Facing crisis, feeling abandoned

This week at our Bible study and prayer time I shared from Psalm 54 which really is a psalm for anyone who feels abandoned, rejected, or betrayed.  Have you ever been abandoned by a husband or a wife or a good friend?  Have you ever been publicly denounced by someone you thought was on your side?  Do you feel as if no one cares for you? Well, then Psalm 54 is for you. This is a psalm for any believer who has been maligned or wrongly accused. And all you have to do is live long enough to experience this.

When we feel this way, we need to do what David did: tell the Lord, trust the Lord, and thank the Lord!

So what do we do when we face a crisis or feel abandoned like David did by people from his own tribe of Judah who rescued from the Philistines?  Here is the process this psalm provides:

• Bring it to God (vv. 1-3)
• Ask God to hear your lament (2)
• Describe the situation to God (3)
• Encourage yourself by remembering who God is (4)
• Make your request to God (5; Philippians 4:6)
• Thank God for his goodness (6-7)

By the way, David wasn’t the only one who did these things when he faced crisis and felt abandoned.  Jesus, our Savior, did as well as he suffered in Gethsemane and on the cross for our sin.  Jesus felt abandoned and was abandoned even by God Himself (My God, my God, why have your forsaken me?) so that you and I would never be abandoned by God.

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Post-election Christian perspectives

Ligon Duncan shares some initial thoughts on praying for President-Elect Obama.

Randy Alcorn reminds us that we vote every day, not just every four years. He tells us that the election is over, but it isn’t over.

Timmy Brister addresses the change we need.

All of these have some great quotes! All of these will help you pray and act biblically as well!

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Good news for marriage

Justin Taylor reports:

Voters in California, Arizona and Florida approved constitutional amendments defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman yesterday. This is great news for marriage.

The California victory is especially important since it reversed the California Supreme Court’s redefinition of marriage in May of this year. The Florida victory is significant because the amendment there needed sixty percent approval to be enacted. The Arizona victory reversed the very narrow defeat of a slightly more complicated marriage amendment in 2006.

The margins of approval were:

Arizona (Prop 102): YES 56% to 44%
California (Prop 8): YES 52% to 48%
Florida (Amdt 2): YES 62% to 38%

These votes surely aren’t the end of the struggle against upholding marriage as God defines it.  Already there are groups in CA ready to challenge the outcome of the vote with new court maneuverings.  So, we can rejoice but not rest in standing up for truth.

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When you doubt God’s love

Jerry Bridges in Trusting God Even When It Hurts reminds us of how the love of God is a stabilizing force in our lives:

When we begin to question the love of God, we need to remember who we are. We have absolutely no claim on His love. We don’t deserve one bit of God’s goodness to us….I know of nothing that will so quickly cut the nerve of a petulant, “Why did this happen to me?”attitude as a realization of who we are before God, considered in ourselves apart from Christ.

We see then that God loved us when we were totally unworthy, when there was nothing whatsoever within us that would call forth His love.

Any time that we are tempted to doubt God’s love for us, we should go back to the Cross. We should reason somewhat in this fashion: If God loved me enough to give His Son to die for me when I was His enemy, surely He loves me enough to care for me now that I am His child. Having loved me to the ultimate extent at the Cross, He cannot possibly fail to love me in my times of adversity. Having given such a priceless gift as His Son, surely He will also give all else that is consistent with His glory and my good.

Note that I said, we should reason. If we are to trust God in adversity, we must use our minds in those times to reason through the great truths of God’s sovereignty, wisdom, and love as they are revealed to us in the Scriptures. We must allow our emotions to hold sway over our minds. Rather, we must seek to let the truth of God rule our minds. Our emotions must become subservient to the truth. This does not mean we do not feel the pain of adversity and heartache. We feel it keenly. Nor does it mean we should seek to bury our emotional pain in a stoic-like attitude. We are meant to feel the pain of adversity, but we must resist allowing that pain to cause us to lapse into hard thoughts about God….

If God’s love was sufficient for my greatest need, my eternal salvation, surely it is sufficient for my lesser needs, the adversities I encounter in this life.

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