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Note:The PowerPoint file is about 10 times larger than Weebly will let me upload; As a result, I saved to a pdf file. You still get the same idea. Also, I used a mac to create this chapel originally. When converting to PowerPoint at work, the TIFF images did not display. I'll see if I can fix that.
Depression Chapel
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I’ve heard it said that foolishness is refusing to learn from your mistakes, while wisdom is learning from someone else’s mistakes. This morning, I share with you my story in hopes that you will learn from my mistakes without having to make them yourself.
I’m going to talk to you about depression today. Please realize that some depression is clinical and is based on an imbalance of chemicals in our brains. I’m not going to talk to you about that kind of depression. I’m going to talk to you about depression that has its roots in our spirits.
I grew up in a Christian home. Some of my earliest memories were of my Dad reading the Bible to my brother and I every night until we fell asleep. By the time I was in middle school I had read the Bible several times through in addition to the times it had been read to me. My life was inundated with Scripture.
Generally, I was a happy kid. But I had difficulty fitting in with my peers. Like most adolescents, I never quite felt like I belonged. My family didn’t do what my friends’ families did. We didn’t watch MTV or even have cable for that matter. My parents didn’t let me watch the cool movies my friends did. I didn’t get all of the newest and coolest toys or video games. I began to look at the lives of my friends (I was a public school child) and they looked like they were having more fun than I was. So, I decided to do what they did. As I listened to their music, watched their movies, and talked like they did I began to feel more like one of them.
By the time I was a sophomore in high school, I was doing everything the world told me I should do and I had lost my joy. I still went to youth group and attended church. I still was kind and considerate to my parents. I still got good grades. I even continued to read the Bible every once in awhile. But life no longer had the shimmer and the unbridled hope it once did. The world had gone from beautiful blues, greens, yellows and reds to shades of gray.
[As I am speaking, slowly click through the slides of the power point.]
I didn’t have words then for what I felt. The only thing I knew was that when I was left alone with myself I had this deep ache inside. There were times when I would sit in my room and be filled with a sadness I could neither understand nor describe. Later in high school I labeled my depression “the sickness”. I felt it tearing at my heart. It was a deep longing on the inside coupled with a dislike of myself and a strong sense of inadequacy.
As I delved deeper into music and the arts, I began to look inside of myself for inspiration. The only thing I found was pain. I looked for inspiration and life in others. The only thing I found was disappointment and still more pain. The movement towards chaos ended the summer between my junior and senior year. While on a first date with a girl from youth group, she asked me how I was different from my non-Christian friends. I had no answer to give. The life I lived would have made many of my non-Christian friends embarrassed. The relationship didn’t last long, but her question haunted me. The Lord spoke through a passing love interest. I had to decide. Either I was the Lord’s or I was the World’s. I could not be both. It was destroying me.
[End on Skeleton slide]
As I began to pursue the Lord and shed some of my sin, the burden of depression lightened. As I washed myself in the word (Eph 5) and attempted to keep my feet from sin, the sun began to shine through again. Within days I actually found worship enjoyable. But this was only a taste of hope not its fruition. My depression persisted. For years it dogged my steps. Still I would sit in my room, in the dark, with my music and my muses, spreading pain over my sketchbook. I had a Christian mentor; I spent hours a week in prayer; yet my art continued to bear the scars of my pain. My life grew more pleasurable but only by small increments.
[Marred crosses]
It was not until I was able to recognize the Lord’s voice in my own life that the major shift happened. One wintry evening I was smoking on the front porch of my college house when the Lord spoke to my heart. I was so startled I dropped my cigarette. The Holy Spirit asked me if I loved him more than music. There is only one response to that kind of question: yes. He asked if I would give him my music if he asked for it. I told him that of course I would: thinking to myself that the Lord would never ask such a thing. The next night, the Lord revealed my own heart to me. Again on the front porch, he asked me to sell all my music. I went upstairs and stared at my music collection. I was heart broken. I had spent 6 years scouring used cd stores and researching artists. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t let go. Instead, I moved my music out to the garage.
[Self-portrait on gray paper]
After a couple of weeks I thought just a taste of my idol wouldn’t hurt me. I pulled out Smashing Pumpkins “Melancholy and the Infinite Sadness”. I played my old lover on the stereo and my familiar sadness came and sat next to me on the bed. It was then revelation entered my heart. It was then I understood the ‘why’ of my King’s request. All my young adult life I had been poisoning my own mind and emotions. My sadness was of not of my doing but it was of my own allowing. I did not create my depression but I did come into agreement with it. The music I had listened to was not giving voice to my emotions but rather manipulating them.
