DEPRESSED
=======================
Q: I am a Christian and I attend church, but not regularly. I am a 39 year-old female who is suffering from depression. Even though I have two beautiful kids, I feel that nothing in my life has gone right.
In fact, I feel as if I have been cursed.
My background:
My parents divorced when I was young. They left me and my sisters with our grandparents. My grandparents were cruel and I was sexual abused. I don't hold any bad feelings towards my parents, but because both of my grandparents have passed away I was not able to forgive them before their deaths.
As if that wasn't horrible enough, I suffer from a medical condition called hyperhidrosis (excessive sweating). Because of the nature of this condition (sweating and body odor), I have learned to live in the background and have very low self-esteem. I don't feel good about myself and have prayed to God to help me but He has never helped me with this situation.
God has answered some of my prayers and I know that He loves me, but I disappoint him constantly. I just can't seem to pull myself together.
It's even hard for me to pray and read my Bible. I struggle with being obedient to God. All I want to do is stay at home, watch TV and do nothing else.
Life has been one disappointment after another.
Please help me.
I don't know what else to do. Is it my lack of obedience that keeps God from helping me? I try hard, but when things go bad I fall into depression and am not able to function.
Please pray that whatever is cursing me is removed?
Thank you and God bless.
from the Mountain:
We will print your request and this answer and place it in the prayer room at The ARK. We will specifically call your name and pray for you. We place the answer in the prayer room because not only do you need the situation prayed for, but strength to follow that which is given.
I preached a series of messages dealing with a particular type of curse, the generational curse. Generational curses are passed from parent to child to grandchild and so on.
They fall into seven categories, each of the categories with the sermon title is listed below:
I advise you to listen to ALL of the sermons, simply click TV Messages. Some of the sermons may not be on the web site yet, you can order a free cassette by calling 404-OUT-REACH.
Generational Curses in general - Up From The Dust, Come Out and Don’t Go Back
1. Money - The Want of Things, The Power of Vision, Bless You
2. Lack or loss of children - Do You Know Where Your Children Are?
3. Confusion of Mind, Spirit and Direction - Are You Straight?
4. Disease - 20/20 Vision
5. Conquering Enemies - Enemies
6. Loss of Respect and Honor - Your Honor: Here Comes the Judge
7. Bad Marriage - Cold Beds, Return to Sender, Less FootBall
Generational curses are real. They may have a spiritual component but most of it is natural. They are the result of psychological, sociological, biological and financial patterns passed from one generation to the next.
Psychologist will often try to take a patient back to their childhood, how they felt about mother and father. There are big fancy words for what is in essence, a generational curse.
Just from what you have told me, I can see the natural generational curse in operation.
Grandparents that are mean to their grandchildren and would sexually abuse a granddaughter would have the same tendencies with their children. Most likely, one of your parents received the same treatment from your grandparents.
It messed up the thinking of one your parents. With messed up thinking and feelings, they were probably drawn to someone equally messed up. It’s the simplest and most direct way that I can describe it. When you boil it down, that’s what it is. Messed up parents will generally produce messed up children in one form or another.
Virtually everything that you have said says that you are messed up. You admit that.
You state that and you probably reaffirm that everyday.
Now, let’s see what can be done to get things straightened out.
First, inventory what’s not messed up.
Start with your strengths, the things that you have going for you. Often when you start to list the things that are going right, you will find that maybe your life isn’t so messed up after all.
Let’s start at the top of your list:
“I am a Christian and I attend church, but not regularly.”
You are a Christian and you do have a church home. That’s a plus. I don’t have to lecture you about becoming affiliated with a good church and getting regular spiritual teachings. You have church, you are a part of a church, you just aren’t faithful to that church.
How hard is it to fix that? Not very.
I always tell people, especially when you are in a hole, going to church once a week is NOT enough. You always have to do more when coming out of a depressed situation whether it is, financial, psychological, physical or romantic.
You need to regularly attend church at least TWICE per week. If it is a good pastor, you will grow and it will gradually begin to pull you out of your depressed state.
That won’t cost you a dime. No church charges admission. Since you are watching TV a lot, you have plenty of time.
“I am a 39 year-old female who is suffering from depression.”
You are six years younger than I am. Women statistically live longer than men. You have more left in life than I do by statistical law. Your youth is a plus. Whether you view yourself as old or young depends on you. As I said, you are six years younger than I am.
You are not suffering from depression. You feel inadequate, abused, trapped and in terrible circumstances. Those feelings cause you to be depressed. You suffer from feeling inadequate, abused, trapped and in terrible circumstances, not from depression. Depression is just a symptom, a manifestation of those feelings.
Understand, depression is NOT a cause.
“Even though I have two beautiful kids,
I feel that nothing in my life has gone right.”
Do you know how much many people would give for two beautiful kids?
I have two beautiful kids. There is no success that I have achieved that matches the gratification that I feel when I see my two sons. Nothing!
That which you say you have is that which I value most on the material plane.
