“Depression and the Christian”

Today is going to be not a whole lot different, but a bit different.  We're going to deal with the issue, the subject of Depression and the Christian and I think a few reasons why might be helpful. 

Practically, for those of you who are, or have experienced some level of serious depression I would like for it to bring you some help and comfort.  For those of you who are in the process of helping a friend, a loved one, someone who is experiencing depression, I would like for it to encourage you and maybe offer some helps.  And third, for those of you who do not think that depression is something a Christian ought to go through or really does go through, to possibly offer you some gentle instruction and a biblical point of view that may be a bit different than what you normally hold.  There are a ton of perspectives on the issue of depression.  There are some things that are right in most perspectives.  This morning when I use the word depression I'm not using it in a clinical sense that would be so distinctly described as if I were a professional psychiatrist.  It will take in all kinds of psychological, for a lack of a better term, maladies, when we suffer on the inside; when there is no seeming external wound but we cannot come out of the darkness.  Why is that so?  Why does it happen?  And what is it I'm supposed to do?

Another reason that I need to address it is throughout growing up, through college and through seminary days and many years beyond that, I'm not certain I ever heard a serious treatment of such issues from the pulpit, and the older I got and the more I read, I found out in church history that this was something that was seriously addressed by some of God's best preachers with a lot of intention a lot of repetition and a lot of purpose.  I know that it is a problem of the ages; it is not a problem of the day.  There have been writings about melancholy or depression since mankind just about has been on the earth, so it is consistent across the centuries.  We know some things more about it now; we know some things less about it.  In some areas we have been educated beyond our intelligence and we offer cures that aren't cures at all.

What we want to do is do some practical thinking with you.  It will be a bit elementary, I am not a physician.  I'm not trying to be a physician other than a soul physician from the scriptures this morning, but I want to help you understand yourself, the persons you live with and the people sitting beside you first in how they think.  Now, if you'll look at the screen, you are going to have an odd-looking thing up there with some nice, cute green dotted lines and this morning I feel real important.  Can you see that?  That makes me feel important.  I have a laser pointer!  Don't point it at people, you're burn their eye out!  In the middle of that is going to be this thing called "normal thinking", whatever that is.  I have "Normal" in quotation marks, but you'll see I have drawn two parallel lines that take this in.  There is a range in which almost all of us would say, "That person is normal" and you don’t have to have an advanced degree to determine that there are some people who think in the range of normal, and some people who think outside the range of normal.  Have you ever had that experience?  You say, "Sure, every time I get in a fight with my husband; he's outside of normal!" Well, I want to tell you one reason why you and your spouse do have fights that you cannot come to equal ground on - this is part of it right here.  It has just to do with this right here.  All of us have one brain.  You got that?  You only have one.  Well, I want to tell you one reason why you and your spouse do have fights that you cannot come to equal ground on - this is part of it right here.  It has just to do with this right here.  All of us have one brain.  You got that?  You only have one.  You only have one experience of life, yours!  You only have one background, yours.  Therefore, the default of every single human on the face of the earth is to assume that the way they see life is the way other people see life.  Ain't true!  How long you been married?  You haven't learned that yet?  That you and your wife see life differently? My dear friend, there is no one on this earth that sees life and understands life like you do, but you put all of humanity together and over the history of the world, we have developed what might be called "normal thinking" normal perceptions of life.  However, sometimes we have people that go above that.  In that arena, proportion and perspective on life are distorted.  We also have people that go below that, and in that proportion and perspective are distorted.  We're not going to spend hardly any time at all talking about what's above that.  In psychological terms, they would call that manic.  That's when the proportions of life are shrunk down and you are made to be huge. There's no limit to what you can spend, there's no limit to what you can do, your energy levels are high, you don't need sleep, that's what people call today bipolar disorder or manic depressive illness.  We're not dealing with that, we're dealing with the low side.

