When You’re Spiritually Depressed (Psalms 42-43)

Big Idea: When God seems far away, preach to yourself and turn to him for help.

If you know me, you know that I get pretty excited about talking about the habits we need to practice growing spiritually. It’s easy for me to get up and speak about the habits you need to build in your life if you are going to grow.

I was teaching these habits a year ago at a church when the pastor raised his hand. He asked a question: What do you do when you practice all these habits, and you still get stuck?

I wanted to say: You won’t! But I didn’t say that because it’s not true. Here’s what I did say. You can do everything right spiritually and still hit a wall because life is complex and hard, and we have to learn what to do in those times that we’re stuck, depressed, or just going through a hard time.

Life isn’t simple, and the reality is that we’re all going to face periods in which we feel stuck or discouraged and God seems absent.

That’s why we need Psalm 42 and 43.

A Little Background

But first, a little background.

Why are we looking at two psalms together? There are a few clues that point to these two psalms originally being joined together. They share the same theme. They’re both written by the sons of Korah. Psalm 43 is one of only two psalms in the second book of psalms (Psalms 42 to 72) that lacks a superscript (the introductory lines at the beginning of the psalm). The Greek translation of the Psalms combines the two psalms. And Psalm 43:5 repeats the same refrain as Psalm 42 verses 5 and 11:

Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you in turmoil within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my salvation and my God.

And that gives you a pretty good idea of what the psalm is about. It’s about spiritual depression.

Why is the psalmist depressed? The sons of Korah were Levites. They were part of the tribe that was assigned the responsibility to care for the temple. In particular, they were in charge of the temple music. And here are some of the reasons why the psalmist felt depressed:

He was forced to be away from the temple. We often read the first couple of verses and think, “Oh, that’s so inspiring!” But verses 1 and 2 are not meant to be inspirational. They’re an expression of anguish.

As a deer pants for flowing streams,
so pants my soul for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God,
for the living God.
When shall I come and appear before God?

Verse 6 gives us a clue to his location. He was probably near the Mount Hermon range, almost a hundred miles away from Jerusalem. He felt far from home and far from God.

But there’s another reason he felt depressed: He was being taunted by unbelievers.

My tears have been my food
day and night,
while they say to me all the day long,,
“Where is your God?”…
As with a deadly wound in my bones,
my adversaries taunt me,
while they say to me all the day long,
“Where is your God?”
(Psalm 42:3, 10)

If you’ve ever lived in an environment in which people are actively hostile to your faith in God, you know how difficult it can be. It can be wearing on the soul. It can be devastating.

That is especially true when you can remember better days.

These things I remember,
as I pour out my soul:
how I would go with the throng
and lead them in procession to the house of God
with glad shouts and songs of praise,
a multitude keeping festival.
(Psalm 42:4)

Contrast this compared to how the psalmist feels now, battered by wave after wave:

Deep calls to deep
at the roar of your waterfalls;
all your breakers and your waves
have gone over me.
(Psalm 42:7)

And then he’s just plain dealing with difficult people.

Vindicate me, O God, and defend my cause
against an ungodly people,
from the deceitful and unjust man
deliver me!
For you are the God in whom I take refuge;
why have you rejected me?
Why do I go about mourning
because of the oppression of the enemy?
(Psalm 43:1-2)

Not only is he dealing with difficult people, but he feels like God hasn’t really been a help to him.

So there’s a lot going on. He’s far from home, feels far from God, is being taunted by unbelievers and difficult people, can remember when things were much better, and has lost hope. He feels overwhelmed and forgotten. No wonder he feels depressed.

So what do you do?

Dealing with Spiritual Depression

Let me tell you two things that the psalm models for us. Remember: this isn’t easy advice. This isn’t going to fix your problems. It’s not two quick steps for overcoming spiritual depression. It’s better than that. It’s a good example of how to respond. I like it because it is from someone who knows what it’s like to go through spiritual depression.

He models two ways to respond.

First: Preach to yourself.

Why does the psalmist repeat the same sentence three times? Because he is speaking to himself. He’s preaching to himself what he most needs to hear.

Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you in turmoil within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my salvation and my God.
(Psalm 42:5, 11; 43:5)

He doesn’t give in to depression or self-pity. He doesn’t try to medicate his pain through any of the pain medication techniques we try, like sin and pleasure. He doesn’t do what one person told me he does when he’s stressed or depressed: go shopping.

Instead, as James Boice says, he takes himself in hand. He speaks to himself. He challenges himself. And he brings himself back to God. Rather than looking at his circumstances, he works his way back to God so that he puts his hope in God once again.

Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones wrote a helpful book called Spiritual Depression. In the book, he points out something important that is modelled so well in this psalm.

He points out a problem: “Our danger is to submit ourselves to our feelings and to allow them to dictate to us, to govern and to master us and to control the whole of our lives.” Do you ever feel like that? That you’re at the whim of your feelings? Feelings are important. We shouldn’t ignore them; we should be informed by them, but they shouldn’t govern and master us. We will not live well if our feelings dictate how we should live.

What we need to do, he says, is what the psalmist does in this psalm. Listen to what he says:

The main trouble in this whole matter of spiritual depression in a sense is this, that we allow our self to talk to us instead of talking to our self … Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? Take those thoughts that come to you the moment you wake up in the morning. You have not originated them, but they start talking to you, they bring back the problem of yesterday, etc. Somebody is talking. Who is talking to you? Your self is talking to you. Now this man’s treatment … was this; instead of allowing this self to talk to him, he starts talking to himself, ‘Why art thou cast down, O my soul?’ he asks. His soul had been repressing him, crushing him. So he stands up and says: ‘Self, listen for a moment, I will speak to you’. Do you know what I mean? If you do not, you have but little experience.
The main art in the matter of spiritual living is to know how to handle yourself. You have to take yourself in hand, you have to address yourself, preach to yourself, question yourself. You must say to your soul: ‘Why art thou cast down’–what business have you to be disquieted? You must turn on yourself, upbraid yourself, condemn yourself, exhort yourself, and say to yourself: ‘Hope thou in God’–instead of muttering in this depressed, unhappy way. And then you must go on to remind yourself of God, Who God is, and what God is and what God has done, and what God has pledged Himself to do. Then having done that, end on this great note: defy yourself, and defy other people, and defy the devil and the whole world, and say with this man: ‘I shall yet praise Him for the help of His countenance, who is also the health of my countenance and my God’.

There’s so much wisdom here. Preach to yourself. The reality is that you’re going to be preaching something to yourself anyway. When you wake up in the morning, you’re already preaching things to yourself. Many of the things we preach to ourselves aren’t helpful or true.

What’s the alternative? Preach the truth to yourself. Question your narrative about things. Are you really seeing things accurately? Preach the reality of God: who he is, what he has done, and what he promises to do. Look at Jesus. Remind yourself of his perfect life, his sacrificial death, his triumphant resurrection, and all the promises he has made to you. Hope in Jesus. Remind yourself of the Holy Spirit, who has promised to seal and to aid every believer in Christ. Preach to yourself.

Open God’s word, and preach the truth to yourself. Let me give you one example. It’s by a helpful book by Joe Thorn called Note to Self. It speaks to all kinds of areas in which we need to preach to ourselves. Take this note, called “Jesus is enough.”

Dear Self, Are you satisfied? It is pretty obvious that the answer is often no. I am not saying it is wrong to want things in this life, but why do you find yourself so frustrated with the absence of those things? The problem is not that you want evil things. The things you want are generally good, or at least harmless in themselves. But more than wanting, you become frustrated by not having. You become jealous, envious, and discontented with your life. It is true; you need what you lack, but what you lack is satisfaction in Jesus.

Have you done this? Stop listening to yourself and start preaching to yourself. Preach the truth about God to yourself, and lead yourself to respond to God and his gospel with all of your heart. It’s a discipline, and we have to do it. But, like the psalmist, we’ll have to do it multiple times for it to be effective.

First: preach to yourself. Here’s the other thing that he does.

Second: Turn to God for help.

The help you need won’t come from yourself. That’s why we read in Psalm 43:3-4:

Send out your light and your truth;
let them lead me;
let them bring me to your holy hill
and to your dwelling!
Then I will go to the altar of God,
to God my exceeding joy,
and I will praise you with the lyre,
O God, my God.

When you’re in the valley, ask God for his guidance. Ask God to return you to where you used to be. Ask him to return you to a place of praise with his people again. Here you see the importance of corporate worship. Ask God to return you, not just physically, but emotionally as well.

Here is what the psalmist is saying. When God seems far away, preach to yourself and turn to him for help.

The great remedy for what you’re going through is not in yourself or even in other people. It’s found in your God. This won’t solve every problem in your life, but in the middle of your problems you can preach to yourself and remind yourself what is true about God, and then ask for his help in restoring you. The same God who helped the sons of Korah will help you as you preach to yourself and turn to him for help.