Depression

Today on Summit life with Jeannie Greer. God what this will in your Bible. Even though it is depressing you will never memorize it because he wants those who suffer no that he knows how you feel, what you do see that it is okay for you to be honest deeply and so wrenchingly honest God. I'm your host Molly that events reason most of us tend to think of good Christians as those who are always smiling and encouraging others.

So whenever we struggle with depression and despair or doubts about God. We think there's something wrong with or maybe we just don't have enough faith in it can be difficult to ask for help will today.

Pastor Jenny addresses this very real struggle from a biblical perspective in our new teaching series called smoke from a fire. How our emotions reveal what's really going on and make sure they stick around until he and will introduce a matching resource is a 10 day devotional in Scripture guide that goes with a series but for now let's jump on it when you do brought it limitations Chevron three. I'm going to begin a series called smoke from a fire.

How our emotions reveal what's really going on down in our hearts.

The title comes from a metaphor from St. Augustine in the fifth century A.D. and Augustine's at our deepest our strongest emotions function like smoke from a fire that you can can tell you what's actually going on down in the deep recesses of your art, you know, whenever you see or smell smoke from a fire in your house, it's never wise just with the smoke away that the previous house I lived in the fire alarm near the kitchen was crazy sensitive and crazy while you burn the bacon by even a little bit it would sound like air raid sirens were going off you really jump up and proceed as you open the door got you the door to fan it out. You grab towels and start waving front of the smoke detector but of course none of that is really going to take your problem if you don't stop the bacon that is burning on the top of the stove will see the same way, our emotions are going to reveal something that is going on in our heart of the wise approach to them is not simply try to lift them away or manage them or suppress them or medicate them. The first thing we got to do is figure out what those emotions reveal about the state of our hearts. That's what the Bible is going to teach you.

Yes, there are good strategies for managing them in. Yes, there are lots of different backers really get into, but the main thing we gotta do is learn to read them as indicators your emotions Dominic impact in determining your quality of life terms and what you enjoy life how happy you feel the terms I see the world how you treat people, all that goes back to your emotions. The first emotion look at in this series is depression now living to say here to you right out of the gate that depression I understand is a very complex emotion first depression we know operates along a continuum wanted to continue to have discouragement which will go through when things don't go like we want them to go back and begin to move toward despair despairs when you think that not only are things bad now, but things will be bad tomorrow and things will be bad for as long as I can save the future, and for many people that can that can spiral down into depression with just number of factors are at play in depression. There are spiritual factors.

There are physiological factors go into its psychological backers even social factors in this sermon series I'm going to focus primarily on the spiritual factors, but I want you to hear this. That doesn't mean that I think that spiritual factors are the only contributor or even always the primary contributor and every time of depression. God made us some would say God made us as a psychosomatic unity which is a fancy word for safe that her body and soul integrated, which means that what happens in one will invariably affect the other. For example, in this this is a very simple example you ever realize how unspiritual you get when you were either hungry or you haven't had enough sleep. So just a couple weeks ago that when I get angry.

I'm not a good counselor. I get rude and I'm impatient with people now rudeness with people is a spiritual problem right. Nothing should ever justify me being rude to somebody else but my rudeness which is a soul problem or sin problem is being triggered and exacerbated by my physical condition that does not mean that I shouldn't pray for patience, just that I should also take a nap to eat a Snickers bar not just to be clear about saying that what I experience when I'm angry at the same thing that that you've experienced a few walk through depression. I'm simply saying that there's a lot going on in any emotion. Backers that are both spiritual and physical and psychological and social. Like I said in this series on the focus mainly in the spiritual dimension okay right depression, like a said depression begins with discouragement, you discourage something that is happening that really starts to change your outlook on life.

Example your marriage is just not getting any better. You see little glimmers of hope, but it always, spirals back down into just the life that you never really wanted to live her. Maybe something happened that really shattered your sense of who you are, you got you got cut from the team you got denied entry into the school we got passed over for the for the promotion, or maybe somebody broke up with you recently in and their insults throughout that breakup is really gotten into your head and change how you see yourself. Maybe a loved one passed away in your your lonely. The pain of their loss that void that is is left by our created by their absence is not going away, you're still single at this point in your life you never thought you would be in your wondering what the future is like. Or maybe you're single again.

