Remembering Him in the Midst of Life’s Storms

Psalm 42:6-10
⁶My 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.

⁸ By day the LORD directs his love,
at night his song is with me—
a prayer to the God of my life.

⁹ I say to God my Rock,
“Why have you forgotten me?
Why must I go about mourning,
oppressed by the enemy?”
¹⁰ My bones suffer mortal agony
as my foes taunt me,
saying to me all day long,

“Where is your God?”

The Psalmist isn’t where he wants to be.  He is on Mount Mizar… (a peak in the Mount Hermon range… miles north of what eventually would be called Galilee)  He is extreme North.  Where he wants to be is on Mount Zion (43:3)  Mizar means “littleness.”  The author of this Psalm feels small due to the storm in front of him.

Deep calls to deep… the water is surging… he is being swept away.

Physically, perhaps.  But most certainly psychologically.

He is going under.

Have you forgotten me, Lord?

I heard of a pastor in the midst of a period of church conflict who went into his backyard one day and waved a handkerchief toward the sky and said:
“Did you forget where you put me?”

Ever feel like that?

The lesson in the storm is:  Remember Him…. Even When You Feel Forgotten

 (New Living Translation)  ⁷ I hear the tumult of the raging seas
as your waves and surging tides sweep over me.
⁸ But each day the Lord pours his unfailing love upon me,
and through each night I sing his songs,
praying to God who gives me life.

1)   Remember that God is still in control.  Nothing has happened outside his notice.  They are His waves and His tides that sweep over you.

2)   Remember back when His love poured into your life.  When you went to bed singing.  When prayer was a second language.  Remember and be thankful.

Author Don Everts once wrote:  “I am a slave to my own personal weather systems.  If it’s been a good week, I have an easier time feeling good about what Jesus has done for me on the cross.  But if I am a little depressed or frustrated, my soul is anything but thankful.”  –  Don Everts  (God in the Flesh, p. 121.)

But thanksgiving may be the very thing you need to lift your depression or frustration.

“Devastated by a series of personal crises, Sean Coxe spent his last $300 to visit his father in Florida.  Feeling helpless and alone, he wanted nothing more than to be with the man who had so often been able to put life’s disasters in perspective when he was a child.  Perhaps he could now.  On the last evening of his visit, the two men stood at the end of a jetty and watched the sun set into the Gulf of Mexico.  Coxe was seething with bitterness.  He said, ‘You know, Dad, if we could take all the great moments we experience in our lifetimes and put them back-to-back, they wouldn’t last twenty minutes.’  Keeping his eyes fixed on the setting sun, his dad responded simply, ‘Yup.’  Stunned, Coxe turned to him.  His father then looked steadily into his eyes and added softly, with the wisdom of Job, ‘Precious, aren’t they?’”  –Ben Patterson (Waiting, pp.21, 22.)