Study Helps for Christian Depression

Part of how I tried to help a Christian who was struggling with some depression.

I do not want you to be discouraged or to conclude anything without prayer and guidance from the Word. As you move into approaching/encouraging her as a Christian (different than the first approach), your daughter (you being the teacher) may benefit from some instruction from the Word about God's character and ways. It would be a nice opportunity for you to draw close to her. The first thing I would say is that no matter how you feel, no matter how I feel (and I have been in this situation), God demonstrated His love toward us on the cross (Romans 5:8). It is a fact of history. Feelings can be telling us one thing but the facts are that "God publicly displayed Jesus as a propitiation in His blood" (Romans 3:25). He did this for all to see, the whole world sees it.

Another thing to do is show how Moses (Numbers 11:11-15), Job (Job 6:14; 27:2; 29:2), Elijah (1 Kings 19:1-8), Jonah (Jonah 4:3), and Jesus (Matthew 26:37-38) had feelings like she did. They were downcast in spirit. (1)Let her identify with their plight and situations and recognize that great men of the faith, even our Lord, were severely distressed. (2)See how they responded by noting the details and circumstances. (3)Ask her if they responded properly and what can she learn from them. Maybe she will identify with Hannah who was discouraged about being barren (1 Samuel 1:8-18).

Often times we need to preach to our souls and listen to them less. I do not encourage one to ignore one’s conscience but that the way we think is how we will feel. Proverbs says, “As a man thinks, so is he.” David preaches, even rebukes his soul for being downcast when he is losing hope in Psalm 42:5, 11. He says twice, “Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why are you so depressed within me? Hope in God, for yet I will praise Him.” He calls God the help of his countenance in verse 11. You do not want to tune your soul out but you want to avoid hyper-introspection which usually ends in despair. There are also Scriptures such as the following that will comfort:

But the needy will not always be forgotten, nor the hope of the afflicted ever perish. Psalm 9:18

My soul faints with longing for your salvation, but I have put my hope in your word. Psalm 119:81

There is surely a future hope for you, and your hope will not be cut off. Psalm 23:18

"A bruised reed shall he not break, and smoldering wick shall he not quench, until he sends forth judgment unto victory." Matthew 12:20

For He Himself knows our frame; He is mindful that we are but dust. Psalm 103:14

+Luther on Marriage

"Of course, the Christian should love his wife. He is supposed to love his neighbor, and since his wife is his nearest neighbor, she should be his deepest love."

Martin Luther—The Later Years and Legacy: Christian History, Issue 39, (Carol Stream, IL: Christianity Today, Inc.) 1997.

What should I do If I Feel Cursed, Have no Peace, and Have no Joy?

(Recently I was emailed a question like the title and this is essentially how I answered)

