Up From Depression

Oh my God, you have put my trust in you.

Oh my God, you have put my hope in you.

Oh my God, you have put my trust in you.

Oh my God, you have put my hope in you.

In you, in you I find my peace. In you, in you I find my strength.

In you, I feel the hope and peace. In you, in you I find my peace.

In you, in you I find my strength. In you, in you I find my strength.

Oh Lord my God, to you I give my hand. Oh Lord my God, to you I give my feet.

Oh Lord my God, to you I give my hand.

Oh Lord my God, to you I give my hand.

Amen.

Just a short video. Just minimize the PowerPoint.

There we go.

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Alright, if you would stand with us. The words are up there. It's a very simple song to sing along with. Here we go.

This was God above the heavens. Hallelujah! Son of God, and Son of Man. Hallelujah! Glory be to God on high. Hallelujah! Glory be to God on high.

Hallelujah!

In your life an earthly child. Hallelujah! In your life a divine. Hallelujah! Jesus died a Calvary. Hallelujah! In your life's triumphantly. Hallelujah!

Glory be to God on high. Hallelujah! Glory be to God on high. Hallelujah!

He will touch from our sin. Hallelujah! If we would have trusted Him. Hallelujah! We would live from Him our sin. Hallelujah! And forever with Him say, Hallelujah!

Glory be to God on high. Hallelujah! Glory be to God on high. Hallelujah! Glory be to God on high. Hallelujah!

Got it despite the technology difficulties. Alright children, and their leaders.

Walk on feet, forever with us. And every knee you set, smile with me. With your love, and all I have in you, is more than enough.

You are my supply, my breath and life. You are my awesome, and I know. You are my everyone, my living blood.

You are my awesome, and I know. God love you, is more than enough for.

Walk on feet, forever with us. And every knee you set, smile with me. With your love, and all I have in you, is more than enough.

You are my sacrifice, my greatest prize. You are my awesome, and I know. You are my coming King, you are everything.

You are my awesome, and I know. God love you, is more than enough for.

Walk on feet, forever with us. And every knee you set, smile with me. With your love, and all I have in you, is more than enough.

You are my everything, and I know. You are my awesome, and I know. God love you, is more than enough for.

More than all I can see. You are more than enough. More than all I want, more than all I need.

You are more than enough for me, more than all I know, more than all I can see. You are more than enough, is all that we are.

Is more than enough for all of me, forever with us. And every knee you set, smile with me. With your love, and all I have in you, is more than enough.

All I can see. Is more than enough for me, more than all I can see. With your love, and all I have in me, is more than enough.

God love you, is more than enough for me, more than all I can see. With your love, and all I can see. With your love, and all I can see.

God love you, is more than enough for me, more than all I can see. With your love, and all I can see. With your love, and all I can see.

God love you, is more than enough for me, more than all I can see. With your love, and all I can see. With your love, and all I can see.

God love you, is more than enough for me, more than all I can see. With your love, and all I can see. With your love, and all I can see.

God love you, is more than enough for me, more than all I can see. With your love, and all I can see. With your love, and all I can see.

God love you, is more than enough for me, more than all I can see. With your love, and all I can see. With your love, and all I can see.

God love you, is more than enough for me, more than all I can see. With your love, and all I can see. With your love, and all I can see.

God love you, is more than enough for me, more than all I can see. With your love, and all I can see. With your love, and all I can see.

God love you, is more than enough for me, more than all I can see. With your love, and all I can see. With your love, and all I can see.

God love you, is more than enough for me, more than all I can see. With your love, and all I can see. With your love, and all I can see.

God love you, is more than enough for me, more than all I can see. With your love, and all I can see. With your love, and all I can see.

So careful and possibly extensive counseling is needed to deal with unresolved motions that have been turned inward once it's out of control. So when you know what you're doing, you're turning it in on yourself, you're going to go to a place of depression, and that's not what you want.

So better learn to deal with it constructively. If you realize over the last five years you've been doing that to yourself, if you can arrest it tonight, great. If you can't, seek help. Get the help that you need to get past it.

Basically, experts believe anger is probably the number one cause. So wherever you read, you're going to find that they think anger turned inward is the number one cause of depression.

Then when people start to get over it, now this is the good news. So you've got depression, people start to get over it, the first step is always to commit to action. That's why going to counseling appointments once a week, or changing your diet, changing your sleep habits.

