[Darris McNeely] One of our readers has written us, asking whether or not you can still be a Christian and suffer from depression. It’s a good question. It’s an important question. Every one of us find ourselves at times when we may be discouraged, we might go through a period of sadness. Winter comes in. sometimes around the holiday periods of Christmas and New Years in the world, people get very, very discouraged and depressed because they may not be with family. But can you be a Christian and still be depressed?

Let me first define some terms. There is a matter that is very clearly called “clinical depression”, where at times a person can sink into a very, very deep, depressed state, and sometimes that is caused by certain imbalances within the mind, the brain, the electrochemical matters of the aspects of the human mind that are in need of being diagnosed and treated by a qualified medical personnel, as well as sometimes even drugs. That’s not necessarily what I’m talking about here today, because there’s another aspect of depression that we could even call discouragement or sadness, where a person becomes discouraged over something that happens to their life, or a period that they go through, or an extreme period of sadness. I’ve had those moments where I’ve been discouraged and I’ve been sad for prolonged periods of time. I’ve never been clinically depressed. Likely many of you have fallen into both – either one of these two particular categories.

But what I’m wanting to focus on here today is the matter of being discouraged – which, again, can happen to any of us, but sometimes people wonder, can you still be a Christian and still be discouraged? Let me give you a story from the Bible. It’s one of my favorite ones regarding a servant of God. It’s in 1 Kings chapter 19 (1 Kings 19:1-21).

It’s a story, the well-known story of the prophet Elijah – beginning in verse 1. Elijah had confronted the prophets of Baal, he had brought down fire from heaven after shutting up the heavens for three and a half years, he had defeated them – it was a very intense, stressful period of time there, where on the mountain Elijah had confronted Jezebel’s prophets of Baal. When he defeated them – after that period of time – he experienced a downer. He was discouraged. Jezebel made a threat against his life and Elijah fled into the desert for a period of time, and he was all mixed up. He was confused, and actually, he was very, very depressed. He was not clinically depressed, but he was going through what we would call a period of discouragement. And he cries out to God and he says, “I’ve done all these great things, and I’ve done all these things, and now they want to take my life. I’ve served You, God, and now here’s what’s happened. I’m under threat and I have had to flee for my own life.”

Well, God appeared to him and He basically bucked him up. He revealed Himself to him in a series of miracles there on the mountain, and then He said to him, “Look, I have still seven thousand people in the land who have not bowed the knee to Baal, and they have not kissed the idol, and they have gone completely into idolatry” (1 Kings 19:18). That must have encouraged Elijah at that moment in time.

The point is this: even servants of God – yes, Christians – can face moments when they may be down, discouraged, and distressed. And it’s – the key is knowing how to battle back from that and to deal with them to keep from going deeper into certain more serious levels of depression.

In my next Daily, I want to come back, and I want to give you some pointers from Christ and from the apostle Paul that help us to deal with this, and to show us that yes, we can deal with it and no, it does not mean that we are not a Christian if we find ourselves at times depressed, discouraged, or sad.

That’s BT Daily. Join us next time.