Psalm 62:5-6 “Yes, my soul, find rest in God; my hope comes from him. Truly he is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I will not be shaken.”
I had come home from a weekend retreat with the women of our church and the topic was, “Take Every Thought Captive.” There was a beautiful teacher of God’s Word and her name was Cathy Dickinson. She had written a book called, “Taming the Giants – Stripping the Power from Overwhelming Emotions.” As I sat and listened to her speak, I felt the Lord was speaking right to me because she spoke on the topic of discouragement. I have to confess that not only was I discouraged because of the loss of my son, but I had dropped my phone in the hot springs and as a result, it wasn’t working. It was Monday morning and I had a pounding headache and I had just gotten a speeding ticket because I was running late. I could have gotten out of bed at 5:15 and it would have been so easy for me to pull the covers back over my head and just say, “No, I can’t do this. I can’t do life,” but instead, the Lord woke me up before my alarm went off with a song that had been sung over the weekend, “It is Well With my Soul.” Since my computer still worked, I listened to the You-Tube version of the song, penned by Horacio Spafford who had lost his four daughters in a tragic accident when the ship they were sailing on in the ocean, sank.
David wrote Psalm 62 at one of his most discouraging times in life. His kingdom had been stolen along with the hearts of his people. David knew his soul needed encouragement and he cried out to God, a lot. David consistently reminds his soul of where his expectations need to be focused; he always tells himself to take his eyes off of his circumstances, and he had trained his soul and his expectations on his God. Psalm 42:11 says, “Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.” David had to tell his soul more than once to focus on the living God. David used the word soul over 100 times in the Psalms and he tells us to use “soul-talk.” He knew truths about his soul, such as, “Unless the LORD has been my help, my soul would have settled in the silence.” (Psalm 94:17.)
There were three things that Cathy taught us to do over the weekend to disarm discouragement; first, we are to “confess it.” And so I did, I knelt before the Lord and I admitted to Him that I was angry at Him for taking my child, that I had actually felt abandoned and betrayed by Him, that I felt like He had given me a gift and then taken it away and that I was struggling with His promises to me. The second thing she taught us to do was to “examine what I believe and what I do not believe.” She challenged us to really look at the scriptures and tell the Lord what you are struggling to believe, what is keeping me discouraged. For me, it is “modern day healing.” Why didn’t the Lord heal my son when I knew He could? And if He didn’t do it for me, then He certainly cannot and should not be doing it for others. Third, we are to “get into and walk in God’s perspective.” How does God see the situation and how does He want me to walk in it? Discouragement, for the most part, is often the result of the wrong perspective. That is where prayer comes in. So this morning, I am praying for my discouragement and asking God for His perspective. I am making the choice to walk in His perspective and for Him to give me His power to show me what to pray for.
– Melody
