Bob: Well, welcome to another Gary Wilkerson Podcast. A special podcast today we're doing it from Gary's home.

Bob: We're going to do a follow up of a previous podcast where we talked about depression; suicide as a general topic. More specifically, pastors and suicide.

Bob: It got a lot of reaction from our viewers and our listeners and many of them wrote in, in fact, was one of the topics that got the most response on our social media sites. Some people asking questions, some people making comments about what you said what we talked about. I want to go through a few of those and have you answer them, answer the questions and respond to some of the comments that were made since it got such a great reaction from our viewers and listeners.

Bob: Ivan asked God or actually makes the statement, God can heal the mind and bring peace. We talked in the first podcast about those who have a physiological problem that you probably do need to seek some medical help. Let's take those who are more spiritually depressed and emotionally depressed. God can heal them, can't He?

Gary: Yes, absolutely. This sounds terrible, but I think the reason that not all pastors, being what they've gone through, have committed suicide, I don't mean to be glib about that, but they're in some deep stuff and some painful stuff. When it's not the accusations and stuff I was talking about, the role of a pastor is unlike any other vocation in the world because the paramedic is there during the accident while the pastor walks alongside them too.

The funeral home director takes care of the death of the family member. The doctor takes care of the cancer patient. The teacher educates the one with the learning disability. The pastor is there for all that. He's hearing all of the family suffering. He's hearing all the divorces. He's hearing… and so he or she is exposed to the depths of human suffering, unlike any other profession. It's like without the grace of God, probably every pastor would have been depressed, would have quit, would have given up, would have committed suicide.

I believe it is the healing power of God that has kept 99.999% of us from clinical severe depression. Maybe more have given up and changed careers when they really didn't need to but just couldn't receive that kind of love from God that they need to. Certainly, yes, absolutely, God can heal. It's not even a question that needs to be discussed. I've seen him heal. I've prayed for people and seen them healed.

I met a man in Europe who had been at one of our meetings the year before, and the next year he came back and said, "I came here. I was going to kill myself but the conference changed my life." That's the miracle he's it's talking about. On the other hand, God can heal cancer, and yet people die of cancer. He can save marriages and reconcile marriages, but a lot of marriages end up in divorce, even if the wife has been praying for 10 years to reconcile the marriage.

If you can answer that, you've got, besides the Bible, the bestselling book ever written, then the most important sermon ever preached, why are some people healed and some people are not? I honestly don't know the answer to that. I don't know, and somebody can enlighten me on that. Just as long as your answer is not some sort of tin can platitude of—

Bob: There are plenty of those around.

Gary: Yes, but a real deep, meaningful sense to this would be important. Yes, God can heal, but the reality is He either doesn't or there's a bigger purpose that we don't know, or we're not receiving it the right way, whatever it is, it doesn't always happen. When it doesn't happen, it causes pain, it causes hardship, and it causes sometimes to do that, but it's something that I talk about a lot.

I think we've already talked about this in one of our podcasts before, how I have taken great joy and delight in redefining certain phrases that we throw out. Abundant life means I got a big house, a nice car, and my family's always happy. I never have cancer and I never get in a car wreck, and 4.0 student and all that kind of stuff. If you define abundant life that way, then you don't have abundant life because you're not going to get that.

Even Jesus didn't have it, but if you define abundant life as being you can press through those painful circumstances and still be joyful and still be content, and still have life inside of you. That is abundant life. The opposite of abundance, the word is scarcity. Scarcity tends to get people to be fearful. The opposite of abundant life is a fearful life. What if the circumstances don't work out? Well, where abundant life is, I don't care if--I care, but that's not my highest priority.

It's making sure all my circumstances, "God, you better make sure all of my circumstances of life are storm free, problem free. If not, you're not a good God and you're not keeping your promises." That's a false view of abundant life. The true view of abundant life is, in the midst of this, there's no scarcity. I have abundance of peace, I have abundance of joy, even I have-- Now, that scarcity is the opposite of generosity.

