An Ancient Cure for Modern Anxiety: Psalm 71

Struggling with anxiety? Psalm 71 has a surprising, free prescription — and it works. Find hope, practical tools, and truth for every age and stage of life.

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Transcript

Welcome And Psalm 71 Theme

Teresa Whiting 0:00

Well, welcome friends. Today we're going to be talking about Psalm 71. And I love Psalms like this that focus on who God is and what He does. We are living in such broken, difficult, uncertain times. And this Psalm is an anchor for our heart. It reminds us that we are never without hope. It reminds us who God is and the way that we can cry out to him. It also gives us a really beautiful model for how to deal with our anxiety. That's something that all of us could use a little help with. So let's start by reading Psalm 71. I'm going to be reading it in the NIV. In you, Lord, I have taken refuge. Let me never be put to shame. In your righteousness, rescue me and deliver me. Turn your ear to me and save me. Be my rock of refuge to which I can always go. Give the command to save me, for you are my rock and my fortress. Deliver me, my God, from the hand of the wicked, from the grasp of those who are evil and cruel. For you have been my hope, sovereign Lord, my confidence since my youth. From birth I have relied on you. You brought me forth from my mother's womb. I will ever praise you. I have become a sign to many. You are my strong refuge. My mouth is filled with your praise, declaring your splendor all day long. Do not cast me away when I am old, do not forsake me when my strength is gone. For my enemies speak against me. Those who wait to kill me conspire together. They say, God has forsaken him. Pursue him and seize him, for no one will rescue him. Do not be far from me, my God. Come quickly, God, to help me. May my accusers perish may my accusers perish in shame. May those who want to harm me be covered with scorn and disgrace. As for me, I will always have hope. I will praise you more and more. My mouth will tell of your righteous deeds, of your saving acts all day long, though I know not how to relate them all. I will come and proclaim your mighty acts, Sovereign Lord. I will proclaim your righteous deeds, yours alone, since my youth, God, you have taught me, and to this day I declare your marvelous deeds. Even when I am old and gray, do not forsake me, my God, till I declare your power to the next generation, your mighty acts to all who are to come. Your righteousness, God, reaches to the heavens. You who have done great things, who is like you, God? Though you have made me see troubles many and bitter, you will restore my life again. From the depths of the earth you will bring me up, you will increase my honor and comfort me once more. I will praise you with the harp for your faithfulness, my God. I will sing praise to you with the lyre, holy one of Israel. My lips will shout for joy when I sing praise to you, I whom you have delivered. My tongue will tell of your righteous acts all day long, for those who wanted to harm me have been put to shame and confusion. One of the things I love to do when I'm reading through the Psalms is interact with Scripture. I like to circle and underline and put boxes around things. And one of the things I noticed in this psalm is that there are lists of things that God does and things that the psalmist does, and there's also things that indicate who God is. So I want to go through some of these lists that I've made. And maybe as you study through Psalm 71, maybe you do the same thing. Maybe you underline and circle and highlight. But listen to just a few of these things that the psalmist is asking God to do. He's saying, God, you rescue, deliver, you turn your ear to me, you save me, be near, come quickly, help me, don't forsake me, don't cast me away, restore my life, bring me up from the depths, increase my hope, comfort me. When our hearts are heavy, when we are filled with regret or shame or fear, one of the things we can do is we can use the psalms as prayers. Like these are things that I want to say to God. I want to say to him, God, rescue me, deliver me, turn your ear to me, save me. And in doing so, I want to remind myself who God is, just like the psalmist does. He says, You are my rock, my fortress, my hope, my confidence, my strong refuge. It's not just that God does things on our behalf, it's who he is. It's pressing into his heart, his character, our relationship with him. See, this God that David is talking to, this is his God. This is his personal God, his savior, his refuge, just like yours and mine. This is our God. This is the God who came for us, who came to rescue us, who came to set us free, who came to lift us from shame. And so we can come boldly to him, just like the psalmist does. We can identify with the psalmist by