Saturday, October 31, 2015

Jesus for the Depressive...

Oh your hands can heal, your hands can bruise
I don't have a choice but I still choose you
-The Civil Wars: Poison & Wine


Many people in America (other parts of the world too but I live here) suffer from depression in some shape or form. I'm not a doctor but I do work in the Mental Health field so I see a lot of things but you don't have to be in that field to see, experience and live many different dark dreams of depression.

Maybe you have experienced it for a short time while grieving the death of a loved one. Maybe you have an aunt, a mother or brother who lives with depression. Maybe you know someone who has sought the ultimate relief from depression and committed suicide. Or maybe, just maybe, you experience it yourself.

Jesus is for the depressive.

I'm not entirely sure but I would wager a guess and say that people suffered from depression during the days Jesus walked the earth. Maybe during Jesus' healing ministry days when he healed the blind, the crippled, the feverishly ill and the demon possessed, maybe he also healed the depressed? Those who cried themselves to sleep, those who never find happiness at parties, with food, with fellowship, with friendship? Those who think of dying so much they never know what it's like to live?

There are those that push memorizing and reading Scripture as a help for depression and I am certainly for that and think it is helpful. But I think we overlook something very simple at times.

Maybe John 5:39-40 will help, “You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me. But you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life.”

It is not in the Scriptures that we have help, it is in the author Himself, the Word of Life, the Word made flesh. It is not in much reading of the Bible that we come to help, not necessarily, it is in calling out to the one who writes these words on our hearts that we are soothed and stilled in our soul.

We would do well to pray the simple prayer of the man who didn't know what to say to Jesus when asking for help in Mark 9:24, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!” It says that he cried out the prayer to Jesus with tears. So, let the depressive cry out with tears to Jesus for help.



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