PSALM 13 PURSUE GODS HEART WITH FEELING2019 Teaching by Jerry B Simmons

Teaching Transcript: Psalm 13 Pursue Gods Heart With Feeling

You are listening to FerventWord, an online Bible study ministry with teachings and tools to help you grow deeper in your relationship with God. The following message was taught by Jerry Simmons in 2019. As we head into the book of Psalms for the next few weeks and consider the many different things that the Lord has for us, as we work our way through the Bible in three years, we are seeing a variety of different types of passages.

Different types of ways that God speaks to his people and through his people. And it's important to understand as we head into the book of Psalms that here in the book of Psalms we are dealing with poetic writings, poetic type passages. As opposed to a narrative where in Genesis and Exodus we have the telling of the story of the things that took place and recounting the events that happened in the history that was involved.

In the Psalms, we sometimes have narrative, but largely the Psalms are focused on other types of things. And as a poetic work, it's an artistic expression, right?

So it's not necessarily a direct teaching all the time. It's not necessarily focused on communicating doctrine all the time. It's more an expression of what the person, the author, is experiencing. And sometimes it's the telling of a story. It's the journey through an experience.

So starting out, you know, at the beginning and where I was when I began and what I was going through and what I was experiencing and how the Lord brought me through and where I ended up at the end. And so there's important things to consider as you work your way through the Psalms, understanding that, well, the interpretation needs to take into account the type of passage that it is. The book of Psalms is a collection of worship songs.

Now, I could say that, and then we could look at it and go, like, this doesn't look anything like, you know, what we typically would consider a worship song. Like, you know, half the lines don't even rhyme, you know, like, where's the verse, where's the chorus, I don't see a bridge in here, like, you know, it's not structured exactly the same as we would structure a song, it doesn't sound the same, but for something to be poetic...

doesn't just mean that it rhymes, right? Roses are red, violets are blue. That's a very simplistic understanding of literature and poetry. There's more to poetry than that, but it's an easy way for us to identify poetry. But as we look at the book of Psalms, well, first of all, we need to understand it was written in Hebrew.

So even if it did rhyme, we wouldn't recognize it because it's been translated to English, right? So unless you're reading the Hebrew, we wouldn't really know if it rhymed anyways. But that's not the point. It's not that each line rhymes. In Hebrew poetry, it was structured differently and they appreciated different aspects of writing besides the rhyming of words or the meter, you know, that kind of thing, the rhythm that was in the words. That's built into it as well.

but also contrasting thoughts. And so it was, you know, poetry or literature that was centered around expressing thoughts and expressing contrasts of experiences and thoughts in different ways. And so there's a lot of different types of writing that we'll find throughout the book of Psalms. Also, it's important to note that there's different authors, right?

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But then there's a lot of psalms that don't particularly say an author. And David might have written many of those. We don't know for sure. But then we also have other authors like Moses. He has a psalm in here. And the sons of Asaph and different guys and people that the Lord inspired. And so there's a variety of authors coming from different experiences, not necessarily trying to directly state teaching,

but to instead relate experience and to express in an artistic fashion something that God has done in their lives. And so it's a lot of variety in the book of Psalms and some great insights from a lot of different perspectives, but it does take a little bit more effort for us

to kind of stop and work through the thoughts and work through the pictures that are being painted and walk through the experience that the author is seeking to communicate with them. And so I would encourage you to do that, to spend some time in the Psalms. And it's easy to, you know, they're shorter, so you just kind of read through it. And it's like, okay, you know, I've got my chapter done for the day. But

But maybe go back and revisit it a couple times and try to think about the account that is being articulated, the feelings, the experiences that are being expressed through this psalm. Well, as we jump into Psalm 13 in particular this morning, we are looking at a psalm that was written by David. And so as we look at this, I've titled the message, Pursue God's Heart with Feeling.

I want to encourage you this morning to pursue God's heart. That's a call back to our Wednesday night studies that we did through 1 and 2 Samuel, looking at the life of David.

And David is called a man after God's own heart. And that doesn't mean that David automatically had God's heart, that he was just born with it, that he always knew what God knew and thought what God thought and felt what God felt and, you know, prioritized what God prioritized. That's not what it means. The fact that David was a man after God's own heart meant that David pursued God's

He didn't automatically have God's heart, but he worked hard. He strove to find out what is important to God. What does God care about? And he made that his own care. He made that his own priorities. And so we refer to that as pursuing God's heart. And as we look at David's example this morning here in this chapter, in this psalm, pursue God's heart with feeling. Feeling.

David was a man who experienced a great range of feelings and emotions. And in many ways, he sets for us a good example so that we can look at how to process feelings

how to handle, how to experience those feelings and then come to a place where we seek after the heart of God and put God first in our lives. And so there's a great deal that we can learn from David in his example.

He experienced high highs and low lows. He experienced a full range of emotion. I like what Pastor Warren Wiersbe says in his introduction to the Psalms. He says, you will find in the Psalms a full range of human emotions from ecstatic joy to despair and contrition. You will also find a revelation of God that brings comfort and encouragement when you trust him.

