A Troubled Spirit

“Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise Him, my salvation and my God….By day the Lord commands His steadfast love, and at night His song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life. I say to God, my rock: "Why have You forgotten me?”…Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise Him, my salvation and my God.”     ~Ps 42 5,8-9,11

Brothers,

     This past month has been a rough month for me.  Between visiting the Adams, dealing with the results of my procrastination, and normal day to day struggles, I’ve been what David would have phrased as “weighed down in spirit.” Thoughts about what the future will hold, what the past has wrought, and what the present is requiring have made my emotions like a roller coaster. The way I typically deal with my emotions is by holding them in until a future time when I will be able to let them out. Yet this past week, as my spirit reached its full mark, I was talking with my parents and I was realizing that I wasn’t handling the situation right. In many cases, yes, holding in emotions can be beneficial. But look at what David does. He brings his worries and fears to the Lord and then in a sense encourages himself.

“Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am in distress; my eye is wasted from grief; my soul and my body also. For my life is spent with sorrow, and my years with sighing; my strength fails because of my iniquity, and my bones waste away.” (Ps 31:9-10)

I’m sure that at some point in your life, you, too, have struggled with a troubled spirit. I’m sure also that you will struggle again many times in your life. Yet I would caution you not to do a few things. Don’t throw all your troubles in a box at the back of your mind and try and forget about them. That doesn’t solve the problem and only makes it harder because when you’ve filled that box high enough, it will overflow and trouble you ten times more than at first. Also, don’t do the opposite and walk around telling everyone about your troubles.  We need to be wise about who we share our innermost thoughts with.  Some might be unprepared at that time to handle the extra burden and others might be simply untrustworthy. 

Here is what I would advise when you are feeling down, emotional, stressed, or otherwise troubled: First, cry out to the Lord. He is the only one who can give you joy and is your only true rest. Seek Him first above all things and live in obedience. Second, seek the support of one you trust. We are commanded in Scripture to bear one another’s burdens and the support of another can considerably lighten your load. Third, meditate on the Word. The Bible and prayer are two powerful weapons that cannot be over-used and should definitely not be under-used. Last, praise the Lord. When your mind is focused on the Lord, the cares of this world seem as light as a feather.

     One interesting thing I’ve noticed about Psalms, is that it begins with cries to the Lord for help and ends with songs of thanksgiving. What better example do we have than this?

“But I trust in You, O Lord; I say, "You are my God." My times are in Your hand;…Make Your face shine on Your servant; save me in Your steadfast love!…Love the Lord, all you His saints! The Lord preserves the faithful but abundantly repays the one who acts in pride. Be strong, and let your heart take courage, all you who wait for the Lord!” (Ps 31:14-15, 23-24)

“Praise the Lord! Praise God in His sanctuary; praise Him in His mighty firmament! Praise Him for His mighty acts; praise Him according to His excellent greatness! Praise Him with the sound of the trumpet; praise Him with the lute and harp! Praise Him with the timbrel and dance; praise Him with stringed instruments and flutes! Praise Him with loud cymbals; praise Him with clashing cymbals! Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Praise the Lord!” (Ps 150)

Your brother in Christ,

Corey

The Hand of the Lord

Brothers,

This week, instead of the normal type of letter I typically write, I want you to read something much more encouraging and inspiring than I could ever pen. In the following verses from various Psalms, focus on the hand of the Lord and all He does: from rooting out the wicked to gathering His people to protecting them and ultimately calling them to be with Him. May these passages be to you what they truly are – the inspired Word of God which brings fear to the sinner and hope and joy to the righteous and therefore elicits all three responses (fear, hope, and joy) in us.

Your brother in Christ,

Corey

Psalms 85:4-7

Restore us, O God of our salvation,

And cause Your anger toward us to cease.

5 Will You be angry with us forever?

Will You prolong Your anger to all generations?

6 Will You not revive us again,

That Your people may rejoice in You?

7 Show us Your mercy, Lord,

And grant us Your salvation.

Psalms 107:28-32

Then they cry out to the Lord in their trouble,

And He brings them out of their distresses.

29 He calms the storm,

So that its waves are still.

30 Then they are glad because they are quiet;

So He guides them to their desired haven.

31 Oh, that men would give thanks to the Lord for His goodness,

And for His wonderful works to the children of men!

Psalms 106:47-48

Save us, O Lord our God,

And gather us from among the Gentiles,

To give thanks to Your holy name,

To triumph in Your praise.

