Welcome to In the Seams, a podcast by Broken and Mended. And now your host, David Heflin.
Want to welcome you back to In the Seams and we are glad to have you. If you're, as you're
listening with us today, I'm excited to have a guest here, Dr. Terry Powell, whom I will
refer to as Terry throughout the conversation. And Terry, first of all, I just want to say
thank you for being with us. I've been looking forward to this conversation as we've been
working out getting this scheduled. I think for our audience's benefit, I'd like to read
a little bit from one of your books here and it's on the back of your book. Can you see
the cross from there? Grace in Grit for Sufferers and Sinners. I love the title by Terry Powell
and it's got a little bit of a bio here that I think will be helpful for those that will
be listening that will be new to your works and your ministry. It says Terry Powell is
faculty emeritus. Emeritus. Okay. Yeah. I stumbled over that. Wasn't ready for it. In
church ministry at Columbia International University in South Carolina, where he taught for 38
years, he served as a Christian education director on two church staffs for a total
of 12 years. And he's a licensed preacher in the PCA or Presbyterian Church in America.
Terry has taught and trained national church or Christian leaders overseas in numerous
countries. He's the author of 20 books and writes a blog on depression and faith at penetrating
the darkness dot com. A couple of these books we will have links to in the show notes, including
this one, your newest one. I'll also put that website in the show notes as well where people
can go directly to that website. In addition to his bride of over 52 years, Terry has two
grown sons, a daughter-in-law and a grandson. His hobbies include reading novels and writing
poetry. His constant prayer is, Lord, make me half the man my dog thinks I am. And Terry,
and I were kind of laughing at that beforehand as we both enjoy our dogs. And yeah, I do
agree our dogs have a higher estimation of us and is probably warranted. But let me again
just welcome you to In the Seams and I want to thank you for being with us.
Thank you. Very brief introduction to me. I am 74. My bride is 73, but she looks younger,
but I don't. I make up for it. And we had a 53rd-anniversary last week, two grown sons
and a grandson. I grew up in western North Carolina, almost in the mountains, not quite.
And a big love of my young life was baseball. I didn't care much for school, but I played
baseball through college. I lettered at two universities and was a pitcher and hard to
give up my dream of praying in the majors. I was good, but not quite that good. I also
started writing poetry when I had my first crush in the sixth grade. So I write my wife
a lot of poems and my friends and occasionally my sons. And I also have the, I teach a class
each year at the university. I retired after 38 years and a professor of church ministry
and sun Bible and Bible teaching in 2019. So now I teach one course a year and write
and do some pulpit supply.
Well it sounds like you are staying busy with a lot of good things. And I also want to just
congratulate you on your 53rd, I think you just said, anniversary. And so that's wonderful.
And thank you for telling us a little bit about yourself. And it sounds like you have
acquired a range of skills and interest. I think the one I am probably most envious of is
the writing poetry part. I have not been any good at that. And so I think it takes a special
gift to be able to endeavor into that at all really, but to be able to do it for so long.
And I'm sure your wife and others have really appreciated that over the years. Terry, what
brings us together today of course is we're going to talk a little bit about mental health
issues and for us with Broken and Mended, which focuses primarily on people struggling
with chronic pain and chronic illness. We actually have talked about this issue several
times on in the seams and I've written about it and had others write about it as well in
our in our blogs because there's so much overlap between those that are struggling with chronic
physical illnesses and those that are struggling with mental illnesses as well. I myself have
been through that. I have battled depression over the years, especially, and mine does
seem to be directly correlated to the pain. When my pain is worse, the depression and
struggle is worse there as well. When I'm feeling a little bit better, maybe not surprisingly,
that issue is not as prevalent. But of course, not everyone has that direct correlation there
because many, many factors can lead to depression and be a trigger or a factor in that. I wondered
if you might start by telling us a little bit about yourself and in terms of your journey
with depression, your and kind of how this has evolved into a ministry for you. As a
boy, when I look back now retrospectively, I realized I was often depressed, but I didn't
know how to voice it. We lived in the country. My parents had an elementary school education
and the idea of getting counseling therapy for us wasn't there. They didn't know what
to do with me sometimes. I would often be hypersensitive, very easily hurt compared
to the norm. I was very melancholy and temperament. I also would call, especially on weekends
when structure was less, I would sometimes sit on the back porch to look at the sun go
down and sit there in great hopelessness and despair. And I didn't have a circumstantial
reason for it. There wasn't anything happened. I wasn't beaten. I wasn't mistreated by my
parents. They were believers. I just felt sad, especially late in the day. It was like
sundowner syndrome. And I look back now and I realize that was depression in childhood.
