Hope for The Depressed

Porch, how are we doing tonight? Are we doing okay? It's great to see you. Welcome back. If you're a familiar face, if you've been in the room, we're so glad you're here. If you're new to The Porch, thanks for choosing to give up your Tuesday and join us here. It's amazing to be a part of worship every single week and see how God is working in the lives of young adults right here in Dallas, Texas. I know he's doing it in my life. I believe he's doing it in your life.

But he's not just doing it here; he's also doing it all over the nation. He's doing it in rooms just like this, and he's doing it in some of our Porch.Live locations. We're so grateful we get to be a part of what God is doing there. If you're a part of the Porch family, thanks for tuning in with us as well. I want to give a very special shout-out to a couple of locations: to Porch Fort Worth, our friends just down the way (we love you guys); Porch Midland, our other friends just a little farther west of us here; and Porch Springfield. We love that we get to tune in together.

Well, I've never been skydiving, but over the summer, I got the chance to try the next best alternative. I went indoor skydiving. Has anybody been indoor skydiving before? It is far less superior to the real thing, I would imagine, yet there are a couple of distinct advantages to indoor skydiving than that of outdoor skydiving. I know this because I asked our instructor, who was apparently GOATed as the skydiving expert in our beloved city of Dallas, Texas.

The advantages are these. First, when you indoor skydive, you actually get a longer free-fall experience than you do when you're outdoors. The reason is when you're outdoors, it's estimated that 30 to 60 seconds of your time is spent in free fall, and then, of course, you get to slowly float your way to the ground. If not, then something terribly tragic has happened to you.

But when you go indoors, you actually get 90 seconds of total time, which is awesome. I'm sure they'll give you more. You just have to pay for that. That's the first advantage. The second advantage is you get to fly solo, which is awesome, because it means you don't have a full adult man attached to your back, traversing through the skies, and both falling to your inevitable doom. You get to free-fall by yourself. You get to fly all alone.

So, I'm pumped for it. We show up, we get all of our gear, and we're making our way in line. As we're watching the group in front of us go through all the motions of free falling, we're standing there, killing a little bit of a moment, and I look over to our instructor and just ask him… Trying to be kind and make conversation, but he's also GOATed, so maybe he has something that can help me. I just simply ask the question, "Hey, any final advice for a future free faller?"

He looked at me and said something that has stuck with me to this day. He said, "What you feel determines how you fly. If you feel yourself sinking, then open up your body, spread your hands, and lift your chin. If you feel yourself drifting one direction, then turn your hands the opposite and let it pull you back the other way. Ultimately, though, know this: whatever you do, don't fight the wind; just feel it."

He was right. As I did these things, my experience, which was unlike anything I had ever experienced before, was amazing. I found myself in a situation that I had never encountered, one where the wind was rushing in this tunnel, and I could feel the deafening noise, and my heart was pounding in my chest. Yet in the midst of it all, I knew, so long as I could feel the wind, I wouldn't fall flat on my face. I could actually fly through the air.

Now, why do I tell you that? Because I think his advice is not just good advice for free falling; I think it's good advice for you and me. The reason why is we're going to similarly find ourselves in moments where we're encountering something the likes of which we've never experienced. We're going to be put in a proverbial wind tunnel, and they're going to crank up the engine, and things are going to get crazy.

What we choose to do in that moment, how we respond to whatever we feel, how we process our emotion, is going to determine whether we fall flat on our face or actually fly through the air. You see, you have to know how to process the things that are happening inside. While that seems obvious, human beings are notoriously bad at this. Christians are especially bad at processing what we feel, because we find ourselves camped in one of two extreme categories: we're either all head and no heart or we're the alternative.

For those of you in the room who are all head and no heart, you know what's right, so you do what's right. Even when what's right doesn't feel right, you do it anyway, because right is right and wrong is wrong, and that is that. It doesn't matter if you feel an alternative way. You take those feelings and stuff them very deeply down inside. You suppress them in a way where you never acknowledge them. You lock them away, and you throw away the key. You don't recognize your feelings; you refuse them all together. This is some people's approach whenever their emotions come into play.

