If You’re Down in the Dumps
"In this will I be confident" -- Psalm 27:3
Down in the dumps, are you? You feel gloomy? You are beset with dark forebodings and fears, and you feel as though you can’t go on and face up to things?
Once David had that feeling come over him. But he refused to give in to it. In his heart he knew he had a confidence that would certainly lift him out of his low spirits and melancholy. The trouble was, he had allowed that confidence to become dormant. He resolved to call it back into activity. This he did by reaffirming it: "The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? In the time of trouble He shall hide me in His pavilion: in the secret place of His tabernacle shall He hide me; He shall set me up upon a rock. In this will I be confident!"
Perhaps the cause of your mood is the same as with David. It is not that your confidence in God has gone from you, but you have allowed it to become dormant. Reaffirm it! Give utterance to it! In your heart you are confident that God will take care of you, but you need to declare it to yourself that this is so. Redeclare your faith, and it will spring into action again, lift you out of the dumps, and set you up upon a rock! That miserable gloomy feeling will be gone. You will see a rainbow in the clouds that darken your soul with forebodings. You will presently find yourself daring the world with renewed courage and with a song in your heart.
It proved so in David’s case. The declaration of confidence in the first verses of this psalm passes, in the verses following, into a triumphant and jubilant song: "And now shall mine head be lifted up. . . . I will sing, yea, I will sing praises unto the Lord."
The uttered confidence becomes an exultant confidence!
Try this for yourself. Very soon, instead of sighing you will be singing; instead of pitying yourselves you will be praising God; instead of being down with the blues you will be up in the blue skies of God’s goodness and sunshine.
