If you’re a Christian, you’ve received it. And if you’re not, you need it. It’s forgiveness. Dr. David Jeremiah returns to the thirty-second Psalm to share how God’s forgiveness impacted King David and continues to change lives today. How are we to respond because God forgives us?

The dictionary defines depression as low spirits, gloomy feelings, dejection, sadness, a condition marked by feelings of worthlessness, failure, and accompanying guilt.
Sometimes the word depression is used very generally to describe a lot of things, but I wanna make sure we understand what we’re gonna talk about today as we read this chapter in a moment.
Depression is more than just a case of the blues.
Perhaps the best way to help us understand that is a phrase that I read this week.
It says depression is embodied emotional suffering. Embodied emotional suffering.
In other words, It’s not just a state of mind or a negative view of life, but something that affects our physical being as well.
Signs of a severe episode of depression include unfounded negative evaluations of friends and family and oneself.
Emotional pain, physical problems like lethargy, difficulty getting your thoughts together, virtually no interest in your surroundings.
But it’s not just having a bad day. We’ve all had bad days.
You probably had a couple this week. But depression is far more than that.
Depression takes over your body and begins to express itself and some of the things I have just discussed.
It was a notable Sunday morning back in eighteen sixty six.
And the famous British preacher Charles Haddon spurgeon shocked his five thousand listeners as he got up in London’s Metropolitan Tabernacle and began a sermon from Isaiah forty one, and this was his introduction.
He said, I have to speak today to myself, and while I shall be endeavoring to encourage those who are distressed and downhearted.
I shall be preaching. I trust to myself for I need something which shall cheer my heart.
Why I cannot tell, wherefore I do not know, but I have a thorn in the flesh a messenger of Satan to buffet me.
My soul is cast down within me. I feel as if I had rather die than live.
All that god has done by me seems to be forgotten and my spirit flags, and my courage breaks down.
And I need your prayers. Now you just stop and think about what you would be thinking right now if I had introduced that sermon, and that was me.
For some of his audience, it was an incomprehensible thought that this world’s greatest preach Charles Haddon spurgeon would confess to such despair, but John Henry Jowett, who was the renowned pastor of fifth presbyterian church in New York City, and later of Westminster Chapel in London wrote to a friend, and he said, you seem to imagine that I have no ups and downs.
But just a level and lofty stretch of spiritual attainment, unbroken joy, by no means, I am often perfectly wretched and everything appears most murky.
Martin Luther, the great reformer was subject to such fits of darkness that he would hide himself away for days, and his family would remove all dangerous implements from the house.
For fear that he would hurt himself.
In the midst of one of these times, he wrote for more than a week, I was as close to the gates of death and hell as one can be.
I trembled in all my members.
Christ was wholly lost to me, I was shaken by desperation and blaspheme me of god.
Reformer John Knox prayed, lord Jesus received my spirit and put an end to my miserable life.
At an Iram Judd, America’s first foreign missionary, suffering from a deep depression following his wife’s death wrote, God to me is the great unknown.
I believe in him, but I cannot find him.
And John Bunion, who wrote pilgrims progress, said sometimes I should be assaulted with such discouragement, fearing that I should not be able to speak the word at all.
At such times, I should have such strange fateness, and my legs have scarce been able to carry me.
Jeremiah, the prophet said, curse to be the day in which I was born.
Elijah experiencing deep depression as he cries out. It is enough now, lord.
Take my life where I am no better than my father’s.
And Jay Oswald, one of the great writers of our generation said speaking of Elijah and Moses, he said, is it not without its comfort that the two men who conversed with the lord on the mount of transfiguration both broke under the strain of their ministry and prayed that they might die.
The dictionary defines depression as low spirits, gloomy feelings, dejection, sadness, a condition marked by feelings of worthlessness, failure, and accompanying guilt.
Sometimes the word depression is used very generally to describe a lot of things, but I wanna make sure we understand what we’re gonna talk about today as we read this chapter in a moment.
Depression is more than just a case of the blues.
Perhaps the best way to help us understand that is a phrase that I read this week.
