The Official Covid 19 Pandemic Psalm

Psalm 77

Opens up with a pained sense of desperation..

ASAP cries earnestly IN ThE NIGHT FROM HIS TROUBLED SPIRIT, SEARCHING HIS SOUL FOR AN ANSWER TO HIS DISTRESS.

Yet his efforts to find comfort in prayer weren’t working…

His emotions were tanking fast, along with any confidence He once had in the Lord’s ability to deliver him

Things got so bad that his troubled spirit eventually outweighed even his ability to pray.

Let’s be honest…we’ve all been at this place before.

Unnerved.

Unsettled.

Undone.

Even after praying, even after meditating on the Word. Even after multiple failed attempts to recalibrate our spirit through worship.

Nothing could lift us out of the mire and clay of our fractured feelings.

Forgive me if our text seems a bit bleak this morning. This is a passage I’ve been wrestling through all week. It encapsulates so many emotions, so many contradictions and so much inner strife.

This is the prayer of a man who is at his breaking point…who is desperately trying to conjure up his faith and trust in God in the midst of circumstances that are doing their dead level best to drown him in sorrow and grief.

If there could be an official Covid 19 Pandemic Psalm, I would certainly nominate this to be it:

- It’s painfully honest

its gut-wrenchingly sincereit’s filled with honest questionsand deep emotions with which every child of God must eventually wrestle…it takes us through dark valleys and prolonged periods of silence before ever attempting to lift us back up on high

And I believe it’s a perfect guide for us in times of struggle.

As this pandemic wears on, and as our nerves and emotions continue to unravel, it is likely that each of us HAS, IS, or WILL EVENTUALLY move through this type of emotional unrest.

It’s simply part of the human condition.

And this is why I love the Bible. because it doesn’t try to candy coat the difficult realities of serving God in a broken world. It doesn’t pretend that life is always rosy and happy. Or that faith it always neat and tidyIt doesn’t perpetuate the facade that one listen to a worship song will lighten the struggle or alleviate the pain that we sometimes experience deep within our soul.

Sometimes life is simply difficult.

We go through seasons that stretch us to the point of breaking

Aren’t you glad that Scripture makes room for this?

That is makes room for sorrow.

It leaves space for unbelief

It gives us permission to wrestle with heavy questions

and maneuver our way through momentary feelings of abandonment

If you find yourself in the midst of a downward spiral this morning, my prayer is that you will identify with this psalm. And as we examine it a bit closer, my hope is that you will be able to find comfort, healing and encouragement for whatever season your soul finds itself in…

Look at verse 1

“I pray to you, Lord God, and I BEG YOU to listen.” CEV

“I cried out to God to or help, I cried out to God to hear me.” NIV

“II cry out to God; yes I shout. Oh, that God would listen to me.” NLT

“I yell out to my God, I yell with all my might, I yell at the top of my lungs.” He listens.” MSG

There are moments in life where a quiet prayer uttered in silence is enough.

Other times we need to write it down and record the words that have burdened us

Sometimes we need to break our silence and speak our prayers aloud, in gentle whispers so that our frail faith can pierce through brass heavens and illuminate the darkness we’re find ourselves surrounded by.

And then there are moments like we find here in Psalm 77 where we none of that seems to work and our only option is to ugly cry out loud to God, raising our voice and shouting from the depths of our being in hopes that we will eventually be heard…

I love the way verse 1 ends in the MSG…it simply says, “He listens.”

And I want you to hear this from the beginning of this talk.

When you pray, God hears you.

When you honestly open up your heart and cry out before Him, he listens to each and every word…He even listens to the groaning of our spirit behind the words that we utter.

The devil will do his dead level best to convince you that God isn’t listening.

He will convince you that God is busy looking after other people who are more deserving of his help…

He will convince you that God is listening to those saints who are more holy and devout and steadfast than you could ever be.

Why would he waste his time listening to you?

Well he does…listen. He does hear our cries. Not a single utterance escapes his notice.

If you’re in a season of pain…I want you to know that God hears you,

If you are feeling all alone and abandoned, the moment you cry out, He is attentive to your cries

God is not deaf to the prayers of his children.

Though we may not feel it, see it or comprehend it, we can be ASSURED that every single time we pray GOD HEARS US…and He immediately goes to work on our behalf.

Verses 2 and 3 paint a bleak picture…

“All night long I prayed with hands lifted towards heaven, but my soul was NOT COMFORTED!”

Have you ever found yourself here? Where prayer was helpless to comfort you? Where you left your prayer closet just as worn out as you approached it? See, you're not the only one. It happens to us all…we just don’t always like to talk about it…

I think about God and I MOAN…overwhelmed with my need for his help.”