Sometimes people slide out of normal thinking and some of their proportions and perspectives on life's issues get a little out of whack.  Do you ever hear somebody in a bit of discouragement say, "I am just worthless.  I can't do anything right." Would you call that statement proper in proportion - perspective or improper?  Thank you, thank you very much.  Improper!  Nobody always does everything wrong, right? Right! But when you begin to think and feel that everything you is wrong, everything in life is hard, you can't accomplish anything, you're proportions of life and your perspectives get out of whack.  You don't size things up rightly.  However, what happens is if… [I didn't do this because it would get too confusing] If there was a line right in the middle of normal, a dotted line that came down to this dotted line, some of you in your natural temperament spend some time in the lower half of the normal thinking and some time down here where you are too low and your proportion and your perspective are out of whack.  That's the only brain you've ever known. You think everybody sees life that way.  You think even when you're down here, and when life is out of normal, out of proportion and out of perspective, that you're still thinking clearly and you think people who see the glass half full are idiots because you know the glass is half empty.  [It's okay to use that word in church because that's really what you think, especially when you're around somebody that's positive all the time.  You think they live in denial, don't you? And you think they need to grow up and face life as it really is because you see it in accurate proportions.]

Now, what in the world is the depressed or the melancholy mind?  The depressed mind comes below normal and does not enter back into it, and their proportion and perspective in life is all out of whack.  Everything little is big, everything fearful is terrifying.  If they're a believer, every sin they commit or think is the unpardonable one.  The very wrath of God is all they can feel, they never sense the love of God though they might read his promises a hundred times and the threatenings of God once, all they can read is the threatenings of God.  They can never be used by him and they are just not, maybe, not even in God's family.  That's what their mind says.  And, of course, we would know that there have been other times in their life when they weren't down here, and up here they love Christ, they love to obey him, they love to read his word, they love to sing his praises, but now they don't see Christ as their friend, they see Christ as their very enemy - that is when depression turns religious which is what happens in most Christians.  That's just a perspective for you to think on.

Now, when life is normal, my friend, and you are married and you and your husband are somewhere here in the normal range, you're not going high, you're not going low, within the range of normal, you still only have your brain, you still only have your perspective, you still only have your background and your experience in life. And you will assume that not only your spouse sees life the way you do, you will assume that the way you see it is correct!  Doesn’t Proverbs say something like, "There is safety in the multitude of counselors?"  Why would that be?  Because if you are your only counselor, my friend, you're going to make some really dumb choices in life because the only experience, the only knowledge, the only anything you ever call on is your own self.  That's why you should be a reader, that's why you should be a listener, that's why you should be a learner, so that you can gain from the experiences of others.  If you choose to only learn from the school of experience, my friend, I can promise you that the colors of that school are black and blue and you will be bruised your entire life, not to mention all the other people around you that you will bruise and offend by making them think you are smarter than they are. 

Now, let's get to the subject of the day. If you have ever talked with someone who is depressed they've lost proportion and perspective but they don't know it.  If you have ever counseled with someone who is deeply, deeply depressed they come to you as a friend or as a counselor and they complain about all the things that are going on in their mind and how deathly life feels and they just can't get their mind clear and their body hurts and then you look at them and you say, "Well, what I really think you need to do and let's pray together briefly about it, and what is it you need to do today? Do you need to cut the grass?  Okay, let's go home and cut the grass and then after that, then wash the car; don't worry about the big things of today, don't spend any lengthy time praying or reading the scripture because your mind's a little confused, you've done that, just get out and do some work."  That's great counsel!  But then the depressed person looks at you and says, "No, no, no… you don't understand, what I need to do is this!" And you want to say to them, "If you know what you need to do, why did you come ask me what to do in the first place if you're not going to listen to me?" Why does that happen?  Because that person has had that mind for a long time and it is a mark of the depressed, even the very depressed that their pride, and they would be the last person in the world to see that they are prideful, this human pride somehow sneaks up within us and our feelings are so confused, somebody gives us good, sound advice that comes from the normal thinking up there, but we're down here in the proportion and perspective problem, we can't even hear them talk to us.  We could go to 10 different good counselors and 10 different good counselors would tell us the exact same thing to do, and they would say, "Oh, yeah, that's right." They would walk out the door and within 5 minutes, sometimes 5 seconds, they would totally forget what you have said to them and they are down in the dumps again, they would want to come back and see you, and you would tell them the same thing the next time; "Oh, that's right, I'll go do it," and…. Why does that happen? 

