If you open up your Bibles to Psalm 42. Psalm 42, I'm gonna begin reading in Psalm 42, but just with this little preface, Psalm 42 and Psalm 43 actually fit together. In the oldest manuscripts, they're one Psalm. And we see through other evidences in Psalm 43, there's no introduction like there is in Psalm 42. And most in the second book, as it were, in the Psalms, the second book of Psalms, in the Psalms, Most all of those do have an introduction and it has Psalm 43 has the same refrain and you'll see that tonight. But we're treating Psalms 42 and 43 as one Psalm as it were. And if you don't believe those proofs that I just mentioned, you can go back to Pastor Rich's message on Psalm 42, you can call upon an eminent scholar, and he had the same testimony when you preached. I looked that up from several years ago, Pastor Rich. So, Psalm 42. As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? My tears have been my food day and night while they say to me all the day long, where is your God? These things I remember as I pour out my soul. How would I go with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God with glad shouts and songs of praise, a multitude keeping festival? Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God, for I shall praise him, my salvation and my God. My soul is cast down within me. Therefore, I remember you from the land of Jordan and of Hermon, from Mount Mizar, deep calls to deep. At the roar of your waterfalls, all your breakers and your waves have gone over me. By day the Lord commands His steadfast love, and at night His song is with me. A prayer to the God of my life, I say to God, my rock, why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy? As with a deadly wound in my bones, my adversaries taunt me, while they say to me all the day long, where is your God? Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God. Vindicate me, O God, and defend my cause against an ungodly people. From the deceitful and unjust man, deliver me. For you are the God in whom I take refuge. Why have you rejected me? Why do I go about mourning because of the oppression of the enemy? Send out your light and your truth. Let them lead me. Let them bring me to your holy hill and to your dwelling. Then I will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy, and I will praise you with the lyre, O God, my God. And here's that refrain one last time. Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God. Lord God Almighty, this evening as we share in the word together as a body of believers, Lord, I pray in Jesus' name that you would have your way with us even as Clark gave testimony earlier about the word of God that people Had not beheld before. It's that same Word of God. That will be reading from tonight that is. Quick, it's sharp. It's powerful. It pierces to the division of. Soul and spirit and joint and marrow and discerns the thoughts and intentions of our heart, and it's instructive for us, Lord. So. The words that I bring tonight, Lord, may they be of you, Lord. and whatever is not of You, Lord, help Your people to cling to Your everlasting Word. In Jesus' name, Amen. So the question tonight is about depression, anxiety. Do Christians get depressed? Some debate over this. does not use our modern language or labels for diagnosis that we do. The ones we're familiar with. So it never says something specifically like, and David got really depressed. But something the Bible does do is it describes men and women who display telltale symptoms of things that we now call depression. Something that we now call anxiety. Something that we now call post-traumatic stress disorder. I call these people, and I'll make mention of just a few of them, you're aware of them, but it's helpful just to be reminded of how many there actually are. I call these people, these characters in the scripture, downcast believers. You might think of Moses in Numbers 11. You'll remember the children of Israel in the wilderness. They were complaining about not having meat, right? And at this point, Moses had just absolutely had it, right? He says to God, if you will treat me like this, just kill me at once. Is that a depressed soul? I mean, we would call that what? Suicidal. There's a loss of hope there. He had put up with it for so long. Hannah. You think of Hannah in 1 Samuel. She had some anxiety, didn't she? Because of the vexation. That's the word the scripture used, because she had been mocked by Penina, remember that? And Jeremiah would be another one. He cursed the very day that he was born. He actually talks about in Lamentations chapter three, and you can look at these. I believe I have these listed in your outline. He actually, in the language of his day, said, I wish I had been aborted. I wish I had never been born. You might be thinking of others like Elijah. Remember, he ran for his life when he was pursued by Jezebel, and then he asked the Lord to take his life as he's under the broom tree. Remember, he had that sort of spiritual high with the prophets of Baal, and he comes back, and all of a sudden, that's classic depression right before you. And you think of