51. How To Slay Depression In 3 Steps

Welcome to the broadcast where we prod the sheep and beat the wolf. This is episode 51, how to slay depression in three steps.

The call to war. Depression is like an unassailable fog that settles down upon the harbor of the soul.

It's a leech upon the fledgling emotions and a disease upon formerly vibrant desires.

It's a thickly clouded midnight sky that chokes out distant starlight. It's abandoned, that comes upon you and grabs hold of you like a barnacle on the underside of a merchant ship.

And when you're a Christian, depression is about as welcome in your life as a fox at a hen convention.

Now as a pastor, I have seen the soul paralyzing effect that depression can wrangle upon the soul and the heart of countless men and women.

And as a man, I felt my own mangled heart periodically strangled by the silent thief lurking in the melancholy shadows.

From my earliest memories to this very week, depression and anxiety have been a constant feature of my life.

Yet I am not a victim and neither are you. For a few moments,

I would like to sketch out a three -step guide that is found in 1 Peter 5, 6 -7 on how to slay the tyrant that is called depression.

This blog will not discuss clinical diagnoses, medication, therapy, or counseling or anything like that.

Instead, I aim to simply describe the spiritual warfare that has aided my own heart and my own soul and I pray that it will comfort you as well.

Here's the text. 1 Peter 5, 6 -7 Therefore, humble yourself under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you at the proper time, casting all of your anxieties on him because he cares for you.

This is the word of the Lord. Step 1. Reject human pride.

Everything in this verse hinges upon killing pride. Because if depression were an engine, then pride would be its gasoline.

It is the fuel that propels major depressive episodes into spiraling tailspins. Thus, if you want to sever the chutes of depression, the trunk of depression, then you first need to cut off the bitter roots of pride in both of its mangy forms.

The most apparent form of pride is self -love, which leads to an eventual credibility crisis.

When humans become infatuated with themselves, the ego inflates beyond rational possibility.

The propaganda and the hype quickly outpace common sense and soon, the person will have to work increasingly harder to believe how incredible that they know that they are not.

This disparity between perception and reality can lead to various forms of depression and it must be repented of.

And yet, the most damaging form of pride is not self -love, it is self -hatred.

Instead of spending hours fantasizing about how incredible you are, this manifestation of pride leads its victims to recall how awful they think they are.

And whether that self -loathing comes from destructive addictions or poor body image or failed relationships or the sorrow from self -induced consequences, the effect of perpetual harmful self -consumption will give way to the same toxic narcissism as self -love.

Biblically speaking, the heart, the human heart will become septic if self is the only thing that you are feeding it.

We may hate various aspects of who we are. We may have abiding bitterness over how things have turned out or based on how we have been treated in our past.

We may ache over feelings of abandonment. We may shake our heads at how stupid that we were that one time or many times and we may carry a duffel bag full of self -blame over this or that scenario, but feeding yourself more of you is like adopting a diet of pure lard and hoping to get healthy by it.

The only way to kill your depression is to stop making everything about you. Sure, you've probably failed a million times.

You are the common denominator in all of your problems. I get it. And yet, you do not belong to you anymore.

If you're a Christian, Christ has purchased your life and your broken record and he has hidden you in him so that he now, not you, is where your hope comes from.

Instead of punishing yourself with more self -hatred, give yourself permission to stop focusing on you and to start focusing on him.

When the chatterbox inside of you screams out, Why do people treat me this way? You can cry back, but look at how kind my savior has been to me.

When the accusations begin to gurgle, you are one pathetic loser from the tar pits of the depressed soul.

You can resist the urge to grovel in a destructive pity party and instead, you can look at your flesh and you can say,

Yeah, but look at who Christ made me to be. I'm no loser. I'm a son. I'm a prince in heaven's army.

No weapon formed against me shall prosper. I am the bruised reed that Jesus will not break. I'm the smoking flax that he's not going to quench.

I'm a citizen of the kingdom of heaven and I'm in route to the new Jerusalem. And though my flesh and though my heart may often fail, my hope is in him and he can never fail me.

You see, this practice of taking your focus off of you and putting it onto Christ is the most excellent medicine that your soul could ever take.

Take hold of your mind, dear brother and sister, and set it upon the Lord Jesus Christ.

Do not allow yourself to be consumed by you. Instead, be consumed by him.

It says, therefore, humble yourself under the mighty hand of God that he may exalt you at the proper time.

Step two, rest in God's providence. Now, I want you to hear me out here.

You deserve nothing but hell. You and I are vicious rebels who've spat in the face of almighty

God, who is now overflowing with a perfect rage, ready to consume us in our transgressions.

