When depression strikes
I Kings 19: 1 – 9
Rev. Peter R Green, Sunday morning, 09 March, 2003

DEPRESSION IS so common that the Government has decided that it has to take some action. It isn’t doing very much, but it has given some financial support to depression help groups.

Elijah suffered from depression. And there are few things like depression to make you feel alone, unloved and separated from God.
You have probably had short periods of depression, up to, say, a fortnight. You might have had longer periods, a few months or even years.Some of us probably can’t remember a day without a tinge of depression.

A counsellor friend once told me that I’m probably constantly mildly depressed. Certainly it used to be easy to fall into a deeply pit when troubles came.
When I was about 10, our teacher was talking about waking up and feeling that the day was bright and fresh and exciting, and I was puzzled. I had heard other people say the same, and I couldn't remember a day when I had felt that way. I remembered plenty of days when I woke up thinking that the day was already too much and I should hide under the sheet and go back to sleep!

Which kind are you? Do you mostly wake up bright eyed and bushy tailed, or do you mostly wake up with a sense of gloom?
You don't have to tell me. Just tell yourself!
But, as the architects say, “If you can’t fix it, feature it.” We can’t control the tendency, but we can decide how we will respond to it.

Elijah was a typical depressive person. Prophets often are.
Cheery, confident, optimistic people notice that something is not rght, but tend to think, “Oh, well; it will all pan out alright in the end.” Pessimistic, brooding people notice a problem, and they reflect long and hard on it; they pray about it. They see the consequences long before they arrive. You don’t have to tend to depression to be a prophet, but it helps.

George on our Beach Mission team had a great sense of humour. He would sit so quietly that we hardly noticed he was there. Suddenly, he would comment on something someone had said, and have us all in fits of laughter. He was so spot on.
On social nights, we always kept a spot for George. He made the stormiest evening warm and sparkly.
The minute it was over, he sank into a deep depression. He was sure he hadn't done well enough, sure that he must have said something to offend everyone, sure he had failed the team, failed God, failed himself.

Was Elijah that kind of person? He could go so far out on a limb that you’d expect it to snap off under his weight. Then he would go a metre further. Everyone stood in awe. But, as soon as Elijah came down, and saw what danger he was in, his knees buckled.

Don’t search the books of Kings for a place about Elijah climbing trees. You won’t find it. It’s a word-picture. Try to understand what it was like to be Elijah.

Yesterday’s Herald told of a man who entered a US shopping mall wearing a T–shirt bearing two slogans. On one side it said, “Peace on Earth.” On the other it said, “Give the inspections time to work.”
He was ordered by security guards to remove the T–shirt before entering the mall. He refused, so they called police, who arrested him and held him for two hours before the mall owners decided not to press charges and allow him back into the mall.

It’s not safe to have a contrary opinion where the Government has the official story.

Elijah had a contrary point of view in Israel when the King and Queen and the religious officials and all the rest had the official story.
The official story was that the Canaanite god, Ba’al, was the true god, and no one should worship Jahweh any more.
Elijah challenged that. He called the people, the priests of Ba’al, and the rulers to Mount Carmel. He challenged the priests of Ba’al to make offerings on their altar and pray to their god until he sent fire and burnt up their offering. But, no matter how long they prayed and chanted and cut themselves and carried on, nothing happened.

Then Elijah rebuilt the Lord’s altar. He killed the sacrificial bulls, he cut them up and placed the pieces on the altar. They he poured water over the offerings, over the wood, over the stones and into a ditch around the edge of the altar. It was too wet for fire from the wood, fire from above, or fire from the trench.
Then Elijah prayed. He offered the gift to God. He asked God to let it be known that he is truly God.
And fire fell from heaven. The wood, the sacrifices, the water in the trenches and even the altar’s stones were burned by God’s fire.
Elijah had the false priests of Ba’al killed. The people shouted, “Yahweh! He is God! Yahweh! He is God!”

But Queen Jezebel, the head of the Ba’al cult, sent a message to Elijah. “By tomorrow, you will be just like those priests of Ba’al whom you had killed, or I’m not Jezebel!”

And Elijah panicked and fled and despaired of his life.

WHAT CAUSES DEPRESSION?
This story gives us a lot to think about. But we need to ask what causes depression. Many Christians like a simplistic answer. Some blame sin, some blame Satan. But the evidence shows that this is right in certain cases, but not in all of them.

Many doctors say, “It all chemical.” And their pills work for some, but not for others.

Counsellors often say, “Just learn to think in a different way about life, and you’ll be OK.” But that doesn’t always work, either.
All of these are true for some people and not for others.

A depressed woman came to a Christian worker. She had a lot of conflict in her marriage. The worker sent her to a doctor and said, “Come back and talk next week.”
The doctor found she was severely anaemic, gave her iron supplements, and by next week, although the home situation hadn’t changed much, the woman was coping better. That meant the counselling helped a lot, because she was strong enough to act on the things that needed changing.

Another woman was severely depressed. Don't think I'm saying that women get depressed and men don't. It's just coincidence that these two stories relate to women I knew. This woman's GP stabilised her with medication. Her pastor and a team from the church delivered her from several spiritual issues which had caused great problems. And a counsellor showed her different ways of coping with stressful situations. Each treatment helped her quite a bit, but it took all three to get her back on a stable keel.

Some people just suddenly become deeply depressed without any emotional cause at all. People who have had heart surgery often became weepy after the surgery. They say it is just the effect of the major shock to the body, as it goes into grief mode to protect itself. Even some tumours cause depression.

