Finding Worship In Your Depression Too

LaRue Baptist Church, OH

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That was amazing. Man, it's hard to follow that up now. Open your

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Bibles to Psalm 13. Psalm 13. Psalm 13.

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To the choir master is Psalm of David. How long,

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O Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?

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How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my own heart all the day?

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How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? Consider and answer me,

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O Lord, my God. Light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death, lest my enemy say

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I have prevailed over him, lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken. But I have trusted in your steadfast love.

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My heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord because he has dealt bountifully with me.

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O God in heaven, how needed is your word. Lord, it is so needful for us to read all of your word, to see all the breath of scripture play out, and for us to bring it to bear upon our souls.

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God in heaven, it is so easy for us to try to worship you only in the good feelings, to try to worship you only whenever it feels good to us.

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But Lord, I'm thankful for this text in which we are to give you worship even in the hardest of times, even when we don't feel you, even when we're depressed, even when we're sad.

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The world has no way to deal with their depression. But Lord, you have equipped us, you strengthen your people that even in our depression, even in our sadness, there is worship to be had, that even in those times there is maturity to grab hold of.

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So let us be a people in which we are so in love with you. We want to obey you from the heart in such a great way that even in the moments when we're alone with you, when we're up with others, and our heart is so far from you, we would wait upon you and we would seek you out.

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Thank you for this encouragement and I pray that you'd be with my lips as I proclaim it. In Jesus' name, amen.

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Well, God has given us a full range of emotions to enjoy him in.

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God has given us a full range of feelings to enjoy him in. I know you've had a certain pastor here historically has told you that feelings are always bad, from what

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I can hear. And that's not true. God has given us all sorts of different feelings that we can enjoy him in all sorts of different ways.

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He's given us a full range of emotions, and it's all for you to have to enjoy him with, to worship him in.

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Even the last few weeks that we've been in the Psalms, we saw in Psalm 4, he's given us the emotion of anger.

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When used rightly, we can worship him in. In the last Psalm we went through, last

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Lord's Day, he gave us happy worship, didn't he? Psalm 8 was very encouraging. It was all just happy worship in light of God's beautiful creation.

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So, he's given us the emotion of happiness and joy in his creation to enjoy worshiping him.

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But here in this Psalm 13, it's a very different Psalm. God has given us sadness.

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He's given us depression to enjoy him in. I'm going to call it one -dimensional

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Christianity. One -dimensional Christianity wants us to always be in Psalm 8, right?

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To always worship God in light of just happy feelings. That's a one -dimensional Christianity, always wants us to be in Psalm 8.

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This is the kind of the K -fluff, the K -love kind of positive, encouraging hits, right? We want to feel good always.

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That's what we want, and we don't want to go through the sadness, depression. We don't even understand why it's there.

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This is one -dimensional Christianity in my own state of Michigan that I grew up in. There was Smile FM, Michigan's positive hits.

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And we'll see, we'll get to the positive part, but beloved, we got to go through the depression first. And one -dimensional

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Christianity wants to avoid anything like that, because that's what the world does. It has no way of dealing with sadness or depression.

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So, they just want to get away from it, even if it means taking pills to do so. But beloved, let me tell you right now that depression, sadness, in a certain context, is given by God to you to enjoy

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Him in. He owns everything. He's sovereign over one, every square inch of your life, even your depression.

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One -dimensional Christianity is dangerous. It is a dangerous thing, because God has ordained that He would get worshiped by you in all of the emotions

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He has given you, given you those emotions on purpose, and you are to find ways to enjoy

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Him in every single one of them. There's not one area that we say, well, not this part. Easy to worship, whether it's in private, in your daily devotions with the

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Lord or with the saints, it's easy to do that with others when you are happy. It's easy to do that.

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There's a Mercy Me song, since I just hated on contemporary Christian music, I'll throw them a bone.

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There's a Mercy Me song, what's it called? It came out recently, by recently, I mean in the last five years, even if,

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I think, but it talks about that. It's easy to sing praises to God when things are going well, but what about when things are bad?

