On this final day of 2023, Charles Spurgeon has this message in his Morning and Evening, based on this heartfelt plea from Christ in John.

“In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying ‘If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink.” – John 7:37

Spurgeon notes that Jesus is both calling and desperately pleading for us, the thirsty (And God knows people with our conditions are thirsty), to drink from him, and ends on this note:

“Drinking represents a reception for which no fitness is required. A fool, a thief, a harlot can drink; and so sinfulness of character is no bar to the invitation to believe in Jesus.“

Amen – you don’t have to be in any shape, of any moral character, in any condition, to drink – except to thirst.

So if you thirst today, don’t think about who you are or what you’ve done — just listen to the words of Christ.

He’s offering you the drink.

This site is about depression/anxiety and other conditions. It’s not about fixes. Those are medical complications of life, and so must be treated medically, as a doctor and you see fit.

But if you want to come to Christ tonight, don’t listen to any church that says the glass ain’t for you unless you’re XYZ.

God created you. He loves you.

And even if tonight turns dark, as nights often do, he will watch over you, as he has always done.

I have trouble believing it, believe me. It’s been a long journey, Jesus and me, and I know it has for you, as well.

There are times we wonder if he really cares. I do.

But there is no moment he wonders if he really cares.

Isaiah 49:15 gets us as close to Christ’s love, viscerally, as any other.

“Can a mother forget her nursing her child? Can she feel no love for the child she has borne? But even if that were possible, I would not forget you!”

When our sons were born, my wife and I were fixated, supernaturally, on their well-being and nurture. Not from responsibility but love.

And Jesus is as fixated on you. He was before time began, and until our earthly time is over.

Infants don’t understand the kind of love that waits and watches over them night and day, and we often don’t even know Christ’s.

But our ignorance doesn’t change his heart. It can’t, any more than an infant’s ignorance can change the 24/7 we pour into our kids.

Finally, on this New Year’s Eve, since I’m often struck by both melancholy and nostalgia for a time I wasn’t even alive (the 1940s), here’s the best NYE song on earth.

Happy New Year’s, dear readers. As I’ve said, my posting has been sparse due to a number of medical issues, but I hope to be with you more in 2024.

Thank you for praying for me, and I am praying for you. Wherever you are, we are all in this fight together. Oh, and with Christ at our side.

“He is my loving ally.”

If any of you dear readers are struggling this season…

Find a psychiatrist here.

Find a therapist here.

If you’re having thoughts of harming yourself or others, please call the National Suicide Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.

[Painting: The Lord is My Shepherd, Sallman]

In her book, Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work, Watch, or Weep, Anglican writer Tish Harrison Warren takes on Nietzche’s famous phrase, “What does not kill us… makes me stronger.”

Most Christians shudder at the idea of repeating anything attached to Nietzche’s name, but the Christian church has, by and large, completely imbibed this idea that trauma makes us stronger.

I get it. Sometimes. Other times, most definitely not.

Trauma can shape us in good ways and bad, and life is far more complex than any binary around, and strength needs to be defined differently (so perhaps he was right, but not in the way he intended. More about that later).

Warren writes of Nietzsche’s phrase:

“I face things every day, big and small, that are difficult but have not killed me.

And I’m finding that what doesn’t kill me actually makes me weaker, and maybe that’s the point — that the way of glory is discovered through, and only through, the cross.

…. certainly suffering builds resilience, just as a broken bone heals stronger. We can be, perhaps ironically, more fragile if we never know pain or struggle. And there is a kind of hardy faithfulness and grit to be found on the far side of agony.

But this kind of resilience does not form us into Nietzsche’s vision of impenetrable toughness; it does not harden us.

It makes us more open to our belovedness in God, to our own vulnerability, and to the vulnerability of others.

…. Marva Dawn says that ‘even as Christ accomplished atonement for us by suffering and death, so the Lord accomplishes witness to the world through our weakness.’

…. The people who I most respect are those who have suffered but did not numb their pain — who faced their darkness. In the process, they have become beautifully weak, not tough as nails, not bitter or rigid, but men and women who bear vulnerability with joy and trust.

They are almost luminescent, like a paper lantern, weak enough that light shines through them.“

End quote:

Amen.

As Christians, we often think the “stronger” Christians are there to comfort the “weaker” ones.

And the Bible does tell us to strengthen each other.

But by the way, who’s defining strength?

Is the church guilty of defining strength by the world’s definition or by Christ’s?

I think we confuse strength with power all the time. Status. Togetherness. Because that’s how the world views strength.

The Christians I’ve learned the most from are the openly alcoholic (Brennan Manning, for example) and all of the friends I’ve met along the way who are completely vulnerable and transparent about their weakness.

And yet, they praise Jesus while stumbling in their walk with him and their humility is so great that they share their stumbles.

Deep down, I think those are the Christians who even the “strong Christians” can learn the most from.

God says adults have to become like kids to receive him in faith.

Why?

I think it’s because kids inherently know they’re not strong, that they’re vulnerable (which is why older kids feign strength to try to mask the weakness they so glaringly feel).

Young kids mainly spend their lives listening to others telling them how to act and behave, but as we grow into adults, we chafe further and further at the idea that someone else might know better.

After all, a sign of maturity is capability, and if you’re really capable, that’s a strength, and we idolize strength.

But at the same time, it feeds into our sense of pride and, because we want to maintain our good standing, we have to nurture it and hide our weakness.

In the process, we lose our humility.

And when we lose our humility, we lose our greatest witness.