Job, right? He curses the day that he was born. And it's not confined just to the Old Testament either, folks. You remember in the New Testament, all the stuff that Paul went through, being shipwrecked, the persecution that he went through, there's a point in his ministry where he said we, all of us, all the people that were involved in his missionary journey, he said, we despaired of life itself. Now if you're in the context of a counseling session today with a licensed counselor and you say something like that, those are suicidal thoughts. So he had lost, there was a point in his ministry, arguably the greatest missionary ever, suffering from classical depression. In his book, Broken Minds, Hope for Healing When You Feel Like You're Losing It, Pastor Stephen Blem writes as one, pastor, and there are many pastors to include C.H. Spurgeon, but this pastor experienced seasons as a downcast believer himself. Listen to what he said, because this relates to tonight, because I believe the Psalms have a lot to say about the downcast or depressed believer. He says, the Psalms treat depression more realistically than many of today's popular books on Christianity and psychology. David and other psalmists often found themselves deeply depressed for various reasons. They did not, however, and this is important, get this, they did not, however, apologize for what they were feeling. There's still a stigma, especially in Christian circles. If you're a Christian, you just don't get depressed, right? They didn't, though, the psalmists, apologize for what they were feeling, nor did they confess it as a sin. It was a legitimate part of their relationship with God. They interacted with him through the context of their depression. Perhaps the most helpful book, and you might want to take this down. This has been an incredibly helpful book. I bought it for a few people that have been suffering depression, believers. The most helpful book that I found on depression from a biblical worldview is by Dr. David Murray, and it's called Christians Get Depressed Too. Dr. David Murray, Christians Get Depressed Too, and he had this to say in that book. He said, there are numerous Bible verses that refer to the causes, the consequences, and curses of depression and severe anxiety. The Bible does not address every cause and consequence, nor does it point to every cure. But the Bible does have an important role to play in the treatment of Christians who are suffering from depression and anxiety. And that's what I hope to bring to you this evening. There are at least 68 Psalms, friends, that express symptoms of either depression or anxiety, or both. Most of them we regard as Psalms of lament. And this evening, I've chosen two psalms that are kind of representative of that. They capture some of the essence of the downcast believer in the midst of their suffering. So this Psalm 42, 43, which we just read, and Psalm 77. The first psalm that I just read captures the lament of a singer who longs to return to God's presence in the sanctuary. For some reason, he's been separated from the temple or the tabernacle. He wants to get back there. Scholars are divided on whether or not they were in exile or for some reason he individually was unable to get there. But for whatever reason, he's longing to be back leading worship. Psalm 77 is another psalm of lament as Asaph, one of the chief psalmist behind David, is in anguish while he's facing a major crisis. So these are just kind of two representative psalms that are helpful in this regard. So as these two believers face classic symptoms of anxiety or depression, I submit to you that they offer three major antidepressants. I'm calling them antidepressants. Three major helps to aid us when we're downcast. And the first of those antidepressants, major helps. And you see this played out throughout the Psalms. The first point, number one, is get raw in your longing for God. Downcast believers must be ready to get raw before the Lord and cry out to him with desperate longing. Notice the psalmist's desperate longing in Psalm 42, verse 1. As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. I gotta be honest with you, when I hear those verses, my mind immediately goes to the hymn, right? Did any of you just start singing it? That thing was actually written in the 80s. I thought that was like a time-honored old hymn from the 1700s, 1800s, but it was actually written in the 80s, but I immediately think of that. That hymn, and when I began studying the passage, the associated image in my mind looked something like this. My mind conjures up a picturesque, aesthetically pleasing vista of a strikingly beautiful doe, peacefully drinking from a gently flowing stream. Something you would want to hung in your living room or print it on a mug. Maybe one of you, some of you have that mug or something that you might pick up at Our Brother's Keeper, right? This beautiful vista, you know, this flowing stream. It's something that you might have as a wallpaper or a screen saver on your computer. Something like this, you know, just for fun. I searched on Google's image search engine for pictures