Those Who Grieve In Zion
There’s been a lot of talk about depression on my timeline this week. A lot of big names have taken their lives because of it in recent days and months, and more and more people suffering from it are seeking help, even Christians. Sheila Walsh is one who has openly shared about her struggle with anxiety and depression. Michelle Williams recently checked herself into a mental health facility, while pastor Louie Giglio released a book about his comeback from his struggle with depression.
Depression is not a foreign subject in Scripture, so it shouldn’t be one in the church too. Many people hit rock bottom and were even suicidal, including the great prophet Elijah, king David in the Psalms and runaway Jonah. But I want to speak about Paul’s struggle with it. Yep, he’s usually not counted amongst the down and out group of the Bible characters, he’s the great apostle that gave us most of the New Testament after all. But the great revelations he received are one side of the coin, the other side is the things he had to experience and endure to get to the revelation. For instance, he gets to the famous Philippians 4:13 after experiencing poverty. He unlocks God’s power that is made perfect in weakness after being tormented in his flesh. The same goes for his understanding of God’s compassion and comfort, he got to it after having experienced suffering and despair.
“We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. 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, who raises the dead. He has delivered us from such deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us,” 2 Corinthians 1:8-10
Paul tells the story backwards here. He started off by talking about God’s comfort in verse 3, now he tells of the sufferings that warranted that comfort. He makes sure that the Corinthian church knows about their suffering, that they know about the other side of the coin. It is such a mistake that we hide our pain and keep everyone out during our night, only inviting them in when morning comes. No wonder suffering Christians are forced to look for the sin that they must have committed to have attracted their pain. We should do better than Job’s friends. We opt to suffer in silence because we are convinced that only triumphs make a testimony; but Paul wanted them to know about the night before the morning they see. The process IS the testimony.
Paul speaks of the great pressure they were under and is clear that it overwhelmed them, so much so they didn’t want to live through it. He says they felt it in their hearts they were going to die. In other words, they were hopeless, they couldn’t see beyond today. It interests me that Paul says the pressure was beyond what they could handle seeing what he said a few chapters ago in 1 Corinthians 10:13. At first it seems contradictory, how can he say it was beyond his ability to endure when he said God wouldn’t let us be tempted beyond what we could bear?
The key to understanding this truth is in what he says next. ‘God provides a way to stand up under it.’ It is not beyond what we can bear only when God is in the picture. This is why he then says these sufferings happened so that they would rely on God. Without God we cannot handle the pressures of life, they will weigh us down until they destroy us. We cannot deal with the loss of our loved ones, our failed marriages and underperformances. Without God, we stand no chance of surviving even when we have everything we ever wanted. With money in our pockets and a long list of achievements, we will succumb to the voice that calls out in the dark.
When you’re Christian it’s easy to cry to your defence that you have God, you read your Bible and pray every day. Paul also had God, he was busy preaching about him, that’s why he was in the situation in the first place. What Paul learned was that he had to rely on God. To trust Him, to abandon himself completely in His care. To surrender his heart’s deepest feelings and mind’s darkest thoughts to God. To believe God’s every word over his own and to follow without question or concern. It’s so hard it seems impossible, but that’s why God gave us His Holy Spirit who energizes us and empowers us to be ‘able to can’.
God raises the dead. He raised our dead spirits to life when we first came to know him, and he can breathe life through his Spirit on absolutely everything that is dead and dying in our lives. I love how Paul concludes, he acknowledges that God got them out of the dark pit they were in but then goes on to say God will continue to deliver them. I believe he says this because he is aware that life will continue presenting him with challenges that will overwhelm him. But He is hopeful in God, in His consistency in delivering. That’s the hope and comfort of all Christians in all their trouble: God is mighty to save and saves all the time, every day.
If you suffer from depression, don’t suffer in silence. Reach out to someone, seek professional help if you must. But I also encourage you to reach out to God, to trust him with your struggle and to fix your hope on Him. He will be the light in your darkness.
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