Turning Point

Guest (Male): Jesus didn't sugarcoat the hard truth, telling us in no uncertain terms that in this world, we would have trouble. Today, on Turning Point, Dr. David Jeremiah explains how to move from problems to praises, as he continues his study of a man who was well acquainted with trouble, yet was considered a man after God's own heart. Here's David with the conclusion of his message, A Prayer from a Cave.

Dr. David Jeremiah: And we thank you so much for joining us here on Turning Point. We're talking about making sense of it all. That's the title of the series. Seeing the world with a biblical perspective. And today we continue our discussion from Psalm 142 and a prayer from a cave.

This is a very visual portion of God's Word. In fact, when you read this Psalm, you can almost see yourself in the cave with David. You can almost feel the emotion of the event, how David starts so deeply depressed and ends so full of faith. And he reminds us that when we face our cave experiences, we have a choice. We can be filled with fear or we can be filled with faith. And what is faith? Faith is believing what you cannot yet see, believing in God, believing in Jesus, believing in the Word of God and trusting that God's truth will carry you through, and it will.

We'll get there in just a moment. Hey, Turning Point has a magazine that we're very proud of because we know it's helping people in their walk with the Lord. It's meant to add value to your life. It's coordinated with the teaching that is on the air every day, and it's available to you just for the asking. If you're not getting the magazine now, when you write or call or however you get in touch with us, just say, please send me the magazine, and you'll get the next copy that comes off the press. It's a beautiful presentation of biblical truth, devotional thoughts for every day, Monday through Friday, and one for the weekend, plus articles to help you in your walk with the Lord and information about the ministry of Turning Point around the world. It's a wonderful tool, and we want you to have it. Be sure to take advantage of this opportunity and have it mailed to your home.

Now, let's finish up what we started. Let's talk about a prayer from a cave. I'll never forget a trip my wife and I took one time years past to London, and we went to Piccadilly Square right in the rush hour. When all the work got out and everybody was running for the train, we were standing right in the middle of a million people, they said. We didn't know a soul.

I got in the train, and Donna kind of got caught in the crowd, and I had a hold of her hand, but I couldn't see her. I wasn't going to let go of her hand because I thought I might never see her again. I finally held onto her and pulled her body in, and we got in the train, and we were smushed in with all those people, and I felt very, very alone, surrounded by more people than I'd been in the presence of in all my life and yet very much alone. Sometimes our problems can do that to us, can't they?

David said, "I looked on my right hand. Who am I going to talk to?" I looked on my left hand, and they don't understand. You know what he said? "There's not one person in this whole group that cares for my soul." I don't know what there is about a problem, but problems have a tendency to isolate us from others. We build a shell around ourselves, and sometimes to our own undoing, we believe that we are unique in that situation. So who can we tell, and who will understand? And the more we think on it, the more certain we are that there's not a person in the world who will ever totally understand what we're going through. So, though we're surrounded by people, we feel very much alone.

I can think back on some problems that I've experienced as a father, as a pastor, when I would deeply desire to have talked to somebody, but just didn't know how to go about it, wondering if anybody would really understand. He's totally abandoned. He's hunted by Saul, and he feels alone.

And then because of all of this, David gets depressed. In the sixth verse is the best description for depression I have ever found in the Bible. It's exactly what the word means. He said, "I am brought very low." What is depression? Well, if you make a depression in something, you press in on it and you leave an indentation. When the soul is depressed, when your spirit is depressed, when you are emotionally depressed, it is a low point in your emotional cycle, and you get very, very low.

David said he had gone through depression. I don't know if I've ever been depressed. I'm not easily depressed, not really easily discouraged, but I've probably been close enough to it to know that I don't want to be. And I've counseled with people who have suffered with chronic depression, and I know that it is a very, very heavy burden to bear.

It is what is causing hundreds and thousands of high school young people, teenagers, to end their lives because they see no hope or any reason to go on, because of family problems, or because of total despair over the future of their own lives, because of a lack of purpose and concern for spiritual truth. They look around at a world, and to them, it's not worth fighting, and they get so depressed that finally they despair of their own lives, and they're killing themselves by the dozens.

David was depressed. All of his hope and all of his joy is gone. The thoughts of his problems have turned inward, and now they're no longer out here, now they're in here. It's no longer Saul is chasing me. It's no longer the 400 men are surrounding me. All of that has somehow come into his spirit, and it resides within his own emotions. He may not even be aware that anybody else is around. He is so down and depressed and discouraged.