Some of you, if you have dealt with it, know that experience. I've counseled with some depressed people who I've told the same thing for weeks on in, and finally by God's grace, sometimes with the help of medicine, sometimes not,  it begins to click, they begin to get healthy.  They begin to get their senses back about them.  It takes awhile to climb out of the hole, but they do, their proportion and their perspective get right, they move back to normal, but from Day 1 to Day 30, I've hardly said anything different.  It's because when your depressed your mind is not functioning rightly, all right?

Now, let's look at Psalm 88. That's just a little background on how people think.  And the next time, for just a little light application of this, you and your spouse get in a bit of a tiff with one another and you think you're right and she thinks she's right, stop  for a minute  and realize there is a little bit of truth in what both of you are seeing and saying, and if you put your minds together instead of against one another, you might come up with a real logical and helpful conclusion.  That goes with coworkers and friends also.

Psalm 88 - have you ever thought that God would really put a psalm like this in the Bible?  Let me just open up again and read a bit of it.  Now, this is inspired scripture, it's in the Hebrew Hymnbook, it is a song to be sung, how would you like to hear the tune the Israelites put this one to?

Psa 88:1  A Song. A Psalm of the Sons of Korah. To the choirmaster: according to Mahalath Leannoth. A Maskil of Heman the Ezrahite. O LORD, God of my salvation; I cry out day and night before you.

Psa 88:2  Let my prayer come before you; incline your ear to my cry!

Psa 88:3  For my soul is full of troubles, and my life draws near to Sheol. [to the grave]

Psa 88:4  I am counted among those who go down to the pit; I am a man who has no strength,

     [and I am so glad it was a man who wrote this for a number of reasons.  It is and always has been typical that more women experience depression than men. It may simply be  that more women are open to talk about it. It is also true that God made women to have a monthly cycle and hormonal  ups and downs that men do not have.  It is also true that for years past that women were told by their doctors about 10 times more than men, it was all in their head, and it was the doctor that needed his head examined because a lot of it was in their body.  But it was a man who was going through this.  It was a man suffering from such deep horrid misery in life]

Psa 88:5  like one set loose among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave, like those whom you remember no more, for they are cut off from your hand.

     I want to call you attention to three facts about this psalm, I want you to look at the very last verse, Verse 18.  We've heard of psalms and psalmists in despair, but they always come out on the victorious side.

Psa 88:17  They surround me like a flood all day long; they close in on me together.

Psa 88:18  You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me; my companions have become darkness.

How do you interpret such a psalm? Do you make excuses for God?  Do you make excuses for the psalmist?  Do you read into it things that aren't there or do you take it at its face value?  Why would God put something like that in the Bible?  We will answer that in a minute , but I want to call your attention to three facts about this psalm:

1.                 The psalmist had a clear personal relationship with and knowledge of God.  How do we know that?  Look at Verse 1:  Oh, LORD, all capital letters, that's Oh, Jehovah, Yahweh.  He knew God by his personal name.  And this wasn't just God, this was God of my salvation. This individual knew they were God's child and he knew the salvation he had was from God's hand, his work and his gift.  He had a clear personal relationship with God.

2.                 This psalmist had an active, intense and consistent prayer life with God and to God.

Psa 88:2  Let my prayer come before you; incline your ear to my cry!

Psa 88:9  my eye grows dim through sorrow. Every day I call upon you, O LORD; I spread out my hands to you.

