Dealing with Depression from Psalm 42-43 (Frank Mullis)

Okay, we have a bonus episode for you.

This is an episode from the conference that we recently had,

Striving for Eternity recently had on the Sanctification Through Suffering Conference. This is

Pastor Frank Mullis dealing with the topic of depression. There are many people that struggle with depression, many who don't want to admit to it, and I think this message will help you, and it will help you to help others as well.

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That was actually a blog article by one of our new bloggers, and you could check that out.

Very helpful information, and I should say that that was from Ashley Evans, she's one of our new bloggers.

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But what was of interest is this month, one of the number one things that people are going to check out was our article on what is salvation in Judaism, thought that was interesting.

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We're going to drop those in bonus episodes. Without further ado, here's the introduction that I have for Pastor Frank Mullis of Striving for Eternity.

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Frank Mollis is a pastor down in Georgia at Devereux Baptist Church, been there, I'm, yeah,

I was going to say 15, but, so been there almost 15 years. He is a full -time counselor of sexual offenders, so he gets to see the worst of humanity on a daily basis.

He also runs the Milledgeville Mixed Martial Arts Academy, he's got a black belt in karate and jiu -jitsu, second degree or third now in jiu -jitsu?

First, oh, first? I thought you got your second from, ah, yeah. So he's got that, used to be a podcaster, but right now he's getting his doctorate and life kind of stops.

Wait, he's got three full -time jobs, how does life stop, right? But what we want to have him talk to you about is the issue of dealing with depression.

And this is a thing that many people struggle with. For folks who don't know, you may not realize many of your pastors even struggle with it.

And there's people that end up being in positions where they have to kind of hide that. So this is an important thing to be able to recognize in ourselves, to recognize signs, but also to see how we can help others.

I did a podcast with Amy Montravadi on the issue of depression and anxiety.

And one of the things we talked about is that people who go through this often go through it alone because they don't want anyone to know they're struggling.

And the reality is one of the biggest ways out of it is to have help. That's what church is for, all right?

So Frank, if you want to come on up, and you've got to check out his shoes. Check out those shoes. So a little bit about my background in counseling.

My senior year of high school, I took a psychology class. I kind of enjoyed it. So I said, hey,

I'm not going into the military. My dad got very upset when I decided to go to college because I had not taken a lot of college courses.

And so he had to pay for college classes that were high school level classes to make up for those.

So he's not too happy. I met a gentleman, Dr. Tom Caldwell.

He became my mentor in psychology. So my goal was to eventually become a psychologist.

Now a little bit of a side note, my grandmother is a Pentecostal, well, she's passed away. She was a

Pentecostal holiness preacher. So that's the other side of my background. And one day she prophesied over me, and she said, you're going to be a pastor one day.

I said, nope, I'm going to be a psychologist. And so at her funeral, I said, hey, we were both right. So I ended up going to Georgia College.

I got a degree in psychology and at that time decided to go to seminary.

When I first went to Southeastern Seminary, it had just switched over from the moderate leanings. Dr. Paige Patterson had taken it over.

And the counseling program had been a blended psychology. Christian psychology is basically what it was, as most of you know from that.

Halfway through the program switched to a biblical counseling program, New Thetic based. So I've got the best of both, quote unquote, with that in between.

So I ended up thinking I was just going to do regular counseling and realized that my premarital counseling,

I have performed maybe about 12 marriages in premarital counseling, and all of them are still married, which is wonderful, right, right,

Brian's, that's why we were connected. However, my marital counseling record is not so bad.

There's 100 percent divorce rate with my marital counseling. So I said, maybe that's not for me. I was feeling really bad until I talked to a marital counselor who did it full time.

He says the success rate in marital counseling is only about 20 to 30 percent, by the way. So it's not, those of you that do divorce care, you pretty much know that.

So I ended up, of course, working with sex offenders now for almost 15 years working in counseling sex offenders.

That's been my primary thing, and I've done quite well with that. But in the counseling world, we deal with a lot of issues.

I don't deal just with comorbidity. That's just a term where people have more than one problem. So one of the main problems that I deal with is depression and anxiety, and I usually send them out to other counselors who specialize in that.

But over the last year, I've been working on my doctorate in professional counseling at Midwestern Seminary.

And so it's one of those issues that you have to deal with. It's a primary issue. Most people that go into counseling are going for anxiety and depression.

Those are the two main things that people come into counseling with. You as pastors know that you're going to deal with depression and anxiety among your congregation.

They're going to come to you to deal with those things. And so I want to talk to you first about a guy named

Joseph Scriven. Joseph Scriven, his death, we don't know whether it was an accident or a suicide.

He was in serious depression about the time that this accident happened. A friend reported, we left him about midnight and withdrew to an adjoining room not to sleep but to watch and wait.

You may imagine my surprise and dismay when on visiting his room, I found it empty. All search failed to find a trace of him until a little afternoon, and his body was discovered in the water nearby, lifeless, cold, and in death.

Joseph was born in Ireland in 1820. His prospects seemed very favorable. He was educated at Trinity College in Dublin and was engaged to be married.

