Roaming Chaplain

My mum often had a saying when things got to her ‘It feels like ants are in my head’.

What things?

Life’s unwelcome challenges,

– Bad news.

– We just aren’t coping emotionally.

– Relationships have turned on their head.

– Sickness

and an array of other things.

It doesn’t matter if we live in paradise but our soul feels threatened (fatigued) and our faith is tested.

The following psalm is poetry in motion about a king who had it all but felt isolated and far from God.

Read the words like it’s your private prayer and at the end let’s focus on what matters most.

Psalm 42: 1 As the deer pants for the water brooks,
So pants my soul for You, O God.
² My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When shall I come and appear before God?
³ My tears have been my food day and night,
While they continually say to me,
“Where is your God?”

⁴ When I remember these things,
I pour out my soul within me.
For I used to go with the multitude;
I went with them to the house of God,
With the voice of joy and praise,
With a multitude that kept a pilgrim feast.

⁵ Why are you cast down, O my soul?
And why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him
For the help of His countenance.

⁶ 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.

The opening verse and the closing verse says it all. No matter what we are going through just remember that this will pass just keep going.

We keep going till the answer comes.

Verse 1 Like a deer that is being chased for its very life is thirsty for survival. We who believe know that only God can quench our thirst.

As the deer pants for the water brooks, So pants my soul for You, O God.

Don’t look for anything else or anyone else to fill that space in your soul only God can fill.

What’s the answer?

In a world that dispenses lies as promises, we who believe reassure ourselves in what God says about us.

Self talk is not something new, the psalmist here thousands of years ago encouraged himself in the Lord. All through the psalm he’s talking to himself and finished with these words,

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.

Sometimes we just have to preach our own sermon in our head or when we meditate and pray and know that God is always an ever present God who hears our cry and sees our distress.

Being honest with God in our distress isn’t a lack of faith it’s a growing faith.

I remember many times mum saying, ‘God has seen my distress and heard my cry of all the calamity I’ve been through in life and finally God had vindicated me in my old age’

Like King David & my mum, this is our promise to us who trust in God.

Dear God, when the enemy of our soul tries to discourage us or discredit us, I pray that you’ll come in like a flood and destroy those taunting thoughts. I pray for everyone who reads this blog and puts their trust in you to experience your presence and feel the health of their soul nourished wherever they are by the Holy Ghost.

I pray these things in Jesus Name, Amen.