[Music] [Music] over the years as I have taught about the pursuit of joy in the Christian life one of the effects and it's a painful one and I think inevitable one is that some people will feel just devastated they'll say I I'm not the kind of person who feels what you say what you say I should feel in fact I may be on medication for depression I'm just barely hanging on by my fingernails in the Christian life and here you are telling me I should I should want I should be happy in Jesus that really
really burdens me burdens me because I know people like that versus me because sometimes I am that kind of person and so I wrote a book in response to that called when I don't desire God subtitle how to fight for joy the last chapter in that book we took out and made a booklet that's what this is and it's called when the darkness does not lift it's a chapter on depression it's a chapter on constitutional melancholy some people whether physiological reasons or historic family reasons or trauma reasons are so wounded in their souls that the
thought of living a life of continual joy and God is to them like jumping over the moon it's like flying through the solar system it's just not going to happen and so what do you do when the when the darkness does not lift are you are you lost is are you hopeless is there's no way forward and so this is an effort to give hope to people like that because I don't want to give the impression in my Christian hedonism that the kind of joy that we need have is a chipper kind of joy a
joy that doesn't know pain a joy that doesn't live with continual sorrows like Paul said he lived with day by day for people and so if if you know people or you perhaps are a person who deals with the dark night of the soul more often than you wish or there are things in your life that are keeping you oppressed in some way I really do command this this little seventy page book to you which is my effort to deal biblically and pastoral II experientially with what that means as you encounter Christ in the Bible
