive response to things.

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And certainly, my day -to -day experience would be different. There certainly would be some days that getting out of bed was just a struggle, and not every day was like that.

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So perhaps we can kind of pivot the conversation to, we've talked about this a little bit.

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Let's maybe kind of bring this to a more Christian perspective. What are some of the things that you find are very unhelpful in the ways that the broader

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Christian church, the broader evangelical church, treats depression, defines depression, and how they try to get people out of it, so to speak?

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What do you guys find? Yeah, I've been around this for quite a while now.

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With Theocast, we did an episode on this very early on in our first few episodes.

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The correspondence that we received was very sad. It was depressing, to say the least.

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We heard stories about people who were trying to work through lifelong battles of depression, and evangelical leaders in their lives, their pastors or counselors, were giving them advice that would only trap them, handcuff them, and even lead them into greater depths of despair, because they were not listening or they weren't aware.

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There's even, within the whole biblical counseling world, the idea that you would ever allow some kind of medication for depression is sinful.

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How dare you not trust in God's word and God's plan for God's word? That is, to me, so devoid of just being kind and considerate.

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There are pain medications that the side effect of this pain medication is depression.

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It is common, but yet I don't want to feel the pain, and so I'll have to take this antidepressant so that I can, one, be without pain and not be depressed.

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To tell someone that that's a sin is, I'm sorry, but that is just not biblical.

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When we're talking about depression and medication, to immediately say, if you are taking antidepressants, you are not trusting in God, I'm sorry, but that is just not a biblical perspective that you can argue from.

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Jimmy Buehler Can I just be super raw with the listener? I am on a daily low -dosage antidepressant.

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When I do not take this, my mind will go all sorts of places and run all sorts of miles per hour.

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When I met with medical professionals, because I had all sorts of misconceptions, I just thought that taking a medical antidepressant was going to quench the

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Holy Spirit within me, that I wasn't able to feel anything. Meeting with medical professionals who actually walked me through what happens in your body physiologically, because it's so important to remember,

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I think one of you said this earlier, we are spiritual people, we are emotional people, and we are physical people.

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There are certain things in our bodies, chemical imbalances, structures, things that God, we are fearfully and wonderfully made.

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What I have found is that the way it was explained to me, these things can help bring you level rather than keep you in the negative, so to speak.

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I will just be open and honest with the listener to say it has been profoundly helpful. It's not the only source of treatment that I have, but certainly it is very helpful for my overall mental health.

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We are excited to announce that we have a new free e -book available at our website called

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Faith vs. Faithfulness, a Primer on Rest. We the hosts put this together to explain the difference between emphasizing one's faith in Christ versus emphasizing one's faithfulness to Christ, and how one leads to rest and how the other often to a lack of assurance.

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You can get this at theocast .org slash Primer. If you've been encouraged by what you've been hearing at Theocast, we'd ask you to help partner with us.

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You can do that by joining our Total Access membership. That's our monthly membership that gives you access to all of our material that we've produced over the last four years, or simply by donating to our ministry.

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You can do that by going to our website, theocast .org. We hope that you enjoy the rest of the conversation.

20:58

Jon, to pick up on what you were describing before I maybe add some other thoughts,

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I think we need to remember always when it comes to the conversation about depression, that mercy and compassion always make room for the answer you're not expecting in terms of why somebody is depressed.

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We would do well in the church just to remember that reality. But I think some of the misunderstanding with respect to depression and a whole host of other issues, but we're talking about depression today, comes from a short selling of the doctrine of the fall and sin.

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I think sin and the fall have affected us far more than most are willing to acknowledge, even in the church.

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It's a deeper, just more overarching, total reality. In the 1689

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London Baptist Confession, chapter 6, in paragraph 2 and 3, it's on sin and the fall of man and its punishment.

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There's language like this, that as a result of Adam and Eve's sin, we all have now become wholly defiled in all the faculties and parts of soul and body.

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There's language of how we are now, because of Adam and Eve's transgression, in Adam we have become the servants of sin, the subjects of death, and all other miseries, spiritual, temporal, and eternal, unless the

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Lord Jesus set them free. So I think what we have to acknowledge here is that death and misery have entered the world through Adam and Adam's fall, and we now have all inherited that condition.

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So sin, one thing we're very adamant about here on Theocast, and this is just true in Reformed theology wholesale, is that sin is a state, it's a condition, before it ever is an action.

