Which glorifies God more: healing depression or redeeming it?

God’s Word teems with examples of miraculous healing, resulting in praise. It also discloses benefits of affliction that isn’t removed, such as

• character cultivation (Romans 5:2-5)
• expansion of our capacity to serve others due to comfort God gives in our affliction (2 Corinthians 1:3-7)
• weaning of self-reliance (2 Corinthians 1:8-10)
• keeping us desperately dependent on His grace and strength (2 Corinthians12:9-10).

Whether your affliction is depression or a different trial, ask God this: Can You receive more glory by removing my affliction or by sustaining and using me in the midst of it?

 

My Story

For two years (2002-03), the deepest and longest episode of depression I’ve ever experienced descended. Some days I experienced extreme sensitivity that included weeping and searing heart pain. On other days, emotional numbness gripped me and I couldn’t feel anything. Either heartache or robotic despair characterized a lot of days during that time span. It wasn’t unusual to lie in my office floor in a fetal position, a high humidity in my heart stifling motivation for living. Yet due to God’s sustenance, I taught and led a ministry team at Columbia International University with apparent effectiveness.

I tried prescription meds, to no avail. I met with a Christian therapist. Along with friends and family members, I prayed for relief, yet relentless despair continued. One afternoon in 2003, while driving to a teacher-training workshop upstate, my perspective shifted.

I pondered God’s sovereignty as it related to my despondency.

 These questions surfaced:

God hasn’t heeded my cries for help and common means of grace aren’t working. What are the implications of this? Is this my “thorn in the flesh” to keep me humble and dependent on God? Is it possible that my propensity for depression is, at least for now, God’s will for my life? Since He hasn’t intervened and I’m not living with unconfessed sin, does it mean God wants me to learn how His “strength is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9-10)? Can I shine a light on God’s grace and power through how I respond to depressive episodes?

 

A Shift In How I Prayed

During that 90-minute drive, the slant of my prayers changed. Through tears, I surrendered to God’s will concerning my depression, no matter what that entailed. I prayed words similar to these:

“Father, if You choose not to lift this veil of darkness, I accept that. I’m yours. You’re still good. You know what You’re about. If this vulnerability to depression always characterizes me and periodic episodes of darkness occur, I’ll assume You have a reason. I’ll trust You to sustain me through the pain and use me not only in spite of it, but because of it. It’s okay if others perceive me as weak and unstable, as long as they perceive You as strong through the way You keep me going. If you don’t take this blight away, please use it for redemptive purposes, for my good and Your glory.”

I didn’t pray that glibly. I relented only after years of experimenting with every known remedy. I also asked Him to give me periods of time without despondency and to strengthen me when it did occur.

 

Expanded Ministry through Pain

Not long after that prayer of surrender, a CIU staff member asked me to share my testimony in a summer school chapel service. That was the first of four messages on depression delivered in CIU chapel services over the next 15-year period.* Since I asked Him to redeem the pain, I’ve published my testimony in multiple Christian magazines. In 2017, I launched a blog on the correlation between faith and depression: penetratingthedarkness.com. Churches began asking me to share my story during worship services. More recently, Christian podcasters and radio stations interviewed me. In all those venues I illustrated the severity of recurring symptoms and how God  intervened to shorten the stay of episodes or to mitigate their intensity. I disclosed how means of God’s grace, such as heartfelt prayer, Bible promises and close friendships, sustained me. I couldn’t tell how Christ healed me of depression, because He didn’t.

I mention those ministry opportunities to reveal how God answered my plea to redeem the pain of depression. Each time I speak on how God sustains me through it, I experience a brief but severe plunge into despair. Perhaps the Lord is giving me a fresh opportunity to apply my own counsel. Or perhaps spiritual warfare occurs, since Satan doesn’t want me explaining how faith in Christ helps me deal with it.

That prayer of surrender back in 2003 didn’t men that I stopped availing myself of helpful resources, such as medication and professional therapy. I can’t take meds any more due to severe side effects, but occasional visits to a counselor help me deal with how symptoms affect close relationships.

My submission to God’s sovereignty doesn’t preclude me from striving for emotionally stability and fighting for my joy. Here’s what it means: I’m willing to accept God’s will even when my efforts don’t help. And more often, I plea for Him to redeem the pain.

Perhaps my most impactful ministry stems from my area of greatest pain.

 

A Difference of Opinion

Not everyone agrees with my conviction that God’s sustenance during depression can honor Him as much as His removal of it.

A nationally known Christian author told me that God would receive more honor and look more powerful by removing my depression rather than redeeming it, if only I’d  appropriate more biblical truth. Another acquaintance insists that a Christian should always have absolute control over his emotions. He also wondered whether unconfessed sin fuels my depressive episodes.

I’m open to what the Lord wants to teach me on the subject. Yet researchers report that major depressive disorder tends to run in families. An estimated 40%-50% of people with this diagnosis traces it in their family line. If that’s the case, why is it necessarily a fault instead of a physical flaw? Why is blaming lack of faith for recurring depression any different than telling someone with a bodily illness that she isn’t healed due to lack of faith?

So I ask again…

Can rock-ribbed faith in God and His resources coexist with occasional lapses into deep despondency? Can God possibly get more glory from a temperamentally weak person who often wrestles with depression, yet remains loyal to Him and maintains a public ministry in spite of it? Could others’ observation of how a believer handles bouts of depression, utilizing weapons of faith, help them see God as good and faithful? After all, God told Paul that His “power is perfected in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9).

If weakness is a prerequisite for usefulness, I qualify!

Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892), a renowned London pastor and prolific author, remained extremely fruitful despite occasional severe lapses into depression. He wrote, “We do not profess that faith in Christ will so thoroughly change a man as to take away from him all his natural tendencies. It will give the despairing something that will alleviate that despondency, but as long as it is caused by a low state of body, or a diseased mind, we do not profess that faith in Christ will totally remove it. Depression of spirit is no index of declining grace.”

Keep asking the Lord to remove your affliction. But if He doesn’t, ask Him to redeem it somehow for your ultimate good and His glory.

In my case, perhaps God wants people who know me, who see how weak and broken I am, to observe His enablement of me through the difficulty. Seeing His grace in my life might instill hope within them concerning their own brokenness. Perhaps they will see a degree of fruitfulness in my life and conclude,  “There’s nothing within Terry that accounts for this. The only explanation is that God did it!”

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*To hear a 30-minute chapel testimony from 2014 at Columbia International University, “What I’ve Seen in the Dark,” click the play button below.