Archive for the 'Depression' Category

How the greatest paragraph ever written was used to deliver a hymn writer from suicidal depression

Published on March 25, 2010 in Depression, Piper and Romans. 1 Comment

If you struggle with depression – - and, what an awful battle that can be – - consider reading The Hidden Smile of God: The Fruit of Affliction in the Lives of John Bunyan, William Cowper, and David Brainerd (The Swans Are Not Silent), but, first read this post and Romans 3:21-26.

John Piper told this story this as part of a sermon on Romans 3:21-26, what some theologians say is the greatest paragraph ever written.

Most nights as I tuck Talitha into bed she says, “Sing me a song.” The one we sing most often is one of my favorites by William Cowper,

God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform;
He plants his footsteps in the sea,
And rides upon the storm.

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take;
The clouds you so much dread,
Are big with mercy and will break
In blessings on your head.

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,
But trust him for his grace;
Behind a frowning providence
He hides a smiling face.

His purposes will ripen fast
Unfolding every hour;
The bud may have a bitter taste,
But sweet will be the flower.

Deep in unfathomable mines
Of never-failing skill,
He treasures up his bright designs
And works his sovereign will.

Blind unbelief is sure to err
And scan his work in vain;
God is his own interpreter,
And he will make it plain.

What Talitha doesn’t know, but may learn some day is that, in 1759 when Cowper was 28 years old, he had a total mental breakdown and tried three different ways to commit suicide. He became convinced that he was damned beyond hope. In December, 1763, he was committed to St. Alban’s Insane Asylum, where the 58-year-old Dr. Nathaniel Cotton tended the patients. By God’s wonderful design, Cotton was also an evangelical believer and lover of God and the gospel.

He loved Cowper and held out hope to him repeatedly in spite of Cowper’s insistence that he was damned and beyond hope. Six months into his stay, Cowper found a Bible lying (not by accident) on a bench in the garden. First he looked at John 11 and saw “so much benevolence, mercy, goodness, and sympathy with miserable men, in our Saviour’s conduct” that he felt a ray of hope. Then he turned to Romans 3:25, our text for today. This was a key turning point in his life.

Immediately I received the strength to believe it, and the full beams of the Sun of Righteousness shone upon me. I saw the sufficiency of the atonement He had made, my pardon sealed in His blood, and all the fulness and completeness of His justification. In a moment I believed, and received the gospel.

In June, 1765, Cowper left St. Alban’s and lived and ministered 35 more years – not without great battles with depression, but also not without great fruit for the kingdom, like the hymns, “There is a Fountain Filled with Blood,” “O for a Closer Walk with God!” and “The Spirit Breathes upon the Word.”

Feeling a little down as the Season comes to an end?

Published on January 1, 2010 in C.S. Lewis, Chris Brauns Radio Spots, Depression and Disappointment. 2 Comments

I think the reason many are depressed over the holidays is because they do not know how to interpret the yearnings of their soul.

I don’t suppose that there is anyone who has not experienced yearnings or longings of the soul – Augustine said that he experienced them when he read Plato – -  he felt as though he was looking at a peaceful valley from a wooded ridge – -  a nostalgic feeling — that there was a beautiful place that he couldn’t quite access.

Lewis wrote a great deal about these longings and and called them “joy’ – -but, he didn’t mean simple happiness, but rather a yearning.

“The experience is one of intense longing. It is distinguished from other longings by two things. In the first place, though the sense of want is acute and even painful, yet the mere wanting is felt to be somehow a delight.” See Pilgrim’s Regress, page 7.

The Germans call this longing Sehnsucht (ZANE-zoocht): yearnings and searchings of the soul (Plantinga, Engaging God’s World, 4).

I haven’t heard Bono talk about it recently, but at least in the 80’s U2, “Still hadn’t found what they were looking for.”  That was a song about “sehnsucht.”

Plantinga (page 3) gave this example of sehnsucht, “certain people feel a kind of delicious sadness on what seems to be the last day of summer.”

The Stones called it “satisfaction” and from the sounds of things were very angry they couldn’t get it.

Most feel it at Christmas time, and my point here is that the reason so many are inconsolably depressed is because they don’t know what to do with Sehnsucht: the longings of the soul. 

Borrowing from Lewis, if you don’t know what I am talking about here – – move on to a different blog – – because this one isn’t going to make any sense.

