Turning to Psalms in Depression

The most recent time it happened, my children were clambering over a wooden playground structure reminiscent of a castle tucked into the woods. Their laughter spiraled skyward, mingling with towering oaks and pines, with lush foliage that shimmered gold and green against the summer blue. I breathed the scent of pine needles dried and baked in the sun, and I reveled in God’s workmanship.
Then, as dramatically as it had bloomed in my heart, the light vanished. Without warning, the rusted gears of a forgotten timepiece engaged, groaned, and clicked to a stop. A shadow descended, and like the emptying of a pool, all joy drained from within me.
I glanced around the playground. My kids still squealed and hurtled down slides, but the jewel tones that moments before had inspired awe from me suddenly lost their imprint. I searched the treetops, and my vision cobwebbed over. Movements felt heavy and sluggish, as if I flailed underwater. A familiar despondency seeped into my bones.
Oh no, I prayed. Please, Lord. Not again.

The Power of Depression

As a clinician, I know that a genetic legacy predisposes me to clinical depression. I understand that neurotransmitters, the clouds of molecules that hover within the synapses of my brain, balance off kilter, and disrupt the delicate translation of electricity into thought and feeling. I can recite mnemonics for you to diagnose the illness, and describe how medications keep symptoms at bay.
Such textbook details, however, do not capture the power of depression to drown us. While we all feel sad from time to time, depression drags its victims into a pervasive joylessness. Despair creeps into every moment, tarnishes the luster of things, and robs us of hope. The compulsion to cry lodges perpetually in the throat, but the relief of weeping never comes.
During such times, we require the message of God’s love and forgiveness more desperately than ever.

When We Cannot See God

As Christians, we delight in our salvation through Jesus’s sacrifice, but depression swallows up our very capacity to delight. The gospel may ring familiar, but we fear that grace has withered away, and that God has withdrawn from our reach. We may acknowledge the truth in Christ, but as gloom hollows out our hearts, we cannot feel it. We grapple in the dark, our hearts gilded with lead, and the enemy hisses into our ears, “God doesn’t love you. He’s forgotten you. You’re worthless. You don’t matter. Nothing matters.”
During such bleak seasons, when our minds twist and warp every good thing, we must bind ourselves to the truth that persists beyond our perception of it. As we seek out medical and counseling support, and as we struggle to complete the most mundane tasks, we may have little strength to pore through Scripture. Words fall limply like withered leaves upon our hearts. Yet when all seems lost, our one hope arises from the God who reigns irrespective of our understanding (Psalm 33:20).
When we cannot see God in our daily lives, we cling to the Bible for assurance of his steadfastness (Romans 15:4). When misery threatens to choke us, the Psalms offer light and air (Psalm 119:105).

Not Alone in the Darkness

The Psalms reassure us that those who know and love God also labor through seasons of despair. Even David, a man after God’s own heart (1 Samuel 13:14), whose youthful hand God steadied against a giant, cries out to the Lord from the depths (Psalm 13:1–2). “I am utterly bowed down and prostrate,” he laments in Psalm 38. “All the day I go about mourning. For my sides are filled with burning, and there is no soundness in my flesh. I am feeble and crushed; I groan because of the tumult of my heart” (Psalm 38:6–8).
Through such earnestness and imagery, the Psalms lend a voice to our own sufferings. When depression seizes us, we too may perceive our days “like an evening shadow,” and feel that we “wither away like grass” (Psalm 102:11). When cut off from the Father on the cross, Christ drew from Psalm 22 (Matthew 27:46). David grieves, “My heart is in anguish within me; the terrors of death have fallen upon me. Fear and trembling come upon me, and horror overwhelms me” (Psalm 55:4–5).
Such verses echo the turmoil within us when depression obscures our identity in Christ. As we fumble through the shadows in search of God, the Psalms reassure us that even those dearest to him struggle through such seasons. Those who have known God, and who have loved him, have also drowned in anguish and cried out in longing for him. When we drift in the blackness, the Psalms guide us to pray, “As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God” (Psalm 42:1–2).

Assurance in God’s Character

As fear and desperation engulf us, the Psalms teach us to find solace in who God is. When the psalmists cannot discern God’s workmanship in their immediate circumstances, they run to the past: to creation, the exodus, and God’s covenant with Israel. Through such tangible remembrances of God’s steadfastness and goodness, the psalmists salvage light where otherwise they discern only emptiness.
Psalm 22 beautifully demonstrates this approach. After his initial cry to God in verses 1–2, David’s tone shifts from one of lamentation to faithfulness (Psalm 22:3–5). Similarly, in Psalm 77, Asaph cries aloud to God and despairs, “Has God forgotten to be gracious? Has he in anger shut up his compassion?” (Psalm 77:9). Then, he looks to the past: “Then I said, ‘I will appeal to this, to the years of the right hand of the Most High.’ I will remember the deeds of the Lord; yes, I will remember your wonders of old” (Psalm 77:10–11). When Asaph cannot perceive a way forward, he leans upon the memory of God’s work in the past.
In this same vein, the Psalms instruct us to peer backward into our personal history with the Lord. Consider, for example, Psalm 71, which recalls a lifetime of dependence on God: “For you, O Lord, are my hope, my trust, O Lord, from my youth. Upon you I have leaned from before my birth; you are he who took me from my mother’s womb” (Psalm 71:5–6).
Similarly, David repeatedly invokes memories when God intervened on his behalf in times of trouble (Psalm 18:6; 31:22; 40:1–2). When darkness clutches us, the Psalms urge us to clasp to the memories of God’s faithfulness in our own lives — the times when we have leaned on him, with nowhere else to turn, and like a patient father, he has answered.
In remembering God’s works for his people in Israel, as well as his providence in our own lives, we peer through the murk and envision who God is: our sovereign Lord, steadfast, loving, forgiving, faithful to all generations, a stronghold for the oppressed, our rock and fortress and deliverer (Psalm 9:9–10; 18:2; 36:5; 86:5; 100:5).

