Hickory Grove – Delaware Campus

Since the Sunday morning of the baby dedication at our Delaware church, I have been afraid of going back to Sunday morning worship. Even though that morning showed me that I have strength through the Lord to survive this loss, the so-called “threat” of another baby dedication has been intimidating.

Instead, Andrew and I have been having church at home, thanks to our North Carolina church’s live service streaming website, HickoryGrove.tv. We’ve begun jokingly calling our living room “Hickory Grove – Delaware Campus”. Listening to our home pastor, Clint Pressley, preach these past few weeks has been a great source of comfort; also, it has reminded me of his incredible gift of teaching God’s Word.

This morning’s sermon spoke to me from beginning to end. It is so applicable to the depression I have felt in the wake of losing Maddox. It validated my pain through Scripture, David struggled with similar feelings and thoughts, and provided a Biblical approach for getting out of the spiritual dryness it is so easy to get stuck in.

I hope you will take a half hour to listen to Pastor Clint’s message in its entirety, but if you can’t, I have shared my personal notes from the sermon below the video.




Psalm 43-43
One of the most sadly beautiful poems of the Old Testament:

Slow agony of a spiritual and emotional drought

The Dark Night of the Soul = Depression

How do believers handle depression? Shouldn’t we be more optimistic, happier and more chipper?

David wasn’t. Yet all the while, he was holding on to his faith in the living God.

We’ve got to get beyond chipper Christianity. Chipper Christianity doesn’t help you deal with the stuff inside of you.


God uses the dryness of the desert so that you will crave the living water that is Jesus Christ.

Some of the causes of spiritual depression:

• Feeling far away from God v. Psalm 42:1-2
  “As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come to appear before God?”
  
  
• The society you live in, it taunts you v. Psalm 42:3
  “My tears have been my food day and night, while they say to me all the day long, ‘Where is your God?’”
  
  
• Memories of better days v. Psalm 42:4
  “These things I remember, as I pour out my soul: how I would go with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God with glad shouts and songs of praise, a multitude keeping festival.”
  
  Be careful with memories. The blade of memory can cut both ways.
  If you stay in the past, you paralyze your past and you rob your future. You must make sure that your memories are baptized in Jesus and put into the hands of God to use for your spiritual growth and not your spiritual stunting.
  
  
• Overwhelming trials of life v. Psalm 42:7
  “Deep calls to deep at the roar of your waterfalls; all your breakers and your waves have gone over me.”
  
  If you lose sight of the fact that God is in control, it’s easy to get spiritually depressed and burned out. Even still, by God’s grace, we can get out of the hole.

How to get out of spiritual depression:

• Seek God’s face v. Psalm 42:2
  “My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?”
  
  
  The Lord has put you in a dark, desperate, dry, desert place for you to thirst for Him. He built you with a mechanism that causes you to thirst spiritually when things get bad.
  
  Seek the Lord!

• Remember who God is:
  v. Psalm 42:2 – The Living God
  v. Psalm 42:5 – The God of my Salvation
  v. Psalm 42:8 – My Covenant God, The God of my Life
  v. Psalm 42:9 – My Rock
  v. Psalm 43:2 – My Refuge
  
  
• Remember how He loves v. Psalm 42:8
  “By day the Lord commands His steadfast love, and at night His song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life.”
  
  God uses the dryness of your life. He put you in that dryness – He does it – so that that mechanism in you, that thirst, will be triggered, and that thirst you have will drive you to come to the living water that is Jesus Christ.