How To Defeat Doubt And Depression

    James Fraser spent thirty years of his life as a missionary in China. After five years on the field, his life became dark with doubt and depression. At that time someone sent him a magazine, and in it a verse shone out in letters of light: "And having spoiled principalities and powers, He made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it" (Col. 2:15).

    Here he saw the victory of Calvary, and the power of the Blood of Jesus as a weapon against Satan. There, in his little shack perched high up in the Lisu mountains, Fraser won a victory that was to later mean life to thousands.

    He resisted the devil vocally, as the Lord Jesus had done (Luke 4), with humble dependence on Christ’s power, and using the promises of Scripture. Right then the terrible oppression began to pass. But he had to continue steadfast in this resistance (1 Pet. 5:8-9). Satan was persistent, and he was harassed by persisting evil thoughts, which even came when he preached.

    But one day he went out of the city to one of his prayer haunts in a hidden gully in the hills, and there he claimed his deliverance on the ground of Calvary’s victory (Rev. 12:11). He shouted aloud his resistance to Satan. Right then and there, he said, the obsession collapsed like a stack of cards, to return no more!

    Satan is a defeated foe (1 John 3:8; Heb. 2:14).

    "No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper..." (Isa. 54:17).

    "Resist the devil, and he will flee..." (Jas. 4:7).