Spiritual Depression Quotes

“To make it quite practical I have a very simple test. After I have explained the way of Christ to somebody I say “Now, are you ready to say that you are a Christian?” And they hesitate. And then I say, “What’s the matter? Why are you hesitating?” And so often people say, “I don’t feel like I’m good enough yet. I don’t think I’m ready to say I’m a Christian now.” And at once I know that I have been wasting my breath. They are still thinking in terms of themselves. They have to do it. It sounds very modest to say, “Well, I don’t think I’ good enough,” but it’s a very denial of the faith. The very essence of the Christian faith is to say that He is good enough and I am in Him. As long as you go on thinking about yourself like that and saying, “I’m not good enough; Oh, I’m not good enough,” you are denying God – you are denying the gospel – you are denying the very essence of the faith and you will never be happy. You think you’re better at times and then again you will find you are not as good at other times than you thought you were. You will be up and down forever. How can I put it plainly? It doesn’t matter if you have almost entered into the depths of hell. It does not matter if you are guilty of murder as well as every other vile sin. It does not matter from the standpoint of being justified before God at all. You are no more hopeless than the most moral and respectable person in the world.”
― Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cure

“we must never look at any sin in our past life in any way except that which leads us to praise God and to magnify His grace in Christ Jesus.”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cures

“How easy it is to read the Scriptures and give a kind of nominal assent to the truth and yet never to appropriate what it tells us!”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cures

“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?”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cures

“We are all in such a hurry, we want everything at once. We believe that all truth can be stated in a few minutes. The answer to that is that it cannot.”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cure

“Our danger is to submit ourselves to our feelings and to allow them to dictate to us, to govern and to master us and to control the whole of our lives.”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cures

“the ultimate cause of all spiritual depression is unbelief.”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cures

“If you were to feel more interest in Christ you would be less interested in yourself.”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cures

“It is because we belong to Him that the devil will do his utmost to disturb and upset us. He cannot rob us of our salvation, thank God, but while he cannot rob us of our salvation he can make us miserable. He can, if we are foolish enough to listen to him, seriously limit our enjoyment of our salvation.”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cures

“go directly to Him and seek His face, as the little child who is miserable and unhappy because somebody else has taken or broken his toy, runs to its father or its mother. So if you and I find ourselves afflicted by this condition, there is only one thing to do, it is to go to Him, If you seek the Lord Jesus Christ and find Him there is no need to worry about your happiness and your joy. He is our joy and our happiness, even as He is our peace. He is life, He is everything. So avoid the incitements and the temptations of Satan to give feelings this great prominence at the centre. Put at the centre the only One who has a right to be there, the Lord of Glory, Who so loved you that He went to the Cross and bore the punishment and the shame of your sins and died for you. Seek Him, seek His face, and all other things shall be added unto you.”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cures

“Talk to yourself, and though the devil will suggest that because you do not feel, you are not a Christian, say: ‘No, I do not feel anything, but whether I feel or not, I believe the Scriptures. I believe God’s Word is true and I will stay my soul on it, I will believe in it come what may’.”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cures

“You must say to yourself: ‘Whatever happens I am going on’. You do not give in or give way.”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cures

“I sometimes think that the whole art of the Christian life is the art of asking questions.”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cures

“this other man within us, has got to be handled. Do not listen to him; turn on him; speak to him; condemn him; upbraid 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.”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cures

“Our fears are due to our failure to stir up—failure to think, failure to take ourselves in hand. You find yourself looking to the future and then you begin to imagine things and you say: ‘I wonder what is going to happen?’ And then, your imagination runs away with you. You are gripped by the thing; you do not stop to remind yourself of who you are and what you are, this thing overwhelms you and down you go. Now the first thing you have to do is to take a firm grip of yourself, to pull yourself up, to stir up yourself, to take yourself in hand and to speak to yourself.”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cures

“We must never for a second worry about anything that cannot be affected or changed by us. It is a waste of energy. If you can do nothing about a situation stop thinking about it; never again look back at it, never think of it.”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cures