It says depression is embodied emotional suffering. Embodied emotional suffering.
In other words, it’s not just a state of mind or a negative view of life, but something that affects our physical being as well.
Signs of a severe episode of depression include unfounded negative evaluations of friends and family and oneself.
Emotional pain, physical problems like lethargy, difficulty getting your thoughts together, virtually no interest in your surroundings.
But it’s not just having a bad day. We’ve all had bad days.
You probably had a couple this week. Depression is far more than that.
Depression takes over your body and begins to express itself and some of the things I have just discussed.
Now in the book of Job, we are going to see one of the most profound statements of depression you will ever read in your life.
In the third chapter, we begin our understanding of this book by experiencing Job’s depression with him.
Job is standing basically naked before god.
Anything or anyone who he may have counted on for help or encouragement has been taken away from him.
His health is gone. His wealth is gone. His family is gone. His wife has abandoned him.
And unknown to Job is the fact that he has been the object of a challenge between god and satan.
He only knows one thing. He knows the pain of his own life. His misery is indescribable.
His outlook is hopeless. And while he rejects the advice of Satan and his wife to curse god and die, job is despairing of his life.
Weeks have gone by since he was first afflicted with the terrible disease described in chapter two.
Besides the physical pain and the emotional and spiritual anguish, Job was a man with a broken body and a broken spirit.
As he sits on the ash heap outside the city, we are not left to wonder what is going through his mind.
For later on in the book of Job in chapters twenty nine and thirty, we hear Job speaking of things as they used to be and as they now are.
He’s thinking about how in days past god took care of him, that he felt the friendship of god in his home.
He remembers when all of his children were around, and his life was prospering, and the elders of the city honored him.
And the young man of the city stepped aside and reverenced him when he walked by.
Even the highest officials in this city stood up in respect for Job.
But that was then, and this is now. Now the young man make fun of him.
I am a joke to them, he writes. They spit in my face.
They lay traps for my path.
They come at me from all directions He says, I live in terror with no one to help.
Depression haunts my days. I cry to god, but I get no answers.
My voice of joy and gladness has turned into mourning.
This is what’s playing on the track of Job’s mind as he sits outside the city.
And there’s still been no indication. That god intends to explain to Job what he’s doing.
To Job, this experience is totally void of meaning.
One writer says few things are harder to bear than meaningless suffering.
If we could see some reason for what we have to go through, we could more easily endure it.
But pointless trouble is corrosive to our souls.
Now there are many who have wondered how such a sweeping change could come over Job from chapter two to chapter three, from radical saintliness in chapter two to unseemly despair in chapter three.
But by this stage, it should be clear that an entirely new trial has now overtaken Job.
The trial of depression, of deep mental spiritual trauma.
The terrible disasters of the first chapter Job managed to weather, and he even maintained his piety in the process.
But now the battlefront has shifted from the outside to the inside.
Now it is Job’s inner psychic life, his very soul that is under direct satanic attack.
In the words of Proverbs eighteen fourteen, a man’s spirit sustains him in sickness, but a crushed spirit who can bear.
And so Job begins to lament in the third chapter, sitting there on the ash heap outside of the city.
For the first time, he really begins to talk And it’s evident that something’s really happened in Job.
He’s he’s become full of depression and despair.
The chapter is made up of three laments, three cries on the part of Job.
And the first one, uh, I’ve called this, Lord, why did I arrive? Why did I arrive?
Then verses one through ten, we read these words.
After this, Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth.
And Job spoke and said, may the day perish on which I was born, and the night in which it was said a male child is conceived.
May that day be darkness, may god above not seek it, nor the light shine upon it, may darkness, and the shadow of death claim it, may a cloud settle on it may the blackness of the day terrify it as for the night may darkness seize it.
May it not rejoice among the days of the year may it not come into the number of the months?
Oh, may that night be barren? May no joyful shout come into it?
May those curse it who curse the day?
Those who are ready to erouse leviathan, may the stars of its morning be dark?
May it look for light, but have none and not see the dawning of the day?
Because it did not shut up the doors of my mother’s womb nor hide sorrow from my eyes.
