Talking to Yourself

Bethany post at 843 Acres: The Space for Lament

843 Acres: The Space for LamentM’Cheyne: Ez 5 (txt | aud, 3:29 min)
Ps 42-43 (txt | aud, 2:27 min)
Highlighted: Ps 42

Happiness: Our longing to be happy isn’t bad. According to C.S. Lewis, it’s required: “It is a Christian duty for everyone to be as happy as he can.” What happens, though, when we’re not happy? When things don’t happen as we hope or expect? Is it inconsistent to be a Christian and also to have feelings of sorrow, confusion, and depression?

Lament: The space for lament is when we see the gap between the way things are and the way things could be. Psalm 42 is a psalm of lament. In it, the psalmist struggles: “My tears have been my food day and night, while they say to me all the day long, ‘Where is your God?’” [1] He continues: “I say to God, my rock: ‘Why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning of because of the oppression of the enemy?’” [2] How does this psalm teach us to confront our feelings of sorrow, confusion, and depression?

Preaching: “Have you realized,” writes D. Martin-Lloyd Jones, “that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? … Now this man’s treatment [in Psalm 42] was this: instead of allowing this self to talk to him, he starts talking to himself. ‘Why are you cast down, O my soul? …’ You have to take yourself in hand, you have to address yourself, preach to yourself, question yourself … And then you must remind yourself of God, who God is, what God is, what God has done, and what God has pledged himself to do. Then, having done that, end on this great note: defy yourself, and defy other people, and defy the devil and the whole world, and say with this man, ‘I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance, who is also the health of my countenance and my God.’”

Prayer: Lord, Thank you for inspiring psalms like Psalm 42 that do not end all-wrapped-up-in-a-bow. As we preach to ourselves, may we cling to your word, not our circumstances. Teach us to say, “Why are you cast down, O my soul? Put your hope in God!” May we be like trees that drink your water, not chaff that blows in the wind. Amen.