But that's when the first tragedy struck. Ironically, his fiancée drowned on the evening before their wedding.

This was seemingly the first of many misfortunes that led him to consecrate his life and property to Christ's service.

He eventually moved to Canada and began tutoring for a living where he met his next young lady that he was going to be engaged to.

However, shortly before they were married, she became ill and died. How would you respond to this type of tragedy?

He joined the local congregation and began to assist the elderly. His sorrows seemed to make him much aware of the suffering of the poor and weak, and he attempted to live out, as I said, the

Sermon on the Mount. He gave or lended to anyone who asked. Sympathized with all who were more unfortunate than him, he sawed wood for the stoves of the physically handicapped and comforted the poor.

However, his last years were plagued by illness, poverty, depression, and then on August 10, 1886, he suddenly drowned.

Now, his tale wouldn't seem to warrant a page in church history were it for not the fact he is the man who wrote one of the hymns that must rank among the ten best known and more loved of all time that he wrote to comfort his mother who still lived in Ireland.

You recognize this hymn? Thank you.

The hymn writer and D .L. Moody's ministry partner, he added this. Have we trials and temptation?

Is there trouble anywhere? We should never be discouraged. Take it to the Lord in prayer. Can we find a friend so faithful?

Who will all our sorrows share? Jesus knows our every weakness. Take it to the

Lord in prayer. Now, before I begin into this lecture, I want to note most of this comes from the lecture, my lecture notes and reading materials from my doctoral class in advanced biology by Dr.

Larry Cornine. Dr. Cornine says if I was at least 30 miles away, I could claim it as my own. So I just want to give credit to him and other biblical counselors that most of this material rises from because it's not my area of expertise, but I put together this and I think it's been very helpful.

I actually sent him the sermon that I did and sent him a copy and he approved it and said I should write a book.

And I was like, well, it's all your notes. I was like, so let's talk about depression and anxiety.

What exactly is depression? One writer said it involves a complete absence, absence of effect, absence of feeling, absence of response, absence of interest.

The pain you feel in the course of a major clinical depression is an attempt on nature's part to fill up the empty space.

But for all intents purposes, the deeply depressed are just the walking dead.

If we look at anxiety, in scripture it's usually defined as fear. Anxiety is an inner fear, a feel of apprehension, uneasiness, worry, and dread and is accompanied by a heightened physical arousal.

In times of anxiety we appear to be on alert, ready to flee or fight. The Bible often discusses anxiety in two ways.

Both are very common. The realistic concern is neither condemned nor forbidden in scripture. Anxiety is fret or worry is more distressing.

A core reflects the lack of confidence in God and a tendency to take burdens on to ourselves instead of giving them over to God.

However, this may not be sinful either. The second type is what most counselors and pastors are going to deal with.

One of the things that I mentioned earlier is anxiety and depression are some of the most common mental illnesses or health problems in America.

17 million people in America suffer from depression and that's the clinical level of depression.

25 % of us will experience a depressive episode in our lifetime.

One website suggests that depression has an impact on nearly everybody if we consider both the depressed people, family members, friends, work colleagues, and others.

It disrupts and interferes with our normal functioning, causes problems at work, reduces efficiency, hinders our spiritual growth at times, and can destroy family and social life.

The impact on the economy is considered to be in the billions. And the mortality rate from depression, people who die from depression, is about 15%.

Anxiety is the most common mental illness in the United States.

Fear. 40 million adults every year are diagnosed with it. About 18 % of our population in the

United States is diagnosed with anxiety. It's one of the most common medications I see among my clients.

Anxiety and depression going together as comorbidity is not uncommon. Most people who suffer from anxiety suffer from depression and most people who suffer from depression end up suffering from some sort of anxiety.

Basically half of the people are diagnosed with either or. But these two disorders are nothing new.

We find them throughout scripture as Job wrote questions in God and his suffering. David wrote psalms about it, which we're going to cover today.

Elijah hid in a cave. Jeremiah was known as the weeping prophet. Justin pointed out Jesus weeping with tears.

Hebrews points out, by the way, I think Paul wrote it through his secretary Luke. So that's my theological opinion there.

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weakness, but we have one who has been tempted in every way just as we are, yet he did not sin.

Let us approach God's throne of grace with confidence so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in our time of need.

Church history shows that is not uncommon among pastors. Maldi so afflicted Martin Luther that his melancholy threatened to destroy him.

Those of you who, if you're a pastor and reformed, you know everybody's gotta quote Spurgeon.

Spurgeon, after some sermons, would curl up in a fetal position in his office and cry. Some Sundays he was so depressed he hid in his home and his deacons had to go drag him to church.

Don't know if you knew that about Spurgeon. Here's what he said, I could weep by the hour like a child, yet I knew not why

I wept, recounted Spurgeon. He said, a veritable howling tempest in the brain, malignant sadness, my bones wasted through my groaning all day long.

The unhappiness was like the dust that infiltrated everything. The iron bolt mysteriously fastens the door of hope and holds our spirits in gloomy prison.