Joe was saying, why did I even arrive? Why was I even born?
And he begs that the night of his conception, and the day of his birth be blotted off of the calendar.
These words are the words of a man who is so broken that no longer cares what he says.
He has come to believe that the only solution to his set of woes is for him never to have been born in the first place.
He has lost his perspective of god at this point. He’s overreacted.
He’s made exaggerated statements He’s jumped to wrong conclusions. He’s losing sound judgment.
And that’s the way depression works, isn’t it? Depression affects a person’s view of life.
It gives a twisted perception of reality, a distorted view of god.
When believers become discouraged, especially over an ended period of time, they can lose a right perspective on life and draw wrong and exaggerated conclusions.
Such dark nights of the soul can cause us to see life in a way that does not square with reality.
And Job understands that. Turn over to chapter six, and notice in chapter six verses two and three.
Joe realizes that he has spoken in a way that he should not have spoken.
He said, oh, that my grief were fully weighed, and my calamity laid with it on the scales.
For then it would be heavier than the sand of the sea. Therefore, my words have been rash.
Job acknowledges that in his crying out in the midst of his anguish. He has spoken rashly.
He has spoken words. He probably shouldn’t have spoken. He continues his lament with this thought.
Lord, if I had to be born, why couldn’t have I just died at birth?
So the second question is not why did I arrive, but why did I survive?
And in verses eleven and twelve, Job expresses the fact that he wished that he had died in childbirth.
He says, why did I not die at birth?
Why did I not perish when I came out of the womb, or why did the knees receive me, or why the breasts that I should nurse?
In his present state of depression, Job can find no reason for his life.
He cannot understand why god would have allowed him to even survive his birth if all these tragedies were gonna happen to him.
Job’s reference to knees here is an interesting thing because it’s a reference to a Hebrew custom in which a newborn child would be placed upon the father’s knee as the mark that the father received the child as his own.
Joe wondered why his mother sustained his life at birth and did not just abandon him if he was going to have a life that ended up like this.
That’s the way people talk and the way they think when they are depressed.
Not only does he help us here to understand his desire for death but he describes death as he understands it, and and I need to tell you in verses thirteen through nineteen, Job has a very uninformed concept of death.
He says for now I would have lain still and been quiet. I would have been asleep.
Then I would have been at rest with kings and counselors of the earth who built ruins for themselves or with princes who had gold, who filled their houses with silver.
Or why was I not hidden like a stillborn child, like infants who never saw light, there the wicked ceased from troubling, and there the weary are at rest.
There are the prisoners rest together.
They do not hear the voice of the oppressor, the small and greater there, and the servant is free from his master.
Please understand men and women that the Bible is a progressive revelation.
Many seed concepts grow and develop in the old testament, and do not really bear fruit until you come to the new testament.
As far as we can discover, at no time did the Hebrews ever think about death as total extinction?
But Job here is expressing death as a hopeful relief for what he’s experiencing in life.
He sees death as a time and place of rest and relief from everything he’s been suffering.
He believes it to be the great equalizer He speaks of kings and counselors of the earth with whom he would be in association.
Job was once rich. Remember, now he’s poor.
And he sort of feels like maybe if I die I can recover my status among the kings and the counselors.
And he even says that the wicked here ceased from turmoil in death.
And that shows the total depth of his depression.
For in essence, he would rather be with the wicked in death than to be alive in the misery that he was experiencing.
Now we should not be too critical of Job.
For he did not know what we know. Therefore, what he is saying is wrong.
Absolutely wrong. Somebody said, I thought there went anything wrong in the Bible. Well, Listen to me.
The Bible accurately speaks of the things people say that are wrong.
Inspiration isn’t just that everything in the Bible is absolutely true.
The Bible is absolute, absolutely true about everything that’s in the Bible.
And so the Bible is speaking here honestly about what Job was experiencing.
And Job only understood death through his very, very limited knowledge of what death was all about.
And he’s wrong about death, as we now know, because we have the new testament that helps us shine light on the old testament.
He’s wrong, and so are all those today who think that death is annihilation.