Others are not all head and no heart; they're all heart and no head. Rather than suppressing their feelings, they become possessed by them, so much so that when they catch feelings for that guy or that girl, it's all they can think about. It's all they can talk about. It doesn't matter if you're their friend and you have something else you would like to discuss. That's what they're going to talk to you about. If you find yourself cut off in traffic…you know who you are…you wage war against the entire interstate because one passerby chose to take an issue with you. That's your approach. You're possessed, you're consumed, you're overwhelmed by what you feel.

By and large, we go one way or the other. But what if there was a third option? What if you didn't have to go all head or all heart? What if you could actually be both at the same time? Well, that's the option the Bible gives us. It wants to teach us a better way to process what we feel, to not ignore what we feel and to not enable what we feel but to inform what we feel, to inform it with God's truth.

You see, as we read the Word, we find that we should feel all of our feelings, and then we bring them under submission to God's Word. We let him tell us how we process those things. As we do, something amazing happens. What we find is our anxiety turns into peace. Our fear becomes trust. Our anger becomes patience. We engage a kind of spirituality that forms not just what we know but, really, who we are, which is exactly what young adults, people just like you, are wanting.

According to Barna, when asked the question, "What are you looking for when you consider your spiritual beliefs?" young adults, out of 10 different options, all of which were really compelling, selected these three as their greatest desires. They selected inner peace, hope, and healing as the fruit of that which they wanted to be true in their spiritual experience, which is massive.

I don't know if it clicks for you why it's such a big deal, but what that's telling us is we want a spirituality that doesn't just change what we do as much as it changes who we are; that impacts us at a core, internal level; that can fix what has gone wrong; that can heal what has been hurt; that can mend the parts of you that feel unmendable.

What this also does is it strikes, at least me, maybe you, with a really surprising notion that our current reality is not giving us the tools or the solutions we need to actually change who we are. It's surprising, because we live in the most therapized era in human history. Never before has the conversation around mental health been more destigmatized than right now, so much so that people are using therapy language in everyday, regular speech.

We were recently visiting with a girl, and she was telling us that she's falling head over heels for this guy, but she's not sure if it's a legitimate feeling or if it's just the result of some trauma bonding they had as they were fighting traffic at the state fair. I don't necessarily know if traffic qualifies for trauma bonding, but I have my suspicions that it doesn't.

You see, we have adopted mental health language in our regular conversations. We say things like toxic and trauma and manic and OCD and emotional attachment or anxious attachment or codependency or gaslighting in everyday, normal conversation. It's telling us that we live in a moment in history where mental health is more accepted than ever before. But (and this is big) we are nonetheless the most anxious, depressed, and lonely generation that has ever been recorded. Isn't that interesting?

Now, is that telling us that therapy is bad? No, of course not. Correlation does not equal causation, not in every instance. This is not saying that therapy is bad, but it is telling us that therapy isn't enough. What we need to shape our perspective of reality is more than just worldly wisdom. We need God's truth. We need his Word, which is what this entire series is about.

Over the course of the next several weeks, we want to help bring your mental health into proper perspective. To do it, we thought we would work through the book of Psalms. The reason is the book of Psalms is the best teacher on how to feel all of your feelings and then bring those things to God. I don't know if you've read them before, but it is characteristically normal to look at the Psalms and see David freaking out over something, yet, by the end of the psalm, he is presenting his requests to God and is changing at his inmost level.

We think the Psalms will be informative for us as we engage this specific topic for that reason. It teaches us to not stuff our feelings away but to address our feelings with God's truth. To kick off the series, what seemed most plausible was for us to start with that mental health disorder that is most common in our country: depression.

According to the American Psychological Association, depression is a "negative affective state, ranging from unhappiness and discontent to an extreme feeling of sadness, pessimism, and despondency that interferes with daily life." That tells us something really important about depression. It tells us there is a continuum we need to consider, where on one end you have general discouragement and on the other you have very personal despair.

The reason it's important for us to consider that continuum is, in a room this size, with this many people, including all of those who are tuning in online or watching this later, we all can more than likely find ourselves…if not right now, then at some point…on the range of those possibilities. I know that was the case for me.

