Category: spiritual lessons

A Woman’s Depression [Honesty]

Depression Fits the Hearts of Women

Women experience twice the rate of depression as men.

Women have twice the chances as men

Everyone experiences disappointment or sadness in life. When the “down” times last a long time or interfere with your ability to function, you may be suffering from a common medical illness called depression.

Major depression affects your mood, mind, body and behavior. Nearly 15 million Americans — one in 10 adults — experience depression each year, and about two-thirds don’t get the help they need.

Women experience twice the rate of depression as men, regardless of race or ethnic background. An estimated one in eight women will contend with a major depression in their lifetimes.

Researchers suspect that, rather than a single cause, many factors unique to women’s lives play a role in developing depression. These factors include: genetic and biological, reproductive, hormonal, abuse and oppression, interpersonal and certain psychological and personality characteristics.

Symptoms of depression include:

  • Little interest or pleasure in doing things
  • Feeling down, depressed or hopeless
  • Trouble falling or staying asleep or sleeping too much
  • Feeling tired or having little energy
  • Poor appetite or overeating
  • Feeling bad about yourself, that you are a failure or have let yourself or your family down
  • Trouble concentrating on things, such as reading the newspaper or watching television
  • Moving or speaking so slowly that other people could have noticed or the opposite in that you are so fidgety or restless that you have been moving around a lot more than usual
  • Thoughts that you would be better off dead or of hurting yourself in some way

Women may be more likely to report certain symptoms, such as…

  • anxiety
  • somatization (the physical expression of mental distress)
  • increases in weight and appetite
  • oversleeping
  • outwardly expressed anger and hostility
 
Stay close to your friend

Helping a Woman with Depression

People with depression aren’t the only ones who suffer. Their friends and loved ones may experience worry, fear, uncertainty, guilt, confusion or even be more likely to go through depression themselves.

The situation may be especially trying if your loved one doesn’t realize that she is depressed. You can help by recognizing the symptoms of depression and pointing out that she has changed.

Recognize even atypical signs of depression. Women may be more likely to report certain symptoms, such as anxiety, physical pain, increases in weight and appetite, oversleeping and outwardly expressed anger and hostility. Women are also more likely to have another mental illness-such as eating disorders or anxiety disorders-present with depression, so be alert for depression if you know a woman with a history of mental illness.

To point out these changes without seeming accusatory or judgmental, it helps to use “I” statements, or sentences that start with “I.” Saying “I’ve noticed you seem to be feeling down and sleeping more” sounds less accusatory than “you’ve changed.”

Talking to a Woman with Depression

If a friend or loved one has depression, you may be trying to figure out how you can talk to her in a comforting and helpful way. This may be difficult for many reasons. She is probably feeling isolated, emotionally withdrawn, angry or hostile and sees the world in a negative light.

Although you may feel your efforts are rebuffed or unwelcome, she needs your support. You can simply be someone she can talk to and let her share her feelings.

It’s important to remember that depression is a medical illness. Her symptoms are not a sign of laziness or of feeling sorry for herself. She can’t just “snap out of it” by taking a more positive outlook on life.

Helpful responses include, “I am sorry you’re in so much pain” or “I can’t imagine what it’s like for you. It must be very difficult and lonely.” Instead of simply disagreeing with feelings she conveys, it is more helpful to point out realities and hope.

A woman with depression often expects to be rejected. You can reassure her that you will be there for her and ask if there’s anything you can do to make her life easier.

If your loved one is not diagnosed or not in treatment, the most important thing you can do is encourage her to see a health care professional.

*Never ignore statements about suicide.* Even if you don’t believe your loved one is serious, these thoughts should be reported to your friend’s doctor. If this is an emergency, call 9-1-1.

http://www.nami.org/Content/NavigationMenu/Mental_Illnesses/

Depression/Women_and_Depression/Women_and_Depression_Facts.htm

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Someday Soon, We Will Wear White [Heaven]

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by Robert Murray McCheyne

As long as you live in your mortal body, you will be faulty in yourself. It is a soul-ruining error to believe anything else. Oh, if ye would be wise, be often looking beneath the robe of the Redeemer’s righteousness to see your own deformity. It will make you keep faster hold of his robe, and keep you washing in the fountain.

Now, when Christ brings you before the throne of God, he will clothe you with his own fine linen, and present you faultless. O it is sweet to me to think how soon you shall be the righteousness of God in him. What a glorious righteousness that can stand the light, of God’s face! Sometimes a garment appears white in dim light: when you bring it into the sunshine you see the spots. O prize, then the Divine righteousness, which is your covering.

