Wednesday, January
16, 2013, 5:55 a.m. – the Lord Jesus woke me with the song “Why So Downcast?” playing in my mind.
Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening. I read Psalm 143 (NIV 1984):
O Lord, hear my
prayer,
listen to my cry for mercy;
in your faithfulness
and righteousness
come to my relief.
Do not bring your
servant into judgment,
for no one living is righteous before you.
The enemy pursues me,
he crushes me to the ground;
he makes me dwell in
darkness
like those long dead.
So my spirit grows
faint within me;
my heart within me is dismayed.
I remember the days of
long ago;
I meditate on all your works
and consider what your hands have done.
I spread out my hands
to you;
my soul thirsts for you like a parched
land. Selah
Answer me quickly, O
Lord;
my spirit fails.
Do not hide your face
from me
or I will be like those who go down to the
pit.
Let the morning bring
me word of your unfailing love,
for I have put my trust in you.
Show me the way I
should go,
for to you I lift up my soul.
Rescue me from my
enemies, O Lord,
for I hide myself in you.
Teach me to do your
will,
for you are my God;
may your good Spirit
lead me on level ground.
For your name’s sake,
O Lord, preserve my life;
in your righteousness, bring me out of
trouble.
In your unfailing
love, silence my enemies;
destroy all my foes,
for I am your servant.
The Enemy Pursues
In this life we will have enemies. We will have people who
just don’t like us for whatever the reason. They might not like how we look,
how we behave, or they might not care for our personalities, our ethnicity, social
status, family history, and the like. Jesus said that if we follow him in
obedience, and we are his disciples, and we share the true gospel of Jesus
Christ that we will be hated, persecuted and even put to death for our faith in,
and for our testimony for our Lord. So, if we are not hated, or we are not
persecuted at all for our faith and testimony for Jesus Christ, then I think we
should do a self-examination before God and ask why. Perhaps we are doing
nothing that would cause us to be hated, i.e. possibly we are not really taking
a stand for Christ, or we are not teaching the true gospel, or we are not
calling people to repentance, as did Jesus and his disciples, and as did the
apostles and the prophets before them… or maybe we are living in sin ourselves.
So, although many of us will encounter people who just don’t
like us, or who even hate us with a passion, and who will even go out of their
way to cause us harm, as the psalmist faced, our greatest enemy is Satan (see
Ephesians 6:10-20). He is described in scripture as a roaring lion seeking
someone to devour. He is also the great deceiver, the accuser of followers of
Christ, and a liar and the father of lies. He is also our adversary, i.e. the
one who stands against us. As well, he is an angel of light who appears good
but is really rotten to the core, i.e. he tries to convince us that lies are
truth and truths are lies. And, he is the tempter whose goal it is to tempt
followers of Christ back into sin, to doubt God, and to deny their Savior. He
is also a thief who comes to “steal and destroy” Jesus’ flock via false
shepherds of the people who feed them lies and deceptions, and who manipulate
the flock into following the ways of men instead of the ways of God.
Where are you God?
When we are faced with daunting (intimidating, unnerving,
overwhelming, and disheartening) circumstances and/or relationships or
encounters with those who are our enemies, or with severe attacks of the enemy
of our souls on our minds and emotions, it can lead us into depression and
discouragement if we are not guarded in heart and mind against such weakness.
The enemy is really good at what he does. He observes us and he knows our
weaknesses (our soft spots), and he targets those. He sets traps and potholes for
us hoping we will get tripped up or that we will fall. He throws his fiery
darts of lies against us and tries to get us to doubt God’s sovereign grace
over our lives. His greatest weapon against us, I believe, is fear. Fear is the
opposite of faith.
So, in our dismay and despair we may begin to wonder, “Where
is God?” Sometimes when things are really dark and troublesome we may even have
difficulty hearing God’s voice speak to our hearts, and he may appear silent in
our presence, and so we will feel as though God has forgotten us, or as though
he has hidden his face from us. I’ve been there! How about you? There have been
times when I have just cried out to God to let me hear his voice even if it was
in rebuke, correction or chastisement for something I had done that was sinful
of which I had not been aware or that I might have forgotten. I just needed to
hear from God and to know that he was still there, because the enemy was so
strong against me.
Remember, Meditate,
Consider
The psalmist knew the remedy for his dismay and his faint
heart. One of the things he would do was to remember the days of long ago, and
he would meditate on all of God’s works and would consider what God’s hands had
done. And, this works for us, too.
