Keith Battle - Life's Greatest Battles: Disability and Depression

So grateful we’re going into the Word of God. Now, if you have a Bible, turn to the Book of Job, chapter 6. Job, chapter 6—somebody say, «Uh-oh!» Yep, Job, chapter 6. I don’t know what that was. Job, chapter 6, I want to read a couple of verses in Job chapter 6 and a couple in chapter 7. So, Job chapter 6, I want to begin reading at verse 8 from the New Living Translation. Job chapter 6, verse 8, and I’m going to read through verse 11, and then I’m going to read Job chapter 7, verse 15 and the first part of verse 16. Job says in chapter 6, verse 8, «Oh, that I might have my request, that God would grant my desire.» I wonder what he wants. Verse 9: «I wish he would crush me. I wish he would reach out his hand and kill me. At least I can take comfort in this: Despite the pain, I have not denied the words of the Holy One. I love the Lord.» But verse 11: «But I don’t have the strength to endure. I have nothing to live for.» Chapter 7, verse 15: «I would rather be strangled than to die and suffer like this. I hate my life, and I don’t want to go on living.» I’m going to stop right there. Life’s greatest battles—today, I want to talk about disability and depression. Life’s greatest battles. Job said here, «Lord, with all due respect, I want you to heal me or kill me, but do not let me stay like this.»

Disability and depression are deeply connected. Disability, by definition, is the inability to do what is normal—what may come naturally to others. Either it is something I was never able to do, or something that I experienced over time, and now I am unable to do, or I gradually lost the ability to do it. By definition, that is a disability. It is important to understand that people who live with disabilities, although they may be unable to perform a task—whether that task is to give birth to a child, walk, talk, hear, see, or perform academically—although they are unable to do it, they are far from unwilling to do it. Come on! Their will to do what they are unable to do may be greater than anybody else’s. But for whatever reason, whether historical or something they have lived with all their life—which I think may be easier to deal with—disability, by definition, is a picture of both lack and loss. So, on the one hand, I lack the capacity to do something, but on the other hand, if it’s something I used to be able to do, not only do I lack it, I also lost it. Whenever there is loss in our life, there is pain. Y’all following me now?

Now, I’m going to look at several passages in the Bible that talk about grief, disability, and depression and their connection, and all of them have similarities in how they unfold. For example, the Apostle Paul had some kind of disability that he talks about in 2 Corinthians, chapter 12. I didn’t give them this scripture, but in 2 Corinthians chapter 12, you should write these scriptures down or take note of them, verses 7-9. The Apostle Paul basically gives reference—oh, there it is. He says, «Even though I have received such wonderful revelations from God, so to keep me from becoming proud, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger from Satan to torment me and keep me from becoming proud.» Now, he doesn’t say what that thorn in his flesh was. There are many speculations about what it was. Many people believe he lost his vision and that he had problems seeing. In fact, there were times when he would write things, and he had someone writing for him because he couldn’t see. There’s also some kind of pain he had or some kind of disability that affected his body. Look at what he does in verse 8 in response to this thorn given to him: «Three different times I begged the Lord to take it away.»

Because there’s not a person with any kind of physical disability who hasn’t asked God, «Can you please take this from me?» or «Can you please restore what I had?» Right? It just is what it is. Nobody with something breaking down on them doesn’t say, «Lord, please rebuild.» That might be one of the most conflicting things about being disabled and saved. When you’re disabled and saved, the conflict comes with the fact that we know God is able to reverse whatever happened. When we understand that God has the capacity to reverse what has happened, or to heal what has happened, or to restore what we had, then it is possible to live life kind of on hold until He does that. Can you imagine being better off being a heathen when you get disabled? Because there’s no expectation that anything will change. If the doctors give up, then we kind of give up. But when you’re saved and the doctors give up, we enter into another space and say, «Yeah, but there is…» You know what I’m saying? But we have a great physician. You understand what I’m saying? That kind of almost complicates it, to be honest with you, because what happens in the meantime between the…