I was encouraged this morning by this post. Here is a exert:

And Spurgeon himself was very familiar with those ebbs and the winter season of the soul. John Piper, in giving a biographical address about Mr. Spurgeon, noted his recurrent battles with depression. John Piper writes,

It is not easy to imagine the omni-competent, eloquent, brilliant, full-of-energy Spurgeon weeping like a baby for no reason that he could think of. In 1858, at age 24 it happened for the first time. He said, “My spirits were sunken so low that I could weep by the hour like a child, and yet I knew not what I wept for.”….

He saw his depression as his “worst feature.” “Despondency,” he said, “is not a virtue; I believe it is a vice. I am heartily ashamed of myself for falling into it, but I am sure there is no remedy for it like a holy faith in God.”4

Spurgeon would once write, “This depression comes over me whenever the Lord is preparing a larger blessing for my ministry.”5 Charles Spurgeon was very familiar with a downcast, troubled soul.

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758)

So was Jonathan Edwards. In his biography on Edwards, George Marsden writes, “We know that he [Edwards] also suffered from depressions throughout his life….Even as he kept the disciplines of the faith, he was frequently afflicted by times of spiritual deadness.”6 Jonathan Edwards was frequently afflicted by times of spiritual deadness.

Martin Luther (1483–1546)

And so was Martin Luther. On one particular occasion when he was greatly discouraged—which was not unusual for Luther—he was forcefully reminded of this by his wife, Katharine. Seeing him unresponsive to any word of encouragement, one morning she appeared dressed in black mourning clothes. No word of explanation was forthcoming, and so Luther, who had heard nothing of a bereavement, asked her, “Katharine, why are you dressed in mourning black?”

“Someone has died,” she replied.

“Died?” said Luther. “I have not heard of anyone dying. Whoever can have died?”

“It seems,” his wife replied, “that God must have died.”7

Luther got the point.