The first thing to do is start with some kind of commitment to action. That's always the first and necessary part of recovery. Why? Because depressed people feel like they really can't do anything.

When I was depressed back in 2001, I remember having feelings where I was sitting on the couch and I would look at my arm and I would will my arm to move to reach for my drink and it would not move.

Like I would go, I'm going to get my drink now. And I would go, oh, nothing's happening. And a few seconds later, then I would get moving. It was like getting started was hard. And that's it.

So that first commitment to action is always necessary. Actions taken to revitalize one's spirit life is always a good first step.

So if you can't go see a counselor, think about what it is that you're supposed to be, if you're a Christian, think about what it is that you're supposed to be doing in God.

I'm supposed to be reading my Bible. So make a commitment to read your Bible in an orderly fashion. Or I'm supposed to be praying. I know I'm not doing that enough.

Plan to pray. Remember those are the spiritual disciplines that we talk about. Committing yourself to take steps in those areas, again, would be that first action step.

There's a thing called the therapy of thanksgiving. You can sit down and make a list of all the things that you're grateful for.

And thinking about what you're grateful for will increase the serotonin, the endorphins and positive endorphins in your brain, not just serotonin, but others that are in your brain.

And you'll go like, oh, I feel better. You ever sit and reminisce, like you haven't seen somebody for a while, or you haven't really had a good conversation with them for a while, and you sit and talk to them,

remember when we did this, remember when we did that, remember when we went to camp, or we went canoeing, or remember when Sally fell off the boat, or you know, talk about it, and you laugh, and you feel, that's what that's all about.

So you're releasing those positive chemicals by having positive emotions about things that already happened in the past.

So you can do therapy for yourself by counting your blessings and thinking about what's good in your life.

Now another action step involves committing to a physical exercise plan.

Some part of depression is about your body's ability to produce the chemicals that it needs to produce, and when you exercise, your body will do that.

So you'll notice that people who are depressed oftentimes do not have a good exercise plan.

It could be because they have health concerns that are stopping them from doing that or whatever.

You'll even find, for example, that there are folks who are struggling with depression who will like, they'll say things like, well I need to lose weight, so they'll eat an atrociously small amount,

like really, really little, trying to lose weight, and they don't lose any weight.

Now they don't increase their exercise plan at the same time, and the best way to do something like that would always be to increase your exercise plan and keep your food consumption at a reasonable level.

So you always want to kind of balance, but have more exercise than food consumption. That's how you lose weight.

If this is your food consumption and you drop your exercise down here, you gain weight.

If it's right here even, you maintain weight, and if it's barely above, you lose weight, but if it's exercise is way above, you don't lose weight.

Your body goes into starvation mode and you don't lose weight.

So the bottom line is, committing to a healthy exercise plan produces the endorphins that are lacking in a depressed person.

You can eat chocolate or you can do push-ups. People are like, well I don't do push-ups, right?

Or you can just sit in a chair and move your leg up and down. You don't have to get up. You don't need cardio.

Exercise produces endorphins. You do whatever you can do and do a lot of it slow, easy, but continuous exercise,

and pretty soon it'll click and your brain will start to produce those endorphins and you'll feel better.

And it's got to be systematic, so it's a plan, and then you choose the plan.

It's also important to build a relational life. Get out, meet people, talk, share and develop friendships.

Living alone, and this is not figurative language, living alone is depressing.

Science proves it, sociology proves it, psychology proves it. If you isolate from the people who want what's good for you,

or even from your enemies, if you have no friends, you can go like, I want to hang out with my friends.

You can't think of anybody you'd hang out from. If you then don't hang out with anybody because you're moving away from certain people

because they're basically enemies or they treat you bad, that's depressing.

You will build depression in yourself, and you'll get clinical depression, and then you'll have to have extra help to try to get out of it.

Finally, a lifestyle of ministry helps in the recovery process. Serve other people at a practical level at least once a week.

This doesn't count your kids. If you're a parent, that's a responsibility, that's not ministry.

Ministry is serving somebody that is outside your family or somebody that you wouldn't normally serve or things like that.

You can serve your husband, that's great, you should do that. Serve your wife, that's great, you should do that.

Serve your kids, you should do that, but that doesn't count for this.

