Depression: Looking Up from the Stubborn Darkness

by Edward T. Welch

Fearing God and keeping his commandments brings a certain simplicity to life. He is the Creator; we are the creatures. We belong to him. When he directs us, we follow. We come before him and say, “And how do you want me to live today?” The psalmist goes so far as to say that his affliction was valuable because it taught him more about keeping God’s commandments, which was his delight

If you think that this is passé or irrelevant, you are revealing your purpose: to be rid of depression. That, of course, is worthwhile, but don’t elevate it to your purpose in life.

Although you might intellectually know your purpose, aspiring to it is very different, and living it out is more different still. The reality is that no one wholeheartedly aspires to it; no one consistently lives out of it. So begin with confession. Tell your Heavenly Father that you are like a prodigal child who keeps looking for self-oriented purposes rather than God-oriented ones.

There is another reality too. You can grow, day to day, with the Spirit of God energizing you, making this more and more of the purpose of your life. As you do, you will be changed.

To glorify God means to have our lives make him obvious and beautiful. We want him to be famous. We want to draw attention to the glorious God who loved us, and we do that by trusting him and loving others.

What’s the use? Why bother? The answer is that Jesus Christ has been crucified and he has risen from the dead. You couldn’t find a more complete answer. In it you find that you are called, forgiven, adopted into a new family, given gifts, given a mission, given a future. You are given love, and this love is so extreme it will take you all eternity to begin to understand it.

Do you want to see evidence of the Holy Spirit in your life? When you say, “Why bother?” answer, “Because of Jesus.”

[Screwtape warns Wormwood] Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s [God’s] will, looks around upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.

Depression says, “Surrender.” The message is relentless, and many comply because even when you know that there is a purpose to your suffering, the battle seems too long.

The call to persevere may not sound anymore appealing when it comes from God himself. It does sound more authoritative. It sounds like a general telling his troops to keep going in the face of a much stronger enemy. But it can still sound hollow. But remember once again that we cannot avoid God. All paths lead to him. If you are tempted to skip over his words on perseverance, remember that he is life. His words give life. Whatever he says is surprising in its beauty and elegance, and is of invaluable worth. In other words, there is more to perseverance than you think.

As with so many commands of Scripture, “persevere” is more than something God says; it is something he does. It is one of the many aspects of his character. The reason it is of great worth is that it is one of the chief ways God has revealed himself to us. Scripture consistently points to God’s perseverance and forbearance with his people.

All teaching on perseverance, patience, and endurance finds its source in the character of God. Just as we love because he is love and he loved us before we knew him, so we persevere because he is perseverance and he has persevered with us throughout history.

Although opportunities to grow in perseverance are available every day, suffering is what makes perseverance a necessary skill. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance.

If Jesus Christ learned obedience and endurance through what he suffered, why would we expect our lives to be different? Through our struggles and pain, we are being offered perseverance, the character of God. Hardships are intended to give us a spiritual makeover, “that we may share in his holiness” (Heb. 12:10). Therefore, when God encourages us to persevere, he is not stumbling for encouraging words. He is teaching us how to look like him.

them. That is a glorious testimony. Perseverance isn’t flashy. It doesn’t call attention to itself. It looks like putting one foot in front of another. But beneath the surface, where few can see the glory, is something very profound (Rev. 2:2, 19). You are becoming more like God. God sees it, and he is pleased by it.

Perseverance is more than just making it through life until you die from natural causes. It is perseverance in faith and obedience. It is perseverance in our God-given purpose, even when life is very hard. Perseverance asks the question, “Today, how will I represent God? How will I trust him and follow him in obedience?” Then it asks for help from others, cries out to the Lord, and looks for an opportunity to love. It may seem feeble, but our confidence is in the God who is strong. The essence of persevering is trusting or obeying because of Jesus.

“Hope.” There it is again. Hope is the constant companion of perseverance.

