No less a great leader than Winston Churchill talked about depression as the black dog and trying to keep that spirit of darkness and despair and depression away from him. It appears that many Christians as well, great and small, have struggled with seasons of depression that have afflicted them terribly, weakened them, put them in a season of darkness and despair. In some cases acute depression can lead to a lot of demonic, false voices and accusations of condemnation and even petitions to commit suicide. These are dark, dark days for believers who wrestle with such things. Among some of the people who have wrestled with depression is William Cooper, the great and famous 18th century poet that wrote the hymn “God Moves in a Mysterious Way,” which I’m going to quote from here before we finish, but he suffered about every 10 years an acute level of mental breakdown even. I would say more severe than what we talk about with depression itself, dark, dark periods of despair, but even active, famous people like Charles Spurgeon wrestled with seasons of depression in his life. And this is a man that was extremely active in writing, preaching 10 sermons a week for most of his adult life and being involved with missions and ministry. And sometimes it may surprise us as everyday believers that people that appear so strong in their faith can still confess to these seasons of depression that come along. Here is what Spurgeon wrote about his own experiences. He said, “I have suffered many times from severe sickness and frightful mental depression seeking almost to despair. Almost every year I’ve been laid aside for a reason, for a season, for flesh and blood cannot bear the strain. At least such flesh and blood is mine. I believe, however, the affliction was necessary to me and has answered salutary ends.” Meaning that he believed like all of us need to learn to believe that nothing bad can happen to us in Christ that is not good for us. And that included these dark periods of depression. Pastors, missionaries, everyday Christians, people like myself that may be traveling all over the world. We do different things. Leaders, they often get depression. Now I will confess that in my own case my my this periods of discouragement are pretty short. I seem to have a personality and a makeup that has so far spared me from the kinds of personal experiences that Spurgeon has been talking about. But I know many many Christians who have gone through these seasons of depression and it’s caused me from time to time to go back and try to appreciate and sympathize with such people and to try to be helpful to them when and where I can. And I wanted to say something about that today about keeping the black dog on a leash. Keeping him as far away from us as possible. And even though there may be times where we enter into a period of darkness we still have to prepare for those battles as Christians if we’re going to stand and endure through them. And here’s what I’ve been encouraging people who have wrestled with depression to do. I’ve come up with five or six different things that I think are health-giving. But one of them is that prior to or outside of these seasons of darkness to genuinely cultivate a deep and profound distrust for our feelings or our perceptions of things. And at the same time to parallel that with a greater to cultivate a superior trust in the truth of the gospel and the promises of God regarding us who are in Christ. I say cultivate because I really think it’s something that we have to train ourselves in. It’s like a muscle that needs to be exercised. And let me give you a couple places where I see that happening in the scriptures. First of all Psalm 139 is a great place to begin. If you think of Psalm 139 and those of us in the pro-life movement, think of Psalm 139 primarily as the Psalm that points to how God fashioned us in the womb. He knit us together. We use this Psalm all the time to celebrate the fact that God is our Creator as well as our Redeemer. That he’s personally involved in the womb. That he’s an artist fashioning each one of us by hand in the same way that a painter hand paints his work of art. But if you think of the first part of Psalm 139, it really is addressing the idea that we’ve been abandoned. And it seems to me that one of the key things that happens in in a time of spiritual depression is that we can’t see or feel the joy of the gospel. And we begin to listen to the voices of condemnation in our head. Maybe point it to things in the past or maybe they’re just demonic in nature that is using that period of darkness to just speak to us. That we are separated from the love of God. That we are lost. That we are headed for eternal damnation. And all of these things are just pound away at people who are in and wrestling with a period of despair. But Psalm 139 is arguing back instead of listening people that need to learn how to speak and preach to themselves. Because if we’re not preaching and speaking to ourselves, we’re probably listening. And in depression or as it’s coming on, we need to really learn to take control and speak to ourselves. So Psalm 139 is the Psalmist declaring that even in a period of darkness where you can see no light, it doesn’t mean that God is not there. Listen to these amazing words in which the Psalmist is cultivating distrust in what he perceives and feels and is cultivating a superior trust in the hope of the Gospel. He writes, “Even if I say, surely the darkness shall cover me and the light about me be night. Even the darkness is not dark to you, O Lord. The night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you.” And he’s saying there, previous to this declaration, “Even there your hand shall lead me and your right hand shall hold me.” That is planting the flag of truth within your dark and rebellious fortress that wants to challenge the hope of the Gospel. So grab on to Psalm 139 and fight for the truth. Here’s another amazing verse I just find that is worth memorizing. It’s worth putting on as your screensaver or writing down several places in your household or in your car, whatever it takes in order to keep your your fists up and in the fight against the black dog. In 1st John 3, 19, and 20, we read these amazing words. “By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before Him.” Meaning before God. “For whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart.” Now if I was battling with depression, if the black dog was a part of my life that would come in and start barking and yelling and scaring me to death, I would bind myself to these words and I would train myself. I’d have them memorized and I’d have them posted on every wall in my room. “That God is greater than my heart, that when our hearts begin to condemn us, that we can reassure ourselves with the truth, the superior truth in the hope of the Gospel.” William Cooper, as I mentioned to you, struggled with depths of darkness and despair that few of us are acquainted with to the point of suicide in his case. And one time he felt that this black dog was coming on strong and he ran home on a Sunday afternoon, January 1st in 1773 and he began to scribble down what I think were his his his cultivation of the superior truth of the hope of the Gospel. He wrote, “God moves in a mysterious way, his wonders to perform. He plants his footsteps in the sea and he rides upon the storm. Ye fearful saints.” Now he’s preaching to himself, even though he’s writing a hymn here, he’s really preaching to himself. “Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take, the clouds you so much dread are big with mercy and shall break in blessings on your head.” This is him just pushing back and keeping that black dog on a tight leash as much as he could. Listen to these next words, “Judge not the Lord by feeble sense.” In other words, don’t interpret your life by your senses, by your feelings, by what you can see and feel through all of your emotions. “But trust him for his grace. Behind a frowning providence he hides a smiling face.” This was part of the way he fought back against the black dog, to recognize that God was greater than his feelings, it was greater than the the darkness of despair itself. I think, unfortunately in his case, right after he wrote this hymn, he went through something of a mental breakdown. So this hymn reflects Cooper at his very best, hanging on to the truth in the hope of the gospel, knowing that a period of darkness and despair was about to settle on him. The fact that he gave in and went through a certain amount of mental breakdown is a terrible, sad thing. But I think that for most of us, we don’t suffer such a severe case. And I think that we need to find people at Cooper and Spurgeon at their best and fight in the same way that they did, which is to cultivate a deep distrust in our feelings and to cultivate a genuine confidence that the truth of the gospel is greater and even in the darkness God will not abandon us. Because light, darkness is as light to the God who loves and has redeemed us through Jesus Christ. May we all learn to fight for these promises and the competences that we should have and feel over a long period of time in our life and be able to fight when those periods of the dark seasons of depression come along. Let’s fight the black dog and fight for joy. Thanks.