This is somebody that has a practical need that you can meet that's outside your responsibilities.

Science shows weekly you can do it more than once, but if you try to do it five times a week, you might burn out, then you'll stop.

If you can make sure that you're doing it at least once a week, that's a key to overcoming depression or rising up out of depression.

Depressed people have a tendency to self-preoccupation. Basically, they find something to keep themselves busy.

Play games, watch your phone, watch TV, stream, whatever. They'll find something to keep themselves occupied.

What that does is it keeps their mind off the fact that their mind is lacking something.

That tendency to self-preoccupation is gradually refocused with the proper input.

As you're hanging around the right people, people are talking to you, as you're in church, you're studying, you get the Bible in you, whatever.

There's a really cool recent study, if anybody wants to look it up, about what happens if you read your Bible three times a week for, I think it's three weeks.

It's a very short period of time. You just block out time to read your Bible.

By the way, the study was done with reading, not listening.

Joy and perspective returns as depressed individuals receive help in understanding their emotions so they know where they're at and why they're there.

Accepting their own worth, they realize they have great value.

Every human being has great value, more than any dollar amount, more than any wealth, more than anything in this lifetime.

A human's worth is way above anything, anything but God.

Then see that God is expressing His love through them as they outreach to others in need.

You're going to remember that when you're doing that service, you're thinking about this is God.

Remember the ordinance of God? If God ordered you to serve people, does anybody think God ordered you to serve people?

It's there, right? A new command I give you, love one another, serve.

If God ordered us to serve people, then when we're serving people, we're carrying out His order.

That means we are His outreaching to other people.

Now we're going to look at some scripture. If you brought your Bible, here we go.

Anybody want to read Psalm 42 verses 3-4? Praise the Lord!

Psalms 42:3–4

Psalm 42, are you going to get there, Tontate? You volunteered.

Yes, you did. If somebody else wants to get ready because we're going to read 5 and 6 next.

This is participation.

42, 3-4.

My tears have been blue day and night, while men say to me all day long, Where is your God?

These things I remember as I fought with my soul. I used to go with the multitude, leading a procession to the house of God,

which shouts of joy and thanksgiving among the best of people.

The question is, what is the Psalmist, the person who wrote this Psalm, what is their emotional state?

Pretty sad.

Pretty sad, that's right.

That sounds like sad, or you could say depressed.

Not clinically depressed necessarily, but depressed.

Now, you don't have to answer this question a lot if you don't want to, but realistically, have you ever been there?

I have. I've been clinically depressed and didn't realize it, and it took a little bit.

In fact, I told my doctor, no, I can't be depressed. That's not possible.

So, it does happen. But even depression can happen for an hour, it can happen for six hours, it can happen for a week.

The standard is if it lasts for more than a week, you need clinical help of some kind, typically.

I'm going to ask you, have you been depressed for a week?

And then you're in the doctor's care trying to get over it.

So, what were the circumstances when it happened to you?

Think about those circumstances.

Not his circumstances, he was isolated.

It says, I used to go, that's what the verse said, I used to go along with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God.

He doesn't do that anymore. So, he isolated himself.

He's withdrawn. He's crying.

People are saying to him all day long, where is your God?

So, he's challenged in his faith. He wants to believe.

What were your circumstances when you were depressed?

I have to share with you, just think about it for a moment.

Okay, let's look at 42, five and six. You got that, RJ?

You read five and six?

Yeah.

Alright, go.

Why are you in despair, O my soul friend? Why have you become disturbed within me?

Open, God, for I shall again praise him for the help of his presence.

O my God, my soul is in despair within me.

Therefore, I remember you from the land of the Jordan and the peeps of the Dex.

Hermon.

From Mount Hazar.

Yep. Okay, so now our question is, how is the soul-mist turning his feelings into words?

And there's a clue. He's verbalizing by talking out his feelings to who?

Something you're talking to God.

Is he?

Why are you in despair, O my soul?

He's talking to himself.

He's talking to his soul, in this case, right? Talking to his soul.

How is the soul-mist turning his feelings into words? He's talking to his soul.

And to, and now, six says, O my God, my soul is in despair within me.

So now he's talking to God, right? So he starts by talking to his soul in five, and then God in six.

Okay.

So because we are reading his words, we can assume he also did what?

