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Jimmy Buehler: Hi, this is Jimmy. Today on Theocast, the guys talk about depression. It’s something that’s more common than we would like to believe, even within the lives of Christians. We hope to bring some helpful definitions around what depression is and what it is not. We also look at various scriptures and see just how common it is even within the broad narrative of the Bible.

In our members’ podcast, we talk about how we can helpfully counsel people who are working through depression. We hope you find this conversation helpful. Thanks for listening.

Justin Perdue: Today we’re talking about something that is relevant for many people: we’re going to be talking about mental and emotional health, in particular depression, which is a common struggle for many of us. We’re thankful the Bible is not silent on these matters. We know that because of sin and the fall, our entire personality – meaning not just our bodies, but also our minds, our hearts, and all of the realities of the psychosomatic union, everything wrapped up in being a human being – all of that has been affected by sin. We tend to struggle mentally and emotionally in terms of how we’re thinking and how we’re feeling. So many of us find ourselves in places where we’re feeling flat. We’re feeling gray; we’re feeling discouraged, despondent, and despairing.

That’s not altogether unreasonable in a fallen world where death and suffering and all of these kinds of things are the norms and bad things happen. To be depressed is not insane in a Genesis 3, Ecclesiastes world. We’re glad that the Bible speaks to these realities.

God’s people, through history, have lamented and despaired about their condition and the things that they experience. We’re also thankful that the Bible points us to the steadfastness of God and His utter faithfulness. We want to have a good conversation today, from a reformed biblical perspective, about depression, and we’re going to get into a number of other things.

We want to try to describe depression and what it might be like for people that fight and experience it. What is it, and what is it not? I think there are some misunderstandings that we want to point out. We want to talk about where it comes from. Then we want to recalibrate the perspective and the thinking with respect to depression in the church, and how do we go about handling these things pastorally; how do we go about encouraging one another as brothers and sisters in the faith? How do we think well about God’s faithfulness even in the face of depression and sorrow and despair?

We hope this is an encouraging conversation, and we hope that this is clarifying and hope-giving in the midst of battling sorrow, the dark night of the soul, melancholy, and those kinds of things.

Let’s begin the conversation with what depression is and maybe some of the things that it is not.

Jimmy Buehler: I recently put out an article on the Theocast website about my own experience with depression and Mayo clinic, a large, influential research hospital here in Minnesota.

They described depression as a mood disorder that causes a persistent feeling of sadness, and a loss of interests that affects how you feel, think and behave. It can lead to a variety of emotional and physical problems; you can struggle with making day-to-day things, day-to-day thought patterns, and other things of that nature.

What I wrote in that article on Theocast.org is that it is certainly a great definition, and it does help create a frame around the topic, but one of the things that I like to say just really simply is depression is just a monster. It feels like there is a consistent weight on top of you.

One thing that I want to be overly and abundantly clear from in the beginning is depression does not equate to mere sadness. I can be sad over war, over the death of a family member, a particular circumstance, but I can ultimately know that these things will pass. Whereas depression almost feels like an inescapable weight in that it’s really difficult to pinpoint feelings. Even in my own experience with depression, there were days where I certainly laughed and joked and smiled and played and experienced a good time, but there was always this gnawing sense underneath that something was definitely off. So, I want to be very careful to say that depression is not necessarily sadness as much as it is a heaviness of spirit. Melancholy is the old word that was used; Charles Spurgeon uses that word a lot: having a “melancholic state”.

Justin Perdue: I think you’re right, Jimmy, in pointing out a common misconception that depression just means that you’re sad all the time. I think that’s a flattening of it. It can be sadness, but there’s a lot more to depression than that. A lot of times it’s a feeling of flatness like I’m emotionally gray and devoid of feeling even.  Sometimes it’s a deep anguish and agony of the soul. Sometimes I honestly don’t know that I feel anything about anything. It’s been said before, not by me, and it sounds hyperbolic, but for people that have experienced the throes of depression, you’re thinking to yourself, “If somebody honestly were to kill one of my children, I don’t know that I would feel anything.” I’m just devoid of emotion; I’m just that flat and that gray.