associated with the phrase, as the deer pants and as the deer longs in Psalm 42. What I found was interesting. I found many pictures just like this one. I found deer drinking and rather alarmingly found a lot of pictures of elk and moose and other ungulates that aren't deer. They might be from the deer family, but that was a bit troubling as a Wyomingite. and then next to it is written in artistic font like the last one that we saw there. I also found pictures and paintings of deer gently moseying along the water's edge and in the water. But you know what I didn't find? What I didn't find was the image that the psalmist wants us to see, a deer panting. I don't know if you've ever seen a deer panting. I don't know that I had. I actually found a video of one panting. It was kind of like a dog, but it was really kind of a wretched thing. It looked like this thing was about to die. The reason for this, I believe, is that panting deer don't make a pretty picture. It probably wouldn't sell. A picture of a panting deer would probably not sell at our brother's keeper. Panting deer are kind of a dreadful, it's kind of a dreadful picture, and kind of morose, as you see this picture up here. After much searching, I found this picture that I believe captures the psalmist's intended image. We're going to be singing as the deer pants for the water later on, and I had half a mind to put that picture behind the words, but I didn't do it. This picture was taken in 2012 in the midst of the devastating Waldo Canyon wildfire just outside of Colorado Springs in Colorado. And this poor buck wandered into the city along with its herd because of the encroaching fire, which left them without places, obviously, to graze or drink. And the photographer offered this deer a bowl of water, and the whole herd received that water with gladness. as the deer pants for flowing streams. It's not peaceful. It's not serene. It's a desperate longing. It's a desperate longing. Have you ever been so thirsty, so parched that all you think about is getting a drink? Like that just dominates your mind. You long for it. You dream about it. Thoughts of a deep, satiating drink of water consume you. Well, the psalmist has such a deep yearning for God that it's likened to the agony of going without water. Not being in God's presence for him is literally like dying of thirst. So picture that as you read that first verse and as we talk about longing for God. Three aspects, all-encompassing aspects, I think we see here in these verses of the longing of the psalmist. It's mind, body, and soul, right? Number one, it's mental. He's putting his thoughts into words. He's in a mental anguish, right? It's a mind thing for him as he fixates on being unable to worship at the temple. Verse four, he says, these things I remember as I pour out my soul, how I would go with the throng and lead them in the procession to the house of God with glad shouts and songs of praise, a multitude keeping festival. It's physical. Notice that he's been weeping. He had been literally unable to eat in his longing. Have you ever been there before when you're downcast? You just don't want to eat. You see people lose weight in the midst of their anxiety and their depression. Look what he says. He says, my tears have been my food day and night. In other words, all I'm doing is crying. Salty tears. That's been my diet. And then thirdly, so there's mentally, physically, and now spiritually, he says in verse two, my soul thirsts for God, for the living God. My soul, his very soul is crying out in thirst for God, for the living God. So this is a whole body, whole soul, whole mind longing for God. So I believe that's instructive for us. Because the Lord calls us to call on Him with all of our heart, soul, strength, and mind, love Him with all of our heart, soul, strength, and mind. And so when we're crying out for Him, we should cry out for Him with all of our heart, soul, strength, and mind. And my question for the downcast Christian this morning, or this evening, is where is your longing? Does your mind long for him? Does your body long and cry out for him? Does your soul long and cry out for the Lord in the midst of your being downcast? I think far too often God is relegated to the last act of half-hearted secondary or last-ditch effort options as we look for help. And I think this is demonstrated sometimes in our language. Have you ever said this or heard someone say, when they've come to the end of all of their options, they say, well, I guess all we can do is pray. Have you heard that before? I've said that before. But if you think that through, If you really think that through, and I know the intentions are generally not to relegate God to third or fourth string when we say something like that, but it certainly is indicative of our general lack of longing for God as the forerunner in our hearts and minds. Like that's not our go-to if we're saying, I guess all we can do is pray. Beloved, I think the psalmist's intimacy with the Lord was so intense that his very first impulse in his depressed state was to what? to cry out to God. That's where he went. Immediately. That's