But it's not just pain, it feels like meaningless pain. That is all I want in my life, for this pain to seem purposeful.

If pain leads to childbirth, then it is tolerable. But it just leads to blackness or nothing, and it threatens to destroy.

That's the Prince of Preachers. I have many dear godly pastor friends that are currently going through depression that I talk to.

About 70 % of pastors suffer with depression at some point. In 1965, most of you recognize

Dr. Martin Lloyd -Jones, pastor of Westminster Chapel in London. One of his books that, and I would suggest all of you if you get a copy of it, called

Spiritual Depression, Its Causes and Cures, became his most popular and widely circulated books.

And the reason being is because Christians get depressed too. So, of course, there are many depression theories.

Why do people get depressed? Why am I suffering with this? Why do I suffer with depression? Most of the theories in the psychological circles go with some sort of neurotransmitter malfunction.

Whether it's the monomane hypothesis or the norepinephrine serotonin hypothesis, or just the diathesis model of depression.

Basically, it's a model of mood disorders that refer to the interaction between experience of stress and a genetic predisposition.

In other words, your genetics and constitutional predisposition to depression. That's your lot in life.

Some people are more prone to depression because of their physical makeup. In psychological circles, it's called endogenous depression, that there's just something in your physiology, much like probably

Luther and Spurgeon, that just are depressed. We have friends. We know people who are just what

I call Eeyore, right? You know, I talk about that with my guys in group.

I have people who are Tigger. I tend to be a Tigger person, right? My wife, it drives my wife crazy. But there are

Eeyore people that we have in our life who, that's just how they are. It's a beautiful day, and it's gonna rain later.

How's everything going? It could get better, right? I don't think they'd be excited if they won the lottery, you know? I'll probably blow it all.

Yeah, they probably would. On the other hand, there is exogenous depression.

This is depression precipitated by life events. We were doing the Iron Sharpens Iron podcast, and apparently

Andrew said, I've never seen Frank depressed. And I'll be honest, that's not my lot in life.

The only way I know I'm depressed is if I actually take a depression scale. Y 'all done the

Myers -Briggs? I've been an ENFJ for my entire life, and one time I was taking it, and I was an

INFJ, and I was like, wait a minute, something's wrong. I've never been a, I'm not an introvert. So I went and talked to one of my professors, and he says, what's been going on?

And I said, well, I just went through a breakup. He says, yeah, you're depressed. It was a situational thing, stress and exhaustion.

That's what I experienced most. I mean, as I've gotten older, I drive, literally, I drive 1 ,000 miles a week.

My 2012 car has 300 ,000 miles on it. So I'm spending a lot of time in a car.

I spend a lot of time counseling and traveling. And so stress and exhaustion, and it gets more and more difficult as I get older, and you find that too.

As I remember, Andrew's talked about all the things I do, and man, my ADD was wonderful for that.

You know, I could get a lot of things done. As I've gotten older, it's a little bit more difficult, and probably the reason

I've developed hypertension and other things. You know, so that's part of it. So, you know, you may experience exogenous depression because of you just, the inability to say no, like me.

Of all these theories, the most popular, of course, is the biochemical hypothesis. So I'm gonna talk about something that is controversial briefly before we move into the text, and a few other things.

But let's talk about medications. That is the, really the split that I found for those when

I went from psychology, secular psychology, into Christian psychology, into the New Thetic.

The time New Thetic counseling was anti -medication, it really was. You know, and first of all, you know,

I'm not anti -medication. I work with people who are extremely violent, and they will kill themselves or kill you.

So be thankful that I put them on meds. Now, I'm not a doctor, but I suggested, you know, hey, you need to get a med.

And I can have them locked up if they become suicidal or, or homicidal. And you know,

I've had guys, they get their shots. So there is a connection, at least in some way, that even the anti -physical treatment people, there is something with the meds.

They do something. The problem is, we don't know exactly how it works. It's very difficult to measure the chemicals in the brain.

There's really not any testing, and that's the issue that goes back and forth. But I've seen the medications work, especially in behavioral, especially in suicidal people.

We know they work. Those of you that take them, you know they work in some way. The problem is, is you're usually the determiner if it's working.

You know, that's why they practice medicine, right? Is it working? Eh, no, let's give you a little bit more.

And were there any side effects? What's doing this? Well, let's put you on a different one. And, and one of the, the issues I really have with the medication is which, which, which medication dealer came by and offered them a trip to the

Bahamas is the next one that they're, they're promoting. And so what I find is a lot of times my people who deal with behavioral issues, they go from one doctor to the next, and they didn't tell them that they were seeing another doctor who put them on a med, and suddenly they're taking meds that are causing interactions.

What's even more interesting is the placebo effect works 20 to 30 % of the time. And I, this is where I'm gonna leave you with the medication thing.

The question with medication and other physical treatments for depression, anxiety, is not, is the treatment right or wrong?

The question is, is the treatment wise? There are some people, as I mentioned, with the endogenous depression, that the physical makeup, there's something that seems to work better.

