This is an excerpt from a rather lengthy devotional I recently did on despondency. Spurgeon struggled with what he called “causeless depression” where, for no good reason, he would cry like a baby for an hour, and when he was through, he didn’t even know why. While most may not be suffering from causeless despondency, the point Spurgeon makes and Piper’s highlight is worth noting.
“Causeless depression cannot be reasoned with, nor can David’s harp charm it away by sweet discoursings. As well fight with the mist with this shapeless, undefinable, yet all-beclouding hopelessness… The iron bolt which so mysteriously fastens the door of hope and holds our spirits in gloomy prison, needs a heavenly hand to push it back.”
Yet he did fight. He saw his depression as his “worst feature.”
“Despondency,” he said, “is not a virtue; I believe it is a vice. I am heartily ashamed of myself for falling into it, but I am sure there is no remedy for it like a holy faith in God.” (p. 301)
Spurgeon saw, and Piper will emphasize, that there is no remedy for despondency like a “holy faith in God.” The whole point of Faith in Future Grace is that saving faith and sanctifying faith are one and the same thing, and it’s important to know that Piper defines faith in the following manner:
Justifying faith is not only a trusting in the past grace of God, but also a trusting in the future grace of God, secured by the past grace of Christ’s death and resurrection. Justifying faith embraces embraces the finished work of Christ’s atonement, in the sense that it rests in all that this atonement means for our past, present and future….
The essence (though not the sum total) of justifying faith is being satisfied with all that God is (and promises to be) for us in Jesus… And this embracing is not a mere intellectual assent to a teaching, but is also a vital heartfelt satisfaction in God. (p. 27)
So a “holy faith in God” is roughly equated with “being satisfied with all that God is (and promises to be) for us in Jesus.” Key word: satisfied. While some people use the “chair” example for faith, you know, that you (1) see the chair, you (2) know the chair is meant to hold you up, but the key moment is when you (3) trust the chair to hold you up. I like this example but trust is still too nebulous for my liking, or maybe it’s so overused it’s lost its meaning. I trust my chair to hold me up, but I have no feeling for it. It’s just a chair. I’d sooner liken it to cheesecake. :o) You (1) see a slice sitting there, with cherries on top and falling down the sides, you (2) know it’s got to taste good, but until you (3) eat or partake of the cheesecake, it does no good to you. And the eating or partaking implies delight. In that sense, there is a trust that the cheesecake will be good, and this is equated with being satisfied in the cheesecake to meet your cravings.
So it is with God. “For as many as are the promises of God, in Him they are yes; therefore also through Him is our Amen to the glory of God through us” (2 Corinthians 1:20). All that God promises to be for us in the Bible receive their “Yes, this is true, and Amen, I will make it happen” through Jesus Christ. I needed to explain all this so that the rest of what Piper says about fighting despondency will make as clear sense as possible.
He says:
Without denying the complexity of our emotions and their hereditary and physical and family dimensions, what I want to show is that unbelief in future grace is the root of yielding to despondency.
He explains in a little more detail that it’s the fight he’s concerned with, not the onslaught of temptation to despair. Some people will be more naturally inclined to despair than others, due to the “complexity of our emotions and their hereditary and physical and family dimensions.” But we’re all to fight against it, no matter what the natural inclinations will be. For others, their patterns of sin are not going to the same as mine. I have a natural bent towards certain sins, and they do, as well. But we must all fight against it, not by our willpower, but by recalling promises in the Word that are truthful and delightful to us. As an example, Proverbs 5 contains the great contrast between an adultress and the “wife of your youth,” with such exhortations to let the physical aspects of the marriage relationship be more satisfying than illicit ones, and they are! When I’m tempted to sin, such statements are being questioned by my sin, and the question is, which one do I believe or delight in? That’s the fight of faith, and that’s where the Holy Spirit empowers us.
All righty. Into despondency. Piper puts it so well in several paragraphs that my paraphrasing of him would butcher the idea, so here goes:
In Psalm 73:26 the psalmist says, “My flesh and my heart may fail.” Literally the verb is simply, “My flesh and my heart fail!” I am despondent! I am discouraged! But then immediately he fires a broadside against his despondency: “But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” The psalmist does not yield. He battles unbelief with counterattack.
In essence, he says, “In myself I feel very weak and helpless and unable to cope. My body is shot and my heart is almost dead. But whatever the reason for this despondency, I will not yield. I will rust God and not myself. He is my strength and my portion.”
The Bible is replete with instances of saints struggling with sunken spirits. Psalm 19:7 says, “The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul.” This is a clear admission that the soul of the saint sometimes needs to be revived. David says the same thing in Psalm 23:2-3, “He leads me beside quiet waters; He restores my soul.” The soul of the “man after God’s own heart” (I Sam. 13:14) needs to be restored. It was dying of thirst and ready to fall exhausted, but God led the soul to water and gave it life again.