Your hope is that God hears, that he finds great worth in perseverance, that he rewards those who seek him (Heb. 11:6), that he blesses those who persevere (James 1:12), that he is faithful to all his promises. Your hope comes when you begin to fix your eyes on Jesus, the One who is invisible (Heb. 11:27).

Depression doesn’t just appear out of nowhere. It has its reasons. And although we have already found that it isn’t essential to know the reasons, we still keep an eye out for them.

When you partner with someone who is suffering, you will often find that people were part of the difficult circumstances. Pain is usually tied to something that happened to us. Does this matter anymore? Does it matter to God? God’s sovereign control over history and our own personal stories make past situations more important, not less. What happened to us was not a series of random, unrelated events.

When Adam sinned, the creation that had been blessed and pronounced “very good” by God fell under judgment. Work suddenly became difficult, relationships had tensions, physical bodies were prone to disease and would waste away, and death cast its long shadow over everything. Even weather would no longer cooperate. Instead of a predictable mist watering a fertile garden, droughts, typhoons, tornados, floods, and earthquakes would remind us that even the earth groans. Nothing in all creation is quite right.

Martin Seligman, a world-renowned researcher on depression, has suggested this explanation for the increase in depression: “The modern individual is not the peasant of yore with a fixed future yawning ahead. He—and now she, effectively doubling the mar-ket—is a battleground of decisions and preferences.”

An understandable response to such a pressured culture is withdrawal, paralysis in the face of decisions, fear of making wrong ones, fatigue, and feeling like you could sleep for days and still be tired. In other words, depression is a fitting response to these cultural pressures.

This exaltation of the individual is a cultural value that is gradually changing. There have been a number of Christian and secular critiques of the “me decades” lifestyle. The problem, however, is twofold. First, the damage has been done. The aloneness, isolation, and powerlessness of a self-driven life have already taken root. Second, in a mobile society that lacks spiritual empowerment to love and reconcile, there isn’t much hope for something better.

If this feature of the world contributes to depression, our response is first to know the enthroned God. When we go into the courtroom of the King of kings, we are in awe of him more than we are aware of ourselves. Our troubles become much smaller in contrast to his beauty and holiness. Then, when we listen to the King, his command to us is simple: love others as you have been loved. Love breaks the hold of individualism; it builds new communities out of the ashes of broken and fragmented relationships. Finally, we band together in churches.

The myth is that “one more” will finally bring satisfaction. The reality, of course, is that it just leaves us with a desire for two more, and then three, because we find that one didn’t satisfy.

People who have experienced war have learned to accept the trials and sufferings of life. Among many wise, older citizens in American society, there is no desperate flight from suffering. Instead, there is a recognition that it is a part of life that can have some benefit.

Yet among those in the post-World War II generation, a wisp of happiness is the goal, and suffering must be avoided at all costs. If there are hardships in a relationship, end it. If there is an unpleasant emotion, medicate it. It is a generation that perceives no value to any hardship. Like a pampered child who never experienced the regular storms of life, we lack the skill of growing through our trials.

Joy is the natural response when we behold God. What does it have to do with boredom? Joyful people are mobilized. They delight in doing small obediences. They are pleased to serve God in any ordinary way he sees fit. They also know that an army of people taking small steps of obedience is what moves the kingdom of God forward in power.

her depression exposed how, when life was sufficiently difficult and her faith was severely tested, Jane found God irrelevant, which made her relationship with God very relevant.

Your story, your interpretations, your motivations, and your beliefs come out of your heart. This is the center of your life. The heart oversees the “whys.” Why work? Why play? Why love? It is the defining feature of humanness.

People worship to get things. We choose idols in part because we believe that they will give us what we want. The god of drugs brings fearlessness; the god of sex promises pleasure and intimacy; the god of wealth holds out power and influence. We can feel miserable about ourselves because we want to be great, at least at something, and we are not feeling very great.

We crave autonomy. Autonomy is closely linked to arrogance. They are both expressions of human pride, but autonomy suggests that we want to be separate from more than over. We want to establish the rules rather than submit to the lordship of the living God.

