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Hendersonville Seventh-day Adventist Church, NC

David Wright

A DEPRESSED Christian

If I were to ask you, and don't rush your answer now, you have to think about this.

If I were to ask you which American president was your favorite down through history, who was the most foundational to this country?

Who led at a time that was, maybe our country was in crisis or made good decisions.

If you had to read a biography on 1 American president, maybe you have, who would it be?

You know, time and time again, he has won hands down in the poll as America's favorite.

This quote says, Abraham Lincoln led the United States through its civil war, its bloodiest war, and its greatest moral, constitutional, and political crisis.

In doing so, he preserved the Union, abolished slavery, strengthened the federal government, and modernized the economy.

The president for, no president has been more beloved than Abraham Lincoln.

And here are all these surveys that have come out, putting him right at the very top.

And while we remember him for all the wonderful things that he accomplished, and I've read some of a biography, the team of rivals, and how he worked with people, and I especially love the stories of how he was so available to the common person and was sympathetic, right?

But how many of you are aware of the fact, and most historians all agree, Abraham Lincoln battled with depression.

Biographer Joshua Wolfe Shank reports that Lincoln experienced 2 major depressive breakdowns at age 26 and age 31, which includes suicidal statements that frighten friends enough to form a suicide watch.

When he was 32 Lincoln wrote, I am now the most miserable man living.

Abraham Lincoln went through not just these 2, I would say many challenging and dark times.

Lincoln's Longtime law partner William Herndon observed about Lincoln, gloom and sadness were his predominant state, and his melancholy dripped from him as he walked.

So the question this morning I want to ask, a depressed Christian?

Is that okay to be a Christian and to be depressed?

Or does that mean that something's wrong?

Well, that's what we're going to talk about this morning.

Neil Nedley, a Seventh-day Adventist physician, reports that 25% of Americans have major depression.

And I would doubt, as in most every other case with most every other statistics, it's no different in our church.

Well, how can I know if it's major depression?

You're thinking, oh great, you're getting me depressed already just thinking about this.

That's why I wore my bow tie, I'm trying to cheer you up.

If you experience at least 5 of 9 symptoms for at least 2 weeks, then you fall into the clinical category of major depression.

You'll make me feel bad, and then I'll be depressed.

And it can't be that you've just recently faced some emotional trauma.

You also qualify if you're not just sad, but feeling like just, well, empty.

Women have more of the sadness, crying for something perhaps relatively small.

The cat didn't die or anything like that.

It's just this little thing and there's a breakdown.

Men more often, characteristically, feel the emptiness, Not all the time, but a majority of the time.

That's when you wake up and you're not necessarily excited about the day.

1 gets up out of duty, not necessarily interest.

Perhaps things that you enjoy, you don't enjoy so much.

And it can get so severe that when people take them out, all they can think about is I have to get out of here, I have to get home, I don't want to be around people.

This is the 1 that most commonly goes under the radar when people try and go through these.

He's been a little more irritable lately.

Maybe you can't fall asleep or maybe you're just sleeping too much.

18, 20 hours a day, you're barely awake enough to survive.

But the most common is you get to sleep, but you get up too early.

Maybe you need to be up by 6 and you find yourself awake at 4 and you can't go back to sleep.

And most often we self-medicate, not with a head of broccoli, But those sweet, sugary foods.

When you find yourself at the bottom of the page and you don't know what you've just read and so you go marching back to the top.

And this is more than just suicidal thoughts, but perhaps a preoccupation with death, or symbols of death.

Crossbones, or skeletons, or all these things that it amazes me are so popular in dress and tattoos and the list goes on.

Fatigue is waking up with no energy or you run out of energy too quickly.

How many do you have to have to be majorly depressed?

Now just 1 and you are at a variant of normal.

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A DEPRESSED Christian

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