First Aid for Depression

Believer, are you discouraged today? Perhaps you feel as if you couldn’t sink any lower. I have found that in the darkest moments of my life the simplest passages of Scripture mean the most. Raging emotions and sleepless nights mean my mind and heart can only handle so much.

Today I would like to give you an emergency kit for your soul. I’ve gathered and listed all the verses in the Psalms that make this simple point: pray to God because He loves you like no one else. God’s love is unchanging, unswerving, unbreakable, unassailable because that is what God is like. His love is not fickle, or passive, or capricious. And on the days when we despair of life, you and I need to wage war on our minds from a thousand different vantage points. These simple verses do just that. Read them again and again. Pray them. Memorize them. Cherish them.

Remember your mercy, O Lord, and your steadfast love,
for they have been from of old.
Psalm 25:6

Make your face shine on your servant;
save me in your steadfast love!
Psalm 31:16

Oh, continue your steadfast love to those who know you,
    and your righteousness to the upright of heart!
Let not the foot of arrogance come upon me,
nor the hand of the wicked drive me away.
Psalm 36:10-11

Rise up; come to our help!
Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love!
Psalm 44:26

Wondrously show your steadfast love,
O Savior of those who seek refuge
from their adversaries at your right hand.
Psalm 17:7a

Great salvation he brings to his king,
and shows steadfast love to his anointed,
to David and his offspring forever.
Psalm 18:50

Answer me, O Lord, for your steadfast love is good;
according to your abundant mercy, turn to me.
Psalm 69:16

Help me, O Lord my God!
Save me according to your steadfast love!
Psalm 109:26

Deal with your servant according to your steadfast love,
and teach me your statutes.
Psalm 119:124

Hear my voice according to your steadfast love;
O Lord, according to your justice give me life.
Psalm 119:149

Consider how I love your precepts!
Give me life according to your steadfast love.
Psalm 119:159

The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me;
your steadfast love, O Lord, endures forever.
Do not forsake the work of your hands.
Psalm 138:8

If you want to go deeper, read these verses again and notice how God shows His steadfast love, who receives His steadfast love, and what God’s steadfast love is like (How? Who? What?). I can promise you this emergency kit works because God always has good plans for those who turn to Him. Notice,

I cry out to God Most High,
to God who fulfills his purpose for me.
Psalm 57:2

You may not always feel like turning to the Word of God in your despair, but you will never regret it. Turn to the Word, then turn to God in prayer. When you do, you will find that God is with you even in the darkest of nights.

By day the Lord commands His steadfast love,
and at night His song is with me,
a prayer to the God of my life.
Psalm 42:8

C.P.