[1 Corinthians slide]
I began to understand what Paul means in 1 Corinthians 10 when he says, "Everything is permissible—but not everything is beneficial.” Was I allowed to listen to whatever I wanted? Yes. Was it helping me grow closer to the Lord? No. In fact, I was rubbing filth on myself faster than the Lord was washing it off.
The question I often asked as a teenager was “What’s wrong with _____”? or “How far is too far with my girlfriend”? It was not until I was a young man in my 20’s that I realized how off the mark the question is. As a child of the king, who loves me and delights in me, my goal is not to get away with as much as I can. My goal is to enjoy Jesus as much as possible and to bring Him as much glory as possible. What I had been interpreting as freedom was in fact putting me into bondage. True freedom is not about getting away with anything; it is about knowing the Person who is Freedom himself.
[2 Corinthians slide]
I also began to understand that my war was not just against the demonic like Eph 6 alludes to but also a war for my mind. In 2 Corinthians 10, Paul writes of taking thoughts captive.
“4The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. 5We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”
My freedom from depression did not happen until I realized that I was in a war for my thought life. I did not have to own every thought that came into my head. I did not have to own every emotion that my body felt. Demons can suggest thoughts to me (but they cannot read your thoughts). My own flesh can suggest thoughts to me that are against the will of God in my life. My job is to bring those thoughts into obedience to Christ. In Romans 12, Paul writes “
“2Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. “
[click war angel]
In my life, this also happened with emotions. In my early teen years, every time the enemy suggested sadness to my heart I took his suggestion as fact. When I would begin to feel a bit down, I would think to myself “I must be feeling sad” and come into agreement with something that I did not have to embrace. Believe it or not, you are not a brute beast controlled by the whims of your emotions. You can be master of your body. Your emotions, like your senses, provide you information about your surroundings but you do not have to give them complete sway. In my bedroom on that January evening, I realized that my depression was my choice. (Please don’t misread me on this. Not all depression is spiritually caused) I could choose to agree with it or I could recognize the enemy’s attack in my life. To do this, we must be able to recognize the lie. To recognize the lie, we must know the truth about who we are in Christ.
Please understand that getting free is not always a one-time event and staying free is a process. There are times when depression comes back and I don’t even recognize I am sad until someone mentions it to me. Then I take that stupid thing by the throat and I proclaim truth in my life.
[Philippians slide]
Philippians 4:6-8 (New International Version)
“6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
God’s peace is my birthright as his child. I started to proclaim the promises of Scripture over my life. Pick a verse that speaks to whatever lie is coming against you—memorize it. Then speak the truth into your situation and your temptation. The demonic cannot hear your thoughts. You must speak the truth. Currently, mine is 1 Corinthians 6:19,20: My body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. I am not my own, I have been bought with a price.
[Philippians slide]
But Paul doesn’t stop there. He says:
“8 Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”
Waging war is not just about the fight. Sometimes, it’s a good idea to stop sending ammunition to the enemy, which he will no doubt use against you. A man named Neil Anderson used this analogy when I heard him speak and it stuck with me. He said your mind is like a coffee pot. When it is dark with sin, you begin to purify by reading the Bible and through prayer. And it’s similar to adding ice cubes. The change in the water is not seen right away. But as they melt the water begins to become clearer and clearer, unless of course you continue to add scoops of coffee along with ice cubes.
I’m not asking you to purge your music collections, video games or whatever of anything and everything naughty. However, I am asking that you use discernment, and once you have discerned that something is not beneficial, refuse to continue to wallow in it.
[blank slide]
Now I want to take a quick detour and speak to the creative types and the artists. There is a lie in our culture—the tortured artist. We see the stories so often that we begin to think depression, dysfunction, and various other self-destructive tendencies are the price we pay for creativity. It does not have to be that way. You do not have to cut your ear off to be creative.
[Van Gogh slide]
As a Christian artist you do not have to follow the path of the world. They do what they do because they know no other way. As a child of the King, you do not have to get your creativity from inside yourself. When doing introspection, I have never found anything I liked. When I look deep inside myself, I see my brokenness, my pain, my inadequacy… but I don’t have to create with those as my raw materials. The most creative person in the universe lives inside of you. One of his names is Teacher. The same one who gives you access to the throne of grace in heaven can also use your imagination to give you paintings from heaven. Believe it or not, Christian art does not have to be cute, or lame. In prayer, with your sketchbook or guitar in front of you, you can ask the Lord for ideas and believe it or not, he gives them. Some of the best guitar riffs I have heard as of late have been from people who heard them during prayer. First off, how cool is that? Second, what a sweet way to pray. I can spend hours in front of my canvas, doing what God created me to do, and as I turn my heart towards him in worship, the inspiration is better than it ever was before? I’m in.
I would like to close with a responsive prayer. Then I’m going to pray over you.
Responsive Prayer:
I confess and I turn away from depression.