“I say, therefore, with reverence and on the authority of the Word of God that God sees your sins no more; He sees the righteousness of Christ upon you. Lay hold of that.”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cures

“the reason why so many today are living superficial Christian lives is because they will not take time to examine themselves.”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cures

“Now the word ‘abiding’ makes people become sentimental. They think of abiding as something passive and clinging, but to abide in Christ is to do what He tells you, positively, and to pray without ceasing. Abiding is a tremendously active thing.”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cures

“The main art in the matter of spiritual living is to know how to handle yourself. You have to take yourself in hand, you have to address yourself, preach to yourself, question yourself.”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cures

“To rejoice is a command, yes, but there is all the difference in the world between rejoicing and being happy. You cannot make yourself happy, but you can make yourself rejoice, in the sense that you will always rejoice in the Lord. Happiness is something within ourselves, rejoicing is ‘in the Lord’.”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cures

“It is not a question of keeping to a standard, it is not a question of vainly striving to do something; it is a question of getting ready for the place to which you are going. The way to get rid of the spirit of bondage and fear, is to know that if you are a child of God, you are destined for heaven and for glory, and that all the things you see inside yourself and outside yourself cannot prevent that plan from being carried out.”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cures

“I say it again at the risk of being misunderstood, but such friends in a way need to pray less and to think more. They must remind themselves that their bodies are ‘the temples of the Holy Ghost which dwelleth in us’. Prayer is always essential, but thought is essential, too, because prayer can be just an escape mechanism, almost at times a cry in the dark by people who are desperate and defeated.”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cures

“Would you like to be rid of this spiritual depression? The first thing you have to do is to say farewell now once and for ever to your past. Realize that it has been covered and blotted out in Christ. Never look back at your sins again. Say: ‘It is finished, it is covered by the Blood of Christ’. That is your first step. Take that and finish with yourself and all this talk about goodness, and look to the Lord Jesus Christ. It is only then that true happiness and joy are possible for you. What you need is not to make resolutions to live a better life, to start fasting and sweating and praying. No! you just begin to say: ‘I rest my faith on Him alone Who died for my transgressions to atone.”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cures

“It does not matter if you have almost entered into the depths of hell, if you are guilty of murder as well as every other vile sin, it does not matter from the standpoint of being justified with God. You are no more hopeless than the most respectable self-righteous person in the world. Do you believe that?”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cures

“I am not good enough.’ It sounds very modest, but it is the lie of the devil, it is a denial of the faith. You think that you are being humble. But you will never be good enough; nobody has ever been good enough. The essence of the Christian salvation is to say that He is good enough and that I am in Him!”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cures

“The main art in the matter of spiritual living is to know how to handle yourself. You have to take yourself in hand, you have to address yourself, preach to yourself, question yourself. You must say to your soul: ‘Why art thou cast down’—what business have you to be disquieted? You must turn on yourself, upbraid yourself, condemn yourself, exhort yourself, and say to yourself: ‘Hope thou in God’—instead of muttering in this depressed, unhappy way. And then you must go on to remind yourself of God, Who God is, and what God is and what God has done, and what God has pledged Himself to do. Then having done that, end on this great note: defy yourself, and defy other people, and defy the devil and the whole world, and say with this man: ‘I shall yet praise Him for the help of His countenance, who is also the health of my countenance and my God’.”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cures

“In this way. I say that we must talk to ourselves instead of allowing ‘ourselves’ to talk to us! Do you realize what that means? I suggest that the main trouble in this whole matter of spiritual depression in a sense is this, that we allow our self to talk to us instead of talking to our self.”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cures

“the ultimate cause of all spiritual depression is unbelief. For if it were not for unbelief even the devil could do nothing. It is because we listen to the devil instead of listening to God that we go down before him and fall before his attacks.”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cures

“If you find that your feelings are depressed do not sit down and commiserate with yourself, do not try to work something up but—this is the simple essence of it—go directly to Him and seek His face, as the little child who is miserable and unhappy because somebody else has taken or broken his toy, runs to its father or its mother.”
― D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cures