A Test Article
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 mentals 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.”
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