The problem I have with it is the exogenous depression, is that, that is the first go -to thing.

It's the first go -to thing. I will use this in one of my counseling situation, and, and again, this is my, kind of my clinical thing.

I had counseled this couple through, through the issues that they were having, and they followed it, listened, and went really well.

The next time they came back for counseling, were having problems, his wife has began to take some medication.

What I find with medication, especially when it's the exogenous problems, stress, anxiety, things going on, is that the medication seems to make us not care.

Says, hey, who cares? And so when you stop caring about your problem, that's good and bad sometimes.

So, what my, my thing is, is just be very careful when it's the first go -to thing that a doctor with very little,

I mean, that's usually the thing is, I'll find my, what did he say, well, he didn't really say I need counseling, he just said I need meds.

Be very careful with that. That's, that's my thing, is just be very wise when your doctor's first treatment method for your anxiety or depression is, is medications.

So with all these theories of treatments and medication, how about this? Many depressed people, people with anxiety, don't even entertain the thought of getting well.

In this book I was reading, it says, depression is not a feeling, it's their identity. What would Eeyore be like in Winnie the

Pooh if he wasn't Eeyore? Yeah, wouldn't, wouldn't be, would he? The question we need to ask a depressed person, do you want to get well?

And it should, you should ask them, make them step back for a moment and think about it, is that if that's true, some things in their life may have to change.

Some depressed people, it's their belief system. This is who I am, this is who I identify with, this is how people recognize me.

They often get attention from it. And so if they get rid of depression, they seem to be getting rid of a part of themselves.

However, many depressed people say they want to get well, but they reject every way out. Man, if I get rid of my depression,

I won't be able to hold on to my anger or my bitterness. And if I get rid of this depression, I may have to forgive them.

If I get rid of this depression, people may not pay attention to me like they used to. Depression is oftentimes, for some people, a way to avoid things.

Man, if I'm not depressed, I may have to get a job, may have to get complicated relationships,

I don't wanna deal with people. I may have to confess my sin or other responsibilities in life.

To give up depression means that they have to not avoid things they don't wanna avoid.

Unbelievable as it might sound, some people prefer their depression over getting better. It's convenient, at least they know it.

When I first started counseling, I had to meet the person's partner, and we would have to talk and make sure they understood that the person had committed a sex crime and they weren't allowed to be around children and things of that nature.

And I began to talk to the partner and found out that the women that they were bringing in were molested as children.

And they would tell me, yes, I understand that I was molested as a child. And I began to scratch my head and I couldn't, it doesn't make sense to me.

Why is a woman who's sexually abused wanting to be with a sexual abuser? So I called up my supervisor, the one that passed away, and I said, can you please explain this to me?

I have no clue, understanding how this doesn't make sense to me. She says, it's very easy, Frank. All you have to remember is it's familiar.

They know how to respond to that type of situation. They know how to deal with someone like that.

So let's move into from the physical side of depression to the spiritual side, because we as Christians understand there's a such thing as spiritual depression.

And through the scriptures, that seems to be what most of the people in scripture experienced.

It's different from psychological depression, but understand they can be connected. If we talk about the doctrine of man,

I believe man is a unity. I'm not a trichotomist or that kind of, I believe we're unity. I believe that we're one, and I believe everything is connected.

And so spiritual depression seems to be the absence of God's delighted presence.

So to ward off it, we must put the two last words together, God's delight and presence. This goes back to what we were talking about last night.

Who are we in Christ Jesus? Who are we in the sight of God? This is a theological understanding when we deal with depression, is understanding that it's very easy for us to think about ourselves and stop thinking about God.

And I want to say this, at least from a Jonathan Edwards standpoint, if God for one moment stopped thinking about us, we would cease to exist.

We end up, even as Christians, even if you wanna hold to an

Arminian view or Pelagian view, whatever, what's your understanding, but is in the reform view, salvations of the

Lord. But what we oftentimes find is that in Christianity, we believe that sanctification becomes a workspace system.

We forget that God is part of sanctification. And if we're talking about sanctification through suffering, one of the issues that is part of this is that God not only died for our past sins and our present sins, but you know what?

He died for our future sins too. Jesus died for your future sins. Brother Eric and I, we were talking, it's one part of Christianity that I missed, and it's probably from bad theology of Southern Baptists.

We spent a lot of times talking about propitiation, that Christ died for my sins, and that's what

I understood. And so what I believed, and it's probably incorrectly, maybe it's just ignorance on my part, what

I believed is I was responsible to be good as a Christian. And so I turned Christianity post -salvation into a moral belief system, that God loved me as a

Christian based on my goodness and how good I could be. That just didn't work and fit with the way my mind worked, you understand?

Because there was still sin that dwelled in me. I think that whole verse about Paul there is post -salvation,

I don't think it's pre, I really don't. And what I understood is the imputation of Christ's righteousness changed my understanding of my morality post, is that no matter how much

I sinned post -Christianity or how good I was, that God still loved me.

And if you're a believer, he still loves you. That when he looks at you, he doesn't see your sin, he sees the robe of Christ's righteousness.

