Read the transcript from today's video devotional.
Pastor and author Martin Lloyd-Jones, who is now with the Lord, said this decades ago. He said: "Most of our happiness is because we are listening to ourselves instead of talking to ourselves."
Our Verse of the Day is a great passage that addresses this idea of happiness, discouragement, and sadness.
It comes from Psalm chapter 43, verse 5. It says, "Why am I discouraged? Why is my heart so sad? I will put my hope in God! I will praise Him again—my Savior and my God!"
We All Experience This
All of us have moments of discouragement. Moments of sadness. These types of pains are in all of our lives. The psalmist really addresses this very simply. We're going to look at two solutions to discouragement, sadness, and maybe even depression.
The Context: Being Slandered
Let's go ahead and look at the Psalm together. Psalm 43 is really a personal response to the person and work of Christ, which ultimately points us to the real Savior, Jesus. As we look at this passage, we get to see how passionate and how aggravated the psalmist is in verse one. He says: "Declare me innocent, O God, defend me against these ungodly people. Rescue me from unjust liars."
Have you ever been lied about? Have you ever been slandered? It doesn't feel very good. The psalmist is feeling this. He says: God, You're my safe haven. I've been tossed aside. But then in verse five, he really is learning how to reflect upon himself.
The Pain of Discouragement
When he asks, "Why am I so discouraged? Why is my heart so sad?" you can hear the stubborn honesty of the Bible. Let's look at these two solutions.
Number one: the pain of discouragement. "Why am I so discouraged? Why is my heart so sad?" He's so real. That's what I love about the psalms. Question: who is the psalmist looking to? What is he thinking about? He's looking to himself. "Why am I so discouraged? Why am I so sad?"
The Danger of Excessive Self-Analysis
See, excessive self-analysis very quickly leads to introspection. It doesn't mean that we can't have the ability to reflect upon and think about our feelings—like, I'm kind of sad. That's okay. But excessive self-interest is very, very dangerous. Discouragement for most of us happens when this introspection happens, and then we can fall into depression.
The Person of Encouragement
As we look at this, we not only see the pain of discouragement, but secondly, let's call it the person of encouragement. The verse again says: "I will put my hope in God. I will praise Him again, my Savior and my God."
Four times in one verse, the focus is now on God: hope in God, praise Him, my Savior, my God. The path and the person to encouragement is God Himself. If you look at the words associated with self—discouraged, sad—and the words associated with God—hope and praise. The contrast is stark.
Talk to Yourself
What do we do with this passage? This is a very common, very real circumstance for some of you. What do we do with it?
Number one: talk to yourself. Don't listen to yourself. You wake up in the morning and your self starts talking to you. I have a meeting. I need to talk to this person. I must do this job, this particular thing. Do you know what? You start getting discouraged and your self just keeps going: You should really be discouraged. You're not going to be able to do it.
We have to learn to talk to ourselves. How do we do that? Sometimes we quote verses. We preach to ourselves. We teach the truth of the Scriptures to ourselves.
Load Your Mind with Scripture
That's the second point: load your mind with the Scriptures. Load your mind with the God of encouragement. We need a big God. We have all kinds of brokenness in the world. Broken people. Our hearts are broken because of them. We need a big God, a great Jesus Christ, and we need to know His Word, which addresses these very concerns.
I love Romans chapter 15, verse 5: "May the God of encouragement and the God of hope, who gives perseverance and encouragement." Philippians chapter 4, verse 13: "I can do all things through Christ who continually strengthens me"—and that means that God allows you to continue to be strengthened as you work through the difficulty, as mercies are new every morning.
Bring Your Pain to Jesus
If you're discouraged, go to the God of encouragement and bring your pain to Jesus Christ, because He truly is the person of encouragement.