Sometimes we think depression is sin, and there are occasions perhaps when it is, but as I've read the history of the great preachers, I've been overwhelmed to discover how many of them had great, great difficulty with depression. Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the great English preacher, would oftentimes get so depressed that he would have to take two to three months off from his ministry and go to the French Riviera just to be by himself and not even think about anybody or talk about anybody until he finally came out of it. Elijah was depressed. Remember, after his great mountaintop experience. Jonah was depressed after he was confronted by God in his disbelief of God's will. I could name others in the Bible. Moses was depressed. Many of God's people have been depressed. David's depressed.

And because of that, he has given up. He's just given up. He's in the midst of this situation. He doesn't see any way out. He doesn't see any hope. And so in verse 6, he just kind of looks at the problem and he says, "My persecutors are stronger than I am." You see what David has done now? I want you to listen carefully. He's added up the score. He's put everything down over on this side of the ledger. He's looked at all of his problems, and you can just see him mentally listing them. He's got all these people, and he's got Saul, and he's got this problem, and he's got his guilt over what's happened, and he's the king elect, but it's not going to happen that way. And he lists all these things down and he looks at him, he says, "Listen, there's no hope."

When I look at everything that's wrong in my life, every problem I have, I've totaled it up, and I'm telling you, I'm going to lose. So he describes his experience in the last verse as being in prison. Wait a minute, David, you're not in prison, you're in a cave. Yes, I know, but sometimes your caves become your prisons, don't they? Sometimes the problems you go through literally incarcerate you in the midst of them, and you can't get out, and there's no way to look, and you don't know what to do. And David is right there in his life. This is his low point, and he's telling us what it's like. He's telling us honestly what he feels. And we can identify with it because we've walked with him through all these experiences.

David is a man after God's own heart, and so when he thinks about Ahimelech the priest and that whole family being annihilated because of his rebellion, David is just so overwhelmed with it all. And if we read the Psalm, we sure identify, don't we?

Some of you here today have been right where David was, and some of you are there right now. You may think I've been reading your mail. You may think I've been listening to your conversations because I've just described what's happening with you.

Folks, I don't want to leave you there. The thing that's so great about this Psalm is David kind of works his way through it. I want to just show you the beginning and the end of the Psalm, and then I want to take you through the steps in between. Verse 1: "I cried unto the Lord." Verse 7: "Thou shalt deal bountifully with me." How did David get from the depths of depression to the confidence that he shows in the last verse? Well, at the risk of being very simplistic, let's just watch carefully the steps he walks through. And these are steps which we too can experience.

First of all, he verbalized what was going on in his life. I have come to this Psalm often and read it often because it reminds me of all the things I don't like to do when I have problems.

And I'm reminded that David was a man of God who followed these principles in his own life and shows us the way that we should go when we have difficulty. If you will look through the Psalm, you will notice it over and over again. Verse 1, "I cried unto the Lord." Verse 2, "I poured out my complaint." Verse 5, "I cried unto thee." Verse 6, "Attend unto my cry." What is David doing? He's telling God what's going on. You say, "Doesn't God know?" Oh yes, he knows.

Why is it so hard for us to do that? Why do we struggle? Some of you have a problem that's overwhelming to you. It's bigger than you can bear, but you cannot bring yourself to tell anybody what's happening. And you haven't even told God.

Before God, we speak our minds fully and name the problems and the people that plague us. Why do we do that? First of all, I do it because the best friend I have in the universe is the God of heaven. He knows, and I can say to him anything that's in my heart. Isn't that what a true friend is? A true friend is somebody to whom you can go, pour out your heart, and say everything that you want to say. And as one writer has said, "They will keep the wheat and blow the chaff away."

Do you have anybody that you can get in the car with and lock the door, roll up the windows and drive off, and when you get to one of those overlooks, you pull the car off and you turn and you vent? And you say, "I'm going to tell you what is going on in my life." Here's what I feel, and you can scream if you want to. And holler and cry.

That's what God is for us. You say, "Pastor, that doesn't sound very spiritual." But I want to tell you something, you can't get to verse 7 if you don't walk through that step. Until you get to the place where you can tell God what you feel as honestly as you know how to say it. And I'm not talking about chronic complaining or negative begging of God. I'm simply saying, oftentimes we don't come to God with our problem. We don't cry out to God from the cave.

One of my favorite people has always been Joseph Bailey. Joe Bailey for years wrote a column for Eternity Magazine. He's written many books, some of them on the family. Joe Bailey suffered a great deal in his life. He lost three of his children through terrible, tragic accidents, and he wrote a book called, "A View From the Hearse," describing what he went through in his pain.