My heart sometimes sickens when I think upon the defects of believers; when I think of one Christian being fond of company, another vain, another given to evil speaking. O aim to be holy Christians, bright, shining Christians. The heaven is more adorned by the large bright constellations than by many insignificant stars; so God may be more glorified by fine bright Christian than by many indifferent ones. Aim at being that one.

We shall be faultless. He that begun will perform it. We shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. When you lay down this body, you may say, Farewell lust for ever, farewell my hateful pride, farewell hateful selfishness, farewell strife and envying, farewell being ashamed of Christ. O this makes death sweet indeed. Let’s long to depart and to be with Christ.

 

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For more from this preacher, you may want to start with these links:

http://www.wholesomewords.org/biography/bmcheyne3.html

http://dowboy.wordpress.com/2009/03/31/robert-murray-mccheyne/

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Condemnation Can’t Stay [Guilt]

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“Lord, I crawled across the barrenness to you with my empty cup uncertain in asking any small drop of refreshment. If only I had known you better I’d have come running with a bucket.”

-Nancy Spiegelberg

There can be no freedom from condemnation without submission to the saving life of Christ.  This is a definite and critical point.

Without a faith in Him, we are left with the option of carrying our own guilt.  This is a staggering possibility, and our lives turn to drinking and “drugging” and other things.  We must escape from all this pain and sin.  We are walking out condemnation, and the weight of this is immense.

Much of our life can be distilled from this viciousness.  We absorb it, adapt to it, thinking it will ease up some.  But it doesn’t, and it won’t.  We turn to all kinds of ‘pain absorbers’ looking to cope with this mindset.  There are escapes, and we try them all.  But ultimately we end up with one that is quite imperfect, and we ‘sort of’ become a little numb. Our hearts become numb and hard.

Condemnation twists us and who are in Christ. 

It deforms our spirit and destroys our confidence before our Father in Heaven.  His love is still being poured out, but we have placed a cover on our vessel.  We are blocking His mercy by our unwillingness to be forgiven.  All of our guilt seems a reasonable reaction to the heaviness of our sin.

Humans were not designed to handle guilt, and its “cousin” fear.  When we do try, we short-circuit.  Pain is always avoided, and that ends up corralling us into bondage.  From here, we can still mentally assent to the Bible; we can still have a sense of spirituality.  But it will always be filtered through our sense of condemnation.

Faith in the complete action of Jesus is enough.  Because I believe He carried the full weight of my sin, past—-present—future, I can walk out a free man.  Yes, sin does require justice, it is to be condemned.  But my faith, trust or confidence enables me to separate from the sin that would take me, straight to the bottom.

In this release, we are supposed to live. Freed from every condemnation. You must displace condemnation with grace.

We have the joy of the forgiven sinner, and that really makes no sense at all. 

It isn’t at all rational.  But it is legal, and it is binding.  And permanent.  There have been too many lies, for too long.  Grace is meant to be the most radical concept we have ever confronted.  And truly it is.

“Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

Romans 8:1

 

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Tempting Offers [Enticement]

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“Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted there by the devil. For forty days and forty nights he fasted and became very hungry.”

Matthew 4:1-2

Jesus was incredibly human.  We can never overlook this, or minimize this fact.  Jesus has just experienced the presence of God in a bone-shaking way after his baptism.  And instead of building on what has happened, he gets turned and directed to leave and go into the wilderness.

The Holy Spirit has initiated this.  The Spirit is leading, directing Jesus to the solitary places.  He has an appointment, and He must keep it.  Satan, the evil prince wants to test Jesus, to put Him on trial.  I believe these examinations are real and substantial.  Because of Jesus’ humanity, He is vulnerable.

Jesus fasted, “and became very hungry”.  His physical defenses were at their very lowest.  He simply could not maintain His walls in this level.  He will need to rely on the Word of God, exclusively.  And perhaps this is the lesson that the Holy Spirit intends to convey.

Jesus overcame each “real” temptation with a promise.  It was His only defense as His enemy subtly and malevolently adapted to take down Jesus.  The Word has become a powerful weapon, and Jesus wields it deftly and precisely. It was his escape hatch.

“The temptations in your life are no different from what others experience. And God is faithful. He will not allow the temptation to be more than you can stand. When you are tempted, he will show you a way out so that you can endure” (1 Cor. 10:13).

On the other hand, most people who want to be delivered from temptation, would still like to keep in touch. We will send it our forwarding address. This is tragic.

Why are church leaders so committed to the study of the Bible?  Because it is the modus operandi for believers in every time and every place.  The promises are truth wrapped in words.  Disciples from every age and theology have found the Bible to be a razor-sharp spiritual weapon.

“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need” 

Hebrews 4:15-16

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