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 want to make sure we understand what we’re going to 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 difficult to getting your thoughts together virtually no interest in your surroundings it 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 in some of the things I have just discussed it was a notable Sunday morning back in 1866 and the famous British preacher Charles Haden Spurgeon shocked his 5,000 listeners as he got up in London’s Metropolitan Tabernacle and began a sermon from Isaiah 41 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 preacher Charles Haden

Spurgeon would confess to such despair but John Henry JWT who was the renowned pastor of the 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 blasphemy of God reformer John Knox prayed Lord Jesus receive my spirit and put an end to my miserable life Adan Iram Judson 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 bunan who wrote Pilgrim’s 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 fatness and my legs have scarce been able to carry me Jeremiah the prophet said cursed be the day on which I was born Elijah experiencing deep depression as he cries out it is enough now Lord take my life for I am no better than my