How to Fight Against Spiritual Depression (Psalm 42):
- Be HONEST WITH GOD ABOUT IT
- Desire and Seek after the LORD
- Remember PAST FAITHFULLNESS
- Preach THE TRUTH TO YOURSLEF and hope IN THE PROMISE OF GOD
Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above for answers!
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So we're all gonna do a mental exercise this morning to get ready for this sermon.
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Are you all ready for this?
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I want you all to try and remember how you saw and experienced the world as a young child.
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Place yourself in the mindset of a five to seven year old.
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As some psychologists would say, get in touch with your inner child.
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I don't really know what that means, but try to do that this morning.
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I'm gonna give you a few scenarios and you're gonna tell me how you would have felt as a young child, all right?
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So imagine that your friend just broke your favorite toy.
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How do you feel?
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You feel angry, right?
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I remember when one of my friends broke my favorite Batman mask.
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He stepped on it and broke it right in half.
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And this wasn't just a minor deal.
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This was a huge thing to me because this was my precious possession and it made me feel like Batman.
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I remember when my friend irreparably broke my precious mask.
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I was filled with intense anger It went far beyond what was appropriate.
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All right, next scenario.
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Imagine that you just got grounded on a very nice summer day.
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How do you feel?
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What emotion are you experiencing?
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Angry, anything else?
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Frustrated?
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I would think sadness, right?
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You may be so overcome with your sadness that you may cry or beg your parents to let you go back outside.
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When I was seven years old, my dad caught me watching a Nickelodeon cartoon that I wasn't allowed to watch.
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And so he grounded me for several days.
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I remember just looking out my bedroom window with all the kids playing in the beautiful sunshine and rollerblading, and to be honest, I was devastated.
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I felt like I had been sentenced to prison for 20 years.
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All right, so go back to your teenage or your adult mind because you'll need it for the rest of this message.
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When we were kids, our emotions are very intense.
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They're very clear cut.
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They're very simple.
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We felt things very deeply, but we got over these emotions rather quickly.
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One minute you throw a temper tantrum on the floor, maybe you're pounding on your bed or pounding on the floor because you're really mad, And the next you're perfectly happy.
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But as you get older, your emotions become more nuanced, more complex.
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You may not even understand how you feel at times.
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Even though we experience the various emotions in different degrees, we've all experienced spiritual depression in some way.
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We've all had days when we felt emotionally numb, miserable, and maybe even hopeless.
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Am I the only one?
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Please don't leave me hanging up here by myself.
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Let me ask you an important question.
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Is it wrong for a believer to struggle with sadness and depression?
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What do we think?
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No, it is not.
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Seasons of sadness are to be expected in a fallen and broken world.
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Throughout the Psalms, we see David and the other psalmist being brutally honest about their struggles with depression and sadness.
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The Apostle Paul said that he once despaired of life itself.
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Even our Savior, Jesus Christ, in the Garden of Gethsemane, he was so stressed out, He was so anxious that literal drops of blood came from his forehead.
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Imagine having that kind of anxiety.
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So if our greatest spiritual heroes and our Savior Himself experience this kind of sadness, then we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that we will as well.
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The question is, how will we handle this depression when it comes into our lives?
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Will we let it rule our hearts and our minds, or will we handle it God's way?
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Thankfully, the Bible has a lot to say about spiritual depression, where it comes from and how we should handle it.
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This morning we're going to dig into Psalm chapter 42.
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So if you have your Bibles, please open to Psalm chapter 42, which beautifully and honestly presents how we can find hope in the midst of feeling hopeless.
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All right, Psalm chapter 42.
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"As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God.
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My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
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When shall I come and appear before God?
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My tears have been my food day and night, while they say to me all the day long, "Where is your God?" These things I remember as I pour out my soul, how I would go with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God with glad shouts and songs of praise, a multitude keeping festival.
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Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me?
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Hope in God, fresh elegant praise Him, my salvation and my God.
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"My soul is cast down within me, therefore I remember you from the land of Jordan and of Hermon from Mount Miser, deep calls to deep at the roars of your waterfalls.
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All of your breakers and your waves have gone over me.
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By day the Lord commands His steadfast love, and at night His song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life.
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I say to God, my rock, why have you forgotten me?
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Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of my enemy?
