A New Job

There are some things that happen in life that are just too fortuitous to be anything but God’s orchestration. I’ve had one of those events recently. A couple months ago, through a perfect series of events, I became connected with the wonderful folks at the Vere Institute. The mission of Vere Institute is near and dear to my heart—cultivating whole-life disciples of Jesus, which they do specifically through equipping and empowering church leaders.

I’m happy to announce that I recently accepted a part-time position as their Communications Director. I’m delighted to be able to support the ministry of Vere Institute and to share more with their partners about whole-life discipleship.

I’ve been working on a project for them we’re calling “Equippers and Frontliners,” which features a series of curated stories of pastors (equippers) and everyday Christians (frontliners), who are both seeking to live on mission for the Kingdom within the context their own callings and circumstances. I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing all of these brothers and sisters, and I can’t wait to share their stories with you. (If you’ve been around here for a while, this series is very similar to my Everyday Disciple series.)

The first post is in the Equippers and Frontliners series is up on the Vere Institute blog this week. (You can find it here.) And if you want to tune in to the rest of the series, you can sign up to receive their blog updates.

Have no fear, I’ll still be sharing my thoughts and stories with you here in this space, as I have been. You’re not getting rid of me that easily.

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Here’s a little snippet of the first post, just for you…

What does discipleship really mean? 

It’s been a question Stephen Johnson has been on a journey to answer for years. “Whatever discipleship means,” he says, “it must be relevant to everyone, everywhere, at all times, or it isn’t real discipleship.”

The model of whole-life discipleship has offered this all-inclusive vision of life to Fellowship Bible Church, where Stephen has pastored for the last eleven years. It has also made discipleship very relational and situational, inviting everyone to ask what the Lord has for them in each moment, as they “wrestle with their situation and the Holy Spirit everywhere they go.” This is a discipleship that speaks to everyone, regardless of whether they are a CEO or a car-pooling mom.

Read more at Vere Institute

The Bible Won't Cure My Depression, But I Still Need It

When you’re depressed, it doesn’t take long until you begin to receive prescriptions for how to fix yourself. They come in many forms. Some of them are pithy feel-good maxims that look like they should be painted onto a piece of distressed barn board: Just choose joy. Think positively. Count your blessings. Some come in the form of diet, exercise, or lifestyle advice: Have you tried cutting (insert food item here) out of your diet? Nature will be your healer; you just need to get outside. Have you tried (insert exercise program, alternative medicine product, or lifestyle fad here)? And, unfortunately, if you’re a Christian, some of these prescriptions come in the form of spirituality: Just pray more. Spend more time reading your Bible. Just have faith.

Often this advice, even if well-intentioned, causes more pain than good. Instead of hearing our story and keeping company with us in the midst of our pain, such advice tries to shout it away. It assumes that depression (or any other ailment) can be cured with a silver bullet approach instead of acknowledging its complexity. It also places a burden of guilt on the person who is suffering—implying that their lingering sorrow is a sign they’re doing something wrong or simply not trying hard enough.

But sometimes such harmful advice does carry seeds of truth. For example, for many people, exercise does help to manage depression. I know many also find being outdoors in a natural setting to be helpful. But we acknowledge that these lifestyle elements are not the only agents in our movement toward healing. They’re important, but they are not a one-stop-shop for mental and emotional wellness. They come in balance with other practices as well—like going to therapy, taking medication, or getting good sleep. When it comes to living with mental illness, I see spiritual practices in a similar way.

To put it simply: Reading the Bible will not cure my depression. I believe those who have reduced mental health to a consistent Bible study plan are severely misguided. Bible study will not prevent me from getting cancer or being in an accident—and it will not provide a guaranteed preventative strategy against mental illness either.

There are some people, I know, who would take issue with this. Some people seem to think that saying the Bible won’t cure depression calls into question the Bible’s authority or effectiveness. They think that if I say we shouldn’t suggest the Bible (or prayer or any other host of practices) as the cure, that I don’t think depressed people should read the Bible. Far from it. But we cannot reduce the hope of the Bible to a how-to-cure manual or a book-sized pain reliever. It’s not what the Bible is meant to be, and treating it as such does it a great disservice.

Let’s go back to the example of cancer. When someone receives a cancer diagnosis, I would imagine you are unlikely to suggest that a more vigorous spiritual life would cure them. In such situations, we encourage them in their relationships with medical professionals and in their suggested treatments. We support them with lifestyle changes they may need to make. We eagerly step in to meet pressing physical needs, like providing rides or meals or child-minding services.

But I would imagine that you would still believe the Bible would offer them comfort during a painful and uncertain season. In fact, if you are a Christian, you would probably see the Bible as an essential piece of navigating that journey—but you wouldn’t claim it as the cure for cancer. We can draw similar parallels about the Bible’s role when we face the death of a loved one, the loss of a job, or any host of physical illnesses or personal tragedies. Mental illness is no different.

