Will I Never Get What I Want?

1. Will I Never Get What I Want? Divorce Recovery Lesson 7 Depression

2. What Does Depression Feel Like? • You feel numb • Your head hurts and feels empty. • There is fatigue and fear. • Things that were pleasures now can barely hold your attention. • Your brain feels like it is in a fog. • You feel like you are carrying the weight of the world.

3. Out of Step • One basic cause of spiritual depression is living out of harmony with Scripture.

4. Unrepentant Sin • One of the causes of depression is unrepentant sin. • This means any sin about which you feel guilty. • Living day in and day out with guilt over sin that has not been confessed expends a lot of emotional energy.

5. Repentance • If we confess our sin God is gracious to forgive us. • Forgiveness deals directly with man’s guilt. • Sanctification deals with our corruption and thereby helps to eliminate guilt that is associated with being in bondage to sin.

6. Side Effects • Certain sins, in addition to producing guilt, have other side effects that will sap emotional energy and produce depression. • The greatest of these is bitterness. • Bitterness is the result of an unwillingness to forgive those who have sinned against you. • It takes a lot of energy to maintain a grudge. • It will deplete your energy if allowed to reside in your heart too long.

7. What’s Your Attitude • Depression often occurs when people have sinful thoughts and motives. • Do you think thoughts that God says you shouldn’t think? • Do you fear the things God doesn’t want you to fear? • Do you fear God as much as He wants you to fear Him? • Do you worry about things God says not to worry about? • Do you interpret circumstances in ways that do not reflect God’s sovereignty, love, or good? • Do you thank God for His blessings? • Do you want things God does not want you to want? • Do you love what God says you shouldn’t want?

8. Mishandling Difficult Situations • God leads His children into a variety of trials designed to perfect their character and ultimately result in their happiness. • If we don’t respond biblically to a trial, we can become discouraged, bitter, guilt-ridden, anxious, and fearful. • All of the above lead to depression. • How we respond to the difficult circumstances God brings in to our lives determines the extent to which we will be depressed about those circumstances.

9. Self Rebuke • It is time for you to ask yourself, as the psalmist did, “Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you disquieted within me?” • This question is meant to be a self-rebuke. • In light of God’s wonderful provisions, what right do you have to be despairing and troubled? • If you are battling depression it might be helpful for you to ask these questions diagnostically.

10. The World Is Coming To A End • Despair can cause us to feel like our world is coming to an end. • Despair is one of the most debilitating emotions people can experience. • If you don’t fight it, it can rob you of one the essential ingredients of your stability as a Christian: hope. • Psalm 27:13 says, “I would have lost heart, unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.”

11. Certainty • The English word hope has a certain amount of uncertainty to it. For example; “I hope I get through this trial but, after all, I’m only human.” • The biblical word for hope in the Greek language denotes certainty, “I have confident that by God’s grace I’m going to come out on the other side of this trial a stronger person because that is what the Lord has promised in His Word.”

12. What’s God Doing? • Your ability to find hope in a seemingly hopeless situation is directly related to the ability to see God’s hand in that situation. • If you are despairing as a result of a broken relationship, you are not focusing on what God intends to do in your life, and for His kingdom, as a result of it .

13. Don’t Despair • Rather than allowing your mind to interpret God as dealing with you in ways that produce despair with things like, He intends to make me miserable,” or “He’s never going to allow me to be happy.” • Interpret God’s providence accordance to His true character in ways that produce hope. • If you love God, you’ll believe He’s going to bless you through this mess. • What is God up to in the termination of your marriage?

14. God is Going to Make You Happier • …As A Result of This Divorce • Ultimately happiness is a direct result of obedience to Scripture. • Jesus said, “Blessed are those who hear the Word of God and keep it.” • As you are conformed to the image of Christ, you become better equipped to handle the trials of life biblically. • As you handle conflicts biblically you will experience greater joy, peace, and happiness in the midst of them.

15. Conformed • The more you become conformed to the image of Christ as a result of responding biblically to trials. • The more those sinful patterns that the Bible says produce misery will be removed from your life. • The degree of misery will be replaced with the same degree of happiness.