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Out of the deadly wound in my bones, my adversaries taunt me while they say to me, 'All this day long, where is your God? Why are you cast down, O my soul? Why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God." So the heading of this psalm lets us know that it was written and performed by one of the sons of Korah. These were a group of priests who were assigned to the ministry of singing. So this psalm was most likely performed in public worship. And this song is also called a "mascal" in the heading. We're not exactly sure what a masculine is, but it means to make someone wise or to instruct in Hebrew.
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So through this psalm, God wants to instruct our minds about spiritual depression as well as engage our emotions.
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This background information reveals that God doesn't want us to keep silent when we struggle with depression.
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Instead, he wants us to lift up our hearts to him and in prayer and in psalm.
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But a question that we need to deal with before we move on to the text is where does depression come from? What are the sources of depression? So first I'm going to talk about the sources of depression that we will not be covering for the rest of this message even though they're very important. First there is personal sin. Personal sin. As a Christian, if you're living in habitual and unrepentant sin, you will experience a sense of sadness, grief, and maybe even depression.
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If you can constantly make the same sinful choice on an endless loop without even caring or feeling bad about it at all, you need to check your heart to see if you even know Christ and have been transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit.
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So what is the solution to this kind of depression?
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Stop pretending like everything is okay.
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Confess your sin to the Lord and other believers and repent.
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Turn your back on your sinful thinking and sinful living and ask the Lord for His grace so you can change.
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It's important to understand that sin isn't always the source of depression, it is simply a common source of depression.
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Another source of depression that we will not be covering in this sermon is mental or psychological issues.
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I've talked to many Christians who don't believe in mental illness or clinical depression.
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And I have to really disagree with this line of thinking.
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If our body feels the effects of the fall and suffers various illnesses, so can our minds.
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In some cases, it would be beneficial for a believer to be prescribed medication for their bowels with clinical depression.
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So please, do not be ashamed.
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you need to travel down that pharmaceutical route in order to deal with your issues. However, I do believe that many doctors misdiagnose clinical depression and they're over eager in prescribing drugs. For someone suffering the spiritual depression, this medication will only mask that problem and it will actually get to the root of it. So, identifying the differences between spiritual depression and clinical depression is very difficult and it requires great wisdom. If some people actually struggle with both forms of depression at the same exact time. I don't want to spend much more time on this but let me just say that there are Christians who would greatly benefit from seeking help from a medical professional. So let's now talk about the sources of depression that this Psalm is speaking to. There's the unexpected trials and hardships of life. Maybe you experience a sudden death of a loved one and this loss just rocks your world and throws your emotional life into chaos.
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You have no idea what to do. You don't know how you can move on without this Maybe you're going through a marital problem or a financial issue right now and the future seems very uncertain.
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Another source of depression is the pressure and anxieties of life.
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I don't know about you, but for me, sometimes the weekly grind can just be soul crushing.
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You can just feel like you're crumbling under the intense weight of your busy schedule.
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Maybe work is really hectic for you right now and it seems like there's no end in sight to this busy season.
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Maybe you even wake up in the morning and you just want to go right back to sleep you don't want to deal with your endless list of responsibilities and tasks.
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Whatever the source may be in your life, you will have days, weeks, maybe even months where your soul feels cast down as this psalm describes. You may even feel like God has forgotten about you. You may feel like God has totally abandoned you. That life is pure chaos and God isn't in control. So what do you do when you experience these feelings? The psalm lays out four ways to fight against spiritual depression and we have them on your outline. First, how to fight against spiritual depression. Be honest with God about it. Be honest with God about it. Throughout this psalm, the writer is really honest with God about what he is feeling and experiencing. Listen to what he says in verse 9, "I say to God my rock, why have you forgotten?" Have you ever felt that way? Have you ever said that to God?
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God, do you even remember me? You know what's going on in my life right now? Now, obviously God never abandons us. He never forsakes us, but it can feel like that.
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at a time. There may be some days where it feels like you're just talking to no one.