Some people teach that death is not nothing but a deep, dreamless sleep that puts an end to all earthly troubles and trials.
That is the tragedy of the thousands every day in this country who deliberately seek death as an escape from the burdens of life.
The Bible teaches consistently that death is no dreamless sleep or state of non existence, but it brings us into the presence of the eternal god.
To whom we must give an account, the Bible says it is appointed unto men, wants to die.
And after that, the judgment, people ask me everywhere I go.
If we ever have a question in an answer time, pastor, let me ask you this If somebody commits suicide, does that mean that we’re gonna go to hell and they can’t go to heaven?
Of course not. If a person is a Christian, and they take their own life that doesn’t cancel out their Christianity any more than any other sin would do it.
But I like to remind people that it’s not a good thing to do.
There’s always hope, and that’s never the answer, and you need to understand the first person you’re gonna see after you do that is the god of heaven who created you and gave you life in the first place.
Maybe some of you are here today, maybe your life is so unraveled and so messed up.
You’re you’ve even thought this week about taking your life. Don’t you dare. God loves you.
He sent his son to provide salvation for you, and there is hope for you.
The enemy would like to have you curse god and die.
That’s what he tried to get Job to do, but don’t you don’t you take his word?
Whatever that negative stuff in that’s going on in your heart is is not from god. It’s from the enemy.
You gotta decide who you’re gonna believe, and I’m here to tell you I don’t know anybody who is beyond the reach of a loving god, including you or anyone else.
He is able to do what he will do.
Now by the end of the book, Job has already gotten some more information about life death.
In fact, I’m gonna jump ahead. I I know you should never do that when you’re telling a story.
Job comes back around, and and if you’ll just let me read these verses from the nineteenth of Job, He says this later on, he says after my skin is destroyed, this I know that in my flesh, I shall see god whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another, oh, how my heart yearns within me?
What’s happened? Job has grown over the verses of this book.
And now he has a different understanding about what happens after death.
But here in his depression, he’s not seeing anything clearly. He sees only death as a way out.
And so he asks, first of all, why did I arrive?
And then secondly, why did I survive? And now thirdly, why am I alive?
Versus twenty through twenty six, Job’s third lament is one that is very common today.
Job is saying since I had to be born, and I didn’t die in childbirth.
Why can’t I just die now?
In these verses, verses twenty through twenty six, Job asked the question why.
And there’s nothing wrong with asking the question why?
Did you know the lord Jesus asked the question, why on the cross, why have you forsaken me?
But go back and read that and read it carefully. I didn’t hear any answer from heaven.
Did you? You see, there’s nothing wrong with asking why. You can ask it all you want.
What’s really wrong is if you spec god owes you an answer. He doesn’t.
Ask your wise, if you will. But don’t make god obligated to answer your questions.
He has not, and he did not answer Jobes.
And here we have these verses beginning at verse twenty.
Why is light given to him who is in misery and life to the bitter of soul who long for death and it does not come?
And search for it more than hidden treasures who rejoice exceedingly, who are glad when they find the grave.
Why is light given to a man whose way is hidden in whom god has hedged in?
For my sign comes before I eat, my groanings pour out like water, and the thing I greatly feared has come upon me.
What I dreaded has happened to me I am not at ease nor am I quiet. I have no rest for trouble comes.
You see Job is at a point where he can’t think of any purpose for his life.
Everything that brought meaning to his life is gone, his health, his wealth, most of his family, One does not have to be a psychologist to understand why Job is depressed.
But here, I want you to understand Job is not talking about suicide.
He had plenty of opportunity to go that route, and he is not.
He’s just wondering out loud why god doesn’t just take him out of his pain and let him die.
God, why don’t you just let this be over?
Here we are told that Job has lost his appetite. He’s filled with fear and dread.
He groans day and night. He has no ease or quiet and trouble surrounds him.
William Barclay says, the very greatness of Job lies in fact that in spite of everything which tore at his heart, he never lost his grip on faith and his grip on god, Jobe’s faith is no grumbling, passive, unquestioning submission.
