“You just don’t have enough faith.” “It’s all in your head.” If you’re a Christian who’s been touched by depression, you’ve likely heard one or both of those before.
The Bible says, “A merry heart does good, like medicine, but a broken spirit dries the bones” (Proverbs 17:22).
How should we understand and respond to depression in the context of God, of faith, and the Christian life? If you are a Christian who experiences depression, or if you know someone who does, you might have heard someone treat depression as a switch you could flick to the off position if you wanted to feel better. Some people seem to assume biblical counsel sounds like, “I mean, haven’t you tried just being happy?”
Oh, I really never thought of that, thank you so much!
That’s not what I want to tell you today. The Bible does not teach that depression is always easy to handle.
To talk about depression from a Christian perspective, we must first understand three facts about depression, and then, there are three things I want you to know about God.
Fact #1: Depression is a real part of life.
Depression is a real part of life. When you read the narratives of the Bible, you won’t only find people living in the sunshine, serving God with a smile all the time. Life is hard, and the Bible tells stories from real life. God’s people back then experienced the same kinds of problems we experience now, and that includes times of depression. Think about Job, when he wished he had died at birth (Job 3). Think about Elijah, when he felt alone and prayed for God to take his life (1 Kings 19). Think about Jeremiah, who was beaten down and ready to quit, joining Job in wishing he had never been born (Jeremiah 20). Think about Peter, when he ran away after denying Jesus, and he “wept bitterly” (Luke 22:62). Think about Paul and his companions, when he described their trouble in Asia as a burden above measure, a trial beyond their strength to handle, causing them to despair of life itself (2 Corinthians 1:8). Depression is a real part of life, and Christians are not immune.
Notice that all these biblical experiences were reactive, whether to negative circumstances, outside of the person’s control, or to self-caused problems. Depression usually doesn’t come out of nowhere; it sets into our minds in response to something else, our emotions giving us physiological information about how we perceive both our environment and ourselves. In difficult cases, those emotions begin reshaping how we interpret our lives.
But emotions themselves are not sinful. It is not wrong to feel deep grief, sorrow, regret, loneliness, or downheartedness. It is not wrong to feel despair and even want to quit, like Elijah and Jeremiah. Godly people are not heartless, unfeeling stoics; Jesus felt deep emotions, too, and the Bible calls Jesus a “man of sorrows,” a person “acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3). Emotions are not sinful, but emotions always offer us choices. For example, anger offers us a choice, to let it rule our lives and interactions or to calm it with patience and forgiveness, which is why the Bible says, “Be angry, and do not sin” (Ephesians 4:26). So, since depression is a real part of life, the question is: how will we respond when life hasn’t gone the way we wanted? Some people make depression their identity; they wallow in self-pity to the point of selfishness. Will we let depression rule our lives, or will we seek God through it and choose to trust His control?
Fact #2: Not all depression is the same.
Every person goes through seasons in life of sadness, loneliness, grief, lack of motivation, or melancholy feelings, and people of different personalities have different reactions to these experiences. Different people have different capacities for handling emotions. They express those emotions in different ways, and they have different support structures and coping mechanisms for those emotions. We should not expect every person to handle life emotionally the same way, even when they are reacting to similar circumstances.
In particular, realize that not all experiences of depression are symptoms of a mood disorder, what we might call clinical depression, even if the depressing emotions are long-lasting or recurring. Now, clinical depression does exist, and like any physical condition, it may require medical treatment; but do not assume you have clinical depression only because you experience a kind of depression, even with ingrained negative feelings.
Please note: I am not a medical expert or licensed counselor, so I cannot give professional advice, and that is not the purpose of this article. If you think you may have a mood disorder, please see a professional.
Fact #3: God can get you through depression.
Whatever your experience with depression looks like, you need God—we all do. I do not mean that you just need to flip a switch and have more faith, and I do not mean that Christianity is like a fairy wand you can wave over your depression to make it disappear. Dealing with depression is hard, but you can be a faithful Christian through it and live with joy, peace, and hope. The Bible is full of commands to rejoice and promises of peace. But I know, in my own life, those commands and promises have sometimes felt like blunt force weapons beating me up more whenever I’m depressed, because now it adds guilt: Am I not a good Christian, because I feel this way? But God’s statements of joy and peace were never meant to be intimidating; they are encouraging, because they are promising. God can get you through depression. We have hope!
