Your Life Matters

There are times when our lives lack meaning, and we feel as if they're not worth living. Where is God in those moments, and what does He say?

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello everyone, welcome to the He's on the Line podcast. My name is Daniela, and by the title of this episode, um you could tell that we're gonna talk about something sensitive, and I want to talk about it with the sensitivity and the reverence it deserves because I know that this is part of the human experience, and I'm not a psychologist or doctor who can medically uh provide relief for this. However, I want to talk to you as a friend today. This is something I would tell a friend if they're struggling with any thoughts um with any just despairing thoughts that is crippling them. And um, as we start this episode, I want to start by reading Psalm 88. I'm gonna read towards the end. The Psalmist, the person who writes this Psalm, is a priest who spends pretty much all his days in the presence of God. Here's what he says in Psalm 88. For my youth I have suffered and been close to death. I have borne your terrors and am in despair. Your wrath has swept over me, your terrors have destroyed me all day long. They surround me like a flood, they have completely engulfed me. You have taken from me friend and neighbor. Darkness is my closest friend. I read this psalm because the Bible is a book, it has characters with a lot of issues, and you can identify with these characters. There is no one that's perfect here except Jesus in the whole Bible. And uh this Psalm is a Psalm that I hope you come back to if you are struggling with that. Um, if you're struggling with despair, hope you can find yourself in this Psalm. I also really like this. I like I like this Psalm because it doesn't have a resolution, it's more about a Psalm you write in the middle of where you're going through, uh, of the pain you're going through. And if you are in that pain, I invite you to read this psalm so you find um, you know, a place to pour out your feelings to God. If you don't have any words to God and you're in despair, let this psalm be kind of like a coach to be there with you and to tell you, hey, you have words to say and help me and let me help you say that to God. Um obviously we can tell that this person was going through a hard time. And when hard times come, we find escapes, escapes either through drugs, uh, people, um, entertainment, and sometimes sex or anything that gives us pleasure, sometimes it might be addictions like workahol, like being a workaholic, that's an addiction, just to kind of ease the pain a little bit. And what I found that when when we are when we are filled with thoughts of despair that just make us want to end it all, it usually is because we have a lot of emotional baggage to the point where we cannot take it anymore. And so we do anything to ease the pain. This feeling is not uncommon to human nature. The book of the Bible has people who have gone through this. In fact, in 1 Corinthians chapter 10, verse 11, Paul tells the Corinthian church, hey guys, y'all gotta lock in because there's people that have come before you that have been foolish like you. These stories that we have is for your own good. And I'm going to just give us a list of those who have gone through this, um, these these these feelings and emotions of despair. And I want us to get wisdom from their stories. All these stories show us something important about human nature. In this list, you will also find people who followed God and they did great things with God, but yet they found themselves in a state of deep emotional turmoil where they just asked God to take their life away. To just God, we're done. Like I'm done, take my life. The first person that I want to talk about is Judas Iscariot. There's a type of grief, obviously, that comes where um with remorse, and you just feel like you're a failure. You feel like nothing matters anymore, you've messed up too much, and your whole life is over. When he betrayed Jesus, he realized he just made the biggest mistake of his life and he felt disgusted with himself, and so he ended it all. We also have um in Judges chapter 9, this guy, his name is Abimelech, he after being like mortally wounded by this woman, he talks to his armor bearer, he's like, Yo, you gotta like uh kill me because uh because I don't want to be, I don't want my story to be that a woman killed me. Ahithopel, um, I believe that's how you pronounce it in English. In 2 Samuel chapter 17, after like a political conspiracy that he he does against David, King David, Ahithopel gets rejected by Absalom, David's br David's son, and he ends it all because he feels useless. And then there is Elijah, the man of fire, the man who asked God, God, bring fire down. He was exhausted and he said, God, I can't do this anymore. These things happened to them as examples, and they were written for us as instruction. The Holy Spirit, we're not here to deny things. In fact, denial is the very thing that blocks us from the freedom that God has for us. I would tell my friend, if they were going through this, that they are too special and that they are too important to end it all. I know that's the last thing you want to hear right now because you probably don't believe it. I invite