Strengthen Through Hope

Devotion 5 - Strengthen Through Hope

 Ever felt as though you could not go on with your Christian life?  Perhaps you have experienced depression and despair and struggled with doubts and fear.  You are confronted with thoughts of yourself not being able to persevere in your walk with the Lord any longer and that your life was falling apart.  God seemed a thousand miles away and His help is not coming. 

Ps.42:3 – “My tears have been my food day and night, while they continually say to me, “Where is your God?”

Vs.9-10- “I will say to God my Rock, “Why have You forgotten me?” As with a breaking of my bones, my enemies reproach me, while they say to me all day long, “Where is your God?”

The sarcastic question, “Where is your God?” seemed to imply that the psalmist was going through immense trials and God appeared to have abandoned him. In verses 5 and 11, the psalmist described himself as “cast down” and “in turmoil” and in verses 6 & 7 as a man drowning: “O my God, my soul is cast down within me…all Your waves and billows have gone over me.” (Ps.42:6-7)

Sometimes it seems as though our trials and troubles never end, with a day stretching into a week, and a week stretching into a month, and on and on it goes.... When will it end?

And the worst is when we give our all to live for God’s glory, only to be misunderstood, ridiculed and hounded by those who would call themselves our friends and brethren in Christ, and still the Lord does not come to us. We do all we can for God and yet feel no improvement nor progress in our lives, but only continuing hardship.

Ps.55:12-15 – “For it is not an enemy who reproaches me; Then I could bear it. Nor is it one who hates me who has exalted himself against me; Then I could hide from him. But it was you, a man my equal, my companion and my acquaintance. We took sweet counsel together and walked to the house of God in the throng.”

In times like this, we need to learn the wisdom and spiritual skills of dealing with discouragement in a God-centred and biblical way so that we can continue to hold our ground by faith in the living God, rather than succumb to despair and self-pity.

Preaching to our own Soul

Ps.42:5 – “Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him for the help of His countenance.”

Vs.11 – “Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God; for I shall yet praise Him, the help of my countenance and my God.”

 

Here we see the psalmist preaching to his own soul. How crucial this is in the fight of faith. If we want to strengthen ourselves in the Lord, we must, like the psalmist, learn to preach the truth to ourselves. Hope in God does not come naturally to us. We must preach it to ourselves, preach diligently or we will give way to a downcast and disquieted spirit.

Most of our unhappiness in life is due to the fact that we are listening to ourselves instead of talking to ourselves. Many Christians often allow negative thoughts or the lies of Satan to dominate their mind, when instead, we should be speaking positive thoughts and God’s truth to ourselves. We need to learn to preach the gospel of faith to ourselves.

Here, we see the psalmist speaking to his emotions. He is not allowing his emotions to dictate his mind, realizing that he must keep his hope in the Lord. This is absolutely critical for us to understand and to commit ourselves to doing in the midst of trouble. We cannot allow our emotions to get the best of us and control our lives. We cannot allow our actions and thoughts be dictated by how we feel. To be governed by our feelings and emotions makes us emotional disasters and leads us toward spiritual suicide. The psalmist is telling us that we have to speak to ourselves through many of the hard times of life.

Affirming God’s Sovereign love over us

Ps.42:8 – “The Lord will command His lovingkindness in the daytime, and in the night His song shall be with me - A prayer to the God of my life.”

Amid his discouragement, the palmist also learned to affirm God’s sovereign love for him. Even though he said it looked as if God had forgotten him, he never stopped believing in the absolute sovereignty of God over all his adversity. 

Worldly hope vs. Biblical hope

Worldly definition of hope – To anticipate, a wish or a deep desire in our heart and a feeling of expectation for a particular thing to happen.

Biblical hope – it is not a vain feeling of “perhaps something better will come”, but rather a certain expectation of faith in God that spurs us to leave our inmost desires and distress with the Lord. It is a recognition in the believer that God will indeed do what He has promised and therefore the believer can trust Him to do so.

Are you cast down and torn with troubles? Are you disillusioned because you feel abandoned with few who cares for you? Put your hope in God!

“Put your hope in God” - The repetition of the phrase tells us that it is not going to be enough to tell ourselves to trust God once. We must keep reminding ourselves of this!