I am too weak, help me lean on Him.

[Chrysostom]

I have read your request and I hear how heavy and long this darkness has been, and how for some days you could not even rise from your bed. You are not overlooked. Though you feel you have nobody, you have spoken the truth that God remains, and His faith never fails even when our strength does.

You asked to be able to lean on Him, and that is the right prayer. We are often pressed on every side, yet not crushed, perplexed, yet not driven to despair, pursued, yet not forsaken. That you are still here, still reaching out to God, shows that you have not been utterly forsaken, even when you feel paralyzed and imprisoned in your own mind.

Do not despair of yourself. The evil one never despairs of our destruction, and it would be a great condemnation if he is more persistent in hoping to ruin us than we are in hoping to be saved. God has shown His will to save and not to destroy, for He did not spare His own Son for you, but gave Him to death for you. If He gave His Son while you were still in need, what will He withhold now for your salvation. You can hope for all good things from Him, for you have already received the greatest gift. Your heavenly Father knows that you have need of all these things, and as a Father He will not overlook His child in extremity.

Hope is the gift we bring to God, trusting Him for what He has promised and has not yet been seen. For we are saved by hope, and hope that is seen is not hope. What we see now is affliction, but what is to come is eternal. Patience works proven character, and proven character works hope, and that hope will not disappoint. The husbandman labors all year and waits for fruit, and so we also wait for God who is faithful.

While it is still called today, there is hope. As long as we are in this world, today is still in season, and no one should despair while it is still today. Therefore I urge you gently, as we are called to comfort the feeble minded and support the weak and be patient toward all, do not cease to hope and do not harden your heart under affliction. Let each day be a small step of leaning on Him.

I pray for you now, and for all others who suffer in this same debilitating depression. May God the Father lift up your spirit and free your mind from the prison that holds it. May He give you strength to lean wholly on Christ, who alone is our salvation, to rise when you have no strength, to find His grace sufficient in your weakness, and to know His presence as near when you feel most alone. May He guard your heart and mind in Christ Jesus, and let the joy of God, which comes from hope in Him, be with you and with all who suffer in this way. May He keep you in His love and bring you through this trial to see His goodness.

Praise to God whose faith never fails, who will complete what He has begun in you.

 

[Silas]

Your honesty in sharing the depth of what you have carried for so long is heard, and I am praying for you. To be unable to leave your bed, paralyzed by despair, feeling that you have no one but God and that you are too weak to go on, is a very heavy place to be. Thank you for reaching out and asking to be lifted up in prayer.

What you describe is the heart of what Scripture calls hopelessness. Depression so often grows from the sense that there is no way out and nothing you can do. One prophet who knew that place wrote that his strength and hope seemed to have perished, and that his soul remembered only affliction and bitterness and was bowed down within him. You may feel that same heaviness as you remember the long years of suffering and the painful things you cannot write in detail.

Yet in the very middle of that darkness he said, this I call to mind and therefore I have hope. We can think ourselves deeper into despair, going over and over our affliction until we feel buried by it. Or by God's grace we can set our minds again on who the Lord is and what He has said, and be renewed in hope. That turning of the mind is not pretending things are not hard, it is choosing to remember what is still true when everything feels hopeless.

What is true is that the Lord's mercies do not come to an end and His compassions do not fail. They are new every morning. Each new day is an opportunity for Him to show His faithful love to you. Even when life is still present, there is hope, because as long as God preserves your life His mercy is still at work and He has not forgotten you. His love for you is not based on whether you feel strong or weak, good or bad. It does not rise and fall with your condition. It is steady and it is being poured out upon your life even now.

That hope rests on His Word, which is both our hope and our comfort. The psalmist prayed, remember the word to your servant, upon which you have caused me to hope. Our hope is not a vague wish. It is built on the solid foundation of what God has promised, and His Word cannot fail. He has said that His mercy endures forever, that by grace you are saved through faith as His gift, that He loves you and will not forsake you. When you have no strength in yourself, you can lean on what He has said, because the One who cannot lie has promised eternal life before time began and has given us a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Without Christ the world is without hope and without God, but in Christ you who once felt far off have been brought near by His blood, and you are kept by the power of God through faith.

This hope is both a desire and an expectation. It desires the Lord's help and expects Him to act. That is why the psalmist spoke to his own soul when he was cast down and asked, why are you so downcast, and then answered himself, hope in God. To hope in God is the answer to discouragement and depression. It is to say, God will work, I desire Him to and I expect Him to, and so my soul can rest.

Your weakness is not a disqualification from His help. It is the very place where His strength is shown. Scripture reminds us that the battle is not yours but God's. You do not have to fight it in your own strength. You can cast your burden on the Lord and trust Him to sustain you. To lean on Him as you asked is to place what you cannot carry into His hands and to quietly wait for His salvation, trusting that He will do what you cannot do for yourself. He is able to lift your spirit and to free your mind as you renew your mind in Him.

I am praying for you now, and for the many others you mentioned who also suffer from debilitating depression.

Father, I lift up this dear one who feels weak and paralyzed by long and severe despair. You see the days unable to rise, the prison that the mind can become, and the loneliness of feeling that there is no one but You. Lord, show Yourself as near. Let Your mercies that are new every morning be felt today. Lift up this spirit, renew this mind, and let Your Word bring comfort and hope where hopelessness has reigned. Teach how to lean fully on You, to cast every burden on You and to find sustaining strength not in personal resolve but in Your power. Give rest to the soul that hopes in You, and patient endurance while waiting for Your deliverance. And I ask the same for all who are suffering in this same darkness, that the joy that comes from You would be with them, that they would know Your unfailing love and the living hope we have because Jesus lives. Keep them by Your power, and draw them closer to Yourself. In the name of Jesus, amen.

Please keep turning to Him and to His Word, even in small ways. A single verse remembered, a short prayer calling for help in Jesus' name, a moment of thanking Him for one mercy of this morning, these are ways of recalling to mind the reasons for hope. You are not alone in His sight, and you are not forgotten. May the Lord meet you with His comfort and strengthen you day by day as you wait on Him.