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But the one -dimensional Christian finds it easy to give up worship when they're feeling depressed or sad.

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I fall into one -dimensional Christianity, that when I am trying to spend time with the

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Lord and I'm sad and depressed, I have no feelings or desire for Him, I just want to close the

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Bible and move on and do other things. It's so easy to fall into one -dimensional Christianity. I've heard it a lot when speaking to congregants.

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One of the things I try to talk with people within the church is, how is your spiritual life going?

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You know, that's a really good question to ask people. You know, it kind of gets in their biz a little bit, but you know, that's actually not bad.

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How is your spiritual life, how is your daily devotions going? And those who are honest with me, who are struggling, it's just not even happening.

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And trying to get to the genesis of it not happening, a lot of times what happens is they started with maybe in the morning opening up their

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Bible, they didn't feel anything. In fact, they were feeling quite depressed and sad, they weren't feeling it, and so they just closed it and eventually that's happened enough to where they quit, right?

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Or they're doing it and they're just going through the motions, and there might be people before me here who, if your heart was revealed on your face, you would show that I'm simply here going through the motions.

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I've given up a long time ago because, you know, to be honest with you, it just wasn't doing it for me.

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It's very easy to fall into this one -dimensional Christianity that's boring, that is only worthy to be spit out.

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This is a one -dimensional Christianity or Christian who never learned that God reveals himself to you in the good and the bad times.

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He ordains your bad times so he can reveal something about himself that he wouldn't have, that wouldn't have been revealed in the good times.

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Your depression, your sadness, is God's gift to you so you can experience him in that and understand something about him that you wouldn't have without it.

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So don't you dare compartmentalize that away from God and say, just get me away from it.

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God reveals himself to you, and in revealing himself to you, how are we to respond in that revealing always?

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What is the only appropriate response? When God reveals himself to you, you,

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O saint, take that and you worship, no matter what. When God brings you into a state of depression and sadness, what does your worship look like?

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When God brings you into a state of depression and sadness, what does your worship look like?

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Is it strengthened? Is it resolved? Or does it just go away until your feelings are neutral again?

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Beloved, if it goes away, if that's where you're at, then in times of sadness and depression, you just tend to close your

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Bible, you tend to just go through the motions here, then you are giving up great maturity in Christ because it's in those great days of conflict in your soul that God reveals himself to you in a most unique, awesome way to mature you in the

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Lord. And if you lean away from God every time that happens, you are giving up maturity in Christ.

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It is a moment of gold that he's given to you to respond in obedience, to mature you in the

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Lord. It should be a time of great growth, for God reveals himself to you in your sadness that you wouldn't have experienced otherwise.

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So if I can use a John Piper statement, don't waste your depression, don't waste your sadness.

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If you're feeling it and it's heavy, have a mindset in you that's like, as long as I'm in this,

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I am not going to waste it. Use this emotion to lean into Christ and mature in ways you wouldn't have without it.

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See, you're not a slave to your emotion if you're in Christ. You're not a slave of your emotion.

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You don't just follow the whims of whatever the emotion's bringing you that day. We're not like the world in that way, are we?

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We're not a slave to it. We are people who are slaves of Christ, and that does not mean whenever it feels good to be so.

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Every single emotion we bring to the footstool of Christ, always, that's what it means to be a saint.

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And so we are not a slave of our feelings like the world. We're a slave of Christ.

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Bring that to him and watch him do wondrous things with it. Okay, that's lofty. Great. How?

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How do we do so? How do we do this? Well, I think Psalm 13, it's not exhaustive, but it'll lead you in the proper direction of how to be sad and depressed in the

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Lord. It'll lead you in the right direction. Meditate on this in those moments. Let it lead you and guide you.

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Going through this Psalm, we're going to break it off in three different parts.

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The first part is verses one through two, and I titled it, Acknowledge It.

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Acknowledge your depression. Acknowledge your sadness. Acknowledge it. Many times we come to God, we're overwhelmed with this emotion, but we're too,

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I don't know, proud or something. We think that Christians don't act like this, or we're not, I'm not supposed to feel this way.

