Healing Hopelessness Through Jesus Christ’s Atonement

Hopelessness, anxiety, depression and despair are all the fruits of darkness. Jesus Christ provided detailed instructions to his prophets regarding how to heal the hopeless and rebirth His believers into new creatures of light, full of faith, hope and charity. Jesus can heal all sickness and affliction, including mental, emotional, spiritual and physical suffering. But we must put our trust in Him alone, and not the arm of flesh.

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The Plague of Hopelessness

As a therapist, I work with people who are constantly struggling with their loss of hope. One of the symptoms of depression is “hopelessness,” which includes a lack of anticipation for the future and a sense that life will not turn out okay. I work with people who have intense feelings that life is not good and that there in nothing to look forward to. There is an absence of seeing the point of life, or the capacity to see life’s purpose or higher calling. It is a dark void of nothingness with no future. I have found working with patients that the only thing that turns that darkness of hopelessness around is love.

The people I work with usually need to remember family and friends or access their own internal love of themselves in order to start the healing process. It is always beautiful to see this happen to people–when they snap out of the darkness and realize that hope exists. They usually:

1. are completely unaware where all this comes from.
2. do not realize that it comes from Jesus Christ himself, and they fail to acknowledge the source of the power.
3. do not make the connection that Christ died on the cross and went through his sacrificial Atonement so that we can have that kind of love in our hearts—the kind of love that saves us from Satan’s grasp.

He is the only source of hope and love. He is the only way to get out of our pits of despair and ultimately find redemption. 

Joseph Smith’s Wrestle with The Adversary

The scriptures are full of moments when people have wrestled with the darkness of hell as Satan has tried to pull them towards him. Joseph Smith had that experience during his first vision:

Joseph was “seized” by the power of “some actual being from the unseen world.” This being of darkness “had such marvelous power as I had never before felt in any being.” It was said in one account:

Joseph was so overcome with hopelessness that he thought that he would be overwhelmed by this force, and had to “call God to deliver me out of the power of this enemy.”  This experience was typical Satan. He overwhelmed Joseph with hopelessness (wanting him to give up). The strategy was to get Joseph to doubt his ability to obtain “the object of his endeavors” with heaven’s help.

The adversary wanted to distract Joseph and fill him with self-loathing and fear. This special Satan cocktail has these goals in mind:

1. making someone completely forget that they had come to seek revelation
2. not reach their full potential by having hope and exercising faith

Luckily, Joseph Smith sought delivery from this, and he actually saw a “light brighter than the sun” and all “darkness vanished.” Following this was Joseph’s personal vision of seeing God and his son Jesus Christ in their light and glory.

Moses Gets Strength from God to Cast Out Satan

After being in God’s presence and seeing His glory, Satan came to Moses and tried to divert Moses’s worship away from God and to him instead. Moses responded:

Moses had just had an experience with God and felt the hope and love that that experience would bring him. Moses said that the difference between that amazing experience and the paltry Satan experience was right before him. He could feel that difference, and almost in disgust told Satan to leave. This outraged Satan, and before leaving, he filled Moses with his special version of hopelessness, fear and despair.

He seemed to be in a similar state that Joseph Smith described. Fear, anxiety, depression, hopelessness and a sense of powerlessness overwhelmed him. It was so intense that he had to plead for help from God.

That made Satan leave for real this time, but not without his loud outcry of “weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.”

Accessing Hope in Christ When Hopeless

There are many scriptures about how to find hope and resists Satan’s attempts to bind us with hopelessness, depression and despair. The psalmist in Psalms 23 describes accessing comfort when faced with Satan’s despair.

The psalmist here is talking about the “valley of the shadow of death” that Satan takes people’s heart to. He is talking about how all those emotional mind games Satan tries to do—hopelessness, self-hatred, suicidal thinking—have no effect because Jesus Christ is with him. Jesus Christ allows him to fear no evil and to disallow Satan to overcome him. 

Nephi talked about hope when he described the path of ascension. He said that once you pass through the “strait and narrow path” (2 Nephi 31:19) there’s more work to do. You have to “press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all men” (2 Nephi 31:20).

