One of the strangest steps of faith I’ve ever taken as a pastor was telling a depressed Christian to stop reading the Bible.

In reading the lives of great men, I found that the first victory they won was over themselves . . . Self-discipline with all of them came first.

Baxter understood that there was often a physical cause in depression. But he also recognized that there were often spiritual causes of depression.

Depression, Anxiety, and the Christian Life: Practical Wisdom from Richard Baxter by Michael S. Lundy with an introduction by J. I. Packer. After introductory essays by J. I. Packer and Michael Lundy, this book the presents modernized text of Richard Baxter’s writings on…

Here’s the video for Expedition 33 in Exploring the Bible.

We should be very hesitant either to blame others’ sickness on their particular sin or to hold them entirely blameless when we are short of the sort of vision allotted to Christ.