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And so we actually don't acknowledge it to God. We keep it inside as if he is hiding it's going to do something good for you.

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The first thing I think we see David do is he acknowledges it, straight up, just acknowledges it. And then

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I think in three through four, he petitions in light of it, right? He acknowledges it, and then he brings it to the

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Lord, a petition, and directly with this problem, God, take this. And I think in verses five through six, what

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I see happening is he trusts God despite it. Okay? The feelings are still there.

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It's still there, but he's still going to trust God despite the fact that he's feeling that way, i .e.

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he's not a slave of his feelings. So let's look at the verses one through two.

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Acknowledge it. Acknowledge it. Thirteen, one through two. How long, oh

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Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?

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How long must I take counsel in my own soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day? How long shall my enemy be exalted?

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I see like five quick questions right there in just two verses, don't we? You know, when something is going bad, what do we tend to get?

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A lot of questions, right? There's something that happens bad in the country. The president or whoever's in control gets a lot of questions.

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How did this happen? How did this happen, right? When we're feeling this way, it's very normal for us to have a ton of questions. What is going on here?

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Why am I feeling this way? What is up with this, right? Bring these questions to the Lord. Let him be the first one to hear it.

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Have these questions. And notice the first one is a great summation of the rest. And it is, how long?

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How long? You know, it is perfectly natural and good when you are feeling this way.

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Depression, sadness, not good feelings. It is perfectly natural for you to say, I don't like this. I want to get out of this.

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This is terrible. How long? This feels like forever. When I say, don't waste your depression, when

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I say, use it, I'm not saying sit there and be like, great, I'm depressed. It's happening again. I love it, right?

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No, that's not how we deal with that feeling. We don't like it. God, how long am

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I going to have to go through this? But that doesn't mean, therefore, we don't take advantage of it and say, this is going to glorify you and be for my good.

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But you see, the flip side of it is that we do. Perfectly natural. Question to be asking

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God is, God, how long do I got to bear with this? How long do I got to get up and try to worship you and I feel nothing?

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How long must this happen to me? Perfectly natural for that to happen. That's being real with God.

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Do not be fake with God in which you're feeling this way, but you're not even putting voice to it.

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Say it out loud. Weep as you say it. How long, oh Lord, must I feel this way?

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And again, keep in your mind some imperative that you have also, but I will not waste this time that God has given me.

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Notice he says in verses one, verse one, will you forget me forever?

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How long will you hide your face from me? What's the issue here? He says, will you forget me?

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Will you hide your face forever? You see, the nature of God's covenant with his people, the very essence of it is that God, we see it in scripture, will not forget his people.

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And he will not hide his face from his people. His face will shine on his people. We have his happy presence, you see.

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The very nature of God being in covenant with his people is that he does not forget us.

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That his face shines upon us. And so what we have here, David is going through a situation in which he feels not in happy covenant with his

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God. The issue involved here, certainly we'll see, is his enemies seem to be prevailing. We don't know exactly what the issue is, but the heart of it is that I'm going through this hard time and it feels like you're not near.

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So you can have a situation where you lose your house financially, you lose a loved one, or you lose the

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Super Bowl. Goodness, Cincinnati, you know, he had it. They had it, right? You can be depressed over those things. And we could be depressed over the situations that happen, but ultimately if we get to the bedrock of it, it is that we're going through that hard time and it feels like God is not near.

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It feels like he's hiding himself. It seems like he's forgotten us. It seems like we're not in that happy communion with him.

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And that's the very nature of the covenant that he has made with us through Jesus Christ. And so this is the nature of our depression.

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And you need to be able to locate that because we can fall into this trap and think, if my circumstances were just a little different, right?

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If this would just get away from me, if this would just change, if I just didn't have this annoying coworker, if I just didn't have this annoying husband, if I didn't, you know, we can get into this circumstantial game.

