Any hint of depression around the church, and clichés start to surface. What adds to the burden of the depressed and despondent is the common and misguided notion that good Christians don't get depressed.

Some here know the private battle of a weary sadness that can take on many forms and show itself in many ways. To be human is to feel that numbing, exhausting, de-motivating fog of depression.Īnd then there is a kind of depression that is even more complicated because it's triggers lie within in the form of chemical imbalance, which means we cannot escape the black hole without medical attention. Every one of us has known, at one time or another, the slap of setback, the grief of loss, or the disheartening effects of stress. 110.) All of our lips have spoken the words of discouragement and depression. One writer calls depression 'the common cold of emotional disorders.' (Quoted by Chip Ingram, I Am Always With You, p. And whether we will admit it or not, all of us have been numbered among them. The company of the depressed is a very noble company. Then there's Nehemiah and Ezekiel and Peter and more in the pages of Scripture.

Jeremiah was so profoundly sad that he is known to this day as the weeping prophet and confessed that he wished he'd never been born. Jonah, the first foreign missionary, became deeply despondent when God did not destroy Nineveh. David, in his efforts to hide sin, made journal entries that speak of the total loss of strength, the ebbing away of all that is worthwhile in life, and groaning all day long (Ps. 1:12)Įlijah, one of the greatest prophets of old, asked for his life to be taken. There came a time when Moses felt the crushing weight of this assignment and at last he cries out, 'How can I bear troubles, burdens, and disputes by myself?' (Deut. He was faced with the arduous task of being the leader and general answer man for over a million Hebrew people, as well as the administrator of God's Law - a role to which he was assigned by God, but one made more complicated by the tendency of the Israelites to gripe, doubt God, and attack Moses. Moses is described as the meekest man on earth (Numbers 12:3) and rises as one of the greatest examples of an ordinary man who, submitted to God, became one of the greatest of all of the Old Testament characters. my eye will never again see anything good.' (Job 7:6, 7)

Job is singled as a man of God, blameless and upright, whose staggering losses and long and painful illness brought him low: 'My days. When you review the great names and personalities of the Scriptures, you become aware very quickly that almost all of them knew, at one time or another, great discouragement and deep depression.

Chip ingram emotional healing