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.
– Psalm 42:11
That’s Psalm 42:5. It’s also Psalm 42:11, and it’s Psalm 43:5, the same verse as these two Psalms go together, and that verse is so important and helpful for us to hear.
Let me read it one more time and pause along the way to help us understand what the psalmist is saying.
Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me?
– Psalm 42:11a
It is clear that the psalmist here is struggling in his faith, and we need to have a category for this, for struggling Christians because we are all them. Christians throughout history, this is part of what I love about the Psalms, have walked through struggles in their faith and struggles in this fallen world.
Psalm 42:11 teaches us to speak truth to ourselves in struggles.
So, when you are struggling with your faith, you’re not an oddity. This is normal in a fallen world, but that’s what I love so much about these couple of chapters and this verse specifically because the psalmist is talking to himself. He’s saying, “Why are you cast down, O my soul? Why are you in turmoil within me? Why are you struggling?” And then he tells himself,
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.
– Psalm 42:11b
This is so important. We need to learn to talk to ourselves instead of just listening to ourselves when we’re walking through struggles. Because if we’re not careful. Especially in struggle. We can fill our minds with all kinds of things that are not true about God, about ourselves. About the circumstances we’re in. And we need to speak to ourselves, to remind ourselves what God’s Word says about who he is, about who we are, about the promises we have to stand on, about the purposes that he is accomplishing, even in the hardest things in this world.
Psalm 42:11 calls us to reject despair and trust in God.
We need to talk to ourselves, and we need other brothers and sisters in Christ to speak to us, remind us, and help us to hope in God. And we need to be that voice in others’ lives when they’re walking through struggles, a voice encouraging them with truth because we are all tempted, when we walk through struggles, to listen to ourselves and to believe lies that God doesn’t love us, that God’s not with us, that God is not for us, to believe lies about ourselves, to, in a sense, beat ourselves up, to tell us we’ll never be enough. We’ll never get over this struggle. And that’s where the psalmist is saying, “No. Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.”
So, God, I pray this verse over anyone walking through a struggle right now, that they would hear you speaking clearly to their hearts right now, their minds right now, telling them you’re with them, you’re for them, and they have a reason to hope in you.
This verse pictures God as our unshakable hope.
God, I pray that you would remove despair from anyone who is struggling with despair right now, and that, for all of us, we would hide this Word away in our hearts and minds for moments of despair, for moments of struggle, even depression or spiritual depression. God, we pray that you would help us, by the power of your Word, to speak this truth to ourselves, to say to ourselves and to say to others that we’re walking alongside life within this fallen world, “Hope in God. You have infinitely good reasons to hope in God, to praise him because he is your salvation and he is your God.”
Oh, God, we praise you for the hope we have in you. Jesus, we praise you for making this hope possible, and we pray specifically today for people who’ve never heard the good news of your hope in Jesus.
Prayer for the Pundari People
Oh, God, please cause the Pundari people in India to be reached with the gospel. 323,000 Bengali-speaking Hindu men, women, and children. No known followers of Jesus among them. God, we pray, please, cause the Pundari people to be reached with the hope of Jesus.
Even as we pray you would help us, just as your Word says, to be ready today to share the reason for the hope we have with anybody around us. God, help us to speak this hope into our own hearts and to speak this hope into others’ lives, other brothers and sisters in Christ today, and to share this hope with people who need it and to spread this hope to people around the world. God, may it be so. We pray according to your Word in Psalm 42 and 43, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
David Platt serves as a Lead Pastor for McLean Bible Church. He is also the Founder of Radical, an organization that helps people follow Jesus and make him known in their neighborhood and all nations.
David received his B.A. from the University of Georgia and M.Div., Th.M., and Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Some of his published works include Radical, Radical Together, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, and Don’t Hold Back.
He lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area with his wife and children.
