I love how Chuck Swindoll goes all the way back to Charles Spurgeon to help us understand that we might suffer from discouragement or depression. Those who serve long learn much of the following lessons.

There is some encouragement in knowing that our battle with the blues is not just a present-day malady. One of my all-time favorite preachers of the past is the colorful Charles Haddon Spurgeon. What a remarkably gifted and powerful servant of God! I’ve worn out my first copy of his outstanding volume, Lectures to My Students, in which he devotes an entire chapter to what he calls “The Minister’s Fainting Fits.” In it he tells of his own struggle with this problem of discouragement . . . sometimes even depression.

Here are several excerpts from Spurgeon’s observations and admissions:

The times most favourable to fits of depression, so far as I have experienced, may be summed up in a brief catalogue.

First among them I must mention the hour of great success. When at last a long-cherished desire is fulfilled, when God has been glorified greatly by our means, and a great triumph achieved, then we are apt to faint. It might be imagined that amid special favours our soul would soar to heights of ecstacy, and rejoice with joy unspeakable, but it is generally the reverse. The Lord seldom exposes His warriors to the perils of exultation over victory; he knows that few of them can endure such a test, and therefore dashes their cup with bitterness. . . .

Excess of joy or excitement must be paid for by subsequent depressions. While the trial lasts, the strength is equal to the emergency; but when it is over, natural weakness claims the right to show itself. . . .

Before any great achievement, some measure of the same depression is very usual. Surveying the difficulties before us, our hearts sink within us. . . . Such was my experience when I first became a pastor in London. My success appalled me; and the thought of the career which it seemed to open up, so far from elating me, cast me into the lowest depth, out of which I uttered my miserere and found no room for a gloria in excelsis. Who was I that I should continue to lead so great a multitude? I would betake me to my village obscurity, or emigrate to America, and find a solitary nest in the backwoods, where I might be sufficient for the things which would be demanded of me. It was just then that the curtain was rising upon my life-work, and I dreaded what it might reveal. . . .

Let no man who looks for ease of mind and seeks the quietude of life enter the ministry; if he does so he will flee from it in disgust.

 C. H. Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan Publishing House, 1954), 158–162. Used by permission.

CHAPTER EIGHT

 Charles R. Swindoll, Elijah: A Man of Heroism and Humility (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2008).