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So we're like, if this would just, if I just had a million dollars, the bedrock, getting to the to the very core of it, is that in your depression, in your sadness, you are not close to God.

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I would much rather have a billion bad circumstances and feel close with my God than have the perfect situation, circumstances, and feel far from him.

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So the heart of the issue here for David is that he feels forgotten and he feels like God's face is away from him.

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And this is, should affect a saint in very profound ways, more than any kind of circumstances in your life.

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This is the heart of depression. Notice he says forever. Will this happen forever?

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Kind of like a teenage girl, you know, you know, with the extremes, you know. I guess guys do it too.

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I shouldn't pick on girls. I'm not allowed to do that anymore. But you know, just how forever? Is this going to be forever?

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Right? So you can almost like sense the exaggeration from David here, you know. It's almost like he knows it's not going to be forever.

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But you know what, right now I'm feeling like it's forever. I feel like it's never going to end. This is forever.

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Let me go to, goes on to say in verse two, it says, how long must

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I take counsel in my soul? How long must

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I take counsel in my soul? And that leads to and have sorrow in my heart all the day.

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You see what happens a lot of times in these moments of depression and sadness when God feels far from us, what happens is instead of taking counsel in the word of God and truth, we take counsel in our own soul.

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And in that state, that is a very bad mood move, I should say.

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This is why we, in this moment, we open up our scriptures and we try to meditate upon it and we feel nothing.

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This is doing nothing for me. Because in those moments we are taking counsel in our own soul. We'd rather just be involved in our own heart and our own understanding.

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And so we open up the word of God and this is doing nothing. And the one -dimensional Christian, since it's just not quite doing it for me, closes the

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Bible in their own soul for the rest of the day. This is the worst state to be in.

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This is the worst state to be in indeed. Those moments that we'll get into,

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I'm jumping the gun, but it's in those moments when we're taking counsel in our own soul and God's word seems far,

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His face and everything seems far, it's in those moments that we do not close scripture, we do not give up, but rather we wait upon the

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Lord. Our feelings are going to say the very opposite, but our actions cannot be directed by our feelings.

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But we must wait upon the Lord in those moments. And indeed, the most depressing part in this situation, in this extreme sadness, is that we naturally will fall prey to our own counsel and do not, we will not, submit and find refuge and strength in God's counsel.

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Look what he says in the end of verse two. How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?

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Now, I don't want to look too much into this. I don't want to quote -unquote over -spiritualize the text, but I think indeed

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David could be talking about physical enemies. David had many of them and his physical enemies, his literal enemies, did much harm to him and it caused him great distress.

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And so I don't doubt at all the text is talking about that, but I also know and I don't doubt at all that David and both the saints and everyone in the

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Lord, we have spiritual enemies, don't we? We have spiritual enemies that can feel like they're exalted over us in these times of depression, sadness.

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God is far from us. You look at 1 Corinthians 15. You look at 1

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Corinthians 15 verses 25, 28.

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1 Corinthians 15, 25. For he, Christ, must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.

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The last enemy to be destroyed is death itself. For God has put all things in subjection under Christ's feet, but when it says all things are put in subjection, it is plain that he is accepted who put all things in subjection under him.

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When all things are subjected to him, then the son himself will also be subjected to him, put all things of subjection under him, that God may be all in all.

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And so the point that I'm getting at there, the thing to look at there is that the enemy, the final enemy, the greatest enemy, the enemies of all of the

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Old Testament that it's pointed to is the enemy of sin. It's the enemy of death, right? We know that sin leads to death and we know that death is a great enemy.

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We know that the devil as the enemy, he entices us to sin. He entices us to these things that lead to our great death.

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And so certainly the literal enemy would be the enemies of Israel, the enemies of David. But I do think there is a spiritual, the things that it's pointing to is our enemy in the

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Lord, the enemy of sin, the enemy of death. And so in those moments in which Jesus or God feels far from us, his face is away from us and we are taking counsel on our own soul, it certainly feels like sin and death, everything that's involved in that is exalted over us.

