New Wineskins
Have you ever struggled with depression? Are you struggling right now? If so, you’re not alone. For years any type of mental struggles have been something to hide out of shame. Only in the past few years have we begun as a society to have frank discussions about mental illnesses.
One of the biggest dangers we as preachers can do is create this mythical ideal of biblical characters as people who only achieved and never struggled. When we dig into Scripture, we’re confronted with the reality that even our favorite Bible characters were real people who struggled with real issues.
Jeremiah is known as the ‘weeping prophet’ because he struggled with the weight of the task given to him. God asked him to repeatedly bring a hard message of condemnation to his people in the face of ridicule and adversity. Not surprisingly, Jeremiah struggled at times. In a particularly low valley, Jeremiah recorded this complaint. Read this and see if you don’t think Jeremiah was struggling with depression:
14 Cursed be the day I was born!
May the day my mother bore me not be blessed!
15 Cursed be the man who brought my father the news,
who made him very glad, saying,
“A child is born to you—a son!”
16 May that man be like the towns
the Lord overthrew without pity.
May he hear wailing in the morning,
a battle cry at noon.
17 For he did not kill me in the womb,
with my mother as my grave,
her womb enlarged forever.
18 Why did I ever come out of the womb
to see trouble and sorrow
and to end my days in shame? Jeremiah 20:14-18
Have you ever struggled with depression? Are you struggling right now? If so, you’re not alone.
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