you to just pause and to listen to some facts and what God has to say about this. I did some research on the chances of an individual uh being born, and I don't know if you knew this, but it's one in a trillion. You are one in 400 trillion of you being here in this time, in this age, you're not here on accident. And like I said in the last episode, what we think about this God really does dictate how we see ourselves, how we see ourselves and our lives. And like I said in the last episode, what we think about this God dictates how we see ourselves and our lives. And it's also important to think about him in the way he. And in the last episode, I said that what we think about this God determines a lot about us, and one of the things is the way we see ourselves and the way that we see our lives. I think it's I forgot the author. I think the book was called The Gift of Being Yourself, and it's this psychologist. The book offers a psychological and theological analysis of how we should see ourselves. When we look at God, your vision of God should be love. I know that that vision can be um blurred, especially if we have not seen or felt love from other people. But that's what the Holy Spirit is there to do to show us the right perspective of God. But think of the most loving person in your life or that you've known or seen, and then see how they would look at and see how they look at their loved ones. Now that's God times like a billion. Now he's looking at you in love, and he looks, he sees all of you, but he still loves you so much. Don't just stop there. When you have that revelation of God's love for you, the book argues that when we stop there, that's when we don't really get to know ourselves or who we're supposed to be in Christ. When we look at God looking at us in love, we now can look at ourselves. We can we can now look at ourselves in love in light of God's love for us. It's that dance that the Holy Spirit needs uh to teach us. Because when we look at ourselves in love, we get to see how important we are in the eyes of our Maker. What we say, of course, what I say says a lot about what I believe. And we can apply that to God as well. Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. And what this God says is very important. The thing also about this God is that he does not lie, he can't lie, he really cannot lie. Here's what he says about his creation. I want to focus on two things that God uses to describe us. He says, We are precious and we are important. One of the people that I listened to is the Bible Project. As I was listening to an episode by the Bible Project, scholar Tim Mackey explains it like this: that out of the overflow of God's goodness, he made us. And out of his abundant generosity, he created us. That's how the biblical authors want us to see the way in which God created us. You come from love. You don't come out of lack. You come out of, you don't come out of lack, you don't come from a being who didn't want you. He created you because he wanted you. You know, there's people in our lives that just want us for what we can give them. And we search for things and people who will just love us for who we are. We want to be known. This God created you just because of you. In Isaiah chapter 43, verse 4, Yahweh tells the Israelites, this God of the Bible, that's his personal name, Yahweh. He tells the Israelites, he tells the Israelites that you are precious in my sight and I love you. Sticking with a theme of currency and value, I want to share with you something that you probably didn't know. Sin is very expensive. Sin is us missing the mark that God has for us. When we do not walk according to what God tells us to do, it's expensive. Like something has to fix that mess up. Him sending Jesus is him telling all of us, the world, and you individually today, that you have value to me. I sent the most priceless thing I have. And friend, I also wanted to remind you that you're important. Your very existence is important. Imagine a king who comes to you and says, Hey, I want to invest in you. Come into my palace. I would feel honored. It says something about you for sure. I mean, a king is very selective, at least a wise one is. Now, this God is also described as the king of the whole universe. He's the king of kings. When we look at it from that perspective, this God also invested in you when he sent his son for you. Your very existence is his delight, and that's a fact. That's what he says. Along these lines, I would also add that we have faith in a lot of things. You have the very if you're listening to this podcast, you have faith that when you click play on the on your device, it would start. If you're sitting down somewhere, you have faith that the chair will hold you up. If you're if you are standing up right now, you have faith that there will not be an earthquake right now and that the ground will support you. Let's learn to have faith in a God that will never lie. Uh, and no matter where you stand, especially if it's uh pain from just life coming at you, um, I want to remind you that when we put our faith in this God and when we ask him to be our light, he allows us to go beyond our difficulties, our limitations. He allows us to go beyond them. On the daily, I invite us to process our emotions with God. Uh in uh Psalm 46, I