Sermon Tone Analysis

It is technically called depression, but it can’t be captured by a word.

You feel numb, yet your head hurts; empty, yet inside there are screams; fatigue, yet fears abound.

Things that were once pleasures now barely hold your attention.

Your brain feels like it is in a fog.

You feel weighted down.

Do you remember when you had goals?

Things that you looked forward to?

They could have been as small as going to a movie on Friday night or a job you wanted to accomplish.

Now you have very few goals.

Making it through the day seems like enough.

Do you notice what life feels like without goals?

Every day is the same.

There is no rhythm of rising anticipation, satisfaction, then rest.

Each day brings a dreadful monotony, and you fear that tomorrow will be the same as today.

The flatness of life feels like it is killing you.

Sleep?

It’s a mess.

You can’t get enough.

You don’t even remember what it feels like to wake up refreshed.

Have you ever seen Pablo Picasso’s paintings from his blue period?

If you find a book on Picasso you might want to take a look.

The pictures are not encouraging but you would, at least, find that you are not alone.

Triggered by a difficult relationship, he did a series of paintings where people looked lifeless and everything was in shades of blue and gray.

Was he putting his feelings into his art, or was he faithfully presenting the world as he actually saw it?

Either way, there are no sun splashed days with depression, just dreary overcast skies and a dull colorless world.

into his art, or was he faithfully presenting the world as he actually saw it?

Either way, there are no sun splashed days with depression, just dreary overcast skies and a dull colorless world.

Picasso wasn’t the only one who struggled with what has come to be known as depression.

Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, the great English preacher Charles Spurgeon, missionary David Brainard, and Bible translator J. B. Phillips were some of the more well-known and accomplished people who talked and wrote about their struggles.

So although you may feel alone, many have walked the path before, and many are walking it now.

I am not here to propose a technique but to present a tried and true person; Jesus.

Some people say, “Jesus doesn’t work,” “I’ve tried Him and I am still just as depressed.”

But consider this: Jesus claims to be the way, truth, life, source of hope, lover of our souls, servant, brother, friend, the one who hears and acts, the one who never leaves.

No therapy or medication makes such bold claims.

If Jesus and the teachings of Scripture seem like hollow platitudes to you—and perhaps they do—remember that everything sounds somewhat empty to you right now.

What may seem trite now will be profound as you begin to be certain of its reality.

Here is the problem.

Most people do things because they feel like doing them.

They get up in the morning because they feel like going to work, or they feel like avoiding the boss’s questions when they are late, or they feel like avoiding poverty.

We are more feelingdriven than we think.

In depression, you don’t feel.

(Or, whatever you do feel isn’t going to motivate you to do anything profitable.

For example, you feel like dying, screaming, running, disappearing, avoiding).

How can feeling-driven people set goals, have purpose, or get motivated when they don’t feel?

Feelings are a gateway into depression while faith is our guide out of it.

We must learn to believe and act on what God says rather than feel what God says.

This is living by faith.

To paraphrase , “faith is being certain of what we do not feel.”

In other words, when there is a debate between what your feelings say and what Scripture says, Scripture wins.

Any other result and you are essentially telling God that He is not to be trusted.

Here is an example of this new way of living.

You feel like you have no purpose and no hope.

There is no reason to get out of bed, work, love, or live.

You feel it in your entire being.

God, however, counters these feelings on every page of Scripture.

For example,

).

That is

That is a purpose statement.

It is a reason to get out of bed.

You have to fight the paralyzing feelings so you can love another person.

Why bother?

Because it is your personal commission from God Himself, the King of kings.

If you are the King’s servant—and you are—and He asks you to do something, you have just been given a purpose for living.

It is only when the King says that He doesn’t need you anymore that your purpose is done, and this, of course, will never happen with the true God.

He says that His purposes for you last all eternity.

To put your purpose in the broadest terms, your job is to glorify and enjoy God

1 Cori To glorify God means to make His name famous.

His honor and His reputation become more important than your own.

To glorify God means to make His name famous.

His honor and His reputation become more important than your own.

To glorify God.

Does it sound like a cliché?

Although it sounds impractical, it is actually very concrete.

It is carried out in small, sometimes private steps of faith and obedience.

Other people may not see it, but if you do anything because of Jesus and what Jesus did for you—from combing your hair to selling everything you have and being a missionary—then you bring glory to God.

Do you want a tangible incentive?

There is good evidence in Scripture that when you seek God and His kingdom, your troubles will become lighter

).

The Roots of Depression

Physical

EATING

What researchers know, and most people assume, is that individuals with excess weight often suffer from depression.

What is less clear is which comes first.

Could the effects of being seriously overweight directly lead to depression, or does depression itself cause excess weight gain in the first place?

Probably, the answers are “yes” and “yes,” and it may not matter in any practical sense.

Depression and weight gain go hand-in-hand.

EXERCISE

ENVIRONMENT

ELIXIR

What are the Best Preservatives against Melancholy and Overmuch Sorrow?”

If other means will not do, neglect not medicine; and though they will be averse to it, as believing that the disease is only in the mind, they must be persuaded or forced to it.

I have known the lady deep in melancholy, who a long time would neither speak, nor take physic, nor endure her husband to go out of the room, and with the restraint and grief he died, and she was cured by physic put down her throat with a pipe by force.

Spiritual

Spiritual

SIN

SATAN

Satan “possesseth only the souls of the ungodly,” nevertheless he “maketh too frequent motions to the faithful.”

These “motions” can include bodily diseases (he notes the book of Job as an example), but Satan also causes temptations and can inject streams of sinful and blasphemous thoughts and doubts into the mind.

Baxter carefully states that Satan “cannot do what he will with us, but what we give him advantage to do.

He cannot break open our doors, but he can enter if we leave them open.

He can easily tempt a ... phlegmatic body to sloth ... a choleric person to anger ... a sanguine man to lust ...”