his default. And that needs to be ours as well. My three-year-old, Judson, recently showed me a picture of how our yearning, how our longing for God should look. When Judson wakes up from a nightmare, scared out of his wits, his immediate impulse is to cry out and seek for not Daddy, but Mommy. He cries for Mommy. When he gets hurt, he cries for Mommy. When he gets lost, he cries and immediately thinks of Mommy. When he's uncertain about what to do, he cries out for Mommy. Beloved, what is our first impulse? If it's not yearning and calling out to God, then what is it? What is our functional and substitute Savior if we're turning to something else immediately and then God's second, third, fourth, fifth order? Judson's go-to is mom. Why is that? He's closest to mom. He trusts his mother. She doesn't let him down. Judson spends the most time with her. And if we're not there with God, are we really spending the time that we should? Do we really trust Him? And are we really close to Him? Because if He is that close to us, then He'll, by default, be the one we turn to immediately. Here's an indicting word from C.S. Lewis, and I have this quote on the overhead. as he evaluates this psalmist longing in contrast to the longing that we normally see in average Christianity today. He says, these poets knew far less reason than we for loving God. They did not know that he offered them eternal joy, still less that he would die to win it for them. They didn't have the full revelation of Messiah, remember? They didn't have the full concept of eternity like we do. Their concept of death and Sheol, it was pretty undeveloped as we would regard it today. Yet, C.S. Lewis says, they express a longing for him, for his mere presence, which comes only to the best Christians, or to Christians in their best moments today. Well, not only was there a deep longing, and should there be a deep longing in our souls as we're downcast, but notice the psalmist's unsanitized candor. What do I mean by that? Look at verse seven. Deep calls to deep at the roar of your waterfalls. All your breakers and your waves have gone over me. This part of the psalm is a lament. In contrast to that living water that he longs for in the beginning, He now openly confesses his bewilderment and sense of being overwhelmed and crushed by calamities that are sanctioned by God. It's like, God, what are you bringing on top of me? You're overwhelming me, you're flooding me. Listen to the messages paraphrase of verse seven. It says, chaos calls to chaos, to the tune of whitewater rapids. Your breaking surf, your thundering breakers crash and crush me. Have you ever felt that way? Overwhelmed, With thundering breakers crashing and crushing you listen listen to the following and sense more of the raw emotion in verses 9 and 10 I say to God my rock. Why have you forgotten me? We don't hear a lot of language like that on a Sunday night when we're sharing and passing the mic God's forgotten me This is unsanitized isn't it why do I go to? mourning because of the oppression of the enemy. As with a deadly wound in my bones, my adversaries taunt me while they say to me all the day long, where is your God? Listen to this, chapter 43, verse two. For you are God in whom I take refuge. Why have you rejected me? That's some pretty unfiltered language there. Why do I go about mourning because of the oppression of the enemy? Psalm 77, listen to this. Will the Lord spurn forever and never again be favorable? Has his steadfast love forever ceased? This borders on irreverence. Are his promises an end for all time? Has God forgotten to be gracious? Has he in anger shut up his compassion? I mean, we could spend all night looking at examples like this. But the psalmist cry out to God in ways that express deep and raw unfiltered statements that they seem irreverent sometimes and harsh and generally over the top. We think especially of the imprecatory Psalms that Pastor Rich took us through a couple years ago, like Psalm 58 that records David and his anger at the wicked rulers of the nations. Just really getting raw, letting it all loose. He says, oh God, break the teeth in their mouths. Tear out the fangs of the young lions, oh Lord. Let them vanish like water that runs away when he aims his arrows. Let them be blunted. Let them be like the snail that dissolves into slime. like the stillborn child who never sees the sun. That's some raw anger. Beloved, God made us. He created us in His image, which means that we carry on. We've got an intellect. We've got emotion and a will. And He knows that we're creatures of emotion. He's passed that on to us so He can handle it. The psalmist never mints words. They express their emotion as if they really feel it. And their words are unsanitized. They know that God knows their feelings anyway. Do you ever think about that? God knows what you're feeling anyway regardless of whether you put words to it. So why not express really what's on your mind? They're simply verbalizing and recording in the Psalms the expression of their souls. And think this through. God has seen fit to pass these prayers collection of songs