THE DESIRE OF THE DISTRESSED Psalms 102:1-11

CRUSHED AND COMPLAINING Psalms 102 Intro. Part 1 

PRESSURED  

A Prayer of the afflicted,

PLAGUED      

when he is overwhelmed,

THE LORD GIVES US TRIUMPH IN EVERY PROBLEM

say many are the afflictions of the righteous: but the

LORD delivers him out of them all. Psalms 34:19

This is a potent motivation to prayer. We have an outstanding promise

of assuring rescue. We have precise encouragement in every trial. And

we have extraordinary enablement in each difficulty and burden.

THE LORD GIVES US DELIVERANCE IN EVERY PREDICAMENT

Thou, which have showed me great and sore troubles, shall make me live again, and will bring me up again from the depths of the earth. Ps 71:20

David endured the insensitivity of his father. He tolerated the jealousy of his brothers. He stood under the savagery of Saul. He stomached the betrayal of his wife Michal. Then in his own family he endured, the incest of Amnon when his son raped Tamar, his daughter. His solution to this debacle was incomplete and Absalom his son murdered Amnon. Then he weathered the deception of Joab, and Absalom’s rebellion against him. Then while fleeing from the murderous uprising of Absalom the curses of Shimei rained in on him, and then the squabbling of the sons of Zeruiah.

David felt a variety of inner emotional devastations. There we’re the polluting corruptions of his own heart, the disgusting filthy expressions of his natural inclination. He dealt with destitution hiding in a lonely escape, hole up in a dark cave where he was surrounded by dysfunctional discontent from the rag tag riff raff who he attracted. He endured the hiding of God’s face, and the temptations of Satan.

David doesn’t blame it on the instruments of second causes, but he blames God as the one who either laid it all on him, or allowed it to happen to him, for his good and God’s glory.

THE LORD GIVES US HIMSELF IN THE MIDST OF OUR PAIN 

When we are overwhelmed and grow faint. When we feel totally weak, because of sickness, or excessive emotional stress. We listen to David in the Psalms who says that he felt covered with a shroud, draped and totally clothed with emotional wreckage and buried to the point of struggling for breath from the pressure of the constant onslaught of crushing heaviness and heaving uncontrollable feelings. And what does the Psalmist do? He prays. This is the answer, David journals his feelings, writing Psalms of poetic prayer expressions. He buries his head in the bosom of his beloved. He pours out his tears in The Lord’s comforting warmth.