You were not owed the comfort of a mother's breast as a helpless babe, and the oxygen you now steal away in your borrowed, developed lungs is not the fair wages for your rebellion.

Every breath is grace. Everything you have, even the sorrows and the pain, is far better than what you were owed by God.

If God executed perfect fairness upon you, you would have never escaped the womb since you were conceived in iniquity.

You were a rebel from the beginning. You would have never taken your first breath. You would have never giggled at the silly faces a father makes.

You would never breathe the cold mountain air on a beautiful summer morning.

You would never taste the marbled goodness of a medium -rare ribeye, or have your heart filled with love for your very own child.

If fairness were your taskmaster, your infant back would be christened in the flames of an eternal hell.

When you understand that, that you're owed nothing, then even the most painful and bitter griefs that you've been allowed to taste may rightly appear as they are, as the tender and affectionate mercies of God.

You have received unfathomable grace. If he did not strike you down in your sin, you have grace.

And if you're in Christ, then God has gone beyond the realm of comprehension to claim you, his enemy, to become his own, a member of his own family, cleansed and being made fit for his celestial kingdom.

The truth, this truth is where the noxious power of depression can be aptly thwarted.

When you understand that God owes you nothing, and yet he's done so much good for you, you will begin to see that everything, even your miseries are regal blessings.

Instead of focusing on your expectations or your experience or your pain or your grievances, you will begin to look for his redemption in these things.

You'll start to see how all of your afflictions are working for you. As scripture says, an eternal weight of glory.

You'll notice how God is working all things together for your good and for your maturity and for your joy.

When you comprehend the providence of God, his sovereignty, then depression will no longer have any room left to afflict you because you know that nothing can separate you from the love of Christ.

And it is this Christ that is using your crosses to bring you into resounding glory at the appointed time.

Rejoice, dear brothers and sisters, in his sovereignty, reject the lies of the enemy and refuse to sit down in your depression.

Finally, casting all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.

Step three, remember God's compassionate provision. After you have slain the monster of self -absorption and you have recognized that you are infinitely more blessed in Christ than you ever dare dream, now it is time to take the final step and to cast any lingering crumbs of anxiety and depression onto him.

Cast upon him your fears, your insecurities, your obesity, your health condition, your tendencies towards self -medicating and whatever else it is that afflicts you.

Cast your anger, toss your doubts, throw your sadness, leave your wayward cares on him because he cares for you.

Jesus demonstrated that great love for us and that while we were yet sinners, he died for us. The one who knew no sin became sin so that we might become the righteousness of God.

And this one who became sin on the cross and was also buried in a borrowed tomb did not stay bound in that well -guarded cryptorium, but yet rose in the power of God on the third day as victor over the grave, author and perfecter of our faith, the one who has triumphed over all of our cares, over all of our concerns and over all of our fears.

When scripture commands us to cast our cares upon Jesus, it tells us to give them to the only one who can handle them anyway.

You can't and I can't, but he has. He's already wrestled our broken emotions and misplaced affections down into the depths of Sheol and he has rose triumphantly in victory over them.

When we cast our sinful desires and attitudes and thoughts and fears and worries and griefs onto Jesus, we are saying,

Lord, not my will, but yours be done. When we abandon our wants and tendencies to punish ourselves, then we'll accept that he has already been punished for us.

We may finally step into this freedom when we let go of our shame.

His will is not for us to live in agony, in depression, but to live in the splendor of his affections.

Conclusion, battling depression for some will be an all out war that will take intentional and constant effort.

But as we said in the beginning, this fight can be won if you will fight in the biblical way.

Step one, you'll need to kill that old man inside of you who wants you to spend all of your time focusing on yourself.

Repent of that and turn all of your affections to Christ. Step two, you also need to take up that new man with the

Holy Spirit that has been given you and all of the affections that he is rotting inside of you so that you won't focus on your situation or your circumstances any longer, but you will remember how blessed you are in Jesus Christ.

Rejoice. Repent. If you're discouraged, rejoice because of all that he's done for you and step three, you will need to learn the timely habit of casting every negative emotion, thought, feeling or desire on him.

The plain and simple truth is that you are not sufficient to carry such things. That is not how you were designed.

So take those aberrant cares, those aberrant concerns and cast them on to the only one who truly loves you and the only one who can truly carry them and watch as your depression melts away.

I hope this helps and I hope that these in these three simple steps, no, not easy. They are simple to understand, but they're not easy always to do, especially

I know when the depression comes down upon you, it can become stifling and it feels like that you can't escape.

I understand. But what I hope is in these three simple steps that you will find freedom, that you will find hope in your depression and yet you will see that all of these things come from him.

Turn from you. Turn to him. That's my prayer for you. God bless you. We'll see you next time on the broadcast.