Your two beautiful kids negates the statement “nothing in my life has gone right.”
That’s like Bill Gates saying, “I don’t have anything but 90 billion dollars.”
Kids, like 90 billion dollars, are not everything, but they are a whole lot.
“I feel as if I have been cursed”
You have been cursed, but all curses can be broken.
Whether you have been cursed or not,
if you FEEL you have been cursed, you have been cursed.
“My parents divorced when I was young.”
That’s part of the curse. Women whose parents are divorced are 50% more likely to divorce than women whose parents are not divorced. That’s a big statistic that no one argues makes a difference. Your own divorce was influenced by your parents divorce. The influence occurs often in subtle ways but it was there.
That’s a negative but it is not a condemnation.
“They left me and my sisters with our grandparents. My grandparents were cruel and I was sexual abused. I don't hold any bad feelings towards my parents, but because both of my grandparents have passed away I was not able to forgive them before their deaths.”
That’s another negative. People are often faced with negative circumstances that make life more difficult. You were born into a life situation that are just plain difficult.
Always separate the things that you can and cannot do anything about. Always.
If you can’t do anything about it, then don’t dwell on it.
If you can, then get busy.
You can’t do anything about the way your parents or grandparents were. You can forgive your grandparents. Unforgiveness is an emotion. It’s a first cousin of hate. It can be as binding as love but a lot more destructive.
You don’t need to see your grandparents to forgive them. True forgiveness is a matter of the heart. It’s not easy, don’t let anyone fool you that it is, especially if the wound was deep and it happened over a long period of time.
Forgiveness of others is the first step in YOUR healing. When a woman is raped, it’s not the physical that stays with her. It’s the emotional. It’s the fear, the embarrassment, the humiliation, the violation, and the matters of the heart and soul that are often never healed.
If you need to go to your grandparent’s gravesite to tell them then do it. Go and tell them that you forgive them, and then get your heart clean.
“As if that wasn't horrible enough, I suffer from a medical condition called hyperhidrosis (excessive sweating). Because of the nature of this condition (sweating and body odor) I have learned to live in the background and have very low self-esteem. I don't feel good about myself and have prayed to God to help me but He has never helped me with this situation.”
Go to www.stopsweating.com. There is a simple surgical procedure that can cure 95% of people with this condition. Many insurance plans cover it.
In the Bible, Jesus healed many conditions but EVERY condition where the disease is specifically mentioned there was no medical cure at the time. Blindness, leprosy, lameness, the issue of blood (the Bible says that the woman had spent all that she had on the physicians), deafness, muteness, etc. all had no medical cure at that time. Not only did they have no medical cure at that time. In most instances, those maladies still can’t be cured by modern medical science today.
Jesus didn’t mention that he healed anything that the doctors could cure.
If the doctor can fix it, go let the doctor fix it, especially if your insurance will cover it.
The rest of your statements relates to your difficulty in being obedient to God.
All of us have that to one degree or another.
You wrote to me hoping to hear from a voice that speaks with some degree of spiritual wisdom. Then heed what I say. I generally don’t tell people to try and go fix every problem they have in an instant. I tell them to pick one or at the most two things and stick to those diligently.
Your ONE thing is this:
START GOING TO CHURCH TWICE PER WEEK WITHOUT FAIL.
All progress and success will ultimately depend on decisions that YOU make and discipline that YOU have. Not God, YOU!
Your situation is neither unique, nor hopeless.
In reality, you are not in bad shape; you just think you are messed up.
The problem is. . . as a man thinketh, so is he.
That applies to a woman too. If you think you are messed up, you are.
I deliberately used “messed up” in the beginning of this answer.
Notice how harsh and cold it sounded. Notice how you thought “I shouldn’t be saying that. He shouldn’t be calling me messed up!” What you say about yourself is 100 times more impacting than what I say. If I sounded harsh, imagine how you sound. Learn to speak about and to yourself in a kinder manner.
You have some problems - yes, but who doesn’t?
Take this one piece of advice, do this one instruction, do it diligently, do it without fail and without excuse.
If you are a Christian, you KNOW that you must regularly attend church.
Compared to many other things, church attendance is easy.
You start with the easy, and then move to the hard.
You start with the things that you can do.
With most people, the problem is not that they can’t do it. It’s that old habits rule over them and a simple thing takes control.
Just start with the basics and get that mastered.
The surprising thing is, once you start diligently doing the easy, the hard won’t be so hard.
START GOING TO CHURCH TWICE PER WEEK WITHOUT FAIL.
That’s not a lot to advise you to do.
That’s simple, that’s easy, but once you determine to do that, every force in hell will come against you to try to make you break the commitment.
Don’t let anything stop you from this one thing.
For the next Seven Weeks, attend church without fail, twice per week.
Watch God move as you move.
In seven weeks, email and tell me of the change brought into your life.
from MountainWings.com
Click here to go
back to the MountainWings
"Advice Answers" Main Page