We’re waving around the book “Spurgeon’s Sorrows” by our brother Zack Eswine. I think it’s the most accessible, really good treatment of depression that I’ve ever read from a biblical theological perspective. He quotes Abraham Lincoln in the book, and it’s absolutely excellent. Abraham Lincoln said about his own depression, “I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would be not one cheerful face on earth. Whether I shall ever be better, I cannot tell; I awfully forebode that I shall not. To remain as I am is impossible; I must die or be better, it appears to me.” It’s a gripping quote that I don’t know if I’m going to get better, but if I don’t get better, I just need to die because I can’t remain as I am. Because this is how perplexed and troubled in my soul I am. This is the experience for many people.

The last thing I’ll say about the existential piece of this is that sometimes this is related to circumstances, and sometimes it is completely unrelated to anything circumstantial; you may even be thinking, “My life is actually going okay.” Like my job is going well, my family is healthy, we’re pretty stable, and I really don’t have a lot to complain about. Yet I am depressed. Then there are other seasons where it’s obvious that some of these circumstantial realities are contributing to my melancholy. It’s a strange thing to know exactly where this comes from for people. And it’s not just this one-to-one, this-is-why-you’re-depressed. This doesn’t work quite like that.

Jon Moffitt: I myself have never met anyone who wants to be depressed or wants to remain in that state as if there’s some kind of benefit to it. There are some sins that people do because they enjoy it – and I’m not calling depression sin, but there are causes as one can find themselves in deep depression. David did at times find himself in deep depression because of his own sin. Other times he can’t point to a sin that’s causing the melancholy of the soul that he is experiencing.

What’s hard for many is that they aren’t given a category for what they’re feeling. The church has, unfortunately, completely dropped the ball on how it is that we have communicated this to the church.

Justin Perdue: One quick interjection, Jon. Just to clarify – I’ll at least speak for myself and you brothers may very well agree – that like you said, I’m not calling depression a sin. I think that depression is something that comes upon people as a result of the fall, which I know we’re going to talk about in just a moment. There can of course be sinful responses to that in terms of how we handle and deal with the depression that comes upon us.

Jon Moffitt: I’m hoping to bring some relief for people who are unwilling to admit their condition. Some may not be able to clinically define it or be able to point out that they are depressed.

I was with a good pastor friend of mine and at one point, the doctor we were with finally just said, “I don’t think you know this, but you are depressed. You are clinically depressed.” Then he began to describe what depressed people experience. It wasn’t until someone told him that he was depressed, and he was willing to admit it that he began to now work on what caused it or what’s leading to it.

Sometimes depression sounds like an unspiritual state – that if you admit that you’re in this position, there’s something wrong with you spiritually. People always assume, “You just need to think about all the benefits of life that you have,” then they go down this list of every reason why you shouldn’t be depressed.

Theologically, it gets worse. People are like, “Oh, you’re depressed. Don’t you understand the sovereignty of God? Don’t you trust the Lord? Don’t you know that He’s faithful and good and that He’s going to work all things for your eternal good? Don’t you know that?” And the answer to that question would be, “Yeah, I absolutely do know that, and I am still battling depression and despondency. What do you have for me?”

Jimmy Buehler: There certainly is a barrage of bad treatments out there. As much as I can emphasize for the listener, something to be mindful of is that depression often is not feeling sad about an experience or an aspect of my life. Considering my own experience: beautiful wife, beautiful children, beautiful home – during the time that I was going through my depressive state, there was very little in my life, circumstantially, that gave me good reason. If you mix some of the things that I was working through personally, as well as the natural dispositions that I had have as a person, it’s so much more than just a feeling of sadness. I do like the word despondency; I often just felt numb. I would see something positive, but I don’t have this overly emotive response to things.

Certainly, my day-to-day experience would be different. There would be some days when getting out of bed was just a struggle, though not every day was like that.

Perhaps we can kind of pivot the conversation to a more Christian perspective. What are some of the things that you find are very unhelpful in the ways that the broader Christian church, the broader evangelical church, treats and defines depression, and how they try to get people out of it, so to speak?

Jon Moffitt: I’ve been around this for quite a while now with Theocast. We did an episode on this early on, and the correspondence that we received was very sad – it was depressing, to say the least. We heard stories about people who were trying to work through life-long battles of depression and evangelical leaders in their lives – their pastors or counselors – were giving them advice that would only trap them, handcuff them, and even lead them into greater depths of despair because they were not listening or they weren’t aware. Within the whole biblical counseling world, there is even the idea that allowing medication for depression is sinful. “How dare you not trust in God’s word, God’s plan, and God’s word?” That, to me, is so devoid of consideration that there are pain medications that have side effects. If I have arthritis and I take this pain medication, the side effect of this pain medication is depression. It is common, yet I don’t want to feel the pain. So, I’ll have to take this antidepressant so that I can be without pain and not be depressed. To tell someone that that’s a sin is just not biblical. When we’re talking about depression and medication and immediately say, “If you are taking antidepressants, then you are not trusting in God,” then I’m sorry, but that is just not a biblical perspective that you can argue from.