I never thought in my own life that I would be depressed, yet I found myself, having lived through some specific hardships, being forced into a counselor's office and processing through all of the circumstantial difficulties I had lived through. As a result of that experience, I found out I was situationally depressed. It was paradigm shifting for me in that season. It changed things in a way where it gave some explanation to why I was the way I was, why I was thinking the way I was thinking, why I was feeling the way I was feeling.

It helped me to understand, "Man, this makes sense of why I'm insecure about my job or why I'm irritable in my marriage or why I find myself indifferent about the things I used to love to enjoy. I'm situationally depressed." As I began to process that experience, I would talk to my counselor, a biblical counselor, and she would inform me that I needed to spend some time in the Psalms.

Those psalms ministered to me in a deep way, because this is what the Psalms are useful for. They are useful for explaining our emotion and bringing those things to God's truth and helping form us into new people. Psalm 42 was particularly helpful for me, which is why I want to look at it with you tonight as we talk about depression.

I do think it's important to say, at the outset of this series, every person struggling with mental health needs God's truth, but for some, your challenge is going to be more clinical or physiological than situational. Meaning, God absolutely may choose to heal you completely, but he may also use a combination of the Bible's counsel, God's truth, paired with medication in your life.

In this series, we are going to be speaking more specifically to situational cases. The reason is I know my depth. I'm not a medical professional. I'm not a doctor. I don't intend to stand on this stage and act like I am one. Nonetheless, whether you find yourself facing situational depression or clinical depression, what you have to know is God's Word is vital.

If your situation is more severe…your mental health disorder is one where there is a prescription from a doctor…God's Word can be a really useful partner to whatever has been prescribed. So, with all that said… I just think that's important for us to know at the outset. Now let's get into it. The goal here is I want to help you understand a new perspective on depression, but before we can do that, we have to understand the problem of depression.

So, starting in verse 1, this is what it says: "As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? My tears have been my food day and night, while they say to me all the day long, 'Where is your God?'"

1. Depression starves you of life. That's what the psalmist means when he says he is like a deer thirsting for water. Notice he doesn't say, "As a deer searches for water, so my soul searches for you." That's not what he says. He says, "As a deer pants for water…" Why does that matter? Because it tells us the state of that animal and, thus, the state of our psalmist. He is spiritually dehydrated. He has been deprived of life.

He's at a spot where he has injected the psalm with some drama because he wants God to understand, "I can't do this anymore. I'm at the end of my rope. It feels like I don't have what it takes. Time is running out. Please, God, where are you?" He goes on and says he needs not just a pool of water but flowing streams of water. Isn't that interesting? Why flowing streams? Because a pool of water might satisfy him for a moment, but it's a limited resource. He'll drink to the bottom of it. A flowing stream has an endless supply of life. It is useful for today and tomorrow and forever. That's what he wants.

He knows, "I don't want to be in this situation anymore. I have been deprived of life. I feel starved in my soul. God, give me what is needed so I never have to experience this again." Do you hear it in this passage? There is a starving quality to this guy's experience. There is a starving quality to depression too. It's persistent. I was thinking it's like a marathon that you run in the snow. It goes on for a really long time, and the entirety of the race is miserable. It numbs you out.

You wake up day after day after day, and you just sense in yourself… It's hard to get out of bed. The hobbies you used to really enjoy… You've lost interest in those things. You used to love playing pickleball or going to a run club or hiking through the woods, yet you don't do any of those things now because you are generally pessimistic.

That actually builds on, because your whole attitude, your outlook on life, has probably changed. Where once you were lighthearted, carrying casual conversation, cracking jokes and hoping they landed, now, instead, you see in yourself a negative disposition, one that seems to have a perspective of gloom and despair on the day.

You see, depression takes those things that once gave you life and renders them lifeless. That's the way it works. It starves you of life. But it doesn't just do that. We have to keep understanding the problem. As we read verse 2, it tells us a little bit more. "When shall I come and appear before God? My tears have been my food day and night, while they say to me all the day long, 'Where is your God?'"