But he was such a great writer because he just put down on paper the way it was. And he's got a book called, "The Psalms of My Life," things that he wrote while he was walking through life. And one particular psalm he wrote while he was traveling across the country on a speaking and writing tour, he was all by himself, and these are his words. Listen carefully.

"I'm alone, Lord, all alone. A thousand miles from home. There's no one here who knows my name except the clerk, and he spelled it wrong. No one to eat dinner with, no one to laugh at my jokes, listen to my gripes, be happy with me about what happened today and say that's great. No one cares. There's just this lousy bed and slush in the street outside and between the buildings. I feel sorry for myself and I've plenty of reason to. Maybe I ought to say I'm on top of it. Praise the Lord. Things are great. But they're not. Tonight, it's all gray slush." Not much of a psalm, but surely a good way to express what the man felt. He verbalized what was happening in his heart. Do you do that?

Have you listened to your prayers lately? Some of you are hurting so desperately today. I know some of you hurts. When was the last time you closed the door, locked it, got on your knees and just told God what you were feeling? Some of you feel abandoned by him. Some of you think God has forgotten about you. You've gone through so many difficult things that you wonder if God really cares. Have you told him?

That's where it starts. That's how it begins. I want you to notice the second thing that he does is he kind of visualizes this whole thing before God. Verse 2. He says, "I poured out my complaint before him. I showed before him my trouble." That's a very important verse. Here's his trouble in this little book, and David says he goes before God and he just turns the book around and he says, "Here, God, here it is. This is what's wrong."

"Look at it. Will you look at it?"

But the key to the verse is that he did it before God. And in the picture, if you can see it, are David's troubles laid out, and in the picture is God. One of the dangers we have in our praying is we rush quickly into our supplication and intercession before we go to praise. And I've warned you about that and how carefully God has protected in the pattern of praying that worship comes first.

That's not just because it's an arbitrary thing of God. Listen to me now. If we do not praise God, if we do not worship God, if we do not adore God in the beginning of our praying, we will not be showing our problems before him. The purpose of praise is not only because God alone is worthy of it, but praise has a tendency to make God big in our hearts and in our minds and in our spiritual being, so that when we finally pass through the gates of praise and thanksgiving, and we enter into the disclosure of our problems, we are pouring out our problems before a great and mighty God.

If I visualize my problems without God in the picture, I'm depressed. And truly, much praying can be depressing, because we give God the grocery list of all of our problems, and we've forgotten the greatness of the one to whom we pray.

David said, "I showed my problems before him. I poured them out before God."

I think of the story of Kadesh Barnea in the Old Testament, and how the spies went in to check out the land, and the majority report came back. They said, "We're dead. We're dead. We've checked out the opposition, and we're like grasshoppers before them. We haven't got a chance."

Then Joshua and Caleb, stubborn men of faith, came back, and they said, "Listen, we looked at those guys, and it's a piece of cake. We have a great God. They may be big to us, but they're not big to God. And after all, it's God's problem, and God can take care of it. All we got to do is trust him." And the majority wouldn't believe, and they ended up wandering around the wilderness for 40 years because of their unbelief, but those two men God blessed. You know what the difference between the two reports was? The first group saw their problems in respect to their own resources and were frightened. But Joshua and Caleb saw the problem in respect to the resources of God, and they were encouraged and had faith.

The best thing I can do when I have a problem, and I feel like I'm in the cave and the prison of my own difficulties, is to spend as much time as I can praising God, exalting him, honoring him, glorifying him, reading the great passages that build the picture of God as he really is, and then in the context of that kind of a God, I tell him my problems.

David continues. He is beginning to get confidence in his own spirit. Notice in the third verse, he begins to recognize something about God. "When my spirit was overwhelmed within me, then thou knewest my path." He begins to think about the fact that what he's going through is known to God. "God, I know I've told you all of this today, and I've showed you all of this today, but it suddenly dawns on me that you know this. You know me, and you care about me, and you're interested in me." And as we read in Job 23:10, "He knoweth the way that I take, and when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold." Or Psalm 37:23, "The steps of a good man are ordered of the Lord, and he delighteth in his way."

As David pours out his soul to God and cries out to God in the midst of the cave, he suddenly begins to understand that the one to whom he speaks is the priest. The one to whom he speaks is the one who knows, who understands. And so he begins to realize the provision that he has in God. Notice verse 5, "I cried unto thee, O Lord. I said, watch this, Thou art my refuge and my portion in the land of the living." What is happening to David? Do you see how he's working through this thing in his life? He's in the cave, he's surrounded by the enemy, he's depressed and discouraged, but he begins to tell God what he feels. He begins to show God what he feels. He begins to understand that God knows what he feels, and then he begins to realize in his own mind that because he is talking to such a great God, that that's where the answer lies.