Looking Forward to God’s Promise

Throughout the psalms, hope in messianic salvation flanks remembrances of God’s character (Psalm 22:25–31; 27:14; 31:24; 33:20; 37:7). While we look backward to steady ourselves with the memory of God’s works, looking forward to the cross reveals his faithfulness and love manifest in Christ. When depression eclipses our hope, we wait for the Lord “more than watchmen for the morning” (Psalm 130:6). Breathlessly, bogged down in despair, we clasp to the promise that through the abundance of God’s steadfast love, in Christ, we will enter his house (Psalm 5:7).
While misery steals our voice and cripples our limbs, we cleave to the assurance of a new heaven and a new earth, when depression no longer darkens hearts. We wash ourselves in the hope of that day, when our hearts “shall rejoice in your salvation” (Psalm 13:5), when with clear eyes and uplifted minds, we will sing, “I trust in the steadfast love of God forever and ever. I will thank you forever, because you have done it” (Psalm 52:8–9).

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Running with the Witnesses

And all these, having gained approval through their faith, did not receive what was promised, because God had provided something better for us, so that apart from us they should not be made perfect. Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance, and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 11:39–12:2)

The book of Hebrews was written to a church that was getting old and was settling into the world and losing its wartime mentality and starting to drift through life without focus, without vigilance, and without energy. Their hands were growing weak, their knees were feeble. It was just easier to meander in the crowd of life than to run the marathon.
We have seen this over and over along the trail through this book. For example, in Hebrews 2:1 and 3, the writer says that “we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. . . . How shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?” So into the church has crept the disease of drifting and neglecting. People are growing careless, spiritually lazy, and negligent.

Take Care

Then, in Hebrews 3:12–13, he warns again:

Take care, brethren, lest there should be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart, in falling away from the living God. But encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called “Today,” lest any one of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

He has heard that some are no longer “taking care.” They have begun to have a kind of lazy sense of security. A false notion that nothing really huge is at stake in their small group meetings or whether they meditate on the Bible or take time alone to pray or fight sin. They assume all will be well. Hebrews is written to teach them otherwise.
In Hebrews 5:12, the writer says,

Though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food.

They made a profession of faith and went into a passive, coasting mode. This is utterly wrong. God means every saint to be moving forward to new gains of strength and wisdom and holiness and courage and joy — from getters to givers, from being taught to teaching.
One more illustration: in Hebrews 12:12-13 the writer says,

Strengthen the hands that are weak and the knees that are feeble, and make straight paths for your feet, so that the limb which is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed.

He is talking in images here of their spiritual condition: weak hands, feeble knees, crooked paths.

Lay Aside Every Encumbrance

That’s the condition of the church. That is the background of Hebrews 12:1b, “Let us also lay aside every encumbrance, and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.” This command does not come out of the blue.

“Fight the fight of faith on the basis of Christ’s spectacular death and resurrection.”

This is the point of the whole book. Endure, persevere, run, fight, be alert, be strengthened, don’t drift, don’t neglect, don’t be sluggish, don’t take your eternal security for granted. Fight the fight of faith on the basis of Christ’s spectacular death and resurrection. And show your faith the way the saints of Hebrews 11 did, not by coasting through life, but by counting reproach for Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt (Hebrews 11:26).
So the main point of this text is the one imperative: run! (Hebrews 12:1). Everything else supports this — explains it or gives motivation for it. Run the race set before you! Don’t stroll, don’t meander, don’t wander about aimlessly. Run as in a race with a finish line and with everything hanging on it.
To this end, verse 1 says, “lay aside every encumbrance, and sin which so easily entangles us.” I remember the effect this verse had on me as a boy when I heard someone explain that we must lay aside not only entangling sins, but “every encumbrance,” that is, every weight or obstacle — things that in themselves may not be sins.
This was revolutionary. What it did (and I hope it does the same for you) was show me that the fight of faith — the race of the Christian life — is not fought well or run well by asking, “what’s wrong with this or that?” but by asking, “Is it in the way of greater faith and greater love and greater purity and greater courage and greater humility and greater patience and greater self-control?” Not, “Is it a sin?” but, “Does it help me run! Is it in the way?”
As a boy I was mightily helped by having my very categories changed in the way I lived my life. I commend it to you young people especially. Don’t ask about your music, your movies, your parties, your habits: What’s wrong with it? Ask: Does it help me run the race? Does it help me run for Jesus?
Hebrews 12:1 is a command to look at your life, think hard about what you are doing, and get ruthless about what stays and what goes.