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So this is us acknowledging the issue. This is David acknowledging the depression.

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This is David acknowledging the sadness and being real with it and bringing it to the Lord. The worst thing you can do is feel this way and not acknowledge it to God.

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And maybe in your heart, in your head, you think that God would be ashamed of you and so I'm just not going to acknowledge, I'm going to ignore it.

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But the worst thing you can do is do so. The first thing we need to do is acknowledge it to our great

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God. Acknowledge the issue. We are depressed. The depression happens because we're not feeling close to God and we're relying upon our own.

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We're not God's. Now, with that, we don't finish there. We don't just acknowledge it and move on, but we then go into petition, right?

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We then go into asking God of things. And asking God of things has to do intimately with what we are acknowledging.

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If you notice, that's exactly what's going on in verses three and four. He says, David says in verse three, consider and answer me,

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O Lord my God. Consider and answer me, O Lord my God. This is in direct correlation with verse one.

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How long, O Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? And now he's saying, in light of that, in light of feeling that way, he's saying, consider and answer me though,

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Yahweh. No longer forget me. No longer hide your face from me, but instead consider and answer me.

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If you notice in chapter 13, in Psalm 13, verse three, the second part of that same verse, he says, light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death.

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Light up my eyes. What does he mean by that? Well, I think that's directly correlated with verse two.

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How long must I take counsel in my own soul? And now he's saying, light up my eyes. What is he saying there?

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Give me understanding. Don't let me take counsel in my own soul anymore. I don't want that. I want counsel in you. Give me understanding.

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Instead, light up my eyes. If you look at Psalm 19, seven and eight. Psalm 19, seven and eight.

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We'll get a taste of that. Look at Psalm 19, seven. David, in this psalm, says, the law of the

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Lord is perfect, reviving the soul. The testimony of Yahweh is sure, making wise the simple, and the precepts of the

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Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes.

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Right? You got this talking about the word of God, and ultimately, he says, it enlightens our eyes.

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It gives us understanding. It gives us counsel. Paul talks about this in Ephesians 1. Paul talks about this in Ephesians 1, verses 17 and 18.

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Paul, in this great prayer, in light of the gospel, he says, in Ephesians 1, 17 and 18, he says, that the

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God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom, and of revelation, and the knowledge of him.

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Have in the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, where are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints.

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Right? This is what Paul, what did Paul want from the saints, is for them to know and understand, for their understanding to understand

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Christ more. The treasure that you have laid up in heaven for you. Right?

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And this is what David's asking for. Light up my eyes. Help me to understand and see. No longer take counsel in my own wickedness and my own sin, but let me take counsel in you and what you have laid up for me.

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The life that I have in happy covenant with you. This is what David's asking for.

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You seem distant, and I'm asking you to light up my eyes to see that you are intimately near through covenant.

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That I would see the beauties of your promises laid up for me in heaven. That I would stop taking counsel of myself, but rather see your promises that my eyes would be lit up.

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He says, unless there's this impending doom upon him, less and less of the worst case scenario, 13 .3,

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the end of it, unless I sleep the sleep of death. You know, when we're encroached with sin, encroached with our own counsels and our own depression, our sadness, we don't see a way out.

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We don't see the truth of God. It's as if sin is encroaching more and more. It's exalted over us, and it's going to have its final say in death itself.

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There is this urgency to get out of this state so that I do not fall prey to sin.

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And how it ravages us when we do. James talks about how sin ultimately leads to death, right?

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Sin works in our desires, and it ultimately, if we give into it, leads to death.

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There's one commentator that thought that David's talking about suicide here. I don't think that's the case.

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And again, death could be physical for sure, but I do think there's a spiritual component playing out here. That whenever we're given into this false mindset, it seems like death, death in a relationship with our

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God is certainly near. See, in verse four, lest my enemy says

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I have prevailed over him, lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken.

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It's the same notion. So look at what

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David's saying here, summarizing this petition. He's not necessarily asking for a change of circumstance, but he's asking that God would make him realize the covenant promises, right?

