Infusion Bible eStudies are downloadable small group studies that can be read online, printed, or emailed. Each study includes a leader guide and a study guide and is suitable for a one-hour group Bible study.
Listen...to the words of the Scripture, and in them discover God's message for you today.
Look...at a brief verbal snapshot from the scrapbook of contemporary life and discover its connection both to you and to the Scripture passage.
Live...inside the Scripture to discover its context and message; then allow the Scripture to come alive in you and cause you to live out your faith in new and more-effective ways.
Read an excerpt from this study below.
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Everybody has periods of weariness, but Jeffery Smith suffers from recurrent depression. He is one of the twenty percent of chronic depressives for whom mood-elevating drugs do not work. He has written a book about his life with depression, called Where the Roots Reach for Water. Listen to this description of a depressive episode:
At the office every phone call,...every bit of documentation felt like drudgery....At home I’d toss my mail, the bills along with the letters, into the corner, unopened....A pile of overdue library books sat on my kitchen table. I drove past the public library at least once a day, but it seemed more than I could manage to...lift the books off the table, and then carry them to my car, and then drop them off at the library. Any one of those steps was a challenge; accomplishing them consecutively was well-nigh impossible.1
Smith considered suicide but instead decided to make what he could of life. He eventually married and began volunteering with some worthy-cause groups. He also became a Christian and joined a church, where he remains active despite his depression. Smith learned that faith can exist apart from mood.