His prayer was so intense that his passions of heart were exercised through his body as his hands were spread out to heaven before God in the agony of his cry.  The regularity, consistency and intensity of  this man's prayer life brings enough conviction to all of us.

Psa 88:13  But I, O LORD, cry to you; in the morning my prayer comes before you.

The first thing in the day in all of his misery, he's asking God about life.

3.                 He had a literal life of misery, emotionally, socially and physically; I should have put spiritually in there too.  There are many spiritual miseries he suffered.

That doesn’t add up well with the rest of the Bible does it? Or does it?  Jesus left heaven and came to earth as a babe.  How did he leave this earth? Via death on a cross.  Where did we ever get the idea that Jesus died as our savior to always make us happy?  Is happiness really the Christian goal in life? I wonder what Heman would have thought about a lot of contemporary preaching.  He could have taught us much about God.  He obviously knew God very well.  One of the things that amazes me about this man, is in his intense sorrow and agony is his intelligent, reverent conversation with God.  He knew the character of God.  He dares talk with God about reality. Look at some of the things he says to him.  Look at Verse 10:

Psa 88:10  Do you work wonders for the dead? Do the departed rise up to praise you? Selah

He's not going beyond the grave to eternity.  He's dealing with his life because this is where he is and he's wanting to know God.  I'm a living dead man. I'm close to the grave. What good is my life here to you?  Even in the grave I can do you no earthly good.  He knew he would go to heaven.  Actually, I'm confident he would have rather died and gone to heaven, but he dared ask God truthful questions and our God dared let him record it in scripture.  He was not irreverent.  He was not unintelligent.  He conversed with God in that way, so why is this in the Bible? Hopefully you can follow my logic as we begin to take this apart.

First, for us contemporary Christian, and I'll explain what I mean, one size does not fit all.  We design programs, we preach sermons, and we have subtle insinuations that tell us that there is a model  way to live the Christian life, and when you're outside of it, something's wrong with you.  When your level of joy and happiness is not high enough, you must be out of fellowship with God.  When you don't smile as much as I do, say "Praise the Lord" and find the joy of Christ in you all the time, then there's got to be sin in your life!  Something's wrong with you. 

My dear friend, you need to spend a year in Turkey with our missionaries and you need to worship with those people, who, when they became Christians lost their wives, their job and their children.  They don't sing happy songs in the Turkish church.  Everyone of them, because of their culture and because of their lifestyle that I have heard sung…  I take that back, they do sing happy songs, but many of them, are songs of the Lord relieving their sorrows because they live in them in this earthly life.  If a sermon I preach here can't be translated  and preached accurately in the Sudan or in the Kurdish church in Turkey, it doesn’t preach in gospel land.  It won't work if it won't work everywhere.  Yes, there are subtle things, idiosyncratic things to our culture, but we've got to realize there is not a single phase of Christianity that describes a certain temperament, that gives a certain lifestyle.  We cannot stereotype the Christian life and say, "Now there goes a real Christian!"  We must be careful about that.  When we're all healthy we have massive differences in our normal temperaments.  There are some people who are happy and love to talk.  There are some people who are very happy and love to stay quiet.  Is one better than the other?  There are some people who can't have enough work to do.  There are some people who would like to have less work to do.  No because they are lazy, they just don't need their lives so filled up.  Is one right and one wrong? No!  That's just the way God designed this beautiful, diverse earth that we live in, so we have to be careful.  One of the subtle things this psalm teaches us is that one size doesn’t fit all because the psalms are vastly different.