"Thou art my portion and my refuge in the land of the living." I heard an old preacher one time preach this Psalm, and it blessed my soul. He said, "There's no living in the land of the living like living unto the living God." And he was right. That's what the Psalmist said. "Thou art my portion and my refuge in the land of the living."

And finally, David comes to the seventh verse, and he finishes up the Psalm, and he's arrived at the place of victory over all of this. "Bring my soul out of prison. Watch this, that I may praise thy name, for thou shalt deal bountifully with me." From depression to praise, from problems to praise.

And I like to believe that when David finished writing Psalm 142, he took a break, and he came back and wrote Psalm 57. Turn over to Psalm 57. We haven't but a moment to look at it, and we're just going to look at two verses.

David is learning that God can be trusted in times of danger. And as he has talked about his problem to God, he now writes this great hymn of exciting praise to the Lord. Now, this hymn has two verses, and in between the two verses is a chorus. Verse 1 of the song is verses 1 through 4 in the Psalm, and verse 2 is verses 6 through 11. And at the end of each verse, there is the chorus. The chorus is in verse 5, "Be thou exalted, O God, above the heavens. Let thy glory be above all the earth." And then there's the second verse and the chorus again in verse 11. "Be thou exalted, O God, above the heavens. Let thy glory be above all the earth."

You see, we don't have much a different pattern in our singing today than they did back then. We sing a verse, and then we sing the chorus. We sing the verse, and then we sing the chorus.

But notice what is going on in the verses. Verse 1, "Be merciful unto me, O God, be merciful unto me, for my soul trusteth in thee." That's where David is at the end of Psalm 142. He's now trusting in God. "In the shadow of thy wings will I make my refuge until these calamities are over."

"I will cry unto God most high, unto God that performeth all things for me. He shall send from heaven and save me from the reproach of him that would swallow me up. God shall send forth his mercy and his truth. My soul is among lions." Those are the 400 to 600 men he's with. "And I lie even among them that are set on fire, even the sons of men whose teeth are spears and arrows and their tongue is a sharp sword."

"Be thou exalted, O God, above the heavens, let thy glory be above all the earth."

"They've prepared a net for my steps. My soul is bowed down. They've dug a pit for me. In the midst thereof, they have fallen themselves. My heart is fixed, O God. My heart is fixed. I will sing and give praise."

"Awake up, my glory. Awake, psaltery and harp. I myself will awake early. I will praise thee, O Lord, among the people. I will sing unto thee among the nations, for thy mercy is great unto the heavens, and thy truth unto the clouds. Be thou exalted, O God, above the heavens. Let thy glory be above all the earth."

I like to imagine the Bible. Here's this huge cave. It has an echo in it. And here are these 400 rough men. And David says, "All right, everyone, listen up. It's time for choir rehearsal." All the tenors over here, we're going to sing. And at first, it didn't sound like much, but then they sang it again and again until that whole cave resounded with praise to God in heaven.

Guest (Male): What a moment that must have been. And if you think back, you've probably had some moments like that in your life. Maybe not quite as stark as this one, but...

Dr. David Jeremiah: Hey, these lessons on making sense of it all with a biblical perspective are available to you on CD. You can also get the study guide that goes with the set, and you can carry on your own Bible study, maybe a small group, or however you get together with people to study and preview the scriptures. We want to send this material to you, make it available. You can find out all about it at davidjeremiah.org. There you will see all of the resources that are available with this series, and you can explore other opportunities that we make available as well.

And don't forget, we're taking a cruise to the Caribbean after Christmas, and you can come with us. Find out about it at the same place, davidjeremiah.org. Plan to come and be with us. We'll have a great time together in the warm weather and with the beautiful ocean, lots of wonderful music, and the teaching of the Word of God. Have a wonderful weekend. We'll see you on Monday.

Guest (Male): Our message today came to you from Shadow Mountain Community Church and Dr. David Jeremiah, the senior pastor. Turning Point is also on radio and TV this weekend. To learn where you can find it, visit our website davidjeremiah.org/radio. That's davidjeremiah.org/radio. Or call 800-947-1993. Ask for your copy of Robert J. Morgan's inspiring book, "100 Bible Verses That Made America." It's yours for a gift of any amount. You can also purchase the Jeremiah Study Bible in the English Standard, New International, and New King James versions, available in your choice of handsome and durable cover options. If this ministry is helping you grow, let us know by writing to Turning Point, PO Box 3838, San Diego, California 92163. This is David Michael Jeremiah. Join us Monday as we continue the series, "Making Sense of It All," on Turning Point with Dr. David Jeremiah.