A CONFLICT BETWEEN SENSE AND FAITH – Part 1

 ANCHOR OF LIFE DAILY DEVOTIONAL GUIDE For FRIDAY, 26TH MAY, 2023.

TOPIC: A CONFLICT BETWEEN SENSE AND FAITH – Part 1

MEMORIZE: “O my God, my soul is cast down within me; Therefore I will remember You from the land of the Jordan, And from the heights of Hermon, From the Hill Mizar.” Psalm 42:6.

SCRIPTURE READING: Psalm 42:6-11

“O my God, my soul is cast down within me; Therefore I will remember You from the land of the Jordan, And from the heights of Hermon, From the Hill Mizar. 7 Deep calls unto deep at the noise of Your waterfalls; All Your waves and billows have gone over me. 8 The LORD will command His lovingkindness in the daytime, And in the night His song shall be with me-A prayer to the God of my life. 9 I will say to God my Rock, "Why have You forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?" 10 As with a breaking of my bones, My enemies reproach me, While they say to me all day long, "Where is your God?" 11 Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; For I shall yet praise Him, The help of my countenance and my God.”

EXPOSITION:

Complaints and comforts here, as before, take their turn in David (and in believers too), like day and night in the course of nature. He complains of the dejections of his spirit (sense), but comforts himself with the thoughts of God (an act of faith), Ps 42:6. 

1. IN HIS TROUBLES. His soul was dejected, and he goes to God and tells him so: O my God! my soul is cast down within me. It is a great support to us, when upon any account we are distressed, that we have liberty of access to God, and liberty of speech before him, and may open to him the causes of our dejection. David had communed with his own heart about its own bitterness, and had not as yet found relief; and therefore he turns to God, and opens before him the trouble. When we cannot get relief for our burdened spirits by pleading with ourselves, we should try what we can do by praying to God and leaving our case with him. We cannot still these winds and waves; but we know who can. 

2. IN HIS DEVOTIONS.  His soul was elevated, and, finding the disease very painful, he had recourse to that as a sovereign remedy. David seems to say, "My soul is plunged; therefore, to prevent its sinking, I will remember thee, meditate upon thee, and call upon thee, and try what that will do to keep up my spirit."  The way to forget the sense of our miseries is to remember the God of our mercies. It was an uncommon case when the psalmist remembered God and was troubled, Ps 77:3. He had often remembered God and was comforted, and therefore had recourse to that expedient now. He was now driven to the utmost borders of the land of Canaan, to shelter himself there from the rage of his persecutors--sometimes to the country about Jordan, and, when discovered there, to the land of the Hermonites, or to a hill called Mizar, or the little hill; but, 

 (a.) Wherever he went he took his religion along with him. In all these places, he remembered God, and lifted up his heart to him, and kept his secret communion with him.  This is the comfort of the banished, the wanderers, the travellers, of those that are strangers in a strange land, that wherever they are there is a way open heavenward. 

 (b.) Wherever he was he retained his affection for the courts of God's house; from the land of Jordan, or from the top of the hills, he used to look a long look, a longing look, towards the place of the sanctuary, and wish himself there. Distance and time could not make him forget that which his heart was so much upon and which lay so near it.

PRAYER POINT: Lord, I cast my burden on you, deliver me from oppression and depression in Jesus name.

DAILY BIBLE READING IN A YEAR –  Job  39-42.