2. Depression fills you with despair. Meaning, it doesn't just take away from you what's good. It does that, for sure, but it also gives to you what is bad. It'd kind of be like a cookie jar set on a shelf that has been emptied of its cookies and filled instead with spiders. That's kind of what depression wants to do to you. It wants to empty out what's good and replace that with what's bad.

That's why the psalmist asks himself a question. He says, "When shall I come and appear before God?" That question is actually not a hopeless question. You see, for him… "When shall I come and appear before God?" It's not a matter of if but when. There's an expectation that though he feels far from God right now, God will return to him again.

Yet, as you keep reading, you realize that in verse 3, a secondary question is asked. It goes from when to where, and it's an alternative voice. It's not his but someone else's. As the question of "Where is your God?" is posed to this psalmist, something altogether darker enters the scene. Let me explain it like this.

If I were to ask you, "Hey, when are your friends showing up?" there's nothing offensive or moderately depressive about that question. The expectation behind it is they're on their way or are coming at some point this evening. You have an expectation that they will arrive. But if I ask you, "Hey, where are your friends?" we move from an expectation that they'll come to a question about why they're not here already.

Do you see that? It fills the psalmist with despair. That's how depression works. It wants to fill your mind with the belief that help isn't coming. "There's no way out of this. I know you think a better day might arrive, but you're actually thinking wrong." It's fitting in this passage that it's a different voice than the psalmist who asks the second question, because in our lives, it is often a voice of accusation, the voice of an enemy, that wants you to buy into the belief that help will not come.

When we choose to forego the voice of truth and listen to the voice of condemnation, what happens is we experience in our spirituality some sort of spiral. We find ourselves indulging unhealthy behaviors. We feel down, so we start drinking to try to cut the edge, to cope with a long day. You feel down so you find a sexual outlet. Whether it's pornography or an old boyfriend or girlfriend or masturbation or sexting, you find a sexual outlet, because you want to feel something that seems to be good but in reality is only wrong.

Or you feel down and so you binge. You binge shopping. You binge eating. You binge Netflix. You binge social media. You binge whatever it is that helps you to get through today and arrive at tomorrow. Which raises the question…Why do we do this kind of stuff? Why do we find ourselves locked into a spiritual spiral?

I ask people a similar question relatively often. I'll ask them, "Why do you sin?" which always gets me an interesting response. It typically falls into one of two categories. One response is people will look at me and be like, "Huh? Who do you think you are asking me something like that?" But the second response I'll often get is something that is super spiritual sounding. People will say something along the lines of, "Well, you see, I live in the 'already but not yet.' Though sin has lost its power over me, sin still has a presence in my life."

They're not wrong, and they're speaking truth. Galatians 5:17 says, "For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do." But here's the thing. When you consider why you sin, what I'm trying to get at is…What is your motivation for sinning?

Here's what I would say. I'm pretty well convinced of this. I've done a lot of personal study on the topic. For those in Christ (and that's a really important distinction), for those who have placed their faith in Jesus, you sin because you're sad. What I mean by that is this. Every one of us in life is seeking after satisfaction. That's what we want most.

As believers in Christ, we know where satisfaction is found, that life and life to the full is found in God. Yet, when we seem to fall short of the satisfaction we want in him, what do we do? We seek satisfaction elsewhere, proving the point that we are not satisfied. We are, in fact, sad, and it's our sadness, our lack of satisfaction, that drives us away from him and into the arms of an alternative love.

What we feel in that experience may be a quick hit, something that is fast in satisfaction, but it is not fulfilling. That's why the spiral perpetuates. We just want a quick hit. We don't want something full. So many of us will find ourselves struggling in depressive tendencies when we continue to indulge our sin, because it leads us not toward life but farther from life. It masquerades as being the very thing we want, but it never actually delivers on the promise.

The last thing you have to know if you want to understand the problem is in verse 4. "These things I remember, as I pour out my soul: how I would go with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God with glad shouts and songs of praise, a multitude keeping festival."

3. Depression isolates you from others. You can hear it in this verse. He says, "I used to go with the throng to the house of God." Now, you probably don't refer to your friend group as a throng. Maybe you refer to them as a squad or a group. What he's saying is "I used to go with my peers, my friends, my pals, to the house of God."