It's a no-brainer. If we're reading it, he must have, he not only said it, but he also wrote it, right?

If he didn't write it, if he's talking to God in his soul, who else knows what he's saying?

So he probably wrote it down as he was doing it, which is a good thing to do.

We talked about that during the anger management training.

Okay, now we're going to 1 Peter 1. So go to the right, that's in the back, in the teeny-teeny books.

1 Peter 1.

We are doing good.

Anybody got it? Josh?

Knowing that you were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from their beautiful way of life,

inherited from their forepowers, but with precious blood, as of a clam unpunished and spotless, the blood of Christ.

Okay, so from these verses, how can you determine your true personal worth to God?

That's the question. What do these verses tell us about our worth to God?

Jace, what do you think, man? What do those verses say about our worth to God?

Shrug?

Well, when God paid for it, he didn't pay like out of anything that fades away, all this other stuff.

It's cool, it's part of us, but God paid his precious blood because he wanted it.

I would say, I don't want to say he won us, but because he was being obedient to himself, but to that, he paid the price for that.

Good. So he paid the most precious thing of all.

Precious blood is everlasting.

Everlasting. Anybody got anything to add?

Okay, 1 Kings 19, 4. We got it? Tommy, you got it?

Almost.

Okay, so which symptoms of depression can you identify right now, this is Elijah speaking, in his life, what symptoms of depression can you see?

Lack of self-worth.

Okay, so lack of self-worth. Yeah, he's literally degrading his value with his words, he's saying he's no good.

Very isolated, he's not going on a way-based journey.

Yep, he isolated himself.

Anything else?

Because we get depression, because he said take my life, it's not really in my course of doing stuff.

Yeah, he's actually pretty deep in depression, he's asking to die.

And so sometimes when you're pretty depressed, you just want to die.

And the truth is most depressed people never commit suicide, it's people who are coming out of depression, they just get just enough strength coming out of depression, and that's when most suicides happen.

We're not talking about suicide, but we do need to be aware that too much depression can make you feel like you want to end it.

That's a real thing. So if you're dealing with somebody who is depressed, be aware of that. If you are depressed, be aware of that.

That can take you to a place where you just feel like you want life to end.

Okay, so now we're going to just follow his story for a minute.

So in verses 5 and 6, we're going to see gradual steps that are provided for him from these verses that follow.

So look at 5 and 6 first, anybody got it? We're all probably in 19 right now.

Alright, Tony Tate, go ahead.

Okay, so what gradual corrective step was in those two verses?

Okay, so he ate, and by the way, that's a pretty healthy eating.

So he ate healthy, right?

Yep, so like self-care, you could probably lump it under self-care, I think.

He also followed it because he didn't have to give up eating.

Right, he committed himself to take that step, right? He was told to take the step to eat, and he did. He got up and ate.

So remember how we talked about overcoming depression kind of begins with a first step, a first action that you commit to?

He got up and he ate. That's what Tony Tate's saying there.

Okay, go down to 10 to 14.

10 to 14. Here, I'll read it.

And he said,

And he said,

So what step is that? What is he taking right there?

Okay, so it is seeking God. I don't think that's the one they're aiming at, but that's what he's doing, you're right.

So it's a spiritual thing.

Okay, he's talking it out. Yeah.

So in fact, if you notice, the first part is talking about how he says, and he said, or he thought, basically he's thinking to himself,

I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts, for the son of Israel, forsaken by covenant, and so on.

And then he gets with God, and God says, what's wrong? And he says exactly the same thing.

I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts, for the son of Israel, forsaken by covenant, torn down nine altars, and killed the prophets with a sword.

I

to God probably hand in hand are a great way to do it.

You might not be able to tell somebody else,

they might not even be available, they might be dead.

They might be in another state,

you might not have their number,

you might not be able to express them how you're feeling.

But you can always talk to God or you can write it out,

and he probably did both,

because he's the only one there.

It's just him and God there.

So he probably later wrote out exactly what happened

so that it could be carried forward to present day.

So, okay, 15, 16.

Anybody?

Okay.

And the Lord said to him,

go return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus.

And when you have arrived,

you shall anoint Heziel king over Aram,

and Jehu the son,

I know, I see why you didn't want to read it now.