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That he would realize that his eyes would be open to the truth that God is near, right? And this is what will get him out of his depression and his sadness.

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That although he feels far, he's praying that God would enlighten his eyes and see that he is near.

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And so as we move in to close this psalm, I think what David does here is he trusts in God despite his feelings.

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Look at five and six of chapter 13. But I have trusted, David says,

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I have trusted in your steadfast love. My heart shall rejoice in your salvation.

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I will sing to the Lord because he has dealt bountifully with me. You see, we might expect after verse four and before verse five that God did something great for David, right?

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His circumstances were different, changed. He had conquered his enemies or whatever was causing him that depression. We might think that something happened, but nothing seems to have happened.

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It just seems like David says, but I will trust despite the fact that I'm feeling this way.

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It's like as if David has these feelings and he wants to give way to them and believe lies, but he says, no, despite that,

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I'm going to trust despite the fact that these feelings are still here. He's going to trust in God despite the feelings.

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Trust, you know, trust is, it means something significant whenever, you know what,

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I'm tempted not to do it, right? Trust means something very significant when everything within you sometimes cries out not to trust, but you said, you know what,

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I'm going to trust anyways. And it's in those moments of depression and sadness that we do not want to trust in the promises of God.

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And it's in those moments especially that we wait upon the Lord and we trust him regardless because he has said it and he will do it.

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He says for his saints that he is near to us. That's what he says in his word.

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And so we trust that he is near even when our feelings say no. In fact, he says,

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I rejoice in seeing. It's almost as if, again, his feelings are this way, but he says, you know,

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I'm going to rejoice in seeing anyways because salvation, he's dealt well with me.

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It shows that, again, we are not a slave to our feelings, are we? We wake up and we're feeling this way and we feel that God is far from us.

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We're not going to believe the lies, but rather we are going to trust that he has said otherwise. And because he has said otherwise, my feelings are not there even though I'm still going to worship

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God and sing praises to him and be thankful in my heart to him. I will rejoice and sing despite my feelings.

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This is David looking upon the objective truth of scripture and not letting his subjective feelings get in the way.

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So in those moments in which we open up scripture in our daily devotions and we feel far from God, it seems like he's abandoned us, we know that that's not the truth and we take counsel in his word and know that he is near.

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So I will rejoice in the Lord even though it's through tears. I'll sing out praises to my

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God even though I feel faint and weak. We will wait upon the

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Lord. And our eyes ultimately needs to look to Jesus. Our eyes ultimately need to look in Jesus.

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What is steadfast love we see in verse 5? What is salvation? What is

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God dealing well with us? That has no meaning outside of Jesus. Our minds and our eyes and our hearts need to focus on what

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Jesus has done for us. You know he was a suffering servant. You know Jesus faced great sorrow and depression himself.

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We talked about it already in worship. You remember what he says when he comes down the mountain of transfiguration, right?

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He enjoys the glory of that moment and then he comes down the mountain and he has to continue to deal with his disciples.

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He has to continue to deal with sinners. And what does he say? He says, how long, how long must

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I be with you people? He was perfectly righteous.

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You know how sad and depressing it would be to be perfectly righteous in the midst of great sin.

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He says, how long do I got to be with you? He says in Gethsemane, my soul is very troubled, right?

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That prayer in Gethsemane is a prayer of great sadness and sorrow over what is going to come upon him.

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He says on the cross, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Jesus' whole life was one of sorrow and it came out in very specific ways in the scripture.

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He suffered the same things. But beloved, if you look at all those things, it was for your good that he did those things.

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Isn't that fascinating? As you look upon the sorrow of Jesus and everything he had to endure, you need to intimately connect that with you.

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It was for me that he did this. He did this so I could be close to God.

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He did this so I could be near to God. And so he suffered these things of sadness and emotions of a suffering servant so that we could be near to God.

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So in our sufferings, in our emotional distraught, when we're distraught in that way, we do not turn away from God, but we lean into him because of what

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Jesus has done. We wait upon the Lord. Psalm 27, 14.

