Pastor Wayne Cordeiro
April 26, 2020 - W2017

Overcoming the Giant of Depression

Killing Giants God’s Way

Pastor Wayne Cordeiro

April 25 & 26, 2020

Aloha and Welcome, New Hope and all our wonderful online friends and family!  As we can all attest, the COVID?19 crisis is taking a toll on every one of us, both physically and emotionally. So, today, we will address Overcoming the Giant of Depression from our series Killing Giants God’s Way; reports indicate that one out of every four people in America suffers depression, and it can be debilitating!  

My message to you today is that you can overcome depression!  I will share glimpses of my own battle later; but first, we’ll check in with David in the Old Testament as he not only faced the giant Goliath, but also wrestled with the Giant of Depression. The good news is that you can have victory over depression—depression is overcomeable! David understood depression. 

You may have experienced a time in your life when you felt you were “at the end of your rope” and out of options! Depression may have been triggered by the loss of a loved one, a dream that evaporated, or a season of depletion or burnout—and now you find yourself alone and in a desert!

Take hope, you’re in good company! Elijah felt that way, so did Jeremiah, Job, and even Moses.   These biblical heroes actually asked God to take their lives! Were they depressed? Absolutely. They felt as though their lives had ended—at the end of a lonely road called Depression!

The good news is that the very battle that you are facing has already been faced by someone in the Bible—and they left clues behind to show how we can navigate through troubled times!

We’ll peek into David's life to find his battle plan for Overcoming the Giant of Depression: David wasn’t always Israel’s hero—there was a time when he was a fugitive, running from King Saul.  In 1 Samuel 27, he actually defected to the Philistine side knowing that King Saul wouldn't go beyond his own borders of Israel; and that he would avoid his archrival, the Philistines.  Even though the Philistines were at war with Israel, David held sort of a celebrity status because they knew him “as the boy who defeated their champion Goliath with just a stone!”

There is an amazing account in the Bible of how God, by His Grace, delivers David from himself! When it was time to go to war against Israel, the Philistine generals refused to have David join them, fearing that he might turn against them in the heat of battle—and they sent him home! In other words, they said, “You're fired. Go home!” David must have felt rejected, a loser. Ever feel like that? Your hopes, dreams, and bucket list have all gone south! For David, it went from sour to putrid, and from putrid to rancid! But unbeknownst to David, God was looking out for him—his future!

The enemy will try to wear down your faith, persistence, and morals, until he removes the image of Christ in you, and you feel worthless! But think about it. God was watching and intervening because He knew that Saul and Jonathan would be killed in that battle, and if David were engaged in it, his whole testimony would be damaged! There's a reason God recorded all of this in the Bible:

When David and his men got back to Ziklag, they found that the Amalekites had raided, looted, and burnt their town, and their wives and children were taken to be Amalekite slaves.  David was filled with discouragement, as everything they had were ripped away! Here we find one of the most heart?wrenching verses about David and his men in 1 Samuel 30:4 (NLT): “…they wept until they could weep no more.”

I wonder how many times my own discouragement and depression could have been caused by my own limited eyesight—a consequence of fighting against what God was doing. God may have intervened because I wasn’t able to see that He had my back!  How many times have I had a spiritual tantrum because things didn’t go the way that I had planned?  God’s ways are much higher than my ways, and I do not understand God’s ways—but I am learning to wait on Him!

A friend once told me, "Wayne, never despise anything that takes you to your knees." You see, God will bring something better when you're driven to your knees—into His presence!   It frees God to do what He wants to do. You're a child of God destined for His purposes; He has a divine assignment for you and has anointed you to fulfill that—settle for nothing less!

If you're wrestling with depression and chronic anxiety, or if you know someone who is, it's important that you resist it! Don't be passive about it; get on the offense. It's more than a passing mood or simply a fleeting emotion—it’s the enemy who will devour your life, steal your joy, and rob your fruitfulness.  You have a divine assignment on this earth, and God has anointed you to fulfill that.  Settle for nothing less. God will bring something good out of all this, if you let Him!

God is not the author of depression. He does not abuse His children with pain; He will turn mistakes into miracles, and defeats into triumph! When David found himself in a fetal position in the middle of the desert, he said these powerful words in 1 Samuel 30:6 KJV: "But David encouraged himself in the Lord his God." Here’s the first principle:

1.  Develop Your Own Inspiration Package

There will be times when no one will be there to encourage you, so encourage yourself!  Email or text yourself:  "I am greatly loved; Jesus and I make a majority; I am perfect in His eyes; I am made in His image.”  If David could encourage himself in the Lord, so can you! It's so important to have His word ready on your lips.  Memorize promises that will buoy you up in times of trouble to help you combat your dark thoughts!