I believe the Bible is incredibly helpful when we’re depressed—and I think Christians who struggle with depression will benefit from its truths. But it is beneficial in the same way that it is beneficial to the cancer patient wrestling with physical fragility, the new widow awash with grief, or the mom wondering how she’ll make ends meet. I do not believe that the “benefit” the Bible offers is about instantaneously removing us from pain—but about providing us with hope and truth and comfort to sustain us in the midst of that pain.

In the midst of my depression, as I turn to the Bible, I find a God who promises to be near to the brokenhearted and suffering, even if I can’t “feel” his presence. I find a God who consistently uses people who struggle like me—so I know that depression does not mean I’m disqualified from being an effective part of his kingdom. I find a Savior who himself suffered and wept and bled—so I know He understands my agony. I find a Spirit who intercedes for me when I don’t have words—so I know that God is still near me and hearing me, even when my words run out.

In the Bible I find a God who makes it his work to create beauty out of ashes in the most unexpected and miraculous ways. I find a God who gives me permission to bring my doubt and fear and anger and utter weariness before him. I find a God who refused to relinquish the world to sin and all its effects—and who set in motion a grand redemption of not only my soul but also my broken body and broken brain chemistry. I find a God who has promised to make all things new.

This is a hope robust enough to sustain me when I have no strength left to hope. It is an anchor when all seems lost and when darkness seems to have won. It will not cure me—but it will give me a reason to take one more breath. And that is enough.

Breath Prayer: A Prayer to Quiet My Anxious Heart

When I am deeply stressed or anxious or experiencing an overwhelming emotion like grief, I can feel it in my body. My muscles are tense, and my shoulders rise towards my ears as they tighten. I can feel my heartbeat elevated and can nearly hear my blood pulsing. I feel jittery and restless, sometimes to the point my fingers tremble. My stomach churns. And my thoughts—they surge and shift, taking me down too many rabbit trails, reluctant to quiet and still.

I know I’m not the only one who has felt this way. I would dare say all of us have at some time or another. Some of us, who live more chronically with anxiety or who walk through a prolonged season of grief or trauma, feel it more often than we would care to admit.

When I feel like this, I want to bring myself to God and put my anxious, hurting heart before him, but the physical and emotional strain of my body in the moment seems to rise and suffocate the words as I try to form them. Sometimes I don’t even know what words to pray. In moments such as these, I have found a particular model of prayer to be helpful: breath prayer.

Breath prayer has been a practice of Christians for centuries. It is a simple, one sentence prayer paired to the rhythm of your breath. As you inhale, call on a name or characteristic of God, and as you exhale, express the desire or need of your heart. For example, (inhale) God of all comfort, (exhale) bring your peace. Continue to breathe deeply and repeat your prayer. Come back to it for as long and as often as you need to throughout the day.

I find in moments when my emotions and stress response run high, a breath prayer can calm my body, my mind, and my spirit. It invites me to stop, to quiet my beating heart and frantic thoughts in God’s presence. It also focuses my heart on God—on who he is, on what he offers, on his nearness to me. As my breath deepens, and my mind continues to meditate on the Lord, I find myself quieting. It doesn’t solve all my problems or permanently fix my emotional state, but it does invite me into a moment of quiet. It helps me recenter on the God who hears, on the God who is with me.

We live in a tumultuous and chaotic world. Stress and anxiety will come. And when they do, when you feel your thoughts and your body becoming overwhelmed and paralyzed, pause, breathe, and pray. Carry your breath prayer with you into those moments. And rest in the fact that you are loved, seen, and heard as his beloved child.

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I would encourage you to choose your own breath prayer, based on what the needs and desires of your heart are in this moment. But here are a few examples to help you.

• Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me.

• Breath of Life, breathe on me.

• Father, let me feel your presence.

• Good Shepherd, show me your way.

• Lord Jesus, let your Kingdom come.

• Lord, in your mercy, bring your healing.

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Do you pray using a breath prayer? What breath prayer has been helpful or meaningful to you?

I Need Stories From the Dark

I heard the first threads of their stories in a seminary classroom. Just months before, I had emerged from another bout of depression, and the taste of that darkness still lingered. The isolation. The tears—then the numbness. The heavy weight pulling me to stay in bed, to not think, to disappear. I wonder now if I would have noticed them if it hadn’t been fresh, if I wasn’t still reminded by a pill each morning of my own fragility. But in that moment, I had ears to hear.

I made extra notes in the margins of my notebooks based on this anecdote and that aside from my professor, and those wispy threads began to converge. These people in church history, the ones I was studying, the ones we still celebrated—they too knew that darkness. They too had been depressed. Why had I never heard their stories? Would my own experience with depression have been different if I had?