And Jehu the son of Nimshi,

you shall anoint king over Israel,

and Elisha the son of Shaphat of Abema,

Abema,

hola,

you shall anoint as prophet in your place.

Okay?

So what is this kind of like progressive,

constructive step that's happening here?

God's telling him what to do.

Can I put him on a call to action?

Yeah.

So he's, yep.

So he's ready to exercise a call to action.

He's gonna go put a plan in place, right?

And really what he's doing is he's assigning

some faithful men named by God to those roles.

It's gonna take some of the weight off.

But God said, this is what you're gonna do,

and he's gonna do it.

So it's a call to action.

And it could be,

I mean, you could say building relational life,

even if we go back to the original thing,

because he's gonna know these guys

once he ordains them into place, right?

They're gonna be his friends in ministry or in kingship.

So you could say that too, okay?

And then 19.

Go ahead.

Just 19?

Yep, just 19.

So he parked in there and found Elijah,

the son of Shephard,

while he was plowing with 20 pairs of ox before him,

and he with the 20, or 12.

And Elijah passed over to him and through his mantle on him.

Okay, and so then what is 19, that progressive step?

Now he's kind of actually what, carrying out the plan.

He willfully picked up in his plan.

Yep, so he willfully did it.

He did it intentionally.

He would right there as he willfully did it.

Yep.

So sometimes I think about this.

God wants us to do something.

God gives us something to do.

We're like, well, I don't need to do that.

I don't see why that benefits me.

I don't see why that benefits the other person.

But sometimes your call to action from God is just for that,

just so that you can be obedient,

so that you can answer the call to action

for no other reason.

Like, okay, it doesn't matter if I take the blue one

or the red one, and God says take the blue one.

You're like, but it doesn't matter

if I take the blue one or the red one.

It's no, why would God even care?

Blue or red, who cares?

God shouldn't care about that.

And then you go, well, fine, I'll take it anyway.

And you take the blue one just because,

what difference, doesn't make any difference to you,

whatever, not out of obedience,

not out of faithfulness to God, but just because, right?

Because you, or you're like,

well, the last thing I saw was blue,

so I'm gonna take the blue one,

like some kind of hokey sign or something, right?

When God gives us something to do,

sometimes it's specific and he wants you to do it.

And it's part of your mental process,

part of your emotional process, part of your psychology,

part of your spiritual leading, right?

There have been lots of times

when God has given me little things to do,

and I'm like, that doesn't, it didn't make any sense.

Like, there's no reason, no reason on earth

that God could want me to do that.

It's not gonna save me from a car accident later today.

It's not gonna make me stronger in any way.

I just cannot fathom any reason why God wants me

to wear a short-sleeve shirt instead of a long-sleeve shirt,

or whatever it might be.

And I was picking one particular example there.

But when I choose it, now something happens, right?

I chose to do what God wanted me to do.

It's an expression of love toward the Lord, if nothing else.

Okay, so Moses, David, and Jonah,

yep, we've got four minutes.

Moses, David, and Jonah also sometimes became depressed.

We're gonna look quickly at the following passages.

I think Jonah's kind of maybe a little self-explanatory.

Whatever ones of these we don't get through,

you can look at on your own.

But the first one's in Numbers 11,

and it's verses 10 to 15.

Did anybody jump ahead and look those up already?

I did not.

Tommy, you got it?

Go.

Now Moses prayed to people weeping throughout their family,

each one at the entrance of his tent.

And the anger of the Lord became very hot,

and Moses was asleep.

So Moses said to the Lord,

why have you been so hard on your servant,

and why have I not found favor in your sight,

that you have put the burden on all of these people on me?

Was it I who conceived all these people,

or did I give birth to them,

that you should say to me, carry them in your arms

as a nursing infant,

to the land which you swore to your father?

Where am I to get meat to give all of these people?

For they weep before me, saying,

give us meat so that we may eat.

I am not able to carry all these people by myself,

because it is too burdening some for me.

So if you are going to deal with me this way,

please kill me now.

If I have found favor in your sight,

then do not let me see my...

Okay.

So while he was reading it,

I was doing my best to keep up with him

and write down the answers,

so we get through a little quicker.

So who's the story about who became depressed?

Moses, right?

And under what circumstances?

Yeah, so he felt like too much responsibility.

Too many people coming to him for answers, right?