saying, God, you are my refuge. You are my rock. You are my strong fortress, my hope, my confidence. It's not in me, it's not in what I can do, it's not in all of the circumstances working out, or my prayers being answered the way I wish they would be answered. My confidence is in who God is and who He is in my life. As we look at our lists of verbs, the things that God does, the things that we do, listen to some of the things that the psalmist does. The psalmist says, I have taken refuge in you, I rely on you, I praise you, I declare your splendor, I tell your righteous deeds, I sing praise, I shout for joy. Interestingly, the the job, the work of the psalmist, the work of you and I, is really to enter into God's presence and then lift him up with our praise. I I counted at least 13 references to the psalmist using their mouth to sing and to speak and to proclaim God's goodness. The heavy lifting, the hard work, the saving, the rescuing, the refuge, the protection, that's on God. Our job is to come to him, to abide in him, to seek him as our refuge, and then to lift his name up. So as we work through the scene series, each of these psalms is connected to one of the women in scene. And Psalm 71, I've connected to Elizabeth because there are so many references to ages and stages of life. If we look at verse five, we see the psalmist saying, For you have been my hope, sovereign Lord, my confidence since my youth. Verse six says, From birth I've relied on you. You brought me forth from my mother's womb. I will ever praise you. Verse 9 says, Do not cast me away when I'm old, do not forsake me when my strength is gone. Verse 17 says, Since my youth, God, you have taught me, and to this day I declare your marvelous deeds. Verse 18 says, Even when I'm old and gray, do not forsake me, my God, till I declare your power to the next generation, your mighty acts to all who are to come. I don't know what age or stage of life you're in right now, but this psalm pretty much covers it all. It covers from conception, from in the mother's womb to old age, to being old and gray. And all throughout, the psalmist acknowledges that God has been with him. God has been his fortress, his refuge, his savior all throughout his life. When we're talking about ages and stages of life, one of the things I love about this psalm is it really underscores the value of older believers speaking truth into the next generation. And we see this modeled in Elizabeth's life. When Mary came to visit her, Mary was a young teenager, probably 13 or 14 years old. And the first thing she did when she got the news that she was going to bear the Son of God was she hurried, she ran to see Elizabeth. And the first words out of Elizabeth's mouth were encouragement. When she saw Mary, she exclaimed, Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear. But why am I so favored that the mother of my Lord should come to me? As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her. Elizabeth encourages Mary, and she also directs her to the truth that God is going to fulfill his promises. Verses 15 to 18 in Psalm 71 talk about how I will tell your righteous deeds, I will relate them to the next generation. It says, Since my youth, God, you've taught me, and to this day I declare your marvelous deeds. In verse 18, it says, Even when I am old and gray, do not forsake me, my God, till I declare your power to the next generation, your mighty acts to all who are to come. You know what I see? I see someone who's saying, Even when I get older, I have something to offer. I have more to offer in my old age because I have been a witness to God's faithfulness throughout my life. I have seen his hand guiding, protecting, preserving, rescuing over and over and over. I've seen it in my life. I've seen it in the lives of people around me. And so if you're an older believer, I want to encourage you that you have something to offer. I know too many older believers that feel like, well, I did my time, I served, or, or even worse, they feel like, uh, I don't really have anything to offer. I can't relate to the younger generation. I want to say, yes, you do. You do. You have so much to offer. If you know the Lord, if you've seen him work in your life, you have experience, you have wisdom, you have a firsthand testimony of God's goodness. You have things that you have walked through that people are gonna come behind you and walk the same road. And they need you. They need your encouragement, they need your example. You don't need to be a Bible teacher or a scholar. You just need to be willing to share with people this is who God is. And let me tell you about our glorious God and how he shows up in our darkest moments. Let me tell you how he walks beside us day by day in the everyday moments of life. That's all you need. And if you are a younger believer, I want to