WHEN YOU DON’T FEEL THE CHRISTMAS SPIRIT
Handling Depression When We’re Supposed to be “Merry” Can you identify with one or both of these journal entries? It just doesn’t feel like Christmas this year. The joyful anticipation I once had prior to December 25 has evaporated as I get older. Maybe it’s...
NO MATTER WHAT
When Being Thankful Is Hard When we are needy, lacking some type of provision, worried about the future, is it still reasonable and possible to praise God? Habakkuk 3:17-19 shouts “Yes!” These verses have always resonated with me, urging me to give thanks to the...
How Can Weakness Be A Strength?
The Outrageously Fruitful Ministry of a Depression-Prone Man For almost 40 years, James “Buck” Hatch served on the faculty of Columbia Bible College in South Carolina, teaching courses in Bible, hermeneutics, psychology, and family life. Hundreds, perhaps...
A Surrendered Spirit
A response to depression far more difficult to experience than it is to write about About 15 years ago, over a period of months, I begged the Lord to heal me of chronic depression. The initial benefit of anti-depressants had waned. Counseling hadn't...
SUFFERING SEEN THROUGH THE LENS OF SCRIPTURE
Vaneetha Risner's The Scars That Have Shaped Me I am not defined by what people have done or said to me. I am defined by who I am in Christ. God uses all of our suffering for our joy and for his glory. God’s refusals are always his mercies. When my life spins out...
DEPRESSION STATISTICS AREN’T NUMBERS, THEY’RE PEOPLE
The Prevalence and Symptoms of Major Depression Usually sanguine, sixteen-year-old Chad started locking himself in his room more often, texting and calling his friends far less frequently, and attending fewer school and church social functions. He’s sleeping more,...
What Does It Look Like in the Dark?
My first recollection of it occurred on the back porch steps of my rural home in North Carolina. Nine or ten years old, I slumped, cried aloud for what seemed like an hour, tears cascading down my cheeks onto the steps, obscuring my view of the sun setting behind a...
I Am Depressed, But God is Good
What follows is a journal entry from 2005. The first part sounds bleak. I was knee-deep in a depressive episode and couldn’t slog my way out. I’m posting it to show you how depression expresses itself in the minds or emotions of some Christian workers you may...
8 BIBLE PROMISES TO ENCOURAGE YOU
Why do you need encouragement? *Inadequacy for a called task or responsibility? *Weariness of mind, body, and spirit? *Battle fatigue over spiritual warfare? *Discouragement over an unmet goal or unanswered prayer? *Doubts about God’s love and faithfulness?...
SURPRISED AT SUNRISE
God Penetrates Our Darkness with His Light. A lot of my writing strives to reconcile struggles, especially depression, with faith in a loving God. But not even a melancholy...
When Faith Doesn’t Work
I am not a Christian because my faith “works” for me. Talk to a devout Mormon, Muslim, or Buddhist and he’ll extol the here-and-now benefits of his faith. He’ll cite a serenity of spirit, or a sense of order that believing brings to his life. Yet his belief system...
5 LESSER KNOWN WAYS THAT PRIDE SHOWS
Repeatedly in His Word, God warns about the encroachment of pride. That’s because, as John Wesley put it, “All pride is idolatry.”When we’re proud, how does it show?More obvious answers include boasting about accomplishments (even when we’re subtle about it during...