No matter what your circumstances or feelings may be, there is a psalm that perfectly fits your situation. And many of us have found that to be true. We've experienced, we've walked through things, and the psalms have brought great comfort as we can identify and recognize, even though we know the Bible says, you know, that our temptations and the things that we go through are not just, you know, something that we only experience, but it's common to man.

But when we read through and we identify, whoa, he feels like I've felt. He's experienced what I've experienced. And others have gone through times like this as well. And there's great comfort and consolation and much to learn through that example. And so we're going to do that with David this morning. Consider what he was experiencing here in Psalm chapter 13 and learn how to pursue God's heart with feelings. So there's three points we'll look at as we work our way through. Not so much feelings.

analyzing the specific words or details of what David said, but just walking through the process with him and experiencing a little bit of what God did in his heart. And so point number one this morning as we look at verse one and two is feel your feelings.

This morning, I want to encourage you to feel your feelings. And that might seem a little bit strange coming from me, and that'll even be more apparent as we work our way through. But let's look again at verse 1 and 2 and get into that. Verse 1, David says, How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily? How long will my enemy be exalted over me?

Here in these first two verses, David is expressing what he is feeling. And you can look through these verses and start to identify some of the feelings, some of the emotions that David might be experiencing. How long, oh Lord? He's in the midst of a trial. We don't know the specific circumstances of this trial. We don't know exactly when this was happening in his life. But whatever was going on, he's been in this situation forever.

For a long time. He's feeling perhaps impatient. How long? When is this going to be over? When is this going to end? He's feeling perhaps despair. This is never going to end. I'm just stuck here. And it's been forever. He says, will you forget me forever? He's feeling perhaps abandoned. Feeling like God has just left him. God has forgotten about him. And is it going to be forever? It feels like forever. Forever.

How long will you hide your face from me? Perhaps David is feeling some loneliness. He feels distant, separate, like God's been hiding from him. He feels alone. In verse 2, as he says, how long shall I take counsel in my soul? It describes a wrestling or a struggling within his soul as he sorrows in his heart daily. The struggle that he's experiencing, the sorrow that he's wrestling with is not, you know, every once in a while he's reminded of it and, you know, has to work with it and deal with it. But

He is on a daily basis working through, wrestling with, dealing with great sorrows that have been going on forever. And he feels all alone and forgotten, abandoned. How long will my enemy be exalted over me? He feels that the enemy has won. He feels the despair of loss and the battle is over is how he feels, but he just hasn't got to the end of it yet. And he's already lost. And so David here expresses this.

How he's feeling. Now, he does this a lot throughout the Psalms, and he's really good at this. David is a great example, and he's able to articulate his feelings and what he's experiencing in that way. Now, as I look at these things and share these things with you this morning, I am no expert on feelings. And those of you who know me, I don't have to tell you that, but some of you don't know me that well. So let me tell you that. I am no expert on feelings. Most of my life,

I've been convinced I don't have feelings. I'm not really an emotional guy. You know, I just, I don't really experience it. I see and I read about emotions. I read through Psalms for many years, just like kind of like perplexed. Like, you know, I see the things you're saying, but I just don't recognize. It doesn't register with me. And so it's something that I'm learning and growing in, but definitely not an expert on.

As it comes to feelings, I have learned that I do have feelings. I've learned that they affect me a whole lot more than I thought they affected me, that they impact my energy level, they impact my day, my mentality, my direction, my focus. They're actually a bigger part of my life than I would have ever thought.

especially the further back you go in my life. You know, the younger I was, the more I just thought that was just, you know, hey, I go back to, give me facts, give me figures, you know, give me math to work out, you know, logic to, and I can live by those things and feelings, you know, that's just fluffy stuff that doesn't really matter. I don't know why people are so caught up in those things, you know, it just, it doesn't really matter, you know, that would have been my attitude in my younger years.

But having come from that background, well, I've learned a lot, but I feel like when it comes to feelings, I basically have the capacity to express, to feel, to articulate feelings like a box of eight crayons. Like that's, give me a box of eight crayons and the expression that you can give with eight crayons is,

I mean, I have a red, a blue, a yellow, a green, you know, it's like there's some different variation in colors, but it's very limited. I, half the time, you know, have a hard time just understanding what I'm feeling myself. And then, you know, Kim's trying to find out, well, how are you feeling or what are you feeling? And I don't have any idea. I know I'm feeling something, you know, I know there's some kind of color there, but I'm

I'm looking at the colors, and I don't know if any of these really fit, you know. I don't really know what it is that I'm feeling. Now, some of you are not limited like that. You don't have a box of eight crayons. You have a box of 64 crayons, and you don't have like one blue. You have like five shades of blue, and you could say, well, I'm feeling happy, but, you know, this shade of happy, not that shade of happy, and

You're able to articulate and identify and you're able to recognize the feelings that you're experiencing to great degree and with greater precision.

