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HOPE DEFERRED” (1)A Meditation on Proverbs 13:12
In 1835 a man visited a doctor in Florence, Italy. The man was quite despondent. He was exhausted from a lack of sleep. Moreover, he couldn’t eat, and he avoided his friends. The doctor examined him and found him to be in excellent physical health. The physician concluded that his patient needed to have a good time, so he recommended that he go to the circus that was in town and see its star performer, a clown named Grimaldi. Night after night he had the people rolling in the aisles. “You must go see him,” the doctor advised. “Grimaldi is the world’s funniest clown. He will make you laugh and cure your sadness.” “No,” replied the despairing man, “he can’t help me. You see, I am Grimaldi!”
We all deal with depression to varying degrees, and we all concur that it usually takes more than a visit to the circus to drive it away.
The causes of depression are myriad and complex; often they go undetected. Charles Spurgeon battled depression. He was no doubt referring to personal experience, when he wrote: “Causeless depression is not to be reasoned with, nor can David’s harp charm it away. [We might] as well fight with the mist as with this shapeless, indefinable, 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; and when that hand is seen we cry with the apostle, ‘Blessed be God…the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort’” (Charles Spurgeon, Lectures To My Students, p. 162-163).
At one level, depression is a state of “all-beclouding hopelessness.” A depressed person lacks hope. Proverbs 13:12 states: “Hope deferred makes the heart sick.” Let’s consider this verse from two different perspectives. The first is that of giving false hope to others. When The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe was made into a movie, I told my kids that I would take them to see it. After it was out a couple of weeks, and I still hadn’t taken them, I could sense in their voices a deferred hope, when they gently reminded me that I had promised to take them. Children are usually better at keeping us accountable than other adults. I’d be too embarrassed to say, “Hey, when are we going to see that movie you promised to take me to?” In fact, we are so used to being disappointed and let down that we hardly give it a second thought. This should not be the case in the Christian community. And we need to ask if we’ve become accustomed to letting others down. It could be as simple as saying, “Let’s get together for lunch some time,” but you never do, and if the truth were known you never really intended to follow through. This can be discouraging.
The second perspective I’d like us to think about is that of giving false hope to ourselves. You might be wondering how we do that. We do it by having unrealistic expectations that are often seen in a demanding spirit. Psychologist Larry Crabb said, “We are a demanding people. We demand that spouses respond to our needs; we demand that our children exhibit the fruit of our godly training; we demand that our churches be sensitive to our concerns by providing certain ministries; we demand that slow drivers get out of the passing lane; we demand that no one hurt us again the way we were hurt before; we demand that legitimate pleasures, long denied, be ours to enjoy” (Larry Crabb, Inside Out, p. 133). With such unrealistic expectations we are bound to be depressed.
Crabb goes on to say, “The way God arranges things sometimes seem uniquely designed to frustrate us: a tire goes flat on the way to the hospital, the sink backs up an hour before company arrives, a friend let you down during a time when you most need support, you suddenly develop laryngitis the day of your presentation to important buyers. In times of frustration, our High Priest sometimes seems more callous to our needs than sympathetic” (Ibid., p. 135-136). Add God’s “frowning providence,” as William Cowper calls it, to our demanding spirit, and we will inevitably experience “hope deferred.”
If anybody could have struggled with depression it was Joseph. Yet he lived his whole life with an acute awareness of God’s presence, and that made all the difference. He was like the godly man who was asked shortly before his death how he handled the fact that God was allowing him to die despite the prayers of thousands for his healing. He replied, “When I am in the presence of God, it seems uniquely unbecoming to demand anything.” Brothers and sisters, desire much, pray for miracles, ask for God’s blessing, but demand nothing. A demanding spirit crosses the line, and just brings disappointment.
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HOPE DEFERRED” (2)A Meditation on Proverbs 13:12
Someone has said, “We can live forty days without food, eight days without water, four minutes without air, but only a few seconds without hope.” Read the average suicide letter, and you will detect that the person was drowning in an ocean of hopelessness. To overcome depression, we must restore hope. Psalms 42 and 43 (originally one Psalm) is one man’s fight to triumph over depression.
The Psalmist is being agitated by his adversaries, he remembers better days filled with joy and thanksgiving, and, worst of all, he feels rejected by God. He is obviously despondent: “My tears have been my food day and night…I say to God my Rock, ‘Why have you forgotten me? Why must I go about mourning?’” (Ps. 42:3, 9). How-ever, this man is not content to just give up and wallow in self-pity. Too many of us are. We must not give in to our emotions. Emotions can be very deceiving. They often lie to us and tell us that things are far worse than they really are. They tell us that God must not care about us. They tell us our situation is hopeless. They tell us we will never recover. They tell us to just give up. We must not listen.
We should question our emotions, and talk to ourselves. Some of you talk to yourself on a regular basis, and you feel a little self conscience about it. Well, let me put you at ease. This is really a biblical thing to do. So you’re okay, unless of course you start answering yourself. Notice how the Psalmist deals with his discouragement by questioning himself: “Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me?” He then goes on to preach to himself: “Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him my Savior and my God” (we find this exhortation three times; Ps. 42:5, 11; 43:5).
Martyn Lloyd-Jones understood the importance of not listening to ourselves, but talking to ourselves: “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…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? …You have to address yourself, preach to yourself, question yourself. You must say to your soul: ‘Why art thou cast down’ – what business have you to be disquieted? You must turn on yourself, upbraid yourself, condemn yourself, exhort yourself, and say to yourself: ‘Hope thou in God’ – instead of muttering in this depressed, unhappy way. And then you must go on to remind yourself of God, who God is, what God is and what God has done, and what God has pledged Himself to do” (Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression, p. 20-21).
“Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life” (Pro. 13:12). Fulfilled desires put an end to hopelessness, but what do you do in the interim? You preach to yourself, specifically reminding yourself that “we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose” (Rom. 8:28). This sustained Joseph through all that he went through. In the Romans 8:28 of the OT, Genesis 50:20, he said to his brothers, when their relationship was restored, “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.”
William Cowper, who struggled greatly with depression, was probably preaching to himself according to Romans 8:28 when he wrote the poem/hymn, “God Moves in a Mysterious Way.”
God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform;
He plants his footsteps in the sea, And rides upon the storm.
Deep in unfathomable mines of never-failing skill,
He treasures up his bright designs And works his sovereign will.
Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take, The clouds ye so much dread
Are big with mercy, and shall break In blessings on your head.
Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, But trust him for his grace;
Behind a frowning providence He hides a smiling face.
His purpose will ripen fast, Unfolding every hour;
The bud may have a bitter taste, But sweet will be the flower.
Blind unbelief is sure to err, And scan his work in vain:
God is his own interpreter, And He will make it plain.
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