The Gos-pill for depression

Romans 15:13 says, “Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”

The word “hope” that is found in the New Testament of the Bible comes from a Greek word that means “joyful, confident expectation.” To have Bible hope means you have an incredible expectation that your future is bright, and that tomorrow will be better than today. God wants every child of His to be filled and abounding in this hope.

How many people do you know that have a hard time sleeping because they can’t wait to get up in the morning so they can see how good the day is going to be? I’ll bet not many. Why? Because people are more hopeless today than they have ever been.

According to Internet sources, more people deal with stress and depression than ever before — men, women and children (even preschoolers) in all socio-economic classes. The problem is worldwide. Depression has caused deaths by suicide, and has been shown to contribute to deaths from coronary disease. Most people who are depressed never seek treatment. The numbers and percentages of people who are affected by depression are staggering, as are the profits of pharmaceutical companies.

(See article by Bob Murray Ph.D. and Alicia Fortinberry M.S. for complete statistics: http://www.upliftprogram.com/depression_stats.html)

Being a Christian doesn’t make you exempt from these problems. Being a Christian does mean that you have an answer in God that has nothing to do with what pharmaceutical companies are offering.

Depression is a result of hopelessness. Hopelessness is a result of something that you believe in your heart. Notice the scripture in Romans 15 says that the God of hope wants to fill you with all joy and peace. Well, why doesn’t He do it?

The reason is because it is based on you believing the right thing. The God of hope can fill you with joy and peace and cause you to abound in hope, as you believe His promises.

The pharmaceutical companies want you to believe that you have a joy and peace problem, and their purple pill can help you. If you’re depressed, you don’t have a joy and peace problem, you have a believing problem. Get your believing straightened out and the God of hope can fill you with this joy and peace.

Believing is not the same thing as mental assent. The mind can agree with truth while the heart remains in a stage of doubt. When Jesus spoke about faith that moves mountains in Mark 11:23, He did not say that this kind of faith was when we agreed in our mind. He said it was when we believed it in our heart and declared it with our mouth. Believing has three stages that you need to know about.

First, you must believe what God is saying to you concerning your circumstance. This means you have to have knowledge of what He said. Faith doesn’t begin until you gain the knowledge of what God has said. Remember, you must believe it in your heart. This means that you are going to have to meditate on His promise until it becomes more real to you than your problem.

Some people don’t like meditation, yet they practice it habitually. Worry is meditation. It’s meditating on the problem until you become depressed and scared. Why not meditate on what God said about the problem? When you do, faith will rise up in your heart!

Second, you must believe that God not only has said it, but He is faithful to do what He said He would do. The scripture is full of promises concerning the faithfulness of God. If I tell you that I am going to do something for you, you will judge me in two areas. First, you will judge what I said to you. Then you will judge my character and my reliability. In other words, “I know he said it, but will he really do it?”

This second stage of believing is where you judge God to be faithful to do what He said He would do. Hebrews 11:11 said Sarah did this and she received strength to conceive.

The third stage is where a lot of people miss it. Jesus did not say in Mark 11:23 that “if you believe that what God said, then it would happen.” He said that you have to believe that what you say will happen. In other words, if you will begin to believe in your heart and say what God has said, then God will begin to bring to pass what you are saying. You have to confess it with your mouth.

According to Romans 10:9 and 10 that’s how you get saved, by believing with the heart and saying it with your mouth. It’s the same way that you come out of depression!

God wants to fill you with a hope today that will cause you to leap out of bed on Mondays and shout how excited you are about the week! You can have that kind of hope if you believe!

Dayne Massey is pastor of Gracepointe Church, 665 Ga. Hwy. 74 South in Peachtree City. Gracepointe is a non-denominational church with a vision to equip people to fulfill the destiny God has for them. The church’s website is www.gracepointechurch.com. For more information, call 770-631-9880 or email pastor@gracepointechurch.com.

Who needs medication when you have JEEESUS?

Submitted by sniffles5 on Fri, 04/04/2008 - 7:41am.

Right on, Pastor Massey!

Who needs silly things like prescription medications when prayer is just as effective!

Those folks in hospitals aren't physically sick, they're suffering from a sickness of the spirit! They've been led to believe by slick pharmaceutical company advertising that medications will make you better, when as we all know it's attending church regularly that will heal all sicknesses!

And those children with Attention Deficit Disorder? Throw away their pills and pray for 'em (and provide a little good Christian discipline to their behinds when they act up)!

Glory glory hallelujah!

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Glory Hallelujah (Teacher Hit Me With a Ruler)

Submitted by muddle on Fri, 04/04/2008 - 8:47am.

I thought the "purple pill" was for heartburn.

The blue pill is for other concerns. (And here is one area where thinking about God is more likely to hinder than help.)

Anyway, first I'm not real sure what the good pastor is advocating. I am to "believe what God has said he'll do." Did I miss it? What will He do?

In any case, don't you agree that depression meds, etc. are over-prescribed? The assumption seems to be that (a) any mental state other than happiness and contentment is bad and (b) the way to alter one's mental state is through chemistry.

I was rather shy as a kid. I dealt with it. Were it today I might have been diagnosed with "Social Anxiety Disorder" and given a medication. My second son was very "active" when he was young. He would have been a perfect candidate, in the eyes of many educators, for ritalin. He didn't need it. My former neighbor, a psychotherapist, was inclined to prescribe a drug for anything and everything. When one of our neighbors--a bachelor--seemed to find it difficult to keep his property picked up, the good doctor offered to prescribe some drug that would motivate him.

I do believe that there is such a thing as clinical depression that may require medical treatment. But very often the sources of one's sadness are, quite simply, cognitive in nature.

I haven't done so well over the past couple of years, with deaths in the family, cancer diagnoses, serious illnesses and anxiety-inducing deadlines. My daughter kindly asked me if I thought I might be a candidate for Prozac or the like. I'm sure that if I walked into the doctor's office and told him that "I've been rather down lately" I would walk out with some sort of prescription. But I can point to the sources of the disturbance and am capable of thinking things through. I don't need chemical alteration. And whatever happened to the angst discussed by the existentialists? Existential despair, arising from an atheistic outlook and the realization that, if there is no God then there is no meaning to life, would now be addressed not through philosophy but with pharmacology.

Sometimes the rationally appropriate emotional response to one's circumstances involves a rather unpleasant mental state, such as shame or guilt or sadness.

And if Pastor Massey's overall worldview is correct, then he may well be right at least in the suggestion that sometimes the source of depression is spritual in nature.

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amen

Submitted by pinkst on Fri, 04/04/2008 - 8:15am.

amen

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