Now, maybe you don't have a pack of eight crayons. Maybe you don't have a pack of 64 crayons. Maybe you have this new one I've never seen before, 152 crayons. Now, they didn't have this when I was a kid, I tell you that. 152 crayons. You don't have like five shades of blue. You have 20 shades of blue, right? You have all this variation. And there is the different kinds of ways that we as people are able to process and understand and recognize our own crayons.

our emotions. I think David was one who maybe had the box of 152 crayons. Like he was able to recognize the different emotions that he had with great detail and precision and articulate that and express that. And we have a record of it here in the book of Psalms. And some of you, perhaps you have these different shades, but then it goes on, you know, emotions are, they're hugely complex. And you might be able to say, well, I'm not just happy, but I'm also sad.

And I don't just feel one emotion at a time. That's pretty crude, just one color at a time. No, I feel happy and sad and excited and rejected. And, you know, there's this combination. And some of you even would take it a step further and you say, well, I felt, you know, I think of it in my head anyways. Like when you go to the doctor and the doctor says, well, how much does it hurt? A scale from one to 10.

Right? Well, sometimes it's hard just to identify, like, exactly, precisely, oh, it hurts right there. Like, does it hurt there? No, does it hurt there? And then he squeezed, oh, oh, right there, that's where it hurts. Okay, we found the spot. Okay, now, how much does it hurt? Scale of one to ten. Okay.

And that's important because sometimes it's hard for us to articulate, like, how much exactly does this hurt? Is it, you know, the worst pain in my life or is it hardly any pain at all? And by giving that scale, it gives us a place to kind of measure and say, okay, I think it's a four or a three or a seven or, you know, whatever it might be.

And I think in a similar way that there is that capacity perhaps for you to say, hey, I'm on a scale of one to 10, I'm eight on the happiness level, right? But I'm also a four in the guilty level. And I also feel, you know,

loving on a seven level. And then 30 seconds later, it's a whole different set of values. And then the next day, it's a whole different set of values, right? There's this complexity and perhaps you identify that to that degree and perhaps you don't. But here we have David kind of expressing these things

And again, I share them with you not as an expert, but as a way to help you understand there is this kind of complexity, there is this kind of capacity, and whatever degree we experience these things, the important thing is, the thing for us to walk away with is, your feelings are designed for you to feel them.

You might be able to express them. You might be able to identify them. You might be able to articulate them. You might be able to, you know, do all kinds of this categorization. But the important thing is, do you feel your feelings? It is important to do. It's something that God has designed and put in you, these feelings that you have, this capacity to feel. And there's a need for us to feel it, even perhaps when you prefer not to. There's some feelings I don't want to feel.

But the feelings that I'm feeling are feelings that I need to feel. And I can try to run from my feelings. I can try to hide my feelings or suppress my feelings or distract myself from my feelings. But those are not healthy ways. Those are not good ways to process what it is that I'm going through. In fact, the feelings that I'm feeling are feelings that, well, I need to feel. I need to experience. I need to walk through. I think of it like a sense of touch, right? We like our sense of touch, right?

It's important to us. It's valuable to us. That sense of touch, though, is also what gives us the capacity to experience pain. And so we can experience that sense of touch from a very light touch, but then also to something that is painful and hurting. Now,

The fact that we feel, we would love to say I would just never feel any pain, but the problem is if I never actually sensed the pain, well, then I would begin to experience great damage to my body because that sense of pain triggers an alert. Hey, your hand is on the grill, right?

You know, you need to move it fast because something is going wrong otherwise. And it's an alert. It's a, you know, a system that is designed to help us recognize when something is wrong.

And our feelings are a similar way that we have feelings and we like the good feelings and there are other feelings that we would rather not have, but those feelings are just as important because, well, they're alerts. They let us know where we're at and what's going on so that we can take some appropriate steps so that we can address the situation that's at hand. And so here's David saying, how long, oh Lord? Theologically, he knows a lot about God.

But that does not keep him from feeling abandoned, impatient, alone. He's experiencing these feelings because of what he is going through. And so he has the sorrow. He feels forgotten. He feels loneliness. And the greatest difficulty, perhaps, of this whole combination is the length of time in which it's taking place. An old commentator named Andrew Fuller says it this way. He says, it's not under the sharpest, but the longest trials, perhaps,

that we are the most in danger of fainting. A lot of times we can experience great pain, but hey, if it's just for a short while, no problem. But sometimes it's those ones that draw out there. I've been dealing with this for such a long time. And that's where David is. Feeling this way for a long time and he's feeling faint.

How long is this going to go on? How much longer can I deal with this? Here's David feeling these things. Pastor David Guzik says this, God has given us feelings as an expression of his image in us. We can feel anger, love, care, sorrow, and many other feelings because God feels those feelings.

In this sense, feelings are a gift from God and a sign that we are made in his image. Something important for us to remember is that the capacity to have these emotions and feelings are part of how God has designed us. Now, some of you don't need to wrestle with that. You already know this is like no-brainer. For me, this was like new information I had to learn. And so that's why I'm taking the time to share it with you this morning.

