Living Life from the Bottom - Psalm 42

"Why am I so depressed? Why this turmoil within me? Put your hope in God, for I will still praise Him, my Savior and my God" (vs. 5).

Do you ever think you've got it all figured out?

Life is treating you well so you must be in God's will because you are so blessed.

Then the bottom falls out of your life and all that "blessedness" seems to go away.

Then you get all conflicted and begin to question everything you think you knew about what is God's will.

In fact, it may even seem as though God is hardly speaking to you any more.

These are some of the emotions the psalmist is expressing in this Psalm. He asks himself why he is so depressed when God is his hope and his Savior? He knows God is there and yet he yearns for fellowship with God: "As a deer longs for streams of water, so I long for you, God. I thirst for God, the living God" (vs. 1-2).

But life has him at a disadvantage; he is down and out and looking for a way up to God.

It's as if he is living life from the bottom!

So, my fellow bottom-dwellers, when you live life from the bottom, what's important to you is not so much that you get to the top, but simply that your cry for help is heard and heeded by God...to know that God hears you from the bottom!

There's a passion (or desperation) for God that comes from being at the bottom that's really not there when you're at the top of your game.

You see, God's Kingdom is the abode of desperate people: "The poor in spirit are blessed, for the kingdom of heaven is theirs" (Matthew 5:3).

We trust and hope in God the most when we have to, not when we want to.

It's hope sustained by desperation!

God knows how we work and so this is the way He works on us, from the bottom up!

"We also rejoice in our afflictions, because we know that affliction produces endurance, endurance produces proven character, and proven character produces hope" (Romans 5:3-4, NLT).