WRAP YOURSELF IN PRAYER
These things come to mind as I pour out my soul: how I walked with the multitude, leading the procession to the house of God with shouts of joyH7440 and praise. Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why the unease within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise Him for the salvation of His presence.
Psalm 42:4-5
HOPE – Confidence in a future event; the highest degree of well-founded expectation of good; as a hope founded on God’s gracious promises; a scriptural sense. A well-founded scriptural hope is, in our religion, the source of ineffable happiness.
INEFFABLE – adjective [Latin ineffabilis; in and effabilis, from effort, to speak.] Unspeakable; unutterable; that cannot be expressed in words; usually in a good sense; as the ineffable joys of heaven; the ineffable glories of the Deity.
The American Dictionary of the English Language, Noah Webster, 1828.
In Psalm 42, one of the sons of Korah reminds himself that he once had been the pied piper of the worshippers. However, at that time, his soul was parched, anguished for the quenching power of the Lord’s presence. His enemies constantly badgered and harassed him concerning God’s seeming lack of faithfulness to him. They were in essence saying, “This best Friend of yours has abandoned you.” The psalmist started to believe the taunting of the haters and asked the Lord, “Why have You forgotten me?” Then he asked himself, “Why are you behaving this way? Why are you drowning in a self-made pity party?” The psalmist turned his focus off of himself and off of his problems and onto his solution—the all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful God.
After graduation from ORU, I moved from the vibrancy of campus life into an apartment building designed for the elderly and physically or mentally challenged. Many of my neighbors were severely mentally impaired and, if off their medications, could be frightening. I was in self-imposed isolation due to fear. I went through a deep depression, to the point that I hardly spoke except to talk to God in prayer because I was so depressed and felt empty. I don’t even know how many months it lasted! I would pray, and I would cry. Then I would pray and cry some more. I would be frank with God in my heart because I reasoned that God knew anyway, so I might as well say what I was thinking and feeling. I couldn’t hide anything from a God who knows everything. I was forthcoming about my pain, emotional as well as physical. The emotional even eclipsed the physical at that time. I can’t even say when it began because I was praying continuously and crying out to God; but gradually, in the fullness of God’s time, He was faithful to lift the cloud of depression. I was able to experience the free exuberance of joy once again.
When you are in a time of despair, do not neglect to wrap yourself in prayer! At the appointed time, the Lord will lift your cares.
Father, we know we can cast all our cares on You (1 Peter 5:7), but sometimes we wallow in despair and defeat before we do so. Help us to exercise “self-talk” and prayer like this Psalmist to reaffirm and reinvigorate our trust and dependance on You.