Maybe it's a chronic illness that you're dealing with that but just the pain of business dull aching just doesn't go away like I just don't know how to look in the future if I got deal with this for the rest of my life. Or maybe, maybe you messed up again you messed up for the thousandth time and you blown another opportunity or loss of the job are destroyed another relationship or maybe do some struggle that you just can't seem to get over you feel like a matter how long I live in going to be led by this and I can get victory whatever it is when you look into the future.

All you feel is this suffocating kind of darkness that is closing in on you to keep you from wanting to even get out of bed in the morning you big things are bad now and probably going to be bad forever, which brings us to Lamentations 3 not realize what I told you to turn in your bottle. Lamentations 3. Some of you have no idea that what was in the Bible.

I am that you spent the last six or seven minutes trying to figure out where is Lamentations.

It's right in the middle of your Old Testament right after Psalms and Isaiah's look around that direction book is going to surprise you when I tell you about it because you probably did nobles like this was in the Bible. What Lamentations is essentially five poems that limit Lamentations 5 poems that lament how bad everything is five that are written by the prophet Jeremiah the book by the way, is itself a work of art come if you brought your Hebrew Bible with you this morning to bring their Hebrew Bible website building through around like this if your Hebrew Bible is open, you will notice that all five of these poems have 22 verses in them. With one exception.

The 22 verses of each of the chapters correspond to one of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet like an acrostic except for the third chapter, which were to look at, which is a triple acrostic. It had 66 versus three verses for every letter of the Hebrew alphabet is like Jeremiah is trying to show us that he is describing suffering from A-to-Z my whole life feels like suffering. The other exception is the last chapter, chapter 5, which you have noticed has 22 verses, but they don't correspond to the letters of the Hebrew alphabet and it's like Jeremiah is trying to show is that at this point is life suffering is lost all rhyme or reason, and is presented in the code total chaos and everything is come off the rails. So the very book itself does the structure of the book is designed to show you a life that is characterized by suffering from A-to-Z finally descended into chaos. There is no more rhyme or reason.

Some of you might already feel like you can relate. Could you like it there was a work of art to somehow picture my life would probably look something like that. Jeremiah lived during the time in Israel was be delivered over to exile for their sin. Israel had hardened our hearts to God.

So many times that God was finally doing to them what he had promised he would do them and that is exiling them from the land that he given to them during Jeremiah's life.

Jeremiah witnessed multiple violent deportations of friends and family from his beloved hometown of Jerusalem to Babylon.

Jeremiah watched as Solomon's Temple, the symbol of Israel's faith in the pinnacle of her culture life. He watched as that was torn down.

Jeremiah was one of the few remaining survivors left in Jerusalem and everybody that was left kept telling themselves that the worst was over. But God told Jeremiah but the worst was in fact yet to come in. Jeremiah was given the unenviable task of telling everybody that remained of the armies of Babylon were given keep coming until nobody was left no imagine that being your job, you gotta tell everybody around you that you love, that is called do unspeakable suffering already that the worst is yet to come, and is not to stop until everything is been destroyed. To make matters worse, nobody believe Jeremiah they called him a traitor and they put them in a dungeon or Jeremiah 38 six.

The other bill Jeremiah wrote the book of Jeremiah Jeremiah 38 six that he summed it up to his armpits in mud. It was from this hell hole Jeremiah compose these five bolts is there any wonder they are so dark. All that to say, if you're in a bad situation. Trust me. Jeremiah gets it. Your friends may not understand. Your parents may not understand I may not understand the Jeremiah would have understood the let's dive down into the middle of this month. It would Jeremiah Lamentations chapter 3.

Let's begin in verse one. Jeremiah says I am the man who was seen affliction under the rod of his wrath.

He has driven and brought me into darkness without any light that were driven there is a word that would mean driven with a whip like a slave is driven. Jeremiah is probably thinking about how we seem friends and family driven from Jerusalem with whips and chains to be taken as slaves in Babylon in the place of darkness without any light darkness with no dawn darkness with no hope few years ago I read a book called the endurance about the failed mission of Ernest Shackle Turner forces shackles on the but am I where they would try to be the first group to cross an article in the South Pole.

So they had this journey laid out but things went wrong and it was an early freeze, unexpected freeze again and so the ice crushed their ship. Amanda walk several hundred more miles and they were planning bottom line is they got stranded at the South Pole for over a year. They said the worst for the survivors that made it out of the worst part was not the subzero temperatures. It was not the fierce storms.

It wasn't even the starvation of the worst part. They said was that the sign. The sign in Antarctica goes down in mid-May and doesn't come back up again until mid August, I said it's hard to describe it. Just a thought or feeling of devastation and desolation to dwell in total darkness day after day with no hope of seeing any kind of like that is what Jeremiah is describing in his life, day after day with darkness, no light, no hope. Nothing on the horizon that I see the can bring joy to this.