Dear friend,

I thank you for reaching out and asking the hard questions that people usually do not even go near. Most people avoid thinking about their standing before God and you have come right up front and center and have faced the music head on. The fact that you are concerned about your soul's state is a good thing. I say that because people who do not care about their choices, their failures, or eternity, do not show evidence that they are spiritually alive. The questions you have asked are difficult to fully address because they require various follow up questions and a discernment of your emotions and feelings but I will nevertheless give some basic diagnostic and practical things you may want to use. The first is the complex issue of emotions.
1. Emotions are a God-given faculty. They go hand-in-hand with your thoughts and often follow right behind them. "As a man thinks, so is he" (Proverbs). I have been through discouragement and wrestle with this often. Sometimes, I will see something happen in my life and I will start to question if God is withdrawing from me at this moment for some reason. If it is not true that He is unhappy with me, the fact that I am doubting and starting to interpret the doubt and its accompanying feelings to sense God is often futile. This is so because doubt concerning one's status with God often illicits feelings of uncertainty and worry which spiral deeper into a depressed spiritual state. The way to see where God is in one's life is not to continuously doubt, but to trust Him that He is near, and if something is wrong, to ask Him to reveal it to you. A certain level of doubt is good, when it conforms to reality but God wants you to know what is going on in your life and He wants you to have faith, all the time. There are so many injunctions in the Scripture to believe, and to have faith. God is good to show us when we need correction and will be consistent in doing so. So my conclusion is that sometimes emotions are an incorrect gauge of spiritual status. Other times, however, emotions correctly cause to us experience what our state before God is. When Cain offered an improper sacrifice and his brother's was accepted (Genesis 4:1-6), "his countenance fell (v 6)." He was downcast and rightly so because he sinned by not bringing God the best of his crop. Then he killed his brother because he was jealous of him. But his countenance, or face, fell, or it was downcast in shame perhaps, or in guilt or in sadness. But if this is the case, God often wants to remedy the situation quickly. Notice how He tells Cain "If you do well will not your countenance be lifted up?" (v 7). If Cain did right after falling short things would have been restored. So there are times when we must address a situation and the result will be that our mood will lift as well.
2. If you have turned to Christ from sin then you are saved, never to fall from salvation. This is the objective side of salvation and you need to start here. What I mean is that anyone who is saved will not ever be lost, even if they do lose their joy and sense of assurance. These things often flee us when circumstances arise but our salvation does not leave us because God declared us righteous when we believed Jesus died on the cross. Your salvation does not depend on your righteousness, your feelings, or your holiness, it depends on what Jesus accomplished for you. He was righteous and holy and God gives the righteousness of Jesus (His perfection in thought, word, and deed) to the believer when he or she places their faith in Him (see Romans 5:17-19 where righteousness comes to us through one man's act). He is pleased with Jesus and by extension is pleased with you because you have trusted Jesus. God also accepts Jesus' substitution on the cross. Jesus' sacrifice was enough for the Father to declare you righteous. So, whether you are a Jew or a Gentile, it does not matter. If you have believed in Christ you are eternally secure. Any peace or joy must start here. It must start in something outside of you. Restoring your joy is something subjective which you will need to ask God for.
3. A life that pleases God will have a certain measure of joy in it. It will not be perfectly joyous but will have the characteristic of joy. We must not forget that we will sin and that sin remains in us as we live on this earth. So as holy as we are, we still will have to battle sin, and battles are often tough and hard and unpleasant. Joy corresponds to our fixation on the final outcome. We must remember that we are victorious in the end and that God "who began a good work in us will complete on the day of Christ" (Phil 1:6). Some people are more prone to being despondent than others. Charles Spurgeon, Martin Luther, even Moses and Elijah fought times of depression. But ultimately, they were lifted up by God.
4. The best diagnostic for anyone wrestling with their spiritual condition is to spend a good deal of time in prayer regarding it. In fact, be consistent in your prayer about the matter until you get an answer. Those who diligently seek God will find Him, and those who ask for wisdom believing they will receive it freely obtain it and that without reproach (James 1:5). God is the best source on what is troubling you and why. And I have been in your situation, and the best advice I can give you is to seek God daily. Don't expect the instant result of joy. Also, let yourself be grounded in the truth. I went through a time where I forgot I had been "purified by my former sins" (2 Peter 1) because I had been living off track for while. Now to get back to where I was took months, but actually I went farther than I was originally and grew enormously but did not see the results as they were happening. I was only able to see the growth as I looked back after a few years. A major catalyst in the equation was learning about certain doctrines concerning salvation. One of them is divine election. Election is the doctrine God has chosen individuals for salvation, and we are saved because God has chosen us. Ephesians 1 tells us that "we have been chosen before the foundation of the world" - so salvation depends on God's act not on ours. Also, salvation is secured forever. A believer will persevere until the end of his life. Jesus said "No one will be able to snatch them out of My hand" (John 10:28-30). Romans 8:30 also tells that those who have been justified are also glorified. It is spoken of as if it already happened - yet it is still in the future. God holds on to us, not the other way around. There is a sense to where we have to get the focus of ourselves and our emotions and onto some truth and God who never fails. "Who can bring a charge against God's elect?" No one! Not one thing can separate us from the love of Christ!
5. Take an overview of your life as a Christian. Do you remember when you were saved? Was there a change in your behavior afterward? Usually, when someone becomes a Christian there is a new outlook on life with new spiritual desires. There might be an increase in longing for the Bible or an increase in evangelism. Also there might be the laying aside of former practices of sin. Do you see God answer your prayers at times? Being brought into God's family means that you have a relationship with Him that is personal and close. You are able to call Him "Papa" or "Daddy" as in Romans 8:15 (Abba). This means He hears your every cry and prayer. There will be some experience of this at some time in your Christian life. Do you delight in His Word? Do you have a desire to show love to other believers? These are practical evidences of salvation found in 1 John. They are not to examined in your life on the level of perfection, but as an abiding evidence.