Psalms 5:4-6

For You are not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness,

Nor shall evil dwell with You.

5 The boastful shall not stand in Your sight;

You hate all workers of iniquity.

6 You shall destroy those who speak falsehood;

The Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man.

Psalms 5:11-12

But let all those rejoice who put their trust in You;

Let them ever shout for joy, because You defend them;

Let those also who love Your name

Be joyful in You.

12 For You, O Lord, will bless the righteous;

With favor You will surround him as with a shield.

Psalms 8

O Lord, our Lord,

How excellent is Your name in all the earth,

Who have set Your glory above the heavens!

2 Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants

You have ordained strength,

Because of Your enemies,

That You may silence the enemy and the avenger.

3 When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers,

The moon and the stars, which You have ordained,

4 What is man that You are mindful of him,

And the son of man that You visit him?

5 For You have made him a little lower than the angels,

And You have crowned him with glory and honor.

9 O Lord, our Lord,

How excellent is Your name in all the earth!

Psalms 84:1-2

How lovely is Your tabernacle,

O Lord of hosts!

2 My soul longs, yes, even faints

For the courts of the Lord;

My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.

Psalms 84:10-12

For a day in Your courts is better than a thousand.

I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God

Than dwell in the tents of wickedness.

11 For the Lord God is a sun and shield;

The Lord will give grace and glory;

No good thing will He withhold

From those who walk uprightly.

12 O Lord of hosts,

Blessed is the man who trusts in You!

Psalms 90:1-2

Lord, You have been our dwelling place in all generations. 2 Before the mountains were brought forth, Or ever You had formed the earth and the world, Even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God.

Lessons Learned from Africa: What missions is truly about

Sorry everyone for not posting in so long. I just looked at the last time I had put something up and realized that it had been a lot longer than I had originally thought. As some of you may know, last month, my mom and I traveled to Africa to pick up a boy we were adopting and during that trip I learned many important lessons, such as this one:

“God be merciful to us and bless us, and cause His face to shine upon us, that Your way may be known on earth, Your salvation among all nations. Let the peoples praise You, O God; let all the peoples praise You. Oh let the nations be glad and sing for joy! For You shall judge the people righteously, and govern the nations on earth.” ~Ps. 67:1-4

Nick,

What you may not realize is that most of the time, when I’m looking for a topic to write on, I just flip open my Bible and write on the first verse or section I read. I did the same thing with these verses, but it always amazes me how the Lord molds that into something that I have been dealing with or something I’ve been thinking about. This passage is both. When my mom and I got to Africa, I was expecting our time to make an impression, and it did, just not in the way I had anticipated. It wasn’t until after we had been there for two weeks that God showed me what I was to learn. First of all, you must understand my mindset during those two weeks. I had envisioned myself as some glorious engineer who would come in to one of the third-world, African countries and suddenly, because of me, it would become a first-class power. In the core of that thinking was providing houses and jobs for the poor. Rarely, however, did I think about the people’s souls. Our second Sunday there, my mom was talking to me and showed me the incredible mistake that was clouding my thinking. We often imagine that Satan leads us astray by tempting us with sinful, wicked thoughts. True, but they come in more than one form. My thinking, though a good thought and a good purpose, was not the best reason for the best purpose. Though it was a good goal and, when done for the right reason, is an admirable calling, because it was distracting me from what God tells us is to be our first focus, it was a sinful thought. Since that time, through talks with my mom and dad, Bible reading, books, and prayer, the Lord has directed my thinking towards another course. As the passage says, “You shall judge the people righteously.” I began wondering whether God’s judgment of me would be “Well done, good and faithful servant,” or “Depart from Me, for I never knew you.” We have a calling: preach the Word. We are not to first think about how to fix the world’s housing problems or even how to feed our families. Our first thought should be to our God and how we can further His glory. We are to care for the souls of our family, friends, nation, and world. What was bogging my thinking down was the notion that I should first meet the physical needs of the people, and then their spiritual needs, when it should have been the other way around. I am starting to realize the full meaning and need of David’s words, “God be merciful to us and bless us…that Your way may be known on earth.” As for you, don’t get so caught up in a career that you are in or are going to be in, that you lose focus of our true calling: first and foremost to evangelize, train, encourage, and strengthen in the name of Christ Jesus our Lord. No, you need not spend hours a day preaching. God has called you to a specific physical job that may not be that of a missionary. But you do need to be constantly praying for the lost, encouraging the Church, and also consistently being bold in your faith. There are times when a specific person will be in every conversation, thought, and news article. Let’s change that to all the time and make it the name of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Your brother in Christ,

Corey

“Let the peoples praise You, O God; let the peoples praise You. Then the earth shall yield her increase; God, our own God, shall bless us. God shall bless us,

and all the ends of the earth shall fear Him.” ~Ps. 67:5-7

Be still and know that I am God...