I didn't know how to deal with it. As a teen, very unstable. I did not study hard. I was
a very average C student in high school. It's miraculous that I became a professor. But
I would be extremely shy to a fault, anxious, very negative in my thinking toward myself.
I cried myself to sleep literally scores of nights, wishing I could be more outgoing toward
girls. I was a 6'4", 215 pound athlete. Oh, to weigh that again. And I looked back at
my pictures and thought, I'm not bad looking, but I had an extremely negative self-image. And
my parents didn't pound that negative image into me. I just had it. So I never dated and
I cried. I'd go into sock hops after Friday night football games I attended and I'd sit
in the corner and cry, wishing I could be normal and dance. Of course, I never did. Didn't
date in high school at all. As an adult, depression shows sometimes with total numbness. I can't
feel anything. I can go through the motions of my ministry. I can go to a class and get
enthusiastic on my subject matter, but then be depressed before and after. It didn't seem
to impact my classes a lot. So I had functional depression. But the other end of it is either
robotic or numb. And then other times I'm hypersensitive. I can hear a song from like
an oldie goldie from the late 60s when I was in high school and college. And I start crying
almost automatically because those were painful days emotionally and socially for me. So I
don't know which extreme is worse. But to God's glory and grace, I don't think I've
ever missed a ministry because of it. But I've often had it before I would get up to
fill a pulpit and God somehow just turned me loose because I was well prepared. But
I have started talking about it and writing about it beginning in 2003, which was the
end of the worst two-year period of my life. Ironically, in God's sense of humor, it was
my highest rated year of 38 years at Columbia National University. But I even stopped class
once and crying over something that I didn't even understand and had to go wash my face
and come back and finish. But somehow those students saw that as strength rather than
weakness. But in 2003, I sent my testimony while I was in the midst of depression on
how God sustained me because I'd been having a lot of it along with anxiety most of my
life. It wasn't that I was never happy that I never laughed. It's just I had periodic
episodes throughout the year. And I wrote a testimony that was published by Discipleship
Journal of the Navigators long before they stopped the magazine due to finances. And
it was put up on the New York secular mental health website to foreign countries, foreign
languages. I don't even know which ones published it in their language. And I got a lot of letters
from it. They weren't used to someone, especially a man being that transparent. I didn't share
how God cured my depression. I simply say I have it. Nothing has taken it away. Meds
helped for a while and I believe in them. Counseling can help to deal with certain symptoms
relationally and how you treat people. But it had never gone away. And I and before I
wrote that article, I was driving out of state on a Sunday afternoon to go teach at a church
in Florence, South Carolina. And my son had been praying gotten to fight with somebody
who he thought was a glib about my depression. He was defending me. I prayed my wife, obviously,
I had been to counseling off and on, took meds for years and they'd send to me
no help. It can help some people, but it didn't help me a lot. And on the way to that 90-minute
drive, on Sunday afternoon, I did something a little strange. I surrendered to my depression.
I said, Lord, and I didn't do this glibly. I said, Lord, I have prayed. I have memorized
scripture to encourage me and those things sustain me and keep me going and may even
alleviate the worst of an episode. But you haven't taken it away. The common grace of
medicine and counseling helped a little but it didn't take this away. You must intend
it for good. I said this through tears, David. I give you this and I ask you to redeem it.
What do you want me to do with it if you don't take it away? I have to believe God's sovereign.
What are the implications of the fact that we've used special means of grace, common
graces, and it's still there for me. And I thought it was not audible, but I just felt
the Holy Spirit saying I want to use it. And about two months later, I did a proposal and
Discipleship Journal published my article, Hope in the midst of Depression. And I just
shared means of grace, how scripture helps, how friends help, how honest praying helps
and other things, not to take it away, but to sustain and use me in spite of it. So they
may see me as weak, but they see that God is strong. So I, he still all these years
later, 21 years later, I still have consistent episodes of down. I've learned more about
how to fight it. I've learned more about scripture memory, which is, it's not, I'm not throwing
the verse at a problem and it going away. I was accused of that. I served strong reader
once they didn't read the book closely. It's that promise that I cling to gives me hope.
And if God doesn't take it away now, I know there's a better future, but he also can alleviate
it now, shorten the stay and help me to deal with it, help me to serve others even when
I'm down that, which is not a normal thing for me. So I surrendered it and I've been
broken most of my life with this, but it's ironic that it was not only that article and
a lot of letters from it. And 2014 after a suicide on campus, they asked me to student
like to give my testimony. And that's on my website, penetrating the darkness.com. If
you go there and click on about, there's a link to that 30-minute chapel talk where I
give a lot of scripture, but I give the raw symptoms of depression through episodes from
past year. And then I go into three means of grace and then, uh, and how does, doesn't
take it away from me, but he manages it. They wanted me to be transparent, knew I would
be so students who are hurting don't think that they're not living victoriously if they
just have depression necessarily. They wanted them to feel more free to go to a counselor
or a faculty member and Dean and settle it and deal with it. So, but then after that,
I started my blog in 2017 and just the week, the days I'm down, I'll often get an email
of something of a reader I've not heard from before and say how much they were encouraged
about my honesty and the means of grace that have helped me. So, uh, God seems to be using
it and, uh, and now he's given me a privilege to be on podcasts.