This is the combination that makes people different from the rest of the world, and able to “have eternal life.” Instead of allowing Satan’s toxic mix of hopelessness to overcome them, believers become “steadfast” in Christ. God grants them a gift of hope in their hearts and a love for everyone around them. That experience is the very substance that ends hopelessness and depression and suicidal thoughts. If people had the capacity to do that in our modern day life, therapists and psychological medications would no longer be needed because everyone would have access to that power. It is the small and subtle but completely powerful tool that the world does not use. 

Hopelessness = Despair = Iniquity

There are many scriptures that talk about a combination of attributes that are required to reach eternal life. They are “Faith, hope and charity.” Moroni talks a lot about the three together, and how they all play on each other to give us the ability to progress. 

Moroni calls this combination of “faith, hope and charity” the “gifts of God” (Moroni 10:26).

If we lose the capacity to have faith, hope and charity we lose the capacity to be saved in the kingdom of God. It’s that important. A world without these gifts of God would be a sorry world indeed. 

As Moroni states in Moroni 10:22 (cited above), we cannot be saved if we have no hope, and if we have no hope we are “in despair, and despair cometh because of iniquity.” This subtle movement from despair to hope can make all the difference. It’s the spark that can lead to a mighty change and transformation from a countenance of darkness and despair to light and hope.

Leading Souls From Despair to Hope in Christ

What does it take to move someone from a state of despair and hopelessness to a state of hope in Christ? As we have been taught from true prophets, it takes crying unto the Lord and asking him to save us. It takes telling Satan to go away, even if he is going to weep and wail and gnash his teeth. It takes being steadfast in Christ.

Once we are steadfast in Christ, we are filled with both hope and love for all men (2 Nephi 31:20). It’s the “perfect brightness of hope” (through Christ) in our hearts that prepares us for the gift of charity, the pure love of Christ. That is why charity is one of the gifts of the spirit. First hope, then love in our hearts, then charity. 

Regarding charity, Moroni also says:

Here in describing the pure love of Christ and charity, Moroni calls this a state of “having this hope” that we can be purified as he is. It is a state of being filled with love for other and ourselves. Experiencing charity cannot happen without having hope in Christ and turning our hearts to him. And that process cannot happen without defying the gates of hell and their terrible torment of anxiety, fear, self-doubt, and hopelessness. It is the exact opposite of that.

When Satan tries to fill us with his dread, we turn our hearts first to hope in Christ, and then what follows is charity and the pure love of Christ in our hearts, and it is this power in our hearts that makes us his. 

Visitation of Holy Ghost Fills You with Hope

Moroni describes the condition necessary to have the gifts of the spirit. They are that we receive a remission of our sins and eventually receive the Holy Ghost. When this happens, the Comforter (baptism of fire and the Holy Ghost) will fill us with hope and love. He says:

It’s only after receiving the Baptism of Fire and the Holy Ghost that a person is able to have this hope. That does not mean that this gift is not available to people before that time. But it is a special gift of the spirit given to those who have the Holy Ghost dwelling within them. It is an attribute of the changed person who has been born of Christ. There is no more hopelessness. This newly reborn person is someone who hopes, and firmly knows the source of their hope which is in Jesus Christ their Savior. This person can also tell their friends the reason for the joy they feel. 

Paul describes this hope by saying:

Awake, My Soul! No Longer Drooping

Nephi taught us about the hope in Christ and obviously understood the concept. Even after his amazing experiences with God, he occasionally found himself having a “down day.” Feeling sad or heavy is not something that humans are ever immune to. However, the difference was in that Nephi understood how to overcome this sorrow, and not wallow in it. He used the power of Christ and hope in Him to cure his sorrows.

Christ is the Cure for Hopelessness

Hope in Christ exists. It makes the gospel so much better than the precepts of the world and modern medicine and psychology. Unfortunately, this modern world prescribes years of therapy and medication to people who have lost hope in Satan’s despair. The world doesn’t understand how to prescribe the one thing that actually heals and helps: “hope in Christ.”

Hope in Christ ends all depression, anxiety and other mental illnesses. When people receive their Baptism of Fire and the Holy Ghost, they are given a special gift of hope in Christ. The gifts of the spirit of “faith, hope and charity” create a person filled with hope and love who can withstand any fiery dart Satan throws at him or her. That person fights Satan every single day. Instead of living with despair and hopelessness, they start to live a Christ-centered life that casts out worldly fears.

This is the path of ascension. Once we enter the gate, we need to seek these spiritual gifts to have them in our hearts. As Nephi said: