Depression is an epidemic.

Even well-meaning Christians find themselves trapped in a maddening pattern.

Sin, confess, promise to do better, fail again.

Sin and forgiveness, sin and forgiveness.

Rinse and repeat until you're emotionally drained and spiritually defeated. And the outcome is self-defeating misery.

Today, on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindall describes the biblical cure. In Romans 7 and 8,

Paul unveils a stunning revelation that shatters this cycle forever.

His timeless wisdom reveals the solution that moves us from spiritual agony to genuine freedom.

Chuck titled his message, From Agony to Ecstasy.

When you get to the seventh of Romans, it's dry and barren. As you get deeper into it, it's hot and arid.

And you long for relief. I often compare Romans 7 and 8 to a drive in the middle of the summer from West Texas to Colorado. The barrenness of the beginning of your journey

is Romans chapter 7. And theness of the beginning of your journey is Romans chapter 7 and the peak of the

destinations, Romans chapter 8.

And you realize in the middle of the barrenness you need help. You need help. You need encouragement in place of discouragement.

You need a purpose in place of despair. You need to win instead of wrestling with wretchedness.

You need to be rescued.

There's everything within me longing to get into the snow-capped mountains of the eighth chapter,

but not until we've revisited one more time this struggle in chapter seven.

Paul admits two or three things. One, he says in verse 15 of chapter seven, I do not understand. Paul comes to the battle between the mind that

wants to obey and the flesh that desires to drag him back into a life of sin and he says i cannot fully explain how

this occurs in me one of the reasons he can't explain it is because it comes upon you without

announcement almost overnight often after a great victory you plunge into the wretchedness of your own flesh.

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