Yeah. Yeah. Amen. I'm certainly glad that you have followed God faithfully through this
journey and certainly resonate with the idea of surrender and brokenness and the moments
when it's not the moments that we say that we can't, we're most powerful. It's probably
the moments we say we can't, we can't without you God. And, um, so I really appreciate that.
And you might've alluded to it a couple of times. I did want to ask because I think from
a standpoint of chronic illness, chronic pain, that the church does get a lot wrong on that
issue. And I know that it does with mental health issues as well. Um, and so I want to
get your perspective on that. What does the church often get wrong about mental health?
Uh, what, what, how can it grow and improve and how it speaks about and addresses this
issue? David, the landscape is improving because every
year two or three, four or more books come out by counselors and some cases pastors who
struggle with, for example, depression, and yet they see it redemptively. They don't,
and God's using them. So we're improving it, but there's still the mindset that if
you just had more faith or are you living in disobedience, I have a neighbor, a good
man came to Christ late. He's near 70. Um, he did well in business. He's never been highly
sensitive or melancholy, but he doesn't understand. He thinks that I should have total control
over every emotion all the time as a Christian. And he made implications that I must be living
in some sin or some area of disobedience for me to struggle so much. And he doesn't realize
that in some ways God's using this pain to help others. Um, but he's not far enough along
to understand this because the causes of depression are a lot more complex than some people want
to admit. So yes, there's still misconceptions that perhaps a book that deals
with them briefly, but effectively is, uh, he's a pastor again. I think David Murray,
M-U-R-R-A-Y wrote a 115 page book a few years ago called Christians Get Depressed Too. It's
got in a simple brief book, it's got one of the best treatments of the misconceptions
and some research on depression. And he didn't come from his own experience, but from others
he knows, um, and talking about depression. By the way, um, if anyone listening, maybe
you could put this on your site too, would write me at terry.powell at C I U dot E D
U my email. I will send them electronically a two page list of resource organizations
and books and a few other bloggers that I know and, um, and so forth that I prepared
last year. Yeah, no, that'd be great. Uh, we will, we will put that email in the show
notes as well as a link to, uh, David Murray's book that you brought up and some of these
other things that we're talking about. You know, I do think we, we have seen a little
bit of a, uh, growing, you know, some kind of a, a better understanding, some growth
toward this understanding of mental, mental health. And, and obviously people like yourself
speaking up about it and has really helped that to take place. Unfortunately, there are
some, uh, prominent pastors and others that, uh, still sometimes try to set the church
back by still implying or sometimes explicitly stating that, you know, that is a depression
is a cause of some spiritual, uh, malformation or immaturity or, uh, some, something lacking.
Uh, and, and I'm not going to mention his name today. There, uh, there's some people
might know. I wrote about it in my blog recently about a, a pretty well-known pastor who has
said some very detrimental and harmful things about unfortunate. Yeah, it is, it is, and
it hurts. It hurts a lot of people. Um, and so I think we have to continue speaking out
so that we can, in other words, we can't assume these miss, these misconceptions have been
corrected. Uh, and then we don't have to address them anymore because I think we do have these
setbacks because the people still talking about things, which they really don't know
about. Uh, I do want to talk a little bit about your books. You know, you, I know you've
written several books along, along these lines. I'm particularly going to ask questions here
about the book, Serve Strong Biblical Encouragement to Sustain God's Servants. And that book,
I believe you told me as we were talking before we went live is, was written about 10 years
ago. I've read a little bit of it. I haven't got a chance to, to read the whole thing yet,
but what I've read has been very, um, very touching, very impactful for me. And so I
got some questions I want to ask about it, but let me just start with what is this book
about and why did you choose to write it? The book is roughly 27 comparatively short
chapters of principles and insights from God's Word that have sustained me through my years
of great depression and anxiety. Um, I've already mentioned it's not a cure, but what
are the truths that I, and from my devotion or reading of other books or whatnot that
have ministered to me to help me in vocational ministry, keep serving strong despite my tendency
for depression and my temperamental weakness. So this is springing from my experience. In
fact, in one of the chapters, I think it's a chapter called Captain of the Arnauts, where
I talk about D.L. Moody and his limitations that I give a page or two of my own testimony
in a very raw way about my depression. Now, the book is not just for Christian workers
who are depressed, but I've had a lot of notes about it because I give that abbreviated testimony
within the book. The book tries to combat the tendency that's all of us in ministry,
whether we're depression prone or not, we're going to experience some opposition. We're
going to experience various forms of spiritual warfare because we're in church work and ministry.