16. Are You Sitting Down? • Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God, (2 Cor. 1:3-4). • One of God’s designs for your breakup is to better prepare you to assist others with the assistance that He will be giving you.

17. Dependence • God may be seeking to strengthen your relationship with Him • Helping you to learn how to better depend on Him. • To help you to have fellowship with Him .

18. Despairing • The Apostle Paul had many discouraging circumstances. • Read 2 Cor. 11:24-28. How Did Paul keep from despair? • Paul focused on the ministry God had given him to fulfill. • It kept him from loosing hearts, I Cor. 4. • To lose heart has the sense of fear or a kind of despondency that comes as a result of fear. • Fear tempts us to say, I quit, I can’t go on, this is too hard. • Paul didn’t give in to this temptation. • Paul stayed focused on the responsibilities God had given him and did not get overcome with despondency or fear.

19. Don’t Give In To The Feelings • Do you give in to your feelings of fear and despondency? • Do you fight the feelings by fulfilling your responsibilities no matter how you feel? • When you give in to the feelings, you will give up on your responsibilities. • When you give up on your responsibilities, you will feel guilty. • The more you give in and give up, the guiltier you will feel. The guiltier you feel, the more depressed you will become. • If you fulfill your responsibilities you will stop the depression before it has a chance to get a foothold in your life.

20. Is Their Any Hope For Me? • I Don’t Feel Anything. • Here Is The Problem… • Most people do things because they feel like doing them. • You get up in the morning because you feel like it. • You go to work in the morning because you feel like it. • You are more feeling driven than you think.

21. Depression Doesn’t Feel • Whatever you do feel isn’t going to motivate you to do anything profitable. For example, you feel like dying, screaming, running, disappearing, or avoiding. • How can feeling-driven people set goals, have a purpose, or get motivated when they don’t feel?

22. Live Another Way • In depression the new way of living is to believe and act on what God says rather than feel what God says. • It is living by faith. To paraphrase Hebrews 11:1, “faith is being certain of what we do not feel.” • When there is a debate between what your feelings say and what Scripture says, Scripture wins.

23. Your Purpose • In the broadest terms your purpose and job for this life is to glorify and enjoy God, (I Cor. 10:31). • To glorify God means to make His name famous. • Your purpose is to make His honor and reputation more important than your own.

24. Automatic Thinking vs. Purposeful Thinking • If you are depressed and you listen to yourself think, you will probably hear thoughts that are dark, hopeless, pessimistic, and critical of yourself or others. • When these thoughts begin, they rarely stop until they get to the most despairing place possible.

25. I Need Something • Is depression saying that you need love, significance, respect? • We all enjoy these things when we have them, but sometimes they become more important than they should. • Can you notice what happens when your desires become the most important thing? • Your desires transform into needs. • Your needs become a must have in order to live. • This is lust, and lust always wants more. It is never satisfied, and it always feels empty.

26. I Am Angry • 1. We are angry because we didn’t get what we wanted from someone else or God Himself. • 2. This doesn’t mean that you think murderous thoughts about others and shake your fist at God. • 3. Look for the quieter expressions of anger, such as complaining, grumbling, lack of forgiveness, or self-pity.

27. Trust and Worship God Alone • Will you live for God or will you live for yourself and the things you worship? • Has your mental dialogue gone on like this… “I can’t go on. • Why? Because, I am so tired and I can’t take the pain any more. • Why? Because I feel like I am alone. • Why? Because, I don’t believe that God is with me. • Why? Because, I don’t trust Him. • Why? Because I trust in my interpretation that comes from my feelings.” • Why questions should lead you to God. You will get tired of the questions by the time you get to the second one, but keep them coming. At the end of the questions say to Him, “Jesus is my Lord, I confess my unbelief, and I trust You.”

28. Depression is Hard • It does not leave without a fight. • There are good reasons to fight. • Changes are guaranteed, (Phil. 1:6). • You are in the presence of “the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles,” (2 Cor. 1:3,4). • If God the Father sent His Son, His beloved only Son, to die for us when we were still His enemies, there is no reason to think that He will be stingy with His love and compassion now that we know Him as Father.