“Alone in Despair” – FBC Morning Light (6/5/2024)

Well, a good Wednesday morning to you, hope you're doing well thus far this week. And I just want to begin again today reminding you of the need that we have for your help if you're watching the devotionals on Facebook.

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Well today in our Bible reading, we're reading Psalms 88 and 89. Now yesterday, we looked at Psalm 71, where the psalmist is an older man, and he's praying to the

Lord not to cast him off in a time of old age. And really, that psalm ended rather positively.

It seems that the psalmist came to a resolution of some of those feelings of aloneness.

But Psalm 88 is quite a bit different. Psalm 88 is a song that reflects our feelings when the resolution hasn't arrived yet.

That is, when we feel like we're all alone, when we feel like heaven is brass, our prayers are getting nowhere, that God doesn't seem to be hearing me, doesn't seem to be answering my prayers, and nothing positive from our perspective is happening.

The difficulty, the challenge, the feeling of being forsaken is not resolved.

So the psalmist begins, he says, O Lord, God of my salvation, I have cried out day and night before you.

Let my prayer come before you, incline your ear to my cry. And then he goes on talking about his soul being full of troubles.

He says in verse 6 that you, speaking to the Lord, have laid me in the lowest pit and darkness and the depths.

Your wrath lies heavy upon me, and you've afflicted me with all your waves. You've put away all my acquaintances from me, in verse 8.

You've made me an abomination to them. Verse 9, my eye wastes away because of affliction.

So he doesn't have any friends, and he's suffering affliction, and he's crying out to God, and God doesn't seem to be hearing or answering his prayers at all.

He says in verse 9, Lord, I've called daily upon you, I've stretched out my hands to you.

And then he says, will you work wonders for the dead? I mean, if I just die in this situation, what good is that going to do you, to the

Lord? And then verse 13 again, he says, to you I have cried out, O Lord, and in the morning my prayer comes before you.

Lord, why do you cast off my soul? Why do you hide your face from me?

Do you ever feel that way? Do you ever feel so despondent that even the

Lord has forsaken you, that even the Lord isn't hearing you in your prayers?

And the thing about this psalm is there's not a turn to it.

In other words, most of the time in these psalms where the psalmist is expressing aloneness and forsakenness and lament and frustration, there is a turning point where he says, ah, but you,

O Lord. And he finds this sense of relief that doesn't come in this psalm.

It doesn't come. He says in verse 15, I've been afflicted and ready to die from my youth. I suffer your terrors,

I am distraught. Your fierce wrath has gone over me, your terrors have cut me off. They came around me all day long like water, they engulfed me altogether.

Loved one and friend, you have put far from me and my acquaintances into darkness.

End of psalm. End of the psalm. On the one hand,

I'm really thankful that the psalm ends that way because there are days like that, aren't there?

There are days when you feel that sense of despair, maybe, of despondency, of heaven being brass, of God not hearing.

There are days like that. How do you get through such days? The same way the psalmist does.

He keeps praying. He keeps going back to the Lord. He keeps coming to the

Lord, the God of his salvation. He cries out to him day and night.

And that's the key. That's the key. The darkness will eventually lift.

The light will shine. The Lord will some way show that, no, he has not forsaken you.

He will bring you through that valley of the shadow of death. So keep on keeping on in those dark days when it seems that everyone else has left you and forsaken you and even

God doesn't hear your prayers. Keep on praying to him. Keep on going to your

Heavenly Father, pouring out your soul to him. He is listening. He does hear. And he will bring you through, okay?

Our Father and our God, we thank you for this psalm that does reflect how we feel sometimes.

I pray that you would, from the example of the psalmist, give us the desire, the longing, the discipline to keep calling upon you and crying out to you, we pray.

And this we ask in Jesus' name, amen. All right. Listen, have a good rest of your