slash prayers to us some 3,000 years later, no, 2,500, 3,000 years later to 3,500 even years later. And it's really what God's given them, the Psalms to us for, I believe, is like a model for how to pray. How often do we pray like this in the rawness that we see in the Psalms? I submit to you that praying like this is healthy for our relationship with God. That's why I think it can be so powerful to pray through the Psalms, because you experience the whole spectrum of human emotion. Many people call the Psalms soul songs. Think about your closest earthly relationship. If you don't believe me, that this would be something healthy to do. Think about your closest earthly relationship. For some of you, that's going to be your spouse. Others, it's going to be a best friend. Others will be a sibling, parent, whoever that is in your life. What do you hold back from them? One of my biggest frustrations in the chaplaincy, especially now going from enlisted to being an officer and chaplain, is people really sanitize who they are around me. They don't talk, they don't use the same language anymore that they use around their friends. They, you know, snap to attention and they're just uptight and everything. And so that's really hard as a minister to try to break through that, like to get to the meat of who they are. And I think about God. in that respect. And think about your closest friend. What do you hold back from them? Nothing, right? That's why they're so close. Very little, if anything. Why? Because they can handle it. Your closest friends can handle your roughest stuff. And they know you. They even know when you go too far and say something that's too harsh. And I think that's sometimes what's happening in the Psalms is they do go too far. They speak hyperbolically. You know, may they be stillborns. This kind of thing. That's just someone expressing their anger in a moment. And God's saying, that's okay. Our friends give us a lot of grace because they know that we're venting. Such is the case with the psalmist. This is a model for our crying out to God. It's okay. He can handle it. The whole point of our redemption after all was restored relationship, wasn't it? We had broken relationship with God. The whole gospel's about bringing us back into relationship. And so why hold back in this relationship that's supposed to be closer than any other earthly relationship? God wants us to be able to come to him with our deepest and most raw emotion, just like our parents, our closest friends and confidants. So get raw in your longing for God as you cry out to him. Try that, he can handle it. And then secondly, I would call you to preach the truth to yourself. And this to me is really the meat of this message. And if you take anything away, I think you'll remember to be open with God. But if there's something for you to take away from this message, I want you to remember this point about preaching the truth to yourself. Downcast believers must preach to themselves, delineating God's truth from destructive self-deception. So let her either embrace the psalmist's concept of self-preaching. What do I mean by self-preaching? Psychologists have long recognized the human behavior that's known as self-talk. Any of you talk to yourselves in here? I see a few hands. Oh, now there they are. Psychologists have long recognized the human behavior known as self-talk, or it's also known as internal monologue. Talking to ourselves is normal, by the way, whether in an audible or inaudible voice. We find it depicted in literature. We find it depicted in movies. Think of the soliloquy in Shakespeare's Hamlet, right? Where he holds the skull contemplating to himself. To be or not to be, that is the question. Or consider movies or television programs that depict self-talk by airing the audible voice, you hear the voice of an actor while the actor is not actually physically, doesn't have his mouth moving or her mouth moving, not physically verbalizing anything so that the viewer knows that the speech is coming from inside of them. Here's the thing, when we're younger, and I've witnessed this this very week with my Olivia, when she's playing, she's talking through everything that she's doing. And some of it is kind of gibberish. It's not complete sentences, though she can speak in complete sentences. She's speaking to herself, and she knows what all that's about. And I would submit to you that all of us do that, but what we do as we get older is we recognize that that's not real socially acceptable. And we get labeled in certain ways if we do that all the time as adults. And so what we tend to do, just like in our reading, where people used to read out loud all the time, what do we do? Where does that voice go? It goes internal. We begin to internalize that monologue. And some of you are probably like, Will, I don't do this. I'm not a self-talker. You just did it. You just did it. This self-talk doesn't necessarily, you're like, I don't do that. This self-talk doesn't necessarily happen like I described in the movies. One researcher, and I found this to be fascinating, found that inner speech is much faster than