How Do You Get Out of Depression? What Elijah Teaches Us (1 Kings 19)

Have you heard that Satan is on Facebook Marketplace? He's selling some of his best instruments, and a few of them are cheap — pride, envy, lust, anger, marked way down. But there's one tool in his arsenal with a ridiculously high price tag. People kept messaging him: what's the deal, why is this one so expensive? The tool was depression. And his answer was, “With depression, I can do anything to anyone. That's why it costs so much.”

I can't prove Satan has a Marketplace account. But I can tell you he's right about the price. Depression — that intense feeling of helplessness and hopelessness that settles into prolonged sadness — is one of his favorite tools, because if the truth were told, all of us deal with it. We're either pre-depressed, walking through depression, or coming out of it. I don't say that to hang a cloud over your day. I say it because I want to give hope to the hopeless and help to the helpless, and the first step is admitting how common this is.

When I started studying the Scriptures on this, I was floored by how many major players — men and women — dealt with depression. It's real, and it doesn't discriminate. It shows up circumstantial, physical, emotional, relational, spiritual, and usually several of those bleeding together at once. That's one of the things I love most about the Bible: it doesn't just show you people's strengths. It shows you their weaknesses. If it only showed the highlight reel, I couldn't relate to any of it. But when it tells me a giant of the faith sat down and asked God to kill him, I can identify with that.

Even Elijah — “a man just like us”

The one who stops me every time is Elijah. James 5:17 says he “was a man just like us,” and I love that, because on paper he doesn't look like us at all. He raised a little boy from the dead. He confronted an evil king and queen, Ahab and Jezebel, and called down a drought on the whole nation. He stood alone against 450 prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel and watched God answer with fire. One man against a crowd, and God won in front of everybody.

So how does a man like that go from the mountaintop of Carmel to a hole in the desert asking to die? That's the question. And the answer is a set of stages — the same ones that take you and me down.

Stage one: you exaggerate

Right after the biggest win of his life, Jezebel sent Elijah a message. It might be the first text in history: your days are numbered. A hit, put out on him.

Here's what he should have done. He should have shrugged and said, “She's just a hater.” She was one woman. He still had 7,000 faithful people of God behind him in Israel, and she'd have lost her throne if she'd touched him. He knew all of that — and he forgot every bit of it. That's what exaggeration does. When I engage my feelings too much, I make the small things huge and the big things — God included — small. Elijah made a one-woman threat bigger than the God who'd just sent fire from the sky, and he ran over a hundred miles to Beersheba.

Part of it was that he was wrecked — physically exhausted from the mountain, emotionally spent from the confrontation, spiritually drained from pouring it all out. And that's the warning: it's often the after that takes us out. After the big win. After the wedding. After the sermon, the surgery, the season, the game. We brace for the hard thing, survive it, and then collapse in the letdown.

When I'm sliding here, I catch myself reaching for what I call the New Perversion Version of the Bible. I read John 8:32 like this: “You shall know your feelings, and your feelings shall set you free.” That's not what it says. It says you shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free. Feelings are real. Feelings are not always true. When you feel yourself exaggerating, stop and ask where it's coming from — depression almost always traces back to a something or a someone, and naming the source cuts it back down to size.

Stage two: you isolate

Then Elijah made his most dangerous move. He got to Beersheba and dropped off his best friend — “you stay here, I'm going on alone” — and walked a full day deeper into the desert until he found a broom tree.

What a name for a tree. A broom tree is small; there's only room for one underneath it. That's the whole point. He went looking for a spot built for exactly one person so he could sit in the boiling sun and throw himself what I can only describe as a black-tie invitational pity party. I've thrown a few of those myself, so I'm not judging. We tell ourselves we just need to be alone, that we'll finally get in touch with who we are if everyone would just back off.

I'm stunned by the suicide numbers in our culture right now. So many young people — so many students — carrying depression and isolation and anxiety, having these thoughts, and too many acting on them. Even one is too many. This is a fallen world, sin is rampant, and the enemy loves to use depression. He doesn't cause all of it, but it's one of his favorite tools, because it keeps you from everything God has for you. That's exactly the corner Elijah was backed into under that tree.

