Pray for Victory over My Depression
This Christmas has been far more depressing than any other in memory.
Pray for God to grant me His grace and peace.
I will be glad when Monday arrives.
Shalom
Follow up sent out on December 26
Much Better Now
THANKS to answered prayers I am feeling much better now.
SUMMARY
God began to answer prayers within hours of the request.
The Lord led me to write many pages in my journal about the thoughts and feelings that were repeating inside of me. That brought relief. Writing in my journal has always helped me. But I have sometimes avoided it when I needed it most.
At a key moment I felt neutral instead of negative but not positive. Then I felt prompted to hear a podcast that I save for such times at that. There were 3 short episodes that lifted my spirits. These are stories of meaningful deeds of kindness. I highly recommend Kind World http://www.wbur.org/kindworld for 7 minute stories to lift your spirits when you feel blue or other times.
PRAYER REQUESTS
May the Lord Jesus Christ lead me in how to better deal with my depression and teach others simple methods that could help them.
May I get very honest and objective about evaluating the previous year, 2016.
May I set simple goals for the major areas of my life for 2017.
PAUSE
Most people want the short version. So you can stop now.
Some people want the details and those follow. The details include 2 sections named RECENT CONDITIONS and BACKGROUND ROOTS
RECENT CONDITIONS
I am single and I have never been married.
I have never had children. So all the Santa hype that goes into Christmas is lost on me.
I have been a committed Christian for 40 years. During those decades the focus has slowly shifted from Christ to lots of other distractions. That is one of the causes for my holiday blues.
Normally I avoid the news because it is far too depressing for me. All the bad news locally and globally without much hope can discourage me.
I especially avoid politics because that can make me upset that adults can talk and behave in such foolish ways.
For many years my holidays blues ran from minus 2 to minus 3 on a minus 10 scale. This year it was minus 4 to minus 5 on a minus 10 scale. That is because during the weeks before the election I got sucked into all the clamor. It took me a long time to even begin to make sense about what was truth versus the spin doctoring, mud slinging and fear mongering. I got a pain in my gut as I started to see the darkness behind all the blaming. I lost my appetite for days and that is very uncommon for me.
During the Christmas weekend both the community college and public libraries were closed. So I was just in the homeless shelter. I had some refreshing naps. But all the old election season yuck came back to me in the stillness.
The election results showed that about as many voted for Trump as Clinton. Loud persons on both sides had horrible things to say about the other side. The thorny problems that face us as a nation can never be solved with such hatred. We are not as much the UNITED States of America as the DIVIDED States of America. Plus I just searched online to find that there were about as many that did not vote as did. So what does that say?
I attend a small church with many children under 6 years old. What kind of a nation are we leaving for them?
Internationally there are also all kinds of complex issues. The election coverage brought a few of those matters to my attention. Just like every election before the attention of such matters will again fade into the background until the next election cycle. What kind of a world are we leaving to residents of other countries?
Pondering the painful conditions of others can lead me to feel depressed and even despairing. Where is hope, justice, solution, grace, sovereignty of God, human responsibility, spiritual warfare, etc.?
BACKGROUND ROOTS
My single status is not an accident or an oversight. During my 20s and 30s I fell in love 7 times and I was engaged to be married 3 times.
I LOVE women. I HATE divorce. I NEVER wanted to be a father. Fatherhood SCARES me.
I told each of the women I was engaged to that I loved them but did not want children. I broke the engagement with 1 woman and the other 2 women broke the engagement. Each of those was followed by a long seasons of deep depression.
God delivered me from alcohol abuse, drug abuse and a New Age cult. Mostly that was due to the answers to the prayers of my mother and her friends. I have witnessed thousands of answered prayers since my drug rehab in the 1975. So I keep requesting prayers.
I exhort others to request prayers. I share the best online prayer groups that are Prayer LA http://www.2prayer.com/prayer_
When I came to faith in Christ at age 23 years old I was fresh out of drug rehab. I had made a wreck of my life. I knew deeply that Jesus had redeemed my life. I made many deep commitments to serve God in any way at any place. I gravitated to a missions oriented church. I came forward untold numbers of times to surrender myself to the mission field. I never felt led to join any missions agency but in investigated many. My pastor had recommended that I go back to college to complete my bachelor's degree. The university he recommended had a low view of Christ and Scriptures. If I had not been listening to Christian radio every day I would have become a miserable minister that did not believe in the grace and power of God.
I struck out on my own and told God to train me. He has led me on a very complex path. He has taught me so much more than any university could. I have many visions for innovative ministry that are web based. None of those got of the drawing table.
I have had 3 near death experiences. Each time I made another super deep vow to do whatever it took to obey the revealed will of God for my life.
Currently I am working on producing an ebook and ecourse that will help get me out of this financial rut. Then hopefully I will launch the ministry when that is going.
Note that I am 63 years old. I was born in 1953. I was a teen during the 1960s. There was much idealism in the air that impressed me during that era.
Deep in my soul there is a longing for this world to become much better for me and especially the next generations. I feel deeply disappointed that Christians have not made a major impact on society except mission agencies.
I keep telling myself that the life insurance industry says that the average life expectancy is about 80 years. Both of my grandfathers made it past 80. My father is 93 and going strong. SO I set my sights on living for more than 20 more years. The question is how can I best lay a foundation for the next decades?
Shalom
John S. Oliver