I can give to other people, even-- That's when you see-- I think the deepest people you see, the deepest, real spiritual people are not those who can quote scripture a lot. That real deepest people are, and you've seen this before, they've been through such pain. Their stories are like, "You endured that and yet you're more concerned about me. You're other-centered. You have a grace about you, a generosity about you.” Those are the people I love being around, that they have endured.

Not the person that, I've heard it said before, there's a person who shouts the coordinates down from the mountaintop like, "I'm up here and here's how I got here. You can come up here too if you follow my 10-step program and pay $49 for my 12-point thing and buy my book. I'm shouting my coordinates from the mountaintop." Whereas the people we tend to learn from are those who are on the edge, the precipice of the abyss.

They're right on the edge but they're not jumping. They look into that and they've survived, and not only survived but now they're thriving. They're giving something away that is not, "Look at me, how great I am on the mountaintop," but, "Let me share in your suffering. I know how to walk alongside of you, and I know how to speak in your life." There's a depth about them, and that to me is abundant life.

That may be why some are healed and some are not because the abundant life is not everybody being healed. The abundant life is not everybody having the perfect marriage and the abundant life is not everybody being rich. The abundant life is when you don't have that and you're still generous, you're still God-fearing, and you're still loving, then you have a deeper-- You've exchanged life. You gave up the corrupt American materialistic mentality of, "I want to achieve more and be successful and famous and rich and sexy. I want all these things." You give that up, you tear that down. You're willing to replace it with, "I'm content, I have joy, I have life, I have abundance, I have peace, I have grace, I have forgiveness, I have kindness and--"

Bob: No matter the circumstances.

Gary: Yes, no matter the circumstances. In our culture today, wouldn't you say, hands down, it's like this one, success, fame, fortune, a huge following, that's what we should aspire to. God will help you get there. Follow God, he's the best way to get to the mountaintop. Even if people achieve that, that's why they're still unhappy. It's never enough like, "Okay, I got to this mountaintop. I got to get to that one because that's not making me happy.

I still feel like a failure. I still feel like I'm not enough. Whereas this person here is-- I think that's what Jesus meant when He said die to yourself. He didn't mean die to love or die to grace or die to a godly ambition that wants to extend love to a hurting world. He didn't mean die to that. He meant die to the self-built construct of our life that is based on a world system and exchange it. That's the thing, you'll never get rid of the old until you see a better alternative. For most of us, we don't see-- okay, gosh, this is hard to say, but I was reading something the other day that said, "Would you rather be a good father or a great success in your field of labor?" If I'm honest, I tend towards the great success.

Bob: We think if we're a great success, we'd be a good father. We'll take care of that in the backend, right?

Gary: Yes, but I don't know if that's what they're meaning. I think they're meaning he could be only one or the other. I know what I'm supposed to say and the good moral Christian that I am wants to be a good father, but when I look back to my history of my life, I think I've proven the opposite, that the career and the calling and the so-called work for God, I think the thing that I struggle most when I look back at my relationship with my own father was that for large portions, large chunks, he chose-- not God over us, I wouldn't mind that because you've got do that, but chose the vocational career of ministry.

Even though it's ministry-- The problem with that is when you're a child, you can't accuse that. If your dad is out there and he's running some corporation, you're like, "That corporation is more important than me? No way, dad. You've got to give me your attention." If it's ministry, you feel guilty if you come against that.

Bob:  Once again, it's a good thing that we have taken in the wrong direction.

Bob: He's somewhere else.

Gary: Yes, he's somewhere else. That hurts as well. This idea of what you value, you've got to value life, and especially exchanging the success syndrome of the American dream. Exchanging that for these really much more meaningful things, but most people can't be convinced that this compassion is more meaningful than success, or grace, whether it be extended towards others or towards yourself, is a much more meaningful way to live your life than being affluent or popular.

But we live in a culture that constantly, the whole-- if you watch TV, everything you hear on the TV is, "You're not enough. Buy my product and you'll be enough." That is the American corporate ladder, success ladder, or fame ladder that totally goes against the whole gospel is being, "That stuff, it's okay. You need some of it in your life." It doesn't hurt to have a little bit of applause and a pat on the back, but what you really want is His grace and compassion and mercy and kindness, but those things are not.