Jimmy Buehler: Can I just be super raw with the listener that I myself am on a daily low dosage antidepressant? When I do not take this, my mind will go all sorts of places and run all sorts of miles per hour.

I had all sorts of misconceptions. I thought that taking a medical antidepressant was going to quench the Holy Spirit within me because I wasn’t be able to feel anything. Meeting with medical professionals who actually walked me through what happens in your body physiologically… It’s so important to remember that we are spiritual people, we are emotional people, and we are physical people. There are certain things in our bodies, such as chemical imbalances, structures – things fearfully and wonderfully made by God.

The way it was explained to me, these things can help bring you level rather than keep you in the negative, so to speak. I would just be open and honest with the listener to say it has been profoundly helpful. Now, it’s not the only source of treatment that I have, but certainly, it has been very helpful for my overall mental health.

Justin Perdue: Jon, to pick up on what you were describing before, I think we need to remember always that when it comes to the conversation about depression, mercy and compassion, always make room for the answer you’re not expecting in terms of why somebody is depressed. We would do well in the church just to remember that reality.

Some of the misunderstandings with respect to a whole host of issues, specifically depression in the conversation today, come from short-selling of the doctrine of the fall and sin. Sin and the fall have affected us far more than most are willing to acknowledge, even in the church. It’s a deeper, more overarching, total reality.

In the 1689 London Baptist Confession, chapter six in paragraphs two and three are on sin, the fall of man, and its punishment. There’s language like this: that as a result of Adam and Eve’s sin, we all have now become wholly defiled in all the faculties and parts of soul and body. There’s language of how we are now, because of Adam and Eve’s transgression, in Adam we have become the servants of sin, the subjects of death, and all other miseries – spiritual, temporal, and eternal – unless the Lord Jesus set them free. What we have to acknowledge here is that death and misery have entered the world through Adam and his fall, and we now have all inherited that condition.

One thing that we’re very adamant about here on Theocast, and this is true in reformed theology, is that sin is a state; it’s a condition before it ever is an action. We see the effects of sin everywhere in creation. We see it in our bodies.

This is an observation that I’ve made: we are really comfortable in the church to acknowledge sin’s effects on our bodies in at least this way that we’re all dying, right? We’re all going to die; our bodies break down. We’ll joke about how our knees hurt or how our joints are bothering us or how we can’t do what we once could do because we’re all getting a little bit of gray in our beard, hair, and everything else. We’ll talk like that and the church, but here’s the great irony. We are often very slow and hesitant to admit the wreckage and the struggles that exist in our minds and our hearts as a result of sin.

Here’s the thing. I think many evangelicals have bought into the lie that emotional, mental, and spiritual struggles should not exist for the Christian – at least not for the good and faithful types. Or if you get your theology right, you won’t have these problems. If you understand things the right way, you won’t struggle with depression.

We just want to come in and say no. Because of sin and the fact that it’s a condition and a state that we live in, we should expect Christians – even faithful Christians with good theology – to battle things like depression. It’s absolutely and fundamentally critical that we would recalibrate the conversation from the jump with that – to say you’re not crazy if you’re battling this.

Jimmy Buehler: Something that you said was really helpful – that we are very quick to recognize the effects of sin on our physical bodies; there is no immortal that has walked the earth; we all experienced the effects of sin in that way. Certainly, we can stay certain aspects of physical negativity, but through diet and exercise, and things like that. But we seem to make a shift when it comes to our mental health that we can control it – which is positive thinking; we can become overcomers with good theology and that everything’s going to be smooth sailing.

The fact of the matter is there is such a thing as the noetic effects of sin – that every crevice within your personhood has been impacted by the curse of the fall, and we need to be sensitive to that. As we think about counseling people, we also need to be sensitive that. As you think about even just physical exercise and physical weight training… those of you that are looking at this video, Justin and I are physically shaped very differently. Me getting in shape physically is going to look different than Justin. We can’t just go in with a shotgun approach and say, “If you want to stop being depressed, you just have to do this and do this and do this.” There is a patience and a slowness that we need to approach people’s souls and care for them, understand their circumstance, unique struggles, and the unique dispositions. It’s not as simple as we like to make it sound.

