Discouraged?

In His Name Devotionals
DISCOURAGED?

“O my God, my soul is cast down within me: therefore will I remember Thee from the land of Jordan, and of the Hermonites, from the hill Mizar.” (Psalm 42:6)

Every responsible person who has ever lived has been discouraged at some time. The conditions always vary, but the result is the same. In the language of David, King of Israel, we find saying, “O my God, my soul is cast down within me: therefore will I remember Thee from the land of Jordan, and of the Hermonites, from the hill Mizar” (Psalm 42:6).

These were not the words of the shepherd boy at home in Bethlehem, but words written after he got to Jerusalem. By this time he had traded his shepherd’s crook for the royal robes of a king. He would add, “Oh that I had wings like a dove! for then would I fly away, and be at rest” (Psalm 55:6). In all of this he was still a good man. He would be called a “man after Mine (God’s) own heart”

(Acts 13:22). Why is one cast down? Is it because we feel God has no regard for us? Really it is because He does have regard for us that we are what we are and where we are. We are “pruned” (to use the figure of John 15) to bear more fruit. We are often put in the furnace, because we are Gold (Mal. 3:2).

It is in this depression we ask, “A wounded spirit who can bear?” (Proverbs 18:14). Or we would say, “Who can cure? ” Only then do we find it is the God of all grace—The God of all comfort. And we learn to spread our problems out before Him. David had said, “Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise Him for the help of His countenance” (Psalm 42:5).