Occasionally, you'll hear a sermon series at church on them and stuff like that, but more-- would you agree with this? We're more likely to hear how to have a good marriage, how to choose your right career, how to financially be sound and secure.

Bob: We want to be a success in everything we do. Even the churches want to be a success. As you've mentioned, if the numbers aren't there, then you're a failure. We especially see it now in the era of megachurches and the rest that's going on, that's just what everybody's after. This is just a different version of it.

Gary: Then those mega-churches, gosh--and I'll put myself in that category too. I was in the deception of, "I'm not good enough, but when my church gets to be 2,000, that's the number that makes you a mega church. We were right on the edge of getting to be almost 2,000 members. I remember thinking like, "I can't wait. If we can get a couple more hundred people in the church, then I'll be a pastor of a mega church.

Then I can go to the meetings and say, yes, I'm a pastor of a mega church." It doesn't mean anything.

Megachurches, I'm not into all that. I'm lying. I actually was and probably still am to some degree. You're not only ministering to try to fill your own needs, but you're attracting people who are just like you. I'm coming to church because you're a guy who can speak to the issue of, "What do you do to get your needs met?"

I'm not talking about the need to love and to have grace. That's an appropriate spiritual hunger. One's a spiritual hunger and the other is of carnal hunger. The carnal hungry is, "Pastor, would you teach me how to become more successful? Now, how do I pray? I'm in this house but I want that house. Can you teach me how to pray?"

Bob: Even Jabez has a prayer [laughs].

Gary: Yes, right. I heard somebody say if one of the first things that God will say to the author of Prayer of Jabez is like, "Where did you get all that?"

[laughter]

Gary: That was a lot for just that one little sentence.

Bob: Yes, I understand what you're saying. Alfred brings up a point with this then. He asked the question of these pastors, can't he resign? I guess the underlying question there is, should he resign? Should a pastor going through depression that is so severe that he's considering this, should he step out?

Gary: Yes, I think so. I think you need to get diagnosed medically if you're in clinical depression. If you're not medically in a place where you're given the green light like, "Okay, you're safe. You're dealing with depression, you're dealing with suicidal thoughts, but you're managing it and you're getting the right soul care internally yourself, and externally through community and through counsel, so you're safe," but if you're fresh into it and you haven't been going through the process of understanding what you have, why you have it, maybe some strategies, how to live in the midst of it, and then maybe even, Lord willing, as we talked about earlier, the healing part of it and how to come out of it.

During that process, if you're doing all that we talked about, like you're getting those critical emails and you're self-critical, and the next Sunday sermon is going to be… Can you imagine being self-critical, and depressed, and you get up and you preach, you've just poured your gut out to people and you leave and just feel miserable, and then you get an email like, "What's wrong with you?" I think you are setting yourself up for greater soul damage to stay in the ministry at that point.

But I think, again, a lot of people do it because they don't know what else to do. They don't know if they have the finances to be able to do that. I wish there was a ministry. Maybe there's one out there and they could send in some information about how a pastor could be provided for for a season while they take a sabbatical. Again, most churches are under 200 people in America, and so they can't afford to pay a year salary while a pastor is maybe on a sabbatical getting the care that they need.

But I would recommend if possible, and this is maybe me on a mountaintop sending my coordinates down how to get there, but even if you had to work at 7-11 or something like that, and I'm not putting that job down, it's a good work that somebody is doing, but if you had to do something different that maybe don't pay as much but less demanding and give you time for the soul care, for the community that you need to build, and going into counseling, then that'd be good.

Because my kids have struggled with addiction before, I've been to a group called-- What's it called? Al-Anon. It's for the family members of those who have addictions. I love being there. I know people say like, "You shouldn't go to that because it's not Christian." It's not anti-Christian either, but I go there because it's anonymous, and so no one knows I'm a pastor or a Christian or a leader. I go there. The anonymity, it's so cool because it's like I can say what I want without a filter. I can be who I am. Isn’t that sad that a lot of pastors can't. You can't do that in a small men's ministry. Men in the group can, and the pastor can hear that like, "I'm so sorry, you're hurting," but the pastor can't say, "My wife is..."