Jon Moffitt: The solution when we’re providing help and comfort to people is not all the same.

We all have a number of children. Because you have multiple children, when you deal with your children, and there’s a frustration or discipline issues, you do not discipline your children all the same because of their disposition and their personality and how they process discomfort. I have to talk differently to every single one of my kids because of the way that they receive information. When it comes to someone who’s battling something as gripping as depression, there is not one solution.

Here’s the thing: salvation is simple; there is one solution to your problem when it comes to your standing before God, and it’s called Jesus Christ and the gospel. But when it comes to the rest of life, it is not as simple. The Bible makes it very obvious that it’s not that simple. When Paul cries out in his own frustration with his own pain and suffering, and he’s called it a thorn in the flesh, and describes his own battle with the flesh and says, “Who will save me from this body of death?” after his salvation, being a regenerate Spirit-filled person, he still struggles with the body, and he still struggles with his own sin. Paul does not always give these solutions that are just a one-stop-shop, will-fix-all.

If you’ve been listening to the podcast, hopefully, you’re picking up on this: we are not offering you the solution to the victorious Christian life because there is no such thing as the victorious Christian life. There’s the hope of the Christian life, but the victory does not come until Christ returns.

Justin Perdue: Christ is victorious, and we will be victorious in that sense in him for eternity. But as it is right now – and this is a conversation that we’ve had before about the theology of the cross versus the theology of glory – we’re going to be weak, and we’re going to struggle now, but glory is coming. It will be revealed in us and to us and through us when Christ returns for us.

I want to just read a few passages from Scripture, some Bible verses here to comfort those who are experiencing depression. One of the things we say on Theocast all the time is that you are not crazy if you are feeling these kinds of ways. You are not alone, and you have not lost your mind. God’s people through history have known this kind of experience and have known this kind of despair. I’m thinking of language like in Psalm 77 where Asaph says, “When I remember God, I moan; when I meditate, my spirit faints. You hold my eyelids open; I’m so troubled that I cannot speak.”

The entirety of Psalm 88 begins and ends in darkness; it doesn’t lift. It talks about the experience of being cast into the pit like, “God, you’ve put me in regions dark and deep; you have slain me. It’s like I’m lying in the grave. People don’t even remember me anymore. Like I’m like a man who has no strength.” Solomon in Ecclesiastes 2 talks about how he hated life because what is done under the sun was grievous to him, for all is vanity and a striving after wind. All man’s days are full of sorrow, and his work is a vexation. Even in the night, his heart doesn’t rest.

This is the language of Scripture. Paul talks in 2 Corinthians 1 about being. He says, “I don’t want you to be ignorant of what we experienced in Asia for we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself.” This is the apostle Paul.

In Job 7, which is some of the most gripping words that I’ve read in all of Scripture, Job says, “When I say, ‘My bed will comfort me, my couch will ease my complaint,” as if saying to God that if he could just sleep, it would be better, “then you scare me with dreams and terrified me with visions so that I would choose strangling and death rather than my bones. I loathe my life; I would not live forever. Leave me alone, for my days are a breath.” My goodness.

Jesus was a man of sorrows; he was sorrowful to the point of death at the Garden of Gethsemane. These are the words of Scripture, so weary saint who is out there listening, who may be finding yourself right now in the deep dark throes of depression, you are not alone; God’s people have known this, your Savior has known sorrow to the point of saying he felt as though he could die. Take heart and look to Christ.

Jon Moffitt: Adding the two of these together: understanding your state as a sinner – sin as a state versus sin as an action.

Often what we suffer is because of the state we were born into: we’re born into Adam, we were born depraved, we were born with sinful, broken bodies. In the garden, when Adam sinned, the ground was cursed, and from that, all of humanity has felt this curse. So, your Father is not ignorant of these things. This is His book, and we have to understand the way in which He has allowed this world, or He has formed this world.

To add to some of what Justin is saying, the comfort often for someone who finds themselves in depression is this: even though you may not feel these truths about God, this is how God feels about you, no matter how you feel about Him. Some of these truths are from Psalm 56: 8 where he says, “You have kept count of my tossings,” or of my misery, “you have kept count” meaning God is not ignorant of your level of depression every single day, “you put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your book?” For every point, every moment, every second of your suffering, your Father is absolutely aware of it. He is not ignorant of it. Psalm 34:18 says, “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.” This, for me, is the one comfort that I like to offer anyone who finds themselves either with depression or even anxiety; the God of the Bible is the God who knows – He is not unaware, and He is not ignorant.