Also, sometimes culturally in a society of people, generally speaking, there is a suppression or there is a, you know, kind of a move away from emotion and expression of emotion. Sometimes

Within the church, within Christian culture, there can be this as well. I sat through many, many teachings over the years growing up, and I've heard lots of important truths like you can't let your feelings rule your life and don't make your decisions by your feelings. And that's true, but

And that's the place. And there's a lot of great jokes that can be told about, you know, how I was feeling like this. And, you know, it's a ripe harvest of jokes and things. And there can be a belittling of how we feel. And not to take away from that, there is, you know, the truth that we can't let our feelings rule our lives and dictate all that we do. And yet at the same time, we need to be careful not to go overboard and

and begin to think that, well, we shouldn't feel our feelings. Do you ever feel guilty over how you feel? It's kind of a weird thing, I know, because you're feeling guilty about how you feel, right? There's complex feelings going on, but sometimes we feel guilty for how we feel, and we may even say, I know I shouldn't feel this way, and there's some things to wrestle with in that, but I would suggest to you that, well,

Don't try not to feel the way that you feel because you think that you shouldn't feel that way. Maybe think about it like this. Emotions are like a compass. The compass doesn't tell you which direction to go. Your map tells you which direction to go. The compass tells you which direction you're facing, right? That's how your feelings are. Your feelings come and say, you're facing east. And God's instruction says, you need to face north. Now, if I pretend like I don't

face east and I just keep going that way or walk a different direction, I don't identify what's going on there, then I'm not going to be able to go the direction that God wants me to go. I have to feel what I'm feeling, look at the compass and say, here's the direction that I'm facing so that I can receive from God the instruction on, well, the right direction that he wants me to go. Emotions are part of how God has created you and part of the image of God in you.

God gets happy. God can be sad. God gets angry. God hates. God experiences emotion probably in a way that we will not understand, especially this side of eternity, maybe never, but God has the capacity for these things. And so when he created us in his image, he gave us the capacity for these things as well. We can see this demonstrated and lived out, of course, in the example of Jesus.

I just want to throw out a few examples for you to consider in the life of Jesus. In Mark 3, verse 5, Jesus, it says, And dealing with the religious leaders on this occasion in Mark 3, as they had kind of set this trap for Jesus and were trying to, you know, attack him in this way,

Jesus experiences some emotion in the midst of the situation. He looks around at them, it says, with anger. Jesus became angry. And the familiar picture of that is Jesus overturning the tables. That's another example of that. But here's Jesus looking at a crowd of people who are, you know, kind of trying to work against him. And he experiences anger. He's upset. He's frustrated. He's frustrated.

He doesn't behave sinfully as a result. That's what we often will do, right? But in your anger, do not sin. The anger itself is not necessarily sin. But if you allow that anger then to take you down a path of sin, that's a different thing. But the emotion itself, well, it's meant to be felt. Jesus felt angry and he felt grieved. He felt sorrow over the hardness of their hearts. He was saddened at the condition of their hearts.

as he looked at those religious leaders. On another occasion, when Jesus sent out the 72 disciples to go and preach the gospel of the kingdom of God, they come back and they have great things to share, great reports about what God did in their midst. And in Luke chapter 10, verse 21, it tells us, in that hour, Jesus rejoiced in the spirit and said, I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth. And here Jesus, as he hears the report, as he receives these guys back,

It stirs up within him emotion. In the spirit, rejoicing, joy, happiness. And sometimes we might picture Jesus, you know, as just kind of like even, you know, stern perhaps. But I think Jesus laughed probably more than Pastor Poole. Like he probably had, you know, I don't know. I'm just making this up, of course. But we don't have a record of it. I wish we had a recording of Jesus' laugh. But we'll hear it one day. He experienced emotion. He experienced joy.

These feelings that we feel. Another example of that is John chapter 11. When Jesus' friend Lazarus had died, the ladies are working through this on their Tuesday study. John chapter 11 verse 35 tells us that Jesus wept. He experienced sorrow to the point of weeping. And I don't know about you, but I don't like the feeling of weeping. That is like the worst feeling. Second to hunger. Hunger is the worst. But second to that is weeping, crying. Oh man, it's the worst feeling.

But here Jesus, he wept. It was a genuine, it was a real weeping from what he was experiencing. Even illustrated a little bit further in John chapter 11 verse 38, it tells us, then Jesus again groaning in himself came to the tomb. It was a cave and a stone lay against it. Jesus was groaning in himself. Have you ever sorrowed like that? Where you have that internal, that groaning, that wrestling, that aching, that

Jesus was experiencing that. And what's significant about this is that, you know, in 30 seconds, Jesus is about to raise Lazarus from the dead. Now, if I'm Jesus and I know I'm about to raise Lazarus from the dead, then I can just skip over the grieving part of it, right? Because of what I know. I know he's going to be alive in just a few moments. So let me skip over the grieving. I don't want to weep. I don't want to groan within myself. I don't want to experience those things. So let me just jump to the good part, right?

