Where Do You Turn in Depression?
- Message Excerpt by
- Topic: Depression
Audio Transcript
The psalmist “remembers” (Psalm 42:4). So crucial. He remembers. He calls to mind past experiences. “These things I remember as I pour out my soul.” Here’s what he remembers: he remembers a worship service — “how I would go with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God with glad shouts and songs of praise, a multitude keeping festival.”
What I want to apply here is this. Many of you grew up in churches, maybe some in this church, with very shallow views of the significance of what is happening right this moment, in the last hour — the meaning of corporate worship. What is this? Is this just a small thing? Is this an insignificant thing? Is this just a human thing? For this psalmist, the memories of meeting with the people of God in the temple were simply massive.
Let’s think of this. If nothing more were happening here right now than me adding some information to your brain, and nothing more was happening when we were singing than the entertainment of your aesthetic capacities to delight in music, the psalmist would never do what he just did here. It would just be nostalgia. Right? Nostalgia’s okay. It’s just not going to help. Nostalgia doesn’t help you when the waves are breaking over you. You’re going to say, “I remember Wheaton College. We had such a good time.” What’s that got to do with anything?
The only reason that he would go back and say, “I remember going in procession to the house of God,” is that God was real there and that helps. I will do that in my dying day, if my Alzheimer’s is not too bad, I will remember hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of seasons on this front bench or sitting on the platform in the old sanctuary. I will remember seasons when your voices cascaded over my aching soul with unbelievable volume. I will remember times at the Lord’s Table. I will remember anointings in the pulpit. I will remember the supernatural in these services.
I hope you don’t come these services thinking this is just a religious tradition. God is here. People pass from death to life in this room. Saints are made strong and able to weather the assault of the devil in this room. God is receiving praise in this room. This is a divine human transaction, which not only now, but ten years from now will be at work saving your soul, preserving your faith. I say this just to elevate in your heart and mind the significance of corporate worship. If you’re a guest tonight and you never go to church and you just showed up here, contemplate the possibility that you are missing something massive.
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