PTSD, Anxiety and Depression

For Charles Spurgeon, the celebrated 19th-century preacher, depression was more than just circumstantial. When he spoke of it in his sermons and lectures, his examples, which were often rooted in his own experience, included a significant form of depression: the kind that comes without cause. In one sermon, he said,

You may be surrounded with all the comforts of life and yet be in wretchedness more gloomy than death if the spirits are depressed. You may have no outward cause whatever for sorrow and yet if the mind is dejected, the brightest sunshine will not relieve your gloom. … There are times when all our evidences get clouded and all our joys are fled. Though we may still cling to the Cross, yet it is with a desperate grasp.

Spurgeon understood that depression isn’t always logical and its cause is not always clear. There are times, he said, when our spirits betray us, and we sink into darkness. We slip into the “bottomless pits” where our souls “can bleed in ten thousand ways, and die over and over again each hour.” There is no reasoning, and a remedy is hard to find. As he put it once in a lecture to students:

As well fight with the mist as with this shapeless, undefinable, yet, all-beclouding hopelessness. One affords himself no pity when in this case, because it seems to be unreasonable, and even sinful to be troubled without manifest cause; and yet troubled the man is, even in the very depths of his spirit … [it] needs a heavenly hand to push it back … but nothing short of this will chase away the nightmare of the soul.

I am so thankful for quotes like this from Spurgeon because you can hear his understanding. I remember how helpless I have felt in my own depression, how it seemed I was powerless to do anything to escape from it. Some people expected there to be a quick fix, a logical solution, or some sort of spiritual willpower that could defeat it, but light and joy were evasive.

Spurgeon clearly knew this helplessness and how poorly people can react to it. He spoke directly to harsh and insensitive “helpers” from the pulpit—those who were quick to cast blame, quick to tell depressed people to just pull themselves out of it, and slow to show compassion. He also would not tolerate the accusation that “good Christians” do not get depressed. “God’s people,” he preached, “sometimes walk in darkness, and see no light. There are times when the best and brightest of saints have no joy.”

He was clear that depression isn’t a guaranteed sign of whether or not someone is a Christian; nor is it a sign you aren’t growing in your faith. It is possible to be faithful and depressed: “Depression of spirit is no index of declining Grace—the very loss of joy and the absence of assurance may be accompanied by the greatest advancement in the spiritual life.” Oh for more pastors to preach this way!

Your Usefulness Is Not Over

Perhaps you know the feeling of your spirits being so low that you can do nothing, contribute nothing. You are overwhelmed and paralyzed by sadness. Your brain is foggy, your temper sharp. All is dark. Then the questions come: What if this endures? What if I can never doanything of lasting value again?

Spurgeon knew this feeling. Perhaps this is why, in a lecture to his students on depression, he told them, “Think not that all is over with your usefulness.” He was laid low many times both physically and emotionally, but it didn’t stop his ministry. He wrote thousands of sermons and countless letters, read prolifically, met with people, prayed with people, organized ministries, and taught at the Pastor’s College. His suffering did not exclude him from usefulness. If anything, the fruit of it made him more useful. His experience with depression enabled him to encourage and support others who suffered from it as well.

For example, Spurgeon warned his students to be aware of situations in which they may be more susceptible to depression. The list he gave them runs like an autobiographical catalog:

when you have prolonged illness or physical problems
when you do intense mental or “heart” work
when you’re lonely or isolated
when your lifestyle is sedentary and you overwork your brain
after success
before success
after one heavy blow
through the slow pile of trouble and discouragement
in exhaustion and overworking
Or it could simply come without cause, without reason, without justification, which he considered the most painful circumstance of all.

Spurgeon offered compassionate and practical advice to his parishioners as well, preaching to them about such things as the need for rest: “The spirit needs to be fed and the body needs feeding also. Do not forget these matters! It may seem to some people that I ought not to mention such small things as food and rest, but these may be the very first elements in really helping a poor depressed servant of God.” Self-care is not merely a modern notion. Spurgeon understood from his own experience that taking proper care of our bodies is an important part of fighting depression, and he freely shared his hard-earned wisdom.

Because of his own suffering, he could also better sympathize with and comfort others. People would come from miles around to seek his advice and consolation, and those who couldn’t come physically would write letters. He was a “wounded healer”—someone who used his own sorrow to bring others comfort:

It is a great gift to have learned by experience how to sympathize. “Ah!” I say to them, “I have been where you are!” They look at me and their eyes say, “No, surely you never felt as we do.” I therefore go further, and say, “If you feel worse than I did, I pity you, indeed, for I could say with Job, ‘My soul chooses strangling rather than life.’ I could readily enough have laid violent hands upon myself to escape from my misery of spirit.”