So, if you are a Christian who experiences depression, here are three things I want you to know about God.
I want you to know…
God knows you.
He knows you. God created you, all of you—your body, your soul, your mind, and your heart. In fact, God told Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you” (Jeremiah 1:5). You have been in the mind of God since before you were conceived. God knows exactly who you are, and He knows your experiences. He has always been watching over you. Psalm 90:1–2 says,
Lord, You have been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever You had formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God.
God has seen everything in your life which has made you the person you are today, even those things you never realized were shaping you. God knows you better than you know yourself, which includes your challenges. Maybe you are like me, and when you run into a problem with something, one of the first things you do is go to Google to check if anyone else has encountered the same problem and knows how to help you. If I am lucky, I find either some obscure YouTube video or some buried thread on Reddit where someone knows that problem and figured it out before. When it comes to any of your experiences in life, including depression, God knows your challenges. Trust the God who knows you. He knows how to help.
I want you to know…
God loves you.
He loves you. God is not someone distant and aloof, detached from your daily concerns and struggles. The God we meet in the Bible is present and caring, even when He seems far away from our perspective. You can cast “all your care upon Him, for He cares for you” (1 Peter 5:7).
Two words in the Bible help me appreciate that God cares about me. One of the most difficult chapters of depression in the Bible is Psalm 88; it is a psalm of lament that, unlike most others, does not end with a statement of faith or hope. But in Psalm 88:2, the troubled writer says, “Incline Your ear to my cry.” The word is incline—to stretch out, to bend and lean over. When God’s children are in trouble or depressed, and we pray and cry out to God, what does God do? All of heaven pauses while God stoops down, leans over, and inclines His ear to hear His child. Why? Because God loves you.
The second word is found in James 5:11, which says, “Indeed we count them blessed who endure. You have heard of the perseverance of Job and seen the end intended by the Lord—that the Lord is very compassionate and merciful.” The phrase “very compassionate” translates one word from the original text, “πολύσπλαγχνος”—the prefix “poly,” meaning “many,” and then—this is interesting— “splagchnos,” a word referring to the internal organs or the gut, which the Greeks used metaphorically to describe someone’s deepest feelings or desires, like we might say “a gut instinct.” So what does this word tell us about the Lord? When we endure suffering, God feels for us in His core, the deepest heart of who He is. He is “very compassionate and merciful.” God loves you!
I want you to know…
God wants you.
He wants you. When you think about your relationship with God, even when it does not feel at all to you like you think it should, know that God isn’t merely tolerating you while being constantly disappointed with how you are performing spiritually. God isn’t putting up with you as an unwanted burden on His infinite kindness and goodness. No, because God knows you and loves you, God wants to be with you, and He wants you to be with Him.
Perhaps no passage tells us that God wants us like Hosea 11. The first seven verses of Hosea 11 describe Israel’s rebellion against God, how they abandoned the heavenly Father who saved them, loved them, and took care of them, choosing instead to worship other gods (idols) and live sinfully like the very oppressors from which God saved them. But in the middle of this condemnation, God stops and says,
How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I set you like Zeboiim? My heart churns within Me; My sympathy is stirred. I will not execute the fierceness of My anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim. For I am God, and not man, the Holy One in your midst; and I will not come with terror.
Hosea 11:8–9
When you think of the heart of God for His children, and for you as a Christian, never imagine that God is so frustrated with you that He wants nothing to do with you anymore. Even when God is angry at sin, all He wants is to forgive, and love, and be with His people. So how much more when you want to please God and are hurting from depression? God is not going to give up on you. He wants you!
Whatever your experience with depression looks like, it is a real and difficult part of life—for now. God can help you endure this aspect of life—to realize all His blessings, to find joy and peace, to overcome. Romans 8:37 says, “Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.” And God promises that there will be no more tears, no sorrow, no crying, and no more pain, when we live forever in His presence, the Father who knows us, loves us, and wants us—when we are home with Him. The Christian hope of victory over sin and death includes hope for victory over depression.
God can help, and God’s word can help. If you’re looking for something more personal, reach out to us. We’d love to spend some time with you in prayer and Bible study.