“But That’s Just the Way I Am”

One of the criticisms I have of some forms of psychology (not all) is the tendency to neutralize texts like this by labeling people with personality types that have no value judgments attached. For example, if a person tends to be passive you give them one label, and if they tend to be aggressive, you give them another label. No type is better than another type.
Then along comes a text like this which says that passivity and coasting and drifting are mortally dangerous. The race might not be finished if we don’t become vigilant and lay aside not only sins, but also weights and hindrances. If we are not careful, we can be so psychologically fatalistic that we read over a text like this and say, “Oh that’s not for me, that’s for type A people, or INTJ’s.” That would be a tragic mistake.
I know that there are personality differences, some more passive and some more aggressive. Each has its weaknesses and strengths. The passive people are in danger of coasting and neglecting and drifting and the many enslavements that result. The aggressive people are in danger of impatience and self-reliance and judgmentalism. And there are strengths: the passive people are less prone to murmur, complain, and retaliate. And the aggressive people are more given to bring about needed change.
But when it comes to the book of Hebrews, and Hebrews 12:1 in particular, it is a great mistake for any of us to say: this command to run is not for me. This command to lay aside entangling sins is not for me. Or this command to lay aside weights and encumbrances is just not the way I am wired.

Plan Your Run with Jesus

Rather, all of us should listen and obey. Here’s what I would suggest. Between now and Labor Day, pick a day or a half day and get away by yourself — away from the house, the phone, the beeper, the TV, the radio, and all other people. Take a Bible and a pad of paper and plan your fall run with Jesus.
On that pad of paper, note the entangling sins. Note the seemingly innocent weights and encumbrances that are not condemned explicitly in the Bible, but which you know are holding you back in the race for faith and love and strength and holiness and courage and freedom. Note the ways you subtly make provision for these hindrances (Romans 13:14): the computer games, the hidden alcohol or candy, the television, the videos, the pull-tab stop on the way home, the magazines, the novels. In addition, note the people that weaken you. Note the times that are wasted, thrown away.

“God has not spoken his commands for nothing.”

When you have made all these notations, pray your way through to a resolve and a pattern of dismantling these encumbrances, and resisting these sins, and breaking old, old habits. And don’t rise up against the Bible at this point and say, “I can’t change.” It is an assault on God if you read Hebrews 12:1 and go away saying: “It can’t happen. Hindrances can’t be removed. Sins can’t be laid aside.” God has not spoken this command for nothing. And this entire book is written to undergird these practical commands.
So go back and read the book and ask God to take all the glorious truth that is here (about the superiority of Christ, and the power of his death and resurrection, and the effectiveness of his intercession for you) and make this truth explosive with life-changing power. Carry some of the story to your small group and get them to pray for you. Find someone you trust and ask them to check in with you and support you. That is what Hebrews 3:12–13 says we should do. Don’t drift from this moment into this Sunday afternoon. Before this day is over choose a day or a half-day and get away to plan your fall run with Jesus.

Motivation: A Cloud of Witnesses

Now what about motivation? That’s what the rest of this text is. First, let’s look back and then forward from this command to run.
Verse 1 says, “Since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us . . . run.” So the first motivation I want us to see is this cloud of witnesses. Who are they and what does their witnessing mean? They are the saints that have lived and died so valiantly by faith in chapter 11. Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Moses, and all those who suffered and died, “of whom the world was not worthy.”
But what does their “witnessing” refer to? Does it refer to their watching us from heaven? Or does it refer their witnessing to us by their lives? The word “witness” can have either meaning: the act of seeing something, or the act of telling something. Which is it here? I think it is the act of telling. The verb form of this word “witness” (martureo) is used five times in Hebrews 11 ( in verses 2, 4 [twice], 5, 39) and always refers to the giving of a (confirming) testimony rather than the mere watching of an event.
So I take the witnesses of Hebrews 12:1 to be the saints who have run the race before us, and have gathered, as it were, along the marathon route to say, through the testimony of their lives, “By faith I finished, you can too!”
The best way to illustrate this, I think, is with Hebrews 11:4, where the writer speaks of Abel and says, “Through faith, though he is dead, he still speaks.” So Abel is in the cloud of witnesses, and he is witnessing to us by his life through the Scriptures. This is the way all the witnesses of Hebrews 11 are helping us. They have gathered along the sidelines of our race and they hold out their wounds and their joys and give us the best high-fives we ever got: “Go for it! You can do it. By faith you can finish. You can lay the weights down and the sins. By faith, by the assurance of better things hoped for, you can do it. I did it. And I know it can be done. Run. Run!”
So be encouraged when you plan your fall run with Jesus. There are dozens and hundreds and thousands of those who have gone before and who have finished the race by faith and surround us like a great cloud of witnesses who say: “It can be done! By faith it can be done.”

Motivation: History Is Waiting for You to Finish Your Race

Then there is another motivation in verses 39–40. It says,

“We all come into the fullness of our inheritance together.”

And all these, having gained approval through their faith, did not receive what was promised, because God had provided something better for us, so that apart from us they should not be made perfect.

This is followed in 12:1 by “Therefore . . . run.” The “therefore” means that verses 39–40 are a motivation for our running. Since this is true, run! How is it a motive?
I take verse 39 to mean that when the believers in the Old Testament died, their spirits were made whole and perfect (as Hebrews 12:23 says), but that they do not receive the full blessing of God’s promise, which is resurrection with new bodies in a glorious new age with all God’s enemies removed and righteousness holding sway and the earth filled with the glory of God. They did not receive that promise yet.
Why not? Why must the saints wait, without their new resurrection bodies? The answer is given in verse 40: “Because God had provided something better for us, so that apart from us they should not be made perfect.” In other words, God’s purpose is that all his people — all the redeemed — be gathered in before any of them enjoys the fullness of his promise. His purpose is that we all come into the fullness of our inheritance together.
So the motivation is this: when you go away to plan your fall run with Jesus, think on the fact that your life counts to God and to them. Your finishing the race is what history is waiting for. The entire consummation of the plan of the universe waits until every single one of God’s elect are gathered in. All history waits and all those who have lived by faith crowd the marathon route to urge you on, because they will not be perfected without you. Nor you without them.