He sees you in Jesus, that's the impact. That's the impact of the gospel post -salvation, is that he loves you.

He loves you, a lot of hellfire and damnation that we hear. Pull washer scares me too,

I promise you. But I'm telling you, your morality does not dictate

God's love for you as a child of Christ. There is no condemnation, there is no condemnation.

That is the wonderful news for Christians, that he loves you with the greatest love that is possible, that agape love that we hear through scripture.

And so as we look at our depression again, as I just got off on a preaching tangent. If you want to find one of the best

Christian counselors out there, it's Ed Welch. You need to, anything that you can get on Ed Welch as a pastor for pastoral counseling, or if you're a counselor or you just want to read, whether it's drugs, alcohol, depression,

Ed Welch is the go -to guy. Biblical counselor, and here's what he said. How can you determine if depression has a physical cause or a spiritual cause?

Well, I'm going to summarize it like this. There are two types of counselors. My supervisor, she was like a mechanic who liked to tear apart the engine, find the cause of the engine's failure, which could take a long time, and then she would begin to teach you how to rebuild the engine and put it back together.

I tend to like to be on the other side. It's easier to pull out the old engine and put in a new one, right? Get rid of the old way of thinking and start thinking new.

It's a lot faster in my opinion, but both work. But here's the thing, Ed Welch says it doesn't matter if it's a physical cause or a spiritual cause, you're going to treat people and deal with people in the same way.

The Apostle Paul speaks of the spiritual depression like this in 2 Corinthians. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed, perplexed, but not driven to despair, persecuted, but not forsaken, struck down, but not destroyed.

Always carrying the body, the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our bodies.

And this is what Justin was saying. We got right to the edge, and he holds, right? That illustrates it.

I'm going to steal that, and I'm not going to give you credit, okay? So, right, so look, depression is profound.

It's devastating. It is not permanent. Even if you stay depressed for 70 years, that's it.

The hope of glory is coming, and you'll never be depressed again, because he's going to wipe away the tears and sadness. That's the hope.

By the way, Philippians just throw in some anxiety there, where we talk about don't worry, right?

One of the problems with counseling people, when we point out sin as worry, guess what your counselee's going to do? They're going to worry more because now they're sinning.

So it adds to it. What I believe Paul says in Philippians, when he says, be anxious for nothing, right?

Don't worry, he's saying, hey, God's got it in control. Why worry? In other words, there's no reason for us to worry.

There's no reason for us to fear. God's got it. So let's go to the text. The fourth century BC, Hippocrates gave the first clinical depression description called melancholia.

But 500 years earlier, King David gave a more biblical and vivid description of the emotions.

In scripture, you don't see the term depression. You will see much of the term, such as torn down, broken down, things like that.

We're going to look at Psalm 42 and 43. We're going to exegete a little bit. It's a psalm of distress. The psalm's in trouble.

Even though it's not mentioned that it's David, some like Calvin maintain it is. Some see it post going through with Absalom, what

David was going through. But mostly, most people think that it was during his exile from Saul.

And his lamentations centers not only his loss of family and home, but being deprived from access to the sanctuary.

So turn to chapter 42 of Psalms and 43, and we'll look at it. And I'm going to divide it up.

I'm going to give you the symptoms of depression, and I'm going to show you the cure for depression according to the psalmist.

My tears, in verse 42, 3, my tears have been my food day and night, while they say to me all the day long, where is your

God? Now what we were saying earlier, where's your God? Now what he said, when you're in bad trouble, you ask yourself, where's

God? Notice he says, my tears have been my food. Crying spells is indicative of depression.

If you've been depressed, you know that you cry oftentimes for no reason. What he's saying is, I'm really lacking the spiritual nourishment of God's presence here.

There are many psalms that talk about my God, my God, why has thou forsaken me? Where is your

God? We see that. It seems to be worse than because the presence of God seems foreign to us. That's why we need a good theology of eminence and transcendence, right?

It gets worse. Where's God? Doubting him. Look down at 42, 6, and my God, my soul is cast down within me.

It's how you feel. You feel cast down. You feel pushed down. The world is on top of you. It's pressure.

You talk to people who are depressed. I feel pressure, all this pressure, fear, anxiety. But look how he responds.

Therefore, I remember you from the land of Jordan and Hermon on Mount Mizar. His depressed mood and he's feeling blue here.

And he looks at the distance from God. How far am I away from the sanctuary? One of the things that we do when we get depressed, and this is one of the things

I do. If you want to know if I'm depressed is when I stop calling you. When I stop going and hanging out with you.

That's one of the things I do. I just, I don't want to be around anybody. I want to sit in my room and I want to play video games and I want to forget about the world.

And he feels far away. This is one of the verses that we think of in the

Psalm, 42, 7. Deep calls to deep at the roar of your waterfalls.

All your breakers and your waves have gone over me. It's signifying here the overwhelming trials of life.

Says God, you're ultimately responsible for the oceans of trials, which I seem to be drowning in.

