Allow the weight of your depression to dash you upon the Rock of Ages. Press into Christ. Let the sadness press you toward Him. Abandon everything but hope in Jesus. Run into His arms because there is nothing good anywhere else. You have been given clarity that very few people have. You understand that there is nothing good anywhere without God. 

I have noticed a world of difference between visiting the depressed and visiting the physically sick. The physically sick will chat with you and will enjoy a prayer at the end of your conversation about their illness and the medical plan to take care of it. The depressed, on the other hand, want to talk to you about God. They weep over their sins. They look to the words of the pastor as if life were in them. Their eyes contain tear-filled expectations, simultaneously expressing grief and hope.
If we evaluate these types of sicknesses—mental and physical—it is easy to see that one type lends itself to an openness to the Lord. Of course, as Lewis says, “God shouts to us in our pains.” We hear God, like Job, when we physically suffer. But mental pain (that is, depression) makes us alert to God in a heightened way.
If you have cancer, you will think about death. You will worry. You will ask your pastor to pray. You will turn to doctors and hope that they can fix you. Cancer can be a gift, which is why John Piper says, “Don’t Waste Your Cancer.”
But when you are depressed, and the depression does not lift, you are backed into the corner of hell. Behind you are the flames, and no doctor extends a hand to help. There are none to pull you from the flames but Christ.
Your conscience is burdened with the feeling that you are to blame for your predicament. The guilt weighs upon you like a thousand-pound weight. Every thought is another burden added to the weight, increasing the pain until it becomes unbearable.
This pain vents itself in cries of desperation, “God, please help me!” When He does not answer, the weight pushes you through the floor.
People with cancer know nothing of this desperation. People with cancer want to live, but people with depression want to die.
We wonder how Paul was able to say, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me.” We marvel at the humility of John: “He must increase, and I must decrease.” The Psalmist outshines our spirituality on its best day when he says, “There is nothing on earth I desire besides You.” How are these people able to say such glitteringly spiritual things?
They walked through the valley of the shadow of death. They have experienced life without God. Like the title of Martin Lloyd Jones’s book, they have tasted Spiritual Depression.
It is staggering to see how many people are depressed today. Someone recently told me that, on average, Americans are more suicidal than those interned at the Nazi concentration camps. Could this be a grace, a gift of God?
I just heard a pastor say that revival always occurs when a society loses the most hope. When people look around and say to one another, “There is no hope left for us!” The eagles of Christ’s mercy swoop down with healing in their wings.
When we are depressed, we sprint toward the medicine cabinet. When we do not feel well, we turn to the bottle. When anxiety strikes, we open the refrigerator. Like a doctor striking our knee, we have instant responses to depression—and they are always to mask it.
But what if our depression is actually preparation? What if the Lord is preparing our hearts to be humble and meek, like His?
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Spurgeon never forgot his own church. In his letters to them, we see the affection of a pastor for his people, his confidence in his elders and deacons, and his dependence on his people for their prayers. During his final trip to Mentone, Spurgeon committed to writing a weekly letter back to his people, updating them on his situation and encouraging them to persevere. These letters comprise Spurgeon’s final pastoral words to his people.[2]

The final weeks of Spurgeon’s life were spent in sunny Menton, in southern France. Throughout his ministry, he had gone there to recover from his various ailments and overwork. Now, in the fall of 1891, Spurgeon was there once again. Under the care of his wife Susie and skilled doctors, the congregation fully expected him to recover and return to London to continue his famous ministry at the Metropolitan Tabernacle. Spurgeon himself held on to this hope. But this was not to be. On January 31, 1892, Spurgeon went to be with the Lord.[1]
Throughout his ministry, Spurgeon wrote many letters to his congregation during his travels. Even when traveling abroad, visiting new places, and preaching before thousands, Spurgeon never forgot his own church. In his letters to them, we see the affection of a pastor for his people, his confidence in his elders and deacons, and his dependence on his people for their prayers. During his final trip to Mentone, Spurgeon committed to writing a weekly letter back to his people, updating them on his situation and encouraging them to persevere. These letters comprise Spurgeon’s final pastoral words to his people.[2]
Over the next four weeks, we will be publishing Spurgeon’s last letters to his congregation, beginning on December 24 and ending on January 14. While nobody expected these to be his last words to his church, they are a fitting conclusion to his pastoral ministry. In them, we see Spurgeon’s confidence in God’s power to build up the church and save the lost, even apart from his own ministry. We see his call for his people to persevere in the truth of the gospel.
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“There is scarce anything that gives such mortal stabs to religion among a people as contention. Where contention is alive, there religion will be dead; and there will be nothing flourishing that is good.” [Jonathan] Edwards goes as far as to say that Christ’s wounds “have been as it were opened afresh by the selfishness and sinister ends, and high spirits, and envy, and anger of contentious persons.”

It’s been well said that it’s possible to win the argument but lose the person.
Similarly, it’s possible to be on the right side of a debate, but conduct ourselves in a way which undoes any good that might have come from it.
That’s something which Jonathan Edwards highlights in a 1737 sermon on a lesser-known Bible character – the “wise woman” from the city of Abel (2 Samuel 20:19). Although we don’t know her name, she was, to quote the title of Edwards’ sermon, “Peaceable and faithful, amid division and strife”.
A Time of Division
This time of division in Israel had seen the rejection of God’s anointed king, David, in favour of his son Absalom. (This of course pictures the rejection of “the true David, the rightful king of the church”). Absalom’s death brought an end to the conflict, but there were still clear tensions between the tribes, and a man called Sheba saw the opportunity to exploit them and lead another rebellion.
Yet amidst the chaos, this wise woman was, in her own words, “one of those who are peaceable and faithful in Israel.” Her great concern was not for herself but for “the heritage of the LORD” (v. 19) and her wise actions led to Sheba losing his head (literally) and the conflict coming to an end.
You Can Be on the Right Side—and Not Be Saved
As Edwards points out however, it’s possible to be on the right side of a debate without being “one of those who are peaceable and faithful in Israel.” “Though he may be right in his judgment, and the party he opposes wrong…he may, notwithstanding this, be exceeding far from the character of the wise woman.” Indeed, “He may be a very contentious person, and carry himself very contentiously, and be the blamable cause of a great deal of that strife that is carried on.”
For an example of someone who fits that description, we need look no further than Joab, who had recently been stripped of his role as army commander by David. Joab, as Edwards points out, “was on the right side in this quarrel… yet he was not influenced by good principles, nor did he act from right ends, in what he did. He minded nothing but his own interest and, to get his will, acted from a proud, revengeful spirit; and this drove him to very unwarrantable and spiteful actions.”
When Joab – who is now effectively commanding the army once more – exclaims to the wise woman “Far be it from me, that I should swallow up or destroy!” (v. 20), he is literally just fresh from the cold-blooded murder of his rival, Amasa. For Edwards, it’s all very up-to-date:
“So in cases of strife among a people, ’tis often so, that though men are of the right side, yet in the management of things, they are like Joab. They justify themselves by their having the right of the cause; but indeed they act mainly from private views, to gratify their own envy, and the spirit they have against some particular persons. They manage things in a very unsuitable, fierce, and un-Christian manner. These therefore are not some of those that are peaceable and faithful in Israel.”
Such people might even oppose others for their contention, “yet their manner of opposing it is itself contentious.” “The way to put out fire,” Edwards contends, “is not to oppose fire to fire, but to throw on water.” Joab “condemned the factious spirit that others showed…but did all in a fierce, furious manner.”
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