Motivation: Jesus Creates and Perfects Our Faith

Perhaps two more very brief motivations from Hebrews 12:2. The first is that the fight of faith is not done in our own strength. When you go away to plan your fall run with Jesus, verse 2 says, “Look to Jesus the author and perfecter of your faith.” Don’t look to your own resources and say, “I’ve tried before. It won’t work.” Fix your eyes on him. The battle is a battle of faith: will you believe that the things he promises are better than the bad habits that you use to cover your sadness?
But more than that, Jesus doesn’t just respond to faith with his help. He works to author faith and perfect faith. He works to begin it and he works to complete it. Faith lays hold on Jesus for help, because Jesus laid hold on the heart for faith. Hebrews 13:21 says that God works in us what is pleasing in his sight through Jesus. He is the author and the perfecter of our faith and we should sit with our Bible and our tablet in the park overwhelmed with the stunning truth that, behind every good resolve and plan of attack for this fall, God is at work in us to will and to do his good pleasure (Philippians 2:12–13) — to sustain and perfect our faith.

Motivation: The Joy of the Triumph at the End

Finally, this writer wants us to be motivated to endure in our run with Jesus this fall the same way Jesus was sustained his painful run. Continue in verse 2: “fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross.” It is not a morally defective thing to be sustained in the marathon of life by the joy of triumph at the end. The reward of seeing God and being free from all sin is the greatest incentive of all.

“The reward of seeing God is the greatest incentive of all.”

So if it seems that there are going to be some temporary losses when you run this race with Jesus, you are right. That is why Jesus said to count the cost (Luke 14:25–33) before you sign on. But the marathon of the Christian life is not mainly loss. It is mainly gain. “For the joy that was set before him he endured the cross.” It is only a matter of timing. If you see things with the eyes of God, there is a vapor’s breath of loss and pain, and then everlasting joy (2 Corinthians 4:17).
When you take your day away, with Bible and tablet, to plan your fall run with Jesus, think on this, think on this: “the sufferings of this present age are not worth comparing to the glory that will be revealed to the children of God” (Romans 8:18).

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Why We Never Leave Our Past Behind

When was the last time you told someone about the worst parts of your past — the deepest, darkest sins you’re most ashamed of?
Why don’t we tell that part of our story more often than we do? If we really believe what we say we believe about the gospel, our past does not define or condemn us anymore. Jesus was pierced in our place for our past (Isaiah 53:5). God has forgiven all of our iniquities (Psalm 103:3). There is now no condemnation (Romans 8:1).
When we have experienced the forgiveness and freedom we find in the gospel, we have the natural impulse to want to put the past behind us. We are new creatures. “The old has passed away” (2 Corinthians 5:17). But with the natural impulse to forget comes a second, seemingly incompatible impulse to divulge — to publish our past. It’s a supernatural impulse to go and tell.
After rescuing a man from wicked, violent, and destructive demonic oppression, Jesus says, “Go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you” (Mark 5:19).
Go and tell everyone who you were and what you did, and then tell them who I am and what I have done for you. Can anyone really see the power of God in our lives without letting his light shine on our past?

Tax Collectors and Sinners

Matthew walked away from a wicked past, but he did not leave his past behind entirely. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell one short story about Jesus mingling with tax collectors, but only one of them had himself extorted money from God’s people for his own personal finances.
“As Jesus reclined at table in the house,” Matthew writes, “behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were reclining with Jesus and his disciples. And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, ‘Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?’” (Matthew 9:10–11).
Tax collectors and sinners. Matthew felt those four words more than Mark did — at the same time probably feeling deeper contrition for his own sin and greater compassion for sinners like him. When he wrote about the scandal of Jesus sitting down with these men, he was writing about the scandal of Jesus eating with him.

Foremost of Sinners

Now, when we hear “tax collector” today, we may think IRS, one of the most widely feared and despised agencies in America. But like it or not, the IRS enforces a justly instituted set of rules. Tax collectors in Matthew’s day, though, were often outlaws — men who manipulated the law to extort money from people, even the poor. Zacchaeus, for instance, admits to that kind of evil (Luke 19:8).
And not only did Matthew do the dirty work of collecting the taxes and (likely) abusing his authority for personal gain, but he was a Jew collecting money from fellow Jews in order to fund Roman oppression of Jews. As a tax collector, Matthew would have been considered a traitor and a sell-out, trading away his own people for pennies.
Until two words liberated him from his love affair with money: “Follow me” (Matthew 9:9). Luke says, “Leaving everything, [Matthew] rose and followed [Jesus]” (Luke 5:28).

The Tax Collector

Matthew, Mark, and Luke all also tell the story of Jesus calling the twelve disciples (Matthew 10:2–4; Mark 3:16–19; Luke 6:13–16). Each starts with Simon (Peter) and ends with Judas. Each calls Judas a traitor or betrayer. But only one sees himself in the list.
Matthew begins listing his brothers, “The names of the twelve apostles are these: first, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother; James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother; Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew . . . ” When he comes to his own name in the list, he stops. He can’t tell this story like everyone else. So he adds three words, “ . . . Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James the son of Alphaeus . . . ” (Matthew 10:2–4).
Instead of trying to leave his past behind, he wanted his readers to know exactly what he had left when he decided to follow Jesus. Those three words were Matthew’s brief opportunity to say, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life” (1 Timothy 1:15–16).
While he highlights and celebrates the beauty of Jesus throughout his Gospel, he is not afraid to rehearse the wickedness in his own story, reminding us that tax collectors were servants of self (Matthew 5:46), slaves to their cravings (Matthew 11:19), and ignorant of God (Matthew 18:17). That he was selfish, licentious, and godless. But God.