Second, now we get to things I hope are very important.  This psalm God put in the Bible, I believe, to guide us in experiencing and expressing sorrow.  To guide us in and expressing  sorrow.  We're all interested in how we express praise and worship, but isn't it fitting to give as much care to the expression of Godly sorrow as it is to Godly praise?  Don't you have sorrows?  Can't you talk to God about them during worship?  Haven't you ever been laid on your belly face down with no hope?  What do you with worship then, come and fake it?  This psalm is a roadmap in how to intelligently and reverently speak to God about our sorrows, and then it takes another step. It is then teaching us that we can know we will not sail in uncharted waters.  The depressed person who is genuinely depressed feels as if no one has ever been where they are and has experienced the darkness that they are experiencing.  But the Bible itself tells us in 1 Corinthians 10 that "there has no temptation or no test taken you, any of God's children, except that which is common to man."  There have been others there before you.  I don't care how dark it gets, my friend, you've not been there before but others have been and this psalm is God's testament to tell us not only have people been there but God's very own select children have been there.  And it is to chart for us and to teach us as a church how to openly, really face life like God does and deal with God's hurting children, because I have noted that there are certain segments of society that the church does not want to deal with, and one of those segments is those who have leprosy of the soul.  They don't fit our stereotype. They won't pull themselves up by their own bootstraps and so we push them off into their own relegated part of society and we pay specialists to go deal with those people because they're too much of a burden for us to deal with.  They scare us.  They're out of the norm.  I’m not certain that that is the way God would have us do it.

Fourth, it's in the Bible so we, as God's people, may have God's authority in admitting to and caring for sorrowing saints.  Christians get depressed just like lost people get depressed.  You say, "Tony, you can't say that."  No, I can say this also.  Christians get cancer just like lost people get cancer.  I know of people who have gotten cancer because they smoked.  I know of people who have gotten smoker's cancer who have never smoked a cigarette. Explain that one for me, would you?  I know people who have gotten depressed because of sin in their life. That's an easy diagnosis.  I know of people who have gotten depressed because of a great trauma in their life.  I know of people who have gone through deepest, darkest depressions who can find no outward cause for their depression; nothing to pin it on anyway.  Are they faking?  I think God has given us authority and information to admit and then care for sorrowing saints. 

Let me borrow some words of the wise from someone else.  Charles Spurgeon has a series of writings on the Psalms called "The Treasury of David."" In some of the things he said about this psalm I'm going to quote.  A little bit at length, not too long, but he's writing in Elizabethan English, but you can understand him fine.  He says, beginning his comments on Verse 3:

Charles Spurgeon:  "The Treasury of David"

"He, [that is the author, Heman] felt as if he must die.  Indeed, he thought himself half dead already.  All his life was going.  His spiritual life declined.  His mental life decayed.  His bodily life flickered.  He was nearer dead than alive.  Some of us can enter into this experience for many a time have we traversed this valley of death shade and dwelt in it by the month together, [30 days, a whole month, we've been that way, he says.] "Really to die and be with Christ would be a gala day's enjoyment compared with our misery when a worse than physical death has cast its dreadful shadow over us. [Did you catch that word, 'a worse than physical death has cast its shadow over us?'  He said, in another one of his writings that the physical body can only suffer so much but the soul can die a thousand deaths, and he's right!] 

He writes, "Death would be welcomed as a relief by those whose depressed spirits make their existence a living death."  And he asks this question, "Are good men ever permitted to suffer thus?  Indeed, they are.  And some of them are even all their lifetime subject to bondage.  Oh, Lord, be pleased to set free thy prisoners of hope.  Let none of thy mourners imagine that a strange thing has happened unto them, but rather rejoice that he sees the footprints of brethren who have trodden this desert before."

That's what this psalm is! When you reach the deepest, darkest place you've ever been in your life, you can't see, you have no hope, you don’t even think that you could draw another breath because you're worthless, you open to Psalm 88 and you see that God dared put a man's experience in print and left it without resolution, I think that brings it to clear resolution  to me.  To tell me this is part of life's real experience for some, not all of God's children, and to help those who never experience understand, be sympathetic with and find ways to help those who do.

