A Pep Talk
Why are you depressed, O my soul? Why so troubled within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise Him, my Saviour and my God.
Psalm 42:11Psalm 42:11
English: World English Bible - WEB
11 Why are you in despair, my soul?
Why are you disturbed within me?
Hope in God! For I shall still praise him,
The saving help of my countenance, and my God.
Lord, I love it that Your Word is so honest. It doesn’t pretend that everyone who served You was up all the time. It records the down times, as well.
By the sound of this, the Psalmist was pretty down when he wrote it. He had been cut off from worship in the Temple, and feels as though You have cut him off. What’s more, he had to deal with the taunts of those who saw his predicament as a sign that You didn’t even exist, and that his faith in You was both unfounded and stupid.
All he could do was remember “the good old days”, and how he had delighted in being in Your presence.
I know where he was coming from. Lord, it’s really horrible when You go silent. There are times when Your presence seems to have retreated to the farthest corner of the universe, and my prayers don’t seem to even get as high as the ceiling. I beat myself up, trying to find what sin I have committed that has excluded me from Your presence. I feel forsaken, and I don’t understand why. At those times, I really understand this psalm.
Yet even in the midst of it, the psalmist sees something else. He gives himself this pep talk, reminding himself that You are still his God and Saviour. It’s like he’s saying to himself, “Even if you can see nothing, even if you can feel nothing, even if you can understand nothing, reach out by faith and take hold of the truth you know.”
Lord, my preference would be never to have to go through those dry times. But if I must go through them, help me, like the Psalmist, to continue to put my hope in You.
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This blog is © copyright Lynn Fowler.
There is one God, and one mediator between God and people, the man Christ Jesus (1 Timothy 2:51 Timothy 2:5
English: World English Bible - WEB
5 For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,)in Whom all the fullness of the Godhead dwells in bodily form (Colossians 2:9Colossians 2:9
English: World English Bible - WEB
9 For in him all the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily,)and Whom God the Father has exalted to the highest place, giving Him the Name which is above every name, that at the Name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:9-11Philippians 2:9-11
English: World English Bible - WEB
9 Therefore God also highly exalted him, and gave to him the name which is above every name;
10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, those on earth, and those under the earth,
11 and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.)
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