Now what we often do, what are you doing to me, God? Why am I going through this? Why do I feel this way? God, why aren't you helping me?

Where are you, God? This seems to be the language of Jonah in verse 3 of chapter 2. For you have cast me into the deep and the midst of the seas and the floods come past me about all thy billows and thy waves passed over me.

It feels like a flood is coming over you and you're having this flood of emotions and all of these things are going through your mind and it's circling around in your head and you can't get a grasp of what's wrong with me.

You ever felt that way? What's wrong? If you live with girls, I have, I live with five women. Deal with it.

Walk past my daughter's room, she's crying. My wife's in there consoling her. I was like, what's wrong? Are you okay?

Why are you crying? I don't know. And I was like, well, if you don't know, I certainly don't know. I mean, that's the way it is.

You can't grasp what's going on and you feel hopeless and you feel overwhelmed and that's part of depression.

This seems to be, have gone over me, that there seems to be a well -known image of despair and trouble throughout scripture.

In 42 .9, I say to my God, or say to God, my rock. Notice that. I say to God, my rock, why have you forgotten me?

I say to my God, my rock. It's not like he doesn't know who God is. You think

Spurgeon didn't know who God was? You think Martin Luther didn't know who God was? They too, ask the question, have you forgotten me?

Why do I go mourning because of the depression of my enemy? What this is saying is, God, why aren't you acting now?

It's a demand on God to act quickly, because I feel lonely. 42 .10, as with a deadly wound in my bones, my adversaries taunt me while they say to me all the day long, where is your

God? So not only are you asking it, but everybody else is asking it. Where was God on 9 -11? But notice he says, wounds in my bones, physical pains, chronic joint pain, limb pain, back pain, physical.

Notice the spiritual and the physical are connected. I think that has to do with my own personal hypertension. I was having back problems for a while.

Could have been that people were cranking on my joints from jiu -jitsu, but. 42 .11a,

why are you cast down on my soul and why are you in turmoil within me? Notice a feeling of emptiness and loneliness is one of those symptoms of depression.

And 43 .2, for you are the God in whom I take refuge. Why have you rejected me? And again, feelings of rejection.

That's one of the reasons for depression, is being rejected. Rejected by friends, rejected by, you know, your, your spouse, and, and you're going through these things, especially as y 'all deal with, with divorce.

They're gonna feel rejected, and that rejection is gonna lead to depression. So let's talk about, now we, we, we've discussed the symptoms.

We see what depression can be in, in a person's life. So let's seek to find what

David's solution is to these problems. And I will say this, when depressed, your main need may be to seek

God himself, not just relief. You see the difference? Think Justin kinda alluded to that last night. Move outside of you and back to God.

In euthetic counseling, the number one cause they would tell us, depression is selfishness, it's pride.

This is a side note, one of the psychological studies out there, the number one reason that your kids lie to you is not to get out of trouble.

It's because that they don't want you to think bad of them. So my pastor who's very euthetic, friend of mine who's very euthetic, he goes, oh, you mean pride?

They're just prideful. They don't want you to think less of them. So he kept going back to sin, and, and, and that's one of the difficulties

I have with euthetic counseling is it seemed to be that everything was sin. Guess what? A lot of it is.

So here, first thing we notice that first we need to seek the person of God. Look at verses one and two of Psalm 42.

As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, oh

God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. The verb there, to pant, is an expression form of a spiritual thirst for God.

This deer's body is still, his heart's pounding in his breast. The whole body of the deer is on alert. He's tired, but cannot relax because he's thirsty.

We've been thirsty like that before. But notice that's not a thirst, a physical thirst. It's like that for God. You have that thirst for God, to know

God. David feels truly deserted in these Psalms, but yet he's seeking God to relieve him of his loneliness, his depression, and he becomes nostalgic.

As believers, we have ready access to the Father through Jesus' Son. We have an advocate with the

Father, a very present help in times of trouble. We seek him while he may be found.

Seek the person of God. We all experience times of extreme tiredness. It's normal for us to go through that.

Our energy levels can go down. You know what? Sometimes we need to just relax. Relaxation.

Get away. I asked my friend who's depressed, says, when's the last time, Pastor Francis, when's the last time you've been on vacation? He goes, you mean a non -working one?

You mean when you went to a conference and you brought your family along? Four years? We as pastors sometimes forget how to relax.

I'll tell you, up until I started my doctoral program, my family, we spent a week on vacation every year. Ten days.

And then that's kind of gone to the sideways, and I think that has a lot to do with it. Look at 42 .5. We seek the

Lord and we want to seek the presence of God. Seek the presence of God. Why are you cast down, O my soul?

And why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise him my salvation.

This is a refrain from 42 .11, 43 .5. Psalmist questions, despairs, and wonders why he's in trouble.

But notice that he speaks of hope in God. He is our hope. The Hebrew word here is to hoping and waiting on God.

That's not a futile activity. It is the faith that God will act and bring in deliverance, as we've seen in Proverbs 20, 22.

Hope in God is not vain. Oh, just hoping God. No, you got to understand that faith is very much connected to hope.

That's what the definition literally means. And so he begins to rebuke himself for his despondency, encourages himself to trust in God.

It goes back to our mind. Finding those scriptures that you can memorize that speaks of trust in God and how

God fulfills his promises. And there's hundreds and hundreds of promises that God makes to us throughout scripture.

And you start memorizing those promises. And when you start feeling this way, you began to put it into your thoughts because our thoughts change our feelings.

Your feelings will change your behavior. You start with feelings. Your behavior will follow the feeling if you start with your thoughts.

But before your thoughts comes your worldview. Your worldview will dictate your response to your thoughts and your feelings.

Just like we said last night, bad theology, poor theology is one of the main reasons we suffer.

So you need to not only develop a theology of suffering, but you need to develop a psychological and I use that term in the

Christian sense, psychological understanding of problems. Find out what scripture says about depression, what it says about anxiety and those verses you commit to memory.

So when you experience these things, your worldview will dictate how you think about it.

And it will aid and help those of you that are in counseling. Psalm 42, 8 and 43, 4 seek the praise of God.

42, 8 by the day, the Lord commands his steadfast love. And at night, his song is with me, a prayer to the love of my life.

God commands his loving kindness to make itself apparent in both the daytime and the night.

What I find often in scripture is that, as I mentioned last night, they start questioning God. And it seems to be that God kind of delights sometimes in our questioning because he says, really,

I will show you I'm God. By the way, he shows you in scripture, right, Justin? If you want to hear from God, read scripture, right?

My favorite quote by Justin. 43, 4, then I will go to the altar of God to my God, my exceeding joy.

And I will praise you with the liar. Oh, God, my God, you go to your special place of thanksgiving, literally unto

God, the gladness of my exaltation. Where is your happiness? Where is your happiness?

Jesus said, is it where you put in this world where mobs are going to eat it and rust is going to do it because where your thoughts are, where your heart is, it's where your treasure is.

And if your treasure is in your belongings and they burn, what's going to happen? If your treasure is in your children and something happens, if your treasure is in your spouse, something happens.

I hear that all the time. Why? Why have you changed the life of my daughter? So what happens if something happens to your daughter? I don't say something terrible like that.

Your hope has to be in the rock. Not on the sinking sand. My harp, I will praise you. Oh, my

God. You know, just sometimes singing talking to a pastor friend of mine, he said he was he just had a heart surgery, almost died from a heart attack.

And he said he has these pieces. I'm not saying I hadn't had those press results, but I put a song in. I start singing.

My countenance changes. Don't believe it. Read, read, read what happened to Saul when God sent those demons to mess with him.

When did they flee when David played? And if it is spiritual, there is a definite spiritual element that's going on.

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood. There are other forces that are trying to break us down. Forty three three. And this is important.

Seek the precepts of God. Send out your light and your truth. Let them lead me. Let them bring me to your holy hill into your dwelling.

Send out the light of truth. Jesus says, I am the light of the world. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth and the life.

When you're depressed, you ball up in a hole, curl up or do you open your Bible and you go to those precepts that I've mentioned and you find those verses and you commit those verses and you trust

God and you do it and you do it. And I have people I've I've read how many times, a couple of times.

And I said, how long do you do it? I said, until you change. Do you understand? Look, depression is very, very debilitating.

You're not going to want to do it. But if you believe in the sufficiency of scripture, because what really shows is when you say scripture doesn't work, you do not believe in the sufficiency of scripture.

If medication is your first thing you go to, the secular counselor is who you first go to. And you don't go to the word.

You don't believe in the sufficiency of scripture. I've challenged many people in my professional counseling degree. I'm in a secular realm, so I have to deal with secular things.

I have to understand psychologists and psychiatrists from a secular background. But there are many counselors that are there.

Pastors wives who are counseling women, pastors who are counseling in a Christian setting that don't have to use secular means.

And they're using secular means as their first and foremost method. And I'm like, why? Because it works.

No electric shock therapy works. And there are things that work. Just because it works doesn't mean it's godly.

But if you believe in the sufficiency of scripture, you keep doing it till it works. Because it will. Part of the diligence that we see in scripture and the endurance is you being faithful.

Let them bring me to the holy hill. What's next? Seek God with the people of God. Let them bring me.

These things I remember as I pour out my soul. How I would, with the throng, lead them in procession to the house of the

Lord with great shouts. Look, when we're depressed, we avoid people. That's what I do. You need to find people in your church that you haven't seen in a while that you know are going through stuff.

And you've got to go to them. Ryan reminded me of that. That's why we lean on one another. We talk about that suffering that we've gone through, the endurances and the trials and tribulations we've gone through so that we're better able to help others.

You're going to have to help some people out of depression. You're going to have to go knock on the door. Get up. Get out. Let's go. Send out your light and your truth.

Let them lead me. Let them bring me to your holy hill, your dwelling, 43 .4. Then I will go to the altar of God, to God, my exceeding joy.

So let's close this out. Here's some, just some application of this. First and foremost, euthetic counselors are not anti -medication per se.