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And so we see the effects of sin everywhere in creation. We see it in our bodies.

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So this is an observation that I've made. We are really comfortable in the church to acknowledge sin's effects on our bodies in at least this way, that we're all dying, right?

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We're all going to die, and then our bodies break down. I mean, we'll joke about how our knees hurt or how our joints are bothering us or how we can't do what we once could do, you know, because we're all getting a little bit of gray in our beard and our hair and everything else.

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And it's like, yeah, man, I can't do it like I once did it. We'll talk like that in the church easily, right?

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But here's the great irony. We are often very slow and hesitant to admit the wreckage and the struggles that exist in our minds and our hearts as a result of sin.

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Because here's the thing. I think many, many evangelicals anyway have bought into the lie that emotional, mental, and spiritual struggles should not exist for the

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Christian, at least not for the good and faithful types, right? Or, here we go, if you get your theology right, you won't have these problems.

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If you just understand things the right way, you won't struggle with depression.

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And we just want to come in and say, no, because of sin and the fact that it's a condition and a state that we live in, we should expect

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Christians, even faithful Christians with good theology, to battle things like depression.

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And it's absolutely fundamental, it's critical that we would recalibrate the conversation from the jump with that.

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To say, you're not crazy if you're battling this. Yeah, I think something that you said,

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Justin, is really helpful that we are very quick to recognize the effects of sin on our physical bodies, right?

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There is no immortal that has walked the earth, right? That we all experience the effects of sin in that way.

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I mean, certainly we can stay certain aspects of physical negativity through diet and exercise, things like that.

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But we seem to make a shift when it comes to our mental health, that we can control it, which is positive thinking.

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We can just control it, as you said, we can become overcomers with good theology, that everything's going to be smooth sailing.

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When the fact of the matter is, no, there is such thing as the noetic effects of sin, that every crevice within your personhood has been impacted by the curse of the fall, and we need to be sensitive to that.

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And it's also, as we think about counseling people, we also need to be sensitive that,

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I mean, as you think about even just physical exercise and physical weight training, those of you that are looking at this video,

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Justin and I are shaped very differently, right? We are physically shaped differently. One of us is attractive and the other one is

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Justin. And so, as we think about these things, I'm just kidding, but I mean, honestly, me getting in shape physically is going to look different than Justin.

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And so, we can't just go in with a shotgun approach and say, well, if you want to stop being depressed, you just got to do this and do this and do this.

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There is a patience and a slowness that we need to approach people's souls and care for them and understand their circumstance and their unique struggles and their unique dispositions, that it's not as simple as we like to make it sound.

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That's right. Yeah, the solution when we're providing help and comfort to people is not always the same.

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This is obvious, we all have a number of children. And so, because you have multiple children, you know that when you deal with your children, if there's a frustration or even discipline issues, you do not discipline your children all the same because of their disposition and their personality and how they process discomfort.

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And every single one of my kids, I talk differently to all of them because of the way that they receive information.

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Well, when it comes to someone who's battling something as gripping as depression, there is not a one solution.

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Here's the thing, salvation is simple. There is one solution to your problem when it comes to your standing before God.

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It's called Jesus Christ, the gospel. But when it comes to the rest of life, it is not as simple.

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And the Bible makes it very obvious that it's not that simple. When Paul cries out in his own frustration, with his own pain and suffering, and he calls it a thorn in the flesh, when

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Paul describes his own battle with the flesh, and he says, who will save me from this body of death, after his salvation, being a regenerate, spirit -filled person, he still struggles with the body and he still struggles with his own sin.

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And Paul does not always give these solutions that are just a one -stop shop, will fix all, because there is, here's the biggest,

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I think, if you've been listening to Theocast, hopefully you're picking up on this, we are not offering you the solution to the victorious

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Christian life, because there is no such thing as the victorious Christian life.

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There's the hope of the Christian life, but the victory does not come until Christ returns.

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Right. Yeah, Christ is victorious, and we will be victorious in that sense, in Him for eternity.

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But as it is right now, I mean, this is a conversation that we've had before about the theology of the cross versus the theology of glory.

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We're going to be weak, and we're going to struggle now, and glory is coming.