God has put these testimonies in the Bible so that we might use them to fight the unbelief of despondency. Wherever despondency might come from, Satan paints it with a lie. The lie says, “This is it. You will never be happy again. You will never be strong again. You will never have vigor and determination again. You will never be strong again. Your life will never again be purposeful. There is no morning after this night. No joy after weeping. All is gathering gloom, darker and darker. This is not a tunnel, it is a cave, an endless cave.”
That is the color Satan paints on our despondency. And God has woven His Word with strands of truth directly opposed to that lie. The law of God does revive (Psalm 19:7). God does lead to springs of water (Psalm 23:3). God does show us the path of life (Psalm 16:11). Joy does come with the morning (Psalm 30:5). So the psalms illustrate for us the truth that unbelief is the root of yielding to despondency; but faith in future grace takes the promises of God and throws them against despondency. “God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” (Psalm 73:26) (pp. 302-303)
Wow! Bill Gothard’s “Stronghold Diagram” really comes through making much more sense to me. Towers of truth are what we need. It’s the shield of faith! When attacked, we defend with faith (delighting in God’s promises) and counter with the Word, and the enemy flees. Weeping may last for the night, but joy does come in the morning. And to say it won’t is to say that God is a liar.
You can see why I’m so concerned with this.
I can at least paraphrase the next section, which is about Psalm 42. Remember where the psalmist says, “Why are you in despair, O my soul? And why have you become disturbed within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him for the help of His presence”? Piper’s heading for this section is “Learning to Preach to Ourselves.” In moments of despondency, we need to talk to ourselves, not allow ourselves to talk to us. Piper highlights Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ amazing statement:
I say that we must talk to ourselves instead of allowing “ourselves” to talk to us! Do you realize what that means? I suggest that 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. Am I just trying to be deliberately paradoxical? 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 and 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 problems of yesterday, etc. Somebody is talking. Who is talking to you? Your self is talking to you. Now [the Psalmist’s] treatment was this: instead of allowing this self to talk to him, he starts talking to himself. “What art thou cast down, O my soul?” he asks. His soul had been depressing him, crushing him. So he stands up and says, “Self, listen for a moment, I will speak to you… Why art thou cast down? ? what business have you to be disquieted?…” And then you must go on to remind yourself of God, Who He is, and what God is and what God has done, and what 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!” (p. 304)
“Faith comes by hearing, and hearing the Word of Christ,” Paul in Romans 10:17 says. Jesus says, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God. Believe also in Me.” (John 14:1) But even Jesus had to fight despondency in Gethsamane. He didn’t give into it, but Matthew 26:38 tells us that Jesus said: “My soul is deeply grieved, to the point of death; remain here and keep watch with Me.” The key is, Jesus did not give into the despondency, but fought it.
The temptation is to think, “Well, Jesus was perfect so He couldn’t give in.” This is true. He was perfect, but it’s important to note that He was perfectly satisfied in God the Father, yet He was still tempted to despair. But He perfectly confronted that grief in the following ways:
First, He chose some close friends to be with Him. (Matthew 26:37) Second, He opened his soul to them. (v. 38) Third, He asked for their intercession and partnership in the battle. (v. 39) Fourth, He poured out his heart to His Father in prayer. (v. 39) Fifth, He rested His soul in the sovereign wisdom of God. (v. 39) Sixth, He fixed His eye on the glorious future grace that awaited Him on the other side of the cross. (Hebrews 12:2)
When something drops into your life that seems to threaten your future, remember this: the first shockwaves of the bomb are not sin. The real danger is yielding to them. Giving in. Putting up no spiritual fight. And the root of that surrender is unbelief — a failure to fight for faith in future grace. A failure to cherish all that God promises to be for us in Jesus.
Jesus shows us another way. Not painless, and not passive. Follow Him. Find your trusted spiritual friends. Open your soul to them. Ask them to watch with you and pray. Pour out your soul to the Father. Rest in the sovereign wisdom of God. And fix your eyes on the joy set before you in the precious and magnificent promises of God. (p. 307)
So, to fight against despondency is to fight to be satisfied in God. And every moment you and I are not satisfied with what God promises to be for us, we are sins waiting to happen. When sin offers to satisfy us in whatever form it takes in our lives, if we do not have our eyes fixed on Him, battling sin is going to be even more unpleasant than it ought to be.
I think back to 1 John 3:2-3:
Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is. And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.
“Has this hope fixed on Him….” I take that to mean just what it says, to fix our eyes on all that God promises to be for us in Christ. Though the soul may be in distress for a time, this must be battled by faith in the grace of God that is there for us in every temptation, for every minute of today.
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