Recovering Lost Baggage

And because Matthew was not quiet about what Jesus had done for him — about the specific, messy, embarrassing, shameful past he had been rescued from — many tax collectors were likewise forgiven and freed.
The first thing Matthew did after deciding to follow Jesus was to throw a party for his fellow tax collectors, so that he could introduce them to Jesus (Luke 5:29). He left behind the sins that had entangled him, but he refused to leave behind others entangled in the same sins. He was not content to be forgiven and forget. His past was his unique, God-given baggage in which to carry the gospel to other tax collectors and sinners.
And because he did not leave his past behind him, many others stopped collecting taxes and started fishing for men. Mark writes about Matthew, “As he reclined at table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners were reclining with Jesus and his disciples, for there were many who followed him” (Mark 2:15).

Free to Remember

Who might hear the gospel more clearly because they heard from you, in your house, in the context of your story? Who might relate to your unique weaknesses, sins, and failures? Throw a party for them, put your past on display, and invite them to walk with you out of slavery and death and into the kind of happiness they will never find in money, or sex, or entertainment, or family, or work. Invite them to follow you as you follow Christ.
If we have left our life of sin to follow Christ, we are free from our past, never to be defined or constrained by it again. But we never completely leave it behind, because God says something uniquely stunning about himself through our past — our tax collecting, our fits of anger, our quiet jealousy and envy, our drunken self-pity, our sexual immorality, our self-righteous morality (or whatever you were freed from).
Someone you know — someone struggling with the same sins you once committed against God — needs to hear what God has done for you.

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Why We Hit Snooze on God

It was all so innocent.
A series of small compromises, a sequence of gentle taps. Most of them I couldn’t even remember. But after months of making them, their cumulative effect could not be ignored. My strength was depleted.
For years, I had dreamt of a button that, when pressed, would set my affections ablaze with unwavering passion for my Savior. That button didn’t exist. But a button does exist that, when forsaken, invigorates my walk with Jesus.
Pushing it makes muting best intentions so easy, ignoring God so simple. It feeds laziness, murders last night’s resolves, and seduces into spiritual slumber. It strips Christians of their morning armor and sends them out naked into a world with prowling lions and flaming darts.
Now, the button isn’t the problem — the love of this button is. Yawning hearts that adore the pleasure of “ten more minutes” take our souls hostage behind linen sheets. Our blankets stand as prison bars preventing us from the Comforter of our souls. Each morning, life, gladness, and increased holiness pass us by as we stay imprisoned behind the Great Wall of Cotton.

Called Out of Sin — and Bed

Men in my small group recently resolved to break free from this spiritual spider web.
No more would our snoozing rob us of spiritual freshness. No more would it lull us back to sleep, cut our hair, and relieve us of our power. No longer would it cause us to return to group the next week, tails between our legs, admitting that time in God’s word had been sparse. We needed to be men fed on solid food, not spiritual milk. Men who loved their families and washed their wives in the word. Men of God and men of prayer who loved their Savior more than life, and more than slumber.
We would not be the sluggard whose natural habitation is his bed (Proverbs 26:14), and who is too spiritually fatigued to bring his potato chips to his mouth or the Book to his eyes (Proverbs 19:4). We would get to bed at a decent hour the night before. We would be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong (1 Corinthians 16:13).
Yet our resolving, although essential, was not sufficient. Our Declaration of Independence was a necessary step towards liberty, but was too “me-centered” to last. We all experienced today’s resolves falling to tomorrow morning’s comatose. What we needed was a fresh vision of God.

Worthy of Wakefulness

We slept in because we had forgotten who bids us to rise. The God we snoozed was puny, uninteresting, unworthy — not the God of the Bible. The God we snoozed seemed so distant, so unaware, so cold. So, we rolled over in our warm beds and resumed sleeping.
But the God who summons his people from their slumber is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He is worthy of our wakefulness.
We rise when friends call. Scramble to attention if our boss rings. And yet, far too often we roll over when our Best Friend, our only Savior, our truest Love knocks on our doors each morning. We provoke our jealous Husband with the scraps of our day, throwing him our spare devotion as stale breadcrumbs are thrown at pigeons in the park. He is God. He deserves our firstfruits, not our microwaved leftovers.
He can ask, “Why do you call me ‘Lord’ and not rise when I bid you? Why do you call me ‘Teacher’ and not sit daily at my feet? Why do you call me ‘Husband’ and not seek my tender embrace?”
The burning ones of heaven cannot look at him — none yawn or fall asleep in his presence. The God we draw near to is the God of Revelation 5. As the Lamb ascends his throne, all of heaven screams, “Worthy!” (Revelation 5:9, 12). This scene is not one for sleeping infants or adults.
What must this heavenly host think when they peer over the edge of heaven and see us lie in bed, as if dead, before him? This is not the holy deadness that resulted from John meeting with the exalted Christ whose chest shone with a golden sash, eyes burned like flames of fire, and whose voice thundered like the flood of many waters (Revelation 1:12–17). No, they see the deadness of Eutychus who, when Paul preached into the night, sank into a deep sleep, fell from his windowsill, and plummeted to his death (Acts 20:9).
How shocking it must be for heaven to be lost in fierce worship of God, and then to see many of us — his blood-bought people — daily meet him with a tap of a button and a rolling over.

