Hello beloved child of God, I hope you’re fine by God’s grace and I hope you’re excited about Lent 2019 and about us focusing on Depression amongst Christians.
Before going any further, I would like to say that I’m part of those people who believe that to better solve something we need to know what it is. Identifying what you’re dealing with will be the first step to overcome it.
So, what is depression and how can you know if you’re suffering from depression?
The first thing you need to know is that most people feel sad at times. It is a normal reaction to loss or life’s struggles.
Feeling sad is not a sin, it is something normal.
Nevertheless, when your feelings of sadness become intense, associated with feelings of unworthiness, hopelessness and helplessness, lasting for many days, to weeks, months and even years, then it is not just sadness, it is depression.
Proverbs 24:10 NLT
If you fail under pressure, your strength is too small.
As I told you yesterday, we’re going to have some exercises to do every single day. This is going to make this practical and we’ll be able to look into ourselves, to study ourselves to know what’s going on, and to study God’s Word to know how to fix it.
For these exercises, I recommend that you use a specific notebook, just to keep everything in the same place.
Here’s your very first exercise.
Here below is a list of sentences. You’ll have to write down in your notebook, the sentences to which you relate the most. You may relate to all these sentences, write all of them down, it is extremely important.
Don’t skip this part, don’t read further without doing it.
Finish with the exercise before reading the rest.
Exercise 1: What’s wrong with me?
- Things are getting worse and worse for me
- I think I’m worthless
- No one would miss me if I were dead
- I think I’m a failure
- My thoughts race and I obsess about things
- I don’t look forward to much of anything
- The world would be better off without me
- Thoughts about past trauma keep rolling through my mind
- My life is full of regrets
- I can’t stand making mistakes
- I don’t see things getting any better in the future
- I am deeply ashamed of myself
- I’ve been crying for no clear reason
- Sometimes I can’t make myself get out of bed
- I can’t seem to make myself exercise
- I don’t do things for fun these days
- I’ve been missing school/work lately because I just don’t have the motivation
- I’ve been doing everything at a much slower pace for no good reason
- I avoid people or places that remind me of a past bad experience
- I don’t care what I look like anymore
- I don’t laugh anymore
- I have no appetite
- I wake up too early and can’t go back to sleep
- I’ve been experiencing a lot of nausea and/or diarrhoea
- I’ve been sleeping a lot more than usual
- I have been having lots of pains and aches for no good reason
- I have no energy lately
- I’m married and I have lost my sex drive
- Every move I make takes more effort lately
- I don’t feel like being with anybody
- I don’t feel like talking to anyone
- I’m overly sensitive when anyone criticizes me in the slightest way
- I’m more irritable with others than usual
- I don’t feel connected to anyone
- I worry about people leaving me
- I don’t feel like hanging out with anyone anymore
- I’ve withdrawn from everyone
- I feel numb around people
- I feel unworthy of Friendship and love
- Compliments make me feel uneasy
- I have thoughts about dying or about killing myself
- I feel hopeless
- My sleep has been seriously disturbed for more than 2 weeks (sleeping too much or not enough)
- I’m ignoring major responsibilities in my work, at school, in my family
- I’m hearing voices which tell me extremely negative things
- I have highly disturbing flashbacks or nightmares about past trauma or past failures I can’t seem to forget about
If you’ve said yes to more than 60 percent of those phrases, if you’ve related to more than 60 percent of those phrases then chances are that you are suffering from depression.
I read somewhere that depression is like flu, it comes and goes. It’s not because you’ve got depression and recovered from it that you’ll never be at risk ever in your life again to suffer from depression.
Actually, I think this is logical because there are seasons in life which just look perfect, and others which are painful and hurting. It’s normal that in those seasons we feel sad, and depending on the perception we have of what we’re going through, we may even get depressed. It can happen.
So, it’s not because you’re free from depression today, that you can never get depression ever again in your life.
However, depression doesn’t lie in what happens to you but in how you process what happens to you. This clearly means that if you learn the right mechanisms to process your thoughts and emotions when you’re facing a difficult time, you may face hard times but not get depressed.
Proverbs 25:28 NIV
Like a city whose walls are broken through is a person who lacks self-control.
That’s what we’ll be working on during Lent, we’ll be working on how to process your thoughts and emotions with respect to what’s going on in your life, how to process it with God’s Word, in order to develop better coping mechanisms not only to recover from depression, but so that next time, when life is hard, you won’t get depressed.
Now, you also have to know that depression doesn’t just have a physical aspect (mental, emotional), it also has a spiritual component.
2 Corinthians 10:4-5 NIV
The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.
Depression is a spirit, a spirit which is depressed, an evil spirit, a fallen angel of the devil.
When you feel depressed, the spirit in question “clings” to you.
It’s like a vicious cycle.
The devil and his demons attack different aspects of the life of a Christian. For example, he tempts the Christian by every means possible and the Christian in question sins. Or for example he attacks his family with sickness and disease. As such, the Christian feels sad, when he feels sad, the devil and his demons are there to invade his mind with negative thoughts, when the Christian accepts those negative thoughts they feel depressed, and the demons of depression hold on tight to them and keep putting more negative thoughts in their mind.
It’s a vicious cycle.
The battle takes place in our minds. It is spiritual warfare, and we will win with God’s Word.
Conclusion
I don’t know what happened to you or what’s going on in your life right now which makes you to be depressed. I can’t measure your pain, I can’t estimate how much you’ve been hurt. I don’t know how much you’ve been fasting, praying in tongues, and commanding the situation to change.
I don’t know how many people asked you to get help. Perhaps you’ve even asked for help from God, from people, from therapists and you still feel the same. In fact maybe you even turned to Christians you trusted and admired and instead of supporting you they looked down on you for being a “weak Christian”, and didn’t attend to you as you expected them to attend to you.
What I know is, it hurts to feel sad and to feel like nobody cares. It’s hard to turn to other Christians which you admire and respect, to ask for their help and to see them ignore you when you need them the most.
Anyhow, what I know is, Jesus Christ is always available and He is powerful enough to set you free. Others may help you cope but Jesus Christ will set you free.
Remember that during His earthly ministry before His death and resurrection people brought desperate cases to Him and He solved all of them. There wasn’t one person who didn’t get exactly what they needed from Jesus Christ.
You’re not alone going through this, we are many Christians suffering from depression and in His Name we will be set free.
Prayer
Father Lord God Almighty, thank You for showing me today that I’m struggling with depression. Lord I present before You my pain, my hurt, my feelings, my mind and my heart. I know that You are able to set me free and to teach me to process my thoughts and emotions better so that I won’t fall back into depression. I put my trust in You, in Jesus Christ’s Name. Amen
It’s Now Your Turn
I hope you’ve done your exercise above.
Here’s your homework for today:
- Get an exercise book/notebook for this journey against depression (if you don’t have one yet)
- Don’t do this alone. Share this with a friend or loved one who may be going through difficult times right now
Your homework today is to subscribe to my Newsletter so as not to miss any post on depression and also, make sure to invite anyone whom you know is suffering from depression.
Click here to subscribe to my Newsletter.
Also, please consider sharing this blog post on all your social media accounts.
Invitation
Click here if you’re looking for a church. I recommend Elevation Church to you. A wonderful Christ-centered Church in which you aren’t limited by your location and in which you can see what God can do through you. We’re in a series right now called ” Maybe:God ” on discerning God’s Will.
If you’ve enjoyed reading this blog post please subscribe to my Newsletter so as not to miss any new post.
Also, please consider sharing this blog post on all your social media accounts.
Thank you for reading
God bless you
Victoria Eyog
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