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You're just praying to the ceiling and God isn't listening. Instead of suffering in silence or putting on that fake church smile on Sunday morning, be honest with God about what you're going through. Cry out to Him and tell Him how you feel because you know what? He already knows how you feel. He knows what emotions you're experiencing and what thoughts are already swirling around in your mind. You cannot find God's solution to your problem until you admit that there actually is a problem. And don't just keep your problem between you and the Lord. God has gifted you with an amazing church family. He wants you to share your struggles with them. If you're struggling with this kind of sadness today, at least talk to one other believer about it. The Christian life isn't a solo homework assignment. It's a community project. We aren't meant to grow or suffer alone. Never forget how much you need every single person in this room. You cannot do your life on your own no matter how much you might want to at times. Secondly, how to fight against depression. Desire and seek after the Lord. We have to desire and seek after the Lord. My favorite part of the psalm is the first two verses. "As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God, my soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?" According to these verses, this psalmist actually desires to know God more than to have his difficult circumstances solved. More than anything he wants to grow closer to his God and become more like him. Sadly we can often treat God like a divine vending machine. We hit the right buttons in prayer so we expect him to give us whatever we want and to solve all of our issues very easily. Instead we should passionately seek after the Lord in the midst of our struggles, ask him to make us more like him. Of course it's acceptable and encouraged to ask God to solve our problems and bring our requests to him.
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We're called in 1 Peter 5, 7 to cast all of our cares, all of our anxieties upon the capable shoulders of the Lord because he cares for us and he's the only one who can truly bear them on our behalf. At the same time, we must recognize that God has a purpose for what we are going. Your pain is not meaningless. God brings trials, suffering, and pain into our lives to smooth out our sinful edges and mold us into the image of Jesus Christ. Reject your natural instinct which is to lean back from this, resist it, get angry about it.
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Instead, lean into it. Lean in to God's discipline and to God's change and ask for his grace that you can become more like your Savior. The Lord will not always solve your problems the way that you want him to, but he will always pull you into an intimate and personal relationship with him if you're willing and submissive. So thirdly, how to fight against spiritual depression. Remember God's past faithfulness. Remember God's past faithfulness. We see this in verses 3 through 4. "My tears have been my food day and night while they say to me all the day long, 'Where is your God?' These things I'll remember as I pour out my soul, how I go with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God with glad shout and songs of praise, a multitude keeping festival.
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So what is the psalmist doing here?
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He's looking back at the awesome times of fellowship and worship that he experienced in the past.
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He's remembering the many times he walked into the temple to worship his God with his fellow Israelites.
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These joyful and uplifting memories from the past give him hope and encouragement in the present.
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Jay already said I am the youth pastor at North Park Church in Wexford, And one of my jobs is to lead a summer missions trip every single July.
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And to be honest with you, this really stresses me out.
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And to be clear, I have a lot of fun doing it and I really have a great time with my students.
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But being responsible for like 30 teenage lives for a whole week isn't the most relaxing activity in the world.
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Every single time I'm driving that 15 passenger van out of the church parking lot, I feel like I have to take in a huge breath that I can't let out until we get back.
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And I have all these anxieties and worries swirling around in my mind.
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Like what if I forget a kid at a rest stop?
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What if they get hurt on the work site?
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What if we get in a car accident?
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What if?
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What if?
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What if?
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What if?
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I have all these worries going on.
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And to help myself fight these anxieties, I look back at how God has provided for every single trip that we have embarked upon.
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Even though they didn't always work out the way I wanted or expected, God came through for us and He had a much better plan.
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This walk down memory lane helps to ease my anxiety and give me a peace that surpasses all understanding.
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It's the same with fighting against the depression that we feel a ton.
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Instead of wallowing in sadness and misery, we need to look back to see how God has provided for us and taken care of us every step along the way.
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We need to remember the good times of happiness and joy that we experienced with the Lord.
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When you feel like God has abandoned you or forgotten you, remember the closeness you you once felt as you engaged with Him in your personal devotions or on Sunday morning during worship.
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We need to remind ourselves that God has pulled us out of the pit of despair a countless number of times throughout our lives and He will continue to do so until the day of our death.
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Looking back at God's past faithfulness is the greatest way to build up your confidence in His present and future faithfulness.
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So finally, how to fight against spiritual depression?
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Preach the truth to yourself and hope in the promises of God.
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the truth to yourself and hope in the promises of God.
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This psalmist actually preaches an important message to himself in order to get himself out of this spiritual and emotional funk.
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Listen to what he says again in verse 5, "Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me?
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Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God." Now, this short sermon must be really important because he repeats it word for word in verse 11 to close out the psalm.
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So what is the point of this important message that the psalmist is giving himself?
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He's essentially saying this to himself, "Why are you so depressed?
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Why are you giving yourself over to misery and hopelessness?
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Choose to hope in the character and promises of your great God and Savior." We need to preach a similar message to ourselves when we're struggling with spiritual depression and sadness.
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Because instead of preaching the truth to ourselves, we tend to listen to the lies of our inner critic.
