Like everyone, I have good days and I have bad days. Sometimes really bad days; there are both mountains to ascend and there are valleys to navigate in our Christian walk.
There's days where you just don't feel like doing what you think you're supposed to do, what you know you're supposed to do, and that can lead to discouragement, despair, and even depression.
How do you fight the funk?
Talk To Yourself
What do I do when I'm down?
Here's my secret: I talk to myself.
Now before you think I'm crazy, or perhaps even afterward, let me show you where I get this from in the Bible.
David was having a down day when he wrote Psalm 42. If you look at it, you see he's discouraged, in despair, and he’s shedding tears and in depression. He feels disconnected from God. He used to be in a spiritually high position, but he's no longer there at this point.
He starts by asking himself questions and talking to himself in verse 5. He says to his own soul, “why are you in despair?” He's talking to himself saying, "why have you become disturbed within me?"
Did you know your soul life is your mind, your intellect, your will, and your emotions? Everything that makes up who you are in your personality.
And then he shifts to a promise and he tells himself to hope in God. He's encouraging himself. He's speaking to himself and he's saying, I will yet again praise him. So what we see here is David is not only commanding himself but he's taking authority over himself. He commands his soul, that mind, will, and emotion within himself.
David doesn't feel right, but he's saying, “you know what? Despite how I feel, I will do this! I command myself; rise up and praise God! I will set my eyes on God regardless of how I feel, regardless of what my emotions are telling me at this moment.”
Remember
The next thing David does is he remembers; he says, “I'm in despair, but therefore I will remember you."
Remembering is a powerful exercise to just pause and think about the victories we’ve faced in life. Contemplate where God brought you out of, and what God has brought you into. Think about a moment in time you were on top of the mountain and you were fully functioning with power.
David's remembering the goodness of God and those states of being he was in when he was fully powerful, fully alive, and walking in the will of God.
Shift Your Focus
The next thing David does is he shifts from focusing on himself.
He starts this Psalm by saying, “I'm down; I'm in despair; woe is me.” As we keep reading we see a shift come as he goes through these steps and he starts remembering God's goodness. He shifts to the promises of God. He starts to say, the Lord will command his loving-kindness in the daytime and his song will be with me in the night, a prayer to the God of my life.” So he's shifting from himself and he's focusing his attention, his intention on God versus his emotional state of being.
I'm convinced David changed his emotional state of being as he did this and he became a different man. You become a different man as you shift your attention because where your focus flows, your energy goes. You change that emotional state of being through the power of God, through what you say, and what you do.
When your desire doesn't reflect how you feel and where you are, you need to do something different.
Have Intention
The first thing we see David do in the Psalm is that he's desiring something in his inner soul. There's an intention. He wants to change. If you don't want to change, you're not gonna change. So you have to say there's something I want, "I need to get out of this; I need to break this thing that I'm in. I need to get back to the mountaintop. I need to start living in victory again, etc..." And that desire comes from your inner self; you have to will yourself to say, "I do not want to be here anymore. I'm choosing to leave this state."
We also see David use intense emotion. There's nothing passive about this! This is a man who's pouring out his soul, pouring out his voice saying, I need to get back to where I was. So you can't do this in a passive way. It's not casual and just say, “yeah that sounds good.”
No, there is an intention and there is a will that is set on changing his ways and breaking out of this place in life that he found himself in.
Have an expectation
When David prayed this, he didn’t think “let me just pray it and see what happens”. He knew that God would answer this prayer. He had a firm expectation that his prayers would be answered.
So every time you approach God, expect to hear. Expect to get an answer. Expect to get what you need from your Father, and praise your way out. That's what blessing the Lord is; it's lifting up that voice of praise. It's worshiping God despite how you feel.
Recently I was doing all these things mentioned above on a recent off day I was having, and I went for a walk. I put on some worship music and did a prayer walk and I just talked to the Lord. I prayed and praised my way out of it.
Like David, I started remembering everything God has said to me, everything that he is. I started contemplating and meditating on God's promises to me. And I talked to myself. And as I was talking to him, and talking to myself, commanding myself, modeling what David models for us here in Psalm 42, I broke that thing off.
This takes energy and intentionality. It takes your will, and what I mean by will is that it's not like your own willpower to give yourself your own breakthrough; it's God who gives you the breakthrough. But it's your will to set your intention to say, I'm going to follow God despite how I feel right now.
So when you're in that moment and you can't find your way, guys, take the lessons from this Psalm. Command yourself. Take control over your state of being, your emotional state. Take authority over yourself.
And lift up worship to God and watch what happens in your life!
P.S. What I said about talking to myself doesn’t look so silly, does it?
If you're experiencing feelings of loneliness and being trapped, don't remain in that state.
As a believer, you may have achieved spiritual salvation but may be facing difficulties such as depression. Despite being called to live a victorious life, you may feel like you're being defeated.
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