Satisfy Me in the Morning

Wakefulness to God is not about legalism; it’s about life.
Many of us need to repent and cry out for joy with the psalmist:

Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. (Psalms 90:14)

Morning satisfaction in God’s steadfast love does not happen by accident. Being glad all our days doesn’t happen by accident. God gives, God satisfies, God meets us when we meet him expectantly, eagerly, wakefully — believing that he will reward us again (Hebrews 11:6).
As we draw near to him, he will draw near to us every morning (James 4:8). He will satisfy us will unrelenting love and fresh mercies each morning (Lamentations 3:22–23). Lay hold of your inheritance each morning.
Choose the Savior over the snooze.

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Where to Bring Your Broken Heart

“Help. My heart is broken.”
This is one of the most common refrains in my counseling ministry. There are many causes: love unrequited, jobs lost, dreams quashed, spouses and children taken. No matter its roots, the pain is unbearably similar for its sufferers. And the question that hangs over it all is this: “Now what?”

Weep Well

Grief is an act as well as a feeling. When hearts are broken, cheeks should be wet. I wish it weren’t true, but it is. There is something about weeping that is incredibly scary. It’s a vulnerable act that floods our thoughts and feelings, leaving us fatigued. Little wonder then that people avoid it like the plague, or feel that they need to make an excuse for it.
But Scripture itself does not take such a negative view on mourning. God does not tell his children to “dry it up!” Rather, God stores our tears in his bottle (Psalm 56:8). In an ancient, arid land where bottles were not a dime a dozen, only precious things were kept in bottles. Even more, God himself weeps and makes no apology for it (Luke 19:41–44; John 11:35). When God finds his heart hurting, his cheeks are not dry, and you should not be ashamed if yours aren’t either.
It’s not enough to merely give our emotions vent; they need to be shepherded (Psalm 120:1; 130:1). Christians are not merely those who weep, but those who weep well. It is not true that our stress, sadness, anger, and negative emotions just need an emotional outlet to release the pressure. This “hydraulic” view of the affections often does more harm than good — before we know it, we can barely put our emotional kettle on the burner before the whistle begins to wail for relief.
Instead, the key is to marry an emotional outlet with hope. This does not mean that we always, at every single moment, need to sustain a conscious feeling of hope alongside our grief — God makes room in Scripture for passages like Psalm 88 and Job 3. He does not ask the believer to take a Pollyanna view of the believing life. But Paul reminds the Thessalonians that their grief is different from a mere emotional outpour (1 Thessalonians 4:13). It is grounded in the truth of the gospel which is the spring of hope and life itself (Romans 15:13; 1 Thessalonians 4:14–17). Gospel hope is the foundation of healthy grief. We may not always see it or focus on it, but it is there, and it will rise again (Psalm 51:12).

Go to Prayer

Grief needs prayer. It is the communion of our souls with their Maker and Sustainer. The Psalter is not just a collection of ditties for believers but a living example of the prayers of the faithful. Praying isn’t about changing God’s mind but submitting the most earnest desires of our hearts to him, and trusting his stewardship with them, even when those desires are aborted.
Christ calls out through prayer in his most desperate hour (Matthew 26:36–39). And Paul tells us that even when we don’t know how to pray as we ought, the Holy Spirit intercedes for us, mending our prayers on the way up (Romans 8:26). There is something about prayer, about giving unto our Lord those thoughts and feelings which are most intimate, that makes our hearts more pliable to the comfort that only the gospel brings.
God loves to hear the raw, unscripted prayers of his children’s hearts (Psalm 62:8). But prayer is more than just an emotional dump. Our prayers are prayers to a God who has revealed himself and provided for us in his word. In grief, our prayers and our souls will benefit by feeding on God’s word.
Meditating on Scripture forces our hearts to move beyond ourselves and think on the grand scope of God’s redemptive work for his people (Colossians 1:13–14). It gives hope where otherwise there may be none (John 14:27; Romans 8:31–39; Hebrews 13:6; James 1:2). It puts our grief in perspective, reminding us that our heartache is but a tiny glimpse of the pain experienced by God at the cross (Matthew 27:46) — a suffering that he entered into willingly (John 10:18), despising the cost of shame for the joy of redeeming a people (Hebrews 12:2).

Go to Rest

Grief is exhausting. Physically and emotionally, we find ourselves worn out. A persistent and terrible fog seems to descend on our minds and bodies making it hard even to breathe at times like these. Those in grief need rest. More than just physical rest (though often no less), we need spiritual rest. It is in these moments that the words of our Lord seem sweeter than honey:

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28–30)

Resting in Jesus often means intentionally disengaging from the busyness of the world. Choosing to focus what little emotional energy we have on Kingdom purposes helps provide a peace that mere logic cannot explain (Philippians 4:4–9).

Go to Friends

Grief isn’t private. It’s often difficult and humiliating to let someone in on the depths of our pain, but God loves his people too much to let your suffering begin and end with you. Keeping your grief hidden robs the church of our ability to have the unbelievable joy of Galatians 6:2: “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.”
All people at all times do not need to be clued into the depth of the darkness in which you find yourself, but allowing others to walk beside you in your time of distress is a way of serving them, while also allowing them to serve you. It’s a reminder that the life of a pilgrim in this fallen world is far from rose-colored and, someday, when the current trial is behind you, the church will get the benefit of witnessing God’s tangible faithfulness to you.
All too often, Satan uses our grief to indulge our desire to isolate, not only personally but corporately. Gathering for worship just feels like a chore too difficult to manage. When we grieve, it may be difficult to sing, pray, or concentrate in worship. It may feel as if the Lord’s Supper is a hollow activity. But worship is the ventilator of our spirits — keeping us alive when all else seems to fail. Bit by bit, even when we don’t appreciate it, worship is consoling our grief and nurturing our souls back to health.

