My Name Is Hope

God is not shocked by your emotions. No matter how messed up your soul may be, God is right there with you, listening.

Jesus lives in a fallen, cracked world where disease and death and tragedy and heartache are a part of life. Jesus, in his humanity,[22] feels disturbing human emotions deep in his soul. He feels the weight of grief over the loss of one of his best friends. He is “deeply moved in spirit and troubled.” The Creator himself is not spared from the assault of creation’s sorrow.

Anxiety is when fear takes over your mind. Anxiety is when fear moves from the tangible to the hypothetical. Anxiety is when the what-ifs of life suffocate your brain. Anxiety is when you can’t fall asleep at night. Anxiety is when you can’t relax and take a nap. Anxiety is when your mind won’t turn off. Anxiety is when your imagination runs haywire, with no boundaries or limits. Anxiety is when your chest is tight, your breathing shallow, and your head dizzy. Anxiety is when your lungs speed up to a frenetic pace and your heart screams through your skin. Anxiety is mental. It takes place in the realm of the mind.

Depression is when sorrow becomes a way of life, not a phase. When joy, hope, and life are snuffed out of your soul. When you are sad for no reason at all. When no matter how hard you try, fight, and work, you can’t pull yourself out of a bad mood. When you wake up sad. When the day grows worse with each passing hour. When pleasure is like ash in your mouth. When family and friends are distant. When you are tired all the time. When dreams and desires for the future die and all motivation and energy is gone. When life is really, really horrible. Depression is emotional. It infects and ruins the realm of the soul.

According to King Solomon, when there’s anxiety in your mind—in your thoughts, in your imaginations, deep in your well—the result is depression in your emotions and feelings. The point is this: How we think influences how we feel.

To quote my dad: “What’s down in the well comes up in the bucket.”[4]

My thesis is simple. Depression is a symptom, not a disease. Something, somewhere, deep inside your life, is causing the depression. The journey toward healing starts with asking the question, “Why so downcast, O my soul?” What is causing the pain?

God built us to walk in peace, not anxiety, which means he calls us to trust, not worry. Anxiety is temporary atheism. Anxiety is when you stop trusting God, stop believing there is a God who is real, aware, loving, involved, and able to do anything in your life. When you worry, you suspend faith—you stop believing in what is true.

Anxiety exposes idolatry. We worry about what we worship. We worry about the things we are passionate about, the things we center ourselves around.

Humans need a mission. Vision. Goals. Plans. Something on the horizon for which we can work, sweat, and pray.

Do not misunderstand the true nature of repentance. Most people think of repentance as a heavy, somber religious duty. In reality, authentic biblical repentance is a life-giving art, renewing the entire soul. The prophet Isaiah says, “In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength.”[1]

To repent is to return to Eden. To go back home. To live as God intended. To step back into the patterns and ways of living God built you for. To live in harmony and alignment with the God who made you.

To repent is to think about the world in a new way. To view the world in a different light. To doubt your doubts and trust the way of Jesus as true reality.

Jesus is up to something. He’s about to renew the entire universe, but first he’s starting with us! We are his “new creation.”[16] Microcosms of his renewal of all things.

There are two main ways we fight to control the mind: a tremendous amount of prayer, and a huge, unending supply of the Word of God.

“God’s response to our prayers is not a charade. He does not pretend that he is answering our prayer when he is only doing what he was going to do anyway. Our requests really do make a difference in what God does or does not do. The idea that everything would happen exactly as it does regardless of whether we pray or not is a specter that haunts the minds of many who sincerely profess belief in God. It makes prayer psychologically impossible, replacing it with dead ritual at best…of course this is not the biblical idea of prayer, nor is it the idea of people for whom prayer is a vital part of life.”[14]