Latest / Fifteen Minutes With Fritz - Where Scripture Meets the Sidewalk / How to escape your "churning place"

Transcript

How to escape your "churning place" · Fifteen Minutes With Fritz - Where Scripture Meets the Sidewalk

• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: Good morning.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_01: My name is Fritz, and I'm the host of this podcast called Fifteen Minutes with Fritz.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: The purpose of these podcasts is to bring scripture into our daily walk, to seek to understand how the God who created the universe and everything in it cares deeply about each one of us.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: We've been using a book titled Living the Psalms written by Pastor Chuck Swindal.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: Each week we look at a different book in the Psalms, challenging ourselves to find encouragement for the daily grind.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: Before we begin this week, I want to talk about something called our churning place.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: For some of us, it's in the pit of our stomach.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: Others feel it at the back of their neck or in one or both temples.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: Some grind their teeth at night and must resort to a mouth guard when they are in their personal churning place.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: So what is a churning place?
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's the place where we physically feel the tension from life's unexpected challenges.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: When we receive bad news or unexpected bills or an impossible deadline at work, we often wrestle with what if scenarios, where we consider all the things that could possibly happen, usually bad, and we work through a myriad of options for how we should respond.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: That's our churning place.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: Now, don't get me wrong, analyzing situations and determining how to move forward is a good thing.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: But a churning place goes beyond that.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's where we retreat to mull over a situation ad nauseum.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: In other words, it's where we worry ourselves to the point of physical discomfort and stress.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: Now we all have triggers and we all have some form of a churning place.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: And today we will be looking to God's word to show us what we should do when we find ourselves in those situations.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: Now I've stated in previous podcasts how much I admire David because I can relate to him.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: No, I'm I'm not a king, but many of his struggles have nothing to do with this his lofty position as king of the Israelites.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: No, I I admire David because he wrestled with everyday situations, many of which are similar to my own.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: In today's Psalm we're going to read about David's churning place and what he did when he arrived there.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: I said Psalm, but we're actually going to look at two Psalms, numbers forty two and forty three.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: While these may be separate in your Bible, most scholars agree that these were probably originally written as one.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: And why would we think that?
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: Well, because there's no title at the beginning of Psalm forty three, which suggests it's a continuation of Psalm forty two.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: Also, you will hear a phrase that is repeated twice in Psalm forty two, then repeat it again word for word in Psalm forty three.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: Finally, there's a significant continuity of thought between the two Psalms.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: So we're going to treat them as one psalm for the purposes of our discussion today.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: If you can, open your Bibles to Psalms forty two and forty three and listen along as I read.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: My soul thirsts for God for the living God.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: When can I go and meet with God?
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: My tears have been my food day and night, while men say to me all day long, Where is your God?
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: These things I remember as I pour out my soul, how I used to go with the multitude, leading the procession to the house of God, with shouts of joy and thanksgiving among the festive throng.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: Why are you downcast, O my soul?
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: Why so disturbed within me?
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: My soul is downcast within me, therefore I will remember you from the land of the Jordan, the heights of Hermon, from Mount Mizar.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls, all your waves and breakers have swept over me.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: By day the Lord directs his love, at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: I say to God my rock, why have you forgotten me?
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: Why must I go about mourning, oppressed by the enemy?
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: My bones suffer mortal agony as my foes taunt me, saying to me all day long, Where is your God?
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: Why are you downcast, O my soul?
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: Why so disturbed within me?
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: Continuing on to Psalm forty three, Vindicate me, O God, and plead my cause against an ungodly nation.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: Rescue me from deceitful and wicked men.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: You are my our God, my stronghold.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: Why have you rejected me?
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: Why must I go about mourning, oppressed by the enemy?
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: Send forth your light and your truth, let them guide me.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: Let them bring me to your holy mountain, to the place where you dwell.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: Then will I go to the altar of God, to God, my joy and my delight.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: I will praise you with the harp, O God, my God.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: Why are you downcast, O my soul?
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: Why so disturbed within me?
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: Now I think you'd agree that David is clearly in his churning place.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: His trigger seems to come from several sources.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: He is surrounded by wicked and deceitful men from an ungodly nation, according to verse one in chapter forty three.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: He is being oppressed or persecuted by his enemies.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: People are mocking him, saying, Where is your God?
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: And all this leads to feelings that God has rejected him.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: And it culminates in a direct confrontation with God.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: Why have you forgotten me?
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: he says in verse nine.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: And there are phrases that seem to indicate this situation has gone on for quite a while.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: My tears have been my food day and night.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: Men say to me all day long, where is your God?
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: And the churning has led to actual physical discomfort.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: My bones suffer mortal agony.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so David resorts to talking to himself in the midst of his turmoil.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, the situation is so troublesome, so real that he repeats it three times in these two psalms.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: Why are you downcast, O my soul?
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: Why so disturbed within me?
