Titus 2 Men And Women

Reverse The Downward Spiral
by Sharon Merhalski

Psalm 42:5-6 "Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance. O my God, my soul is cast down within me: therefore will I remember thee..."

The other day I dropped a raw egg and was quick enough to reach down, catch it and bring it back up to the counter.  Several weeks ago I dropped a raw egg and was not quick enough to catch it.  I am still trying to clean all of that raw egg out of my kitchen carpet.  My reaction time was the key factor in my reversing the situation or making a lasting mess.

Depression does not happen overnight.  First there is sadness or emotional pain that causes a person to turn their eyes inward...introspect. In Psalm 42 and 43 God has some specific things to say about where we are to keep our eyes...where we are to put our "cast".  And our reaction time to our introspection is the key factor in our making a lasting mess of being depressed or in reversing the situation.

We can choose to look up to God and out to people.
                             OR
We can choose to put our focus on "self".
(This choice---looking inward--will spiral us down into an emotional sadness, that if not reversed, will lead us in to a  black hole of depression.)

I say humbly and with much praise to the Lord-- I have never been depressed.  I am what my husband calls an optimist--I always see the glass half-full not half-empty.  Many deep valleys in my life have left me without doubt that Romans 8:28 is true and God is Sovereign and in control of the "all things" of my life.  And I purpose---I choose--to catch myself in those rare moments of sadness and pray and change my "cast" whenever I begin to feel sad and take a step or two toward a downward spiral into "me". 

Since I am not an authority on depression I will not write a lengthy article.  A very good article that has helped many depressed people is Denise Lower’s article:  The Black Hole of Depression.  Instead, at the request of many people over the last several months, I am going to list some of the things I have learned to do quickly to change an inward "cast"-- a "me/self" focus--up to God and out to others.

I make one or more of the following choices to:

• Read my Bible and pray...whether I feel like it or not.
• Remember the landmarks of my life:  Those times when God , by His indelible presence and provision, ‘marked’ a time for me to remember Who He is and how much He loves me.
• Remember---think about the fact that God’s purpose for my life is to bring Him glory.  (A Christian in a state of depression cannot glorify a Sovereign God.) 
• Count my blessings in prayer---a time of thanksgiving with God-- and on paper.
• Bless someone---I write notes of appreciation, love, cheer, encouragement, etc. Or I send E-cards for the same reasons. 
• Do a kind deed for someone...anonymously if possible.
• Visit a lonely person in a nursing home.  I often ask at the desk for the name of some person who never gets a visit. (I have never had one person tell me they did not like my visit or my reading the Bible to them.)
• Read and/or Sing Psalms and hymns until I believe them as true for Sharon.

Several years ago a ‘well-meaning’ Christian (maybe I should say a ‘mean’ Christian) told me that my doing the above was self-motivated for self- change and would receive no rewards in Heaven.  God tells us that after we are saved we are to "...work out (accomplish, fashion, cause to deed) your own salvation with fear and trembling."  Philippians 2:12b

I understand this to mean we are to order our lives to glorify God--which is His purpose for us--with a reverential fear of falling short of His will thereby disappointing Him.  The Bible tells us in I Samuel 30:6 that David "encouraged himself in the LORD".  In this verse the word encourage in the Strong’s Concordance means to: strengthen, help, prepare, fortify, seize.  We are to seize ourselves and keep ourselves strengthened, prepared, and fortified to bring glory to God by showing Christ to the world.  And this cannot be accomplished if we choose to ignore our sad countenance and spiral into depression.  Depression is the state of hopelessness and the Bible is God’s book of Hope.

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