Useful insights from “the Doctor” on a common Christian condition:
Reversing the order of my title, we all have feelings, most of us have known depression at one time or another, and many of us know about the great Welsh expository preacher of last century, Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899-1981). In this piece I will discuss all three. And my audience here, like that of Lloyd-Jones, is the Christian.
Yes, Christians can and do experience depression, struggle with despair, and can be overcome by what they are going through. I am one of those. Lloyd-Jones knew much about this as a minister of the gospel, and sought to help his people by extensively dealing with it.
As with so many of the vital books that we have from him, the volume I am quoting from here began as a series of 21 sermons which he had delivered at Westminster Chapel in London over consecutive Sunday mornings in 1954. He had been concerned about the rather joyless condition of many English Christians, especially just after WWII.
These sermons were put together in book form in 1965 and titled Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cures. I have the 1998 MarshallPickering edition, so my page numbers refer to that volume. In this book of 300 pages, he looks at a number of aspects of depression and how the believer should deal with it. The 21 chapter titles are these:
- General Consideration (Psalm 42:5, Psalm 42:11)
- The True Foundation (Romans 3:28)
- Men as Trees, Walking (Mark 8:22, 26)
- Mind, Heart and Will (Romans 6:17)
- That One Sin (1 Timothy 1:16)
- Vain Regrets (1 Corinthians 15:8-10)
- Fear of the Future (2 Timothy 1:7)
- Feelings (2 Timothy 1:6)
- Laborers in the Vineyard (Matthew 20:1-16)
- Where is Your Faith? (Luke 8:22-25)
- Looking at the Waves (Matthew 14:22-33)
- The Spirit of Bondage (Romans 8:15-17)
- False Teaching (Galatians 4:15)
- Weary in Well Doing (Galatians 6:9)
- Discipline (2 Peter 1:5-7)
- Trials (1 Peter 1:6-7)
- Chastening (Hebrews 12:5-11)
- In God’s Gymnasium (Hebrews 12:5-11)
- The Peace of God (Philippians 4:6-7)
- Learning to be Content (Philippians 4:10-12)
- The Final Cure (Philippians 4:13)
In this article I am drawing from just one chapter – Chap. 8 on “Feelings”. The 12-page chapter is loaded with helpful insights and spiritual truths, and here I simply want to offer a number of key quotes from it.
“There are those, I know, who will not recognise the condition at all but will brush it aside impatiently, and say that a Christian is one who sings all the day long, and that that, ever since they were converted, has been their story – never a ripple on the surface of the soul, and all has been well. Since they will not recognise the condition at all, they have grave doubts about those who are given to depression and even doubt whether such people are Christians at all. We have shown repeatedly that the Scriptures are much kinder to such friends, and do grant clearly by their teaching that it is possible for a Christian to be depressed. Not that they justify this, but they do recognise the fact, and it is the business of anyone who is concerned about the nurture and care of the soul to understand such cases and to apply to them the remedy that God has provided so freely in the words of Scripture.” p. 107
“Feelings are meant to be engaged, and when the gospel comes to us it does involve the whole man. It moves his mind as he sees its glorious truths, it moves his heart in the same way, and it moves his will.
“The second statement which I want to make is this – and these are very simple and elementary points, but we are often in trouble because we forget them. The second is, that we cannot create feelings, we cannot command them at will. Let me put this quite plainly. You cannot generate feelings within yourself. You can, perhaps, make yourself weep and bring tears to your own eyes, but that does not of necessity mean real feelings. There is a false sentimentality very different from true emotion. That is something beyond our control; we cannot create it. However much you try you will not succeed. Indeed, in a sense, the more you try to produce feelings within yourself, the more you are increasing your own misery. Looked at psychologically it is one of the most remarkable things about man that in this respect he is not master of himself. He cannot generate or produce feelings, he cannot bring them into being, and to attempt to do so directly is always to exacerbate the trouble.
