Psalms 3, 4, 42
Processing And Recovery
David is in the wilderness running from his son Absalom who has rebelled and is trying to take over the kingdom. God warned David this would be the consequence of his sin of adultery with Bathsheba and murder of her husband. As he makes his escape into the wilderness Psalms 3 and 4 indicate that he is processing what has happened and why.
The first church I pastored met in the conference room of a drug alcohol counselling center. In talking with the manager about addictions the manager told me that the first thing that is cast aside when one goes down the road to addiction is the spiritual and it is the last thing that comes back. From what I have observed I believe this is true. I would also add that if one does not bring the spiritual back the rehab is short lived and the cycle will repeat over and over.
The processing is important because we must get back to the place where the spiritual was abandoned. For David it was long before he committed the sins mentioned above. Unfortunately, the sins and consequences scream the loudest and demand the most attention, but before David committed them he was wandering from his trust in God.
David had finally become king and was successful as king and had the peoples support along with the palace to prove it. He even wanted to build a house for God but it was here that God gave him a stern rebuke in 2 Samuel 7 because he was getting off track. Twenty one times in Chapter 7 God tells David what He has done for David and the point was that God was God and David was not. David was discarding his humility before God and starting to think more highly of himself than he ought. That was the problem back in the Garden of Eden when the serpent told Eve she could be like God if she ate the forbidden fruit. When Adam and Eve ate the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil they were cast out of the garden. They now had the choice to depend on their wisdom and emotions to guide them in life, or depend on God.
We leave the spiritual behind when we depend on our own wisdom and emotions (often unchecked) to get us through life and when the pressures of life, which range from success to failure mount, we tend to rely more on emotion and less on wisdom and that rarely works out well which is why in Psalm 4 David deals with his anger. Also, in Psalms 4 and 42, he deals with fear and is feeling overwhelmed. Psalm 3 deals with where all this got him. The more we rely on emotions to guide us the more out of control our life becomes. We must get back to the place where we let God direct and guide and that is what David is doing as he writes the Psalms we are going to study over the next few days.
With every process, there must be a point where the process begins. In David’s case, and with us, that point begins with a decision to let go of our control and let God be God. In an earlier study I shared this quote.
"Sin will take you farther than you want to go, keep you longer than you want to stay, and cost you more than you want to pay.” Author unknown
I think this is only half the story. How about we add this to it?
No matter how far you go from God, or how long you have been separated from God, and even if you have lost everything, God is as close as a prayer and his prayer line is open 24/7. He is waiting for your call.
James 4:10 says, “Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you.” NASB
In this verse we see the process. Humble yourself, connect with the Lord, and the Lord will exalt you.
This is what the young man did when he made the decision to return home to his father in the parable Jesus told in Luke 15:11-13. Jesus said he went on a journey to a distant land. After he lost everything and became desperate he made the decision to go back to his father. That was step one in the beginning of the long journey home. We are not told much of the journey back but we do read that on his journey to the distant land there were many places where he lost everything with the choices he made on his journey. The process of bringing the spiritual back is to identify those places where poor decisions were made and put up “Do Not Enter” signs. If we are to succeed we must keep our eye on the goal of getting back and be committed to giving up whatever we need to in order to get there. We must believe that going to God is much better for us than where we have been.
We need to change our thinking but most importantly we need to change what we put our faith and trust in. The reality is we have been trusting in ourselves. Putting our faith in our abilities, wisdom, and especially our unchecked emotions, has failed us and brought us to ruin. We have tried to bless ourselves and failed. We have not taken responsibility for our actions that brought us here. The Lord is working and speaking often in our circumstances. We must listen and be honest with ourselves if we are to succeed in the process of bringing back the spiritual.
Let God be God of your life. He wants to bless you. Do what it takes to bring back the spiritual if you have left it behind. God still loves you and is for you. You will be glad you did.
Pastor Dave