Why are you downcast?
Notes
Transcript
Focus: That at times we will be downcast but our hope is found focusing on God.
Function: To encourage in times of distance or depression.
It’s been great looking at the book of Acts in our Bold series. It’s inspiring to be reminded of who we’re called to be. It’s good to be inspired. I love to hear a good testimony about what God is doing. I’ve heard testimonies of lives transformed. People healed. People hearing so clearly from God with remarkable results. People just so close to God they glow. Just full of Joy!
Can I let you into a secret though? Sometimes I find myself thinking why isn’t it like that for me? Why don’t I hear God like they do? Why don’t I see the miracles they are seeing? Why don’t I feel more Joy? I want those things, I yearn for them but I just don’t see them. I may remember times when I did, when I was filled with the presence of Love of Christ. That often feels distant though, I get to thinking did it ever feel like I remember… Sometimes things just feel spiritually dry.
I remember once hearing a well known preacher, Malcolm Duncan, it was one of those sermons that has really stuck with me. It was at a big Christian event - you know the sort of thing, big known speakers, amazing music etc several thousand people gathered together. Malcolm has a great teaching gift, the sort of speaker you could spend an hour listening too, so inspiring. Well on this occasion he started to talk about his life over the last year. He talked about so many personal tragedies, terminal illness of family, multiple suicides in his family, Just an awful year. It had affected him. He spoke so honestly about this. He felt distant from God, His preaching was hard work, his prayer seemed to go no where. He heard nothing from God. He said something that’s always stuck with me. “Sometimes you find yourself in the wilderness, you need to know this is ok, you don’t need rescuing or removing from it - Well meaning Christians often try - but sometimes you need to be in the wilderness”.
Sometimes it’s Ok to not be Ok. Sometimes we will be in the wilderness-this is right for a time. Where in the Bible does it say “Come to me all you who are weary and I will give you loads of cash, a comfortable life and you’ll never have real troubles” or “If anyone wants to follow me, they should deny themselves and pick up an extra bottle of champagne because life is going to be one big happy party”.
There are thoughts I want you to watch out for, things like… Perhaps I’m not praying hard enough? Perhaps I’m not good enough in God’s eyes? Perhaps I’m not enough of a Christian? None are true. We are Gods by grace only - it is a gift we cannot earn so cannot lose either through our poor efforts. You’re not excused from trying to live a transformed life but you are excused from being really awful at it. All thoughts like this are wrong. You are good enough for Christ. He made you so.
It is ok to feel like God isn’t present, to yearn after something more of God than what you have. To feel downcast. It isn’t because you’re at fault. This is the reality of our Christian lives - it’s not all happiness, intimacy, miracles and feeling hopeful. How do I know? I know because someone close enough to God that God trusted them to write part of the Bible for Him wrote about this very thing.
We heard Psalm 42 earlier and it’ll help you to open up your Bibles back to the passage now. Lets see the writers pain. See if you recognise any of your own distress in their words.
1 As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God.
I’m desperate for God. I need what he provides. I’m searching after Him but I’m not finding him.
3 My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me all day long, “Where is your God?”
I don’t know about you but sometimes I don’t even need people to ask me ‘where is your God’, I’m perfectly able to ask this myself. God where are you? Sometimes its a fleeting thought but I need you to know sometimes it’s not. The tears were food day and night. This is not fleeting. Sometimes you are going to feel like this. Some of you will be feeling like this today.
4 These things I remember as I pour out my soul: how I used to go to the house of God under the protection of the Mighty One with shouts of joy and praise among the festive throng.
Do you remember times when it was different? When things were better? I remember the songs of my youth… The way I felt back then… Now I feel as far from him as I can get.
6 My soul is downcast within me; therefore I will remember you from the land of the Jordan, the heights of Hermon—from Mount Mizar.
Thats about as far from God in his temple as the writer could be and still be in Israel
7 Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me.
This is the verse God gave me to focus me on the theme and passage this morning. This is for someone this morning. You’re feeling overwhelmed by the powers arrayed against you. The deep chaos of the waters feels like it’s going to overwhelm your soul. You feel helpless in your situation. You feel in your soul that you’re going under nothing can pull you up. God wants you to know this morning he’s with you. He’s needs you to hear his word.
Look there are 2 things to take away this morning. Firstly we will all face times like this. Secondly how does God ask us to respond.
Practical advice
There is a particular refrain - repeated text - that we find in the Psalm which is the outworking of this. You find it in verse 5 and then again in 11. It’s repetition is what we’re meant to focus in on.
5 Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.
This is the Psalmists, and hence God’s advice.
