Turning the page…
Turning the page…
Glory · Anxiety & Peace
Yes. The psalms of lament put anxiety itself into the mouth of believers: souls in despair, tears eaten as bread, questions flung straight at God, and one psalm that ends in darkness without a resolution. Yet every one of these prayers was addressed TO God, which means being overwhelmed has never disqualified anyone from trusting Him.
https://glorystudy.com/questions/can-i-be-anxious-and-still-trust-god · Scripture quoted from the World English Bible
Psalms 42
As you read: The movement between honest despair (3-7) and the refrain that preaches to the soul (5, 11), plus the question 'Where is your God?'
1As the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants after you, God.
2My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?
3My tears have been my food day and night, while they continually ask me, “Where is your God?”
4These things I remember, and pour out my soul within me, how I used to go with the crowd, and led them to God’s house, with the voice of joy and praise, a multitude keeping a holy day.
5Why are you in despair, my soul? Why are you disturbed within me? Hope in God! For I shall still praise him for the saving help of his presence.
6My God, my soul is in despair within me. Therefore I remember you from the land of the Jordan, the heights of Hermon, from the hill Mizar.
7Deep calls to deep at the noise of your waterfalls. All your waves and your billows have swept over me.
8Yahweh will command his loving kindness in the daytime. In the night his song shall be with me: a prayer to the God of my life.
9I will ask God, my rock, “Why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?”
10As with a sword in my bones, my adversaries reproach me, while they continually ask me, “Where is your God?”
11Why are you in despair, my soul? Why are you disturbed within me? Hope in God! For I shall still praise him, the saving help of my countenance, and my God.
Psalms 43
As you read: How the abandoned worshipper prays for light and truth to lead him back, and how the refrain returns one last time.
1Vindicate me, God, and plead my cause against an ungodly nation. Oh, deliver me from deceitful and wicked men.
2For you are the God of my strength. Why have you rejected me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?
3Oh, send out your light and your truth. Let them lead me. Let them bring me to your holy hill, To your tents.
4Then I will go to the altar of God, to God, my exceeding joy. I will praise you on the harp, God, my God.
5Why are you in despair, my soul? Why are you disturbed within me? Hope in God! For I shall still praise him: my Savior, my helper, and my God.
Psalms 88
As you read: A prayer that never resolves: no turn to praise, no answered hope, and yet God preserved it in His songbook.
1Yahweh, the God of my salvation, I have cried day and night before you.
2Let my prayer enter into your presence. Turn your ear to my cry.
3For my soul is full of troubles. My life draws near to Sheol.
4I am counted among those who go down into the pit. I am like a man who has no help,
5set apart among the dead, like the slain who lie in the grave, whom you remember no more. They are cut off from your hand.
6You have laid me in the lowest pit, in the darkest depths.
7Your wrath lies heavily on me. You have afflicted me with all your waves. Selah.
8You have taken my friends from me. You have made me an abomination to them. I am confined, and I can’t escape.
9My eyes are dim from grief. I have called on you daily, Yahweh. I have spread out my hands to you.
10Do you show wonders to the dead? Do the departed spirits rise up and praise you? Selah.
11Is your loving kindness declared in the grave? Or your faithfulness in Destruction?
12Are your wonders made known in the dark? Or your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?
13But to you, Yahweh, I have cried. In the morning, my prayer comes before you.
14Yahweh, why do you reject my soul? Why do you hide your face from me?
15I am afflicted and ready to die from my youth up. While I suffer your terrors, I am distracted.
16Your fierce wrath has gone over me. Your terrors have cut me off.
17They came around me like water all day long. They completely engulfed me.
18You have put lover and friend far from me, and my friends into darkness.
The psalm opens with a soul in distress, and the distress is aimed at God: 'As the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants after you, God.' Thirst, tears, and relentless taunts ('Where is your God?') are all spoken TO Him. Whatever else anxiety is, in Scripture it does not disqualify a person from seeking God; the very ache becomes the address.
“As the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants after you, God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? My tears have been my food day and night, while they continually ask me, “Where is your God?””Psalms 42:1-3
Three times across Psalms 42 and 43 the writer turns inward and interrogates himself: 'Why are you in despair, my soul? Why are you disturbed within me? Hope in God!' He does not deny the disturbance; he questions it. This is not pretending to be fine. It is preaching to yourself instead of only hearing yourself, and it is one of the most practical disciplines in the whole Bible for a spiraling mind.
“Why are you in despair, my soul? Why are you disturbed within me? Hope in God! For I shall still praise him for the saving help of his presence.”Psalms 42:5
“Why are you in despair, my soul? Why are you disturbed within me? Hope in God! For I shall still praise him, the saving help of my countenance, and my God.”Psalms 42:11
“Why are you in despair, my soul? Why are you disturbed within me? Hope in God! For I shall still praise him: my Savior, my helper, and my God.”Psalms 43:5
The psalmist's faith is not fragile politeness: 'I will ask God, my rock, Why have you forgotten me?' Notice the contradiction he holds together: God is his rock even while he asks why God seems absent. Psalm 88 goes further still: 'Yahweh, why do you reject my soul? Why do you hide your face from me?' Lament directed at God is a form of trust, because only a believer brings the unedited heart to the One he still calls his rock.
“I will ask God, my rock, “Why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?””Psalms 42:9
“Yahweh, why do you reject my soul? Why do you hide your face from me?”Psalms 88:14
Psalm 88 never turns. Its final line leaves lover and friend 'into darkness,' with no resolution and no sunrise. That is astonishing: the Spirit saw fit to preserve a believer's unresolved anguish in the permanent songbook of God's people. If you have seasons where faith survives but joy does not return by the last verse, you are not broken beyond the family of God; you are in a psalm.
“You have put lover and friend far from me, and my friends into darkness.”Psalms 88:18
“Yahweh, the God of my salvation, I have cried day and night before you.”Psalms 88:1
The refrain commands the soul: 'Hope in God!' before any relief has arrived, and grounds it forward: 'For I shall still praise him.' Psalm 43 shows what hoping looks like mid-darkness: praying for light and truth to lead home, and calling God 'my exceeding joy' while the way there is still unpaved. Trust under anxiety is often exactly this: an act of the will performed ahead of the feeling, sustained by remembering who God has been.
“Why are you in despair, my soul? Why are you disturbed within me? Hope in God! For I shall still praise him for the saving help of his presence. My God, my soul is in despair within me. Therefore I remember you from the land of the Jordan, the heights of Hermon, from the hill Mizar.”Psalms 42:5-6
“Oh, send out your light and your truth. Let them lead me. Let them bring me to your holy hill, To your tents. Then I will go to the altar of God, to God, my exceeding joy. I will praise you on the harp, God, my God.”Psalms 43:3-4