To the Soul In Despair - "Don't listen to yourself." (Psalm 42)

 Psalm 42

As the deer pants for the water brooks, So my soul pants for You, O God. 

My soul thirsts for God, for the living God; When shall I come and appear before God? 

My tears have been my food day and night, While they say to me all day long, "Where is your God?" 

These things I remember and I pour out my soul within me. 

For I used to go along with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God, 

With the voice of joy and thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival. 

Why are you in despair, O my soul? And why have you become disturbed within me? 

Hope in God, FOR (the reason) I shall yet thank Him for the salvation of His presence.

O my God, my soul is in despair within me; Therefore (resulting conclusion) I remember You...

The LORD will command His lovingkindness in the daytime; 

And His song will be with me in the night, A prayer to the God of my life...

(daytime + night = all the time)

Why are you in despair, O my soul? And why have you become disturbed within me? 

Hope in God, FOR (the reason) I shall yet praise Him, The help of my countenance and my God.
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"The main trouble in this whole matter of spiritual depression in a sense is this, that we allow our self to talk to us instead of talking to our self. Am I just trying to be deliberately paradoxical? Far from it. This is the very essence of wisdom in this matter. Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? Take those thoughts that come to you the moment you wake up in the morning. You have not originated them, but they start talking to you, they bring back the problem of yesterday, etc. Somebody is talking. Who is talking to you? Your self is talking to you. Now [the Psalmist's] treatment was this; instead of allowing this self to talk to him, he starts talking to himself, ‘Why art thou cast down, O my soul?’ he asks. His soul had been repressing him, crushing him. So he stands up and says: ‘Self, listen for a moment, I will speak to you’. Do you know what I mean? If you do not, you have but little experience.

The main art in the matter of spiritual living is to know how to handle yourself. You have to take yourself in hand, you have to address yourself, preach to yourself, question yourself. You must say to your soul: ‘Why art thou cast down’- what business have you to be disquieted? You must turn on yourself, upbraid yourself, condemn yourself, exhort yourself, and say to yourself: ‘Hope thou in God’- instead of muttering in this depressed, unhappy way. And then you must go on to remind yourself of God, Who God is, and what God is and what God has done, and what God has pledged Himself to do. Then having done that, end on this great note: defy yourself, and defy other people, and defy the devil and the whole world, and say with this man: ‘I shall yet praise Him for the help of His countenance, who is also the health of my countenance and my God’.

[D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, in Spiritual Depression]
Related Post: "How God's People Handle Despair" (Psalm 77)

Responding to Crisis

Natural disasters so easily touch our emotions, though I dare say we're often selective about which ones we choose to attach ourselves.  Some become deeply empathetic with the situation in one nation, yet are completely unresponsive to suffering in other parts of the world.  As Americans, I fear we too often direct our money at a problem and then feel we have done our part.  As believers we're called to go a step further, to look beyond physical needs to eternal ones.  We're called to direct our thoughts towards eternal realities ... even when there isn't a natural disaster involved.  Of course we should address physical need as God enables us.  But we must be cautious to not stop there.  There is a deeper crisis, a deeper need we dare not ignore.  Let's not limit Christian service to an emotional response to the Evening News, as tragic as those events may be.  Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899-1981) left the medical profession to become the pastor of a mission church in Wales, a choice often misunderstood by others.  His response gives insight into how we must never lose sight of man's deepest need, the need of a Savior able to offer eternal peace with a holy God.

"It is not often that I make any kind of personal reference from this pulpit, but I feel this morning that I must speak of an experience which bears on this very subject.  When I came here, people said to me: ‘Why give up good work – a good profession – after all, the medical profession, why give that up?  If you had been a bookie, for instance, and wanted to give that up to preach the gospel, we should understand and agree with you and say that you were doing a grand thing.  But medicine – a good profession, healing the sick and relieving pain!’  One man even said this, ‘If you were a solicitor [lawyer] and gave it up, I’d give you a pat on the back, but to give up medicine!’

‘Ah well!’ I felt like saying to them, ‘if you knew more about the work of a doctor, you would understand.  We but spend most of our time rendering people fit to go back to their sin!’  I saw men on their sick beds, I spoke to them of their immortal souls, they promised grand things.  Then they got better and back they went to their old sin!  I saw I was helping these men to sin and I decided that I would do no more of it.  I want to heal souls.  If a man has a diseased body and his soul is all right, he is all right to the end; but a man with a healthy body and a diseased soul is all right for sixty years or so and then he has to face an eternity of hell.  Ah, yes! we have sometimes to give up those which are good for that which is the best of all – the joy of salvation and newness of life."

[Martyn Lloyd Jones, The First Forty Years]