Yesterday we looked at various notable saints in the Bible who suffered from crippling, and sometimes paralyzing, depression. Now we’re going to look at a few examples of God’s choice servants who have likewise suffered in this manner. It may surprise you to learn that Martin Luther was among those who’ve struggled with depression.

The great hymn we all love to sing, A Mighty Fortress Is Our God, was penned by the great sixteenth-century reformer, Martin Luther (1483-1546)—during his darkest days of depression. It was a testimony to God’s power to lift him out of the prison of his soul, back to hope and strength.

As a devoted pastor, he sought to bring spiritual counsel to struggling souls. His compassion for those souls shines in numerous places, including his sermons, lectures, Bible commentaries and table talks.³

Besides observing mental difficulties in others, Luther had a greater reason to affirm their reality—he also endured many periods of depression. He described his personal experience in varied terms: melancholy, heaviness, and depression; dejection of spirit, downcast, sad, and downhearted. He suffered this way for much of his life and often revealed these struggles in his works. Luther evidently did not think it a shameful problem to be hidden.

Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892), who lit the fires of the nineteenth-century revival movement, struggled so severely with depression that he was forced to be absent from his pulpit for two to three months a year. In 1866 he told his congregation: “I am the subject of depressions of spirit so fearful that I hope none of you ever get to such extremes of wretchedness as I go to.” Those words were spoken in a sermon by Spurgeon whose marvelous ministry in London made him perhaps the greatest preacher England ever produced.