Ultimately, you are in a good place. You are desiring to find a remedy for your downcast spirit. Please, be encouraged. You might also want to confide in your pastor or a close friend or two who can help you in this matter. Reality might remind you that this might be a battle in your life for some time. Or it may not. God is able to do more than we ask or think!

Simon, Watch & Pray!

Recently I was asked what the specific temptation was to guard against in the Garden of Gathsemane. It says, "Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation." I thought, 'that is a very good question'! If you notice in Mark 14:37, Jesus is talking to Peter. He is specifically calling him to "keep watch for one hour." Then in verse 38, he is told to keep watching and praying that [he] may not come into temptation." This sounds like the Lord's Prayer, doesn't it? "Lead us not into temptation?" Jesus knows that a specific hour of temptation is coming for Peter and that Peter, and he calls him Simon- his name before he became a follower of Christ, is not ready. Look at the verses before and after verse 38. What has Peter said or done? In verse 29, he said, "Even though all fall away, I will not." In the face of Jesus' prediction of his failure, Peter is bold and stoic in his resolve. On the other hand, he shouldn't have thought, 'Well, the Lord said I am going to deny Him so, oh well, I'll just let it happen'.He should have been humble and sought wisdom for prevention measures and/or remedy for his coming failure from Jesus. Jesus predicted that before the rooster crowed Peter would deny him 3 times. So, I think that Peter's denial, although prophesied by the Lord, was to be handled by Peter as real and resistible. Something similar to this happened in Daniel 4:10-17, 27, where Daniel predicted that the king would be driven away as a wild beast for 7 years because of pride and then later be restored to his kingdom. However, in Daniel 4:27, Daniel gives advice to the king about specific ways to repent and perhaps avoid this fate. He says break off your sins "in case there may be a prolonging of your prosperity." This also happened to Hezekiah, who was told he was going to die but when he humbled himself the Lord gave him 13 more years. So, it seems the Lord sometimes prophesies of coming judgment in order to provoke repentance or readiness for action (also see Jonah 3:4, 10). For Peter, he wanted to resist the temptation (the spirit is willing) but his flesh was weak (he fell asleep at a time when he should have prayed) and he consequently failed. The other part of the temptation that Jesus may have warned against was that He was soon to be taken from their midst. This would have been the first time they had been without their Lord and they would have been afraid. It would be harder to confess Him as their Lord and so they would need God's help and power to overcome their coming cowardice. Verse 27 says that "I will strike down the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered." Jesus told them what was coming and they needed to prepare. I believe the command to "watch" takes on 2 meanings. The first has the idea of seeing what was going on, what was about to happen. Peter needed to be awake so that he could see the betrayal and arrest. He needed to be able to read the times and act appropriately. He was not told to pray yet (v. 34). The second is tied to the first. It has the idea of seeing and being prepared to act according to the circumstances. Peter should have been praying and keeping watch while his Lord prayed. So, as we do not specifically get the details about the temptation Peter was to avoid, we do get the general concept by looking at the verses before and after Jesus' prediction. And this seems to be that Peter needed to prepare to stand up for the name of Christ, when his shepherd had been taken away, so that he would not sin, as he did before the fire in the courtyard of the high priest. Even though our Lord was temporarily removed from Peter, He has promised us that He is with us always, even to the end of the age! Ask God to prepare you to be ready to confess Christ today!