encourage you to seek out someone older, to seek out a mentor, someone to disciple you, someone who you can go to and say, you know, I'm walking through this. I need wisdom, I need guidance, I need help, I need direction. That's what we're here for. We are a body. We need one another. The church is made up of young and old and middle-aged, and all of us are valuable. We are all needed, we all bring something to the table. And so I just want to encourage you, whatever age or stage of life you're in, to speak God's praise to those in the generations around you, above you, below you, next to you, be a voice, use your mouth to praise God. Because we talk about ages and stages of life. Interestingly, the word always, at least in the original language, it shows up three times in this psalm. So if we look at verse three, the psalmist says, Be my rock of refuge to which I can always go. Verse six says, From birth I have relied on you. You brought me forth from my mother's womb. Now in the NIV it says, I will ever praise you, but in the original language it says, I will always praise you. And then my favorite is in verse 14, which says, As for me, I will always have hope. I will praise you yet more and more. Is that something you can say? Can you say, As for me, I will always have hope? If you know Christ, if you are in Christ, no matter how dark the world gets, no matter how chaotic life gets, no matter how painful your circumstances, you have hope. Because hope isn't rooted in what's going on around us, it's not rooted in our circumstances, it's rooted in the character of God. It's rooted in the fact that He is good, He has you, He has a plan, and He is working out that plan. And I know sometimes it just looks so dark. And we want to say, but how do I have hope in the midst of this circumstance? And I think the psalmist answers that in the latter part of verse 14. He says, As for me, I will always have hope. I will praise you more and more. Honestly, the darker it gets, the more we need to praise God, the more we need to speak and sing. I mean, after that, after verse 14, the psalmist just goes on to talk about the use of his mouth. My mouth will tell of your righteous deeds. I will proclaim your mighty acts, proclaim your righteous deeds, and declare your power to the next generation. In verse 19, it says, Your righteousness, God, reaches to the heavens, you who have done great things. Who is like you? And here's what I love, verse 20 is not this is not a pie in the sky, like, oh, everything's been great, life is wonderful. Listen to verse 20. Though you have made me see troubles, many and bitter, you will restore my life again. From the depths of the earth, you will again bring me up, you will increase my honor and comfort me once more. I love the reality of the Psalms. I love that the Psalms don't say, just ignore the pain, just ignore all the hard things. No, the psalmist is saying, I have seen many bitter troubles, but I know who my God is. I know that He will eventually bring me up. He will eventually restore me and comfort me. And then the end of the psalm is all of these words about singing praise. I will praise you with the harp. I will sing praise to you. My mouth will shout for joy when I sing praise to you. My tongue will tell of your righteous acts all day long. So, one of the things I like to do in this podcast is get really practical. I want to think about what would this look like in our life? How does this, how does this psalm of praise, this psalm of putting our hope in God, translate to our everyday lives? One of the things that has been a practice for me, and it's definitely not often enough, but I find this truth. When I am struggling with fear, with anxiety, with looking at the world around us and feeling a sense of foreboding or hopelessness. When I'm looking at circumstances in my life or in my family, and I just feel this heaviness and this weight. One of the things that God has given us as a gift is tongues and mouths to praise him. And we live in a day when there is so much opportunity for us to lift our voices in praise. I am not a singer. I have no ability to carry a tune whatsoever. I don't know musical things, but I know this: that when I am in a dark place and I put worship music on and I open my mouth and I use my mouth to bless God, to sing his praise, something happens in my heart. Something happens in my mind and in my body. A change occurs. When we sing, it directs our hearts and our minds to the character of God. First of all, when we sing, it lifts God up, it exalts him to his rightful place. It lifts our eyes off of our circumstances and onto him, his goodness, his grace, his glory, his power, his might, his ability to deliver us. It changes our perspective. It takes us from looking at our uh our issues, our problems, and they're and they're so huge. And I am not