These last few days have been very hard for Marti and me.  I find it difficult to think, sleep or care for her or anyone else, for that matter.  Our land is threatened and temporarily overtaken by the enemy. Unlike David in Psalm 41 and 42, I accepted the spirit of depression and did nothing to shake it. 

You see, late in David’s reign, his son, Absalom, took over the kingdom temporarily and David was driven into exile outside Jerusalem. Clearly it is a time of depression and frustration. But David does not give in to that spirit of depression, like I have a tendency to do; he seeks to do something about it. He embraces it, expresses it, and fights with it, as if he could wrestle it to the ground like Jacob wrestled with the angel.

None of us can escape times of depression; they will come. But when they come, instead of succumbing to them, we need to do what David did.  

There are three stages of David’s experience, and at the end of each stage there comes the refrain that describes what brought him through: 

“Hope in God; for I shall again praise Him, my help and my God.”

The first stage is one of intense longing and desire. He is experiencing a sense of God’s delay. There is no doubt in his heart that there is help for him in God. He expects to find it. He knows God has met his need in the past and he expects Him to meet it again. But, for some reason, after glorying in the memory specific times God has met his need, it still seems that help is delayed and this is hard for him to bear.

So he reminds himself in the refrain of this song:

Why are you cast down, O my soul,
  and why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God; for I shall yet praise him,
  my help and my God. (Psalms 42:5)

But his trial is not over. He has reached a second stage and he tries another tactic. He says,

My soul is cast down within me,
  therefore I remember Thee
from the land of Jordan and of Hermon,
  from Mount Mizar.
Deep calls to deep
  at the thunder of Thy cataracts;
all thy waves and Thy billows
  have gone over me.
By day the Lord commands His steadfast love;
  and at night His song is within me,
a prayer to the God of my life. (Psalms 42:6-8)

Here he remembers something else: an experience on a mountain, where he heard the waterfalls and the thundering white water.  They seemed to be calling to one another, “deep calling unto deep,” and it reminded him that the depths in God call out to the depths in him: the depth of the love of God, and the joy of God, calling out to the corresponding depth of prayer in the believer. Even though he does not feel anything, they are there; these silent deeps in God calling out to the deeps in man. Depression can drive us deeper to where we can find God in the depths.

But still he is not met with any comfort or resolve. So he expresses his disappointment in Verses 9-10:

I say to God, my rock:
  “Why hast Thou forgotten me?
Why go I mourning
  because of the oppression of the enemy?”
As with a deadly wound in my body,
  my adversaries taunt me,
while they say to me continually,
  “Where is your God?” (Psalms 42:9-10)

As if to say “Well God, you heard them; where are you?”

He is still deeply troubled. His usual means for dispelling depression have not helped him this time. He has not been able to shake his sense of God’s untimely delay, and now it has grown into a nagging, torturing doubt, “Why hast Thou forgotten me?”

He has reached the place of despair. “Why have You abandoned me? I’ve taken refuge in You, God, and yet You do nothing, absolutely nothing. I feel utterly forsaken.”

But then he realizes, at last, a way out:

Oh send out Thy light and Thy truth;
  let them lead me,
let them bring me to Thy holy hill
  and to Thy dwelling!
Then I will go to the altar of God,
  to God my exceeding joy;
and I will praise Thee with the lyre,
  O God, my God. (Psalms 43:3-4)

What a word of triumph! Now he understands that what God is doing is driving him step by step to the ultimate refuge of any believer in any time of testing: the word of God. It is the truth of God coupled with the light that will lead Him. The truth is God’s word; the light is our understanding of it. What he is crying out for is an understanding of the word as he reads it; light, breaking out of these promises, to encourage and strengthen his heart. 

There comes a time in all of our lives when we discover for ourselves that our ultimate refuge is in the word of God — what God has said. That is what David is saying. When you have depression of spirit, where nothing seems to relieve it; when you have tried to remember a joyful time with God in the past, and tried to recall the unshakable, unchangeable relationship that exist between you and God, but nothing helps; then there is nothing left but to rest upon His word, His truth, and to allow that to heal your heart. 

So David isn’t actually able to wrestle his depression to the ground, but he is able to come to something even stronger than his depression — the truth and light of the word of God. Like a lighthouse in a storm, we can hold on through to calmer days.

So David closes once more with the refrain that catches up the whole meaning of this song:

Why are you cast down, O my soul,
  and why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise Him,
  my help and my God.” (Psalms 43:5)

Yes, hope in God, for He is working out His purposes at all times. That is what the New Testament means when it says, “Having done all, to stand” (Ephesians 6:13).

Our Prayer Ministry Pastor, Merv Keck, has been a huge encouragement to me during this difficult time. Even his prayer requests are uplifting. As in: “Pray for financial stability as the ministry has labored through a pandemic during a time while many organizations did not stand.” And: “Pray that by the Grace of God we can focus our ministry on meeting the needs of a broken world, introducing Grace turned outward to everyone we encounter, and introduce Jesus to a new generation.”

Amen!

So why are you cast down O my soul? Hope in God; for I shall again praise Him, my help and my God!