Sell all of my possessions, Lord? Part 2

2. “Who is the faithful and sensible steward, whom his master will put in charge…” (Luke 12:42) Perhaps the result of one who submits to the call of discipleship by Jesus is that he or she will “give up” or “say farewell to” (14:33) his or her possessions willingly but might not be required to begin their immediate sale. This is especially so before one comes to faith (see Matthew 19:21). This interpretation, that we must be willing to give it all up, has favor from the analogy of the inferior king meeting a more powerful one in battle (Luke 14:31,32). The inferior king (those who hear the gospel call) will, if he is in his right mind, seek “terms of peace” from the king with “twenty thousand” men (God the Father). The gospel call seems to be pictured here. The gospel commands us to seek terms of peace from God or we will be crushed by His great, overpowering army. How does this happen? We give up our rights to everything that is in our territory and become the property of God Almighty. We gain our lives (salvation) by our surrender and He gains us as His subjects. If the person does not “give up all of his own possessions” he will have to face the Lord in battle, and lose (eternal judgment). Now let me note, that this preserves the force of the text, to some extent, and it allows Luke to write the end of the story. The story concludes with us as subjects of God’s kingdom. Better than that, we are stewards of His kingdom. If you glance back to 12:42, and much of Luke deals with possessions and money, you see that following the same command to “sell your possessions and give to charity” (12:33) comes commands to be ready for Christ’s coming again. How do we get ready for the Second Coming of Christ? We do so by being “faithful and sensible steward[s]” who have charge over much of God’s kingdom while He is away for a long journey (12:45). How can we be stewards if we have nothing in our possession. So, it seems fitting that we renounce our right to our own possessions and willingly hand them over to God’s disposal and He in turn gives them back to us to use to His benefit and glory. In fact, in 12:47, we prove ourselves His stewards by not being lazy with what God has “put us in charge of” (12:42). Also, the conclusion in 12:48 is that “we have been given much” and “entrusted with much” (i.e. we still have possessions in our stead), therefore we will be required to give a more detailed account of our use of them. This idea of resultant stewardship and generosity fits well with Acts 5:4, (which Luke also authored). There it says that Ananias and Sapphira willingly sold a piece of property and promised to keep back some of the profit (5:2). However, when this is exposed to Peter, he says “While it (the land) remained unsold did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not under your control?” It was Ananias’ decision to sell the land. F.F. Bruce says, “no compulsion had been laid on Ananias to sell his property,” and that this act, like Barnabas’ in 4:37, was “quite voluntary.”**** It remained his own and was under his control (5:4) and if he decided to give it up it would have been an act of generosity. Also, numerous examples exist where followers of Christ kept some of their finances and even used them to support the kingdom of God (the women who supported Christ “out of their own means” Luke 8:3, the Good Samaritan in Luke 10:34-35, and Cornelius in Acts 10:2). Robert H. Stein, says the following, “The context of 12:33a clearly indicates that the total renunciation of all personal possessions is not the intent of this saying since disciples are expected to have the means to practice a continual generosity (12:33b). At times believers may be called on to sell all their possessions, as in the case of the rich young ruler (18:22), but this is not a universal demand…We must also note the demand to “provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out.” This latter command assumes that one will continue to have the means to give alms, i.e., that one will still have purses out of which to give alms.”*****

Conclusion The conclusion seems to be that we “cannot be a disciple” of Christ if we do not first “say farewell” to the right to all of our possessions. This, to the unbeliever, is a gospel appeal. Why? Because it matters not for an unbeliever to be generous to the poor without first becoming a disciple of the Master. On the other hand, some of God’s subjects might be asked to sell all that they have for a specific reason or test. Let us not rule that out. If that is the case, God will make it clear to them that He desires this. We must be willing to give up all rights in surrender to Christ or we are falling short of the command. In fact, giving up all of our rights is even more radical than giving up only one’s possessions (John MacArthur). In salvation, we are thus blessed and made stewards of God’s kingdom. Now that we have been made God’s stewards we are “entrusted with His possessions” (in context it refers to discipleship) and are commanded to be generous with them. Since we know that every New Testament disciple did not sell all we can fulfill this command by following their examples. We do this by selling some of them for the purpose of giving to those in need “from time to time,” especially within the church. We do this by being spontaneously generous as Barnabas and Cornelius were.