Maybe you can relate to this verse three surely against me, he turns his hand again and again all day long? Who is that he in this verse is the God surely against me. God turns his hand again and again the whole day he God has made my flesh and my skin waste away.

God has broken my bones. God has proceeds that envelop me with bitterness and tribulation. God has may be dwell in darkness, like the dead of long ago.

God has warned me about so that I cannot escape God has made my chain 70 though I call a cry for help, God shuts out my prayer ever felt like that so I God's not listening even more you start wondering God maybe your behind this at the very least, God, do not do anything to fix the situation. This no, here's the thing Jeremiah knows that this feeling is not true, the easier to show you that in a minute. But regardless, this is how he feels in the moment. Some of you have gone through dark chapters and you thought these same things, but you have suppressed those emotions, telling yourself real Christians don't ever feel this way, the prophet Jeremiah was a real Christian, and he felt that way Charles Spurgeon was a real Christian, and he told his 15,000 member congregation at the end of the 19th century. He told them. I know that I spent more days shut up in depression than anybody else here. He was said by many to be the greatest preacher ever to live, and he frequently considered quitting the ministry. He was so depressed and so often depressed. Martin Luther was a real Christian and Luther went the times are so dark that his wife would remove every night from the house for fear that he would kill himself for more than a week.

He wrote in one of his journals for more than a week. I was close to the gates of death and hell. I trembled constantly I could find no thoughts about Christ only thoughts I could come up with were desperation and constant blasphemy of God. Whenever church planters Trevor Atwood tells a story when he first felt the call of God, go to ministry resign his job in Tennessee. A good paying job with his young family down here in got to be a part of this church and started to go to seminary settles the meal he thinks are to fall apart to my marriage and I remember him walking with him through this season.

My marriage got within inches of divorce. He said he so we went in the total bankruptcy is in the worst moment again. I member this is when we wife gave birth to our newborn son lived just a few days and he died in my arms, he said in that moment as I held my dying newborn babies that I had the words. All I could ask God during that season was God.

Why, I don't want to talk about God.

I did want to preach the words of God. I didn't want to go but trained it to learn more about God and teach other people about and I only wanted to rage against God.all I've done is try to follow all I've done is try to obey you and this is how you treat me can you see at least that you're not alone. You're not alone.

Some of these thoughts. God is blocking my way wood blocks of stones.

God is they bypass crooked every time I see a way out of this is like God crushes it. God is a bear line and wait for me a line and Heidi what your favorite image of God, did Alan is a bear waiting tomorrow you will. I am waiting to devour you, God turns on my steps for me to pieces.

I pray for deliverance or pray for direction and like you just destroyed me. God is maybe desolate. God bit his bow and set me as a target for his arrow. It's like God was hunting me, God drove into my kidneys or my heart the errors of his quiver.

I've become the laughing stock of all peoples.

The objects of their taunts all day long. This is all driven me the despair and self-doubt. Maybe there really is something wrong with me. God has filled me with bitterness. He is sated me with warm what one would by the way, was a bitter herb that the Jews believe represented the judgment of the wrath of God. God has made my teeth grind on gravel.

God is maybe cow and ashes. My soul is bereft of these I have forgotten what happiness it can't even remember what the emotion of joy and happiness is like, and so I say my endurance is perished and so has my hope in the Lord my soul remembers all of this in this depressed within me, this is Jeremiah. Ladies and gentlemen, the prophet of God close in prayer and on.

I would do that to you serious it is nice passage you commit to memory right is it is a you like mentor and encourage use when we initially were picking up your bodybuilding to Bob you're going is this the Bible and out of the out of an editor, not catch this the managers or the like, yeah Jeremiah this is Natalie with your best. Once a gold they cannot get a shower and breakfast and I dried again tomorrow, but he was to stop right there and make sure we get our minds around that God shows to include this in your Bible, he could have edited this out.

You know Jim, I will week, but we need more positive and encouraging Psalms, like David, you know the Lord is much everything and still waters of overflowing cup some lines laying down the lambs and I got up that stuff sells that's what the people want you Psalms wisdom is really hot right now we can I we can keep his sex manuals on the south.

We can be depending on the shelves.

Once you go right one of those things.

That's what the people want Jeremiah. Nobody wants a boat where profit rages against God, and says things like my hope is perished to God achieving his arrows at me if not shut up. My prayers and listen to woman in God like a bear waiting a moment knowing about Jeremiah.