But, if you do know what I mean by these intense longings – – then you will probably agree that more than any other season, at Christmas time we have a yearning for something wonderful that seems just beyond our reach – -

And, it is imperative that these yearnings be properly interpreted.   We must realize that these longings of our soul are a longing for God and they will be ultimately fulfilled only on the New Earth.

So many get in trouble at this time of the year, because they convince themselves that these can be fulfilled now – – and when the yearnings of their soul are not satisfied, then they find themselves mired in depression.

You want to see someone depressed (or sometimes mad)?  Find someone who thought that the longings of their soul would be satisfied by having Christmas done in a particular way – – then when they couldn’t get “any satisfaction,” they looked for someone or some circumstance to blame.

Here is what we must do.  Recognize the longings of the soul for what they are. . . they are not needs that can be met in Christmas 2007 by circumstances or relationships within Creation – – rather, they are signs pointing us to Christ – – as Yancey said, they are “Rumors of Another World.”

Lewis’ testimony is all about how he finally figured out sensucht. . . not that he ever got over it.

“I believe (if the thing were at all worth recording) that the stab, the old bittersweet, has come to me as often and as sharply since my conversion as at any time of my life whatever. But I now know that the experience, considered as a state of my own mind, had never had the kind of importance I once gave it. It was valuable only as a pointer to something other and outer. While that other was in doubt, the pointer naturally loomed large in my thoughts. When we are lost in the woods the sight of a signpost is a great matter. He who first sees it cries, “look!” The whole party gathers round and stares. But when we have found the road and are passing signposts every few miles, we shall not stop and stare. They will encourage us and we shall be grateful to the authority that sets them up. But we shall not stop and stare, or not much; not on this road, though their pillars are of silver and their lettering of gold. ‘We should be at Jerusalem.’ Not, of course, that I don’t catch myself stopping to stare at roadside objects of less importance.” C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy.

Know this at Christmas: Your soul will only find rest in Christ (Psalm 62); what you are longing for is God.  Savor him now – – and be excited on that morning when we will open the present of a New Creation and eternity in his presence (Revelation 21:3-5).

Reposted.

Don’t Ask the Depressed, “How Are You Doing?”

Published on August 12, 2009 in Chris Brauns Radio Spots, Depression and Psalms. 2 Comments

Let me tell you something to avoid asking a friend who is feeling down. I am not saying it is always wrong, but be careful. Ask this question and you may make the situation worse.

Here is the question to avoid, “How are you doing?” “How’s it going for you?”

Not always, but often, people think themselves into a mental tailspin. Introspection, thinking about how you feel, can be a kind of mental quicksand. When you ask a person with that struggle, “How are you doing?” You only encourage him or her to continue focusing inward.

Psalm 77:1-20 is the story of someone in a mental battle. The Psalmist said he couldn’t sleep and felt like God was against him. Twice (Psalm 77:3,6) he says that he “mused.” I looked that word up. “To muse” means to turn things over and over in ones mind without achieving any resolution.

The turning point came when the Psalmist stopped thinking about how He was doing and began to focus on God. He asked Himself, “Has God’s unfailing love failed?” (Psalm 77:7-9) The answer to that question is obviously “no.”

So, maybe instead of asking people how they are doing, we should ask them, “How is God doing?” (Psalm 77:12)

The answer to that question is that God is glorious. There is none like Him. He never sleeps or slumbers and He always accomplishes exactly what He seeks to do. He is a loving, merciful God. And, If you are truly a Christian, then He works all things together for your good (Romans 8:28).

On the Suicide of Vincent van Gogh

Published on July 29, 2009 in Depression and Recommended Links. 0 Comments

image Fred Sanders has written a reflection on van Gogh that will forever cause me to think differently about van Gogh’s painting, A Starry Night.  Indeed, Sanders makes me want to visit the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Fred Sanders:

Today (July 29) is the day in 1890 when Vincent van Gogh died from a gunshot wound he had inflicted on himself two days earlier, leaving behind many questions.

That van Gogh was mentally tormented throughout his life is widely known. It is an unavoidable subject for biographers, but also an irresistible subject for anybody who has ever stood in front of a van Gogh painting and had one of those embarassingly strong physiological responses his art can induce: the lump in the throat, the tear in the eye, the bottom dropping out of the stomach, the head reeling, the giddiness, the speeding pulse. Or there is the most common of the strong responses to his work: a feeling of overwhelming joy and delirious well-being. The question is inevitable: How could a man capable of seeing so penetratingly into the joy of being, of capturing it on canvas, of stimulating a like response in others, have been so comfortless in life and so despairing in death?