This was a dark place. It got so bad that even when Asaph thought about the Lord, he would moan. He would sigh. He would lament. He was so overwhelmed with his need for God’s help yet so underwhelmed with the help he seemed to be receiving in the moment of his desperation.

He goes on to say…

I can’t sleep. I’m too distressed to even pray

Now let me let you in on a little secret…this is place the enemy wants to take you. He wants to take you to the place where your desperation meets with exasperation and it culminates with this overwhelming feeling of emptiness and lack.

I want to warn you…don’t allow yourself to get to this place. And if you find yourself there this morning, PLEASE DOn”T ALLOW YOURSELF TO REMAIN THERE! Don’t continue to follow the rabbit trail of your negative emotions down to the place where everything seems senseless, hopeless and impossible.

This is where a lot people find themselves this morning. They don’t know what to do, where to turn or how to cope. And many of these people are believers - blood bought children of the most high who have lost sight of his great power and might.

This is where depression kicks in….this is where hopelessness fights to take control.

This is where we start wrestling with deep questions that threaten our very soul!!!!

Look at the questions Asaph asked himself:

Has the Lord rejected me forever?Will he never again be kind to me?Is his unfailing love gone forever?Have his promises permanently failed?Has He forgotten to be gracious?Has he slammed the door on his compassion?And then I said, this is my fate - the most high has turned his hand against me

The MSG asks in modern language, “Has God gone out of business just the moment I need him most?”

These are the kinds of questions that we gravitate towards when we follow our feelings down dark paths…

We call God’s goodness into question

We convince ourselves that he’ll never be kind to us again

The his love and patience towards us has run out

That his promises will never be able to come to pass

And here is the danger…the danger comes in answering these questions with emotional responses. Once we reach this point of despair, we don’t need any more emotion. We simply need to remind ourselves of the facts.

Has the Lord rejected us? No! he is faithful to the end!

Lamentations 3:31-33 says “For no one is abandoned by the Lord forever. Though he brings grief, he also shows compassion because of the greatness of his unfailing love. For he does not enjoy hurting people or causing them sorrow.”

Will he ever show us favor again? Yes! Psalm 30:5 tells states this. “For his anger lasts only a moment but his favor lasts a lifetime! Weeping may last through the night, but joy comes with the morning!

Has his unfailing love disappeared? No! Jeremiah 31:3 “I have loved you, my people, with an everlasting love. With unfailing love I have drawn you to myself”

Have his promises failed? 1 Kings 8:56 “Praise the Lord who has given rest to his people Israel, just as he promised. No one word has failed to of all the wonderful promises he gave us through Hi servant Moses.”

Has God forgotten to be gracious? Isa 49:14-18 No “Jerusalem says, ‘the Lord has deserted us; the Lord has forgotten us. NEVER! Can a mother forget her nursing child” Can she feel no love for the child she has borne? But even if that were possible, I WOULD NEVER FORGET YOU! I have written your name on the palms of my hands.”

Have I reached the end of God’s mercy and grace? NO! Lam 3:22-24 “The faithful love of the Lord never ends! His mercies never cease. Great is his faithfulness. His mercies begin afresh each morning. I say to myself, “The Lord is my inheritance; therefore I will hope in Him.”

We must respond to our despondent feelings with the TRUTH of GOD’S WORD.

We have to let His holy hammer smash through he lies of our feelings and the distortions of the enemy.

Only then we will find freedom. Only then will we break out fo the confines of our depression and find that His truth is like a healing balm to our fractured soul.

Look what Asaph does next….He shifts his thinking off himself and his feelings and He centers them on God instead…

V 11 “But then I recall ALL you have done, O Lord; I remember your wonderful deeds of long ago. They are constantly in my thoughts. I cannot stop thinking about your mighty works.”

From here on out, the pronouns in this psalm shift from me and my, and I…to You and Yours

You are the god of great Wonders!

You demonstrate your awesome power among the nations

By your strong arm you redeemed your people

He goes all the way back to the Exodus event - the greatest moment in Human history up until that point…

When the Red Sea saw you, O God, its waters looked and trembled!

The sea quaked to its very depths

The clouds poured down rain; the thunder rumbled in the sky

Your arrows of lightning flashed, your thunder roared from the whirlwind

The lightning lit up the world!

the earth trembled and shook

“YOUR ROAD LED THROUGH THE SEA, your pathway through the mighty waters - a pathway no one knew was there. You led your people along the road like a flock of sheep…”

It may no loot like it

it may not feee like it

but God has a way out for you this morning

You can’t see it

You can’t comprehend it

You can’t understand it

because it hasn’t been revealed to you yet. But God knows the path he has laid out for you. It’s a pathway that no one knew existed. He is getting ready to do a new thing in your life.

Get ready!