****The Book of the Acts. The New International Commentary on the New Testament. Eerdmans, 1988, 105.
*****Luke. The New American Commentary. Broadman Press: Nashville, 1992, 53.

Sell all of my possessions, Lord? Part 1

Does Jesus want us to sell all of our possessions?
What a great question! Why? Well, because when you wrestle with a text like this (Luke 12:33) and come away thinking that He wants you to act and sell your possessions you are taking the text at its face value and are not blurred by alternative voices explaining the text away. With that said, ironically, I am going to function, in some sense, as an alternative voice. The reason being is that there are elements within Luke’s writings that might warrant us gathering all of the data before coming to an inflexible conclusion. However, I tread lightly here because I do not want to minimize the intended force of God’s word. I will first point out factors affirming taking the text at face value and what that might mean (Part 1) and then I will point out several mitigating ones that might help us obey Jesus’ command along with other passages by the same author (Luke) or containing the same teachings (Part 2). Within that discussion I will briefly touch on Matthew’s rendition of the command and context and also note some factors that Acts brings to the table.

1. “Sell all your possessions and give to the poor…” (see Luke 12:33; 14:33). When you take this imperative (command) at face value, and you meditate on it for some time, you come away thinking that you should sell your possessions (Luke says “all” of them, Matthew leaves “all” out of his text) and give the proceeds to the poor. If we do this we are being obedient to the words of Christ. The first Christians did this in Acts, in some sense. In Acts 2:44-45 it says, “all those who had believed were together and had all things in common; and they began selling their property and possessions and were sharing them with all, as any might have need” (NASB). When you take this text at face value, it seems that they probably had Jesus’ command in mind and believed it to be binding upon their lives. Now what it does say is that they “began selling their property and possessions.” This does not necessarily mean that they sold everything, for how would they take care of their own families (we will see more in part #2), but that they were selling possessions for the purpose of providing for “anyone [who] might have need.” The verb “selling” is an imperfect active verb which has the idea “they sold their possessions from time to time.”* This was something that they did continuously, but at various times, not all at once. It is interesting to note this was their behavior, because when Jesus tells us to “sell your possessions” it is used in a verb tense that indicates no reference to how often it should happen but that it should. Perhaps those first believers concluded that this was something that should characterize their lives. On the other hand, the force of this passage might have been intended by Jesus to be a call to repentance and faith in Him. This seems to be the case for the rich young ruler in Matthew 19. Notice how in 19:20 he admits to having "kept" 6 great commandments and therefore was righteous in his own eyes. Jesus therefore does not give him the gospel (telling him about forgiveness of sin) but more law. He does this, most likely, because this is what the man needs. He needs to see his sin, and hear the bad news, before he can appreciate the good news. The man was blind to his own sin, that of greed and reliance on possessions, and Jesus was to expose it by commanding him to break from them. This is why He spoke this way to the rich man. Jesus' evangelistic encounters were tailor-made for the person he was talking to (see Luke 9:60). Jesus also often used hyperbole (exaggerated/overstated statements to get His point across “If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off…no one can be my disciple if he does not first hate his mother and father“), and this fits well with Luke 14:18-20, where various characters in a parable are called to a “supper” in the kingdom of God (15,16). In this parable, the three invited guests give excuses for not attending. Each person asks to be excused so they can attend to some earthly possession or acquisition, or to someone (a new spouse) elevated to higher importance than God. In 14:18 the first guest “bought a piece of land” and needed to “go out and look at it.” In 14:19 another guest has to “try out” his newly purchased “oxen.” Finally, and not to say that women or wives are possessions at all,** but the newly married man asked to be excused because he has just “married.” Craig Keener notes that these guests (illustrative of Israel) would have already promised to attend the banquet and were thus insulting in their cancellations.*** With this said we look to a possible interpretation, in Part 2, of the passages at hand. Stay tuned!