Firstly we get in touch with our feelings - ‘why are you downcast’. Perhaps that sounds simple to some of you but let me assure you as a British white, middle-class, middle-aged man who was raised with the ideal of the ‘stiff-upper lip’ this isn’t. My natural approach to emotions is denial. Everything is fine.
Emily has started training as a counsellor, it’s something she felt God calling her to equip for. She’s been coming home and trying out her techniques on me. She doesn’t think I know but I know. One thing I’ve learned from her is that Counselling techniques - talk therapy - are designed to help people get in touch with their emotions, what they are really feeling, to not deny the emotions.
Secondly we need to talk to ourselves . We need to talk to ourselves instead of letting ourselves talk to us. Let me say that again. We talk to our Soul and tell it what to do, we don’t let it tell us. I have a lot of thoughts that go through me head in a day. If I go about letting me go about telling me how to feel we’ve got problems. Let me explain the ‘thought bus’. Inside our heads is a crazy mix of thoughts and emotions. Imagine you’re at a bus stop and every thought or emotion that we think or feel is a bus. We don’t need to get on every bus. Every bus is a valid bus, it’s not about pretending the buses don’t exist. But not every bus takes you where you want to go. I don’t need to explore every thought or acknowledge every emotion is useful.
Tell yourself to get on the God bus. Ignore the buses that don’t take you to him. It is an intentional attitude to sorting out our soul. Listening to what God would say and only that. Be shaped by God’s thoughts. If you want to know what the God bus looks like then read, learn absorb, memorise scripture. Get on the buses that have verses written on the side!
5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; 6 in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.
3 When I am afraid, I put my trust in you.
20 We wait in hope for the Lord; he is our help and our shield.
7 “But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him.
3 You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you.
Its interesting isn’t it how closely this Psalm mirrors the way the world approaches counselling. There is an important difference though. The world says “look inside and find who you truly are, this will bring happiness” or “just be true to yourself” or “think positive and positive things will happen”. Will they? why should they! If there is no outside God changing me then all my buses just wander aimlessly - I’m not sure I know the route! I would point out that when I look inside myself I find that the problem is me. If I put my hope in only me then I’m not going to get far.
Finally, then what is it we talk to our Soul about? It is the Re-ordering of our hopes - I will praise God. Where is our hope placed? If I’m downcast because money is tight, could my hope then primarily be in possessions? If I’m downcast because of personal relationships is my hope primarily in personal relationships? If I’m downcast because of health is my hope primarily in my health? These things aren’t wrong to hope for but the order needs to be right. We need to have our primary hope in God. Relationships come and go. Money comes and goes. Health comes and goes. Life fluctuates. God never changes. He is the only sure place to place our hope.
The how of this probably looks different for each of us. Worship music for me helps with this. I love nothing more than putting it on in the car. Volume all the way to 11. Singing like a loon. I also though find restoration of praise by taking a walk in nature. Nature helps me praise. That’s me - these are my praise places. Where are yours? What do you do to engage your praising heart?
Is that it though? Just helpful advice when struggling. Aren’t I meant to give you a resolution to your despair? Isn’t the Psalm meant to leave us with emotions resolved and positivity restored? Firm confidence that things will get better? Yet there is full no resolution in Psalm 42, we don’t end on a note of happiness. We don’t get lifted from the downcast. There are glimmers of hope though. The odd thing about Psalm 42 is that it isn’t complete. There is more to come. There’s another chapter but we can’t see it yet. There’s an ending that hasn’t arrived. A hope beyond the things of now. Look at Psalm 43. You find the same refrain in Verse 5. Here is a glimmer of hope
Psalm 43 (NIV)
1 Vindicate me, my God, and plead my cause against an unfaithful nation. Rescue me from those who are deceitful and wicked. 2 You are God my stronghold. Why have you rejected me? Why must I go about mourning, oppressed by the enemy? 3 Send me your light and your faithful care, let them lead me; let them bring me to your holy mountain, to the place where you dwell. 4 Then I will go to the altar of God, to God, my joy and my delight. I will praise you with the lyre, O God, my God. 5 Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.
Jesus is the light. Jesus is the living water. Jesus is the ultimate answer to the Psalmist prayer. Jesus calls us into a life with him. A life transformed and transforming. A place with him on his holy mountain. Our hope, not for now but in the next life.
If you are downcast today then don’t give in to it. Acknowledge your emotions. Focus on God. It might be that there is a glimmer of hope that you just can’t see. Another chapter beyond the one you’re in. An oasis in your wilderness that’s just over the next hill. I can’t promise you this but I can promise you one day all will be forgotten as we rest with him on his Holy hill.