I have believed the lie that I have to live in sadness and that I am helpless to change. I renounce that lie and I choose to believe the truth.
The truth is: God wants me to enjoy life and He enjoys me. I believe God can enable me to overcome any obstacle that separates me from the love of Christ.
I’m going to talk to you about depression today. Please realize that some depression is clinical and is based on an imbalance of chemicals in our brains. I’m not going to talk to you about that kind of depression. I’m going to talk to you about depression that has its roots in our spirits.
I grew up in a Christian home. Some of my earliest memories were of my Dad reading the Bible to my brother and I every night until we fell asleep. By the time I was in middle school I had read the Bible several times through in addition to the times it had been read to me. My life was inundated with Scripture.
Generally, I was a happy kid. But I had difficulty fitting in with my peers. Like most adolescents, I never quite felt like I belonged. My family didn’t do what my friends’ families did. We didn’t watch MTV or even have cable for that matter. My parents didn’t let me watch the cool movies my friends did. I didn’t get all of the newest and coolest toys or video games. I began to look at the lives of my friends (I was a public school child) and they looked like they were having more fun than I was. So, I decided to do what they did. As I listened to their music, watched their movies, and talked like they did I began to feel more like one of them.
By the time I was a sophomore in high school, I was doing everything the world told me I should do and I had lost my joy. I still went to youth group and attended church. I still was kind and considerate to my parents. I still got good grades. I even continued to read the Bible every once in awhile. But life no longer had the shimmer and the unbridled hope it once did. The world had gone from beautiful blues, greens, yellows and reds to shades of gray.
[As I am speaking, slowly click through the slides of the power point.]
I didn’t have words then for what I felt. The only thing I knew was that when I was left alone with myself I had this deep ache inside. There were times when I would sit in my room and be filled with a sadness I could neither understand nor describe. Later in high school I labeled my depression “the sickness”. I felt it tearing at my heart. It was a deep longing on the inside coupled with a dislike of myself and a strong sense of inadequacy.
As I delved deeper into music and the arts, I began to look inside of myself for inspiration. The only thing I found was pain. I looked for inspiration and life in others. The only thing I found was disappointment and still more pain. The movement towards chaos ended the summer between my junior and senior year. While on a first date with a girl from youth group, she asked me how I was different from my non-Christian friends. I had no answer to give. The life I lived would have made many of my non-Christian friends embarrassed. The relationship didn’t last long, but her question haunted me. The Lord spoke through a passing love interest. I had to decide. Either I was the Lord’s or I was the World’s. I could not be both. It was destroying me.
[End on Skeleton slide]
As I began to pursue the Lord and shed some of my sin, the burden of depression lightened. As I washed myself in the word (Eph 5) and attempted to keep my feet from sin, the sun began to shine through again. Within days I actually found worship enjoyable. But this was only a taste of hope not its fruition. My depression persisted. For years it dogged my steps. Still I would sit in my room, in the dark, with my music and my muses, spreading pain over my sketchbook. I had a Christian mentor; I spent hours a week in prayer; yet my art continued to bear the scars of my pain. My life grew more pleasurable but only by small increments.
[Marred crosses]
It was not until I was able to recognize the Lord’s voice in my own life that the major shift happened. One wintry evening I was smoking on the front porch of my college house when the Lord spoke to my heart. I was so startled I dropped my cigarette. The Holy Spirit asked me if I loved him more than music. There is only one response to that kind of question: yes. He asked if I would give him my music if he asked for it. I told him that of course I would: thinking to myself that the Lord would never ask such a thing. The next night, the Lord revealed my own heart to me. Again on the front porch, he asked me to sell all my music. I went upstairs and stared at my music collection. I was heart broken. I had spent 6 years scouring used cd stores and researching artists. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t let go. Instead, I moved my music out to the garage.
[Self-portrait on gray paper]
After a couple of weeks I thought just a taste of my idol wouldn’t hurt me. I pulled out Smashing Pumpkins “Melancholy and the Infinite Sadness”. I played my old lover on the stereo and my familiar sadness came and sat next to me on the bed. It was then revelation entered my heart. It was then I understood the ‘why’ of my King’s request. All my young adult life I had been poisoning my own mind and emotions. My sadness was of not of my doing but it was of my own allowing. I did not create my depression but I did come into agreement with it. The music I had listened to was not giving voice to my emotions but rather manipulating them.
[1 Corinthians slide]
I began to understand what Paul means in 1 Corinthians 10 when he says, "Everything is permissible—but not everything is beneficial.” Was I allowed to listen to whatever I wanted? Yes. Was it helping me grow closer to the Lord? No. In fact, I was rubbing filth on myself faster than the Lord was washing it off.
