“If you and I find ourselves afflicted by this condition, there is only one thing to do, it is to go to Him….He is our joy and our happiness, even as He is our peace. He is life, He is everything. So avoid the incitements and the temptations of Satan to give feelings this great prominence at the centre. Put at the centre the only One who has a right to be there, the Lord of Glory.”

Reversing the order of my title, we all have feelings, most of us have known depression at one time or another, and many of us know about the great Welsh expository preacher of last century, Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899-1981). In this piece I will discuss all three. And my audience here, like that of Lloyd-Jones, is the Christian.

Yes, Christians can and do experience depression, struggle with despair, and can be overcome by what they are going through. I am one of those. Lloyd-Jones knew much about this as a minister of the gospel, and sought to help his people by extensively dealing with it.

As with so many of the vital books that we have from him, the volume I am quoting from here began as a series of 21 sermons which he had delivered at Westminster Chapel in London over consecutive Sunday mornings in 1954. He had been concerned about the rather joyless condition of many English Christians, especially just after WWII.

These sermons were put together in book form in 1965 and titled Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cures. I have the 1998 Marshall Pickering edition, so my page numbers refer to that volume. In this book of 300 pages, he looks at a number of aspects of depression and how the believer should deal with it. The 21 chapter titles are these:

1. General Consideration (Psalm 42:5, Psalm 42:11)
2. The True Foundation (Romans 3:28)
3. Men as Trees, Walking (Mark 8:22, 26)
4. Mind, Heart and Will (Romans 6:17)
5. That One Sin (1 Timothy 1:16)
6. Vain Regrets (1 Corinthians 15:8-10)
7. Fear of the Future (2 Timothy 1:7)
8. Feelings (2 Timothy 1:6)
9. Laborers in the Vineyard (Matthew 20:1-16)
10. Where is Your Faith? (Luke 8:22-25)
11. Looking at the Waves (Matthew 14:22-33)
12. The Spirit of Bondage (Romans 8:15-17)
13. False Teaching (Galatians 4:15)
14. Weary in Well Doing (Galatians 6:9)
15. Discipline (2 Peter 1:5-7)
16. Trials (1 Peter 1:6-7)
17. Chastening (Hebrews 12:5-11)
18. In God’s Gymnasium (Hebrews 12:5-11)
19. The Peace of God (Philippians 4:6-7)
20. Learning to be Content (Philippians 4:10-12)
21. The Final Cure (Philippians 4:13)

In this article I am drawing from just one chapter—Chap. 8 on “Feelings”. The 12-page chapter is loaded with helpful insights and spiritual truths, and here I simply want to offer a number of key quotes from it.

“There are those, I know, who will not recognise the condition at all but will brush it aside impatiently, and say that a Christian is one who sings all the day long, and that that, ever since they were converted, has been their story—never a ripple on the surface of the soul, and all has been well. Since they will not recognise the condition at all, they have grave doubts about those who are given to depression and even doubt whether such people are Christians at all. We have shown repeatedly that the Scriptures are much kinder to such friends, and do grant clearly by their teaching that it is possible for a Christian to be depressed. Not that they justify this, but they do recognise the fact, and it is the business of anyone who is concerned about the nurture and care of the soul to understand such cases and to apply to them the remedy that God has provided so freely in the words of Scripture.” p. 107

“Feelings are meant to be engaged, and when the gospel comes to us it does involve the whole man. It moves his mind as he sees its glorious truths, it moves his heart in the same way, and it moves his will.

“The second statement which I want to make is this—and these are very simple and elementary points, but we are often in trouble because we forget them. The second is, that we cannot create feelings, we cannot command them at will. Let me put this quite plainly. You cannot generate feelings within yourself. You can, perhaps, make yourself weep and bring tears to your own eyes, but that does not of necessity mean real feelings. There is a false sentimentality very different from true emotion. That is something beyond our control; we cannot create it. However much you try you will not succeed. Indeed, in a sense, the more you try to produce feelings within yourself, the more you are increasing your own misery. Looked at psychologically it is one of the most remarkable things about man that in this respect he is not master of himself. He cannot generate or produce feelings, he cannot bring them into being, and to attempt to do so directly is always to exacerbate the trouble.

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