Vindicate me, O God, and plead my cause against an ungodly nation;
Oh, deliver me from the deceitful and unjust man! For You are the God of my strength;
Why do You cast me off?
Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy? Oh, send out Your light and Your truth!
Let them lead me;
Let them bring me to Your holy hill
And to Your tabernacle. Then I will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy; and on the harp I will praise You,
O God, my God. Why are you cast down, O my soul?
And why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God;
For I shall yet praise Him,
The help of my countenance and my God.
- Psalm 43
This is an amazing chapter that gives us a great insight into fighting spiritual despondency and depression in five short verses. He feels unjustly accused, life isn't fair and it feels like everyone is against him. He hasn't done anything to deserve the treatment he's getting so he cries out to God for vindication. Vindication is more than being delivered or having people start treating you right. It means to be shown to have been right. Of course he responded like such and such, after all, this and that had happened. It's the kind of thing we're hoping for when we say things like most people would have become violent, they're lucky I only screamed at them. Or, if you had to deal with what I'm going through or went through you'd drink too.
We all love to be vindicated, even when we know we aren't in the right. We'll overlook our part in things. Or we may downplay our part while magnifying and emphasizing the other side's part. Even if we can't twist things to make us look good or right, and we can't really make everything seem like it's all the fault of the other person, we try to show that everyone would have done the same thing in our place. We forget while trying to do this that not everyone chases the guy who cut them off in traffic down and cusses them out. Not everyone is even tempted to do so. Not everyone is really rude in whatever situation brings out the rudeness, or the bitterness or the etc., etc., etc., in us.
What we are saying when we cry for vindication is either that we were right in our actions and reactions with the will of God for our life and following the example of Jesus by the power of the Spirit for the glory of Daddy or that we weren't doing anything out of line with human nature, with what is common for people to do in that circumstance. The problem with the first is that doing it perfectly in the will of God doesn't always mean that there won't be trouble or difficulty. Elijah may have been fed and provided water, but he wasn't feasting and in a state of plenty during the three years of drought. Peter still got beaten for refusing to cease preaching, even though he did it right and they release him after.
Sometimes we feel that if we are walking with God everything should be roses and rainbows and no problems, but we forget that roses have thorns and rainbows come during and after storms, not on clear sunny days. Expectations are precursors to resentments when our expectations are unrealistic or are not based on truth. Being in the right doesn't always make life easier. Sometimes it makes things more difficult, at least for a time.
The problem with the second reason we cry for vindication is that not being out of line with normal human behavior is no high praise. There is no glory in that, not for us and not for God. It's like when Jesus asked why do you stop at being good to those who are good to you? Even Godless people do that. No, be good to those who aren't good to you and you'll show a higher love. On our own, apart from God, our defaults, our normal actions and reactions are motivated by selfishness and fall short of the righteousness of God and His love.
Actually, the getting to the very place where it is so easy and natural to cry out to be shown to be in the right means we have turned our eyes on to self and taken them off God. I't not a condemnation. We're going to do that as long as we are on this side of eternity and as long as we are wrapped in this cursed flesh. God understands that. It's why He makes it clear that He wants us to take our needs to Him. You can't see your need without being aware of self, and yet when self comes to the front with its fears, pain and need, taking the situation to Daddy is the way to both correct our perspective and access the grace and power of God in our lives. He is our hope.
And that is what the Psalmist does here. He is focused on self. His pain. His misery. His depression. His this isn't fair, this isn't how my life should be, this isn't how I expected it to be or wanted it to be. It is his self that is speaking, that is crying out for vindication, just as it is our human nature, our old nature, our self, that looks at out life and cries that it isn't fair, it isn't supposed to be this way. We can't avoid it. We experience faith and fear, and everything in between through the filter of self.
It is our awareness of self and the situation our self is in that lets us see and feel the weight of what we are facing, the pressure of what needs to be done, and every other emotion that is tied in with being aware of our needs for provision, healing and restoration. It is our awareness of self that shows us that we need God, that we are still in need of a Savior.
But when our self starts talking to us, we need to remember the source. When I wake up in the morning and my mind starts whining and complaining and going to the sad, scary, dark places before I can even sit up, I need to remember that the voice in my brain is my self, my old self, and not my new self, the redeemed spirit born of God within me. We can't keep the old self from talking. We can't keep it from exaggerating and saying misery has always been our lot, rejection has been all we have known and everyone, even God, is either out to get us or going to let us down. We can't keep it from trying to justify it's whining and the reactions and demands for action self makes. We can't silence the screams of self that we don't deserve this or this much or that we were in the right, that we are only human after all. And we can't even keep it from saying see, I told you walking with God won't help. You did what you were supposed to and life not only still sucks, it's gotten worse. In fact, we can't even trust self's evaluation that life sucks.
Self, is not an objective news source. Self has an agenda behind every weather report, status update and system scan it does. We can't turn self and its voice completely off, but we can choose how we respond to the report. Our first and best reaction is always going to be to turn our eyes and attention to God. I'm feeling week and miserable and life isn't fair, the Psalmist cries. God help me. You are my strength! The first step in getting out of the funk and depression that listening to the propaganda of self has led us to is to turn to remember who our Daddy really is and turn to Him for help.
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