What they want you to do is go to a medical doctor and get a physical. If you're depressed, go get a physical. It could be something.

Could be ladies, thyroid, estrogen levels, men, testosterone levels. All these things affect.

So get a, get a physical, get blood work done. Sometimes if it is endogenous there and you may need medication, not as I said, but don't let it be your go -to.

You need to work on ways to resolve the impact of the psychological causes. Death of loved ones.

You're dealing with that. You help others change the way they think. You show them the scripture.

You take them to the scripture. You help them apply those scriptures to their life and guide them into behavioral changes. Some things we do on a regular basis is depressing like work.

That's why you need a vacation. You need a break. People who just, there are certain things that they do on a regular basis that are very depressive.

I know people who go every day to the cemetery to see their loved one every day. That's depressing.

Assisting people in coping with their environmental influences. You know, you have some depressive people in your life.

You have an Eeyore. That Eeyore is a problem because now he's pushing you to be

Eeyore -like. It's not bad to have an Eeyore in your life, but you need a Tigger too, right? But you don't need a

Tigger all the time either. You need social support systems. Look, if you got a friend who's talking suicide, and I know

I'm short on time, Andrew, but I'm going to, quick story. Five Solos Podcast. You can open that one up.

I'll give James a bid. James Watkins is my associate pastor.

James Watkins started out as one of my martial arts students. He disappeared. Hadn't heard from him in years. One day

I opened up Messenger. Says, hey, you're a pastor, right? Last time I checked, it's that day of the week. Yeah, I'm a pastor today.

Says, I got a theological question for you. And I was like, okay, what is it? Do people who commit suicide go to hell?

This is one of my cautions to you as theologians. Listen to the question being asked because not all questions that are theological questions are theological questions.

My response to him, thank goodness I was a counselor. Are you thinking about killing yourself? Nothing for five minutes.

Yes. Do you have a plan? Yes. What is it? I have a bottle of pills and a fifth of Jack.

Nothing. Then he says, do you think I'll go to hell? The very fact you asked me this question may be very well,

God is telling you that you will go to hell if you kill yourself. Where are you? Nothing. And he just quit talking to me.

I go immediately to my martial arts school and start looking through my records to see if I could find a number. About an hour,

I found the number. I called him. This is not the best way, but this is the way and it did work.

I said, James, I want to meet with you. I want to talk with you. I said, let me tell you this. If you kill yourself,

I'm going to have to deal with this the rest of my life. Do you really want to put that burden on me? I made him quit thinking about himself and think about me.

Several months later, he meets his current wife. He gets, she gets him into church. He gets saved, starts coming to my church, gets a call to the ministry.

Now he's my associate at my church. That's the sovereignty of God. You need to learn how to deal with suicide if you're going to counsel people because you're going to deal with it.

So a couple of things for you for depress and I'll be done. Number one, trust in God. Don't you just love that?

That little trust in God. That's just simple. It's like the Sunday school answer. Jesus. It's really understanding the nature of depression.

When people are depressed, you've got to understand it. You got to take time. And if you're depressed, you need to read about depression.

Get one of the Welsh's books on depression. Read articles on depression. Find you some godly counselors.

Talk to them about depression and understand why you're depressed. Many factors that lead to depression.

One is anger view. I'm not, I'm not an angry person. I don't get angry. It's just not. If I get angry, it's really bad.

I'll just say that though, right? It takes a lot to make me angry. Just don't make me angry, right? But if you, if anger is a problem for you, you need to learn anger management skills.

Unlike me with stress, stress management skills, breathing techniques, learn how to relax, relaxation techniques, learn to control and change self -defeating thoughts.

I call these automatic thoughts. I'm going to talk about this briefly. I'll be done. Andrew is going to start throwing things at me.

Automatic thoughts. Automatic thoughts are the thoughts you learn from your childhood. If you had dysfunctional parents, you're stupid.

You're no good. You're worthless. And worst things I could say that I've heard clients say that their parents told them when they were children.

And guess what? Every time they make a mistake, every time they sin, every time they do something that seems like a failure in life, those words of their parents and others in their life pop in there.

You idiot. You're so stupid. So you have to help those people or you yourself learn to replace those automatic thoughts with scriptural thoughts about how much

Jesus loves you. Reaching out to others. And this one is keep physically fit. That's one of my issues.

King David says, why am I so discouraged? Why I'm so sad? And he wrote, I will put my hope in God. I want to say this to you.

If you're lost, if you're not a Christian, if you were depressed, you don't need to simply feel better. You don't simply need medication.

You don't simply need a good counselor. You need the wonderful counselor. You need a redeemer. The gospel will change your circumstances.

If you're lost, I promise you. Let's pray. Father, I thank you for this time, this word from these many wonderful counselors that I've been able to glean from.

I want to take credit for what they had to say, but it's you who helped them through your word for these things together.

Father, may they help us and apply these to our life. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. This podcast is part of the

Striving for Eternity ministry. For more content or to request a speaker or seminar to your church, go to strivingforeternity .org