And we're going to have times of apparent barrenness where we don't see fruit. We may
be bearing it or planting seeds, but we may wonder if God's using us. We may be overworked
because a lot of pastors and other Christian leaders, missionaries are, and we're physically
and emotionally exhausted. And we may feel inadequate when for certain tasks that are
integral to our work. So I wanted to say it's not just depression, but what are the truths
that can help people serve strong? Does it mean you won't be weak? In fact, I have a
chapter on the ministry of weakness. I have a chapter in the book on the ministry of pain.
I give stories from the life of Pastor Charles Spurgeon, who had both physical and emotional
issues. He was known to laugh a lot, but he also had depression. He said one time in his
20s, I weep like a baby and I can't tell you why. Another time he said, you might as well
fight with the morning mist as fight with this all be clouding hopelessness. And so,
but some biographers from way back do not mention this, but the book by Zach Eswine,
Spurgeon Sorrows is not just for pastors, but anybody in ministry who gets depressed
should read that. It's outstanding about how he handled it and his thoughts on it. Spurgeon
Sorrows, S-1-E-S-W-I-N-E. It's a paperback book that tells about his severe gout. He
died in around 58 and it's also his depression, which was intermittent, but it's very encouraging.
But I wrote Serve Strong, what I call for serious volunteer workers like a Sunday school
teacher or an elder in a church. If they're active in ministry or someone who shares their
faith, I've known laymen with the gift of evangelism that just share their faiths naturally.
If you do this, you're going to face opposition. So I have a whole chapter on the power of
God's word and his promises to use it. I have a chapter reminding of his presence when we're
doing ministry, whether we feel it or not. And I have a material dealing with the success
syndrome in ministry, which is a big part of Western culture and how God views success
somewhat differently than a lot of us do, even as conservative leaders. And the whole
bottom line is if we absorb these, we will be encouraged, at least I was. I'm sharing
what I've shared all through and on in classes since the 1980s, more later. And then I decided
about 2013, I want to write it because somebody else depressed or not could use this encouragement.
Sure. Yeah, I certainly appreciate it too, as a person who is a pastor and preacher.
And I think, you know, sometimes I'm speaking a little bit of confession here myself, I
want to project an image of strength that I got it all together, even though I know
that that's not true. And in my best moments, I know that that's actually not what's going
to help people. And I know there's a lot of pressure sometimes on people who, as you said,
are volunteers in churches and teachers and elders, as well as people who are paid staff,
to always project an image of success and really a triumphalism type of faith. We end
up doing great harm to ourselves and to others when we do that. And it's not in step with
what the Bible teaches. Of course, I rely a lot there on the Apostle Paul. One of the
most impactful things he said to me that I remind myself often is this idea that I boast
in my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may rest on me or rest upon me. And I believe
that's in the 2 Corinthians 12. 12, 9, and 10. As you know, he thought his thorn in the
flesh, we're not told what it is, possibly a physical setback. He thought that limited
him and God says, no, that just keeps you from being proud in light of all I'm doing
through you and in you. So I've always defined brokenness. And I have two chapters on serve
strong on brokenness and illustrate it. But I know a person can be abused, go through
horrible things like rape. And that's a type of brokenness that I'm not saying is good.
Overall, brokenness, if it results in a settled, what I call a subtle posture of my heart and
mind, where I'm more humble, I'm less prone to be self sufficient and trust myself and
a lot of my weakness or background, or I am more sepulous, worry less about what people
think about me, I'm more concerned about loving others, because some form of brokenness, whether
that was an estrangement in relationship, or the loss of someone or a career that didn't
pan out something to make me humble, to cause me to have desperate dependence on the Lord,
and to give me a spirit of submission and say, All right, God, I'm ready to use me.
So God can redeem brokenness. In fact, he may use it, run down a late Southern Baptist
pastor, he wrote a couple of books before he died over 20 years ago, I believe. But he said
once on a tape I heard in the 1970s, he said, God keeps a man usable by keeping him weak.