The Bible says to speak God’s promises over yourself.  Doing daily devotions will build up truths in your soul and ammunition against hell.  You never know when the enemy will strike you, and you’ll drop off a ledge into depression.  

2. Take Action

Don’t wait till depression has you in a stranglehold.  David called for the priest, and said, “Bring me the ephod (his prayer shawl),” and he inquired of the Lord, “Shall I pursue the raiding party? Will I overtake them?” God answered, “Pursue them. You shall surely overtake them and succeed.”

Let me assure you that if you will add action to your faith, the success that God promised David, He also promises you. The giant of depression is overcomeable!  What is God asking you to do? What action should you take? Get counseling? Get involved? Get exercise? Talk to a friend? Start reframing your mind so you refuse to entertain past hurts. Say, “No more!”

You must fight to get your mind back. Has the adversary gotten a foothold? Just wishing it were better will not improve things. Sometimes we don't need more wishbone; we need more backbone! Remember: Don't make where you are, define who you are!

What if all your life decisions were made when you were discouraged, depressed, angry, and tired?  You will face times of depletion and anxiety, but that doesn't change God's assignment on your life or the person He's created you to become.  When you are clear-headed and close to God, write down what God is calling you to do; such as, be a good wife/mother, a friend, a woman of God, a man of God, or stay true to your family.

One author calls it Eulogy Virtues. In other words, how do you want people to define your life after you're gone? What do you want to be known for? Write those down so that when you are discouraged, depressed, angry, and tired, you take that list out, and no matter how you feel, you take action and stick with it.  When the struggle is over, you will be soooo thankful that you didn't let where you are, define who you are. Let what God says define you, not how you felt at that moment.

Daniel 7:25 NASB says: “He [the enemy] will speak out against the Most High and wear down the saints of the Highest One.” 

Daniel reveals that one of the enemy’s tactics is to get you to rehearse the betrayal, the setback, the lost friendship, what others say about you, and to listen to those recordings over and again until it holds you hostage. Soon it wears you down, until he removes the image of Christ from your life and wear down your value! How do you restore that value?   Do what David did.  He went before the Lord and presented himself to the Lord, and the Lord restored and re-minted His image on David again—the Lord will do the same for us, too, when we humbly repent and ask His forgiveness. 

3. The Deeper Your Depression, The Deeper Your Worship

David writes prolifically about this in the Psalms. Worshiping in the presence of God is much more than just singing religious songs; it's about wholly expressing your love and affection for God.  Worship breaks open the dam of past events that have hindered us from God’s healing! The problem is that when you're depressed, you feel the least likely to worship; but this is actually the most important time to worship! 

Depression forces you to define yourself by what’s wrong, not what’s right. So, the deeper your depression, the more necessary it is to get before the altar of God with greater frequency—deepen your worship, express it authentically. Let it not only express but expose your heart before Him. You can make an altar in the room where you are right now.

May I recommend reading my book, “Leading on Empty,” in which I chronicle my steps in overcoming the giant of depression! Tauren Wells, a good friend, went through a season of depletion and burnout and he said that this book brought him encouragement; that what he went through was connected to a sense of burnout by being involved in many different activities, demands, and pressures pulling on him, and he felt very spiritually depleted. He didn’t have the right emphasis on his spiritual life, which then affected his emotional life.

Throughout that journey, Tauren Wells wrote the song, “Hills and Valleys.” What a beautiful idea of seeing Jesus as the Lily of the Valley, growing beauty even in the dark unwanted places of our lives! 

Jesus is there for you! So, even when He intervenes, trust Him! It may mean a different direction from where you were going, but don't fight against it. Don't allow an emotional struggle to cause more problems by wrestling against the sovereignty of what God wants to do. Don't ask why. Ask what. Build an altar right where you are. The re-forging of His image in your life happens in His presence—so make an altar today and hang out with Him!

Remember, God will sustain you even in the valley. His presence is just as strong there as it is on the mountaintops.  He is The Lord of the Hills and Valleys!

Study Questions:

1.   Name times that God has intervened in exchange for something else.
2.   What has caused you to lose focus on God and wear down his “image”?
3.   When is time now that you “wait upon the Lord”?
4.   Describe a difficult time you now realize God was preparing you for something else.
5.   Name a time when God brought you out of a valley to a mountaintop.