Man Up & Pray More - Resilient & Redeemed: Lesson About Faith, Depression & Suicidality

“From the depths of despair, O LORD, I call for your help.” (Psalm 130:1, NLT)

“We think you ought to know, dear brothers and sisters, about the trouble we went through in the province of Asia. We were crushed and overwhelmed beyond our ability to endure, and we thought we would never live through it. In fact, we expected to die. But as a result, we stopped relying on ourselves and learned to rely only on God, who raises the dead. And he did rescue us from mortal danger, and he will rescue us again. We have placed our confidence in him, and he will continue to rescue us.” (2 Corinthians 1:8-10, NLT)

I wish I could tell you that my depression and suicidality left me forever when I met Jesus in high school, but that’s not what happened. About four years after I graduated from college, I found myself wondering why God didn’t fit inside my theological box. I read my Bible and prayed daily. I led ministries in my church. I did all the right practices, but things remained off for me somehow. I began to feel the familiar tug of depressive episodes once again.

My theological constructs became harmful to me. I believed that maturing Christians shouldn’t have battles with depression, but I didn’t fit into this construct well at all. I practiced all the right skills to develop maturity as I led in my church, but I had depressive episodes. What could I do? I didn’t know, so I tried to pretend like the depressive episodes weren’t happening. I tried to power through by sheer willpower. That didn’t work, pure and simple. Something had to change. I scheduled an appointment to speak with my pastor.

I shared with my pastor the struggles that I had with depression. I shared that I read my Bible and prayed, but it didn’t seem to be doing much. I told him that I had been suicidal before I became a Christian and hadn’t struggled with it since. But I had started to worry it might make another appearance because I had started fielding some of those same worthless thought patterns from my suicidal teen days. He listened to me ramble for about ten minutes, and then he spoke five words I will never forget: “Man up and pray more.”

Here’s the truth I wish my pastor had understood: Mental health does not equal spiritual maturity, and spiritual maturity does not guarantee mental health. The best example of this is the Apostle Paul. He looms larger than everyone except Jesus in the New Testament, so clearly he had some spiritual maturity. Yet in our 2 Corinthians passage, it says he despaired of life itself. If Paul had this experience while planting churches across the known world, it’s evident that maturity and mental health aren’t always bedfellows.

But Paul teaches us more in this passage. He finds a hope that we must grasp hold of to see his secret for surviving this dark night of the soul experience. Paul felt he had received the sentence of death, but God allowed these circumstances so that Paul would rely on the God who raises the dead. And who would be included among the dead at this moment? None other than Paul himself! The promise of God in the middle of Paul’s busted-up and broken life, in the very moment when he felt the deepest despair, remained—God would resurrect him because that is what God does. God resurrects dead things.

Reflect: How does it encourage you that God resurrects dead things and that even the apostle Paul needed God to resurrect his dead hope? My hope is that this stirs up something good in your spirit. So often, we are quick to make heroes out of the people in the Bible. But we forget they are humans just like us, who struggle and battle and sometimes lose hope. This means that when we are in dark spaces, it doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with it. It means we are human.