Job struggled and questioned, and sometimes even defied But the flame of faith was never extinguished in his heart.
He lived later to triumph in his faith Once again, if I can jump ahead to a few statements later on in the book of Job.
In Job chapter thirteen, he says, though he slay me, yet I will trust him.
Job sixteen, nineteen, surely even now my witnesses in heaven and my evidence is on high.
Job nineteen twenty five, I know that my redeemer lives, and he shall stand at last on the earth.
And the important thing to remember men and women is this, that god spoke highly of Job before and after his experience in depression.
In Job forty two, which is the last chapter in the book verses seven and eight, we read these words.
And so it was after the lord had spoken these words to Job, that the lord said to Eliphaz, the temanite.
My wrath is aroused against you and your two friends for you have not spoken of me what is right as my servant Job has.
Now, therefore, take for yourselves seven bulls and seven rams, and go to my servant Job and offer up for yourselves a burnt offering, and my servant Job will pray for you.
And I will accept him lest I deal with you according to your folly because you have not spoken of me what is right as my servant, Job has.
God said that at the end of the book after all this stuff has happened.
God did not excuse Joe because of his circumstances, But god understood Job’s frailty and the strength of the temptations that assailed him.
And he does the very same for us today.
We have so demonized depression that many Christians are afraid to even exist in the midst of it or to say anything about it.
Don’t ever forget tell people that it’s alright to go to someone and tell them as a Christian that you’re going through a time of depression.
It may not do with anything. You don’t know there is such a thing as organic, uh, depression.
You can have chemical misbalance in your, in your spirit. There’s all kinds of reasons for depression.
And the last thing I wanna do is oversimplify it today. That’s not my role.
What I really want you to see is a man of god who never lost favor with god, who went through a very difficult time in his life.
Because once you see that, you will begin to understand that that’s not unusual. That happens to people.
So we’ve looked at this chapter experiencing depression, but I wanna take these last few moments and talk with you about examining depression.
And I want you to listen carefully because I have had to choose carefully what I would say and what I wouldn’t have time to say.
And I really believe these are the things that god wants me to leave in your heart as we close our book on the third chapter of Job.
First of all, I wanna talk with you about the reality of depression.
More than one in twenty American adults are treated for depression sometime during their life.
Fourteen percent or thirty one million adults report a major bout with depression in their lifetime.
Major Depression is now the leading cause of disability worldwide.
No gender, no age group, or other demographic is immune from depression and the disease cost fifty five billion in lower productivity and workplace absenteeism each year.
The reality is that godly believers sometimes get depressed.
Depression has been called the common cold of the soul. Sooner or later, most people catch one.
And god’s servants, including spurgeon, and Jeremiah and Elijah, and Job are not immune.
To periodic visitations of depression, the reality of it.
Let me speak for just a moment about the recognition of depression.
According to the National Institute of Mental Health, those who exhibit four of the following symptoms should probably go and see somebody and get some help and try to get through it.
Here are the things they’ve listed.
Loss of interest in usual activities, feelings of guilt, worthlessness, hopelessness, weight gain or loss.
Now if you’ve gained a lot of weight, it may not be about depression.
I just thought I’d throw that in here. You might be depressed because you gained a lot of weight.
That might be true. Sleep disturbances, depressed mood, hyperactivity, lethargy, anxiety, crying, slow thinking, suicidal thoughts.
If you have four of these says the mental health association, you should seek someone to help you work through it.
Joe had them all. He scored a hundred on the test.
The reality of depression and the recognition of it.
Here’s something that’s really, uh, to me is profound.
And I guess any of us who think we covered something that nobody’s written about before.
We think it’s probably the first time, and it’s more than likely in a hundred books someplace.
I’ve noticed is I’ve thought about this that there is a routine of depression, the routine of depression.
Someone has described it like this, in nautical terms. Listen carefully. You’ll get this picture.
The height of the wave determines the depth of the valley that follows it.
All of us West Coast people.
We’ve been we’ve been out in the waves, and we know that when a big wave comes and almost blows us away, that after that, there’s a huge dip in, and then the next wave comes.
