You will need to learn the timely habit of casting every negative emotion, thought, feeling, or desire on Him. The plain and simple truth is that you are not sufficient to carry such things. That is not how you were made. So take those aberrant cares and cast them onto the only one who truly loves you, and watch your depression melt away.

The Call to War
Depression is like an unassailable fog that settles upon the harbor of the soul. It is a leach upon the fledgling emotions and a disease upon formerly vibrant desires. It is a thickly clouded midnight sky that chokes out distant starlight. It’s a bandit that comes upon you and grabs hold of you like a barnacle on the underside of a merchant ship. And when you are a Christian, depression is about as welcome in your life as a fox would be at a hen convention.
As a pastor, I have seen the soul-paralyzing effects that depression can wrangle upon the heart of countless men and women. As a man, I have felt my mangled heart periodically strangled by the silent thief lurking in the melancholy shadows. From my earliest memories to this very week, depression and anxiety have been a feature of my life. Yet, I am not a victim, and neither are you.
For a few moments, I would like to sketch out a three-step guide found in 1 Peter 5:6-7 on how to slay the tyrant called depression. This blog will not discuss clinical depression, medication, therapy, or counseling. Instead, I aim to describe the spiritual warfare that has aided my heart and soul, and I pray it will comfort you.
The Text

6 Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time, 7 casting all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you.

Step 1: Reject Human Pride
Everything in this verse hinges upon killing pride because if depression were an engine, then pride would be its gasoline. It is the fuel that propels major depressive episodes into spiraling tailspins. Thus, if you want to sever the shoots of depression, you must first cut off the bitter roots of pride in both its mange forms.
The most apparent form of pride is self-love, which leads to an eventual credibility crisis. When humans become infatuated with themselves, the ego inflates beyond rational possibility. The propaganda and hype quickly outpace common sense, and soon the person will have to work increasingly harder to believe how incredible they know that they are not. This disparity between perception and reality can lead to various forms of depression and must be repented of.
And yet, the most damaging form of pride is not self-love; it is self-hatred. Instead of spending hours fantasizing about how incredible you are, this manifestation of pride leads its victims to recall how awful they are. And whether that self-loathing comes from destructive addictions, poor body image, failed relationships, or the sorrow from self-induced consequences, the effect of perpetual harmful self-consumption will give way to the same toxic narcissism as self-love.
Biblically speaking, the human heart will become septic if the self is all you feed it. We may hate various aspects of who we are. We may have abiding bitterness over how things have turned out or based on how we have been treated. We may ache over feelings of abandonment. We may shake our heads at how stupid we were that one time (or many times). And we may carry a duffle bag full of self-blame over this or that scenario. But, feeding yourself more of you is like adopting a diet of pure lard and hoping to get healthy.
The only way to kill your depression is to stop making everything about you. Sure, you probably have failed a million times. You are also the common denominator in all of your ruined circumstances. And yet, you do not belong to you. If you are a Christian, Christ has purchased your life and hidden it in Him so that He is where your hope comes from.
Instead of punishing yourself with more self-hatred, give yourself permission to stop focusing on yourself and start focusing on Him. When the chatterbox inside of you screams, “why do people treat me this way” you cry back: “Look how kind my savior has treated me!”. When the accusations begin to gurgle, “you are one pathetic loser,” from the tar pits of depression, you resist the urge to grovel alone in destructive pity and speak to your flesh, saying: “Look at who Christ has made me. I am no loser; I am a son.
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Together Adam and Noah and Melchizedek and Joseph and Moses and Joshua and Samson and Solomon and Jonah, and they would not make a fragment of a Christ, a quarter of a Christ, the half of a Christ, or the millionth part of a Christ. He forsook a throne and sat down on His own footstool. He came from the top of glory to the bottom of humiliation, and exchanged a circumference seraphic, for a circumference diabolic. Once waited on by angels, now hissed at by brigands.

We have a natural tendency to attempt to understand what we don’t know by extrapolating from what we do. This works well in much of life, but not so much when it comes to theology, for God comes before comparisons and supersedes them all. When it comes to Christ, he is more unlike than like what we know. This quote from the old preacher De Witt Talmage celebrates how Christ was “the great unlike.”
All good men have for centuries been trying to tell whom this Substitute was like, but every comparison, inspired and uninspired, evangelistic, prophetic, apostolic, and human falls short, for Christ was the Great Unlike.

Adam a type of Christ, because he came directly from God;
Noah a type of Christ, because he delivered his own family from the deluge;
Melchizedek a type of Christ, because he had no predecessor or successor;
Joseph a type of Christ, because he was cast out by his brethren;
Moses a type of Christ, because he was a deliverer from bondage;

Joshua a type of Christ, because he was a conqueror;

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One third of the Calvin University faculty signed a statement opposing the Human Sexuality Report. All One Body has released a series of talking head videos of therapists, social scientists and pastors discrediting the Human Sexuality Report. Synod 2022 meets June 10-16 at Calvin University and will likely be monumental. The Abide Project’s stated goal is to adopt the Human Sexuality Report and hold all church leaders to the historic biblical view of sexuality.

The Christian Reformed Church in North America (CRC), a 200,000-member denomination in the United States and Canada, now has a renewal movement named the Abide Project.
Organized in 2021, the Abide Project seeks “to uphold the historic, beautiful, Biblical understanding of human sexuality in doctrine, discipleship, and discipline” in the CRC.
Once forbidding movies, card-playing and dancing, the CRC has drifted leftward in recent generations. Across the past decade, the push for full inclusion of LGBTQ members has gained momentum and prompted the organization of the Abide Project.
The focal point of contention is a report adopted in 1973 by synod (the CRC’s annual assembly and highest body of authority). The report says believers with same-sex attractions are to be fully accepted in the church, but declares homosexuality to be “a condition of disordered sexuality” and “Homosexualism – as explicit homosexual practice – must be condemned as incompatible with obedience to the will of God as revealed in Holy Scripture.” This has been the official position of the CRC since 1973.
At Synod 2011, an overture asking to reexamine the CRC position on homosexuality was voted down. The overture came from Classis Grand Rapids East, the regional body of churches surrounding the CRC headquarters as well as the denomination’s educational institutions in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Shortly after Synod 2011 voted down the Grand Rapids East overture, a group called All One Body emerged to promote full inclusion of LGBTQ persons in the CRC.
All One Body hosted events at Classis Grand Rapids East congregations. Speakers called into question the CRC position on homosexuality. Professors presented on new scientific findings. Ex-members identifying as LGBTQ spoke about the hurt-feelings over the 1973 position.
As national polls tipped in favor of homosexuality and same-sex marriage became legal in more locations, another regional group of churches (Classis Zeeland) asked Synod 2013 for guidance on how to apply the 1973 stance on homosexuality in the changing society. Some synod delegates seized the opportunity to amend the request for guidance into reconsidering the whole topic from scratch. However, amendments from the floor were defeated. A committee was tasked to give guidance on applying the current stance. But when members were chosen to fill the committee, the vast majority were pastors and scholars with an LGBTQ-inclusivist view.
The committee of nine divided along ideological lines, producing majority and minority reports. The inclusivist 7-person majority report’s advice stretched the CRC stance on homosexuality as far as possible. The 44-page report made passing references to only four Scripture verses, frequently stressed the complexity of these issues and contained thinly veiled disparagements of the 1973 position. Dividing marriage into civil and religious unions, the majority report said ministers could perform same-sex civil ceremonies as long as the ceremonies were not religious.
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