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Psalm 27, 14 says, wait for the

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Lord. It says in verse 13, I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of Yahweh in the land of the living.

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Wait for the Lord. Be strong and let your heart take courage. Wait for the

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Lord. Why would we need to be told to wait so much but that we are tempted to not? Our feelings are given way and we want to quit.

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Isaiah 40, Isaiah 40, verse 27 -31.

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Isaiah 40, verse 27 -31. Why do you say,

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O Jacob, and speak, O Israel? My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my

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God. See what's going on there is Israel's being mistreated by the world and Israel as a nation is trying to say

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God is not looking upon what's going on here at all. He doesn't care. And so Isaiah is saying, why do you say that?

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Why do you say my way is hidden from the Lord? My right is disregarded by my God. Have you not known?

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Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God. He's the creator of the ends of the earth.

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He does not faint or grow weary. His understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint.

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And to him who has no might, he increases strength. Even youth shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted.

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But they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with the wings like eagles, and they shall run and not be weary.

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They shall walk and not faint. So in those moments, and there's some of you who are in it right now, what are you to do?

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What are you to do in those moments? You're to wait. You're to cry out to the

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Lord, acknowledge it. You are to petition, Lord, get me out of this, please. But you do not ignore it, and you do not close your

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Bibles and just forget it. If God has you in this state, and it's not a result of some kind of sin that you're living in, then you are to take it and say,

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God, what am I to learn through this? You're to wait upon. Lord, you be patient because you are to remind yourselves of the covenantal promises we have in Jesus.

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Jesus took on these same things. It was for my benefit to be close to him. This is objective truth.

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So this is going to teach me this union, this relationship I can have with him.

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I will wait upon the Lord. I will go through this, whatever it may be, and I'll ask

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God, teach me through this. So again, if in your study it's stale, it's just not what it used to be, you don't give up, you don't wait, you don't give up, and you don't turn away, but rather you wait upon the

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Lord in that moment. There is a parable in which there is a plant that grows up from the gospel, and the maturity of the fruit, the fruit of the plant is cut off because of the cares of the world, right?

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We are to be a Christian who the cares of the world actually increases our fruit.

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We are to be the type of Christian, an actual abiding relationship with our Lord, that instead of these things that cause the world to fall in depression and sadness and falter, what are we to do?

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God has a way to use those moments to increase our relationship to him, to show himself in ways that we would never have seen without it.

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So what are we to do? We are to wait upon the Lord and say, have your will in this, show me who you are in this, and let me grow in maturity because of this.

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And this is the power of the gospel, the power of what Christ can do in these situations. Let us pray.

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Our God in heaven, it is an encouragement to me, it encourages my heart to know that no matter what life may, whatever might happen in my life, whatever might come,

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I know that already what your purpose is for it. And your purpose is to grow me, to mature me in the

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Lord. I'm thankful that the people before me, those saints who are in Christ, it's the same resolve for them that no matter what may be happening in their life or whatever they may be coming up to, whatever you allow, it is for their good.

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It is to reveal yourself to them. And Lord, that doesn't mean everything's going to be great.

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Great. In fact, it might be your purpose for it to be the very opposite. God, we can't explain your ways, but we know that if you are doing it, allowing it, it's for a particular purpose.

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And so I pray, God, that this would be our resolve, that even whenever you feel distant, even whenever you feel far from us, we would be resolved to know objective truth that in Jesus Christ, you are very near, and we'll wait upon you to experience that.

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We will say, how long, O Lord, must I feel this way? But we'll be resolved to know that you have promised good things for us.

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And so that our hearts, our actions, we would rejoice in you despite the feelings.

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So I pray that that would be our resolve even in this moment, that we would worship you even in this end of this

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Lord's day, even as we go about our week, that even whenever we encounter these things, our resolve will be to understand our salvation, to see it, and to be rejoicing in it despite the circumstances.

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Praise be to your great name, because it's only by your power that we're able to do this. So we praise you this morning in Jesus' name.