The question I often asked as a teenager was “What’s wrong with _____”? or “How far is too far with my girlfriend”? It was not until I was a young man in my 20’s that I realized how off the mark the question is. As a child of the king, who loves me and delights in me, my goal is not to get away with as much as I can. My goal is to enjoy Jesus as much as possible and to bring Him as much glory as possible. What I had been interpreting as freedom was in fact putting me into bondage. True freedom is not about getting away with anything; it is about knowing the Person who is Freedom himself.
[2 Corinthians slide]
I also began to understand that my war was not just against the demonic like Eph 6 alludes to but also a war for my mind. In 2 Corinthians 10, Paul writes of taking thoughts captive.
“4The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. 5We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”
My freedom from depression did not happen until I realized that I was in a war for my thought life. I did not have to own every thought that came into my head. I did not have to own every emotion that my body felt. Demons can suggest thoughts to me (but they cannot read your thoughts). My own flesh can suggest thoughts to me that are against the will of God in my life. My job is to bring those thoughts into obedience to Christ. In Romans 12, Paul writes “
“2Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. “
[click war angel]
In my life, this also happened with emotions. In my early teen years, every time the enemy suggested sadness to my heart I took his suggestion as fact. When I would begin to feel a bit down, I would think to myself “I must be feeling sad” and come into agreement with something that I did not have to embrace. Believe it or not, you are not a brute beast controlled by the whims of your emotions. You can be master of your body. Your emotions, like your senses, provide you information about your surroundings but you do not have to give them complete sway. In my bedroom on that January evening, I realized that my depression was my choice. (Please don’t misread me on this. Not all depression is spiritually caused) I could choose to agree with it or I could recognize the enemy’s attack in my life. To do this, we must be able to recognize the lie. To recognize the lie, we must know the truth about who we are in Christ.
Please understand that getting free is not always a one-time event and staying free is a process. There are times when depression comes back and I don’t even recognize I am sad until someone mentions it to me. Then I take that stupid thing by the throat and I proclaim truth in my life.
[Philippians slide]
Philippians 4:6-8 (New International Version)
“6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
God’s peace is my birthright as his child. I started to proclaim the promises of Scripture over my life. Pick a verse that speaks to whatever lie is coming against you—memorize it. Then speak the truth into your situation and your temptation. The demonic cannot hear your thoughts. You must speak the truth. Currently, mine is 1 Corinthians 6:19,20: My body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. I am not my own, I have been bought with a price.
[Philippians slide]
But Paul doesn’t stop there. He says:
“8 Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”
Waging war is not just about the fight. Sometimes, it’s a good idea to stop sending ammunition to the enemy, which he will no doubt use against you. A man named Neil Anderson used this analogy when I heard him speak and it stuck with me. He said your mind is like a coffee pot. When it is dark with sin, you begin to purify by reading the Bible and through prayer. And it’s similar to adding ice cubes. The change in the water is not seen right away. But as they melt the water begins to become clearer and clearer, unless of course you continue to add scoops of coffee along with ice cubes.
I’m not asking you to purge your music collections, video games or whatever of anything and everything naughty. However, I am asking that you use discernment, and once you have discerned that something is not beneficial, refuse to continue to wallow in it.
[blank slide]
Now I want to take a quick detour and speak to the creative types and the artists. There is a lie in our culture—the tortured artist. We see the stories so often that we begin to think depression, dysfunction, and various other self-destructive tendencies are the price we pay for creativity. It does not have to be that way. You do not have to cut your ear off to be creative.
[Van Gogh slide]
As a Christian artist you do not have to follow the path of the world. They do what they do because they know no other way. As a child of the King, you do not have to get your creativity from inside yourself. When doing introspection, I have never found anything I liked. When I look deep inside myself, I see my brokenness, my pain, my inadequacy… but I don’t have to create with those as my raw materials. The most creative person in the universe lives inside of you. One of his names is Teacher. The same one who gives you access to the throne of grace in heaven can also use your imagination to give you paintings from heaven. Believe it or not, Christian art does not have to be cute, or lame. In prayer, with your sketchbook or guitar in front of you, you can ask the Lord for ideas and believe it or not, he gives them. Some of the best guitar riffs I have heard as of late have been from people who heard them during prayer. First off, how cool is that? Second, what a sweet way to pray. I can spend hours in front of my canvas, doing what God created me to do, and as I turn my heart towards him in worship, the inspiration is better than it ever was before? I’m in.
I would like to close with a responsive prayer. Then I’m going to pray over you.
Responsive Prayer:
I confess and I turn away from depression.
I have believed the lie that I have to live in sadness and that I am helpless to change. I renounce that lie and I choose to believe the truth.
The truth is: God wants me to enjoy life and He enjoys me. I believe God can enable me to overcome any obstacle that separates me from the love of Christ.
