Hey Gang,
We begin a whole new series this week on WORSHIP! Many people think of worship as taking place on Sunday mornings at about 11 a.m. This worship includes congregational singing, prayer, an offering, a sermon, and an invitation. Some judge the quality of these worship services by how many people attend, how motivating the sermon was, or how good the music sounded. Our four week series is entitled – Worship By Heart and the study reminds us that true worship isn’t an event on the weekly calendar; it’s a matter of the heart. Real worship happens when those who know God respond to Him – with an action, a specific kindness, a thought, or an obedience. Where our heart is matters much more than style of music or preaching. True worship is about connecting with God and living a life that honors Him.
Lessons in this series:
March 4 – Be Spiritual – Strengthening your desire to encounter God.
March 11 – Call on God – Deepening your communication with God.
March 18 – Celebrate Life – Demonstrate that worship is celebration.
March 25 – Thank God – Motivating you to express your gratitude to God?
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God made you to know Him and worship Him. Do so with adventure and an anticipation of meeting Him.
Click on the links below to watch the Spencer's Mountain episode we saw in class:
What was Clay Spencers idea of worship?
Why do you worship in church?
Does my style of worship matter?
- Differences in style may be peripheral to the larger issues of content and impact.
- The condition of the heart is what matters most to God.
- It is not enough to go through the motions of any style if the substance is not from the heart.
Some of the most powerful psalms about suffering were written during the Babylonian exile. As chastisement for His people’s wickedness, God allowed Israel to be conquered by Babylon. Many Jews were taken into captivity, where their devotion to the Lord was reawakened. Psalms 42 and 43, which may have originally been combined, were probably written in Babylon during this time period.
Overcoming Despair - Psalm 42 & 43 (It's a song!)
1. A longing to worship God.
2. Chorus: Trust in God my Savior.
3. The pain of separation and oppression is too much to bear.
4. Chorus: Trust in God my Savior.
5. A plea for deliverance from the lies of wicked men.
6. Chorus: Trust in God my Savior.
The book of Psalms is one of the best resources believers have for finding encouragement when life is hard.
How does God want us to worship Him? - Spiritually with a thirst for Him, a despair for Him, and a confidence in Him!
I. THIRSTING FOR GOD – PSALM 42:1-5
1 As a deer longs for streams of water, so I long for You, God. 2 I thirst for God, the living God. When can I come and appear before God? 3 My tears have been my food day and night, while all day long people say to me, “Where is your God?” 4 I remember this as I pour out my heart: how I walked with many, leading the festive procession to the house of God, with joyful and thankful shouts. 5 Why am I so depressed? Why this turmoil within me? Put your hope in God, for I will still praise Him, my Savior and my God.
How is our longing for God expressed in our worship?
Sometimes you don’t realize how much you need something until you lose it.
- The hot water heater goes out, or your internet goes down for a few days.
- Taking loved ones for granted … until we lose them or they move on or move away. When a relationship is over or a loved one is gone, we miss that person so badly we’d give anything just to have one more day with him or her. The longing is intense and overwhelming.
That’s the kind of longing the psalmist expressed in Psalm 42. Only God can fill certain longings in us. Without Him as our foundation, everything else is out of kilter.
This psalmist had a particular situation:
- He had known the joy of worshiping God together with others.
- He remembered entering the temple with shouts of joy and thanksgiving.
- But now he found himself away from his homeland – where he was prevented from joining in public worship.
- He could still worship God privately, but he also needed worship with others who shared his love for God.
How is thirst for water like longing for God? What else does spiritual longing feel like?
- When we experience spiritual thirst, it might feel like God is silent or far off. Our response might be to withdraw from God and His people. The response that works is to pursue God: Read our Bibles to actively obey Him, take part in corporate worship. Eventually feelings will follow actions, and we’ll feel His closeness again.
- It’s possible to need something and not even know it. Think about it, what do you feel when you are dehydrated – headache and joint pain. If we misdiagnose this, we might neglect to drink the very water that will make us feel better.
Do you think that you have ever thirsted or hungered for God and substituted Him for something else? How can we know when we’ve made poor substitutes? What is the difference between a substitute and God?
- When we are not desperately hungry and thirsty for God, we may have filled our bellies with lesser things. They fill the space but don’t satisfy for long.
What would happen to your faith if you were cut off from church and Christian friends?
- We can develop spiritual dehydration both from failing to meet with God at all and from forgetting Him as we go about our days.
- Spiritual depression.
- Jesus knew spiritual depression, separation from God.
- "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
- He knew physical suffering, on the cross.
Each of us benefits from worship with other believers. Singing, studying God’s Word together, and the sweet fellowship of people grateful to God for salvation contribute to meaningful worship experiences. These experiences over time enrich our lives and draw us closer to the God we love and people who love Him.
Fellowship with God is as necessary and satisfying as water to those who are thirsty.
I love the story about the young man who went to the preacher searching for God. After much talk the preacher was not having any success – finally he thought and took the young man down to the river grab him and put his head under the water – the young man began to squirm and try his best to come up for air but the preacher held him under – finally lifting his head up out of the water – The preacher asked, Son when you were under the water what did you want more than anything? The young man said Air, Air, Air… And the preacher said, Son when you want God as bad as you wanted air, You will find Him!
WE NEED TO THIRST FOR GOD LIKE A DROWNING MAN NEEDS AIR.
How does worship in a group setting—especially a very large one—differ from a private worship experience?
