The Gos-pill for Depression

Romans 15:13 says, “Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”
The word “hope” that is found in the New Testament of the Bible comes from a Greek word that means “joyful, confident expectation.” To have Bible hope means you have an incredible expectation that your future is bright, and that tomorrow will be better than today. God wants every child of His to be filled and abounding in this hope.

How many people do you know that have a hard time sleeping because they can’t wait to get up in the morning so they can see how good the day is going to be? I’ll bet not many. Why? Because people are more hopeless today than they have ever been. More people deal with stress and depression than ever before. Listen to some of these statistics found on the internet on a website that specializes in helping people with depression:

• Depressive disorders affect approximately 18.8 million American adults or about 9.5% of the U.S. population age 18 and older in a given year. This includes major depressive disorder, dysthymic disorder, and bipolar disorder.
• Everyone will at some time in his or her life be affected by depression — their own or someone else’s, according to Australian Government statistics.
• Pre-schoolers are the fastest-growing market for antidepressants. At least four percent of preschoolers — over a million are clinically depressed.
• The rate of increase of depression among children is an astounding 23%
• 15% of the population of most developed countries suffers severe depression.
• 30% of women are depressed.
• 54% of people believe depression is a personal weakness.
• 41% of depressed women are too embarrassed to seek help.
• 80% of depressed people are not currently having any treatment.
• 92% of depressed African-American males do not seek treatment.
• 15% of depressed people will commit suicide.
• Depression will be the second largest killer after heart disease by 2020 — and studies show depression is a contributory factor to fatal coronary disease.
• Depression results in more absenteeism than almost any other physical disorder and costs employers more than US$51 billion per year in absenteeism and lost productivity, not including high medical and pharmaceutical bills.

Being a Christian doesn’t make you exempt from these problems. Being a Christian does mean that you have an answer in God that has nothing to do with what pharmaceutical companies are offering. Depression is a result of hopelessness. Hopelessness is a result of something that you believe in your heart. Notice the scripture in Romans 15 says that the God of hope want s to fill you with ALL joy and peace. Well why doesn’t He do it. The reason is because it is based on you believing the right thing. The God of hope can fill you with joy and peace and cause you to abound in hope, as you believe His promises.

The pharmaceutical companies want you to believe that you have a joy and peace problem, and their purple pill can help you. If you’re depressed, you don’t have a joy and peace problem, you have a believing problem. Get your believing straightened out and the God of hope can fill you with this joy and peace.

Believing is not the same thing as mental assent. The mind can agree with truth while the heart remains in a stage of doubt. When Jesus spoke about faith that moves mountains in Mark 11:23, He did not say that this kind of faith was when we agreed in our mind. He said it was when we believed it in our heart and declared it with our mouth. Believing has three stages that you need to know about.

First, you must believe what God is saying to you concerning your circumstance. This means you have to have knowledge of what He said. Faith doesn’t begin until you gain the knowledge of what God has said. Remember, you must believe it in your heart. This means that you are going to have to meditate on His promise until it becomes more real to you than your problem. Some people don’t like meditation, yet they practice it habitually. Worry is mediation. It’s meditating on the problem until you become depressed and scared. Why not meditate on what God said about the problem? When you do, faith will rise up in your heart!

Second, you must believe that God not only has said it, but He is faithful to do what He said He would do. The scripture is full of promises concerning the faithfulness of God. If I tell you that I am going to do something for you, you will judge me in two areas. First, you will judge what I said to you. Then you will judge my character and my reliability. In other words, “I know he said it, but will he really do it?” This second stage of believing is where you judge God to be faithful to do what He said He would do. Hebrews 11:11 said Sarah did this and she received strength to conceive.

The third stage is where a lot of people miss it. Jesus did not say in Mark 11:23 that “if you believe that what God said, then it would happen.” He said that you have to believe that what YOU say will happen. In other words, if you will begin to believe in your heart and say what God has said, then God will begin to bring to pass what you are saying. You have to confess it with your mouth. According to Romans 10:9 and 10 that’s how you get saved, by believing with the heart and saying it with your mouth. It’s the same way that you come out of depression!

God wants to fill you with a hope today that will cause you to leap out of bed on Mondays and shout how excited you are about the week! You can have that kind of hope is you believe!

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