That goes back to 2nd Quintian 12, 9 and 10, God says, I'm not going to remove this from
you're going to trust me and my strength for your weaknesses. And but he also said, this
is something that I see in my own depression, I see it in Johnny Erickson Tata, dramatically,
and others that he said, your greatest area of usefulness to God may stem from your greatest
area of pain. greatest area of usefulness to God may stem from their greatest area of
pain. Now, he was known to say, gee, you'll never know Jesus is all you need until he's
all you have left. And only years later, after many tears listening to his messages that
I discovered that before he made those takes, he found his teenage son dead of suicide on
Thanksgiving Day. So he had been broken, it didn't change his ministry, it didn't take
away his faith, but he had a sensitivity to hurting people out there like that. He was
broken in a good sense of his heart was broken and tender and he was desperately dependent
on the Lord for sustenance and ministry.
Yes, that's, that's, that's powerful. And I got the opportunity to read these chapters
on brokenness. And obviously, even it relates very well to what we're talking about in our
ministry broken and mended. And, you know, our the emphasis on mended really having to
do with the Japanese art form of Kintsugi, where you see the the gold in the scene, well,
hence the name of our podcast in the seams, you know, where where the precious metal is
in the seams of our brokenness, where the glory of God shows through in our weakness
in such incredible biblical teaching on that throughout throughout the whole Bible, whole
canon, whether we're talking back to books like the Book of Job or in the ministry of
Jesus. And I think most explicitly is spelled out in the ministry in the in the works of
Paul. But it is very different than what we see in our in our world in general. And unfortunately,
sometimes the church has been influenced too much by certainly the Western view of success.
And that has made it seem impossible for us at times to boast in our weaknesses, it's
made it difficult for us to fully surrender. And I look back to earlier parts in my ministry,
and I wanted to be surrendered, but maybe halfway and still be in control in the other
half. That's not really surrender at all. In the chapter called Harnessing Our Potential,
you point to an interesting dilemma that elevates our calling over brokenness. And you quote
Vance Havner. This is the quote, we are trying to get young people to volunteer and say,
here am I, before they have ever said, woe is me. So I want to ask the question, why
does our calling, here am I, flow most powerfully from our brokenness, woe is me?
Well, I think whatever causes or form of brokenness a person experiences that they are going to
be I've mentioned it before, they're going to be weaned from pride and self sufficiency.
I'm very alarmed even on local levels, the pride I see in ministry, even with people
who never write and so forth, and they have a limited platform. And God says in Isaiah,
I think it's 42, eight, I will not share my glory with another. And I have to weep. Because,
I mean, there's fingerprints of my humanity and pride on about everything I do. But I
say, Lord, my motives are mixed, but I'm here, use me. So by being broken in the way I have
by him not taking away this source of pain, it leaves me dependent upon him. If even if
for no other reason, I pray, Lord, help me get through the day, Lord, help me to teach
my class today with effectiveness, no matter why I feel beforehand, I am forced in a sense
to be radically dependent on strength that's not mine naturally. So I think that's one
big benefit of the brokenness. And it also I'm not talking about sin being the cause
of depression, but I also it's it's brokenness to realize my potential to sin. And I know
where my thoughts go sometimes. I mean, John Owen, who John Piper calls the greatest devotional
writer, and some of his mega books on sin and temptation that have been edited down for
modern readers. But he warned his congregation over 300 years ago about what he called the
indwelling sin of believers. Yes, you have the Holy Spirit within he emphasized Romans
eight. But he said, you've got to recognize that there's warfare going on and your heart
and mind are battlegrounds, even if you are the Lord's. So he said, we take our own potential
to sin too lightly. And remind you, I think if I don't still see Terry Powell's potential
to harm the Lord's name, and to break up my marriage or whatnot, even in my 70s, then
I think there's a word for a person like that. And it's called victim. Because I'm scared.
I'm scared of my sin potential. And every day I have to confess before the Lord and
in tears and, and say, Lord, purify me or Lord, keep me strong. I am forced to rely
now sometimes broken experience can make a person bitter. But I say, Lord, break my heart.
And there's one sense in which the only thing that improves by breaking it is the human
heart. If it if that leads me to tenderness toward other people, that leads me to trust
the Lord Paul when he went through great pressure and persecution in Asia, and he was not a
melancholy temperament. He was pretty cleric. But Paul says, as you know, in Second Corinthians
one, he talks about I have comfort you with what I've been comforted from by God, I've
suffered, and I give you the comfort I received in my suffering. Then he says in verses eight
and nine, the second 20 and one, we had this experience in Asia, this difficulty, we despaired
even of life. So whatever he went through also affected his attitude in his mind and
his heart. But he said, we learned to trust not in yourselves, but in God who can raise
the dead. That was the effect of his pain. But it's a good thing.