It's not just that he would go with them. He even says he used to lead them, which tells us something about the spiritual state of this guy. He was a leader in the church. Like, he was someone you would see in Bible study not sitting in the room but sitting at the front of the room, which, in a roundabout way, is kind of encouraging, because it tells us that you're not spiritually inferior if you struggle with depression. It tells us, instead, that you may be spiritually isolated.

This is exactly what happens to Elijah. What we see in his life, after he faces the prophets of Baal, is Jezebel threatens him. She's like, "Hey, I'm going to do to you what you did to them." So, he runs for his life, and he is isolated from all forms of community, and depression sets in. The threat he thought he faced is replaced by a completely different threat instead, the threat known as himself.

First Kings 19:4 says, "But he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a broom tree. And he asked that he might die, saying, 'It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my fathers.'" You see, there is a real danger in isolation, so much so that it took a man like Elijah, a mighty prophet of God, and provoked him to consider the unimaginable. It provoked him to consider ending it all.

Some of you are here, and I just want to speak to you for a moment, because you get this space. You know those thoughts because you have thought them. You've prayed that prayer because you're so very tired with how things are right now. You yourself have thought about ending it all. If that's you, I want to ask you to do what Elijah did. I want to ask you to choose life.

You see, Elijah believed what you need to believe, that God is in control and has a beautiful plan for your life. There is a group of people here at The Porch, if no one else is available, who want to walk with you through the valley of the shadow of death. You need no ending. It doesn't stop the pain; it just spreads it. Choose life. There is hope.

That is what I want to turn our attention to right now, because this is important. Depression may be your problem, but hope can be your perspective. We want to lead you, by God's Word, into a material change, one where what may have been true is no longer true. Instead, in your life, you've gained a new perspective in place of what was once an old problem. As we read the rest of the psalm, we're going to see how that happens. So, let's keep going.

If you want a new perspective, a perspective of hope, then look at verse 6. He says, "My soul is cast down within me; therefore I remember you from the land of Jordan and of Hermon, from Mount Mizar. Deep calls to deep at the roar of your waterfalls; all your breakers and your waves have gone over me."

1. Hope admits when things are not okay. That's what the psalmist is saying here. He acknowledges that things are not okay. He says, "My soul is cast down within me; therefore I remember you…" Do you see it? He feels his feelings, and he brings them to God. He doesn't put on a strong face and act like everything is okay. He doesn't laugh to keep from crying. He doesn't pull himself up by his spiritual bootstraps because he's a good soldier in the Lord's army. That's not what he does. Instead, he just admits honestly how he's doing.

I love that it says he does so from the land of Jordan and Hermon, from Mount Mizar. You see, he's referencing that area of the land of Israel that was farthest from the house of God. Mount Hermon was the northernmost boundary marker for the nation of Israel when they came to conquer the land of Canaan. So, he's saying, "God, I am as far away from you as humanly possible, yet I will still remember you. I will still seek you and believe the fact that you will come for me."

What's the point of it? He knows (and we need to also) that it's hard to be honest, but it doesn't matter how far off you feel; you need still to be honest. Now, this is crazy, because we do this with one another. People will walk up and be like, "Hey, man, how are you doing?" and you're like, "I'm doing great," and you're actually not doing great. You're kind of suffering. You're smothered. You're drowning in something. It's hard to be honest with one another.

But here's the thing. I want to speak to a different subset, because I often think that while it is difficult to be honest with others, it's often more difficult to be honest with God. Why is that? Because we're too smart for our own good. Rather than admit to God how we're actually doing, what we often do is prematurely apply the truths we know before we even finish praying the prayer we're trying to pray.

It's kind of like autocorrect. I know in my phone, when I first got it, I would type my name Kylen, K-Y-L-E-N, and every time, it would autocorrect to Kyle. That's not my name, but the phone thought it was. It would autocorrect to what it assumed was right. For so many of you, your prayers function a lot like that.

Rather than just admitting, "God, I don't know why this happened in my life…" You can't even get through the prayer before you start to register and autocorrect. "Well, don't forget, though; God works all things according to the good of those who love him." You autocorrect your feelings with truth before you can even express them to the Lord.

