I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Psalms 32-37.

    I am not sure that my title quite captures the theme I want to talk about from today’s Psalms, but it is close. If we are feeling depression and despair the first step is to confess our sins to God. There may be exceptions, but the source of much depression in this world is unconfessed sin. Refusing to admit that we have sinned can send us into a spiral of despair and depression. Giving in and admitting that we have sinned, and repenting of that sin will allow us to discover God’s forgiveness. When we receive and understand God’s forgiveness, we will be filled with joy.

    Our response to that joy should be to sing praises to the Lord, but even if we do not feel the joy we should praise the Lord. This is a second tool which God provides us to fight depression and despair. Praising the Lord will fill us with joy. There is a progression involved. In order to praise God, we must recognize the power and majesty of God: He merely spoke and the Universe came into existence. That leads us to fear the Lord, to hold Him in awe(a mixture of reverence, respect, and dread). When we hold the Lord in fear and awe we do as He instructs, which leads us to discover that He loves what is just and true. We learn that His love is unfailing. When we sense and experience God’s love we are filled with joy, which leads us to praise Him.

    These psalms fill me with a sense of wonder that I have completely failed to convey in what I have written in the previous two paragraphs. In order to try and capture those thoughts I am going to pull a few things the psalmist says out and highlight them.

Then keep your tongue from speaking evil
and your lips from telling lies!
Turn away from evil and do good.
Search for peace, and work to maintain it.

From there the psalmist goes on to tell us that the righteous will face many troubles, but God will come to their rescue. Related to my theme about turning to God to overcome depression is this statement by the psalmist:

The Lord is close to the brokenhearted;
he rescues those whose spirits are crushed.

That is something important to remember, God is close to those suffering depression and despair. He will rescue them.

    It is a bit of a stretch to connect this last bit to overcoming depression and obtaining joy, but I am going to go there anyway. The psalmist calls on the Lord to fight his enemies. He outlines what our behavior needs to be if we want God to take on our enemies for us. First, we must do them no wrong to justify their attack against us, but that is not of itself enough. When they are suffering let us grieve for them. Let us fast and pray for them. Let us think of them and treat them as if they were our own family. We need to give up our anger and our rage. Losing our temper will benefit no one. It is only when we have done all of these things that we can know that WE are not the ones against whom God will be fighting.