Sometimes we humans go through harrowing, traumatic experiences that leave us with the problem of depression and nightmares. Our minds are overburdened trying to understand the guilt we may think we are involved in, and the underlying fear that oppresses us. It's easy for people who haven't been through this "hell" to say rather flippantly, "Oh, Jesus will help you!" but the problem continues. Then in desperation, we start taking prescription drugs, and lo, and behold, they do help! But in our better judgment, we long to find relief without drugs, for now we fear side effects.
Superficial, thoughtless "help" only makes the problem worse. Isaiah quotes the Father saying of Christ, "By His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many" (53:11). Paul considers that this "knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord" is an "excellency" more precious than winning any jackpot. Paul says he wants to "know" Christ and "the fellowship of HIS sufferings." Could this "knowledge" be better than drugs?
Jesus went through the Ultimate human experience of trauma--in Gethsemane and on His cross. He experienced it as a human Being, but it was unspeakably worse because He was also divine so He suffered the pain on an infinite scale. That made Him become the exactly right Physician for every individual, depressed person, male or female. Psalms 22 and 69 can introduce you to understand His hellish trauma (it was actual hell that He endured!). He is your real brother. As you listen and share with Him what this hell was, you become "a partaker of Christ's sufferings" (1 Peter 4:13), which means you see how "He was wounded for our transgressions, ... bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace [nightmares?] was upon Him," and then the blessing comes--"and by His stripes we are healed" (Isa. 53:5). Walk softly: this is more than "psychology." It's Bible.
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: July 29, 2005.
Copyright © 2010 by Robert J. Wieland.
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