Do you ever give much thought to the voice inside your head? I’m talking about the script that so often seems to run on auto pilot and provides an endless flow of messages in which we may not even be aware. This dialogue we unwittingly have with ourselves can be so constant and repetitive that we rarely question its origination, not to mention its validity. How often do we identify these thoughts as truth and then define ourselves by them? “I can’t do…” “If I wasn’t so…” “I’ll never amount to…” So many factors work to determine the tone and content of these messages and whether they can be deemed helpful or detrimental—how we are feeling at the time, how much sleep we have had, what kind of stress we are under, how we are being treated, how we have been raised, expectations we have for ourselves or others have for us, our perceptions, our biases…the list goes on and on.
In his book entitled In the Lord I Take Refuge, Dane C. Ortlund, quotes Martin Lloyd-Jones, twentieth-century preacher as saying, “Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? Take those thoughts that come to you the moment you wake up in the morning. You have not originated them, but they start talking to you, they bring back the problem of yesterday, etc. Somebody is talking. Who is talking to you? Your self is talking to you.” (2021, p. 123). The question then becomes, “What are you saying to yourself?” Are you speaking messages constructed by the limitations of the finite view of your current situation? Or, if you are a believer, are you reminding yourself of who you are in Christ and the eternal hope you have in an all-powerful, all-knowing, compassionate, faithful, holy, loving, and merciful God?
The writer of Psalm 43:5 says, “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.” Here, he is speaking truth to his own soul, commanding himself to hope in God, and determining to praise Him!
If you’re like me, it often feels easier to wholeheartedly declare the wonderful truths of God’s faithfulness when life is on an upturn and things are going well. This, however, was not the current situation for the psalmist. He was reminding himself of his hope in God although he was facing a very difficult trial as recorded in Psalm 43:1-4 where he cries out,
“1 Declare me innocent, O God! Defend me against these ungodly people. Rescue me from these unjust liars.
2 For you are God, my only safe haven. Why have you tossed me aside? Why must I wander around in grief, oppressed by my enemies?
3 Send out your light and your truth; let them guide me. Let them lead me to your holy mountain, to the place where you live.
4 There I will go to the altar of God, to God—the source of all my joy! I will praise you with my harp, O God, my God!
This Psalm beautifully demonstrates for us the first three steps of the lament process with the writer 1) turning to God, 2) bringing his complaint to God, and 3) then asking boldly for God to act. He could have chosen, as some are in the habit of doing, to suffer in silence allowing the difficulty to overwhelm him or push him into anger or bitterness. He could have chosen to turn to unhealthy ways of coping to numb the pain or bring short-term escape from current reality. He could have simply complained about his circumstances to his friends and family. Or, he could have tried to fix it on his own. However, we see that in the midst of his painful circumstances, he chose to lean into God and to trust Him regardless of the outcome. In this final step of Lament, He made a choice to praise God, to remind himself that God alone is his salvation; that God alone is his God. He was honest with God about His suffering. But, instead of allowing his own thoughts of worry or despair to run wild and overcome him, he chose to speak the powerful truth of God’s salvation and reign over his own soul.
Mark Vroegop (2019) challenges us in his book Dark Clouds Deep Mercy by saying, “In the midst of the darkest moments of your life, I hope you’ll have the courage and conviction to say: ‘But I call to mind what God is like. I’m going to rehearse what I know to be true. I’m going to recite what I know to believe. I’m going to dare to hope’” (p. 111).
-Mickey Jensen – learn more about working with Mickey here!
References
Ortlund, D. C. (2021). In the lord I take refuge: 150 daily devotions through the Psalms. Crossway Books.
Vroegop, M. (2019). Dark clouds, deep mercy: Discovering the grace of lament. Crossway.