For others, instead of processing, "God, I'm so lonely; I'm afraid I'm going to be single for the rest of my life," you'll autocorrect in the middle of your prayer to something along the lines of, "But don't forget; you're not going to be alone for the rest of your life because you have Christ and his church."

Others of you will be praying, "God, I care so much about what other people think of me," but before you can even get the full prayer out, you'll autocorrect to something along the lines of, "Do not forget, though; though you care what other people think of you, you should care more what Christ thinks of you. He has proven that by way of his body and shed blood on the cross."

Am I telling you that you should not preach truth to your feelings? Absolutely not. Of course. The whole premise here is we feel what we feel and bring that to God's truth. But too often, we preach the truth to our feelings and don't speak our feelings to God. I just want to tell you to put a rule in your life, the same way I've had to put a rule in my phone to correct the autocorrect. It should let me communicate what I want to communicate. I need to be able to say my name. You need to be able to tell God what you feel. You need to be able to communicate clearly.

So, here's a rule: "I will not pray the right things before I pray the real things." Now, you will pray the right thing, just not before you pray the real thing. I love the Psalms. I had to cut some of these for the sake of time. Psalm 13:1-2 gives us an example of an honest prayer. It says, "How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?"

Does that feel very right? That's real. God loves an honest prayer more than a polite prayer, so be willing to deal honestly with him. You can admit you're not doing okay. He's wanting for that. He knows it already, so be willing to admit it to him. That's the first thing hope does. The second thing is in verses 8-10.

"By day the Lord commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life. I say to God, my rock: 'Why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?' As with a deadly wound in my bones, my adversaries taunt me, while they say to me all the day long, 'Where is your God?'"

2. Hope clings to God's character. Hope clings to God's character when it's hard. It's funny. The psalmist isn't even done admitting what's all going on. He's in the middle of this thing, and he's still processing to the Lord all that he's experiencing, yet in the middle of it, he reminds himself of who God is.

He says, "Hey, my God is of steadfast love. He is the God who sings over the night. He is the God of my life. He is the God to which I cling as the waves of chaos crash over me." He declares to God who he is. He does what Ben Affleck does in the movie Armageddon. Has anybody seen this? At the very end, the climactic moment, as this planet-killer asteroid is careening toward earth… Time is running out, and everyone is worried that Bruce Willis isn't going to save the day.

Ben remembers his character and says, "Harry will do it. I know it. Harry doesn't know how to fail." He calls to mind Bruce Willis' character. Do you know who else doesn't know how to fail? God. God does not know how to fail. It's your responsibility to remind yourself of that, to call to mind his character. As the world is ending around you, when all hope feels lost, when time is running out, you have to cling to him. It says that he is a rock, one you can anchor yourself to.

So listen. When you struggle to believe that God truly cares, remember he never changes. "For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed." When you struggle to believe God is still good, remember he never changes. "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change."

When you struggle to believe if God is going to keep his word, if he's going to uphold his promises, remember he never changes. "God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?" When you struggle to believe if God actually understands you, remember he never changes.

"Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, 'My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God'? Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable."

When you struggle to believe that God still saves, remember he never changes. "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever." If you want to change your perspective on depression, if you want to adopt an outlook of hope, you have to admit how you're doing. You have to cling to God's character. Lastly, you have to do what verse 11 says. "Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God."

3. Hope speaks back to the lies you've believed before. You see it twice in this passage. It happens in verse 5, and it happens in verse 11. He speaks to his soul. It happens once in Psalm 43, which may be a continuation of this passage. It's profound what he's doing. I love the way Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones explains this specific section in his book Spiritual Depression. He says, "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?" Isn't that crazy to consider?

So, let me ask you: What are you telling yourself? What's the inner voice speaking to your inner man or inner woman? "You're not good enough. You're not good enough. You're not good enough to land that job. You're not good enough for her to notice you. You're not good enough for those people to ask you out. You're always the one who has to initiate. They never think of you. You're not good enough to move into that neighborhood. You're not good enough to lead in that organization. You're not good enough."