And that's how we can be sometimes in our lives. And that's why this morning, again, I make the point, feel your feelings. Jesus could have just skipped over this, but instead he wept. He let himself feel the experience of what he was going through. And none of us would want to groan within ourselves, but he experienced that. It was part of what the Father was doing and allowing. And in a similar way, we need to feel what it is that we feel.

And sometimes we try not to feel our feelings in a variety of ways. There's all kinds of techniques that we have. Sometimes it's just by sheer willpower, right? It's just like, I'm not going to feel that way. And we're just determined. And we try to, you know, make ourselves, you know, just real men don't cry, you know, don't. And we just try to be determined not to feel that way. Sometimes we handle our feelings with distraction, right?

Well, I don't, if I'm just like sitting here quiet, I'm going to feel all those feelings. So let me go do something, do activity, you know, get involved in something, go do something fun perhaps, or just something that takes my mind off of so I don't have to feel what it is that I'm feeling. Sometimes we try to drown out the feelings, suppress the feelings, you know, and so we chase after, perhaps you chase after substances or alcohol to

I don't want to feel that. And so I try to numb myself to the feeling so I don't feel what it is that I'm feeling. Sometimes we try to deal with our feelings by pursuing a different feeling. I don't want to feel that. So then I try to, you know, immerse myself in something else that will give me a different feeling. So then all I can feel is that and I don't feel the feeling that I don't want to feel. It's all bad ways of handling the feelings that we're experiencing. Now, what we need to do is to feel.

our feelings. Let yourself feel them. Let yourself experience. I know it's not, they're not always pleasant. And sometimes we withhold from ourselves the good feelings as much as we withhold ourselves from the bad feelings or what we would classify as bad feelings. But we need to let ourselves experience it. I was thinking about this last year when my grandfather died and I experienced emotion as a result of that. Not surprising, right? But his death was a surprise to us. We went up there to celebrate his birthday and

We knew that there might be some health issues, but we weren't expecting that, you know, within the time that we were there, that he would actually enter into eternity. And sitting beside his bed in those final days and hours, I found myself wanting to say all kinds of things to him, but literally being completely unable to because of the level of emotion that I was experiencing. Everything I would try, every time I would open my mouth, it was just...

I was overwhelmed with the emotion. And it's easy to want to escape when you're feeling that emotion, when you're feeling that level of intensity, when you're feeling those kinds of things. It's easy to not want to feel that, to do anything we can to not feel that. But it is also important for us to feel that, to let ourselves experience what it is that we are going through. There was the opportunity there.

if I wanted to, for me to do the funeral service for my grandpa. And I was really tempted by that because that would be a great distraction for me. Instead of having to feel what I'm feeling, I could feel other things like anxiety and nervousness over preparing to put together everything and speak in front of everybody. And I could busy myself with schedules and preparation and all of these things. And I decided I didn't want to do that. I needed to feel.

This is my grandpa. I needed to feel. What's it like to lose a grandpa? To be a grandson without a grandpa? What's it feel like? I needed to feel that. I didn't want to, but I needed to. You need to feel your feelings. What if I told you that my commute was really rough? I came up to you. I said, man, my commute is just so hard. It's just such a burden. And man, it's just such a struggle. Every day, my commute is so hard. And we began to talk. And you find out, wait a minute.

You only work five miles away from your house. Why do you think your commute is so hard? Well, it's just every day, man. It's just like such a struggle. I get up every day and I push my car five miles to work every day. You say, well, what? Why do you push your car to work? That's not what it's for. Of course it's a struggle. Then no wonder it's a burden, your five-mile commute, because you're using your car wrong. It's not meant to be pushed wrong.

Get in and drive and you'll find, hey, there's no burden at all. And I'm not trying to rub my commute into all of you. I apologize for that part of it. But I think it's a good illustration. Listen, you come and you're like carrying all these burdens and it's like, hey, you're doing it wrong perhaps.

You're carrying the burden of your emotion because you won't let yourself feel it. Instead, you kind of like wrap it up, pretend it's not there. You throw it on your back and then you're like, I don't know why my life is, you know, I'm so burdened and overwhelmed in my life. And well, it might be because you're using those emotions. You're handling them wrong. You're not supposed to suppress them or distract yourself or push them down or pretend like they're not there or pretend like you're more spiritual than that. No, no, no. You're supposed to feel them. You're supposed to experience them. That's what feelings are for. You're supposed to feel them.

for feeling. Now again, there is balance to this, right? We don't want emotions to then just rule our lives and all we ever do is feel. No, no, it's the compass to help direct us, to help us identify the direction we're going, what we're experiencing, what we're going through, what's happening internally with us. And that brings us now to point number two, looking at verses three and four. Point number two is express your feelings to God. So first of all, we need to feel our feelings and then

We need to bring those experiences, what's happening internally to us, we need to bring that before the Lord. Here's what David says in verse 3 and 4. Consider and hear me, O Lord my God. Enlighten my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death. Lest my enemies say I have prevailed against him. Lest those who trouble me rejoice when I am moved. Here in these verses, and actually in the previous verses as well, David is addressing God here.