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Do you know what I mean by our inner critic?
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We all have one.
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It's that voice that constantly tries to condemn you and make you feel like garbage.
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It's that voice whenever you're going through a spiritual dry spell and God feels very distant that says to you, "God doesn't care about you.
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He is not here for you.
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You are on your own." When you're going through a trial and you feel like your faith is hanging on by a thread, the inner critic gets in your face and says, "Just give up.
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There is no point behind your pain.
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It's meaningless.
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Life is chaos.
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nothing. Whenever you make a mistake, whenever you sin and do something you know you shouldn't do, the inner critic just rubs this mistake in your face, says you're such a failure, you're never gonna change. God's disgusted with you, he wants nothing to do with you. These false messages, these lies can be debilitating and disheartening if we let them. In the 1960s, one of my favorite preachers of all time, Martin Lloyd-Jones, wrote a very helpful book called Spiritual Depression. Listen to what he has to say about dealing with your inner critic and preaching the truth to yourself. Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? The essence of this matter is to understand this self of ours, this other man within us, this inner critic has got to be handled. Do not listen to him. Instead, speak to him, condemn him, exhort him, encourage him, remind him of what you know instead of listening placidly to him and allowing him to drag you down and depress you. For this is what he will always do if you allow him to be in control. Please do not listen to the lies of Satan and your inner critic. Shut them down with the truth of God's Word and drown out their worthless voices with the beautiful and life-giving words of Scripture. When you hear the inner critic, throw a Bible verse back in his face. The word in your mind so you can be ready to do the spiritual battle. We need to constantly remind ourselves of the simple yet deep gospel message and the unbreakable promises of God. Never forget that you are a loved child of God, has been cleansed from your sins by the blood of Christ. You've been adopted into his family. That God promises to never leave you or forsake you. He promises to do everything for your ultimate good. He even uses those bad things to make you more like Christ. That is your ultimate good. He has given you the Holy Spirit to strengthen you in these moments of weakness and comfort you in the midst of disappointments of life. You know it's hard for me to say this as a preacher but the most important sermons you will ever hear are the ones you preach to yourself in the midst of trial and hardship. So instead of giving in, teach yourself the truth. I know in a room this size that many of us are struggling with spiritual sadness and depression right now. You may feel like you're sinking in sorrow and you can't swim back up to the surface to catch your breath.
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But please know this morning, there is hope in Jesus Christ and you will make it the other side of this struggle. I don't want to minimize your pain but I also don't want to maximize the fears and the false messages that you're believing right now. I instead want to point you to Christ and the never-ending supply of joy that he provides. Instead of focusing on the magnitude of your problems, choose to fix your eyes upon the immensity of your God. We'll have a more accurate view of our problems when we begin to comprehend the bigness of our God. When we have a small view of God, our problems are blown out of proportion.
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But when we have a big view of a God that we cannot completely understand, our problems begin to shrink down and seem much more manageable. Small God, big problems. Big God, small problems. Do that with me. Small God, big problems. Big God, small problem. Others of us aren't struggling with this kind of sadness right now, but I can guarantee you that it's coming. I don't know when it is. It could be next week, it could be next month, it could be next year. Regardless of when it comes, you have to be ready. You need to root yourself on the solid rock of Christ and His gospel that the rough ways of circumstances and emotions will not be able to move you. Let's pray. Father, all of us are going through something right now, whether it's big or whether it's small. We all struggle with trusting in you. We all struggle with believing that you are enough even though you are more than enough for us. It would help us to remember that we are your children and you love us more than we can possibly imagine. Your word tells us that you love us with the same intense love that you have for your one and only son.
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How awesome is that? Well, there may be someone in this room who's thinking about suicide, Lord. Maybe someone in this room who doesn't think they can make it another day. I pray that you would come alongside them, point them to the truth, and you'd comfort them.
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There's many people in this room who are struggling with depression, Lord.
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I pray they would take this sermon to heart, and walk in the joy that you alone provide.
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We thank you for all that you do for us.
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In Jesus' name, amen.
Small Group Discussion
Read Psalm 42
What stood out to you from the message? What convicted or encouraged you?
According to Psalm 42, how can we find hope in the midst of feeling hopeless?
What does it mean/look like to preach the gospel to yourself on a daily basis? Why is this so important?
Why are we often tempted to act fake around other Christians and pretend like everything is fine? How can we become a more transparent group of believers?