One last verse I love, to add to what Justin was saying, is Isaiah 57:15. It says, “For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: ‘I dwell in the high and holy places, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite.'” Meaning the God of the universe, this high and holy God we serve comes down to you who feels numb and depressed, who feels a lack of all things, and does not get angry with you. He says He comes to revive you and to remind you that hope is of your future. You may not feel that reviving now. The hope that God often provides for us is this: this misery you’re experiencing is not your final destiny – that is safely secured with Him in heaven.

Jimmy Buehler: Zack Eswine talks about this in his book, “Spurgeon’s Sorrows”, in that often we can assume wrongly within the Christian life that a depressive state means an absence of grace or an absence of God’s work in your life. He has a wonderful quote where he says, “We sufferers of depression in Christ may grow terribly weak, even in faith, but we are not lost to God. Contrary to those who tell us that we do not have enough faith or that we are condemned because of our inability to smile more. Depression of spirit is no index of declining grace. It is Christ and not the absence of depression that saves us. So, we declare this truth. Our sense of God’s absence does not mean that He is so. Though our bodily gloom allows us no feeling of His tender touch, He holds onto us still. Our feelings of Him do not save us. He does.” I think that’s wonderful news. That is the gospel that people who struggle with mental and emotional health need to hear, that even in the midst of numbness and tears and the swaying of your emotions we are ever so mindful that it is not our grip of Christ that saves us, but rather his grip of us that does. The goal in depression should not always be, “I just want to feel better. I just want to get out of it.” Certainly, that would be nice, but Zack Eswine talks about in the same way that believing in Jesus may probably not cure your asthma. The same way that believing in Jesus may not cure your depressive state. It could be a battle that you rage with day in and day out, that there is no state this side of heaven where you’re going to feel really good 100% of the time. Rather, the hope of the Christian life is the resurrection – that we will be made new, that we will be glorified. When we are longing for the feelings of not being depressed, we are going to fully experience those in the new heavens and new earth. We look to Christ, not our feelings about him.

Justin Perdue: One of the problems in the church is this perspective regarding depression (and a whole host of other struggles and battles against sin) is that you should be better by now. That if you’re in Christ Jesus, you should be better than you are.

Picking up on what Jimmy was saying, I would like to say a brief word of comfort to everybody out there who’s battling depression, anxiety, or some kind of darkness of the soul: the fact that you are experiencing depression does not for one second mean that you are not in Christ Jesus. It’s critical to understand that you are depressed does not for one second mean that you’re not in Christ.

What we need to do in the church, broadly speaking, is recalibrate how we talk about this and how we define, dare I say, the word progress because I think it’s a dangerous word when it comes to depression. We need to redefine that word. Another word that’s thrown around a lot is victory; we want to help people get victory over depression. I don’t even know what to make of that statement, depending on what you mean by that word, because typically what folks mean in the evangelical world when we speak this way is this: “Here’s the goal for you, brother. Here’s the goal for you, sister. We need to get you to a place where you’re no longer depressed, or we need to get you to a place where you’re no longer getting depressed anymore, and that will be real progress, and that will be a victory in your battle against depression.” As we’ve stated already, you may very well battle depression for the rest of your days until you die or Christ returns – and that is not to rob you of hope; it is to comfort you in the midst of your struggle and in the midst of your depression. Victory may very well mean taking your depression to Christ over and over and over again, and you’re praying to God, “Father, here I’m despairing. I’m flat, dry, and gray. Help me. Give me grace. Sustain my faith that I might trust Your Son.” We’re looking to Christ and his work in our place, and we’re taking our sorrow and our despair to him over and over and over again. That, my friends, is a better definition of progress and victory when it comes to this conversation about depression than what’s commonly out there.

This is harmful. It’s a kind of bondage that exists. Somebody is already despairing, and now let’s just pile it on. “Because if you would just get serious about this and apply the Bible rightly, you’d be better.”

Jon Moffitt: This only leads to greater discouragement and despair.

We are called to walk by faith, not by victory. We aren’t looking for the victory lap; we’re looking for the hope that’s in Christ. This is why in Hebrews 4:15, it says, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in the time of need.” To those who are depressed, run to God to find grace and mercy in a time of need – this grace and mercy just maybe to get you through the next day to get you over the next hump, to get you from 24 hours to the next 24 hours.