There is a profound comfort in realizing someone else understands— at least in part—your suffering. They can offer comfort in a way others cannot. Surviving painful experiences like depression puts us in a unique position and bestows on us a unique responsibility to offer this comfort and camaraderie to others. Spurgeon encourages us not to forget this: “He who has been in the dark dungeon knows the way to the bread and the water. If you have passed through depression, and the Lord has appeared to your comfort, lay yourself out to help others who are where you used to be.”

Your usefulness is not over, Spurgeon tells us. You, too, can be a companion to one in the dark.

Sing in the Darkness

When I think of the word Spurgeon speaks to us from the inheritance of his own struggles, it brings to mind a boisterous hymn I remember singing in my childhood church:

Standing on the promises that cannot fail,

When the howling storms of doubt and fear assail,

By the living Word of God I shall prevail,

Standing on the promises of God.

In the lowest points of Spurgeon’s life, it was the promises of God in Scripture that lifted him from despair. In the early years, when he was depressed and distraught over the harsh criticism flung at him, he took comfort from looking at a Bible verse written in his wife Susannah’s script: “Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you” (Matt. 5:11, KJV). As the years went by, another verse replaced it, again in his wife’s hand: “I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction” (Isa. 48:10, KJV). After the Surrey Gardens Music Hall disaster, when seven were trampled to death and many others injured after a false alarm during Spurgeon’s prayer at a crowded service, consolation from Scripture pulled him from the brink of collapse.

And repeatedly in his sermons, the words of Scripture and the lives of biblical characters encouraged him. They reminded him of truth. They kept him singing. They kept him alive. It was here, where the promises of God collided with his own sorrow, that he found hope.

In his introduction of the Chequebook of the Bank of Faith, a devotional book he wrote in the midst of the Downgrade Controversy (when he was embroiled in a dispute over compromised doctrine within the pastorate), Spurgeon says this: “I believe all the promises of God, but many of them I have personally tried and proved. … I would say to [fellow Christians] in their trials—My brethren, God is good. He will not forsake you: He will bear you through. … Everything else will fail, but His word never will.”

“Ah, yes, Spurgeon,” we might say, “but this is so difficult.” He knew this. He felt this struggle, the struggle for belief, for faith, the struggle to hold on to the hope of the promises. He knew the temptations of doubt. He knew how depression made them even more difficult to withstand, how much easier it was to question God’s goodness, his faithfulness, his abiding presence: “That perpetual assaulting, that perpetual stabbing, and cutting, and hacking at one’s faith, is not so easy to endure.” But endure we must. And it is precisely “by enduring that we learn to endure.” Our trials make these promises richer and make our faith in them even stronger as we see again and again that they are robust enough to sustain us. They teach us humble dependence on a faithful God.

Spurgeon was not saying that the solution to suffering and depression lies in the mantra many depressed Christians have repeatedly heard: Just read the Bible, just pray more, just have faith. There is no depression cure-all, no quick spiritual fix. But when we are in the darkness, the promises of Scripture are strong enough to keep us tethered. Knowing that we belong to Christ is an anchor. When we are flailing about, when we don’t know if we can go on, when we feel lost, when the darkness consumes us, we cling to God’s promises, even when we hardly have the strength to believe them. They are sure, regardless of our feelings, regardless of our outward state.

When we see people from the Bible like Elijah, who wanted to die, and the psalmists, who wrestled with depression and feelings of abandonment by God, and “we find ourselves in similar places,” Spurgeon preached, “we are relieved by discovering that we are walking along a path which others have traversed before us.” We see these saints cast into darkness. We see God’s faithfulness. We see his promises that are strong enough to hold them—and us as well. Don’t be dismayed, their stories remind us. This is a trial many have had to endure. You are still his. The Christ who bought you will not abandon you in the dark.

Spurgeon once said, “In the night of sorrow … believers [are] like nightingales, and they sing in the darkness. There is no real night to a man of a nightingale spirit.” It reminds me of a note I received once from a friend: “You are brave. You stand in the darkness, whispering Truth back to yourself.” I felt anything but brave at the time. It had been a hard year. It had been a year of tears and questions and fitful nights. And here was my closest friend calling me brave. I couldn’t believe it. I wasn’t brave—I was desperate. What else could I do in that dark place but keep whispering Truth? It was all I could do to keep the darkness at bay, to keep it from suffocating me.