denying that we have difficult problems. But when we lift our eyes, when we lift our voices and we sing praise to God, it takes us from that place of just being absolutely enshrouded by fear or anxiety or pain. And it lifts us out of that pit. It lifts us up. It lifts our eyes, our hearts, our minds, our thoughts to a new place. It brings gratitude into our hearts where maybe we couldn't find anything to be grateful for. When we put on worship music and we sing those songs out loud, it changes the atmosphere. I don't know if you listened last week to my conversation with Michelle Wilkins, but she talks about this in such a beautiful, powerful way that when she was getting the worst news of her life, she made a choice. She chose to lift her voice in praise of God. And she says how it changed the atmosphere in her home. That's what happens. That's what praise does. It is powerful. It's a weapon that we can use against our enemy. It's also a source of comfort to us. But not only that, singing praise is a type of medicine. Now, I'm not a big medicine person. I don't really take medication very often. A few years ago, I went to a doctor. She was a naturopathic doctor, and I was just wanting to find out like some of the things that were going on in my heart, in my body. Um, and she immediately, like, she was in the room for maybe 10 minutes, and she's like, We need to get your anxiety under control. And I was like, What? Anxiety? Nobody's ever told me I have anxiety. Funny, funny. Nobody's ever told me because I never go to the doctor. That's why no one's ever told me. But she nailed it. She knew exactly from the moment I walked in the room that I was carrying this anxiety. So in scripture, the word anxiety means pulled in a million directions. And the word for peace, the word shalom means wholeness. It means everything is all together in one. Understanding anxiety from that light, of course, I could tell her, yes, I have anxiety. But here's the interesting thing. She was like, okay, I'm gonna give you some remedies for anxiety. So she was giving me the whole spectrum, you know, from medication all the way down to completely natural things that didn't have anything to do with medication. And one of the things she said as an antidote to anxiety, you can hum or sing. She said, Humming and singing changes the body, it does something to our nervous systems. And I was like, no kidding. God designed something that lifts him up, that is a worshipful practice to him. When we do this in obedience to him, when we exalt his name as a sweet gift to him, he turns around and blesses us. He takes that gift that we give to him and he pours it back on us. And isn't that just like our God? Oh, I get so excited because I'm like, he takes the gift that he, well, first of all, he commands that we worship him. He desires that we worship him, right? He asks us to worship him, knowing that when we do, it helps us. It helps our hearts, it helps our bodies. What a gift that God gives us to sing, to speak, to declare his praise. And in doing so, we not only lift him up, but he ministers grace to our hearts and our bodies and our souls and our minds. I like to create resources that are practical and helpful. I have a Couple different things I want to offer you today. One is a sing praise playlist. It's my go-to. It's what I put on when I'm when I feel myself spiraling into the pit, when I feel myself going into a really dark place. I put that on and I sing God's praise. I belt it out, usually when nobody's home, or maybe when I'm in the shower. And that is something that has helped me. I will link the Sing Praise playlist. But another thing I've created is a 31-day soul care calendar. And that calendar has all different ways for us to care for our souls, to for us to bring nourishment, bring hope, bring life to you know the dark places in our hearts. It's easy for us right now to look around at the world, at the chaos that's swirling. But what I want us to remember is that even in the midst of that, even if God makes us see troubles many and bitter, he will restore us again. He will bring us up. He is a God of hope and strength. And because of who he is, we can always, always have hope. Thanks for hanging out with me today on Beauty and the Brokenness. To find the things that I mentioned on the episode, go to TeresaWiting.com/slash listen dash episode one four six. And friend, if you are enjoying this podcast, would you take just a minute to go over to Apple Podcasts or to Spotify and leave a five-star rating and review? It's one way you can help spread the message that there is beauty in the midst of this broken world. In closing, I want to leave you with this prayer from number six, twenty-four to twenty-six. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you. The Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace.