Welcome back again to another episode of Struggling Wealth. We're glad that you've joined us again this week and we're in our summer quote unquote series in the Psalms, simmering in the Psalms. And we hope that it's challenging you to look at the Psalms, perhaps in particular this summer as well. And so I'm going to turn it over to you, Suzi, because you have one that you want us to wrestle with this week.
Yeah, this week I'd love for us to look at Psalm 42. It is a favorite of mine. actually, all the Psalms are my favorites, but I love this particular psalm, and I'm going to tell you why in a little bit. But if you have your Bible, I'm going to be reading from the NLT. It's the version that I've really enjoyed a lot. I study from the ESV, but for my own personal reading, I read through the NLT. So on Psalm 42, it is written by Kora. And let me give you a little background on Kora. That was a guild of musicians. these were the men that would be playing at each of the festivals that they went to when they would be ascending to Jerusalem. He would be these men would be leading the music. And so this is one of the psalms of Kora. And this is one that I'm sure you're familiar with, but I'm going to read parts of it, not all of it. It starts in verse one when he says, "As the deer longs for streams of waters, so I long for you, oh God. I thirst for God, the living God. When can I go and stand before him? Day and night I have only tears for food, while my enemies continually taunt me, saying, "Where's your God?" Then I drop down and There are other places where he laments in this way. But he says, "Why am I discouraged? Why is my heart so sad? I will put my hope in God. I will praise him again, my savior and my God." Then right after that, it says, "Now I'm deeply discouraged, but I will remember you." And then in verse 8, but each day the Lord pours his unfailing love upon me. Then in verse 11, he repeats again, "Why am I so discouraged? Why is my heart so sad?" And it's I so resonate with this. The ups and downs of feelings, the ups and downs of our situation. We could be, you know, flying high one second because life feels good and then you could get a phone call or you could just get a funny feeling and then all of a sudden you're down. So, so what's happening here with in this psalm? I think there are a couple of things that are happening here. And first of all, there's the idea of thirst and we'll talk a little bit more about thirst. And Jimmy, I want you to be thinking in terms of thirst as well. But as you read this and you think, "God, this guy's got like he is really he's up one second and depressed this the next second." It's true. And there are a few reasons for that. He's a long way from home. If he's coming, if these people are coming into Jerusalem, they're a long way from home. And I don't know about you, but I love to travel. I love to go to the beach, but I always love coming home. So, they were a long way from home, but It wasn't just physically. There was something going on in their inner lives. And I think there are three things that describe if someone were to ask these people, "How are you?" they might answer this way. Well, I'm parched. I'm overwhelmed. And I feel misjudged. I have lots of enemies. And so that whole idea of being parched and overwhelmed and misjudged, I think we can so easily identify with. And yet in the midst of the psalm, what we hear the psalmist saying is, "Yes, I'm parched, but he's the one who satisfies my thirst. Yes, I'm overwhelmed, but I'm going to put my hope in God. Yes, I feel misjudged, but I'm going to praise him again because he's my savior and my God. And so, I want to go back to the thirsty part. and the question I'm going to ask you, Jimmy, is what do you understand about thirst? And I'm not talking about physical thirst, but what's your take on inner thirst?
Well, my take on inner thirst would be my take on everything in life in this sense that it's that longing of my soul for something that satisfies and water if I'm going to take it to a physical water will satisfy my thirst like nothing else more than a soda more than anything water satisfies my thirst it quenches my desire and I think the psalmist here is talking about that inner longing or desire that can only be quenched and satisfied in God himself. And he struggles back and forth as you said it so well between being discouraged being upset being life isn't giving him what he hoped for and yet he longs for the thing that will quench that thirst and that's the living water that God provides.
The problem comes in for all of us is that we are thirsty. we're thirsty for answers. We're thirsty for peace. We're thirsty for contentment and happiness. we have this I took a wonderful course called discerning developing a discerning heart and they spoke a ton about thirst and it has been on my mind for probably a good solid year. What do I thirst for? I thirst for peace and contentment and purpose and this psalm is written from somebody who's weary. They feel stale, flat, and unprofitable. They feel like, you know, they're going nowhere. And what we struggle with then is we try to fill that thirst with other things. and there's a lot of ways that if I look at my life like a glass. when I'm thirsty, Jimmy said it before, I'm going to fill it with water first, that's the thing that quenches my thirst the most. But there are a lot of things we put in that glass to try to quench our thirst. I'm not trying to get too close to what we put in the glass, but more about what we're looking all the time to quench that deep longing. And the psalmist here is saying, "I'm thirsty for you." I want you to imagine for a minute, there's plenty of deer everywhere. Sometimes it might be where you live, there's too many deer. And they are thirsting for water. They're look, they're going to streams. They're doing everything they can to get to a source of water. What are we doing to quench our thirst?
Yeah. I love that 11th verse of the psalm because I think it describes so often our experience in life. Why am I discouraged? Why is my heart so sad? I pictured the psalmist looking around at life, whatever he was facing at that point in time. And that's just the reality for us. Many times we look around the world that we live in. We can look around our own individual lives. become discouraged, become sad. But then he says, "I will put my hope in God. I will praise him again, my savior and my God." And it's that split vision, if you will, of the world that we live in. That's the lament. There's something wrong in this world that comes up short of what we were designed for. And that can create discouragement. That can create sadness. But then he says, "I'll put my hope in God."
And he's making motion to do that. I will put my hope. Here's the great thing about the Bible. I mean, sometimes people are like, "Yeah, it's boring. It's an old story." It is not. I mean, when I read the Psalms, when I Well, any place in the Bible, I read about real people with real struggles, real heartache, real disappointment, real joys, real just I mean, it's real life. And when we read this, where the psalmist is lamenting and rejoicing and struggling to trust, that is real, you guys. It's real for us. It was real for them. And we want you to know that the source for your hope is God. Go to his word. Read what he says. Let him speak so deeply to your soul.
Yeah. A psalm written thousands of years ago in a culture that in many ways is different than the culture we live in today is just as real and alive today as it was when it was written thousands of years ago because the source of hope is the same.
Thank you so much for joining us. We hope you come back next week and have a great week. Thanks for joining us. To learn more about the Struggling Well podcast, visit tandemspirituality. com.