Bipolar Faith
Bipolar Faith
Many times Christianity just doesn’t work. Many times we don’t get our best life now. Now what do you do? Psalm 42 and 43 offers spiritual resources to help us pick up the pieces.
“Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I will again enjoy him, my salvation and my God.” This three-peat refrain found in 42.5, 42.11, and 43.5 is the Psalm’s textual GPS leading us home to its big idea – life is bipolar, you need a bipolar faith to survive. Pain and praise, wilderness and worship, despair and deliverance, horror and hope, it’s all packed in there. Two completely opposite psychological or spiritual poles are included in a life before God. Real life before God is both praise and pain while God is fiercely present in both producing a faith that is inherently bi-polar. The ultimate goal of Psalm 43 and 43 is not to get rid of our pain but to inject faith into it, which is the deepest deliverance of all.
How do we live with a bipolar life? Specifically, what do we do in pain? Do we just stand there and bleed (think Wyatt Earp in Tombstone)? Psalm 42 and 43 says, “NO.” We do something heroic: pray your way through the pain.
In Psalm 42 the Psalmist is a Poet of Pain. He releases several images of pain to pummel the reader with help. The first image is pretty famous - a “thirsting deer” (verse 1). Most modern eyes see this as a picture of passionate piety rather than of unbearable pain. The image is of a desperate dehydrated deer straining to reach a reliable water source only to find it has dried up. The image portrays the inescapable desperation and need of the human soul for God or “living waters” (verse 1), especially when his living presence appears to have dried up in our lives.
Another image of pain is, “My tears have been my food” (verse 3). The thrust being, “Pain is my food. I eat pain day and night.” The Psalmist’s suffering is so fundamental to his life that it has become his daily nourishment or sustenance and even marks the passage of time (“day and night” – verse 3).
The last image in verse 7 rules them all, “the great chaotic deep.” This disturbing image has a long and notorious history in the Bible: the chaos of pre-creation, the great flood, the piled-up waters at the Red Sea, and the localized land of the dead (“Sheol”). The Psalmist likens his pain to the most destructive de-creative force in the Old Testament being unleashed on his soul - “I am de-creating. I am falling to pieces.” The Psalmist is utterly helpless as the waves of pain roll over him.
How do you deal with your pain? Most of us “stuff it.” Deny it. Clamp down on it. Try to control it some way, and we are incredibly creative in our strategies. Others of us “surrender to it.” Pain sweeps us away. Pain controls our lives. Pain becomes god-like in its control and power over our lives, its dark rule painfully expressed in fearful avoidance and hopeless surrender. Whatever our strategy for dealing with pain, pain breaks us down piece by painful piece.
What is the Psalmist doing with all these images of pain? He’s giving us a third way to deal with pain: Pray Your Pain. Pray your pain to God in graphic personal detail. Why? It’s part of God’s appointed way to help heal us. We actually feel God hearing us, seeing us, knowing us, being with us, and helping us when we pray our pain to Him. God actually addresses, accounts for, speaks to, and describes in vivid detail your pain in His Word. This means God knows your pain! Pain might feel out of control to us, but it is under control with God. There is healing in identifying and voicing your pain. Psalm 42 and 43 helps you find your voice.
The placement of verse 8 after the “great chaotic deep” is puzzling: “By day the LORD commands His steadfast love (hessed)…” Why does the LORD command his love into the great chaotic deep? Because the LORD’s love over-rules the deep. The LORD over-masters the great chaotic deep with his greater deeper love. God over-loves pain.
Experiencing God’s deeper love injects healing into pain as God is discovered to be enough, to be an exceeding-pain joy (Psalm 43.4). This is what the Psalmist has been thirsting for since verse 1. This is what we thirst for.
Years later on a cross outside Jerusalem God commands his love into the deepest darkest chaos of all - cosmic judgment against human sin. There, God de-created his own Son so all who trust in him would never experience “the great chaotic deep.” There, God’s love over-mastered sin and guilt for those who contribute nothing to the relationship but their sin and resistance. Life is bi-polar. Pray your pain to the God who not only hears but heals through the chaos of the cross.
