At a conference a few years ago, I went up for prayer at the end of one of the services. I remember how I was feeling: sad and hopeless in a situation I was in at the time. I expected the speaker to speak encouragement into my heart and tell me to keep my chin up. I found myself hearing words something like this: “Wanda, there are promises pouring all over you right now but it’s like you are holding an umbrella over you and those promises are falling to the wayside.”
I left feeling somewhat hurt and disappointed because I didn’t really get what I had gone for... encouragement and maybe even empathy.
I’ve thought of that word from time to time through challenges I’ve faced since then. I don’t think there is any harm in desiring to be encouraged when going through the valleys, yet the temptation may be to wish for someone to join our pity party or even more, the temptation to fall to the comfort of men rather than going straight to God with our feelings.
The writer of the Psalms, David, was possibly struggling with the same emotions I have from time to time. As he spent hours with the sheep, there was no one there except God to lean on. He had to even fight a bear and a lion all by himself. What about when he became king? He faced even more struggle as he led a nation in spite of his own personal struggles. The temptation may have been to have a pity party in the valleys he walked yet he learned to pick himself up.
Psalm 42:11 “Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why the unease within me? Put your hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him, my Savior and my God.”
On one occasion, David’s family had been taken captive, the city had been burned and all the people in the city were captured. Then his own people spoke of stoning him because they were all deeply grieved. You can read the account in 1 Samuel 30. Verse 4 says, “David and the people who were with him lifted up their voices and wept, until they had no more power to weep.” They had cried until they had no tears left. Verse 6 says, “David was greatly distressed, for the people spoke of stoning him, because the soul of all the people was grieved, every man for his sons and daughters. BUT David strengthened himself in the Lord his God.”
David made a choice to rise out of the ashes and seek the Lord for the next step. “Shall I pursue this troop? Shall I overtake them? And He (the Lord) answered him, ‘Pursue, for you shall surely overtake them and without fail recover all.’” We see in a few verses later, “So David recovered all that the Amalekites had carried away... and nothing of theirs was lacking, either small or great, sons or daughters, spoil or anything which they had taken from them; David recovered all.”
If David had lain down and wallowed in debilitating grief, he would’ve never recovered what had been stolen from him and his people. On the hillsides, he had learned the power of praise and worship. He had learned how to encourage himself while in the depths of despair. He recounted the promises of God and took courage from them.
As we walk through the valleys in life, we can do as David did! We can recover all! Put your hope in God, dear friends.
