Hello, world. I welcome you to LifeRocks. You think about it. Let's talk about it.

There's a story of a man who went to a psychiatrist asking for help. He said, "I'm lost, I'm in tears, I don't have any motivation, I need some help." The story is actually found in a documentary called The Great Terrifini. So the man asking for help is advised by the counselor to go see the clown in the circus, which is now in town, and that the Great Terrifini will make him laugh. And the man admits to the counselor and says, "Sir, I am Terrifini."

The same stories I've heard about a Swiss clown, Grock, or Grimaldi, a British clown, who I presume performed in London. Or Pagliacci, an Italian clown--all of them may be Italians. Because they are expressive on the outside, they make people laugh. But even people who make others laugh need to find the means by which they can laugh.

Now temporary depression is not unusual. All of us need to face it. Discouragement is a normal thing in life. I often ask people how many have been discouraged, and every person in the room lifts his hand, her hand. You probably have done it even while watching me. You have been discouraged. That temporary depression is a common experience, but Major Depressive Disorder-- that can be devastating, and you need to get professional, clinical help for it. Because these are trained psychiatrists who can give you empathy, who can give you directions from other similar experiences, even give you some prescriptions.

The question, however, remains--if psychiatrists need other psychiatrists for their own challenges, and counselors need other counselors, and clowns need other clowns to make them laugh, is there a place where there can be sustainable resources in the middle of depression? Something that can sustain you, not just giving you habits and attitudes and tactics which you cannot implement--you simply don't have the power to implement? Is there a sustainable resource from a simplicity of response that will help you through every day, as dark and as depressive as it gets?

I'd like to point you in that direction. Equals--humans--cannot give us the resources. They can give you advice. They can give you counsel. But they cannot give you the empowerment. They may even give you inspiration, but they cannot give you the ability to implement. That takes God. And if there is a god who understands depression but can also lift us out of it and keep us going in it when we feel it and face it in the middle of trouble and tribulation and tears, can there be peace? And that's exactly what I have to say to you, because there is a God who experienced lostness in life and fear and crying and asking for the sense of grief and suffering to be relieved, somehow to be removed from it, but had to go through it.

He wept, and then he rises again to say, "There is victory. That's possible in the middle of anything you face, because I can give you My peace." You cannot have peace in yourself. The Lord Jesus says, "My peace I will give to you." Now even the most depressed person knows how to fall--and not to complicate life--but fall on an external source simply to say, "Yes." Yes in acknowledging that you are depressed, but yes in trusting the Lord Jesus as the source and the sustainable resource in the middle of your depression.

Would you like that kind of healing? Because along with depression would be hope and joy, which are the cousins of peace, and when you get His peace, you get hope and joy right in the middle of the circumstances and the feelings and the events that you experience. You think about it. Let's talk about it.