Many times Christianity just doesn’t work. Many times we don’t get our best life now. Now what do you do? Psalm 42 and 43 offers spiritual resources to help us pick up the pieces.
“Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I will again enjoy him, my salvation and my God.” This three-peat refrain found in 42.5, 42.11, and 43.5 is the Psalm’s textual GPS leading us home to its big idea – life is bipolar, you need a bipolar faith to survive. Pain and praise, wilderness and worship, despair and deliverance, horror and hope, it’s all packed in there. Two completely opposite psychological or spiritual poles are included in a life before God. Real life before God is both praise and pain while God is fiercely present in both producing a faith that is inherently bi-polar. The ultimate goal of Psalm 43 and 43 is not to get rid of our pain but to inject faith into it, which is the deepest deliverance of all.
How do we live with a bipolar life? Specifically, what do we do in pain? Do we just stand there and bleed (think Wyatt Earp in Tombstone)? Psalm 42 and 43 says, “NO.” We do something heroic: pray your way through the pain.
In Psalm 42 the Psalmist is a Poet of Pain. He releases several images of pain to pummel the reader with help. The first image is pretty famous - a “thirsting deer” (verse 1). Most modern eyes see this as a picture of passionate piety rather than of unbearable pain. The image is of a desperate dehydrated deer straining to reach a reliable water source only to find it has dried up. The image portrays the inescapable desperation and need of the human soul for God or “living waters” (verse 1), especially when his living presence appears to have dried up in our lives.
Another image of pain is, “My tears have been my food” (verse 3). The thrust being, “Pain is my food. I eat pain day and night.” The Psalmist’s suffering is so fundamental to his life that it has become his daily nourishment or sustenance and even marks the passage of time (“day and night” – verse 3).
The last image in verse 7 rules them all, “the great chaotic deep.” This disturbing image has a long and notorious history in the Bible: the chaos of pre-creation, the great flood, the piled-up waters at the Red Sea, and the localized land of the dead (“Sheol”). The Psalmist likens his pain to the most destructive de-creative force in the Old Testament being unleashed on his soul - “I am de-creating. I am falling to pieces.” The Psalmist is utterly helpless as the waves of pain roll over him.
How do you deal with your pain? Most of us “stuff it.” Deny it. Clamp down on it. Try to control it some way, and we are incredibly creative in our strategies. Others of us “surrender to it.” Pain sweeps us away. Pain controls our lives. Pain becomes god-like in its control and power over our lives, its dark rule painfully expressed in fearful avoidance and hopeless surrender. Whatever our strategy for dealing with pain, pain breaks us down piece by painful piece.
What is the Psalmist doing with all these images of pain? He’s giving us a third way to deal with pain: Pray Your Pain. Pray your pain to God in graphic personal detail. Why? It’s part of God’s appointed way to help heal us. We actually feel God hearing us, seeing us, knowing us, being with us, and helping us when we pray our pain to Him. God actually addresses, accounts for, speaks to, and describes in vivid detail your pain in His Word. This means God knows your pain! Pain might feel out of control to us, but it is under control with God. There is healing in identifying and voicing your pain. Psalm 42 and 43 helps you find your voice.
The placement of verse 8 after the “great chaotic deep” is puzzling: “By day the LORD commands His steadfast love (hessed)…” Why does the LORD command his love into the great chaotic deep? Because the LORD’s love over-rules the deep. The LORD over-masters the great chaotic deep with his greater deeper love. God over-loves pain.
Experiencing God’s deeper love injects healing into pain as God is discovered to be enough, to be an exceeding-pain joy (Psalm 43.4). This is what the Psalmist has been thirsting for since verse 1. This is what we thirst for.
Years later on a cross outside Jerusalem God commands his love into the deepest darkest chaos of all - cosmic judgment against human sin. There, God de-created his own Son so all who trust in him would never experience “the great chaotic deep.” There, God’s love over-mastered sin and guilt for those who contribute nothing to the relationship but their sin and resistance. Life is bi-polar. Pray your pain to the God who not only hears but heals through the chaos of the cross.
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