I've had a lot of push-back over the years when I've suggested that God is quite enough to free people from the depression, anxiety, phobias and obsessions they take on. The Church has been steeped for so long in the notion that popular psychology is the only truly effective way for people to deal with their "mental illnesses" that thinking of God as a remedy for them has taken on a mythological, even ridiculous, character. But my question in response is this: What did God do for the psychologically-distressed for the many centuries prior to the advent of Prozac and the therapist's couch? Were the biblical promises of peace, joy, contentment and spiritual abundancy in walking with God all lies? Did God forget to include in Scripture that the psychologically-troubled had to wait 'til the 20th century to be truly free of their troubles? Of course not. But this is, apparently, what many modern believers have come to accept as true.
I preached a sermon a couple of years ago in which, among other things, I urged my audience to view God as sufficient to free anyone from whatever inner turmoil they might be bound in. Afterward, a woman approached me with a grim expression on her face. "I want to talk to you," she said.
"Sure," I replied.
"I'm a Christian," she began, "But I've been depressed and on medication for twenty years and I want you to know that there are some things God needs help with."
As you might expect, I was taken off-guard by this remark. God needs help? I thought to myself. How, then, can He be God? By definition, God is entirely self-sufficient. How small and impotent the Creator had become in this women's thinking! No wonder she was looking to chemicals instead of her Maker for treatment of her chronic depression. And how very sad that after twenty years of ingesting drugs she had not yet realized that true liberty from her depression would never come from taking them.
This women is an example of just how thoroughly modern believers have been induced to doubt God's promises of freedom, and peace and contentment in a relationship with Himself. Until Christians start taking God at His word, and trusting themselves to His will and way, they will never cease merely "managing" their fear, and despair, and pain.
John 10:10
10 The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.
Matthew 11:28
28 Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
I preached a sermon a couple of years ago in which, among other things, I urged my audience to view God as sufficient to free anyone from whatever inner turmoil they might be bound in. Afterward, a woman approached me with a grim expression on her face. "I want to talk to you," she said.
"Sure," I replied.
"I'm a Christian," she began, "But I've been depressed and on medication for twenty years and I want you to know that there are some things God needs help with."
As you might expect, I was taken off-guard by this remark. God needs help? I thought to myself. How, then, can He be God? By definition, God is entirely self-sufficient. How small and impotent the Creator had become in this women's thinking! No wonder she was looking to chemicals instead of her Maker for treatment of her chronic depression. And how very sad that after twenty years of ingesting drugs she had not yet realized that true liberty from her depression would never come from taking them.
This women is an example of just how thoroughly modern believers have been induced to doubt God's promises of freedom, and peace and contentment in a relationship with Himself. Until Christians start taking God at His word, and trusting themselves to His will and way, they will never cease merely "managing" their fear, and despair, and pain.
John 10:10
10 The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.
Matthew 11:28
28 Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