One of the reasons I recommend that we keep daily journals
of our times with our Lord in prayer and in his word is that when Satan throws
his fiery darts of doubt against us, and he tries to convince us that what is
true is really a lie, we have something we can immediately pull out and read
and remember, and meditate and consider how God has spoken to us in the past,
and often we will be led to see where we already dealt with that issue before
God, and so we can reaffirm our commitments to God to continue in his will and
in his ways.
Seek, Thirst, Hunger
Another thing the psalmist would do when feeling faint of
heart and discouraged was to seek God’s face and to hunger and thirst after
God, after his righteousness and after the teachings of his word. I believe the
Bible teaches us that one of the reasons we will face hardships and
difficulties in this life is to make us holy, to mature us in Christ, to teach
us God’s ways and to lead us into truth. When things are going well in life, it
is easy to forget about God or to make him less of a priority in our lives, but
there is just something about sickness, hardship, and persecution that drives
us, or should drive us to his breast in humility, in surrender and submission
to his will for our lives, and/or in repentance.
Teach, Lead, Guide
One of the good results that should come out of these times
of hardship, persecution, famine or sword is that we turn to God for help, we
renew our faith and trust in him, we repent of any known sins in our lives, and
we choose again to walk in his ways and to abide in his love. The psalmist
appears to have gone through this or a similar process in his thinking and in
his responding to his circumstances, i.e. to his disaster (storm; tempest).
He prayed that the morning would bring him relief and that
he would have word of God’s unfailing love to him, because he put his trust in
God. And, then he prayed that God/Jesus would show him the way he should go,
that he would teach him his will, and that the Lord would lead him on level
ground.
So, when we are faced with such difficulties (disasters;
storms; persecutions), we should, too, put our hope and trust in God/Jesus, and
we should inquire of the Lord as to what he wants to teach us through these
circumstances, and for him to guide us in how we should respond to our situations.
We should seek God’s face and study his word and ask him to teach us his ways
and the way he wants us to go, but we have to be willing to hear what he says
and then to obey it, for he may lead us somewhere we, in our flesh, don’t want
to go, because we know what persecution will await us there. Yet, there is no
better place on earth to be than to be right in the center of God’s will, doing
exactly what he has called us to do, even despite how people might respond to
us, or even despite Satan’s attempts to try to discourage us and to try to get us
to give up and jump ship.
And, we should pray for God to teach us his will, and for us
to be discerning with regard to the will of man, the ways of men and the
teachings of mankind vs. the teachings, will and ways of God. So many follow
the ways and teachings of mankind thinking they are following God’s ways
because they don’t seek God’s face and they don’t study the scriptures. We need
to be ones who are diligent in the study of God’s word so that we can correctly
handle the word of truth, and so that we are not deceived by clever lies
disguised as truth.
Lastly, we should pray for our Lord Jesus and our Father God
to lead us on level ground. There are many paths to take in this life, but only
one of them leads to eternity with God, so we need to know the truth, so the
truth can set us free. Then we won’t be like the immature who are tossed here
and there by every wind of doctrine and by the cunning and craftiness of men in
their deceitful scheming (see Eph. 4). We will know and understand what the
will of God is, and we will make it our goal to please our Lord in every way.
We will know and understand that the true gospel teaches that we must turn from
our lives of sin, and we must be transformed in heart and mind, and we must be
made into new creatures in Christ Jesus, and we must follow our Lord in
obedience and surrender to his will for our lives (see Eph. 4:17-24; Luke
9:23-25, et al.) for us to know Christ and to have the hope of eternity.
Why So Downcast?
/ An Original Work / December 21, 2012
Based off Psalm 42
Why so downcast,
O my soul,
And why so disturbed
Now within me?
Put your hope
In Jesus Christ,
For I will praise His
name.
He’s my Savior
And my God,
So therefore I’ll
Remember Him through
Storms and tempests
Sweeping o’er me.
Still I’ll praise His
name.
Put your hope in God.
By day the Lord
Sends forth His love.
In the night
His song is with me.
I pray to the
God of my life.
I will praise His
name.
I say to God my Rock,
“Why must I be called
To suffer this way?”
Foes attack me;
Satan sneering.
Still I’ll praise my
God.
Put your hope in Him.
As a deer pants
For the waters,
So my soul pants
For You, O God.
My soul thirsts for
God who’s living.
When can I meet Him?
My tears have been
My food at night,
When men say,
“So, where is your
God?”
I pour out my
Soul to my God.
I’ll still praise His
name.
Shout with joy to Him.
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