With the emotion that he's experiencing. He's saying, how long, oh Lord? Here's what I'm going through. In verse 3, he says, consider and hear me, oh Lord, my God. He's calling out to God. He's asking God for help with what he is feeling, with what he's experiencing, with what he's going through. He says, enlighten my eyes. And that can be understood in a couple different ways. It could be that David is saying, Lord, I need strength.

And enlightening the eyes is a way, poetically perhaps to say, to be revived and renewed and, you know, recharged so that he would have the strength to face the things that he's facing. But enlighten my eyes also might be, Lord, give me understanding. Help me to see these things through your perspective, that I would have your sights and not my sights and not be limited in my understanding of this. And so he says, enlighten my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death.

Lest the enemy say, I have prevailed against him. What it really looks like, I'm going to lose this battle. It really looks like I've lost this and it's going to be a tragedy for me. It's going to be for my detriment. But I need you to enlighten my eyes. I need you to help me through this so that the enemy doesn't have the victory. G. Campbell Morgan says of this passage, he says, this is a lesson of profound value.

Again, as I shared, sometimes there is that negative perspective from people around us, even Christians around us. Oh, you shouldn't be feeling that way.

But the appropriate thing to do with feelings, even that we think we shouldn't be feeling, is not to not feel them. Pretend like they're not there. Pretend like, you know, we're not experiencing them. But no, no, whatever it is that you're feeling, go talk to God about it. Bring it to the Lord. Feel like God is distant. You feel like God has not been there for you. You feel like you're overburdened and God has hidden his face. Go talk to him about it. Express your feelings to God.

Call out to him with the burden that is on your heart. Let him know. Talk through those things. This is what we need to do with the things that we're feeling. We need to feel them first, but then as we're feeling them, we need to bring them before the Lord and lay them at his feet. Ask him for help and insight.

with the things that we're experiencing. Pastor David Guzik says, David had the wisdom to know that though he felt powerful feelings, he wasn't seeing reality. His vision was clouded and dark, so he cried out to God, enlighten my eyes. He had powerful feelings, but David understood, I feel like God has abandoned me, but I know that God hasn't abandoned me. That's why I'm crying out to him. I feel like the enemy has won and the enemy is going to have victory, but

But I know that's not the truth. I know that God wins in the end. I know what I know, but I'm still feeling this way. And so David brings this wrestling to the Lord. He expresses these things to God. And again, this is one of the important aspects of feeling and why God has enabled you to feel feelings like the sense of touch. There's some great feelings that

Some great emotions that you can experience, and we all want those, but God has also allowed us to have the capacity to feel, well, things that are hurtful and painful so that we can recognize, hey, my hand is burning. I need to move away. I need to remove my hand. I need to take action in a similar way. The feelings that we experience when they're not so pleasant, when they're not our favorite feelings in the world, well,

We need to feel that. We need to experience that so that we can come to the Lord and say, God, I'm tore up over this. I am a mess. I am a wreck. I am overwhelmed by these things. Lord, what's going on? What do I need to do? Enlighten my eyes. Show me the way. Show me how to handle these things, these situations. Again, it's like a compass. You're feeling, so you're feeling that way. That doesn't tell you which way to go. And it's a problem if you let your feelings tell you which way to go.

No, it's the compass. It just shows you which way you're facing. And now you need to come to God and say, God, I'm facing east. Which way do you want me to be facing? Which direction do you want me to go? I'm feeling sad. Is that how you want me to feel? Is that the direction you want me to go? I'm feeling this. Is that what you want? And bringing our feelings to God is an important aspect of, well, being mature and being healthy in the processing of the things that we're experiencing and the feelings that we have.

Peter tells us in 1 Peter 5 to cast all our care upon him because he cares for us. Cast your care upon him. That's your feelings. That's your emotions, your worries, your anxieties, your sadness, your stresses, whatever it might be. Cast your care upon him because he cares for you. He cares about what you're going through. He cares about what you're experiencing. He doesn't look at you and think, ah, you're just an emotional fool. You know, just stop crying, get over it.

No, no, he cares about you. Come and bring your feelings to God. Well, what about sinful feelings? Listen, God knows. He's not surprised by how you feel. And God does not expect you to go fix your feelings and then come to him. So you have these feelings of bitterness. God doesn't say, don't come to me with those things. You go take care of that and come back when you're ready. That's not what God says.

We can't deal with the issue of bitterness and the feelings that we have on our own. We can't. How do we deal with those? We have to bring them to God. Before we can bring them to God, we have to feel them and recognize, here's how I'm feeling. I feel bitter. I feel angry and not in a righteous anger, but I feel anger in an unrighteous manner. And as I feel that, then I can come to God and say, God, here's how I'm feeling.

Not coming to God and pretending, I'm fine, God. I don't feel that way. That's how many times we try to do it. Just, you know, mind over feeling, mind over matter. Like we're just, I'm just determined. I'm just, I'm not going to feel that way. Yeah, you can't do that. No, no, you need to come to God with an honesty, with a genuineness. God, here is how I'm feeling. Don't be like Adam and Eve, right? In the garden, trying to cover up and hide their nakedness from God.

Like that's how we, you ever think about that? Sometimes I go before the Lord, I try to pretend I'm not feeling the way I'm feeling. It's like, I'm just like hiding a little fig leaf, you know, like just God can't tell, you know, I don't actually have any clothes on. God can't tell I'm actually feeling this way. No, no, no. Go before God and be honest and genuine. This is how I'm feeling. This is where I'm at.

And that way God can begin to do the work in you that needs to be done. And again, there's a huge range here. So I'm kind of focusing on, you know, maybe the negative aspects of emotions more than the positive, but both are true. You're happy, you're celebrating, express it to the Lord. Rejoice in the Lord. You're sad, you're sorrow, you're struggling with things, you're overwhelmed by intense emotion, bring it before the Lord. And then that gives us point number three in verse five and six says,

Trust God more than your feelings. First, we need to feel our feelings. Then we express them to God. And then with God's help, we can come to a place where we trust God more than how we feel. Verse five, but I have trusted in your mercy. My heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord because he has dealt bountifully with me.

David here concludes this psalm in a completely different state than how he began. He began in great despair. Oh Lord, how long? I've been dealing with this for so long and I'm feeling all of these things. It's intense. It's hard. It's difficult. I'm struggling. But he ends, it's a short psalm, but he ends this psalm in a completely different state. Charles Spurgeon says it this way, what a change is here.

We've mourned with David. We've experienced the difficulty and tragedy, those emotions. We've watched through that a bit. Now he says, now let's dance with him. Let's celebrate with him. Let's experience the other end of the spectrum with our emotions as well.

There's a transformation that has taken place here. And what has changed? Well, there's no indication actually from the passage that his circumstances have changed. But what's changed is he's had some time with God. He's met with the Lord and been reminded of some important things about God, like God's mercy. God withholds from us the judgment we deserve. And he never deals with us according, well, to the amount of judgment that we deserve to be dealt. I've trusted in your mercy.

David comes back to the mercy of God, the goodness of God, the grace of God. And he's able to trust in God. He's reminded to trust in God. He's directed to, okay, I can hold fast to God, even though I feel abandoned, even though I feel like God has left me alone and I'm all alone and he's just been gone away for such a long time. Even though I feel that way, I can trust in the goodness and the mercy of God. I'm going to grasp hold of God.

And my heart shall rejoice in your salvation. For us as believers, we can always rejoice in our salvation. Even if there's great tragedy in our life, even if great difficulty in the things that we experience, there is the reality of salvation, the reality of our sins being forgiven and the promise of eternity that we can be reminded of and come back to and trust in God for.

And as David is reminded of God's salvation and his mercy, it brings him to a place where he's ready to sing to the Lord. Not in a fake way, not in a let's pretend everything's all better way, but in a genuine way. Man, I feel like this, this is really difficult, but I'm trusting in God. I'm going to sing to the Lord as a result.

Because he's dealt bountifully with me. Abundantly, overflowing, he's dealt with me to that degree. We can be experiencing abundant emotions, intense emotions, and at the same time connect with God and sing because he has dealt bountifully with us.

Pastor David Guzik puts it this way, our feelings are affected by our fallenness. We can't trust our feelings because of this. In this sense, it was right for David to feel these feelings and good to take them to God. But he should never accept the reality of feelings as real reality. Especially when our feelings are intense. It can seem like the way that we feel is the way that things are. But Guzik points out, David recognizes, I feel this way.

But even though he feels abandoned by God, he goes to God in prayer. He's modeling for us. We walk by faith and not by sight. I might feel like God's a thousand miles away, but I'm still going to cry out to him and call out to him because I know he's right here, even though I feel like he's far away. I'm not going to base what I do and try to relate to God on the basis of what I can see, but I'm going to believe God at his word and let him tell me what reality is.

not how I feel about things. And as he connects with God in this way, as he draws near to God, he meets with God and God meets with him and he comes to a place where he can trust God even more than how he feels about the situation. He can believe what God says about it more than what he feels about it. Pastor Warren Wiersbe puts it this way, faith does not always give answers, but it does give encouragement.

No matter how successful the enemy appears to be, you can trust the Lord, rejoice in the Lord, sing to the Lord, and know that he will always deal bountifully with you. Coming to the Lord with our emotions, with our feelings, doesn't mean those feelings necessarily go away immediately. Doesn't mean that circumstances change immediately. Sometimes he works miraculously in that way, and we praise God for that. But it doesn't mean that those just all go away, that there is no struggle, there is no battle, there is no intense emotional, no struggle.

It doesn't always remove those things. It doesn't always give us the answers for why. You know, just see Job from the previous book and you understand God doesn't always answer why, but it does give us encouragement. It does give us the direction and help and strength that we need so that we can trust God more than our feelings. How do we know that we can trust God to that degree?

