Speaker: Pastor H Biakson
Topic: Freedom from depression
The speaker started off by greeting the congregation in God’s name.
“As we are encountering suicide amongst us, I believe that there will be some of us who carries a burden. One thing that struck my mind while I was preparing for this sermon is that ‘As a Christian youth, whom do we let guard ourselves.’
Today we will discuss different types of depression but on spiritual aspects, as I won’t be able to cover them all.
Bible verses: 1Kings 19:3-5
Psalm 43:5
Isaiah 40:31
As we can see from the bible Elija was depressed, he compared himself to his ancestors. David was also worried about his life. Jona also had asked God to take away his life. Job wished that his life was taken away the moment he was born. We can see that depression had been there for a long time and it’s not a new thing.
SIGNS OF DEPRESSION:
- Feeling hopeless and helpless, “life will never get better”
- Finding it hard to concentrate or stay focussed
- Feeling overwhelmed by the burdens of life
- Appetite or weight changes, sleeping problem
- Anger problem, low tolerance level, easily agitated.
- Self loathing, feeling guilty, worthless and self-critical
- Thinking about death or killing oneself occasionally.
THE SET UP FOR DEPRESSION
- Physical factors (the complexity of human body- Psalm 139:14)
- Disease, physical sickness, pain and suffering, death.
- Lack of diet and exercise.
- Genetic inheritance, melancholic tendencies when coupled with external factors.
OUTSIDE INFLUENCE
- Family background and past abusive every family has a capacity to nurture or injure all kinds of family dysfunction criticism, rejection, violence in family relationship painful incidents of emotions.
- Experience of loss of unfairness job positions, opportunities, personal freedom, financial.
- Differed hope- hope for an end to loss,etc.
THE PROCESS OF GIVING UP
- Giving up- Attitude of “why bother, things are not going to improve, so what’s the use of trying”
- Blaming others - we blame other people in our lives for not caring enough.
- Hating Pleasure- although a part of us wanted to stay hopeful, we use to back away from anything that arouses.
THE REASON WE GIVE UP
- Refusal to live with differed hope
- Misplaced hope(placing hope in other than God)
THE PROCESS OF RECOVERY
- Recovering hope by facing despair difficulties are temporary, so face your despair.
- Acknowledging the pain of loss
- Admitting the failure of misplaced hope
- Recovering faith by facing doubt
ELIJA’S DEPRESSION & RECOVERY
Thinking about wrong thoughts
- Wrong thinkings made him depressed. Elija had always received God’s providence, but when he had negative thoughts it led to his depression.
- Comparing himself with others. “Our weakness and other’s strength are being compared most of the time”-Rick Warren. So you should not compare with others.
- Feeling guilt, not because of his wrong doings.
- Giving himself to the worst or exaggerating.
How god restore elija
- God ask him to eat food first.
- Casting all his burdens to God.
Before we reach that level of thinking about taking our own lives, we should go back to the bible and try to hear a still small voice. We should be well equipped with the word of God so that in times of need, God can talk to you through his words through a still small voice.
