Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation - Psalm 42:5
Every one of us knows at least one person who tends toward depression even during good times. There doesn’t seem to be any particular reason for their despondency; they’re simply and constantly in a blue mood.
The ‘why’ is the question for this feeling of grief and depression. Is it something we’ve done? Something we’ve experienced? The loss of a loved one? Do we sense a loss of control? Is it something we’ve failed to accomplish? From seasonal effects to routine life situations to deeper, more foreboding issues, both spiritual and clinical, the bottom line for these despondent spirits is the tragic feeling of depression, helplessness, hopelessness, and abandonment.
As we can see, the ‘whys’ could very well be many. Perhaps we have allowed ourselves to be overcome by the dark fog of popular culture. We have deliberately chosen to seek out El Dorado, Utopia, or Xanadu here on earth to the complete and utter exclusion of heaven. Our suffering may well be the result of seeking and asking for the wrong things. “You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.” - James 4:3.
We must understand that before God will abandon us we must first abandon God. Mankind has a natural affinity to worship. It is part of our spiritual makeup. What ultimately matters is who we choose to worship, the creature or the Creator. When our hearts and minds, through our natural fallenness, choose to worship the things created rather than the Creator, we deny God and that leads to Divine alienation. “So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.” - Matthew 10:32-33.
Many feel hopeless because of their unbelief. They have placed their hopes upon the transient and the temporary and have chosen to ignore the eternal! One who places their hopes and dreams upon something as fleeting as mere human kindness might have better invested their faith in a Summer without end. The stinging winds of Winter will surely cure them of their fanciful delusions. God’s reality is truly a harsh mistress when we choose to go our own way.
I have always questioned what unbelieving people are talking about when they speak of hope. On what do they pin those hopes? If not faith in God then in what? What can they possibly say about the hopes they claim to have? How can the realization of such hopes come to fruition? What are they counting on to see their hopes become reality? Do they hope in mankind? Didn’t the 20th Century teach them anything? Do they not understand how fickle humanity is? The holocaust of lost human beings from wars, genocide, and abortion should make us all cringe at the thought that anyone would pin their hopes on man! “Thus says the Lord: ‘Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart turns away from the Lord.'” - Jeremiah 17:5.
We must grasp the truth that there is no such thing as an empty heart. The heart is either occupied by God or it is occupied by the devil. There is no middle ground. If we don’t place all our hopes in God then we might as well throw them into the Abyss because what is not of God is of sin. When someone says. “I hope,” it must be bound to faith in God. We anchor our hopes to faith in God because there is no other whom we can put our trust in. “For to this end we toil and strive, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe.” - 1 Timothy 4:10.
God is the true source of hope. Without Him we have no reason to hope, no reason to wish; we haven’t even got a prayer. The despondent spirit is without hope because it is without God.
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