Maybe it's not that. Maybe it's "You're too far gone. You're too far gone. It doesn't matter how hard you try, how willing you are to work, or how much effort you're going to give. You know what you've done. You're too far gone. You know what you said to those people. You can't take that back. You know what you did, and they know it too. You know where you've been."

Maybe it's "You're just a burden." You look at yourself, and all you see is "I'm worthless. I offer no value. I have no role within this world. Nobody actually needs me. I'm just a burden to everybody around me. It would be better if I weren't here at all." I don't know what it is for you, but like the psalmist, you have to speak back to those lies. You have to speak into your soul what it needs to hear.

I'll finish with this story. I remember this specific lesson and it being so profound for me when I was going through my own situational depression. If we've not gotten the chance to talk about it here before, I'll tell you now. A big part of my story is I struggled with self-hate for a really long time, and I have to be on guard for it even to this day.

A big part of me really disliked my own hardwiring. I didn't like my personality. I didn't like the quirks in my being. I didn't like the way I looked. I thought the way I interacted with people was funny. I would second-guess or question back the things I had said. I would wonder to myself, "How do those people perceive me?" I never had to worry, "What do others think?" because I often thought worse of myself.

What I realized, as I sat in Psalm 42 and God spoke to me out of his Word, was my inner voice was so very loud. It was so very defeating. But it was only when Christ's voice, by his Spirit, through his truth, began to speak that the defeating voice was defeated, that a victorious voice spoke instead, and it changed my life forever. I found hope in that place, not because of anything I had to offer but because of everything Jesus had to give.

So, if you're here, you need to know you have a reason to hope in God. If you don't feel good enough, you don't need to stroke your ego to make yourself feel better, because the reality is no one was good enough. All of us had gone astray. We were enemies of God, not his children. No one was good. No one was righteous; no, not one. Yet Christ stepped in, and he became good on our behalf. He did what we could not.

If it's "I feel too far gone," you don't need to coddle your emotions and tell yourself something untrue; you need to understand, yes, you were too far gone, for we all were too far gone, yet no one was outside the reach of God's long-stretched arm. Christ would go as far as was necessary to save anyone who would place their faith in him.

Some of you feel like you're just a burden. Here's the thing. You don't have to fool yourself into feeling differently, because we all were a burden. No one had anything good to offer God. No one had any value to bring to the table, yet Christ stepped into our story and offered everything we could not. This is the gospel.

You may feel hopeless, for we all were hopeless, yet for those who believe Jesus Christ is the Son of God sent to save the world, for all who would place their faith in him, you can go from hopelessness to hope. You can move from depression into prosperity. You can believe, "I can have life and have life eternally." Let me pray that you would believe that true for yourself tonight.

Jesus, we know we have reason to hope, for in you we see one who has granted us salvation. I pray, God, please, here tonight, for these friends in this room… I'm asking you, would you work in a way that doesn't just change what we know? So many Christians are content to just learn more, change what they understand, but, God, we don't want to just change what we know; we want to be changed at who we are. We want to be different, God.

For my friends here tonight who are struggling with depression… I don't know where on that range they fall, whether they see themselves as just generally sad or if they find themselves truly despondent. God, I pray here tonight, would you liberate them? As we go into this final song, would they speak to their soul?

Would they say, "Why are you so downcast? Hope in God, for I have good reason to hope, not because of anything I have to give, not because of anything I've ever done, but because of all that Christ has given and all that Jesus has done. I have reason to hope. I will not suppress my feelings; I will feel them in full, yet I will bring all of that emotion to the cross, because it's there that everything can be changed." Please, God, do that now.

There are some here who do not know you. Save them, please, God. There are some here who, as I'm praying, are thinking about what's next. They're wanting to figure out the rest of their evening. They've already discounted this next song, but you, God, have not counted them out yet. You have something even still for them.

There are others, God, who feel like they're in an amazing spot tonight. Lord, they get to rejoice at the fact that you, Jesus, have given them this situation, yet they also can take heart, because they know, "Though the clouds are always moving, the sun above is always shining. My Jesus sits enthroned forever." God, we pray, meet with us here. We want to be more like you. So, would you do that in us, please? We pray in Christ's name, amen.