The feeling of emptiness is usually a sign that we have put our trust in something that can’t sustain us. It reminds us that we were created to trust in our heavenly Father and nothing else. We were created to enjoy the many things God gives without making them the center of our lives. When we confuse the two, our lives feel out of kilter. To feel better, we try again and search for love apart from God, but when we finally realize that it is elusive, we forsake the quest and quietly despair.

Knowing God without knowing our own wretchedness makes for pride. Knowing our own wretchedness without knowing God makes for despair. Knowing Jesus Christ strikes the balance because he shows us both God and our own wretchedness.

Under ordinary circumstances we rarely ask these questions of ourselves or allow them to take us to the spiritual core of our lives, but depression is not an ordinary circumstance. Depression unveils our hearts.

Throughout history, God has used hardships to reveal people’s hearts, and this unveiling has had a purpose. It is an essential part of the process of change. You have to see what is in your heart before you can set out to change it.

When we see something of our own hearts, we are in a position to grow and change. However hard it is to have our innermost being exposed, it is a necessary part of the path of blessing.

The principle that suffering tests us and reveals our hearts is one that appears throughout Scripture.

Joy and suffering are wedded together. At first glance it looks like an impossible marriage, but James is not the only one to speak about hardships with a hint of a smile on his face. Other Scriptures concur.

Notice why he is excited about trials: trials, he writes, have a purpose. They test our faith. They reveal what we worship, what we trust, what we love. From James’s perspective, this is evidence of God’s fatherly care. It is essential to our spiritual welfare. It would be a tragedy to go through life with a nominal faith we think is genuine but isn’t. God’s love is behind the trials that reveal the true condition of our faith.

Joy is not the opposite of depression. It is deeper than depression. Therefore, you can experience both. Depression is the relentless rain. Joy is the rock. Whether depression is present or not, you can stand on joy.

When fears are left unattended, they can lead to depression. You can try to avoid them when they haunt you, but you can still feel them. The only way to really quiet them is to confront them. And since fears run in packs, expect to find more than one.

Regardless of the particular fear you have, fear always asks the same questions: “Who will you trust? Where will you turn when you are afraid or anxious?” The story of Scripture is one in which God demonstrates himself to be trustworthy, and then he invites wary people to trust him. Given such an attractive invitation, you would think that none could resist, but we all have our reasons for putting our trust in things we can see.

This is how idolatry grows in our hearts. We want things and we aren’t sure God will give them to us, so we put our trust in other gods. This is THE problem of the human heart—misplaced trust. We value, love, and trust something in creation more than the Creator, and since there is nothing in creation that is intended to bear the weight of our trust, we are bound to live in fear.

All other loves must be subordinate to your love for Christ. This may sound like God is demanding our love, and that is true to a point. But the reason we are to love him more than all others is that, among the many suitors for our affections, he alone is worthy of such love.

Your goal is to get into a manna rhythm. Seek his grace today, be faithful to the tasks in front of you, and trust him for tomorrow. Then, when you look back and see that he was faithful, your faith will be “fed” for the next day.

Anger will not always be the cause of your depression, although some researchers want to tell you that it is a likely cause. But anger is frequently revealed by depression. The wisest way to approach this subject is to assume that you are angry. Anger is as basic to our condition as bipedal locomotion and opposable thumbs. If you are a person with a mind and emotions, you will find anger.

Take grumbling as an example. Who hasn’t grumbled and complained in the last couple of days? Grumbling or complaining fits within the larger category of anger because it is a judgment. The grumbler has declared something to be wrong, be it a person, the weather, or the expensive car repair.

The reason God extends such mercy and patience is because his anger with our rebellion is ultimately poured out on Jesus. Make no mistake: the cross is about love and anger. God is angrier than any of his creatures, and the cross is where his anger and wrath were fully concentrated. When we turn to Jesus, God’s anger is turned away from us and turned toward the cross. His justice is fully satisfied by the very costly price of his Son’s death. Meanwhile, his mercy and love are fully expressed to us as he gives us true life through Jesus’ death and resurrection.