Don't take that bait. We are built for community, not isolation, and isolation is where the lie gets loud — the lie that says I'm the only one. I'm the only parent who feels this. The only one at my job, in my marriage, in my family. When you're alone, your feelings get exaggerated and that lie starts to sound like fact.

Think about what isolation does to people. The castaways on Gilligan's Island were building radios out of coconuts. Tom Hanks in Castaway ended up having full conversations with a volleyball. Isolation makes you do crazy things. That's why the church exists — for community, for connection, for grief groups and recovery groups and friendships where somebody knows your name. Whatever you do, don't drop everybody off in Beersheba.

God comes with a meal and a nap

Here's what I find beautiful. When God finally shows up to a suicidal, exhausted prophet, He doesn't open with a lecture. Elijah falls asleep under the tree, and an angel nudges him awake and says, “Get up and eat.” He looks over, and there's bread baked on hot coals — angel food cake — and a jar of water. He eats, drinks, and lies back down. And they do it again.

God ministered to him physically before He ministered to him spiritually. Sometimes the most spiritual thing you can do — in depression or just in a hard stretch of life — is take a nap and eat a good meal. Don't over-spiritualize your exhaustion. Sometimes your soul is fine and your body is just empty.

Stage three: you play the victim

Fed and rested, Elijah travels on to Mount Horeb and settles into a cave — and God's going to teach him how to behave in a cave, because depression will put all of us in one eventually. God asks him a question, and asks it twice: “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

Now, God is all-knowing. He didn't need the information. He wanted Elijah to reason with his own reasoning — to hear his own answer out loud. And Elijah's answer is one long complaint: I've been zealous for you, they've torn down your altars, I'm the only one left, and now they want me dead. Soaked in self-pity, and most of it flat-out untrue — he still had those 7,000, and he knew it. That's the victim stage. It masquerades as honesty, but it's really a way of handing your life off to everyone else's fault. I'm good at this one. I can blame with the best of them. But blame keeps you stuck, because if it's all someone else's doing, there's nothing left for you to actually do.

Here's the turn, though: God let him say all of it. He didn't shut Elijah up. And revealing your feelings is the beginning of healing. God let him empty the tank — and then started rebuilding him.

How you deal with depression — and reverse it

This is the whole point. The same three stages that take you down run in reverse, and that's how you deal with depression — not by white-knuckling harder, but by walking each stage backward the way God walked Elijah back.

1. Instead of victimization — take responsibility. It starts with knowing who you are before God: forgiven, accepted, loved, one of a kind. You be you — because if you aren't you, there's a hole in history, a gap in God's creative order. Owning your identity is what gives you the footing to take the next step instead of waiting to be rescued.
2. Instead of isolation — connect and get into community. For Elijah that meant an angel, a meal, rest, and a voice. For you it might mean walking into a Christian counselor's office, sitting down with a physician, being open to the good medication that's out there, or just refusing to skip the people who love you. It's a multi-pronged thing, and every prong matters. Don't drop everyone off in Beersheba.
3. Instead of exaggeration — look at the truth. Elijah missed the truth entirely. God used him to raise the dead, warn kings, and beat 450 enemies single-handed — all true, and he owned none of it in the moment. Get your eyes off your feelings and onto what's actually so.

God was in the whisper

When God finally spoke, it wasn't in the earthquake, the wind, or the fire. Three times the spectacular rolled through, and three times God wasn't in it. He was in a gentle whisper — a still, small voice.

I've walked with God more than fifty years now, and if I'm honest, I keep waiting for Him in the spectacular — the conference, the worship night, the goosebumps. Those are real and good. But more often than not, He speaks in the whisper. Which means the question was never whether God is speaking. It's whether I've gotten quiet enough to listen.

When I was a kid riding the bus, I learned what every bus driver knows at a railroad crossing: stop, look, and listen. That's the instruction here too. Stop. Look around. And listen — not hear. We say “yeah, I hear you” all day long. Hearing is passive. Listening is active. God told Elijah to get up and go back the way he came, and that broken prophet went on to anoint Elisha, his successor, who took everything to the next level.

So if you're under the broom tree right now, hear this: depression is not proof that God has left you or that your faith has failed. It put one of His greatest prophets flat on the ground — and God met him there with a meal, a nap, and a whisper. He'll meet you too. You don't have to get all the way out today. You just have to stop running, and start listening.