What is a chemical imbalance?

This is another way of saying there is or seems to be something physical within your trouble. It's typically used for problems that we call psychiatric or psychiatric disorders: ADD, OCD, depression, panic attacks, bipolar. For us, chemical imbalance will imply a few things. One, specific causes are unclear. Growing faith and radical repentance is essential as in all life, but it is not necessarily likely to eradicate the struggle. Two, since the phrase tends to link to psychiatric disorders, you usually want to keep it quiet. For some reason, we still feel the lesser when we have these particular struggles. Three, medication is usually suggested. Yet here perhaps is the most important thing to keep in mind. As soon as we hear the phrase, God typically has no place in our struggle. And if our struggle is attached to a more specific name like depression, ADD, OCD, and we can't find that problem mentioned in the Bible, we feel as though we are on our own.

So with that particular problem in mind, here are two things to remember. It might be helpful for you to revise the phrase “chemical imbalance” into something less technical sounding. This is really hard. This is really hard. We might not know why it is hard in that it has akin to all kinds of different suffering. Whatever the cause, ALS, cancer, Parkinson's disease, you need other people, and you need more of Jesus. A passage to keep in mind that can help orient you is this, 2 Corinthians 4:16: "Therefore, we do not lose heart, though outwardly we are wasting away. Physically, we are wasting away. Yet inwardly, in our hearts, we are being renewed day by day." So what we do is we fix our eyes not on what is seen but on what is unseen. What is seen is temporary, what is unseen is eternal. Attend to the normal matters of the heart that are relevant to us all. We don't love as we should. Anger can creep in. We're slow to turn to Jesus in our fears and anxieties. We're slow to talk to him. We can hide old sins and pain. We're vulnerable to believing Satan's lies. You're beyond hope. God doesn't care. Those are his prominent lies. We need Jesus in the midst of these difficult troubles, and Jesus typically uses people.

The second thing to remember is this: Should you pursue medication or other physical treatments? There's certainly nothing wrong with pursuing such things, and they could be helpful. So you get advice. That's what wisdom does. What might you expect? There are lots of unknowns in psychiatric disorders. Unlikely will you find a chemical cure, but you would settle usually for alleviating some of the pain.

Let me summarize with just one thing you can do if you or other has a problem that's identified as a chemical imbalance. Be able to quickly identify one thing that you need from Jesus for your heart in the midst of your suffering. What are the promises that you need to lay hold on? What are the words of comfort, the words that inspire you to endure? And then ask others to pray for you.