But God put this book in your Bible. Even though it is depressing and even though most of you will never memorize it because he wants those of you suffer to know that he knows how you feel, and it is okay for you to express those emotions to God. You see, this lament is honest, even if it's not accurate.

It's an honest reflection of how Jeremiah feels even if it does not fully and accurately account for everything that God is doing for who God was, as you point that out because I want you to see that it is okay for you to be honest deeply and so wrenchingly honest with God that sometimes I think we can be entirely too quick with our with our quick little one line answers in church over you feeling sad that can't be from God. You need a pop on some K love and listen to something positive and encouraging because that's what the Christian life should be all the time that was in the disrespect for K love it's a great station to listen to… This sometimes you need a God who walks to paint with you and that's what you can find in chapters like these the greatest Christians in history were not those a God delivered from all pain and misery for those he delivered through pain and misery and faith starts with honesty before God. They got a good stop there were 21 but this I called him on this might be one of the me the most profound transitions in the entire Bible. I want you I want you to visualize Jeremiah in this dungeon sunk up to his armpits in mud, thinking maybe about a child. But he's lost the battle wife that is lost. Think about people that he loves driven away commit she's never to see them again. I want you to see him in this mud pit defiantly say, but this I call to mind and therefore I choose I choose to have hope the steadfast love the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning great is your faithfulness.

The Lord is my portion, says my soul therefore I will hope in him. The Lord is good to those who wait for him to the soul who seeks him.

It is good.

It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord, the Lord will not cast off forever. But though he cause grief you will have compassion. According to the abundance of the steadfast love, for he does not afflict from his heart agreed the children of men want to keep in mind that these are the middle versus in the middle chapter of a book that is otherwise completely filled with despair is right smack in the middle and everything else in the book of Lamentations is nothing but despair misery. This is like Centerpoint.

The anchor put point for the whole book. This is Jeremiah's answer to the spiritual dimensions of depression. These shows us what we are to do in the midst of despair number one Jeremiah says I will call to mind the goodness of God.

I will call to mind the goodness of God.

In verse 33 there.

What is he calling to mind that he does not afflict from his heart or grieve the children of men. What that means is a like any good father God will allow his children sometimes to go through pain, but he does not enjoy their pain and he only allows because he knows that pain will ultimately produce a greater joy later. One of the most traumatic experiences of my life was when I took my first daughter at one-year-old in for that round of shots that she gets what she don't want Hike took her to the pediatrician office and I was told my role folder on my lap you, I know it's bad for the kid. I know it's got to be bad for the kid but somebody should give a class of the barracks because I said my middlebrow those you like a little, you little prick. Will and Mike was already done a Dr. stuck the needle might my little girls are the first shot. She let out a scream. I could've woken the dead. The worst part was after stuck in the middle. The second time that my daughter's eyes start frantically looking around the room for what monster is doing the store is you locks on that Dr. is not the worst for worst part is, then she turns to me she's like you. You could stop this. But not only did I not stop it actually held her more tightly so that Dr. could do it not just one more time, but two more times to look for total for starts and that look in her eyes of just the trail. I don't know what goes on the psychology of one-year-old. I'm not sure what they can remember, but I hope my daughter has reconciled with them in her life. Because ultimately, yes, I am allowing or even assisting in the causing pain but I'm doing it because I know this is good only hurdle ultimate health and joy. Later Jeremiah said in the midst of this pain. I cling to the goodness of God. I cling to the goodness of my father and how is it that I know that God is good. He says because I call in my mind the steadfast love of the Lord in the way that he is active in Israel's history the things he's revealed about his character. I remind myself that he delivered our people from slavery when he did not have to because he saw her suffering. He was moved by I call to mind that Jesus came to earth to die on the cross for my sins when he did not have to hi call to mind the life of Jesus, where we saw his heart break again and again for every broken center saw him reading tears with people that were in pain. We saw how he never turned away someone was sick or someone who was suffering with compassion for all of them. I know from those things that he's good that he is a good good father and I choose to believe that even when I can't see it or feel it right now in my circumstances for the reminder to call to mind the goodness of God, and preach the gospel to every single day you're listening to Summit life with Katie Greer when you join our mission and donate at the suggested level of $25 or more will say thanks by sending you a 10 day devotional in Scripture God is a companion to a series, also titled smoke from a fire as pastor Ginny just said it's okay to express emotions to God.

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