Corona Devo 318

Why am I discouraged?  Why is my heart so sad? (Psalm 42:5)

Is anyone else trapped today?  

Muted and almost-buried under the heaviness/the sorrow/the stress/the worry/the binding.  

What suffocates me differs from what stifles you, and right now I cannot even identify it, because it is everything.  And I am shriveling up without God. 

Psalm 42

1 As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God.  ~Psalm 42:1

The defenseless deer needs water to keep on living and our souls pant for You in the same way, Lord.  We are defenseless against the pressures, fears and realities surrounding us today.  They have parched our hope and strength, but You alone quench our spiritual and emotional dryness.  

2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.  When can I go and meet with God? ~Psalm 42:2

I am searching for You, Lord, but there seems to be a shroud separating me.  Nothing is right.  I want to find You.  I seek to meet You, but how do I break this barrier that is blocking my connection to You?  Invisible and yet absolutely real--My soul thirsts...for the living God but I cannot shake the heaviness long enough to find You.  

3 My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me all day long, “Where is your God?” ~Psalm 42:2

Why can't I stop crying?  Sometimes the veil of sadness just won't lift.  

I know better, and I agree with well-meaning friends who encourage me to seek God.  I cringe at nay-sayers who quip, “Where is your God?”  But either way, I thirst for You but cannot get to You.  

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. ~Psalm 42:4

There is power in Your Presence and in Your House, God.  Let us gather with other believers and be refreshed by Your Spirit when we gather together.  I praise You for the Family of Christ and the blessing of coming together to support each other. Our souls experience healing when we join in shouts of joy and praise offered to You.  We have felt it before, and You will remove the shrouds of sorrow as we meet once again. 

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.  ~Psalm 42:5

Why am I discouraged?  Why is my heart so sad? 

The variables in our lives distort and inflate with our mood and intimidation, but the reality of You towers over them.  You are real, Lord.  You are relevant, Father.  We have to separate from our burdens and be penetrated by You.  Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.

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.  ~Psalm 42:6

When I am sad, I will remember you.  God has brought much joy into our lives--the memory of this revives us even as we pant in our sorrow and heaviness today.  The truth of God's reliability in our lives provides proof for our hope in Him today. 

7 Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me.

8 By day the Lord directs his love, at night his song is with me—a prayer to the God of my life.  ~Psalm 42:7-8

The depth of God and His love for us and our well-being calls to us in the deepest recesses of our spirit, our faith, and our hurt.  Even as we feel battered by the non-stop waterfalls of life, the waves and breakers of pressure and expectations...The Lord promises His presence.  By day the Lord directs his love, at night his song is with me.

9 I say to God my Rock, “Why have you forgotten me?  Why must I go about mourning, oppressed by the enemy?”

10 My bones suffer mortal agony as my foes taunt me, saying to me all day long, “Where is your God?”

11 Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me?   ~Psalm 42:9-11

As we sit in our sorrow, our sadness, our depression and our fear, we feel isolated and unique.  But the Psalmist captures my thoughts, my rants, my cries and my self-pity.  We feel forgotten, we mourn, we feel oppressed by the enemy.  We suffer, it gets to the (mental/physical/emotional/spiritual) point of agony.  It's no wonder our soul is downcast and disturbed.  

The Psalmist felt this way too.  

I feel this way sometimes and you do too.  The burden is joy-sucking and hope-stealing.  

But God speaks remedy into our ailing souls.   

Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.  ~Psalm 42:11

The reality of our souls being downcast and disturbed within us at times has been established.  But the doorway out has also been opened (and it will never be shut!).  God is the life-giving water for our panting soul and regardless of what our foes say, He has not forgotten us. 

What suffocates and shrivels us right now cannot and will not withstand the re-hydrating and rejuvenating presence of God, which is with us day and night (By day the Lord directs his love, at night his song is with me) whether we feel able to "access" Him or not.  

Keep thirsting for Him.  He will refresh.

Blessings,

sarah

https://sarahsundy04.blogspot.com/