This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

(upbeat music) Welcome back for our look at Psalm 41 to 45, day two, Psalm 42
this week. It's a Psalm that asks the question, what do you do when your soul is
downcast? Verse five, why are you downcast, oh my soul?

Why are you so disturbed within me? Verse nine and 10 of this Psalm say, I say
to God my rock, why have you forgotten me? Why must I go about mourning,
oppressed by the enemy?

My bones suffer mortal agony as my foes taunt me, saying to me all day long,
where is your God? What do you do when you're asking, where is your God? What do
you do when your soul is downcast?

Well, this Psalm gets to some answers, some of the places that we need to look,
because we know that God cares for us. We know that God is with us, but he also
has some ways that he says he can speak to our souls when our souls are
downcast. So what do I do?

Well, number one, you recognize that your thirst is for God. When you have a
downcast soul, there's a thirst there, and you recognize that that thirst is for
God. These very familiar verses in one and two of Psalm 42, as the deer pants
for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, oh God.

My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. Where can I go and meet with God?
So you recognize again and again and again that although you may think that your
thirst is for rest, or your thirst is for success when your soul is downcast,
your true thirst is for God, and only God can quench the real thirst of your
soul.

Sometimes our soul becomes downcast not because things are going wrong, but
because things are going right. We have all the success we ever thought we would
need, and we think our soul should be lifted up by that, but it is not. It's in
those moments sometimes of success that you recognize my soul is still panting.

And a downcast soul is often a soul that is panting for God. And that picture of
a deer panting, panting means you need water now. You are desperate to quench
your thirst.

And when you feel that way, you recognize I need, I need what God can do in my
soul that can quench my thirst through his word, through his presence, through
his people. When you're panting, you need water now. And so you get to water as
fast as you can.

And what I want to say to you is when you recognize your thirst is for God, you
start to seek him passionately. In Psalm 63 verse one, David wrote this while he
was in the desert. He was experiencing physical thirst, but he recognized in it
a soul thirst.

63 one says, oh God, you are my God. I earnestly seek you, my soul thirsts for
you. My body longs for you in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

And Jesus told a lot of stories about this. The fact that when my soul needs
God, only God will do. He's told stories about a pearl of great price and you
sell everything to get that pearl because you're seeking that one thing that you
need passionately.

Or about sheep, a sheep that was lost and you leave the 99 or coins that were
lost or a son that was lost. You seek God passionately because you realize it
can't wait. My soul is thirsty.

It can't wait a week or a month or a day. I need him right now. So you recognize
that your soul's thirst when your soul is downcast is for God.

A second thing you do is you remember the faithfulness of God. A time of your
soul being downcast is a good time to remember. And sometimes we can remember
all the things that have gone wrong in our lives.

It's easy to do that. I can sure do that easily. This is an easy time to have a
pity party when your soul is downcast.

But God says, take some time to remember what I have done in your life. In verse
four, these things I remember as I pour out my soul, how I used to go with the
multitude, leading the procession to the house of God with shouts of joy and
thanksgiving among the festive throng. And then in verse six, my soul is
downcast within me.

Therefore, I will remember you from the land of Jordan, the heights of Hermon,
from Mount Mizar. Here's something very interesting. He's talking about the
geography of the Holy Land here, of Jerusalem.

I'll remember you from the land of Jordan, the heights of Hermon, a mountain.
Then he says, Mount Mizar. Mizar means littleness.

And there's some deeper meaning for us there because most of us have spent some
time on Mount Little. Feeling little, looking at how little we've accomplished,
looking at how little people love us, feeling sorry for ourselves. On Mount
Little, we don't humble ourselves.

We humiliate ourselves with all the things that have gone wrong and all the
things that should have gone right. On Mount Little, we don't worship, we
wallow. We wallow in feeling sorry for ourselves.

And although God loves and cares for you in the midst of that downcast soul, and
he understands all the reasons for it, and he doesn't rush you to a place where
your soul has to feel better. He invites you not to wallow in your pain, but to
worship God in your pain. Don't pretend the pain isn't there, but just choose to
worship God in your pain.

I will remember you from Mount Little is what he says. So from that place of
feeling little or like little has happened in your life, remember God from that
point. And remember that even though you might feel that way, there are those
places of faithfulness, God's faithfulness in your life.

He's been faithful to bring you to him. He's been faithful along the way to give
you his grace and his patience and his love. And he'll be eternally faithful to
you.

So you remember the faithfulness of God when your soul is downcast. And then the
third thing that you do, and this may sound simple, it may sound trite, I hope
you can see the depth of it, is you put your hope in God. You put your hope in
God.

We need to be reminded of that. In verse five, verse five says, "Why are you
downcast, O my soul? "Why so disturbed within me?

"Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, "my Savior and my God. " Now,
let me read verse 11 to you, which is going to sound very familiar to what I just
read. Verse 11 says, "Why are you downcast, O my soul?

"Why so disturbed within me? "Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him,
"my Savior and my God. " He says the same thing twice.

He felt it was important that he needed to say in prayer the same thing to God
twice in this psalm. The truth is, your soul doesn't always get it the first
time, that we have to remind ourselves again and again and again throughout the
day and the days, I gotta put my hope in God. I gotta put my hope in God.

Once is not enough. So yes, it's a very simple phrase, put your hope in God, but
it will change everything. And it's worth reminding yourself again and again and
again.

Now, the psalmist reminds us, ends by giving us some advice that helps us to
recognize how God can work in our lives to let these very things happen that
we've just talked about. How do you recognize that your thirst is for God? How
do you remember the faithfulness of God?

How do you put your hope in God when your soul is downcast? Because your soul is
downcast. You don't feel like you have the energy to do all of these things.

So how do I do this? It's in this phrase that he uses. Let the deep call to the
deep.

Let the deep call to the deep. Your soul is the depths of who you are. So
surface answers are not going to lift your downcast soul.

Surface answers are not going to show you where God is in your lonely
circumstances. You need the depths of who God is to call to the depths of who
you are. Verse seven and eight, deep calls to deep in the roar of the
waterfalls, of your waterfalls.

All your waves and breakers have swept over me. By day the Lord directs his love
and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life. So the
psalmist is saying when I go and I hear the sound of a waterfall or I go and
watch the waves come in at the ocean, there's something about God's power.

There's something about God's depth there that calls to something in my soul.
And when your soul is downcast, you need God to call to something in your soul
like never before. You can't figure it out on your own.

You can't make yourself feel better all by yourself. You need the depths of who
God is to call to the depths of who you are. When you are deeply discouraged,
you need to know that God deeply loves you.

When you have a depth of doubt, you need to know like never before the depth of
God's truth. When you've been hurt deeply, you need to know the depths of God's
healing. Let the depths of who God is call to the depths of your soul right now.

Father, we sit before you and our soul may be downcast right now. If it's not
now, we're going to face it sometime, we know. And so we bring our downcast soul to
you and we pray that the depths of who you are would call to the depths of who
we are.

We need to hear something from you that we can't hear from anybody else, that we
can't hear from any circumstance, that we can't hear even from ourselves. So
God, call to us right now and let us hear the depths of your love, the depths of
your forgiveness, the depths of your truth, the depths of your healing, the
depths of your patience, the depths of who you are calling to the depths of who
we are. We ask for this miracle to happen by the power of your spirit and we ask
for it in Jesus' name, amen.

Join us tomorrow, we're going to see that Psalm 43 is actually part two of how to
deal with discouragement.