*Cleon Rogers Jr. and Cleon Rogers III. The New Linguistic Key to the Greek New Testament. Zondervan, 1998, 234.
**The IVP Bible Background Commentary. InterVarsity Press, 1993, 230.
***Culturally, the status of women in the Middle East was minimal. As Keener also notes, women “were not often invited to such dinners” on page 231 but could have attended with the husband. Christianity reversed such imbalanced roles.

Thou Shalt Not Make Any Graven Image

The Hebrew word for “image” referred to fashioned idols used in worship and the image was thought to contain the “deity’s essence” (Walton et al. 2000, 29). Images were also seen to denote representation of the deity. However, God was not made with human hands, and is spirit in essence, and to fashion something after His likeness was to believe some part of Him was in the idol. A calf was shaped by Aaron in Exodus 32:4 so that it could “go before” the people and lead them into the Promised Land (32:1 NIV) because was Moses took too long on the mountain with God. Most likely, this was a wooden figure overlaid with pliable gold in the shape of a calf (Walton, 115). The image is given credit for delivering Israel from their bondage in Egypt (32:4) and results in cultic festivities. Like their neighbors, Israel entertains the celebration with a feast, burnt and peace offerings, and probably dancing and sexual acts associated with pagan fertility feasts (Walton, 115). As a result, God’s anger burns against them to destroy all of them (32:10) but Moses intercedes and saves the majority. He pleads that God remember his promises of the past and succeeds (32:12-14). Moses then descends the mountain and breaks the tablets of the covenant. The breaking of the tablets (32:19) symbolized a destruction of the covenant in ancient Near Eastern times (Walton, 116). For Israel, God is breaking his covenant with them because of their disobedience. In response, Moses takes significant action. He burns the calf with fire, grinds it into powder, and makes the Israelites drink it (32:20). The importance of this destruction and drinking of the powdered gold cannot be over-estimated. Destroying the idol (as well as any future idol of the pagan nations in 34:13) took great faith because this was considered very offensive to the represented god (Walton, 117). Likewise, Moses commands Israel to drink the remains of the destroyed image. This symbolized the irreversibility of the destruction of the idol and that it was completely renounced, and a full commitment to I AM (Walton, 117). The narrative concludes with Israel being warned not to intermingle with the nations it will encounter (34:12-15). They should not covenant with them (34:12), should not worship their gods but should smash their idols (34:13-14), and should not even intermarry with them (34:15). Complete separation from them is required.
As far as the images, they had many forms in the ancient Near East. The bull was common to Canaanite religion and Egypt had a wide range of animal gods (McConville 2002, 126). This is probably the reason for the sweeping prohibition of Deut. 5:8. Also, the deities of surrounding cultures had their needs met through the image (Walton 2006, 156) which was the manner in which the deity showed itself (Walton et al. 2000, 95). God was unique in comparison to these gods. He was not represented by any graven image.
Verse 9 gives reasons for not making any image of a god. It speaks of I AM as a “jealous” God who visits the “iniquities of the fathers on the children” to the third and fourth generations (5:9). This mention of multi-generational households is significant because of the close nature of families within the community (McConville, 126). For one to worship “any” image (5:8) was to introduce the family and community to possible successive judgments.
-In 1 John we read: "Little children, guard yourselves from idols." What practices or beliefs are we importing into an image of God?

-Hamilton, Victor P. The Book of Genesis Chapters 1-17. Grand Rapids: MI: William B Eerdmanns Publishing Company, 1990.
-McConville, J.G. Deuteronomy. Downers Grove: IL: InterVarsity Press, 2002.
-Walton, John H. Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible. Grand Rapids: MI: Baker Academic, 2006.
-Walton, John H, Victor H. Matthews, and Mark W. Chavalas. The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament. Downers Grove: IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000.