WHY AM I REJECTED!?

PSALM 43

Vindicate me, O God, and plead my cause against an ungodly nation;

rescue me from deceitful and wicked men.

You are God my stronghold.

Why have rejected me? Why must I go about mourning,

oppressed by the enemy?

Send forth Your light and Your truth,

let them guide me....

The reality is that we live in an ungodly generation. Dishonesty, injustice, greed, fraud, doctoring books, misrepresentations, lying, stealing, betrayal, set-ups.....and we are too often victims of power plays of other people.

When we are victimized by such "enemies," then we we are attacked from within with confusion, anger, distress, fear, and much more. Doubts about where God is and whether He has abandoned us torment us. We wonder, "Am I being punished for something?" "If so, what?" Why didn't God protect me? Why doesn't He punished the bad people who did this to me?

These questions of the Psalmist represent many more questions that we most naturally fall prey to.

However, the questions of the Psalmist and our own questions are guides to the answers God has for us!

Look at the next verses:

Send forth Your light and your truth, let them guide me;

let them bring me to Your holy mountain,

to the place where You dwell.

Then will go to the altar of God, to God, my joy and my delight.

I will praise You with the harp, O God, my God.

Why are you downcast, O my soul?

Why so disturbed within me?

Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise Him,

my Savior and my God.

Vv. 3-5

When this world, our jobs, our associates, even friends or family, betrays, victimizes, abandons......us, the Psalmist proclaims and insists that God remains faithful, trustworthy, strong, and compassionate.

Our God stands ready to intervene with Grace to restore, rebuild, and renew our lives on solid ground that will not crumble and fail us for the coming ages of eternity.

The Psalm says that God will send light and truth to guide us and bring us to His holy mountain. So, the psalmist determines to go to the altar of God to receive such grace, wisdom, and strength. Then, he urges us to put

our hope in God and join him in praise as our Savior and God.

And, yes, this will mean a change of approach and of outlook. We will have to "renew our minds," meaning our attidues and ways of thinking, our value systems, our "time management." We will have to do a serious "spiritual inventory," and face our poverty and bankruptcy in the values of God. We will have to learn "spiritual a, b, c's" like a child.

But, if we faithfully seek and follow Jesus as Lord and the Holy Spirit as Counselor, believing and trusting God as our Father, we will soon discover and experience that the will of God is good, satisfying, and sufficient for all things.