My personal battle to present has been intense, and I have suffered greatly at Satan’s hands.  I have lost many battles, too.  But I’ve not lost the war.  And won’t!   I know that I am more than a conqueror through Him who loves me (Rom. 8:37).  I know that everything that happens and everything that I feel, including my own dark moments, work out for my own good, as well as for the good of the kingdom (Rom. 8:28).  I know how to endure hardship as discipline (Heb. 12:7).  I know to rejoice in my trials, including my more melancholy moments (Ja. 1:2-4).  And finally, I know that my despair has as its ultimate purpose that of teaching me to rely on God and not on myself (2 Cor. 1:8-9).  I learned that the victory that overcomes the world is in my faith in Christ (1 John 5:4-5).

I don’t believe depression itself is a sin.  Much like Paul said about anger, “In your anger, don’t sin…” (Eph. 4:26), I say, in your depression, don’t sin.  Depression is an emotional mindset.  As I said earlier, depression is a type of emotional weather that blows in.  Some is simply situational—responses to negative situations and stimuli.  Situational depression can however become chronic.  There is another destructive depression that is chronic and nonspecific.  It comes out of nowhere and sticks around for far too long.  But, as we can see, some of our great Bible examples did indeed face types of depression.

Isaiah noted, far before Jesus came to the world, that Jesus would be “a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief” (Isa. 53:3, NASB).  And, when Jesus sweated blood, he wasn’t faking.  He was deeply troubled and had been on and off his whole life, I suppose.  His question in his darkest moment as to why God was forsaking him was certainly not rhetorical.  I think Jesus was a melancholy.  I can assure you that while there is something for everyone in Jesus’ life and teaching, there is a special connection there for the true melancholy—“Jesus withdrew often to lonely places to pray” (Luke 5:16); Jesus sat on a hill and lamented the plight of the Jews (Matt. 23:37-29); and in his last hours he said to the apostles, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death…” (Mk. 14:34).  At eleven years of age, he was talking to the religious leaders rather than playing kid games with the others at the Jerusalem convention.  True melancholies understand and relate to all of that.

Paul also understood despondency saying, “We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God…” (2 Cor. 1:8-9).  It wasn’t exactly the death-wish of a destructive state of depression, but he basically said he’d rather be dead than alive (Phil. 1:21).  Paul didn’t exactly exemplify the mythical “ideal” of much of modern Christianity—that if we’ll be good and give good, we’ll be happy and rich all the time.  Yeah, right.
Elijah was arguably the greatest of the Old Testament prophets.  His was an unusual calling.  First, he was sent to live by a stream and be fed by ravens (yuk!).  Then, of all things, the stream dried up.  Such is the luck of melancholies—as if to say, “God you told me to go live by this stream and I did and you let the stream dry up!  Why is that?”  Then he sends him to be taken care of by a widow who was preparing the last meal for her and her starving son.  “Oh great, now I get to go mooch off a starving widow!”  After all that, her son dies and she blames Elijah.  In desperation, Elijah falls on the boy, begging God to raise him, and God does just that.  And, all that was just a prelude for his real battle with two of the most wicked leaders ever, Ahab and Jezebel.  He, of course, wins a major victory over the false prophets.   Then, under the threat of execution, Elijah is afraid and runs.  Imagine that, he’d just experienced a great miracle from God before the people.  He’d also personally led in the execution of hundreds of false prophets.  How could someone like him be afraid of anything after that?  Well, he was obviously a melancholy.

In his flight for his life, he finally hides out in the desert.  He sits down under a tree and says to God, “I have had enough, Lord.  Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors”.  Then, in the typical fashion of one depressed, he falls asleep (1 Ki. 19:4-6).  So, if you’ve been thinking you’re pretty useless and that God can’t use you because you get depressed, think again.  Elijah can testify to the fact that God can and will use you.  Even your darkness.  Go read Elijah’s story in 1 Kings 17 – 2 Kings 2 if you want more.

Jeremiah was obviously melancholy.  Gosh, he wrote a book they named “Lamentations”!  God needed someone who could deal with the dark side to do what Jeremiah would have to do.  He was privileged to foretell the final doom of the original nation of Judah.  Boy, was he popular.  Yeah, right.  Listen to what this man of God had to say in his despair, “Oh Lord, you deceived me, and I was deceived; you overpowered me and prevailed.  I am ridiculed all day long; everyone mocks me.  Whenever I speak, I cry out proclaiming violence and destruction.  So the word of the Lord has brought me insult and reproach all day long” (Jer. 20:7-8).  He wasn’t exactly mega-church preacher material.  And, he wasn’t through with that depressed thought yet, “Cursed be the day I was born!  May the day my mother bore me not be blessed!  Cursed be the man who brought my father the news, who made him very glad, saying, ‘A child is born to you—a son!’”  (Jer. 20:14-15).  After all that, God kept on using him too.  Others were struck dead for saying those kinds of words, or at least severely rebuked as in the case of Job.  Jeremiah just trucked on with his depressing message.

You see depression flows out of our emotions.  Since the Bible reveals God’s early interactions with man, you’d expect to see the realities of depression in the lives of those mentioned.  You do.  There’s certainly more there.  Much more.  In fact, you see the whole range of emotions in the Bible.  In the life of King David, you see psalms of joy (Psa. 9) and you see psalms of defeat (Psa. 51).  You see in David a man who had the highest of highs and you see in him a man who knew the darkness of deep depression.  Peter, no doubt, fell into depression after his embarrassing denial of Christ just before Jesus’ execution.  He clearly lost confidence and hope.  It took a special appearance by and conversation with Jesus to restore Peter’s hope.

So, armed with these thoughts, what is the Christian approach to sadness, despair and depression?