Psalm 42:5-7 - May 13, 2009

Ps 42:5-7 "Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and 6 my God. My soul is downcast within me; therefore I will remember you from the land of the Jordan, the heights of Hermon — from Mount Mizar. 7 Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me." NIV

There is a war going on inside of you! Each one of us lives in the context of a conflict for control of who you are. The Apostle Paul describes the conflict in great detail in Rom 7:21-23 “So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 For in my inner being I delight in God's law; 23 but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members.” The law of sin is warring against your soul and the fight is for domination of your focus. When the struggles and temptations of life come our way they war against a God centered focus. They war against inner peace. They war against Godly choices, seeking to dominate us and cause us to live out of the turbulent waters of our soulish, sinful nature.
Paul continues on to further describe this conflict in Rom 8:5-6 as he states, “Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. 6 The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace…” Each posture, living by the Spirit and living from our soul, carries with it an unalterable consequence. To live by the Spirit will in time produce life and peace and to live dominated by my soul will inevitably result in death.
Psalm 42:5-7 is an insightful illustration of a man purposefully engaging in that conflict. The psalmist has recognized the condition of his soul. Evidently circumstances have arisen that have left him describing his inner state as downcast and disturbed. Where the powerful lesson comes in is when we observe his response to his own state of mind. The psalmist refuses to wallow in his own discouragement. Instead, he confronts his own self-pity, and exhorts himself to a right focus. In essence he speaks to his own inner man and declares, “Why are you feeling this way? Put your hope in God!” What must not be missed within these words is the implication that if he has to be exhorted to put his hope in God then he must have allowed his focus to become off centered and must have placed his hope in something else. His gaze must have been either on man or on circumstance and now he is recognizing this inner drift and calling himself back to his foundation. It is so often the case that when we lose our peace it is because we have taken our eyes off of the Lord and placed them on something or someone else and like the psalmist we must arrest ourselves and re-fix our gaze on the Lord.
The psalmist’s reflections within this passage as he responds to this time of self-revelation are an insightful lesson for us. He takes three clear steps that are foundational responses to changing the state of our inner man. First he challenges himself to put his hope in God. Secondly he sets his heart to renew himself through praise and third he refocuses his thoughts through meditating on the good things that the Lord has done for him in the past. The wonderful conclusion of this simple journey is the awakening that takes place within the psalmist. He moves from warring against his feelings to a renewal of inner awareness. Only moments before he had been reflecting on the downcast state of his inner man but now the deep places within him are calling out to him again and his inner man is coming alive with divine refreshing. Consider the language of verse 7. “Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me.” As the psalmist has resolutely fixed his eyes upon the Lord the waves and breakers of God’s ministering presence are now crashing over him and the deep places within him are once again calling out to the Spirit of God for renewed visitation. Make a decision right now to cast off the destructive voice of a discouraged soul and fix your eyes upon the Lord. Let him renew you as you wait for him in the secret place of his presence!