Building off of last week's message, this week we took another look at Psalm 42-43 and Pastor Phill shared three lessons of wisdom as it relates to our world's current crisis of depression. Those three hope-filled lessons are: (1) Psalm 42 and 43 teaches us that God knows and understands depression better than we do…so we can trust him; (2) Psalm 42 and 43 teaches us that even the very best believers struggle with depression…so we can stop beating ourselves up; (3) Psalm 42 and 43 teaches us realistic responses to depression, not immediate cures…so talk to God, talk to yourself, and do both of these things in a covenant community.

Discussion Questions:

1. How does this song of wisdom give us something practical wisdom for our lives?
2. How does this psalm show us that God understands depression more than us?
3. What do you see and have you experienced the difference between sadness and depression?
4. Are there moments in your life or others’ lives where you/they have experienced depression? How did you/they respond to God in that time?
5. How has the Bible helped to connect to your or others’ depression? What passages were they?
6. What variety of depression have you seen in the word? what varieties have you seen of experienced in the lives of people?
7. What have you experienced when you pray like the psalms to God?
8. What are ways you can grow in empathy towards those who are struggling?
9. What can I learn about God from the doctrine of Psalm 42 & 43?
10. How do we know that true believers experience deep depression? How have you seen believers in the word and outside the word have depression?
11. How do we see in God’s word that personal sin is not always connected to depression?
12. What does it look like to talk to God, talk to yourself, and to do it corporately with depression?
13. Do you understand what it means to talk with yourself like Martin Lloyd-Jones says and not to talk back to yourself the truth of the gospel? What does it look like? What promises and truths would you and/or the word say to talk back to yourself?
14. How does faithfully coming to corporate worship help us know the truths of God’s word and share it with others? What are examples you can think of?