These questions lurk in the back of the mind of anybody who has encountered van Gogh’s paintings. But even if you didn’t know the scraps of his biography that are common knowledge (he was a failed missionary, he cut off his own ear, he was committed to an asylum, he took his own life), and didn’t wonder about the contradiction between life and art, the art itself would pose intractable enough questions: How did van Gogh make paintings that can hit people in the gut so hard? Is it the way that, even in the smallest paintings, he constructed a phenomenological space, a space that is more like the way space feels than the way it looks? Is it the uncanny color choices, about which he theorized at such length in his letters? Is it the wildness of the brush-work, which lets us see exactly how the image was crafted in the studio?

A last set of questions: How did van Gogh’s Christian faith inform his work and shape his later life?

Read the rest here.

Why You Should Talk To Yourself

Published on January 22, 2009 in Depression. 3 Comments

Jollyblogger quotes Martyn LLoyd-Jones on why we need to talk to ourselves.

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? Take those thoughts that come to you the moment you wake up in the morning. You have not originated them, but they start talking to you, they bring back the problems of yesterday, etc.
Somebody is talking. Who is talking? Your self is talking to you. Now this man’s treatment was this; instead of allowing this self to talk to him, he starts talking to himself. “Why art thou cast down, O my soul?” he asks. His soul had been depressing him, crushing him. So he stands up and says: “Self, listen for a moment, I will speak to you . . .”
The main art in the matter of spiritual living is to know how to handle yourself. . . .

Read more here.

Counseling Resources

Published on July 25, 2008 in Depression, Disappointment and death. 0 Comments

If you are struggling with divorce, recovering from child abuse, you are facing death, or a number of other specific counseling problems, I would recommend that you review this series of booklets from the Christian Counseling and Education Foundation (click here).

If you are part of our church family, I have ordered the whole set.  You can glance at one and see if you are interested.

HT: Justin Taylor (who gives a nice summary of the booklets here).

The Quicksand of Depression

Published on July 13, 2008 in Chris Brauns Radio Spots and Depression. 2 Comments

Ever suffer from depression? Ever get sucked into emotional quicksand.  Telling yourself to snap out of it, or trying reason up out of the muck only makes it worse?

Abraham Lincoln once said about his depression.

“I am now the most miserable man living,”  . . . “If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one cheerful face on the earth. . . Whether I shall ever be better I can not tell . . .  To remain as I am is impossible; I must die or be better.”

Great pastors have been swamped by depression too.  Charles Spurgeon was one of the greatest preachers ever.  But, his church leaders once informed his congregation:

“You are anxious to hear about our poor pastor – - he is very bad.  Very bad I say, not from any injuries or bruises he has received, but from the extreme tension on his nerves and his great anxiety.  So bad is he that we were fearful for his mind this morning.  . . .”

Spurgeon said that he could not think himself out of his depression.  He said that his thoughts were like knives shredding his heart into pieces.

And, King David wrote about depression.  In Psalm 69 David said it was like being in deep filthy mud where there is no foothold

. . . . . Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck. I sink in the miry depths, where there is no foothold. I have come into the deep waters. . . My eyes fail, looking for my God (Psalm 69:1-3).”

Listen.  If you are feeling depressed – - really blue – - really down, then this spot is for you.  Friend, you are not alone, not the only one who feels so down.  The Bible and the church of the Lord Jesus Christ have answers, not only about where you will spend eternity, but about where you are emotionally today.

I am Chris Brauns from the Red Brick Church in Stillman Valley.  If you had a hard time even getting out of bed this morning.   Listen to some good Christian music, read some Psalms, and get Christ and Word centered help.  Our web site is www.theredbrickchurch.org.

William Cowper and Depression

Published on January 27, 2008 in Chris Brauns Radio Spots and Depression. 2 Comments

If you are someone who struggles with depression, you might appreciate the story of William Cowper who lived in the 1700′s.

Despite being a gifted poet and writer, Cowper struggled with depression so much that he was institutionalized.  It was in an asylum that he read the Bible and understood that salvation is found in Christ.

Continue reading ‘William Cowper and Depression’