Because my feelings seem so real. And how I feel about the situation. It's so impressive. I'm really persuaded to just follow what I feel about this. How do I know I can trust God to believe him over how I feel? Because I feel like I can see it so clearly. How do I know I can trust God to that degree? We know we can trust God to that degree because of what he has done for us. He loved us so much that he, being God, became man.

to come to this earth, to live the human experience, and then to die upon the cross for our sin. You can trust God that much because he's demonstrated once and for all at the cross that he has loved you more than you can ever know. Paul tells us this in Romans chapter 8, verse 31 and 32. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own son, but delivered him up for us all.

How shall he not with him also freely give us all things? Paul says, look, if God is for us, who can be against us? And here's the reality. God is for you. The reality is God is for you. He loves you. That's why he died upon the cross for you. He knew everything about you, all of your feelings and experiences and all your bad decisions and all your sinful behaviors. They were laid out before him. He looked at all that. He looked at you and he said...

Yeah, they're worth it. He's worth it. She's worth it. I know what they're like. I know what's going to happen. I know what they're going to do, but I love them. I'm going to die for them. I'm going to wash their sins. I'm going to give them opportunity to know God and walk with him. God's for you. He goes on to say, if God didn't spare his own son, your greatest need ever, the greatest expense that God has ever spent on you,

is his only begotten son, Jesus Christ, dying upon the cross for your sin. Now, Paul says, look, if God gave you that, he gave you the billions and trillions of dollars that you needed, covered your debt, how much more is he going to give you the little candies that he has in the bowl on his desk, right? Like, of course, no problem. You want a lollipop? Yes. Not to minimize the things that we're going through and experiencing, but in comparison, what we're facing and the things that we experience in this life

They are much less costly than what it took for us to be forgiven of our sin. Of course, if God gave his only son, how much more is he freely going to give us everything else that we need, everything that's best for us, everything that's good for us? God's going to do that. He's going to work that in our lives as we walk with him. Of course he is. You can trust God more than your feelings. He's proven it once and for all.

And we get to reflect on that and consider that this morning as we finish up our time together with the time of communion, where we stop and remember, where Jesus gave us these elements to remember what he has done for us. He gave us the bread and the cup. He said, look, this is my body, which is broken for you. This is my blood, which is shed for you. Do this often, do this repeatedly in remembrance of me. Remember what I've done for you. Remember that you can trust me more than your feelings.

Now the fact that we're remembering Jesus at the cross also reminds us that we can come to God with our feelings. Number one, because we know that he knows them. And trying to hide and pretend like they're not there, that's not effective. God sees right through that. But also because we know that Jesus experienced feelings. He went through, he walked through. We can come to God and express what it is that we're going through with him. Because he's our sympathetic high priest. He walked through.

in our shoes and experienced humanity without sin, but humanity nonetheless. And part of humanity is the capacity to feel the emotions that we experience. So we have this opportunity to come to the table and remember what Christ has done for us. Remember how much he loves us. We have this opportunity to, in those conditions, bring to him what it is that we're going through. And I want to encourage you, Kim's going to come up and lead us in a time of worship.

I want to encourage you during this song, maybe not literally, maybe you can if you want to, but maybe write your own Psalm 13 that you would express your feelings to the Lord. Say, God, this is what I'm dealing with. This is what I'm going through. This is what I'm feeling. I don't want to hide or pretend like I'm not feeling this. I don't want to, no, no, I need to feel what I'm feeling to let, take a good look at that compass and recognize this is the condition of my heart. This is where I'm at. This is what I'm looking at.

Bring that to God and say, God, here's where I'm at. Here's what's going on. I need you to help. I want your help. I need you to guide me and instruct me in this. And as you meet with the Lord and come to the table and meet with Him and remember Christ, we can walk away trusting God more than how I feel about the situation, trusting God more than what I think about the situation. It may feel like God's a million miles away, but let the cup and the bread remind you He's right here in your midst.

He loves you greatly so much that he died upon the cross for you. In his last hours, Jesus felt betrayed by Judas. He felt exceeding sorrow in the garden of Gethsemane, even to the point of death. He felt abandoned on the cross. He cried out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? He felt shame hanging there naked upon the cross, exposed, but he also felt joy. Hebrews 12, two tells us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross.

despising the shame. There was shame, but even in spite of that, he looked at us, he looked at you, he looked at me, he said, joy, it's worth it. And he experienced joy giving himself on my behalf, on your behalf, so that we could come to him in openness, genuinely, honestly, with what's really going on inside. And so let's take this time to connect with him, to pursue God's heart.

with the feelings, not hiding them, not pretending like they're not there. As Kim leads us in this song, the ushers are going to pass out the bread and the cup. And anytime during the song, you're free to partake as you write your own Psalm 13 and express your feelings and feel your feelings and talk to God and meet with Him and can trust Him. You go ahead and partake between you and the Lord as you worship Him and walk with Him. And Kim will give you an opportunity at the end to partake if you don't during the song. But let's worship the Lord. Let's connect with Him and let Him minister to us.

about how we feel. Let's worship Him together.