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It will consummatively be revealed in us and to us and through us when

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Christ returns for us. I want to just read a few passages from scripture, just some Bible verses here to maybe comfort those who are experiencing depression, because I know one of the things we say on Theocast all the time is, you are not crazy.

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If you are feeling these kinds of ways, you are not alone, and you have not lost your mind. God's people through history have known this kind of experience and have known this kind of despair.

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I mean, I'm thinking of language like in Psalm 77, where Asaph will talk about how he says, I can't sleep at night, but he says, when

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I think about God, when I remember God, I moan, and when I meditate, my spirit faints, and God, you're holding my eyelids open, and I'm so troubled that I can't speak.

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The entirety of Psalm 88, just go read it. It begins and ends in darkness. It doesn't lift.

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It just talks about the experience of being cast into the pit, and God, you've put me in regions dark and deep. You've slain me.

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It's like I'm lying in the grave. People don't even remember me anymore. I'm like a man who has no strength.

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Solomon in Ecclesiastes 2 talks about how he hated life because what is done under the sun was grievous to me, for all is vanity and a striving after wind.

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All man's days are full of sorrow, and his work is a vexation. Even in the night, his heart doesn't rest.

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This is the language of Scripture. Paul talks in 2 Corinthians 1 about being, he says,

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I don't want you to be ignorant of what we experienced in Asia, for we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself.

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This is the apostle Paul. Then in Job 7, this is some of those gripping words that I've read in all of Scripture for me.

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Job says, when I say, my bed will comfort me, my couch will ease my complaint.

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God, if I could just sleep, it would be better. Then you scare me with dreams and terrify me with visions, so that I would choose strangling and death rather than my bones.

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I loathe my life. I would not live forever. Leave me alone, for my days are a breath.

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I mean, my goodness, Jesus was a man of sorrows. He was sorrowful to the point of death in the garden of Gethsemane.

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These are the words of Scripture. Weary saint who is out there listening, you may be finding yourself right now in the deep, dark throes of depression.

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You are not alone, and God's people have known this. Your Savior has known sorrow to the point of saying

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He felt as though He could die. So take heart and look to Christ. Yeah, I think adding the two of these together, understanding, and we'll do a podcast on this soon, understanding your state as a sinner, sin as state versus sin as action.

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Often what we suffer is because of the state we were born in. We were born into Adam. We were born depraved.

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We were born with sinful, broken bodies in the garden. When Adam sinned, the ground was cursed, and from that, all of humanity has felt this curse.

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So your Father is not ignorant of these things. This is His book, and we have to understand the way in which

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He has allowed this world, or He has formed this world. And to add to some of what

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Justin is saying, the comfort often is to offer someone who finds themselves in depression, even though you may not feel these truths about God, this is how

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God feels about you, no matter how you feel about Him, and some of these truths are from Psalm 56, 8, where He says, you have kept count of my tossings or of my misery.

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You have kept count, meaning God is not ignorant of your level of depression every single day.

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It says, you put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your book?

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Every point, every moment, every second of suffering, your Father is absolutely aware of it.

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He is not ignorant of it. Psalm 34, 18 says, the Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.

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Again, for me, the one comfort that I like to offer anyone who finds themselves either with depression or even anxiety is the

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God of the Bible is the God who knows. He is not unaware. He is not ignorant.

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One last verse I love to give people, just to kind of add to some of what Justin was saying, is Isaiah 57, 15, when he says, for thus says the one who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is holy,

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I dwell in the high and holy places, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite.

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Meaning, the God of the universe, this high and holy God we serve comes down to you who feels numb and depressed, who feels a lack of all things, and does not get angry with you.

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He says he comes to revive you. And again, to remind you is that that hope is of your future.

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You may not feel that reviving now. The hope that often God provides for us is you're probably going to die of something, or you are going to die, and it's probably going to be something horrible like cancer or a car accident, or very few people die in their sleep.

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Very few. And the hope that God provides is that, listen, this misery you're experiencing is not your final destiny.

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That is safely secured with me in heaven. Yeah. Yeah. I want to pick up on an idea that Zach Aswine talks about in this book,

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Spurgeon's Sorrows, in that often we can, I think wrongly within the Christian life, we can assume that a depressive state means an absence of grace, an absence of God's work in your life, and he has a wonderful quote.

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Where he says, He holds onto us still.

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Our feelings of him do not save us. He does. And I think that's wonderful news.