normal speech. So it's not like what you see in the movies where you're speaking in a normal rate or whatever. In fact, that inner speech is sometimes up to 4,000 words per minute. which is at least 10 times faster than normal human speech. And on top of that, think this through. On top of that, we don't need to use full sentences when we speak to ourselves, do we? And you don't have to use proper grammar either, right? Because we know what we mean when we talk to ourselves. Our self-talk is often condensed, and that's part of the problem in communicating with others, like we know what we mean, but the problem is getting what we know what we mean communicated to someone else, to articulate that in a way that's understandable to somebody else. But we all do it. Scientists and psychologists have glommed on to this reality within the last hundred years or so. and regarded their research as groundbreaking, innovative, especially in the realm of what's called positive self-talk. Have you heard of this before? Positive self-talk involves noticing the reality of a given situation, and with the positive self-talk, overriding negative self-talk. Truth be told, there's nothing new under the sun. God knows how we're wired. He knows about self-talk. He knows that we talk to ourselves. He knows how our brains work. And he preserved his word here in the Psalms where we behold, drum roll, self-talk. 3,000-ish years ago. Now, to be clear, I'm not going to give a positive thinking, psychobabble, Joel Osteen type message here tonight. Look at verses 5, verse 11 and chapter 43, verse 5. Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you in turmoil within me? That's the refrain over and over again. We see that time and time again. What is that? It's self-talk. It's the psalmist preaching to himself. It's an internal monologue on display for us. God intended for us to have it. It's a tool. In that book that I mentioned earlier by David Murray, he said, arguably, the greatest contributor to depression is wrong and unhelpful thoughts. Many Christians who wouldn't think of viewing God's word in a false way still make the mistake of viewing God's world in a false way. As they view themselves, their situations, and their relationships with others, they tend to dwell on and magnify The negatives and exclude the positives. Any of you do that? This distorted view of reality inevitably depresses our moods. So there's a negative self-talk in there. In his classic work that I would commend to you as well, entitled Spiritual Depression, this book that Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones wrote many, many years ago. I think it was published in the 60s. Pastor Rich, you might have it. in your library there. It's based off like 24 sermons that you can get for free online. Very good. Sometimes Martin Lloyd-Jones, when you listen to him on sermon audio or whatever, it can be kind of dry, but the content is so solid. But he says this about this very psalm. He says, the psalmist addresses himself. He talks to himself. And herein, he discovers the cure. The main problem, listen to this, the main problem in the whole matter of spiritual depression, in a sense, is this. We allow ourself to talk to us instead of talking to ourself. We allow ourself to talk to us instead of talking to ourself. Most unhappiness in life is due to the fact that we listen to ourselves. instead of talking to ourselves. The psalmist, in effect, says, self, listen for a moment to what I have to say. Why are you so cast down? The main art in the matter of spiritual living is to know how to handle yourself, question yourself, and preach. to yourself. So this isn't just positive thinking. I'm going to displace positive thoughts with negative thoughts. This is preaching to yourself. This is using this powerful word of God that Clark mentioned earlier and applying it to yourself, preaching the gospel to yourself, preaching truth to yourself. That's what the psalmist is doing here. We're going to see that in a moment. Lloyd Jones continues, he says, you must remind yourself who God is, what God has done, and what God has promised to do. This is the essence of the treatment in a nutshell. We must understand that this self of ours, this other man or woman within us, has got to be handled. Don't listen to them. Turn on them. Speak to them. Remind them of what you know. Kind of reminds me in some ways of the Smeagol Gollum thing and the Lord of the Rings for some reason. Remind them of what you know. So rather than listening to him and allowing him to drag you down and depress you, you must take control. Hopefully you're sold on this concept. I've tried this, and I guess I didn't realize how strong that voice is, that internal monologue. It's a real thing. Even if you don't recognize it as an audible voice, You speak to yourself, you listen to yourself talk, but you need to now talk or preach to yourself. That's what the psalmist is doing. Letter B, we need to embrace the psalmist's content. So what should be the content of our preaching then? Embrace the psalmist's content in self-preaching. Did you catch the last piece of