But be careful,

because if he legitimately had too much responsibility,

would he become depressed?

That doesn't cause depression, right?

So we already talked about how that happens.

Why was he depressed?

Frustration brings him anger.

Frustration brings him anger.

Okay, so if it was frustration and anger,

he's right now expressing his frustration and anger to God, right?

So it's not unexpressed frustration and anger.

When Moses said, he says to God,

why do you put all this responsibility on me?

What is he saying?

He's saying, right?

Say it again.

Yeah, he's saying it's built up to be so much.

Basically, he has a wrong understanding,

wrong anxiety, right?

So he's upset that God is asking him to do the job

that God is asking him to do,

as if God were wrong and saying,

you're giving me too much responsibility.

So his anxiety is, I'm gonna crumble under this.

God will never give you anything

that you're gonna crumble under, right?

He'll give you something,

and then he'll sustain you through that something.

And sometimes it's pretty terrible

what Christians have to go through.

It is really bad, but the bottom line is,

he has a wrong anxiety.

If you remember back when we talked about

one of the causes of depression is self-worth issues,

and where's anxiety on my list here?

I lost it.

Exaggerated anxiety.

So he has exaggerated anxiety.

What happens if Moses just doesn't go to work the next day?

Did God's people suddenly become not God's people?

Do they just all die in the desert,

like God just says, oh, this is about to happen,

you're all done?

No, right?

Moses is going to work because it's what God wants him to do,

so he's submitting to God,

but he gets wrapped up in the anxiety

of the fact that he thinks he's beyond his capabilities.

He thinks he's beyond his capabilities.

Apparently that makes a noise,

even if you turn the volume off.

Okay, so it's wrong anxiety or an exaggerated anxiety.

And then how was he depressed?

And I probably phrased that question poorly,

but how badly or how, what's an example of his depression?

He was terribly depressed,

and he was asking the God would just kill him, right?

Let's end it.

So we're gonna finish on this one,

and you can do the other two on your own,

which I would strongly encourage you to do,

but let's talk about the significance of this story to us.

Does anybody in here, is there anybody in this room

that feels like they have some pretty significant

responsibilities in life?

My hand is way up, okay?

And if this story tells me if I set a wrong standard

for those responsibilities, or if I get anxious,

like I want the outcome to be what I want it to be so bad,

I'm so wrapped up in it, that my anxiety is out of control,

I'm gonna be depressed.

That's what's gonna happen.

I'm gonna wind up in depression.

And so that's the significance of that story.

Moses, who's, I mean, as a man of God,

Moses is a better man than I am, you know?

But is he really?

Because what did Paul, or what did Jesus say?

He said that John the Baptist was the greatest man

ever born of women, so that means John the Baptist

is better than Moses, right?

And then he said, and greater is the least

in the kingdom of God than Jesus.

And greater is the kingdom of God than John the Baptist.

So actually, that means we're all better than Moses

in some sense, and one thing, one way we can be better

is we can have our eyes opened and our heart unleashed for God

and realize that if we set wrong standards,

or if we over-exaggerate our anxiety over something,

Ariana and I just had this conversation last night

and I didn't realize the providence of the Lord,

the timing of the Lord or whatever,

but we're talking about how people, I told her,

she said people get really upset sometimes

when they don't get their way,

and we're talking about how somebody will go like,

well, teenagers, for example, think,

well, if my boyfriend breaks up to me, the world's over.

Everything is over, I should just die,

I can't stand it, I'll never survive, right?

Or the valedictorian gets a C and is like,

oh, the world's over, it's all done.

It's all exaggerated anxiety.

I didn't get the birthday present I wanted,

exaggerated anxiety.

I don't have the money, but it's my birthday

and everybody knows you gotta go out to eat on your birthday,

but I really shouldn't do that, it's anxiety.

And it's exaggerate, we're living in a world

of exaggerated anxiety where everybody takes everything

to the umph degree, right?

So people aren't just like for the Democratic party,

they hate Republicans, or for the Republican party,

they hate Democrats, right?

Because they're exaggerating everything, right?

You can't just be for one football team,

you have to hate the rival football team.

It's exaggerated anxiety, everything is like that.

And so the solution then to depression

that we get out of that text is to go back to God,

express what you're feeling and let God show you

what you're actually supposed to be doing

and then just do that.