Spurgeon goes on and writes about Verse 5:

"It is a sad case when our only hope lies in the direction of death.  [Some of you have been there.]  Our only liberty of spirit amid the congenial horrors of corruption.  The psalmist writes like the slain that lie in the grave, whom you remember no more.  Spurgeon then writes, the psalmist felt as if he were utterly forgotten; as those whose carcasses are left to rot on the battlefield as when a soldier mortally wounded bleeds unheeded amid the heaps of slain, and remains to his last expiring groan unpitied and uncomforted, so did Heman sigh out his soul in loneliest sorrow feeling as if even God himself had quite forgotten him.  How low the spirits of good and brave men will sometimes sink!" 

Listen closely:

"Under the influence of certain disorders everything will wear a sober aspect. [This was written in the 1800s by a pastor] And the heart will dive into the profoundest deeps of misery.  It is all very well for those who are in robust health and full of spirits to blame those whose lives are sicklied over with the pale cast of melancholy [or depression].  But the evil is as real as a gaping wound, and all the more hard to bear because it lies so much in the region of the soul.  Now to the inexperienced it appears to be a mere matter of fancy and the diseased imagination.  Reader, never ridicule the nervous person!  Their pain is real, though much of the evil lies in their imagination, it is not imaginary."  Oh, for more to speak that way.

Now some practical advice.  I knew that I would run way out of time. We could talk about this a long time.  The psalmist who wrote this is relating to us his deep, rich, devastating experience.  He had sailed through the roughest human waters of the soul possible.  God put this psalm in scripture to be a guide to those whose faith is blinded, whose comfort is gone, and whose hope is almost extinguished.  The truth of the matter  is it speaks of the land that most of us never want to go, but many of us even deny it exists for God's children because we think it's impossible for a child of God to be in this situation other than by their own choosing.  And sometimes we deny it because we don't want to deal with those who seem to have that leprosy of the soul, a disease so disturbing that we shun the broken ones.  Spurgeon said, in another place, those are my words, Spurgeon said, "Trouble in the soul is the soul of trouble."  You can't pin it down.  You can't give it medicine that goes right to the source and heals it. 

So let's talk about some practical things as we wrap up.  Some of you have experienced depression.  Some of you are presently depressed.  What are you going to do about it?  I don't have time to say everything I would like to say, but I think what I say will be sufficient.  What are these practical steps?

1. Taking counsel.

Your mind has everything out of proportion and out of perspective. You feel terrible but you think you're still seeing your life right.  You are not!  You need to seek counsel.  Who should I seek that with?  Does it need to be a doctor?  Not necessarily.  Some of the best counsel that you will ever get comes from a Christian brother or sister who knows you, loves you, knows the Word of God and will walk with you through this.  You may never need to see a doctor whatsoever.

2. Taking action.

This is where it gets hard.  The counsel you're given is not so you can come back next week and let that person pat you on the back and feel good about it again.  It's so you will take action.  Now, let me be cautious.  Some of you won't understand this, but there are times when the depressed person cannot, I repeat cannot take action.  That doesn’t mean we let them stay there.  But it means we're patient and loving, and take time until we urge them onto where they can take action.  Something as simple as cutting the grass, doing a load of laundry, taking somebody a meal, even if you have to cook it, get that person with you and get their minds on somebody else.  It was Richard Baxter, one of the best puritan writers on melancholy I've ever read, one of the best writers ever I've have ever read; he said, "If your friend has not completely lost his or her reason, it might be good to cast a cup of cold water in their face to bring them back to their senses!"  I like that!  But he says, "If they've lost their reason and wit at that time, that would do no good." 

Martin Luther, the great reformer, whom God used to turn the entire world upsidedown, had horrid fits of depression.  He said he found it very good to hitch up the oxen and go spread manure across the field to relieve his melancholy.  It's just commonsense!  You're problem is a broken thinker so don’t try to think your way out of it.  Typically, a melancholic Christian will go off in a corner and they're going to start thinking about something, and they say, "If I could get this right, then I could get this right, I could do this, I could do that, then it's going to be okay, I know it's going to be okay." Or they get so depressed they just want to get in the corner and they want to hug themselves in darkness.  Your thinker is broken.  Your thinker is not the way out; somebody else's thinker is.  Listen to what they tell you and obey them.  You're not obeying them, my friend, is where your sin begins.  It's your pride.