You know, when you think about the context of Paul saying those things, as he was talking
about the things that they went through that perhaps others were even saying was a sign
of weakness and a negative sense that they were on the attack against him. And they had
the things that they were boasting in with their credentials, that it's in that context
that Paul teaches us how to boast in our weaknesses. And yeah, I love both Corinthians letters,
but second Corinthians, I think, especially speaks to this brokenness that we're discussing
right now. You write quite a bit about a influential pastor or professor, I should say named Buck
Hatch in your chapter, which is also about brokenness, I think part two, called Wanted
Wounded Soldiers. And certainly we could see the Apostle Paul in a similar light. But there
were stories that were shared by his son that demonstrated how God changed people's lives
through Buck's brokenness. They were powerful stories. Certainly, people will get the book
and read these chapters, they'll be touched by them. But here's the quote that stuck out
to me. This is from his son, Nathan. He says, Buck Hatch's life demonstrated that the divine
economy inverts natural priorities. In Christ's kingdom, the last shall be first. A life is
saved by losing it. And weakness confounds strength. And that is just one of those wow
quotes to me. And because it just says so much. And I particularly was grappling with
that latter part and weakness confounds strength. So focusing on that last phrase, weakness
confounds strength, how do the struggles of chronic conditions, and we'll say whether
they're physical or mental or both, how do they show the truth of that statement, weakness
confounds strength?
By the way, Nathan, when he wrote that, Buck Hatch's son was history professor as an evangelical
Protestant at Notre Dame. And he later became president of Wake Forest University. He's
retired now in North Carolina. But Buck was not only, he was still counseling students
when he was no longer teaching all the way into the 90s. He died in the late 90s. But
for his 80th birthday, Nathan published that and surprised him with it in Christianity
Today, called the Blessing of Brokenness. And his dad, Philip Yancey, I think I quote
him in that chapter, Yancey was a student and he said some bad things to say about some
of the legalism and hardness of our environment back when he was here. It's not that way
now to that extent. But he said, Buck Hatch untangled some of my negative views of God.
So he had a big influence on Philip Yancey as well. But he was shy. He almost never ate
with anybody in the cafeteria. He would meet one to one with people and counsel up to 10
hours a week and never charge because he had a background in psychology. But he came from
a broken home, a well to do home financially, but heard his parents argue and would sit
outside the door and shake his head as a boy and feel great grief over it. But he's had
depression much of his life. But yet, if you ask, I am not exaggerating this. If you asked
anybody who's still alive from the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s into the 80s, what professor impacted
them most and it was James Buck Hatch. Buck was his nickname. And the lives have changed.
He's dynamic in the class, but like I'm not saying I'm comparing myself to him, but he
was not really relational outside of class except for one on one dealing with hurting
people. But he was a great example of great usefulness of somebody who had great pain.
Even growing up with his kids, he would sometimes come to the dinner table, all six people,
six kids and his wife and never say a word for 30 to 45 minutes because he was so depressed.
But he kept on, he kept serving the Lord. He didn't talk about it much publicly like
me, but he still had a significant ministry. So it's again, example, here's the issue.
In Psalm 50, I think it's 15, the Lord says, call on me in the day of trouble. I shall
rescue you and you will honor me. Obviously, he doesn't keep us from all trouble, but he
will do something. There's a direct link grammatically between the idea of calling on God, his work
on our behalf, and then him being honored. And Charles Spurgeon's analysis of that verse
from many years ago, of course, was that the giver gets the glory. God gets more glory
when I'm weak and needy, not when I'm strong and have it all together, because I'm forced
to call on him for help, get me through this day, whatever. And then when others who know
me and they're around me, they know if I am able to keep serving or keep speaking or teaching
and writing and living, they shake their heads and look at me and say, well, I know Powell,
that can't be him, it must be God. So God gets more glory. Spurgeon said it this way
in his analysis. He said, God gets from us most glory when we get from him most grace.
Have that quote in Serve Strong Too in another chapter. But you know, so when I'm needy and
need a lot of grace to get through the day, that's when God gets glory, as long as I go
and give him that neediness and let him use me. That way he gets more glory. I tell my
students I became increasingly transparent in my last decade or two of teaching about
my struggles. But I said, it's okay if you see Terry Powell is weak. I know some of you
do because you're right. I am. But as long as you see my Savior that I lean on is strong.
That's the key. When you see his strength, keeping me up, keeping me alive, keeping me
useful. That's the key.
