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But look at the last part of that verse, "deceiving your own selves". That is exactly what happens when we don’t DO enough and all we do is LISTEN. Who is the deceiver the Bible refers to?  Who is the "accuser of the brethren"?

 Sharon says it this way, and it is a very appropriate word picture.  A pool of water has no flowing in and out, it is just a vessel of still water.  Look at pools of water in July or August.  They are teeming, stagnant pools of green unused water.  They take in all the rain water and surface water, but have no way to get rid of it.

A Christian who is NOT doing and who is introspecting themselves to death is just like that stagnant pool. There is a HUGE difference in introspection (SELF-thought) and meditation or musing on GOD’S WORD).  Like me, I had taken in and taken in and taken in for YEARS, and never found a way to GIVE OUT or BACK.  Satan had me trapped in a LIE.  He had me bound up in MY SELF.  I needed to find a way to GIVE BACK what I had been TAKING IN for years.

Society likes to make you think you are giving back just by being active in your children’s lives, by working, by going to school and "improving yourself", by traveling, but ESPECIALLY BY THINKING ABOUT YOURSELF.  Selfishness is NOT the ticket out of depression, it is the chain and ropes that Satan uses to keep you bound in that dark room of your soul.

I used to be depressed.  I had what the docs called "laughing depression". I covered up how I really felt.  They said I had depleted all the chemicals in my brain, that I would need to replace them with drugs, and that due to my personality and lifestyle, I would need to take them approximately every 7 years, since I would continue to use them up after I replaced them with drugs.

I bought into that.  Did they ask me anything else about my life? NO.  Did they know my parents had just begun a horrendous divorce, and even though I was a grown adult with children of my own, it affected me a great deal? NO.  Did they know my husband at the time was cheating on me, and that he was a lay preacher??? NO.  Did they ask how many miscarriages I had suffered??? NO....(four).  I was 25 at the time.  Been married almost 5 years.  I will not go in to the details, but my life was a mess.  So they put me on anti-depressants, NO counseling, and told me I would probably need to take them a year or so.

The first brand they put me on nearly killed me, I laid in a hospital bed for almost 2 weeks on IV cortisone, to overcome the edema on ALL my major organs, including my brain.  Still, I wanted to feel better, so I allowed them to put me on another medication. This one didn't kill me ,and DID make me feel better, so I took this medication for approximately a year.

(Danette Tucker, another writer from this site would like to add these insightful comments. "Depression is about what's going on in our heads -- what we really believe and what we're choosing to focus on (the circumstances, Satan's lies, or God's truth).  The way out of depression is exactly what has been said -- living by faith in the truth ,DOING what God has shown us is right even when it doesn't feel like the truth.

The vast majority of the time, drugs are detrimental rather than beneficial -- especially the popular drugs of choice these days.  The use of drugs, Paxil in our case, nearly cost our family everything because they made a bad situation dramatically worse.  Drugs mask the pain and make it more difficult to clearly focus mentally on the truth.  There are some drugs which have very mild, if any, side effects.  Two of those are Zoloft and Desipramine.  My husband's meds were changed by a Christian psychiatrist, from Paxil to Desipramine.  It made a dramatic difference.  A few years later my husband was able to wean himself off the Desipramine (with doctor's direction) and is now drug free.

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