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And that is the gospel that people who struggle with mental and emotional health need to hear is that even in the midst of numbness and tears and the swaying of your emotions, we are ever so mindful that it is not our grip of Christ that saves us, but rather his grip of us that does.

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And often the goal in depression should not always be,

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I just want to feel better. I just want to get out of it. Well, certainly that would be nice. But, you know,

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Zach Aswine talks about in the same way that believing in Jesus may not cure your asthma, and it probably won't cure your asthma.

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The same way that believing in Jesus, it just may not cure your depressive state, that it could be a battle that you rage with day in and day out, that there is no state this side of heaven where you're going to feel, and I just feel really good all the time, 100 % of the time.

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But rather, as we have been saying, the hope of the Christian life is the resurrection, that we will be made new, that we will be glorified.

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And when we are longing for the feelings of not being depressed, well, we are going to fully experience those in the new heavens and new earth, and that's what we look to, is

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Christ, not our feelings about him. Yeah, I think one of the problems in the church is this perspective regarding depression and a whole host of other struggles and battles against sin, is that you should be better by now.

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Like if you're in Christ Jesus, you should be better than you are. And I think just a brief word of comfort, picking up on what

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Jimmy was saying to everybody out there who's battling depression, even today, or anxiety or some kind of darkness of the soul, the fact that you are experiencing depression does not for one second mean that you are not in Christ Jesus.

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It's critical that we would understand that. The fact that you are depressed does not for one second mean that you're not in Christ.

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And so I think what we need to do in the church, broadly speaking, is recalibrate how we talk about this and how we even define, dare

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I even say the word progress, because I think it's a dangerous word when it comes to depression or something like that.

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But I mean, we need to redefine the word. Or another word that's thrown around a lot is victory. Like we want to help people get victory over depression.

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It's like, well, I don't even know what to make of that statement, depending on what you mean by that word. Because typically what folks mean in the evangelical world when we speak this way is like, well, okay, here's the goal for you, brother.

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Here's the goal for you, sister. We need to get you to a place where you're no longer depressed.

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Or we need to get you to a place where you're no longer getting depressed anymore, and that will be real progress and that will be victory in your battle against depression.

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And as I think we've stated already, like brother or sister, you may very well battle depression for the rest of your days until you die or Christ returns.

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And that is not to rob you of hope. It is to comfort you in the midst of your struggle and in the midst of your depression.

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Victory for you, for us, may very well mean taking your depression to Christ over and over and over again.

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And you're praying to God and you're saying, like, Father, here I am again. Right? I'm despairing.

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I'm flat. I'm dry. I'm gray. Help me. Give me grace.

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Sustain my faith that I might trust your son. And we're looking to Christ, His work in our place, and we're taking our sorrow and our despair to Him over and over and over again.

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That, my friends, is a better definition of progress and victory when it comes to this conversation about depression than what's commonly out there.

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This is harmful. It's a kind of bondage that exists. And it's like, okay, somebody's already despairing and now let's just pile it on.

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Because if you would just get serious about this and apply the Bible rightly, you'd be better. Yeah, which only leads to greater discouragement and despair.

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We are called to walk by faith, not by victory. We aren't looking for the victory lap. We're looking for the hope that's in Christ.

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This is why in Hebrews 4 .15, it says, for we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are yet without sin, let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in the time of need.

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To those who are depressed, I tell you, you can run to God to find grace and mercy in a time of need.

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This grace and mercy often just may be to get you through the next day, to get you over the next hump, to get you from 24 hours to the next 24 hours.

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And it sounds like, guys, you're just offering no solutions. Well, listen, there is a solution.

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It's called Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Our ultimate hope is secure. We are safe in the arms of our dear

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Savior, but He never promised to fix you here. It's not the promise.

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It is a lie, and it is horrible to be told that you can have glorification now.

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The more you progress in sanctification does not guarantee you that you will not have the effects of sin. I'm sorry, but I will turn up the volume here to protect the poor innocence that is out there that they've been told, you need to try harder.

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And the more you try harder, God will bring you relief here. And I'm sorry, that is just not the promise of Scripture.

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I'm sorry, I'll get out of my soapbox now. No, I mean, amen from me. I mean, perfectionism, this side of glory is a lie.

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It is not going to happen. I mean, you will not be perfected in your battle against lust.

