In a sermon on this blog called "From Darkness to Light" Frank Hunting talks about a lady who suffered from intense mental health problems.
He outlines how the verse outlined above, which is found in the Psalms, was the catalyst that started her on the road to full recovery.
You should listen to the whole sermon to appreciate what Frank was saying.
http://geoffthompsonsblog.blogspot.com.au/2012/08/from-darkness-to-light-by-frank-hunting.html
This verse comes to my mind when I recount yet another encounter with birds that I had a couple of years ago now.
We were visiting Renmark relatives and I was in the grip of a deep depression.
We were as a family out driving on Calperum Station near Renmark.
We stopped to photograph and look at some kangaroos near to the road.
My depression at the time was unrelenting with the so called "black fog" or "black dog"gripping me.
While parked, in the distance, we saw a group of emus coming towards us over a rise in the distance.
For rise think hill.
Emus are very curious birds and they slowly walked towards the car from about 500 yards away.
I started to take photos as they approached.
They came right up to the car and were not deterred when I opened the front passenger door to get better un-interrupted views.
All up we were probably stopped for about half an hour while I snapped photos.
During all of that photo shoot time I was symptom free.
The symptoms returned as soon as we started for home again after I had stopped shooting.
I am aware that when you are in the grip of depression it is because you cannot get your mind off yourself and whatever might be troubling you.
Sometimes you may not even know what is causing the depression.
What I have learned over the years, when having had some tussles with this condition, is that it is not a problem that is unsolvable.
The fact that you can be totally sympton free in situations like outlined above should be helpful in saying to yourself "I can get better".
"I do have a future."
When we are a Christian we sometimes find depression harder to deal with because we think we are failing in applying our faith.
This is not the reality of the situation but we don't always look at the reality of things.
The Bible teaches that "Faith comes by hearing and hearing comes by the word of God."
I found it hard to take medication for depression when I believed I shouldn't need it if I had more Faith.
Revisiting my Faith and scripture and things I knew to be true were important factors in my recovery.
I have dispensed with the medication at least a year ago now.
If you are suffering from depression now, and you are a Christian ,Jesus will bring you out of it.
Consider the following posted earlier on this blog.
 |
| The rise in the distance is the"hill" from whence came my help. |