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: Why are you downcast, O my soul?
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: Why so disturbed within me?
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: Why are you downcast, O my soul?
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: Why so disturbed within me?
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: Have you ever been there?
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: I know I have.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think we've been churning long enough.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: Let's find out how David escapes his gloominess and despair.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: Immediately after declaring that his very soul is downcast and disturbed, Davis gives us the answer.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: Put your hope in God, he says in verse five in Psalm forty two.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: And again in verse eleven, put your hope in God.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: And a third time, put your hope in God, this time in verse five in Psalm forty three.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: Honestly, this is a little disappointing.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: I was actually hoping for more from David.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: This sounds like one of those trite Christian answers to any problem we faced.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: Trust God and everything will be okay.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: While that's true, when we're in the midst of a problem, we want something more practical, something we can sink our teeth into, something that will pull us out of the mire.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: But before we give up on him, let's dig a little deeper into what David is saying.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: First, let's make sure we understand what he means by the word hope.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: We can hope in a lot of things.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: I hope the chair I'm sitting in will hold my weight.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: I hope that I've saved up enough money for my retirement.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: I hope I will remain healthy.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: This kind of hope is more or less wishful thinking.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: Biblical hope, however, is different.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: Whenever you see the word hope in the Bible, it doesn't mean we wish something would happen.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: Biblical hope carries a much stronger weight behind it.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: It means to wait expectantly, to have confidence something will come about.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: David captured this thought in another of his Psalms.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: I hope for you, O Lord, you will answer, O Lord my God.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: Another prophet, Micah, said something similar, but as for me, I watch in hope for the Lord, I wait for God my Savior.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: My God will hear me.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: Notice the positive tone.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: Both writers are expressing their confidence that God hears and that God answers.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: This is what David is saying in Psalm forty two and forty three.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: He is putting his hope, his trust, his confidence in God.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: A second thing we need to understand is that David is actually issuing a command to himself, to his soul, put your hope in God.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: In the Hebrew language this is a formal imperative verb, meaning it is a directive, an order.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: It isn't a recommendation, it's a commandment.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: David is telling himself that he has to put his trust where it belongs, in God.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: There's one more interesting thing that is clearer in the Hebrew language than it is in English.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: The verb hope is in the second person, meaning the command is directed specifically at the subject, which in this case is his soul.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_01: Why are you downcast, O my soul?
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: Why so disturbed within me?
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: Then comes the command put your hope in God.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so we know what we're supposed to do, but how do we actually get our souls to hope in God?
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we start by tracing the steps David took to escape his churning place.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: Why are you downcast, O my soul?
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: Why so disturbed within me?
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: This verse paints the picture of someone looking downward, kind of doubled over in despair and despondency.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: David then shifts his gaze upward by forcing his soul to put its hope in God.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: He expectantly then looks to the future where he will once again be able to praise God.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: So three simple steps stop looking down, look up and confidently prepare yourself to praise God.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: One very important thing to note is that while he is going through these steps, David's circumstances haven't changed.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: He is still surrounded by wicked and deceitful men.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: He is still being oppressed or persecuted by his enemies.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: People are still mocking him, saying, Where is your God?
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: But he doesn't wait for his circumstances to change before he changes his focus.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: He consciously switches from focusing on his problems to focusing on God.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: You see how important that is?
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: If we wait for our circumstances to change before we turn our gaze on God, we will never escape our churning place.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: As one commentator put it, biblical faith is not the absence of grief, but the redirection of it.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: David does not wait for his circumstances to change before he changes his focus.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: He uses the reality of God's future deliverance to anchor his present stormy soul.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: Finally, notice that David expects to praise God.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: I will yet praise him my Savior and my God.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: Not right now, but sometime in the future he's he's admitting that right now he's still in too much pain, that he's not in the proper mood.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: But he knows that there will come a time when he is in the right frame of mind, and he will once again praise God.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: And while he waits for that time to come around again, he will fix his gaze on God, not on his circumstances.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: And so when you find yourself in your churning place, remember the circumstances are real, the pain is real, but our God is also real, and when we turn our gaze on him, even in the midst of these painful circumstances, he will lift us up and place our feet on the rock, and from there we can praise Him.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: Let's pray.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: Our Father in heaven, as the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: Make these words the foundation of our hearts and our souls, and remind us that we need not be downcast.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: We do not need to despair.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: We need to look up and put our hope in God, and when we do, we will yet praise Him.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: In Jesus' name.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: Amen.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: This is the end of our podcast, but it's not the end of our story.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for listening.