“That leads us to my next statement, which is that, clearly, there is nothing that is quite so variable about us as our feelings. We are very variable creatures, and our feelings are, of everything that belongs to us, the most variable of all. That is because they are dependent upon so many factors; there are so many things that influence the feelings, not only temperament, but physical conditions also.” pp. 110-111
“We are all given our temperament by God. He has made no two of us the same, and we must remain different. Yes, we have our temperament, but there is nothing that is so wrong and un-Christian as to allow our temperament to rule us. Of course, there are people who glory in doing that. We all know the person who says: ‘I always speak my mind. I always say what I think’. Think of the damage done by such people as they trample self-righteously over the susceptibilities of other people! What if everybody did it? They say: ‘I am that sort of person’. The answer to them is that they should not be! That does not mean that they can change their temperament, but it does mean that they should control it. In other words, temperament is a gift from God, but as the result of the Fall, and of sin, temperament is to be kept in its place. It is a wonderful gift, but to be controlled. Now it is exactly the same with feelings. Our feelings are always seeking to control us, and unless we realize this, they will undoubtedly do so. That is what we mean when we talk about moods and moodiness. The mood seems to descend upon us. We do not want it, but there it is. Now the danger is to allow it to control and grip us. We wake up in a bad mood in the morning, and the tendency is to go on like that throughout the day and to remain like that until something happens to put us right. There is a great instance of that in the Old Testament in the case of Saul, King of Israel. Our danger is to submit ourselves to our feelings and to allow them to dictate to us, to govern and to master us and to control the whole of our lives.
“Finally under this heading I would draw attention to the danger of thinking that we are not Christians at all because we have not had some particular type of feeling or experience. This from a spiritual standpoint is one of the commonest manifestations of this condition. I am thinking of people who hear others, while talking or giving their testimony, testifying to some wonderful feeling, and they say to themselves: ‘I have never had that’. And they begin to wonder whether they are Christians at all. Let me repeat what I have already said; feelings must be engaged in true Christianity, but the mere fact that we have not had certain particular feelings does not of necessity mean that we are not Christian. Feelings are essential, but if we postulate certain particular feelings as being essential we may very well become victims of the devil and spend the whole of our life in unhappiness and ‘bound in shallows and miseries’, though the whole time we are truly Christian.” pp. 112-113
“So the next point I would make is this, that we must recognize that there is all the difference in the world between rejoicing and feeling happy. The Scripture tells us that we should always rejoice. Take the lyrical Epistle of Paul to the Philippians where he says: ‘Rejoice in the Lord always and again I say rejoice’. He goes on saying it. To rejoice is a command, yes, but there is all the difference in the world between rejoicing and being happy. You cannot make yourself happy, but you can make yourself rejoice, in the sense that you will always rejoice in the Lord. Happiness is something within ourselves, rejoicing is ‘in the Lord’. How important it is then, to draw the distinction between rejoicing in the Lord and feeling happy. Take the fourth chapter of the Second Epistle to the Corinthians. There you will find that the great Apostle puts it all very plainly and clearly in that series of extraordinary contrasts which he makes: ‘We are troubled on every side (I don’t think he felt very happy at the moment) yet not distressed’, ‘we are perplexed (he wasn’t feeling happy at all at that point) but not in despair’, ‘persecuted but not forsaken’, ‘cast down, but not destroyed’—and so on. In other words the Apostle does not suggest a kind of happy person in a carnal sense, but he was still rejoicing. That is the difference between the two conditions.” pp. 115-116
“I cannot make myself happy, but I can remind myself of my belief. I can exhort myself to believe, I can address my soul as the Psalmist did in Psalm 42: ‘Why art thou cast down O my soul, and why art thou disquieted within me? Hope thou’ … believe thou, trust thou. That is the way. And then our feelings will look after themselves. Do not worry about them. Talk to yourself, and though the devil will suggest that because you do not feel, you are not a Christian, say: ‘No, I do not feel anything, but whether I feel or not, I believe the Scriptures. I believe God’s Word is true and I will stay my soul on it, I will believe in it come what may’.” pp. 116-117
“Finally, let me put it in this way: `Do you want to know supreme joy, do you want to experience a happiness that eludes description? There is only one thing to do, really seek Him, seek Him Himself, turn to the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. If you find that your feelings are depressed do not sit down and commiserate with yourself, do not try to work something up but—this is the simple essence of it—go directly to Him and seek His face, as the little child who is miserable and unhappy because somebody else has taken or broken his toy, runs to its father or its mother. So if you and I find ourselves afflicted by this condition, there is only one thing to do, it is to go to Him. If you seek the Lord Jesus Christ and find Him there is no need to worry about your happiness and your joy. He is our joy and our happiness, even as He is our peace. He is life, He is everything. So avoid the incitements and the temptations of Satan to give feelings this great prominence at the centre. Put at the centre the only One who has a right to be there, the Lord of Glory, Who so loved you that He went to the Cross and bore the punishment and the shame of your sins and died for you. Seek Him, seek His face, and all other things shall be added unto you.” pp. 117-118
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