A MESSAGE TO OVERWHELMED BELIEVERS

I speak now to those believers who are overwhelmed by accumulating afflictions. David the Psalmist tells of his being overwhelmed by unbearable troubles:

“My heart is sorely pained within me: all the terrors of death are fallen upon me. Fearfulness and trembling are come upon me, and horror has overwhelmed me” (Psalm 55:4-5).

Search the Scriptures through and you will not find any man of God speak more than David did about trusting God. No one spoke more about seeking and waiting on the Lord for strength in the time of need. It was David who testified he feared no evil, even though he walked through the valley of death—because the Lord was with him.

But there fell upon David a series of deep and painful distresses that shook his faith. At one low point when he seemed hopeless, he cried, “All men are liars!” He was speaking out of his overwhelming pain and sorrow. All spoken words of comfort and hope have not come to pass; it all seems like a lie.

There was an all-out attack on David’s faith. He was not accusing God of lying—but all the voices coming at him from all sides. David was at the place of despair. He looked for an escape “that I had the wings like a dove, I’d fly away from all this despairing and find a place of rest.”

When I speak about being overwhelmed, I know what I speak of. My daughter Debi has just been operated on for cancer. My 29-year-old grandson Brandon is undergoing chemotherapy for 4th stage cancer. David was right: “Fearfulness and trembling fall upon us.”

What does the believing child of God do in these overwhelming hours? We do as David did.

“As for me, I will call upon God; and the Lord will save me. Evening, and morning, and at noon, will I pray, and cry aloud: and he shall hear my voice…[and] deliver my soul in peace from the battle that was against me: for there were many with me” (Psalm 55:15-18).

Go to prayer—steal way and get into the Lord’s presence. Even if you do it quietly, cry out your pain and ask for peace to come upon you. We must do more than trust. We must stay in God’s Word and pray the promises back to him.

My family and I are walking in faith and relying on God’s faithfulness to his Word. God is good!