Kicking Defeat to the Curb

I am speaking on a very controversial topic this weekend from the life of Elijah: depression. Did Elijah fall into depression? Was it severe? How do we know? Lots of questions. One of the problems is we are trying to diagnose a 9th century BC patient with 21st century medical knowledge. All we really know is Elijah got kicked in the butt. He went down hard. Jezebel wanted him dead after slaying her Baal influencers and turning the people back around to the worship of Yahweh. Elijah asked the Lord to take his life. He wasn’t willing to live any longer. He was hopeless. Depression can be identified as a mental illness. It’s a disease. You can’t just convince someone to not be depressed. It must be unravelled carefully through a layered multi dimensional process. Anxiety, worry, and depression are becoming more and more common in young people as we try to bounce back from a debilitating shutdown that left many people worried and depressed. It’s an epidemic the Christian church does not want to talk about. Thank God Elijah was honest with us. He showed what happened, what it was like and how he recovered. There is hope. Join me.