Overcoming Despair About Personal Change
If our only hope of personal change was to let time and nature do their work, we might lose hope that ourselves and others would ever be brought to faith or holiness. Yet one of the deepest works of personal transformation to ever occur was that which happened within Saul on the road to Damascus, and this was accomplished in an instant by the Spirit. [Acts 9, 22] One moment Saul viewed Jesus as his enemy. Then a light appeared from heaven and a voice spoke, “Saul, why are you persecuting me?” As the bitter Pharisee beheld the fearful glory of the Son, a more mysterious light suddenly appeared within his heart—faith, the gift of God. Now in a moment he believed Jesus was his greatest benefactor, for having died to reconcile him, an enemy of God, to the Father at the cross. The greatest change imaginable happened in the twinkling of an eye, when a spiritually dead man was resurrected by God through new birth into spiritual life.
Jobless, Single, Penniless: Letter to a Man in Despair
The following is a response I wrote to a person who had sunken into despair over what he felt to be his sorry circumstances in life. He publicly lamented that he was shadowed by “a particular agony and frustration building from joblessness, singleness, and pennilessness that found expression in intense anger, jealousy, and envy toward others who ‘have it all’.”
I empathized with his position and grief. Besides the usual share of hard lumps, I consider the period from August 2009 to June 2010 to have been among the worst periods of my life in terms of desperation and listlessness. Yet this was also the time when I came to grips with my circumstances through an intense, albeit somewhat unintentional study of what it means to be “in Christ” both personally and providentially. I learned that it is one thing to say, “it is no longer I who lives, but Christ” and another to embrace the paradigm practically and heartily. From this vantage I wrote as follows,
Treating Depression: Medicine or Repentance?
“Treating a depressed person with medication is often no different from my giving my eight-year-old daughter one of her many daily injections of insulin for diabetes. I am not merely alleviating symptoms, but addressing the cause—depleted insulin due to dying or dead cells in her pancreas. And if she is lethargic, weepy, or irrational due to low sugar levels, I do not ask her what commandments she has broken or what “issues of meaning and relationship” she has in her life. I pity her, weep for her, and thank God for His gracious provision of medicine for her.
If we come to the point that our default position in dealing with the causes of depression is that it is sin until proven otherwise, we are getting painfully close to the disciples’ position: “Master, who did sin, this man or his parents?” (John 9:2) It is also a position that is somewhat akin to the health wealth, and prosperity gospel, in which the diagnosis for trials is personal sin and the prescription is more repentance and faith…So I would encourage pastors dealing with depressed people to fight strongly against adopting these immediate assumptions about the causes of depression: “It’s sin until proven otherwise”; “There are always issues, underlying issues”; “It’s about what she is living for and how she is living”; or “It’s about the two great commandments.” It may well be. But let’s not begin there and potentially damage some of the precious people of God in their moments of greatest weakness.”
— David Murray, Christians Get Depressed Too, 2010
At times I wonder what the point of my life is, and where I’m going, and then recall WSC, Q&A 1: “Man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” When in doubt about my purpose, I can be right where God wants me, if I enjoy that He loves me despite my shortcomings, trusting that my future is far more glorious than my inglorious past.
