Encouraging Verses to Lift Your Eyes and Touch Your Spirit

World angst over the large and small, the first-world problems and the very real ones, stresses over life-as-we-know-it and life-as-we-thankfully-don’t … it can weigh a person down. 

The prophet Jeremiah in his book of sorrow, Lamentations, describes that downcast feeling…that time when you feel like you’ve had enough and just can’t take it anymore. 

Lamentations 3:1 I am the man who has seen affliction by the rod of his wrath. 2 He has driven me away and made me walk in darkness rather than light; 3 indeed, he has turned his hand against me again and again, all day long. 4 He has made my skin and my flesh grow old and has broken my bones. 5 He has besieged me and surrounded me with bitterness and hardship. 6 He has made me dwell in darkness like those long dead. 7 He has walled me in so I cannot escape; he has weighed me down with chains. 8 Even when I call out or cry for help, he shuts out my prayer. 9 He has barred my way with blocks of stone; he has made my paths crooked. 10 Like a bear lying in wait, like a lion in hiding, 11 he dragged me from the path and mangled me and left me without help. 12 He drew his bow and made me the target for his arrows. 13 He pierced my heart with arrows from his quiver. 14 I became the laughingstock of all my people; they mock me in song all day long. 15 He has filled me with bitter herbs and sated me with gall. 16 He has broken my teeth with gravel; he has trampled me in the dust. 17 I have been deprived of peace; I have forgotten what prosperity is. 18 So I say, “My splendor is gone and all that I had hoped from the LORD.” 19 I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall. 20 I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me.

Wow.  His life stinks.  What was his solution?  Get off Twitter, it’s a sewer?  Start a Facebook fast?  Stop posting on Instagram?  Turn off the nightly news?  Nope.

Lamentations 3:21 Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: 22 Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. 23 They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. 24 I say to myself, “The LORD is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.” 25 The LORD is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him; 26 it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD.

He did what King David did before him:  “Moreover David was greatly distressed because the people spoke of stoning him, for all the people were embittered, each one because of his sons and his daughters. But David strengthened himself in the LORD his God.” (1 Samuel 30:6) 

 

.

This new series Encouraging Verses will help us to do the same.  To strengthen, to encourage ourselves in the Lord our God.  Verses to remind us of God’s great love, His compassion, His faithfulness, His sovereignty, His power, and all the other reasons we can simply trust His goodness. 

Encouraging Verses, even in times like these.  Especially in times like these.