Christian Depression

A friend gave me a book that I have started reading. Spiritual Depression by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones. This topic is near to my soul and the book has been a challenge to me and I just started. Here is a snippet from the book that impacted me.

“But there is another and more important reason, which is that we must face this problem [depression and Christians] for the sake of the Kingdom of God and for the glory of God. In a sense a depressed Christian is a contradiction in terms, and he is a very poor recommendation for the gospel. We are living in a pragmatic age. People today are not primarily interested in Truth but they are interested in results. The one question they ask is: Does it work? They are frantically seeking and searching for something that can help them. Now we believe that God extends His Kingdom partly through His people, and we know that He has oftentimes done some of the most notable things in the history of the Church through the simple Christian living of some quite ordinary people. Nothing is more important, therefore, than that we should be delivered from a condition which gives other people, looking at us, the impression that to be a Christian means to be unhappy, to be sad, to be morbid, and that the Christian is one who ‘scorns delights and lives laborious days.'”

Understanding depression is an immense task. Feeling overwhelmed with a cloud of darkness and despair which debilitates the senses and causes the spirit to suffer in quiet anguish is not helped by glib responses like “get over it” or “don’t worry, be happy.” But I thank God that His Word is not trite nor glib, but truly provides answers to our fleshly depression. Depression for the Christian is just that, it is not the result of the Holy Spirit or the renewed life, but the remnants of the fallen flesh and sin nature. God save us from ourselves! I pray that God will teach me through this book which is really a sermon series by the late D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones.

Dogmatic Theology

“Christian theology differs from every other branch of knowledge, by being the outcome of divine revelation. Consequently the interpretation of Scripture is the very first work of the theologian. When man constructs a system of philosophy, he must look into his own mind for the data; but when he constructs the Christian system he must look in the Bible for them. Hence the first procedure of the theologian is exegetical. The contents and meaning of inspiration are to be discovered. Christian dogmatics is what he finds, not what he originates.” [emphasis mine]

-William G. T. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology pg. 11; 1888 first printing.

I just thought this was an interesting reminder that all Christians are to be theologians, yet they must be exegetically driven theologians; discovering theology first and foremost from the proper and clear interpretation of the Biblical texts within its context.

Quotes on Preaching

Here are some interesting quotes I discovered reading John Broadus’ On the Preparation and Delivery of Sermons (the volume I have was revised by Jesse Weatherspoon). 

“With the emphasis today upon the institutional program of the church, pastoral visitation, counseling and administration, the proper use of ceremonial and ritual in worship these tend to become competitors of preaching and to disparage the hearing of the Word which is the secret of power in all”

“Ceremonies of worship, also, are instructive and impressive and should be clothed in such beauty and dignity and meaning as to lead the worshiper into the presence of God with reverence and a pure heart.  But let it be remembered that true preaching is as essential and necessary even as ritual and song and, properly done, is itself an act of worship.”

On interpretation-
“Never draw out of a text a meaning which you know is not there.  If your text has not your truth in it, find some other text which has.  If you can find no text for it in the Bible, then preach on something else.”  -Phillips Brooks

“That is a distorted ministry which deals in any large proportion with subjects which are not logically presented in the Scriptures.  It is not a biblical ministry.” -Phelps

Jonathan Edwards on Music

“And the duty of singing praises to God seems to be appointed wholly to excite and express religious affections.  No other reason can be assigned why we should express ourselves to God in verse rather than in prose, and do it with music, but only that such is our nature and frame that these things have a tendency to move our affections.”

Chesterton Quotes

On Separation of church and state: 

“Religious liberty might be supposed to mean that everybody is free to discuss religion. In practice it means that hardly anybody is allowed to mention it.” – Autobiography, 1937

 On Government and Religion:

“Once abolish the God, and the government becomes the God.” – Christendom in Dublin, 1933

On History (Maybe applicable to Fundamental Christianity)

“I believe what really happens in history is this: the old man is always wrong; and the young people are always wrong about what is wrong with him. The practical form it takes is this: that, while the old man may stand by some stupid custom, the young man always attacks it with some theory that turns out to be equally stupid.” – ILN 6-3-22 

Catching fish or stealing fish?

Sometimes it is easier to wait by the dock and steal the fish from another boat rather than going through the labor and endurance needed to catch the fish. 

“We’re no longer fishers of men, but keepers of the aquarium, and we spend most of our time swiping fish from each other’s bowls.”                    -Dr.  Kermit Long

I do believe that the primary goal of leadership in the church is to make disciples who in turn will be equipped to catch fish.  It seems as if the model of our Lord in catching fish has taken a back seat.  In our desire to have a “church” do we spend more effort reaching out to the good people from the church down the street?  Do we get more excited when a well-dressed man carrying a Bible visits our church; or when a shabbily dressed stranger who doesn’t even know where to find Genesis in the Bible steps through the door.  Are we friends of sinners?  Do we quietly cheer when that new-evangelical or ultra-conservative church in town has a split, because maybe we will pick up the people?  If we are busy about catching fish, we will not be concerned about the number of fish in the other boat.  Let’s get back to the Divine business of being fishers of men.

Quote of the Week

"Live simply so that others can simply live."

                                                 -Dr. Clifford Clark