Weep and Draw Near

In a world where sin infects and impacts all things, it is impossible for believers to make it through without hearts that break. But we have a God who is not silent at such times. He knows, because he has walked in our shoes (Hebrews 4:15). He has felt the terrible pangs of a broken heart. And at such times, he does not tell us to shut up and go away, but rather to weep, draw near to him, and rejoice in him.

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God Did Not Spare His Own Son

And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren; and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?

Some truth leaves us almost speechless. Romans 8:28–30 left Paul almost speechless. All things work for your good — God sees to it, because he foreknew you, predestined you to glory with Christ, called you when you were dead in trespasses and sins, justified you freely by his grace through faith alone, and is now glorifying you little by little until the day of his coming when it will be consummated with a body like Christ’s glorious resurrection body.
This leaves Paul almost speechless — almost. He says, “What then shall we say to these things?” I hear two things in those words for Paul and for us. I hear, “It is hard to find words for these great things.” And I hear, “We must find words for these great things.” I think when Paul says, “What then shall we say to these things?” his answer is: We must say it again another way. We must find different words and say it again. That’s what he does with the words, “If God is for us, who is against us?” That’s what he has been saying all along. But he must say it another way.
And so must we. If you have shared the glorious gospel with a child or a parent or a friend many times, you must say it again, say it another way. We must write another email, dictate another letter, teach another lesson, put up another plaque, write another poem, sing another song, speak another bedside sentence about the glory of Christ to a dying father. “What then shall we say to these things?” We will say them another way, over and over again till we die, and then to all eternity. They will never cease to be worthy of another way of speaking the glory.

God Is For Us

How does Paul say it this time in verse 31? He says, “If God is for us, who is against us?” And his point is to sum up what has gone before: God is for us, and therefore no one can be against us. God foreknew us in love, predestined us to sonship, called us from death, declared us righteous, and is working in us from one degree of glory to another until the great and glad day of Christ. How shall we say that again? We shall say, “God is for us.”

“If infinitely powerful wrath is against us, annihilation would be a sweet gift of grace.”

Oh, how precious are those two words, “for us.” There are no more fearful words in the universe than the words, “God is against us.” If infinitely powerful wrath is against us, annihilation would be a sweet gift of grace. Which is why those who try to persuade us that annihilation is what judgment means, not hell, are so far from the mark. Annihilation under the wrath of God is not judgment, it is deliverance and relief (see Revelation 6:16). No. There is no annihilation of any human being. We live forever with God against us or with God for us. And all who are in Christ may say with almost unspeakable joy, “God is for us.” He is on our side.
There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1). God is entirely for us, and never against us. None of our sicknesses is a judgment from a condemning judge. None of our broken cars or failed appliances is a punishment from God. None of our marital strife is a sign of his wrath. None of our lost jobs is a penalty for sin. None of our wayward children is a crack of the whip of God’s retribution. If we are in Christ. No. God is for us, not against, in and through all things — all ease and all pain.

Who Is Against Us?

This means, to say it still another way, “Who is against us?” We are still in verse 31: “If God is for us, who is against us?” The answer Paul expects when he asks that question is, “No one can be against us.” To which we are prone to say, “Really?” What does that mean? Verse 35 says that there will be tribulation and distress and persecution and sword. Verse 36 says that Christians are being killed all day long, they are counted like sheep to be slaughtered. Paul said that. So what does he mean, “Who can be against us?” I think he means no one can be successfully against us.
The devil and sinful men can make you sick, can steal your car, can sow seeds of strife in your marriage, can take away your job, and rob you of your child. But verse 28 says, God works all those things together for your good if you love him. And if they finally work for your good, the designs of the adversary are thwarted and his aim to be against you is turned into a Christ-exalting, soul-sanctifying, faith-deepening, painful benefit. If God is for you, he does not spare you these things. But he designs good where the adversary designs evil (Genesis 50:20; 45:7). The things that are against you he designs to be for you. No one can be successfully against you.
What an impact this should have on our lives! We should not be like the world if these things are so. Most of the world chooses its lifestyle because it fears sickness and theft and terror and loss of job and a dozen other things. But to the follower of Jesus, the Lord says, “The Gentiles seek all these things. You seek the kingdom first” (see Matthew 6:32–33). God will give you what you need. And what you lose or lack in the kingdom-ministry of love and sacrifice and suffering will work for your good and come back to you, in some God-designed way, a hundredfold.
So stand before your adversary and speak the gospel, whether in Kankan, Guinea, or Istanbul, Turkey, or Ternate, Indonesia, or Minneapolis, Minnesota. And say to those who even plan to take your life: “Do what you must, but in the end all your words and all your injury can only refine my faith, and enlarge my reward, and dispatch me to paradise with the risen Jesus Christ.” Oh, how different we will be if we believe that God is for us and no one can be against us!

The Solid Logic of Heaven

And now what shall we say to that? What will the apostle Paul add to that? He will say it yet another way. He will say it in a way now in verse 32 that not only promises no successful adversaries, but also promises total, overflowing, never-ending generosity from God; and all that on the rock-solid basis in the death of his Son for sinners. “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?”
I called this one time, “The Solid Logic of Heaven.” It’s an argument from the greater to the lesser. The hard to the easy. From the almost insurmountable obstacle to the easily surmountable obstacle. Since he did not spare his own Son — that’s the great thing, the hard thing, the insurmountable obstacle to our salvation — delivering over his Son to torture, scorn, and sin-bearing death. If that can be done, then the lesser thing, the easy thing will surely be done: his freely giving to us all that Christ bought for us — all things! The solid logic of heaven.