- The psalms show us many colors of worship offering expressions of lament, confession, thanksgiving, praise, teaching, and celebration.
- Missing worship, alone and with others, can contribute to our spiritual discouragement.
II. DESPAIRING FOR GOD – PSALM 42:6-11
6 I am deeply depressed; therefore I remember You from the land of Jordan and the peaks of Hermon, from Mount Mizar. 7 Deep calls to deep in the roar of Your waterfalls; all Your breakers and Your billows have swept over me. 8 The LORD will send His faithful love by day; His song will be with me in the night— a prayer to the God of my life. 9 I will say to God, my rock, “Why have You forgotten me? Why must I go about in sorrow because of the enemy’s oppression?” 10 My adversaries taunt me, as if crushing my bones, while all day long they say to me, “Where is your God?” 11 Why am I so depressed? Why this turmoil within me? Put your hope in God, for I will still praise Him, my Savior and my God.
Everybody has a rainy day occasionally – that’s life, and we expect it. But we don’t expect a tsunami – the kind of life crisis that knocks us off our feet, flips us upside down, leaves us gasping for air, and struggling just to survive. This is how the psalmist found himself as he penned these words. Without revealing the particulars, he described how he felt about what was going on in his life.
What has made you or could make you feel forgotten by God?
o Death of a spouse or child
o Loneliness
o Alienation from your children
o Incapacitating accident or illness
o Job loss
o Foreclosure on your home
o Others
How do you know God doesn’t forget you? (Isa. 49:13-15 and Heb. 13:5b)
13 Shout for joy, you heavens; rejoice, you earth; burst into song, you mountains! For the LORD comforts his people and will have compassion on his afflicted ones. 14 But Zion said, “The LORD has forsaken me, the Lord has forgotten me.” 15 “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you!
5 Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.
What should you do when you feel like He has forgotten or that He doesn’t care?
- Share your honest but respectful emotions of both hope and despair with God. He’ll show you what to do about them. Trusting God doesn’t mean we pretend everything is all right when we’re dying inside. It means we thoughtfully handle the easy and hard of life. We can tell God how we really feel, no matter how depressed or angry we get. God is worthy of our worship when life is good and when it is just plain hard. Having negative feelings is not wrong. Allowing them to keep us from worshiping and trusting God is.
- At a time when circumstances seemed to indicate God had forgotten the psalmist and naysayers were claiming God had abandoned him, the psalmist forced himself to “remember” God (v. 6). Recalling God’s character can reassure us of His faithfulness to carry us through the crisis of the present.
- Remembering God and His people is a good antidote for depression.
III. CONFIDENCE IN GOD – PSALM 43:1-5
1 Vindicate me, God, and defend my cause against an ungodly nation; rescue me from the deceitful and unjust man. 2 For You are the God of my refuge. Why have You rejected me? Why must I go about in sorrow because of the enemy’s oppression? 3 Send Your light and Your truth; let them lead me. Let them bring me to Your holy mountain, to Your dwelling place. 4 Then I will come to the altar of God, to God, my greatest joy. I will praise You with the lyre, God, my God. 5 Why am I so depressed? Why this turmoil within me? Put your hope in God, for I will still praise Him, my Savior and my God.
Which hope is a sure thing: hope in the judicial system or hope in God?
Is hope more than wishful thinking? How do light and hope work together to guide? How does truth guide?
- It’s a path to take. It’s an act of the will.
- As if we are in a courtroom, the writer called on God to argue his case and declare him in the right. He called God his refuge or “safe place.”
- We sometimes go astray when we ignore the compasses of God’s light and truth. Why do we need those to guide our steps and decisions?
How do we hope in God even in hopeless situations? As a community of believers, how can we help each other hope just by the way we treat them?
The psalmist closed Psalm 43 with the refrain as Psalm 42. It sounds like he gave himself a little self-talk. He chose not to wallow in depression but put his hope in God instead. In the end, we face the same choice. Either we give in to despair or choose loving obedience based on God’s promises.
Closing Thoughts:
Times of despair cause you to have much greater sensitivity to things that happen. You get that, "When it rains, it pours" feeling. Every little thing seems worse, quite often, than it really is. It is hard to think rationally or even to apply common sense when your emotions are torn apart. That is why the Psalmist asks God to send forth His truth. You need to remember to seek truth in your time of despair. Let your close family members or friends help you see the real truth in your situation. Even if it is a situation that cannot be understood, seek the truth about God’s unchanging character. Seek the truth about God to overcome the darkness of despair.
In John Bunyan’s story of “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” Evangelist tells young Christian that there will be tribulations along the way to the Celestial City – for tribulations mark the way to Heaven. But you be faithful unto death and the King will give you a crown of life. You see, the path to Heaven is straight and narrow, and no matter how rough the going, it must be followed.
However, young Christian got off the straight and narrow way, and he chose to take another way called By-Path Meadow. This choice though, led to his captured by Giant Despair and he is thrown into Doubting Castle where he is locked in by his own fears and doubts. But young Christian remembers that he carries a key that will open any lock in Doubting Castle because the key is called “Promise.”
God keeps His promises… will you keep yours?
Prayer of Commitment
Lord, I have a longing to be closer to You. Help me quench that longing with Your presence. Amen
This is going to be a great series. Be sure to read your lesson this week as we explore the depths of God's Word through the eyes of a lonely psalmist longing for God - can you relate to this psalmist?
Hope you have a blessed rest of the week as we prepare to meet this Sunday to begin a new series on Worship!
See you Sunday!
In His Love,
David & Susan
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