A Word in Season: A Remedy for Anxiety (Psalm 94:19)

The Distress of God’s People in Psalm 94

There are occasions when God's people feel as if they are being clogged up in their inner being with dark and distressing thoughts. That was taking place to some extent in Psalm 94, where it seemed as if the wicked were in the ascendancy in the land, the righteous felt that they were being derided and drawn aside and thrown away, and in verse 16 the man of God says, He's saying in effect, who's going to be my defender?

Where will I turn for refuge? It seems as if the wickedness of man is rising in such a way that there's really no way out. When it feels like it's the interior of a bramble, it's all thorns and thistles and shadows, when all those troubles rise up within me, when I feel as if my foot is slipping, when I don't know where I'm going to turn next or I can't see a way out of my present predicament, when it seems as if the world on the grand scale and in my own life on a smaller scale, everything seems to be going against me and all I can see is how things are going to fall apart.

I don't know where to go, I don't know what to do. These are seasons when perhaps we can feel utterly overwhelmed by those sorrows and anxieties, the images of some great twisted mass of darkness that just captures us and constrains us and it seems perhaps at times that there is no way forward.

The Comforts of God in the Multitude of Anxieties

What is our consolation at that time? In the multitude of my anxieties within me, your comforts delight my soul. There is the answer to our distresses, there is the blessing that we need, there is the one who is able to relieve us in our trouble.

It is distinctly the consolations of the Lord, the comforts. God relieves our distresses, God lifts our burdens. Notice again, if I say my foot slips, there is an expression of an anxiety. Your mercy, O Lord, will hold me up.

Your comforts delight my soul. This is where I get my joy in the midst of sorrow. This is what takes away my distress when I am grieved. It is the fact that God is merciful towards me. If we are entering into that language today as believers, then we are speaking particularly of the redeeming mercies of God in Christ Jesus, his loving, saving, keeping, shepherding, protecting favour towards all his people, all those who have trusted in him.

Turning to Christ for Consolation and Refuge

It is then to God that we need to go when our anxieties well up within us, when that clogging darkness seems to press in upon our souls, when we are wondering if we are going to stumble and fall, when we think that our enemies have surrounded us, our troubles have come upon us, there is no way out for us.

Then is the time to remember the mercies of God and to turn again to him who alone we can trust and to ask him to take care of us. And not only to take care of us, but to persuade us of his care. You see, God is always taking care of us.

The comforts of God are sure, they are solid, they are certain and secure. There is no doubt that they are there, the problem often is that we don't see them or feel them in the way that we might wish.

And so we need to have our souls delighted with the enduring and certain consolations of God in Christ Jesus. That doesn't necessarily take away the grounds of our anxieties, but it does comfort us in the midst of our anxieties.

Bringing Your Anxieties to the God of Heaven

And if you have no such comforts, if you have no such refuge, if you have no such blessing, then take your anxieties, especially those with regard to your soul and your sin and your future, to the God of heaven and go to him in Christ and get his consolations to comfort your soul.