Lift The Heart

Written by Ed Allen
 Saturday, 17 April 1999 19:00

How To Experience God's Presence

Not all of those who are spiritual believe that you can experience God. Some spiritualities, like Buddhism, believe that life is a journey deeper and higher into yourself. Some, like Islam, would be uncomfortable with the idea of experiencing God. They believe you must obey God but He is far too distant to be actual experienced by human beings. But the Bible makes it absolutely clear that we can hear God?s voice, we can see His handiwork, we can know Him and love Him. In short, we can experience God. But how is that possible?

Psalm 42, 43

  • Carries on an inner dialogue with himself. "Soul, why are you so downcast?"
  • "Soul" is the Hebrew word nephesh which means inner self, passion, emotion, life. If a contemporary lyricist were writing this hymn, she would have said, "Heart, why are you so broken? Why are you so discouraged?"
  • Without a doubt discouragement is one of the principle enemies to experiencing God. Like the broken glass cannot hold liquid, so the broken heart cannot hold onto God. His presence slips away. Discouragement keeps us at a distance.
  • And yet discouragement is an inevitable part of the human experience. Christian pyschologist, Tim LaHaye has asked over 100,000 people if they never been depressed stand up. Never! If you?re not depressed you?re not in the company of Moses, Elijah, David, Jeremiah, Paul, even Jesus.
  • One of the things we learn from Psalm 42, 43 It?s okay to be depressed.
  • 2-face my favorite Batman character

Psalm 42, 43 written by a man whose soul is a battleground where faith and despair wrestle for control and ascendancy. He is tossed to and fro like the writer of the old negro spiritual ? "sometimes I?m up, sometimes I?m down, standin in the need of prayer."
  • Psalmist is looking at 2 possible selves. One whose pulse beats with the rhythm of the heart of God. It is a faith-filled heart. It cries out with confidence and wells up with joy filled with the knowledge of, the real experience of God?s love. The other self is a doubting, despairing self. It feels itself close to edge of a black midnight. It hangs over the precipice of depression and stares into that bottomless pit.
  • Dr. Hasel Markus, psychologist at the U. of MI says that we either have helpful inner dialogue or unhelpful. If we tend to think of ourselves as well integrated, whole, successful, happy people ? If we tend to think of ourselves as loosing it, then we go that way.

 

As we read Psalm 42, 43 we read a real, dynamic, honest heart struggle with discouragement, a struggle which the Psalmist ultimately wins because he remembers past encounters with God, he acknowledges God?s present faithfulness and he calls on God?s future intervention. If we will follow the Psalmist?s thoughts, we too can climb out way out of discouragement. We can lift our hearts out of the dark night and into the light of God?s presence.

  1. REMEMBER PAST ENCOUNTERS WITH GOD
  • The source of the Psalmist discouragement is both internal and external.
      1. Clear that he is physically separated from the place of worship. Maybe through sickness, maybe as a political exile, we cannot be sure of the reason, but the separation is clear.
      2. Inwardly down
      3. Expresses his discouragement in one of the most vivid figures of speech in all of the Bible. Verses 1, 2 image of a deer searching for water. 3 times the refrain "God, O God, for the living God."
      4. Gary Haines, Wongi National Park, studied elephants from 81 to 84. Dynamic drought. Sink holes with water 5 to 6 feet under the ground. Elephants sink their trunk into the dry, parched sand looking for water.
  • External ridicule(v. 3)
      1. We get this from our culture.
      2. Some of you get this from friends or family.
      3. Because of this tears flowed into his mouth. Ironic, looked for the water of God but only got the water of his own tears.
      4. Humans alone cry. Dr. William Frey studied crying. When people cry for emotional reasons the make-up of their tears is different than when they cry for emotional reasons. When they cry, they cry on average for 6 minutes. Men and Women cry for different reasons.
      5. The Psalmist has cried day and night.
  • But the Psalmist said the beginning of the way up and out is to remember.
      1. Times of worship. Energetic, forceful, exuberant worship.
      2. Jack Scott wrote in Reader?s Digest about the power of memory to rejuvenate the heart. He lived with his family for 17 years in front of a beautiful meadow. Then the lease on that home ran out and the Scott family had to move into a crowded urban environment. The whole family fell into depression. But one night his wife said to him, "Do you remember the time the deer gave birth out in the meadow?" One by one they began to recount scenes from the meadow. They built what Scott called a meadow of memories and in that meadow their hearts were lightened.
      3. I remember ?

     

    1. ACKNOWLEDGE THE PRESENT FAITHFULNESS OF GOD.
    1. Verse 5 "Downcast" is passive form of word for crouched down, bent over.
      1. The Psalmist is also discouraged because of distance.
      2. He is in a place we don?t even know where it is ?
      3. He is high in the mountains where there is an echo of waterfalls, perhaps the beginning of some river.
      4. Is there any way out?
    1. to recognize the present faithfulness of God.
      1. Continually, right now, the Lord directs his love. He commands his love, He charges his love. The implication here is that God sends his love out toward the Psalmist on a continual basis. The word love here is Hebrew hesed.
      2. By night God?s song is within him like a prayer to God.
      3. All the day long, the Psalmist recognizes He is in God?s presence. This is a statement of faith. The Psalmist may not feel it. Not in his barrenness. His heart may not leap at the words as he writes them. But he knows it. He knows he is surrounded night and day by the steadfast love of God. And he follows that knowledge as if it were a torch just ahead of him on a dark trail. He follows it up and out into the blinding light of God?s presence.
      4. "Love Lifted Me"
      5. If you?re down today, would you dare to look up from your discouragement and into the knowledge of God?s faithfulness to you. God has provided for you this week. You?re here!!!!

     

    1. EXPECT GOD?S FUTURE INTERVENTION
    1. The final step in lifting our heart toward God is to turn our attention fully to Him.
    2. Let?s stop the negative self-talk and turn our hearts toward God.
    3. Read 43:1-3
    4. Not All happiness and light here. But crying out to God as the one who can help.
    5. This is a choice. It cuts off the downward spiral of discouragement.

     

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