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You will not be perfected in your battle against depression. You will not be perfected in your battle against whatever sin that you have.

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I know everybody likes to take that John Owen quote, you know, be killing sin, or it's going to be killing you kind of thing, and they like to like wield that as like the

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Reformation theology's greatest quote, and certainly I think that a lot of that is taken out of context, but the fact of the matter is, it's like, if you read

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Owen's writings, where is he constantly pointing you? Christ and him crucified. And something that I also, yeah, exactly right.

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And the other thing that I want to point out, it's right behind John on his bookshelf, if you're watching the video, there is a sign on his bookshelf that says extra notes.

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That is a Latin term that means the realities of the gospel, the good news of the gospel, they exist where?

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They exist outside of you. And so much, I think what people are fighting and clawing for in their battle of depression is they are fighting for a greater subjective experience, where what we are trying to, where we are trying to point you ultimately is the objective realities of Christ and him crucified, that the benefits of the gospel are applied to you by grace through faith on account of Christ, that you are saved and safe in him, not in your experience of him.

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Right? That Jesus has saved you in spite of yourself. And ultimately, as you struggle with your frame in this life and the weaknesses that you have and the depressive thoughts and feelings and emotions that you have, you have a greater hope that exists outside of you, extra notes, and you need to have that spoken over you, that your subjective experience of Christ is not the barometer of truth, but rather the life, death, burial, resurrection, ascension, enthronement of Christ is.

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So some listeners may be out there and they're thinking, guys, like, don't we need to use the Bible in our battle against depression?

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Don't we need to give people Bible to help them fight this fight? And my answer to that question is, well, yes we do, but we need to give them

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Bible in an appropriate manner. Because often I think we approach the Bible in a ridiculous fashion when it comes to a whole host of things.

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We look at the Bible like it's a medicine cabinet, you know, like it's like, here are your verses for depression, dispense those.

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Here are your verses for anxiety, give people those. Here are your verses for lust. Here are your verses for anger. Here are your verses for pride, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

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And then it produces this kind of absurd scenario where we almost look at people and we say, hey, here, you're depressed.

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Okay, here are these three verses, take these. And I'm sure by the time we grab coffee next

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Tuesday, you're going to be doing a lot better. Yeah. If you'll just take these and meditate on them, you know, really think these over, pray over them.

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I'm sure you're going to be doing better the next time we hang out. And it's just absolutely patently ridiculous, you know, to approach depression or any sin battle like that.

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And here's the thing. So when we give people scripture, right now we're talking about depression. We're talking with a depressed brother or sister and we want to give them

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Bible. Well, what the Bible reveals, friends, is the utter faithfulness of God.

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And what the Bible reveals is the plan of redemption that God has made from before the world began that would be accomplished through Christ Jesus and applied to sinners by faith through the work of the

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Holy Spirit, right? So that's what the scripture reveals. The scripture reveals Jesus Christ crucified for you,

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Jesus Christ's perfect life for you, Jesus Christ triumphant resurrection for you, you're safe and secure, and Jesus has secured your future.

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That is what the Bible reveals. And so that's what we need to be pointing people to when we give them scripture in the midst of depression, not, you know, well, here's this, or like, or somebody's anxious and it's like, well, you know,

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Jesus said, be anxious for nothing, you know, and you just need to take that seriously and you'll be doing better.

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So we need to use the Bible well and point people to the faithfulness of God in Christ in the midst of their depression.

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No, that's really helpful. Yeah. Well, the Bible is not a medicine cabinet. Take two of these and talk to me in the morning, which

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I think is dangerous. That's right. Right. Yeah. Jesus pills. Well, certainly we could continue to talk about this all day.

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And frankly, I do think it's a conversation that comes up between the three of us a lot, but something I think we should pivot to in our members podcast is really, you know, how do we counsel those who are serial sufferers of a depressive state or melancholic state?

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And so we're going to hop over to our members podcast and talk about that here in a few moments. Just want to thank you as a listener for tuning into this podcast as we seek to unravel the great things of this life and today, one of the awful things of this life and talk about it from a reform perspective, we're going to head over to our members podcast.

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If you have interest in learning more about that, you can head over to theocast .org and being a member really helps our ministry continue to go forth as we continue the work of the reformation in today's context.

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And so thanks for listening. We hope this conversation was helpful to you. We'd ask that you share it with those who you think would benefit from it.