His Own Son

“Jesus is no mere prophet. He is God the Son.”

Consider the parts of it. First, the phrase “his own Son.” Jesus Christ was not a man whom God found and adopted to be his son on earth. Jesus Christ is the pre-existent, indeed ever-existent, co-eternal, non-created, divine image of the Father in whom all the fullness of deity dwells (Colossians 2:9). Remember from Romans 8:3 that God “sent His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh.” In other words, the Son existed before he took on human flesh. This is no mere prophet. This is God the Son.
And when verse 32 calls him “his own” Son, the point is that there are no others and that he is infinitely precious to the Father. At least twice while Jesus was on earth God said, “This is my beloved Son” (Matthew 3:7; 17:5). In Colossians 1:13, Paul calls him “the Son of [God’s] love.” Jesus himself told the parable of the tenants in which the master’s servants were beaten and killed when they came to collect the fruit. Then Jesus said, “He had still one other, a beloved son” (Mark 12:6). One son is all the Father had. And he was deeply loved. And he sent him.
I have four sons. There is no love like the love of a father for a son. Don’t misunderstand. I love my wife. And I love my daughter. And I love my father and my comrades on the staff of this church and you. And I don’t mean the love of a father for his sons is better than these loves. I mean, it’s different. They are too. But I speak only of this one: there is no love like the love of a father for a son.
The point of verse 32 is that this love of God for his one and only Son was like a massive Mount Everest obstacle standing between him and our salvation. Here was an obstacle almost insurmountable. Could God, would God, overcome his cherishing, admiring, treasuring, white-hot, affectionate bond with his Son and deliver him over to be lied about and betrayed and abandoned and mocked and flogged and beaten and spit on and nailed to a cross and pierced with a sword like an animal being butchered. Would he really do that? Would he hand over the Son of his love? If he would, then whatever goal he is pursuing could never be stopped. If that obstacle were overcome in the pursuit of his good, every obstacle would be overcome.
Did he do it? Paul’s answer is yes, and he puts it negatively and positively: “He did not spare him, but he delivered him over.” In the words, “he did not spare him,” we hear the immensity of the difficulty and the obstacle. God did not delight in the pain or the dishonor of his Son. This was an infinitely horrible thing for the Son of God to be treated this way. Sin reached its worst in those hours. It was exposed for what it really is — an attack on God. All sin — our sin — is an attack on God. A rejection of God. An assault on his rights and his truth and his beauty. But God did not spare his Son this treatment.

Delivered Him Over

Instead “he delivered him over.” Don’t miss this. Almost everything in the universe that is important and precious gathers here in this unparalleled moment in time. Divine love for man and divine hatred for sin gather here. Absolute divine sovereignty and the everlasting weight of human accountability and moral action gather here. Infinite divine wisdom and power gather here — when God delivered over his own Son to death.
The Bible says Judas delivered him over (Mark 3:19), and Pilate delivered him over (Mark 15:15), and Herod and the Jewish people and the Gentiles delivered him over (Acts 4:27–28), and we delivered him over (1 Corinthians 15:3; Galatians 1:4; 1 Peter 2:24). It even says Jesus delivered himself over (John 10:17; 19:30). But Paul is saying the ultimate thing here in verse 32. In and behind and beneath and through all these human deliverings, God was delivering his Son to death. “This Man, delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death” (Acts 2:23). In Judas and Pilate and Herod and Jewish crowds and Gentile soldiers and our sin and Jesus’s lamb-like submission, God delivered over his Son. Nothing greater has ever happened.

If This Is True, Then What?

And what shall we say to this? We shall say, “The logic of heaven holds!” If God thus delivered over his own Son, then. . . . What? Answer: He shall with him surely and freely give us all things. If God did not withhold his Son, he will not withhold any good thing from us.

• This is the final purchase and fulfillment of Psalm 84:11: “No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly.”
• This is the promise and ground of 1 Corinthians 3:21–23: “All things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future — all are yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.”
• This is the sealing of the promise of Ephesians 1:3: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.”
• This is the securing of the promise of Jesus in the words, “Do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’. . . . Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” (Matthew 6:31–33).

Since he did not spare his own Son, but delivered him over for us all, he will, with absolute moral certainty, give us all things with him. Really? All things? What about “tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword” (Romans 8:35)? The answer is in this magnificent quote from John Flavel from 350 years ago:

“When you believe God works all things for your good, all of the Christian life is simply the fruit of faith.”

He spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all; how shall he not with him freely give us all things?” (Romans 8:32). How is it imaginable that God should withhold, after this, spirituals or temporals, from his people? How shall he not call them effectually, justify them freely, sanctify them thoroughly, and glorify them eternally? How shall he not clothe them, feed them, protect and deliver them? Surely if he would not spare his own Son one stroke, one tear, one groan, one sigh, one circumstance of misery, it can never be imagined that ever he should, after this, deny or withhold from his people, for whose sakes all this was suffered, any mercies, any comforts, any privilege, spiritual or temporal, which is good for them.

God always does what is good for us. If you believe that he gave his own Son for you, this is what you believe. And all of the Christian life is simply the fruit of that faith. Look to Christ. Look to the love God. Live in love. And fear no more.

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