This is what Spurgeon offers to us. A reminder to sing God’s promises. Sing of his faithfulness. Even if you can’t see it yet, even if you don’t feel it—whisper the Truth to yourself. Sing in the darkness.

Adapted from “Companions in the Darkness” by Diana Gruver.

Destroying the Sting of Death

1 Corinthians 15:53–57

1 CORINTHIANS 15:53–57
“The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (vv. 56–57).

Resurrection is good news for us because it affirms that death does not have the final say.

Just as death was not the last word for Christ, death is not the last word for believers.

Because Jesus is the firstfruits of the resurrection of the dead, all who trust in Him alone will also be resurrected at His return.

If we die before then, we will live consciously in heaven while our physical bodies lie in the grave.

But when the final trumpet sounds, our bodies will be raised and glorified, and our spirits will be reunited with them.

On that day, everything will be as God originally made it to be. In fact, it will be better because decay and death will never again enter creation (1 Cor. 15:1–52; Rev. 21:1–22:5; see Phil. 1:23).

Paul tells us in today’s passage that the resurrection on the last day will fulfill the prophecy of Isaiah 25 that death will be swallowed up forever (1 Cor. 15:53–55). Death, after all, is the final enemy that Christ will defeat (v. 26).

In any case, the citation of Isaiah indicates that God’s people have been looking forward to resurrection and to the end of death for millennia.

After the reference to Isaiah, Paul alludes to Hosea 13:14 in what may be seen as a mockery of death (1 Cor. 15:55).

Basically, he is pointing out that death no longer has any power to strike fear in the hearts of believers. Although we may rightly not wish for the physical pain associated with death, death itself cannot finally hurt the Christian.

Paul expands on this point in verses 56–57 to explain why death has no victory or sting, presenting a very concise form of his teaching on the work of Christ and the law that appears in a more extended form in Romans 7 and Galatians 3.

The sting of death comes from sin, for death exists only because sin warrants death. And the power of sin is the law because our fallen natures take God’s good law and twist it into something that encourages us to break it.

Yet Christ, in His death and resurrection, has removed death as the penalty for sin for Christians and has set us free from sin and from enslavement to the law as something that condemns us and that is used to incite even more sin.

We have the victory because we have been moved from being in Adam to being in Christ, where we receive power to love and obey God.

Puritan commentator Matthew Henry writes: “Christ, by dying, has taken out this sting. He has made atonement for sin; he has obtained remission of it. It may hiss therefore, but it cannot hurt.”

Coram Deo

As Christians, we might fear the process of dying because it is often painful. However, we have no need to fear death itself. For the Christian, death is experienced not as God’s wrath on sin but as a transition to the intermediate state, where we will be with Christ. If we believe in Jesus, we do not have to be afraid of death, for God will use it to bring us even closer to Him.

For Further Study

PSALM 68:20
PROVERBS 12:28
HEBREWS 2:14–15
REVELATION 1:17–18

-Ligonier

A Psalm for the desperate heart

“Hear my cry, O God, listen to my prayer; from the end of the earth I call to you when my heart is faint. Lead me to the rock that is higher than I.” Psalm 61:1-2

Walking through depression isn’t something I want to do again, but I am thankful for the season when my heart was faint because I experienced God’s presence like never before. These Psalms gave me prayers to pray when I had no words. Wounds of life had run deep and my mind was filled with fear and despair.

No matter what you are going through or how hard life may be, speak these simple psalms to the Lord today and let Him meet you right where you are. May God bless you and begin to give you a glimpse of hope.

-Micah Maddox

A Psalm for the terrified heart

“Be gracious to me, O God, for man tramples on me; all day long an attacker oppresses me; my enemies trample on me all day long, for many attack me proudly. When I am afraid, I put my trust in you. In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I shall not be afraid. What can flesh do to me?” Psalm 56:1-4

Life is complicated when people let us down or hurt us on purpose. But there is one person who is always steady, faithful, and true. If you are worried about what might happen next or afraid of what people will do or say, know that God is gracious, merciful, loving, and kind. He wants to hear you pray the words of the psalms.

