7. GRIEVED AND GRAPPLING PSALMS 102:3

BLINDED V.3

For my days are consumed like smoke,

What should we do if we feel like our life is a waste. We can get in a tangle of feeling meaningless and inconsequential. When we boil everything down, there comes this miserable sense, that even our expressions are pointless, hollow, irrelevant and futile.

Our days are consumed like smoke. The end result of a burned up item is there is nothing but smoke drifting up in the air. Smoke quickly disappears in an elusive flume. Smoke is a ghostly eerie puff of flurry, evaporating into nothing. Are we nothing but a combustible substance?

Satan is the stoker of this blaze. The end result is the sensation of rising into nowhere.

We are asked in Jas 4:14 for what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time, and then vanishes away.

The question is what is our life? Is it nothing but a cloud of smoke? Others may ridicule what we say as just blowing smoke and worthless nonsense. But really, our words are our life, for it’s out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks.

When it is our life that is in question it is our value that is constantly challenged. Our life is very fragile in a number of ways.

There is our life according to its duration.

How much time do we have left?

There is our life according to our distinctiveness.

What are the characteristics of our life? What impressions do we leave others?

The other delicate aspect of our life is that the slightest decision can crumble our possibilities.

What are our life decisions?

The expression of the psalmist is that he feels wasted, useless,

unsuccessful and out of it.

This is looking at our life according to our personal determinations.

Our determinations are our opinion of our life’s effectiveness.

The Psalmist is expressing his despair and the vacuum that depression causes. When you add in the negative censor of others, we can end up feeling stifled and repressed. If we feel like smoke and we feel the additional weight of lacking positive influence for others, it adds to our discouragement. But really what is our life or what are we surrendering it too? Are we unattractive and are we yielding and giving way too feeling distasteful and unappealing?

OUR LIFE IS WHAT WE LOVE THE MOST.

Where our treasure is there will our heart (life) be also.

We need to GIVE OUR LIFE TO THE LORD

give me your heart, and let your eyes observe my ways Prov. 23:26

We need to GIVE OUR LOYALTY TO THE LORD

return to the LORD thy God, and obey his voice Dt. 30:2

We need to GIVE OUR LOVE TO THE LORD

love the LORD thy God with all your heart & with all thy soul,

and with all thy might Dt. 6:5

We need to GIVE OUR LONGING TO THE LORD

seek Him with the whole heart Psa. 119:2

We need to GIVE OUR LIABILITY TO THE LORD

Trust in the LORD with all your heart Prov. 3:5

We need to GIVE OUR LOOK TO THE LORD

you will seek me & find me, when you shall search for me

with all your heart Jer.29:13

We need to GIVE OUR LIVELINESS TO THE LORD

Worthy, is the Lamb that hath been slain, to receive Rev.5:12

ALL OUR ENERGY                

the power,

ALL OUR EARNING              

and riches,

ALL OUR EXPERIENCE      

and wisdom,

ALL OUR ENDOWMENT    

and might,

ALL OUR ESTEEM                 

and honor,

ALL OUR EXALTATION      

and glory,

ALL OUR ENDORSEMENT

and blessing.

Our value is enhanced when we give our life to the Lord and allow the life of Christ to be our life: Gal.2:20

OUR IDENTITY                 

I am crucified with Christ:

OUR INDIVIDUALITY  

nevertheless I live;

HIS INDWELLING      

yet not I, but Christ lives in me:

HIS INVOLVEMENT  

and the life which I now live in the flesh

HIS INSISTENCE        

I live by the faith of the Son of God,

HIS INTIMACY             

who loved me, and gave himself for me.

For whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord: whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord’s Rom. 14:8

When our life is given to the Lord our life is not a waste. Self-deprecation or criticism from others is invalid. We are not smoke.

and another angel came and stood at the altar, having a golden censer; and there was given unto him much incense that he should offer it with the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne Rev. 8:3

Our smoke can be an enjoyable incense that is received by the Lord. Our emotions are not a waste. Our sacrifices are not a waste but an act of worship.

We may feel like:

my strength and my hope is perished from the LORD Lam 3:18

We can get haunted that our splendor is evaporated as a fading vaporous smoke. But in Jesus our labor is not in vain in the Lord. We can cry out:

remember my affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall Lam. 3:19

Sure we can feel that the expressions of our life are nothing but disappearing smoke. We can sense that our smoke stings the eyes of those around us. But our evaluation could be a figment of our own imagination. We may be nurturing a hypersensitivity of defeated thought patterns.

We should raise our sights above, to the one who has the real worth. Don’t give in to the crass disarray of our groveling perceptions and spooky misgivings. Jesus is the solution to the battling in the shadows of our mind games. The Psalmist took his smoky feelings to God. This can renew the vigor away from uselessness to our value in Christ.

F.W. Faber wrote:

How wonderful, how beautiful the sight of Thee must be,

Thy endless wisdom, boundless power, and awful purity;

O how I fear thee, living God, with deepest, tender, fears,

and worship thee in trembling hope and penitential tears.