that MLJ quote? You must remind yourself who God is, what God has done, and what God has promised to do. That's the remainder of the message tonight, in essence. So much of our being downcast, so much of our being depressed, anxious, as believers, I believe is due to spiritual amnesia. We are so prone to forget God's character. We're so prone to forget God's care. It's like every day we got to start. It's almost like Groundhog Day. You got to start over again and again because we're so quick to forget what God's done, who he is. And that's why self-preaching is so critical. Screenwriter Jonathan Nolan published a short story in 2001 called Memento Mori. The short story was later the basis for a movie that I can't recommend from the pulpit. In this story, though, the main character has a condition called anterograde amnesia. Because of his inability to recall anything for more than a few minutes, the main character used sticky notes, put them all over his place, Polaroid photos, and even tattoos, like tattooed his name on himself so he could remember his name because for a little while he'd be going along and everything, all of a sudden, boom, memories are gone again. He did that so he could recount his name and know his story and constantly rehearse his personal story to remember who he was, who his friends were, and his wife had been brutally murdered so he was pursuing his wife's killer. So that's the storyline. But his practice was a regular rehearsal of all of these things. In a way, in many ways, we're like that man because how quickly do we forget God's provision for us? how much we know about the character of God, the theology that we've learned, as we've listened to a lifetime of sermons, some of us. So I think in the same way, we need to rehearse who we are and whose we are when we preach to ourselves. So first I wanna show you that we need to rehearse God's identity. This is really just theology. Theology proper understanding who God is in Psalm 42 to listen to this the psalmist reminds himself that the Lord is the Living God God's not dead. You got a t-shirt on God's not dead. That's a good reminder that he's alive In verse 5, he remembers that God is the God of his salvation. Reminder who God is. He's the God of salvation. And his personal God. This is not the God of deism who set things in motion and just let it go for awhile. He's a personal God. In verse 8, he remembers that God is his rock. He's my strong tower. I can cling to him. I can stand on this and stick. In Psalm 43, the psalmist remembers that the Lord is his refuge. It's a place that he can go. God is a sanctuary. Guys, this is just basic theology. These are things that we get to know about the character of God. I encourage us all as believers to get to know the character of God. Study theology. It can be a great comfort for your souls. A great way to do that is just in studying the names of God. I think you ladies did that a couple of years ago. So powerful just to know who God is as expressed in His very names. Get to know his attributes, right? So much of our despair could be nipped in the bud by just merely remembering who God is like the psalmist did. So remember God's or rehearse God's identity, but also rehearse God's work in your life or works in your life and Psalm 77 after he's cried aloud after moaning and groaning after saying my spirit faints. Turn with me to Psalm 77. You can follow along. He gets really raw here. I want you to feel the weight of this. He says, after he's gotten raw, he says, I consider the days of old, the years long ago. I said, let me remember, or rehearse, right, my song in the night. Let me meditate in my heart. Then my spirit made a diligent search. Will the Lord spurn forever and never again be favorable? Has his steadfast love forever ceased? Are his promises at an end for all time? Has God forgotten to be gracious? Has he in anger shut up his compassion? Then I said, listen to this. He's remembering, this is a preaching of sorts. I will appeal to this, to the years of the right hand of the Most High. I will remember the deeds of the Lord. Yes, I will remember your wonders of old. I will ponder all of your work and meditate on your mighty deeds. Your way, O God, is holy. This is part of character again, isn't it? He's a holy God. What God is great like our God? You are the God who works wonders. He's a wonder-working God. You have made known your might among your peoples. You with your arm redeemed your people, the children of Jacob and Joseph. And then he goes on to tell of the mighty acts in 16 through 20 in parting the Red Sea during the Exodus. So you see what he's calling upon? the past mighty works of God in his life. That's what Asaph is calling upon in Psalm 77. My question to you, believer, is what great acts, what has God wrought by His mighty right hand in your life? What pit has He delivered you from? When you get depressed, it's great to meditate on these things. Remember the stories of your deliverance. Journal them and come back to them later. Remember the stories of provision, how God provided for you in a time of need. Remember the greatest story