believe it says, God is an ever-present help in times of need, ever-present. He does not leave. And God understands our emotions, and he is an emotional God Himself. So when you feel, for example, overwhelmed, you're like, God, like, I'm just so tired. Let him know, God, I am tired right now, and I need your help. You said that you're an ever-present help in times of need and of trouble. If it's because of shame that you just feel this immense despair, tell God, God, I feel this immense despair, but because I put my faith in you, God, I want to trust you. And because I trust you, you say that I no longer have to carry guilt. You tell me in the book of Isaiah, chapter 53, that you carried my wounds, that the punishment that was supposed to be on me is on you now. That's why it's important to read God's word. His word lets us know exactly what we have. I would also tell you that God believes in your deliverance. He does. He believes in you. Let that be the reason why you keep going. When you can't even believe in your own healing, believe that God has already seen you through, that he will perfect all that is concerning you. He's turning everything around. If you love him and if you are called according to his purpose, by the way, when you really know him, you will love him, by the way. I'm just letting you know. When we love him and when we follow his will, he promises to work all things for good as we are coming out of the darkness. I also invite you to look at yourself through the eyes of compassion. How would your best friend, if you had a best friend, how would they look at you? If you're dealing with guilt, how would he look at your whole story? Sometimes we just look at one part of our lives and not the whole story. What might have led to this shame? I also would recommend that we speak life to our situations. Yes, this is hard, but also I know that what you have for me is good. That the plans you have for me, God, are plans to give me a hope and a future. And um, one last thing that has helped me the most is recognizing that I have been given a sound mind. God is a giver and he gives us only good things, right? Uh the Bible says that in Psalm 103. In his giving, he gave me a sound mind because I believe in his son. And so a sound mind just means a mind that is peaceful, a mind that is yes, there's chaos all around me, but my mind is uh is grounded in reality, in reality, not denying what's wrong, but also in God's reality, what could be in his perspective. For example, I'm dealing with immense guilt and shame, and I'm just like, God, I'm done. A sound mind in that moment, I'll be like, God, I'm dealing with immense guilt right now. You say that I don't have to carry this guilt anymore. I renounce the spirit because they're they're spirits. I'm not saying this to frighten you. In this world, there is a spiritual realm, and sometimes there are demonic spirits that come and they sit on us. It's kind of like a cloud of darkness, and sometimes it can be spirit, especially if you don't believe in Jesus. Um it's heavier, but if you believe in Jesus, the Holy Spirit lives on the inside of you, the spirit that you receive when you receive Jesus. Uh the spirit of Jesus lives on the inside of you, and so these spirits can only torment you, they can't possess you. And this is where prayer comes in, praying and asking God, God, take this away. I don't want to feel this spirit of heaviness. Instead, give me a garment of praise. I'm going to conclude this episode by with reading you Micah 7, verse 8. Micah chapter 7, verse 8, it tells us, rejoice not over me, oh my enemy, though I have fallen, I will arise. Though I sit in darkness, the Lord will be my light. I'm gonna repeat that. Though I have fallen, I will arise. Though I sit in darkness, the Lord will be my light. When you do not have your own light, when there's not when there when it doesn't seem like there is light around you, let God be your light. I do not know any other thing to recommend you, to give you, except God. He's the only one who's gotten me true transformation and true hope. Hope that will never like hope that will never put me to shame, hope that will always, always, always prosper, hope that will never disappoint me. Only God gave me that. Yes, I partnered with God in seeing um life from his perspective, but it was only him. It was because of him. He gave me perspective, he gave me hope. I hope this episode encourages you to see your life from a different point of view. Everything you've been listening to are lies. If you are struggling with thoughts of despair, everything you've been listening to are lies. Let God's word be the truth that you choose to listen to. And in all things, know that God believes in your healing and let that be the fuel through which you continue on and persist until you find the healing you need. And when you do, he doesn't leave you either. He brings you into what he's called you to do and who he's called you to be. Blessings, everyone. May the Lord bless you and keep you. May He make His face shine upon you and that He may lavish you with His unending love and His peace. I cannot wait to see what God will do through your life and how He will just give you new hope. Like He's given me so much hope. Now I want to share that with you. All right. Blessings. Bye.