“Be still and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.” ~Ps. 46:10

Nick,

Last night we were sitting at our kitchen table with the lights turned low and the advent candles lit, while my dad read from an advent book that included this magnificent verse. Especially during this busy holiday season, we often forget the resounding command in this verse. “Be still and know;” few times have I been more reminded of God’s presence, than when I stepped outside one windy, rainy night and sang hymns to the Lord. There is something about rainy nights, especially, that show God’s majesty. The wind rushes around you breathing its icy breath through your hair and rustling ominously through the trees. The rain rushes toward the earth in pounding waves; thunder and lightening flashing and booming, sound forth in awe of their Maker. And then, hidden away in all this tumultuous cacophony of sounds and sights, is a silent pervasive hint of yet another of God’s many promises: the clean, fresh smell that comes after rain, a reminder that one day the world will be made new and that even as the rain washes away the dirt and grime and filth of the land, so Christ has washed away our grime and filth.

With the holiday stress of searching for presents, preparing meals, visiting, writing letters, and cleaning the house, it is very, very easy to lose our focus of what truly matters. This past week as my sister was in the hospital and my mom was getting ready to go to Africa, I could feel myself getting grumpy, sharp, and all together like a wet blanket. I knew that the reason was that I had lowered my sight from the things of the Lord to the dust of the ground, but it wasn’t until several days later that I truly prayed that the Lord would yet again clear my mind of the fog that so often fills it. Remember this month, the reason we celebrate is that it is a time that commemorates the fulfillment of God’s promise to send a Deliverer to Israel and the beginning of His great sacrifice. Don’t get bogged down in the meaningless pageantry of the season Rather, remember that Christ was born in a stable and His first bed was a feeding trough. Don’t worship santa, Christmas songs, or your Christmas tree. Remember the sacrifice that would later be made on a tree. Don’t diminish the celebration. I’m not advocating an abolishment of Christmas, merely a simpler celebration that revolves around Christ, instead of presents and sweet rolls. Don’t stop singing; just start singing for the lyrics, not the tune or tradition. Even I have lost some of my focus over the course of this letter, so I will turn it back to the original intent:

“Be still and know

That I am God…”

Your brother in Christ,

Corey

Give ear to my words...

“Give ear to my words, O Lord, consider my meditation…My voice You shall hear in the morning, O Lord; In the morning I will direct it to You, and I will look up.” ~Ps. 5:1,3

Nick,

Throughout the Psalms, we see a pattern: every Psalm is directed to God. The whole Bible, in fact, is one continuous story of God’s majesty, mercy, and love. In our modernized world, we are often distracted from the things of the Lord. TV and radio commercials encourage us to buy things to improve our lives; newspapers and magazines highlight the scandals and sin of our culture; internet chat groups entice us to spend more time looking at a computer screen and less time enjoying actual fellowship and encouragement from believers. Books are also written to satisfy our fleshly lusts. For instance, what good is there in mystery novels? There is never anything God- glorifying behavior, but only death: a constant reminder of Man’s sin and the consequence of it. Self-help books do not point to God as the solution to our troubles, but rather to our own selves. Even supposedly Christian books contain a shockingly enormous amount of sensuality. I bring this all up to illustrate, and to show more clearly, the need for godly thinking and judgment. Our thoughts are always to be on the Lord. Morning prayer times and evening Bible studies are important for our spiritual growth, but we should always be questioning our actions as to whether or not they are for God’s glory.

If you watch a movie, before you even turn on the TV, you should ask, “Is what I am going to see and hear going to make me become more like Christ?” Before you pick up a book, evaluate whether it contains godly examples, whether the plot ends with the good side victorious, and whether there is God-honoring behavior. In Scripture we repeatedly see sinful man turning away from God, but God always returns victorious.

“Therefore, whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” ~1 Cor. 10:31

So, whether you’re reading a book, playing a game, watching a movie, eating, drinking, walking down a sidewalk, etc., constantly be asking yourself whether you are glorifying God with your actions. The world needs godly men to lead; men who glorify God in all that they do. We are to be those men who take up the duty of leadership. May the Lord bless you this week.

Your brother in Christ,

Corey