of deliverance in the gospel. Preach the gospel to yourself every day. Who God is. Remember who God is. Remember who you were. Remember what God did, the pit that he brought you out of, and who you are in him now. Thirdly and lastly, After we've preached to ourselves and remembered who God is and what He's done for us, I want you to remember to look to the future. And we'll close with number three here. Look to the future in faith and praise. Downcast believers must trust God for the future, praising Him with a spirit of expectancy. I think we see this borne out in the Psalm. Notice Psalms 42 and 43 in the self-preaching verses that we've already looked at. Verse 5 there. Why are you cast down, O my soul? Remember the questioning? The self-talk? And why are you in turmoil within me? And then Part B. This is the looking to the future in faith and praise. Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him. My salvation? and my God. So this follows from everything I've just talked about. In part A of those verses, the self-talk happens. But in part B, he comes and reminds himself to exercise faith for the future. Okay, so drawing upon all that God's already done for the future. Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God. Do you see what the psalmist is basing his faith on? who God is and what God's done. He's basing his faith on, his base in the future on what he knows from the past, right? He's gotten to know who God is. But you say, well, in 2 Corinthians, as we talk about faith, chapter five, verse seven, Paul says, we walk by faith, not by sight. That's true, but I want to submit to you, even as you consider the Apostle Paul, what did he have to call upon? What did he have to draw upon? the experience of what God had already done in his life. And as you look in the great hall of faith in Hebrews chapter 11, look at all those people in the hall. Yes, they did wondrous feats, you know, they were involved in wondrous feats of faith, right? And we, in some ways, exalt them. We call it the hall of faith. But who really gets the glory in all of that? God does, or should. Why is the faith there? Not so much because the people were great, but because they served a great God who showed them wondrous and mighty things elsewise they would never have gone forward to begin with. Why did they go forward to begin with? Why did they step out in faith? because they knew the character of God, because they saw who God was, and they were compelled to follow them, not knowing that in the immediate future, yes, you're gonna be without sight, but you're banking on what you've already seen. And so I always tell people that true faith is not really a leap into darkness at all. You're really walking in the light of what you've already seen. Right, so it's not a leap of faith as such, a leap into absolute darkness without knowing what is there. What Paul means is that in the here and now, our physical senses can't immediately grasp what lies ahead. Some of you are facing something right now where you're just having to walk in faith, but why are you doing that? Because you know who God is, you know what he's done in your life already. We have a living testimony, friends, of all those things that we preach to ourselves just a minute ago, right? Those things that we call to remembrance. And we have, as well, the promises of God to rely on. And which of his promises has he fallen, have fallen through thus far? Haven't worked out for you. And for me, listen to this, faith says, I cannot believe that he who has brought me so far is going to let me down at this point. It is impossible because it would be inconsistent with the very character of God for him to just let go after he's brought you so far to just let you down now. So faith, having refused to be controlled by circumstances, reminds itself of what it believes and what it knows to be true. That last paragraph isn't mine. I got it from somewhere else. I just didn't write down where I got it. But I want to give credit to somebody. I want you to notice as we close. the end of Psalms 42 and 43. This is indicative of the faith of this believer. In just a moment, I'm going to ask Pastor Rich to come and pray, but I'll give you an opportunity. Maybe there's some downcast Christians in this room tonight, and there is a stigma, and maybe you're even struggling with it, but I just want to open up the altar tonight for those of you that might be in a place of Where Paul was, despairing. Where Elijah was, where Moses was. Maybe you're in a dark place. That's what the body of Christ is for. This isn't just a social club, right? We're here to bear one another's burdens and pray for one another. We're stronger together when we do that. So let's pray for one another. I want you to notice now the end of Psalm 42 and 43 as a word of parting hope. Send out your light and your truth. Let them lead me. Let them bring me to your holy hill and to your dwelling. Then I will go to the altar of God. To God, my exceeding joy, and I will praise you with the lyre. Oh God, my God. Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God. Would you bow your heads?