Well, I was very touched by both of those chapters. I believe in the book, if remember
correctly, chapters 11 and 12. But in any case, it certainly gave me an appetite for
the rest of what you have to say in that book. And also, I just as an aside, you know, about
Philip Yancey, you know, I think Philip Yancey has impacted probably maybe millions of people,
you know, through his writings. And as far as popular authors go, I feel like he's one
of the most humble, grounded, you know, and gives you something of, you know, depth. And
you could tell it just, it comes from somebody who is deeply rooted in the Lord. So it was
exciting for me to see that connection to what was I'm sorry, Buck Hatch. Yeah, you
said Buck was his nickname. But it was exciting to think that here's someone maybe who didn't
even think a lot of himself that ends up influencing somebody that has gone on to impact millions
of people and impact them in the right way. That's the thing about Philip Yancey. Like
you can tell it's not out of, you know, any kind of any kind of pride, or, you know, wanting
to be someone that we now call influencers or anything like that. He's just faithfully
serving the Lord. And it happens to be that he's he's a pretty good writer as he does
that. And so that allows him to reach a lot of people. So that was a neat connection.
And I look forward to reading the rest of that book. I know that's not your most recent
book. Your most recent book, if I understand correctly, is Can You See the Cross From There?
Grace and Grit for Suffers and Sinners. And so I wanted to ask a little bit about that
book. And also, if you just want to elaborate, I think we've touched on some of the resources
available throughout our conversation. But if there's anything else you'd like to add
in terms of resources, and maybe talk a little bit about your new book.
Yeah. Well, the new book is unique. It started out as a devotional book. The chapters, because
of the development of content, became longer than a typical devotional. But I wrote 31
chapters, and everything from a chapter on listening well, a chapter on our speech and
conversations and biblical guidelines for them. There's two chapters on the value of
Christian friendship and fellowship to sustain us through hard times. There's several chapters
on God Lament Prayers, where I pray to God for purifying and changing my heart. I deal
with issues of personal revival and corporate revival. And when do you know if it comes?
I have a chapter on the sovereignty of God and suffering based upon a poem I wrote to
a couple on a church who lost their 23 year old son on a mission trip when he was going
on climbing a mountain to be up high to be with God and have potions. He was a medical
student almost finished and was going to go overseas on missions and so forth for part
of his year every year. And my wife taught him piano for 10 years. So I wrote a poem
for memorial service, which I preached and gave it to his parents. But that's in there.
But then I go into several people's experiences on how that mysterious but special doctrine
of God's sovereignty is actually something that can comfort, won't take all pain away,
but it sustains and comforts people when they're depressed or when they're hurting in many
ways. So there's also several chapters on the concept of preaching to yourself. Paul
Tripp has written and talked on this. John Piper many years ago has. But for years I've
been teaching this practice as key to my own spiritual journey because I preach to myself
God's word. I remind myself of promises when I'm hurting. It doesn't necessarily end a
depression episode or a frustration, but it sustains me. It keeps me going. I will pray.
I may not feel God's presence for a long time, but I literally remind myself of promises.
Matthew 28 20 part of the Great Commission, Isaiah 41 10, do not fear for I am with you.
I don't multiply memorize verses like that just for my teaching. It's for my life. So
it's not like I throw a verse at something and I clippantly think it's going to go or
the problems goes away. No, it gives me a redemptive look at it. It helps me to how
I pray about it. It sustains me. So I'm unapologetically whether I'm tempted, I'll take promises on
temptation like second, that's long industry. Three, the Lord is faithful who will protect
and strengthen you against the evil one. I quote promises to myself on a variety of issues,
not just despondency, to help give me hope and sustenance to keep going. And it certainly
does that for me. So I have several chapters where I illustrate how to do that against
different type of foes, not only despondency, discouragement and ministry, but also temptation.
So but a lot of it's focused on how do I appropriate the gospel? Am I really delighting in God's
forgiveness or do I still punish myself for things I've dealt with and yet I still feel
guilty over false guilt? So that's why I named it What I Did. There's a strong emphasis.
Am I taking the benefits of Jesus death seriously? Could I take just a moment to read a short
poem that entered it? Sure. No, that would be great. 31 chapters start with a faith poem.
It's not just a poem about anything. And some I wrote decades ago and some I wrote two or
three years ago. This one I wrote in 1989 when I was first beginning to get help with
depression. My wife thought I was suicidal. I probably was. And she called two people.
My current pastor was only there a couple of years and an older student I'd had in class
who was pastoring a different church locally after he graduated. Well, my pastor took me
out to breakfast and tried to encourage me to get medical intervention because I just
thought it was a faith issue. And when I did for the first couple of years, I had some
great help through the medication. It later waned in effectiveness. And then the other
gentleman, the young pastor, knocked on my door at night. I was reading the newspaper
and my kids were school age. But he comes in around seven o'clock after dinner and I
didn't know my wife had called him. And he said, I've heard you've had a rough day. I
said, yes. And he knew I was depression prone and he was too. He said, I just want you to
know I'm by your side until nine o'clock, two hours. You can read to your kids. You
can study for next day's class. You can read the newspaper. You can watch TV. But I'm not
leaving your side for two hours. Just know that. I wrote this poem to those two men.