It may sound like we’re offering no solutions – there is a solution. It’s called Jesus Christ, and he crucified; our ultimate hope is secure; we are safe in the arms of our dear Savior, but he never promised to fix you here. It’s not the promise. That is a lie. It is horrible to be told that you can have glorification now. The more you progress in sanctification does not guarantee you that you will not have the effects of sin. I’m sorry, but I will turn up the volume here to protect the poor innocents that have been told they need to try harder, and that the more they try harder, God will bring them relief here. I’m sorry, but that is just not the promise of Scripture.

Jimmy Buehler: Perfectionism on this side of glory is a lie. It is not going to happen. You will not be perfected in your battle against lust. You will not be perfected in your battle against depression. You will not be perfected in your battle against whatever sin that you have.

I know everybody likes to take that John Owen quote, “be killing sin or it’s going to be killing you” kind of thing. They like to wield that as reformation theology’s greatest quote. A lot of that is taken out of context; if you read Owen’s writings, he is constantly pointing you to Christ and him crucified.

The other thing that I want to point out, it’s right behind Jon on his bookshelf if you’re watching the video, there is a sign on his bookshelf that says extra nos. That is a Latin term that means the realities of the gospel, the good news of the gospel that exists where? They exist outside of you. What people are fighting and clawing for in their battle of depression is they are fighting for a greater subjective experience, whereas we are trying to point you ultimately to the objective realities of Christ and him crucified that the benefits of the gospel are applied to you by grace, through faith on account of Christ, that you are saved and safe in him, not in your experience of him. Jesus has saved you in spite of yourself. Ultimately, as you struggle with your frame in this life and the weaknesses, depressive thoughts, feelings, and emotions that you have, you have a greater hope that exists outside of you extra nos.

You need to have that spoken over you – your subjective experience of Christ is not the barometer of truth, but rather the life, death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and enthronement of Christ are.

Justin Perdue: Some listeners may be out there, and they’re thinking, “Don’t we need to use the Bible in our battle against depression? Don’t we need to give people the Bible to help them fight this fight?” My answer to that question is yes, we do, but we need to give them Bible in an appropriate manner. Often we approach the Bible in a ridiculous fashion when it comes to a whole host of things. We look at the Bible like it’s a medicine cabinet: here are your verses for depression, here are your verses for anxiety, here are your verses for lust, here are your verses for anger here, your verses for pride, etc. Then it produces this absurd scenario where we almost look at people, and we say, “You’re depressed. Here are these three verses. Take these, and I’m sure by the time we grab coffee next Tuesday, you’re going to be doing a lot better as long as you take these and meditate on them, think these over, and pray over them.” It’s just absolutely patently ridiculous to approach depression or any sin battle like that.

Right now, we’re talking about depression. We’re talking with a depressed brother or sister, and we want to give them the Bible. What the Bible reveals is the utter faithfulness of God, and God’s plan of redemption that He had made from before the world began, that would be accomplished through Christ Jesus and applied to sinners by faith through the work of the Holy Spirit. That’s what the Scripture reveals.

The Scripture reveals Jesus Christ crucified for you, Jesus Christ’s perfect life for you, and Jesus Christ’s triumphant resurrection for you. You’re safe and secure because Jesus has secured your future. That is what the Bible reveals. That’s what we need to be pointing people to when we give them Scripture in the midst of depression. We need to use the Bible well and point people to the faithfulness of God in Christ in the midst of their depression.

Jon Moffitt: The Bible is not a medicine cabinet. Take two of these and talk to me in the morning, which I think is dangerous.

Jimmy Buehler: Right. The Jesus pills.

We could continue to talk about this all day, and frankly, it’s a conversation that comes up between three of us a lot. But something I think we should pivot to in our members’ podcasts is this: how do we counsel those who are serial suffers of a depressive state or melancholic state? We’re going to hop over to our members’ podcast and talk about that in a few moments.

We want to thank you, as a listener, for tuning into this podcast as we seek to unravel the great things of this life, and today, one of the awful things of this life, and talk about it from a reformed perspective.

We’re going to head over to our members’ podcast. If you are interested in learning more about that, you can head over to Theocast.org. Being a member really helps our ministry continue to go forth as we continue the work of the Reformation in today’s context.

Thank you for listening. We hope this conversation was helpful to you. We ask that you share it with those who you think would benefit from it. To our members, we’ll see you in a few moments.

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