And I would say it this way, just do that until,

if what you're saying is actually true,

you're exaggerating your anxiety,

if it's really all that bad,

then just do that until it kills you.

Because then that way, you win, right?

You serve God until serving God kills you

and then you go straight to heaven.

Whereas if you let the exaggerated anxiety

get out of control and stop you from serving God,

then maybe you don't go to heaven

because you say you're a Christian, but are you?

And I'm not saying depression is an anti-Christian thing,

or I made that mistake when I was a young Christian

thinking that Christians can't be depressed.

The reality is we don't have to be depressed

because the reality is we all have depression

at one time or another, something goes wrong,

we don't handle our feelings well, whatever,

and we wind up depressed, right?

This is how you rise out of depression.

Basically, start with a committed action

and a good committed action is to revitalize

one's own spiritual plan, if you will.

The therapy of thanksgiving is a very good thing.

Another action step involved is committing

to a physical exercise plan, eat right exercise,

and that replaces the endorphins that are lacking

in a depressed person.

It's also important to build a relational life,

get out, meet people, talk, share, develop friendships,

and then finally a lifestyle of ministry

helps in the recovery process.

As you serve other people at a practical level,

at least once a week, you'll learn how to

think of your actions as God's actions,

as God's working through you,

and you'll bounce and you'll come out of it.

And you'll be less self-preoccupied.

There's a lot of preoccupation we're filling our days

just thinking we're just gonna get by.

I just can't feel good, so I'm just gonna watch more TV

and not think about it, right?

Or, and that's how people get into drugs and alcohol

because it helps numb the pain and all that kind of stuff.

You don't need to do any of that.

There is a way, and it's about, it really is about caring

for other people at the same time

that you're caring for yourself, okay?

So Jonah, we're not gonna go read it.

Obviously, Jonah gets very depressed.

He also is begging God that he should just die

at the very end, and he also has some interesting emotions

that lead into that place,

so I highly recommend you read that story.

It's all about a plant and a worm.

It all comes down to a plant and a worm in the end.

And then Psalm 32, if you wanna take a chance to read that,

there's a very interesting set of circumstances in there.

So I'm gonna pray for you briefly.

And we do have snack cakes and punch in the cafeteria,

so we'll have a little time of fellowship hangout.

And, you know, a little chocolate in there,

so if you need a little endorphins, a little chocolate,

you can have a little chocolate.

Father in heaven, thank you so much for the simplicity.

So we know sometimes we make following Jesus a grand affair.

It's gotta be about everything.

It's gotta be about everything I do and every choice I make,

and I wanna be storing up treasure for myself in heaven,

not on earth, and I wanna give God every penny,

every dollar, every moment of every day,

and all that's kinda like grand language.

It is the goal.

It's what we should do and it's what we should be,

and after we die and go to be with you,

it's what it'll be like.

It's all gonna be between us and you for an eternity,

and it's gonna be awesome.

But we're a work in progress now,

and that means sometimes we get depressed, we struggle.

It's hard not to be sad when somebody dies

or when a relationship falls apart

or when we don't have the things that we think we needed,

and especially when we exaggerate our anxiety

over something like, oh man, if this happens,

this is the end of the world,

but it's not the end of the world.

The end of the world isn't coming

until the end of the world comes.

And so there are people who have filed bankruptcy five times

and wound up millionaires,

people who closed the doors of their dream business,

they were gonna build every,

they spent their whole life trying to build something,

and they built it and then it all fell apart,

and they had to start over again.

People who came home and their loved one,

turns out that they were betraying them the whole time,

and they were terribly betrayed,

and yet then they made it through that,

and they developed good, healthy relationships after that.

And it doesn't matter how bad it gets,

it matters that we keep on faithfully searching for you,

serving you, letting you work through us,

overcoming day after day after day.

And we're still here,

which means you've got an awesome plan

for every person that's in this room.

Some are young, so they got a lot of time

for the plan to develop.

Some are older, so not so much time

for the plan to develop.

Thank you, Lord.

Thank you for desiring the great things

that you can do through us,

and we commit ourselves to kind of be available,

take the first action steps, and do the right thing,

and when we find ourselves depressed,

because we will, when we find ourselves depressed,

take the right steps with you to get out of it.

We'll praise you for all that you do, in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

Thank you very much.