One of the means of grace, whether the problem is discouragement about ministry or depression
or other struggles, obviously God likes to use the body of Christ in our lives, a good
friend. I've learned though that a friend can help me, for example, in my despondency
unless I'm willing to look weak and be transparent and open about it. As Galatians 6.2 says,
bear one another's burdens. So I need to tap into that means of grace and yet I have to
share my burdens. And so that's something we're not always willing to do. One man who
came by my side to sit with me for two hours on a very depressed day, back around 1089,
he was a local pastor, but not my pastor, but I knew him well. And when he came to sit
with me for two hours, I later wrote this poem. I titled it incarnation. The load is
heavy. My body is bent. My spirit too is weak and spent. Darkness hovers so the sun is high.
Too tired to pray. Too numb to cry. I'm feeling hopeless on a downward slide. Then you knock
and come alongside. Encouraging words, a listening ear. I'm reassured that Christ is near. When
pain turns a heart to stone, no one should have to go it alone. In time and space through
thick and thin, God wraps his love in human skin. I went on to give other illustrations
in biblical teaching on the importance of one another's bearing each other's burdens
and the need to be transparent about it. And I have other chapters on that. So every chapter
of this book, can you see the cross from there, starts with a faith poem on a vital topic.
And then I have anywhere from one to four pages of biblical teaching. And then I will
have a prayer and then a scripture quote other than what I may use in the copy of the article
chapter. And then I'll have a quote on another author on that topic. So that's my latest,
I think it's the most significant in one sense. And it's available at Amazon.
Okay. Well, thank you. And we'll link that as well. And, you know, I think that's very
powerful, of course, and part of what can minister to us most in our brokenness, I think,
is recognizing what God has done in the incarnation. And it's, of course, what makes Christianity
unique. But then we inhabit that or we continue that ministry of incarnation with one another.
And it sounds like your friend was able to do that. And so I appreciate you sharing that.
I wanted to also go back to one other thing here in closing. You mentioned, you know,
preaching to yourself. And it's a little subtle distinction there. I think that's different
than preaching at yourself. And where I'm kind of going through the idea of reminding
myself of God's promises and assurances, I was actually working on something earlier
today where I was talking about the inner critic and how our inner critic is always
accusing us of things and how that's more akin to the voice of Satan than it is the
voice of God. But I think as we take that inner critic out of our lives, especially
when it's accusatory, what a great thing to bring back into to fill that void with the
promises of God and how that preaching to ourselves builds us up and reminds us of truth
and reminds us of God's love for us and how He will never abandon us. Thank you so much.
Because preaching to myself, is it because I and or Satan say negative things to myself
that are not right. God doesn't care for God's not with me, or you cannot overcome this temptation,
or you just messed up with your grandson again when we had an argument. And I will, I will
get upset at myself. But the preaching is to comfort and to give truth to replace that
negativism. It is giving a biblically based rebuttal to false beliefs and negative thinking
that isn't biblical. So I'm very qualified.
Well, it's just I happen to be writing my Bulletin article for my church about that
today. And so it was just fresh in my mind. And, you know, if I think I think it just
compliments so well what I was thinking about earlier, because some of us grew up in traditions
and circumstances where a very negative view of God was constantly reinforced in a God
that was always negatively assessing us. So you can imagine combining it out then that
theology with a bad, you know, with the battle of depression and where you already have a
lot of negative self taught going on. And you combine that with a reinforcing bad theology,
just how harmful it could be. So how much more important than is it going to be for
us to be able to preach to ourselves the truths and the love of God?
Yeah, we're preaching grace to ourselves and the different things that God promises to
dispel and refute the lies that we tell ourselves and that Satan whispers.
Amen. Well, Terry, thank you so much for being with us today. You know, certainly excited
for our listeners to get an opportunity to hear this conversation that we got to we got
to have and we'll link all the that stuff in the all those resources in our show notes.
And then I will also include your email if they want to get that list of resources that
you said you would make available to them. So thank you so much. And of course, I encourage
you to go to brokenamended.org and see some of the resources that we have there for chronic
pain and chronic illness and support groups that we have as well as some the blog post
and podcast, which, of course, you found our podcast if you happen to be listening to this.
But you'll also notice that we do talk about mental health and anxiety and depression and
the need to be transparent about this and to speak up. And Terry, I appreciate, too,
you kind of alluded to it, you know, the importance of speaking up, I think, as a man, because
a lot of times men think that they can't, they shouldn't speak up about their weaknesses.
We're taught not to do that. And so I appreciate your humility. I appreciate your transparency.
And it is obvious to me that God is using that to great effect through your life into
the lives of others. And I believe that in that he is receiving glory. So thank you very
much for being with us, Terry.