-Micah Maddox

A Psalm for the overwhelmed heart

“God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble at its swelling. Selah. Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!" Psalm 46:1-3,10

Life is paralyzing when struggles surround us. There is no shame in being still, and this psalm gives us the very tangible value to slowing down the soul and letting the season of struggle be a gift rather than a curse. Being still and letting God into the depths of the overwhelm is perhaps a key to finding the help we need to make it through another day.

-Micah Maddox

A Psalm for the grieving heart

“I am weary with my moaning; every night I flood my bed with tears; I drench my couch with my weeping. My eye wastes away because of grief; it grows weak because of all my foes. Depart from me, all you workers of evil, for the LORD has heard the sound of my weeping. The LORD has heard my plea; the LORD accepts my prayer.” Psalm 6:6-9

Grief changes us. It forces us to stop and acknowledge the pain of the world around us. Loss ushers us into an emotional cycle that we can try to ignore only to be hit harder when the next wave of grief overcomes us. Tears are not a sign of weakness, they prove a person is letting him or herself come face to face with something difficult. The hope we hold is that God hears the cries of His children and He gives us words to help express the deep ache of a heart in grief.

-Micah Maddox

A Psalm for the discouraged heart

“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.” Psalm 43:5

The question why is one that is hard to answer in seasons of depression. Sometimes there is no good answer. But we can always find an answer for where to find hope. This psalm spells it out for us and walks us toward God with praise and thanks for salvation.

-Micah Maddox

A Psalm for the waiting heart

“I waited patiently for the LORD; he inclined to me and heard my cry. He drew me up from the pit of destruction, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure. He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God. Many will see and fear, and put their trust in the LORD.” Psalm 40:1-3

Seasons of depression go by slower than other seasons of life. The days linger and the nights seem to never end. But the psalmist here reminds us that God pulls us up out of that terrible place and gives us steady ground to stand on. When we feel like the night will never end, this gives us fresh hope to rise up with a new song for a new day.

-Micah Maddox

A Psalm for the fearful heart

“The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? Wait for the LORD; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the LORD!” Psalm 27:1,14

Fear is gripping. It’s the feeling that starts small but grows and seems to take us down faster than we want to go. But God gives us big truths to cling to from this psalm. He is our light! He is our strength! When fear grips us, we know where to go to find light in the dark and strength when we feel depleted. It’s not that we immediately jump for joy and have miraculous physical power, but remembering where the light comes from, helps lead us in the right direction when we are in the depths of the dark.

-Micah Maddox

Micah Maddox Find Purpose, Peace, and Calmness in a Chaotic World

Depression is not something that magically disappears when you slap a band aid on it. Sometimes the last thing you want to hear is another Bible verse or an encouraging word from someone who has not walked in your shoes. We all have moments when we need someone to grab our hand and help pull us up out of the depths of despair. It’s the moments when we cannot even reach back for the extended hand that are hardest to get through. No matter what you are facing today or tomorrow, or what you went through yesterday, there is hope for you. Psalms puts words to the hardest seasons of life when it’s hard to find words to pray.

I’ve been there in the dark season of depression. I know what it’s like to wonder if this thick cloud that seems to surround me will ever lift. I’ve sat in the waiting rooms, read the articles, and attempted to talk about the moments that made me question if I was ever going to be ok again.

We cannot cover depression with a bandage or pretend like there are not tangible physical reasons for mental health struggles. But what we can do is use the resources we have wisely and share the hope we find in scripture.

There are a few Psalms that helped me through some of the darkest moments and I want to share them with you. The Psalmist conveys my feelings in ways I could never verbalize on my own. I have prayed these Psalms many times while asking God to deliver me from the struggle at hand. Every time I read them, I am reminded again of how amazing and alive God’s Word really is. While I love the entire chapter of each of these Psalms, I included the highlights that speak directly to my heart. For deeper study, read the entire chapter.

If you are encouraged by one of these, it’s your turn to hold out your hand to a friend and pull her up. Be an encourager and pass this on!

-Micah Maddox

(Micah is a women’s event speaker, Bible teacher, and author of Anchored In: Experience a Power-Full Life in a Problem-Filled World. She is passionate about helping women find purpose, peace, and calm in our chaotic world. Micah is on the Proberbs31 First5 Writing Team. As a pastor’s wife, mother of three, and foster mom, she contributes her time to her family and local church serving as a women’s ministry leader. Micah loves to give a voice to hurting hearts and writes to the one who needs encouragement. You can connect with her at micahmaddox.com.)

Micah Maddox Find Purpose, Peace, and Calmness in a Chaotic World