Because that, perhaps more than anything, is what’s so compelling about Jesus.

He was born humble, lived humble, and died humble, and yet it was through that that he changed the world and brought us salvation.

If Jesus had come as the rich, strong businessman, could he really touch us the way he did? Would the poor of the world have trusted him? Would the rich have even trusted him?

They might have respected him. But would he have changed them so radically?

And so, the “paper lanterns” of which Warren writes, illuminate all around them, and we tend to walk away from our encounters with them far more changed than when we fraternize with the “strong.”

If you feel like a paper lantern, then yes, your light will shine brightest.

“That person only has Jesus, and yet Jesus seems enough!”

That’s a more powerful witness than a man or woman who’s been blessed with what the world values.

However, do seek help for your diseases!

But don’t be embarrassed by them either, or think God doesn’t use you.

And even if you’re too depressed to face the world right now, you can face God and tell him, “Please bless the ones I can’t serve.”

That’s called prayer, and it’s kind of a big deal to God, and I firmly believe that’s what God uses to move the world more than anything.

So if all you can do is pray, pray.

Find a psychiatrist here.

Find a therapist here.

[Photo: Pexels. And guess what, that’s the “strong” Christians looking up at you – whether you realize it or not. Don’t think any less of yourself. You are Christ’s magnificent creation. Like Brennan Manning wrote, take Christ’s evaluation of you over your self-evaluation.]

I John 3:20: “For whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our hearts, and he knows all things.”

Depressed, OCD, and anxious Christians tend to condemn themselves all the time… hence, why this verse is so meaningful, and also why you should read my interview with Michael Schiferl on scrupulosity.

And why, if you continue struggling, we should keep reading verses like I John 3:20 and also…

Find a psychiatrist here.

Find a therapist here.

And also remember this – for many of us, this thing never goes away. But Christ never does, either. He will be with us the whole way, all the way to the end.

In her excellent book, Prayer in the Night, Tish Harrison Warren writes:

“If we do not make time for grief, it will not simply disappear. Grief is stubborn. It will make itself heard or we will die trying to silence it.

If we don’t face it directly it comes out sideways, in ways that aren’t always recognizable as grief: explosive anger, uncontrollable anxiety, compulsive shallowness, brooding bitterness, unchecked addiction.

Grief is a ghost that can’t be put to rest until its purpose has been fulfilled.”

I love that last line.

Don’t let a Victorious Christian Church Culture pressure you out of a grief that permeates the Psalms, the whole Bible, and Jesus’ own life as a “man of sorrows.”

There’s a strange fusion of Victorious Christian Church and American Optimism at work in most evangelical churches today, wherein you have to always be making progress towards success.

In this case, success from grief.

So they’ll try to find all sorts of ways for you to short-circuit the process.

But grieving itself is the balm for grief. It is not the problem.

As she says, “Grief is a ghost that can’t be put to rest until its purpose has been fulfilled.”

Amen.

Elisabeth Elliot isn’t using the word “salvation” here in the sense of adoption by Christ, but in terms of the Christian journey.

And so I think a better word might be “sanctification,” as in becoming more like Jesus won’t always be fun.

And in her book, Suffering is Never for Nothing, Elliot has a particularly good passage on this mysterious cup we all must drink from.

Elliot writes:

“Whatever is in the cup that God is offering to me, whether it be pain and sorrow and suffering and grief along with the many more joys, I’m willing to take it because I trust him. Because I know that what God wants for me is the very best. I will receive this one thing in his name.

I need pain sometimes because God has something bigger in mind. It is never for nothing. And so I say Lord, in Jesus’ name, by Your grace I accept it.

…. Paul accepted the thorn even though it wasn’t to his taste and preferences. Jesus accepted the cup and said not My will but Thine be done.

And that same vision and that same principle ought to characterize each of us Christians as we receive, from the hand of God, the cup of salvation with whatever it contains for our ultimate redemption and perfection.

There will be nothing in that cup of salvation except what is necessary.”

Now, a few points on this.

First, this is absolutely NOT me nodding my head and saying, “Friend, just accept your depression or anxiety or ADHD etc.,”

It would be awful for me to tell you to accept stage 1, treatable cancer as your cup, and not treat it.

Mental health conditions are medical. They are treatable.

Yet… they can be very difficult to treat.

And for many of us, it can take a long time or our entire lives, fighting this beast. It’s our thorn in the flesh.

We absolutely should look for professional help and never stop looking.

But to Elliot’s point, none of this is fun. It’s awful. Even looking for help is hard.

Chemo isn’t fun for a cancer patient. It’s a terrible cup. And searching, year after year, for relief from your own mind’s turmoil is also a terrible cup.

God sees all this, he knows what you’re going through, he wants you to continue looking for help, and so keep looking for it, but if you’re discouraged, know that he understands discouragement better than even you or I do.

He understands rejection better than you or I do. Our Father will never reject us, and yet the Father turned his face from Christ on the cross.

I’ve been through a lot, you’ve been through a lot, we all have cups that often seem more filled with the blood of our tears than the joy of the Lord, right?

But do you remember the Psalm where we learn God numbers our tears?

He sees each drop, and we don’t even know he is crying for and with us, and one day, we won’t even have to look for help because you and I will be in Immanuel’s land where the cup of salvation will overflow with such perfect love and wonder that you’ll see all this was worth it.

Keep going, dear friends. And I will too.

Oh, and as always, please, keep looking for help if you’re struggling.

Find a psychiatrist here.

Find a therapist here.