Ever feel desperate (or like a pelican in the wilderness?)

I love love teaching Bible study.

In fact here is a picture of me getting excited about teaching while holding my niece Hope, our youngest member

She helped me teach last night!

Anyways.. I love love teaching.. I love our crazy group to. All different ages, all different stages of life, all accept crazy ol’ me as their teacher.. Ha and we never know what is going to happen.
Anyways. God laid on my heart to do a series of teaching Ps. 100-109.  It’s funny because when I told them that they laughed. I am not good at sticking to a series for one thing… and the other thing is I announced that to them and then I read some of the psalms in that series and I was like.. um.. these are gonna be hard to teach from. But it has been very very exciting to study and teach from.
So I wanted to share what I learned last night.

Studying Psalms 102…
Well frankly it would have probably been one of those Psalms I would have skipped over. The first 11 verses are full of desperation.. desperate analogies.. depression, just well.. the title of the psalms in my Bible is a Prayer of the Afflicted, when He is faint, and pours out His complaint to the Lord.
I love that we can pour our WHOLE hearts out to the Lord.

These verses included things like:  verse 4 : a smitten heart (whatever that means.. i just know it’s not good)
verse 5: being in such a bad place bones clinging to flesh because not wanting to eat
dry desolate places
sleepless
reproached
weeping

These are not happy words, happy times– not exactly the verses you write in sharpie on your mirror.
But all of us reach these desperate places at some time or another.

We kind of got a kick out of my version: it even described resembling a pelican in the wilderness.

That’s a bad place to be
I mean you expect a pelican to be at a beach, not at a wilderness

verse 1-11 full of desperation. .. then comes verse 12. When you read it packed after verse 1-11 it made me wanna shout.. I almost did in panera.. i almost shouted glory.. because verse 12 says

BUT THOU oh Lord do abide forever!  You will arise and have compassion on Zion (insert your own name) and then it goes on to share how.  It shares how the God of the universe looked down from heaven to gaze upon the earth, heard the groanings, and came to set free.

Are you in a desperate place right now? Do you feel like a pelican in a lonely wilderness?  Pour out your heart to God.. and Watch for your BUT God!  IT may not always come in your time, but it comes.. there is hope.

We got to talking about that last night at bible study.  We cross referenced Psalms 69 which also describes desperate times. My sis discussed how she noticed beside her bible study had written Oct 2005. She said she sat there for a minute and tried to remember what was going on that was so difficult at that time. It was right after she had gotten married and when the day after she got married her new father in law was killed in a car accident. She was angry at God. Desperate for months trying to figure out why.  And God came in the midst of that and met with her.
Last night we were discussing how she had to think even why she was desperate at that time.  As she did she was holding her little baby hope in her arms.. same month… 7 years later.  Hope came!! how cool.. there is always a BUT GOD!

Verse 27 ends reminding us another but:  BUT thou art the same!
God is the same
and who does God say He is?
Exodus 3:15 says He is I AM.

So I wanted to leave you with this that God gave me to read to Bible study last night:

If you are in a desperate place:
You are broken.  I AM the one who puts together
You are doomed to death.  I AM the one who conquered death!
You were hopeless.  I AM the HOPE, the HOPE GIVER, the HOPE sender
You fear change– I AM the one who never changes
You were a prisoner– I AM the one who sets free
SO.. if you feel like like a pelican in the wilderness.. mount up on HIS wings like eagles, and let’s fly!

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