Looking back now, I wonder how many explicit messages I heard about depression. I don’t remember anyone specifically telling me I was a failure for succumbing to it, but it was the message I received just the same. As it tightened its grip on me during my senior year of college, I felt as though I should be able to try harder, as though I had to find a way to pull myself together. But I barely had the strength to make it to class most days—an emotional overhaul was beyond my reach. I felt guilty and weak. I felt like a “bad” Christian. I was surrounded by a culture of spiritual perfectionism and keenly aware of how far I fell short. I was broken—shattered was more like it—and the God of comfort I had known fell silent.

At the time, I didn’t hear stories about Christians suffering from depression, aside from the confided experiences of a couple close friends. I certainly didn’t hear stories about what it looked like to live in the midst of depression, those stories of what faithfulness looked like in the dark. I heard whispers and rumors of others who suffered like me, but our time in depression’s darkness was not a story to be told—or so it seemed. It felt shameful and awkward. I didn’t know what other people would make of my pain—I didn’t know what to make of it myself, of that pain that grew so great it became nothingness, numbness, the void.

But what if, in that moment, I knew the stories I would come to know later? What if I knew of the saints of the darkness, of these sisters and brothers throughout the church’s history who had traveled this road long before me, who had wept and wrestled as I did? It would not have removed depression’s darkness or dulled its ache, but it may have made it just a little less bitter—to know that this was not some strange or shameful thing that was happening to me, to know I was not alone, to know God was not finished with me yet.

I realize now that the stories we choose to tell communicate something. My experience has been that we like stories of the light, stories of victory, stories of perfectly packaged happy endings. And why not? They’re heartwarming. But when we prioritize these at the expense of stories from the opposite part of human experience—of struggle and pain—we send an implicit but clear message that those messier and more painful stories are not welcome. It is this sort of message that kept me uncertain and quiet about my own depression. It is this message that perpetuates stigma and judgment, that suggests Christians shouldn’t struggle as I did.

But there are saints among us—perhaps you’re one of them—who have stories from the dark, stories of the not-yet, stories that end with a question mark—and we need those just as much. We have these stories throughout our history, just waiting to be told. We have them living and breathing among us today. Stories like these give me permission to acknowledge and share my own struggles. They remind me I’m not alone. They remind me of how God is faithful when I can’t see him or when I wonder if I have the strength for faith left. They tell me depression will not be the end of my story.

In my own experience with depression, I have found stories of the dark in the lives of people throughout church history. They are a source of comfort, encouragement, and guidance to me. But they also give me boldness to tell my own story—because somewhere out there is a college student like I once was, weary and heavy laden with depression’s load, and my story may just be the one they need to hear.

Hope More Audacious Than Heaven

We are living in a time in which there is no doubt that the world is broken. We’re feeling in real time the effects of all that is not right with the world. We’re facing sickness and death. We’re seeing conflict and greed and pride. We’re seeing broken systems that leave people vulnerable. We’re witnessing violence and dehumanization. We bear the ache of uncertainty and upheaval, of separation from each other, of anxiety and depression. I know I’m not alone in the desperate prayer Come, Lord Jesus.

In the face of such a time as this, the resurrection offers me audacious hope.

This hope is not ultimately, as many have explained it, about going to heaven when I die. I cannot count the times I’ve heard the comfort and hope of the Christian life described only this way. But the hope of the resurrection is not about escapism. It’s not about jumping ship and flying away to a disembodied, better place. It’s not one that lets me wash my hands of the world, believing it’s all going to burn.

No, the hope we have is much deeper—and, yes, more audacious. It is a hope that clings to a coming new creation. Jesus’ resurrection declares that our hope is not just about the renewal and rebirth of our souls (though this is a critical part of it), but it is also about a renewal and remaking of all of creation. At the end of the biblical story, we are given a picture of a new heavens and new earth, a place of tangible beauty and wholeness, made and remade for us. It is Eden restored, where we live and breath in resurrection bodies. Jesus’ resurrection was the guarantee of this, the first picture and first fruit of a new creation. The hope we have is not of going to heaven—it is of heaven coming down to earth, just as Jesus taught us to pray.

When you look at the world around you, it is one thing to believe that God will take you from it. It is another thing entirely to believe that God will return and transform it, will break it open like a seed and allow his life to burst forth. It is one thing to believe that we will be taken away from pain and sickness and death. It is another thing entirely to believe that pain and sickness and death themselves will be taken away, forever eradicated, fully and completely destroyed. I believe this sort of hope takes even more audacity to believe—to stand in the face of what our human experience has taught us to be unbreakable, unrelenting tyrants (sin and pain, sickness and death) and insist that they will not have the last say, that they will finally meet their end.

So as you stare out at a world that is broken and aching for redemption, stand with defiant hope. This is not the end. There will come a day when we will be restored—and creation will be as well.