*This article and comic addresses the topic of depression.  If you are in need of help with mental illness, please contact a professional at BetterHelp.com or your primary care physician.

To celebrate his powerful conversion experience, Charles Wesley wrote the joyful “Oh For A Thousand Tongues to Sing!”  And yet his conversion experience had not set him free from  a lifelong and sometimes crippling depression.

Charles Wesley, within a week  after his profound conversion experience, began writing daily in his journal about his deep misery. He felt nothing in prayer or worship. Charles could not with any confidence say that he loved God, and instead felt a vast distance from God’s love for him.

But in his mental illness, even in the perceived distance from God’s love, he clung to the truth which had brought him to conversion in the first place… God’s love is not earned, but freely given.  If you’ve ever experience anxiety or depression before, you can relate to the troubling position of finding oneself unable to change your own feelings with logic.  I can know, “I am saved, there is much to be grateful for.” I can remind myself constantly, “God is good, and God’s grace has saved me and is saving me now.” And yet, should I be in a depressive state, the feelings of sorrow and misery do not magically go away with that knowledge.  But by God’s grace, salvation is not dependent on today’s feelings.

Sadly, there is quite a myth around God’s full healing of the mental health of believers.  Perhaps mostly based in a prosperity mentality, it’s not uncommon to find arguments that the depressed or anxious person does not truly know God, else they would be joyful.  I find it telling that Charles Wesley did not slip into this mindset when his depression hit him hard only six days after conversion.  He did not seem to even expect for God to “cure” him of his sadness.  Instead, he found comfort in trusting God’s salvation meant his sorrow was not permanent, and that God’s sustaining love would never leave him.  This did not magically put him in a joyful mood.  Rather, it motivated him to get out of bed and try again.  As he reflected on this dark night within him, he stated:

“I found power to pray with great earnestness and rejoiced in my trial’s having continued so long, to show me that it is then the best time to labor for our neighbour when we are most cast down and most unable to help ourselves.”                                                     -Charles Wesley Journal, June 3, 1738.

I do not know how to best encourage you when you face dark times. I do not presume to tell you the meaning of your suffering or generate some reason for it.  Instead, my encouragement is that no matter how alone you feel, yet you are not alone.  And when the sorrow seems heavy, know that God’s love for you does not rely on your ability to feel it or even reciprocate it.  You are loved, friend.  You are so, so loved.

Read this excellent article by “Joe” over at ThePoetPreacher.com.