In the realm of depression, that is often the routine.
In the scripture, you see this, for instance, Elijah was used by god to confront the prophets of baal.
If you look at first kings eighteen and nineteen, you will discover a thrilling event in which god performed a mighty miracle.
In answer to Elijah’s prayer, god sent fire down from heaven, and burned up the sacrifice that had been loaded up with with water.
And Elijah knew god’s mighty power.
And within just a matter of hours, he was running for his life from Queen Jezebel.
And when he couldn’t run any longer, he collapsed under a tree and ask god if to kill him.
He said, I wanna die. You see, oftentimes, after a mountain top experience, you can suffer the valley afterward.
Anybody been through that? Anybody ever know that?
You you’re standing on the mountain with your hands up high, but the next day, Interestingly enough, the word Satan does not appear in the book of Job after chapter two.
Listen to me. Listen carefully. The word Satan appears in Job two seven, and it doesn’t appear again in the book.
It seems as if Satan’s testing of Job was finished with the completion of the second chapter.
Job stood strong against the tests of Satan, when he was under fire and his family was taken, and his health was taken, and his wealth was taken.
He hung in there during that time.
But when the contest was concluded, he fell into deep despair.
All of the anguish turned inward on him.
And you know, it’s not recorded of Jesus that he was ever depressed, but he was tempted by the devil.
Do you remember And do you know when it happened immediately after his baptism?
Sometimes if we suffer from bouts of depression, we do well to observe its routine in our lives, and then the response to depression.
And I need to just say, I feel like I’m apologizing here because folks, I am not a psychologist.
I’m not a psychiatrist. I’m just a student of the word of god.
I’m trying to tell you only what I observe in the scripture.
You gotta go beyond that yourself, but here’s what I want you to know.
The response to depression is not something I can cover adequately because there’s all different ways to respond to it.
But I do have one observation from this story. And here it is.
Face your depression, honestly. Joe did not hide his feelings.
It was his honesty about his feelings that ultimately brought him back to health.
He refused to bury it before god and anybody that would listen when he finally hit it He just let it all out and expressed what was going on in his heart.
Honestly is always the best policy.
On one end, characteristically awful afternoon during the nineteen fifties Yankee slugger superstar Mickey Manel struck out three times and he was badly depressed about it.
He was sitting in the clubhouse. He remembered.
He said, I sat down on my stool and held my head in my hands, like I thought I was gonna start crying.
And I heard someone come up to me, and it was little Tommy Barra, Yogi Barra’s boy.
Standing there next to me, and he tapped me on the knee, nice and soft.
And I figured he’s gonna say something nice like, hey, you hang in there or something like that.
But all he did was look at me and then in his little kid’s voice, he said, you stink.
Now I can’t say this for sure, but I would imagine Mickey Mano felt better after that, you know.
Most of us find it a lot easier to be honest with somebody else than we are with ourselves.
Often in the psalms, we read of David crying out to the lord.
And this is what Job did too. Job seven eleven says this, Therefore, I will not restrain my mouth.
I will speak in the anguish of my spirit. I will complain in the bitterness of my soul.
The fact that there is a point at which any man simply throws in the towel is illustrated in the life of Job.
He does not abandon his faith.
He just gets thoroughly sick and tired of trying to put a good face on things.
And This is not sin. It’s just honesty.
Job is a forthright, plain spoken man, the sort of person who’s not afraid to say what’s on his heart, And we need grudgingly to acknowledge that such uncommon honesty may be one of the greatest virtues that a saint can possess.
He’s not putting a spin on his walk with god.
He’s in a dark place, and he acknowledges it.
The reality of depression, and the recognition of it, the routine of it, and the response to it, and finally the result of it.
Once again, as our friend, Paul Harvey, said, here’s the rest of the story.
Even before his testing was over, Job expressed confidence in the end result.
In chapter twenty three, in verse ten, he says, but he knows the way that I take, And when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold.
Wow. And after it was over, he expressed gratitude for what had happened in his life.
In Job forty two five, he said, I have heard of you god by the hearing of the year, but now my I seize you.
Therefore, I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes.