Depression is often protective. It paralyses your will; it anaesthetises you to outside events. It stops you from becoming frantic when major troubles hit. But it can also kill you when you have too much for too long.
The moral is, don’t try to fix someone’s depression with a simple answer. There can be all kinds of underlying causes. Don’t keep trying to exorcise someone when they need chemotherapy for a tumour — you might end up on a murder charge!

ELIJAH’S DEPRESSION
Today we are mainly looking at Elijah’s depression. You will see that it has basically three factors.

First, Elijah feels trapped. He has defied the Queen, and now he is deep in whatever it is that people get deep in. She’s out to get him, he’s only one man, and all of Jezebel’s Palace Guard and all their spies are out to find him and kill him.
Second, he feels isolated. Physically, he is isolated, because he chose to go out into the desert and leave his assistant behind. But he also feels isolated, because, a bit later, when God asks him what he is doing out in desert places, he says,
The Israelites have rejected your covenant, broken down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and they are trying to kill me, too.
The third thing is that he blames himself for not winning the entire war against Ba’al. He has somewhat unrealistic attitudes, actually.

He says to God,

Take my life: I am no better than my ancestors.

This is typical of many kinds of depression. Isolation, loneliness, feeling trapped, self–blame — they all add up to depression. Hope is lost: happiness flees.

And that kind of depression is very common in ministry. It applies if you are ministering in any way anywhere — I’m not just talking about Pastors and other people “with their Revs up”. I’m talking about everyone who wants to serve God and make a difference to this world.

I’m also talking to people in small churches, and in small ministry organisations. They increase the sense of isolation and the feeling of failure if something goes wrong.
If the average attendance is 100 and one person walks out in a huff, it’s a 1% loss. But if the average attendance is 20, you can never get less than a 5% loss. Having one person go from that little church is like having a large family go from the bigger church.That begins to really hurt!
I've seen it in people stuck at home looking after a sick husband or wife, or an elderly relative or even a small child. I’ve seen it in people plodding on through the years in an unresponsive area.

But there’s the far more active situation, when someone stands up and is counted, and the count ends at 1. There’s a pastor (we'll call him John) — he’s someone I don’t particularly warm to — who got up in a Baptist Union Assembly meeting and spoke passionately about an important issue as to what kind of denomination we should be. It was a brave speech, tackling something that many people wouldn’t have fully understood, and he made a good job of making everything clear.

And then a senior pastor with a high and undeserved reputation stood up and heaped lie upon lie about what John had said, and made out that John was teaching heresy. It was character assassination.

And the meeting sided with the older man and his lies.

I saw John outside, and he was already sinking into a bog of despair, because he had been isolated and marginalised, and there was nowhere for him to take the issue now: the decision was made. He was trapped and he felt alone, and he blamed himself for even trying.
It should not be so, but Jesus said that weeds would grow among the wheat, and it would be almost impossible to tell the two apart until the judgment day, when everything will be revealed.

WHAT TO DO WHEN DEPRESSION HITS
As I said before, there can be many causes for depression, so, even if you know for sure that some event triggered it off, I’d say, “Talk to a professional.” You may be over–reacting to a situation, because you are also unwell.

Don’t even be afraid of anti-depressant medication. If it’s wrong to take something to stabilise your body’s natural serotonin levels, then is it any less wrong to take something to balance your body’s insulin levels? People die when they don’t balance their insulin; some people die if they don’t balance their serotonin!
But whether or not you have to sort out a medical problem, there are some other clues about what to do.

First, attend to your physical needs. We read of Elijah,

Then he lay down under the tree and fell asleep.

And, after the angel ministered to him, we read again,

He ate and drank and then lay down again.

One common symptom of depression is disturbed sleep. Another is disrupted eating patterns. Many discover their depression when they can’t sleep properly. Don’t try to live around it. You might need to mow the lawns and do the washing on Saturday afternoon. Forget it! Eat properly and set two hours aside for a proper sleep!

Second, share with God how you feel. I might surprise you here and say that one of the best ways to share it with God is to share it with a fellow believer who will really listen. In fact, sharing it with anyone who will truly listen is pretty helpful. When you are depressed, your thoughts can go around in circles, and it can really help if someone can say, "I can see this is really troubling you, but you've told me this twice already. Is there something extra you want to add?" Also, when you are depressed and God seems far away, someone's response makes it that much clearere that God is also listening.
Elijah said

I have had enough Lord! Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors.

That’s good. He's talking honestly to God. But imagine how much better it would have been if someone had just replied, “You must be feeling totally defeated and worthless.”
Elijah could have really closely looked at how he was feeling, and would have probably been able to put it into better perspective.
Still, he took a good step in the right direction.

Remember we saw a few weeks ago that Jesus is our good Shepherd. He is always there for his sheep. Trust him, even when it seems too dark to see him.

Third, receive ministry from others. Most of us are too proud to receive from others. But, when we do, we discover that we are not alone. Elijah received ministry from that angel.

In our office, we have all had some pretty hard days over the past few months, but we have learnt to support each other, like a family. And it has helped us all know that we really are not alone, someone understands, even if it's just shown by making a cup of coffee for someone under pressure.

Finally, within your limits, keep going. Many people have stopped coping when they stopped moving. You don’t have to kill yourself, but keep up the routines. Elijah was able to travel 40 days and 40 nights once he was strenghtened. And he was still moving towards his next ministry.

You mightn’t have a lot of control over how you feel, but God can still use you. You mightn’t always be on top of the world, but God cares for you. trust him, and let him lead you all the way!

AMEN