I talk very cautiously about sin to the depressed person, because everything they breathe and do they think is sinful.  They feel the condemning hand of God.  They feel like his wrath is against them, as the psalmist talked about.  Is there sin involved in depression?  Usually, because we're totally consumed with self.  Does sin cause depression?  The only time I would ever say that is when someone is in known, willful sin and they won't stop it.  Sin causes depression; the fact that sin causes all diseases; we're in a fallen world.  And just as sometimes our liver doesn’t work right, our brain doesn’t work right, and when somebody's brain malfunctions and their thinking is out of whack, it's usually pretty easy to tell.  But if you're taking counsel, take action steps, even if they have to be little bitty. 

When you read the Bible, read promises and read short sections.   When you pray, pray prayers of thanksgiving and pray short prayers.  It's not the time to be spending deep time alone with God.  I'm not telling you to avoid God; let God be God and trust him; do what you can.  You don't expect someone to run a 100-yard dash when their leg is broken, so you can't expect someone to meditate on deep passages of scripture when their brain is broken.  You do the meditation for them, who are healthy, and encourage them with God's promises.

3. [A little bit of controversy] Taking medicine.

I am not a doctor, but I do have some pretty clear thinking on the issues of medicine.  I have a good pastoral counselor friend who says the world is full of two kinds of people:  Those who want to be on medicine and don't need to, and those need to be on medicine and don't want to.

We far too easily pass out pills for everything today.  I, however, do believe that there are times when you are in counsel, which must continue, and you are willfully, as much as you can, taking action, but your diet is upset, your sleeping is upset, your job is suffering harm, you're family is suffering harm, that medicine  may be the right course of action.  Christians do not condemn yourself if you ever get to the point where you have to take medicine, because sometimes we have condemned people right out of the church for being so weak they have to take medicine.  

Medicine will not change you spiritually and it will not change you morally.  It may, as it has for many people, settled out their minds so they get things in proportion, they begin to develop the right kind of Christian meditation, the thinking on the promises of the gospel of God and then they move forward; they get healthy, they taper off that medicine and they go right on.  There are some few, there are some few, who in my opinion, I think may never leave the medicine altogether, and will live a great life that way.  I know I differ with some of you in that and I'm sorry if I do.  I can't lay down theological things, but no one else can in their perspective either.  I can lay down this truth: My brain has fallen like the rest of my body and sometimes it doesn’t work right, and it may need medicine  just like my pituitary gland or my thyroid or anything else.

4. Trusting God.

Do you?  Trusting God is always seen in action, not in feeling.  Feelings may come.  Find someone to talk to; follow their counsel.  The main things you need to make sure of are that they love Christ with all their heart and they know his Word and are obeying it themselves; they probably will be a good counselor for you.  If you need something further than that, seek out a pastor, I say this with caution because I don't want you to think that a psychiatrist is going to send you the wrong way, but get some other professional who knows the world of psychiatry before you just go chose one; get counsel.  There are good psychiatrists out there; many of them, well, I'll just leave it at that. 

Most of all trusting God.  The most remarkable thing about this psalm that we read over is the psalmist attributed his misery to God's hand.  He didn't blame himself, he didn't blame the world.  He said, "God, it's your hand that's heavy on me."  You say, "Boy, what comfort does that bring?" Oh, lots!  Because God will never push me beyond where I can go.  God will teach me because when his hand is on me, that means his hand is close and the refiner's hand is never closer to the metal than when it's in the furnace, so I rest in that.  You've got to trust him with the things that go above the counsel, the action, the medicine even, you trust God!