Charles Haddon Spurgeon and His Struggle with Depression

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“Charles Spurgeon is known as one of the greatest preachers in history. Not everyone knows about his ongoing battle with depression. Even fewer people know about his advocacy for people who lived with the same—or a similar—condition.” - Ref21

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Spurgeon on Suffering Depression and Trials

Perhaps it isn’t commonly known that Charles Spurgeon suffered from depression. In his book, Spurgeon on the Christian Life, Michael Reeves notes that today he would most certainly be diagnosed as clinically depressed.

At age twenty-two he was the pastor of a large church and the father of twin babies. While he was preaching to thousands of people, some pranksters began yelling “fire.” They created a stampede killing seven people and severely injuring twenty-eight others. Reeves cites his wife Susannah,

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Should Pastors Admit They Struggle with Depression?

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“For starters, there’s oversharing. We’re hardly meant, as ambassadors of Christ, to talk about ourselves all the time. Also, not everyone in the church needs to know about everything you struggle with.” - TGC

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Why a ‘Health and Wealth’ Approach to Scripture Leaves Us More Depressed

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“Our analyses suggest that reading scripture for insights into attaining health and healing exacerbated the adverse effects of poor self-rated health on depressive symptoms, a finding consistent with an emergent literature on the ‘dark side’ of religious and spiritual coping…” - CToday

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