He said, lord god, I used to know about you, but when you took me through this test, man, I I know you now.
How many know that when you go through test testing, and god walks through with you, you come out of it with a greater sense of intimacy with almighty god than you’ve ever had in your life.
That’s what Job is experiencing.
In his book, The Gospel, according to Job, Mike Mason summarizes the impact of a chapter like Job chapter three, I’ve had many people say they’ve never heard a message on Job three.
I understand why. But listen to his analysis of why we should never avoid even a passage like this.
He said for the person who struggles and agonizes, the very blackness in the Bible is gold.
Just the presence in scripture of a book so dark and chaotic and thoroughly eccentric as Job should come as an immense comfort to any suffering believer.
For the book says, in effect, this is what faith is often like.
Do not be surprised if you find yourself confused and doubting and afflicted and all crushed, it does not mean you have lost favor with god.
And of, quote, Charles spurgeon left behind a couple of little books called lectures to my students, and I have those books.
My father gave them to me.
These are the things he would say to preacher boys when he’d get them together and hold classes and even teach them.
And in one of his lectures to his students, here’s what he said.
He said before any great achievement, some measure of depression is very usual.
So such was my experience when I first became the pastor in London.
My success appalled me and the thought of the career, which it seemed to open up so far from elating me, cast me into the lowest depths.
Who was I that I should continue to lead so great a multitude?
I would take me to my village obscurity, immigrate to America, find a solitary nest in the backwoods where I might be sufficient for the things.
Which would be demanded of me.
And then he said, this depression comes over me whenever the lord is preparing a larger blessing for my ministry.
The cloud is always black before it breaks and overshadows before it yields its deluge of mercy.
Depression has now become to me as a prophet in rough clothing.
Later on in the book, he says depression has become his John the Baptist announcing something good that is about to happen.
You see, the routine of depression is not only the valley after the mountaintop it’s the valley often before the mountaintop.
We were not made as human beings to sustain holy highs throughout every minute of our life.
We cannot do that. And god allows the dark moments so that we can appreciate the moments of glory and light that come before and after.
And if you’re going through a time of depression, may be triggered by some of the things that have been happening in our culture.
Let me assure you, you have not lost favor with god. He has not forgotten you nor could he ever?
His love for you is so great and so immense that there is no precedent for it.
It is unprecedented. There’s nothing to which we can compare it And if god would love you so much, that he would not even spare his only begotten son, but would send him into this world so that you might be redeemed Do you think he is going to forsake you in the midst of a difficult moment?
He has promised I will never leave you nor forsake you.
And I have no evidence anywhere that god has ever, how promised himself or gone back on his word.
If you feel unloved by god, it’s because the problems of your life have fogged up the screen through which you see reality.
Find somebody who can help you and pray with you.
Whatever you do, don’t not talk about it. Find somebody who can help you. You can get past it.
You can get beyond it. And like Job, you will stand and say, When he tested me, I came out as gold.
God never wastes anything, and he will not waste these moments on your life.
So if you’re in the midst of some deep moments of discouragement, maybe pressing over the threshold into despair and depression, I’m here to tell you today, God loves you.
And he knows what you’re experiencing.
And he will never ever turn his back on you. So don’t you turn your back on him?
Thank you for joining us today on turning point.
If you have never taken the step to believe in Jesus Christ as your lord and savior, you can do that today.
If you will allow us, Doctor. Jeremiah would like to send you two resources that will help you.
The first is a booklet called your greatest turning point, which will help you as you begin your relationship with Christ.
And the second is our monthly devotional magazine turning points to give you encouragement and inspiration throughout the year.
These resources are yours completely free when you contact turning point today.
Next time, on turning point.
It is true to say that all suffering is the result of sin.
It is totally untrue to say that any particular suffering is the result. Of some particular sin.
And what Eliphaz was saying to Job was, Job, if you’ll comb through your history, you’ll find the awful things that you did that made it for god to make you suffer like you are suffering, and that was wrong.
Don’t ever go there.
Join Doctor Amaya next time for his message, helping the hurting.
Here on turning point.