A Puritan’s Guide to Overcoming Depression
Commentary
My 40th birthday was memorable to say the least. Years of bottled-up stress associated with multiple military moves, deployments, undealt with sin, death in the family, and the daily grind of marriage & parenting had finally caught up with me and after checking myself into the ER, I found myself celebrating my birthday at a military in-patient care facility. One could easily have labeled all my physiological and mental symptoms with terms like anxiety, burnout, depression, mid-life crisis, etc., yet I knew something much deeper and spiritual was at war with my soul. That is why the first item (aside from my Bible) that I asked my wife to bring me at the hospital was my copy of William Bridge’s A Lifting Up for the Downcast. The Holy Spirit would use Bridge’s writings as the perfect prescription for my soul and was one of the means of grace in lifting me up out of that dark season of life. This paperback would circulate and make its way around the resiliency center, “lifting up” many other “downcast” patients. I write this review as one who has found these words to be tried and true weapons in my own war with spiritual depression.
“A Lifting Up for the Downcast” is the first book in the Banner of Truth’s Puritan Paperback series. It’s fitting that this is the first book in this list as it mirrors Christian’s experience in Pilgrim’s Progress, where his first experience in his pilgrimage was marked by falling into the “slough of despond”.
Using Psalm 42:11 as a point of departure (“Why are you cast down my soul?”), William Bridge’s goal is to encourage all who find themselves in the “slough of despond” that there is external peace that is greater than all the internal storms of anxiety or despair. This is far beyond any kind of secular Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), for Bridge goes beyond merely identifying our past traumas, negative thinking patterns, or chronic sufferings, but elevates the mind outside of itself onto a sure and steady anchor: that being God Himself. In a surgical way that only a Puritan could do, Bridge lists every conceivable argument for why a Christian could find themselves discouraged and then offers the remedy for these claims by tapping into the rich living cisterns of biblical truth.
Structured in thirteen sermons or chapters all centered on Psalm 42:11, Bridge argues 1. Why saints should never be discouraged, 2. Why many still fall into discouragement, and 3. What are the practical cures for discouragement.
His conclusion is that our ultimate rest can be found in Christ alone. He writes that “If Christ is mine, then all is mine, and death is mine; and what though all my comforts be dead and are gone, and are all out of sight, yet Christ is a living Christ, Christ is a living Saviour; and therefore be of good comfort, O my soul.”
Structure of the Book
The book is structured into 13 sermons all centered on Psalm 42:11:
The Good Man’s Peace
True Peace May be Interrupted
Saints Should Not Be Discouraged Whatever Their Condition Be
A Lifting Up in the Case of Great Sins
A Lifting Up in the Case of Weak Grace
A Lifting Up in the Case of Miscarriage of Duties
A Lifting Up in the Case of Lack of Assurance
A Lifting Up in the Case of Temptation
A Lifting Up in the Case of Desertion
A Lifting Up in the Case of Affliction
A Lifting Up in the Case of Unserviceableness
A Lifting Up in the Case of Discouragements Drawn from the Condition Itself
The Cure of Discouragements by Faith in Jesus Christ
Five Key Quotes
"There is no matter of discouragement which the saints do or can meet with, but there is a greater encouragement bound up therewith, or comes along with it. God never more graciously appears to his people, than when there is the matter for their greatest discouragements."
"The shaken tree grows the strongest … So far as a good man is sunk in unbelief, so far he will rise in faith. So much as a man is shaken by unbelief, and by the lack of assurance, so much he will rise unto assurance and be confirmed and steeled in it."
"The valley of your discouragements shall be the door and inlet unto all your rest and comfort … This is God’s way; discouragements bring encouragements; and the more discouragements the saints have, the more encouragements they shall have. Yea, their discouragements shall contribute to their encouragements, and be a door of hope to them.”
“Had I been settled in the world, I should never have been fixed upon God himself; but being unsettled in the world, I learn to settle upon God himself.”
“We do not live by feeling, but by faith. It is the duty of a Christian to begin with faith, and so to rise up to feeling.”
Recommended Complementary Reading
The Soul’s Conflict and Victory Over Itself by Faith by Richard Sibbes
Depression, Anxiety, and the Christian Life: Practical Wisdom from Richard Baxter by Michael Lundy
Contentment, Prosperity, and God’s Glory by Jeremiah Burroughs