Transcription
Good morning, Dwayne here. Tank Room Bible Talk. Today is Sunday, December 21st, 2025. Today's actually the winter solstice. It's the shortest day of the year, which is kind of fitting, I guess, um, for what we're looking at this morning.
I don't want to do I'm not going to do any kind of doctrinal. I just want to kind of encourage um my brethren today and uh in Psalm 42, if you want to look and you want to follow along, uh I'm going to be in Psalm 42 and I'm just going to look at this chapter. It's one of my favorite Psalms. Um and David says um in uh in verse number one, as the heart panth after the waterbrooks, soul panteth my soul after thee, oh God. The heart here, h a r t, that's not man's heart. That's a deer. Okay. He says, "As a heart, as the deer panteth after the waterbrooks, soul panteth my soul after thee, oh God."
Now, I think this would be a little more clear if we understand that back in the day, back here, they hunted deer with hounds and and on horseback. And so you can picture out in this rocky, dry, barren place out here, a deer that's being um hunted and being chased by by hounds, by dogs. And that deer keeps running and he doesn't seem to get much break, doesn't seem to get much rest. And after a while, he gets thirsty and he pants after a stream of water. And he said, and David says, as this heart, as this deer is panting, he's thirsty from being hounded, from being chased, um, he's thirsty and he's panting after water. He said, God, that's how my soul is panting after you.
And you know, there's a a lot of Christians, true Christians today that we feel hounded at every turn. Uh we are hounded and chased by our own passions and our own flesh. And we are hounded and chased by the world, um by religion, by politics, by culture. It's like everywhere we turn. Sometimes it seems that the hounds of hell are at our heels nipping all the time and we're just tired. Um, as a Christian, do you ever just feel exhausted and just tired like you're constantly chased? And he says, "As this deer is desperate and panting after water, that's how my soul is panting after you, God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?"
You know, I grew up in church my entire life and I always heard you know that the return of Christ is imminent and uh you know we should always be ready. And I remember as a as a young man I'm like well that would be great. You know I I would love for for Jesus to come back but if he doesn't come back today that's that's okay. Uh because I haven't graduated high school yet. Uh, I'd really like to experience that because I haven't gotten my driver's license yet. Um, because I haven't gotten married yet, because I haven't done this. Because I haven't gone to see that. And I realized [sighs] one day later in life, I'm like, you know what? I wish he'd come back right now. And I find myself and I have found myself many times just standing outside and looking up to the sky sometimes at night looking at the stars sometimes in the day and my heart just longing and saying I wish you would come back now. I'm tired. I'm tired of the fight. I'm tired of the constant nonstop battle. I'm just I'm tired of it. And there's nothing in my life that is more important to me today than going to see God. I would rather go see God now than experience or accomplish anything else in life. The you know Paul said at one point he said for me to live is Christ and to die is gain. He said, "For me to live is worthwhile and it's in service to God, but man, if I were to die right now, it would be so much better."
And we, one of the ways that we can determine, is my heart becoming more in the right place? Is it becoming less and less about the world and my place in the world and what's going on in the world and what I want to get, what I want to accomplish is that taking a backseat to just wanting to see God. That's one of the ways that you know that you are starting to get to where you really should be as a child of God. He says, "My soul thirsteth for God." How sweet it is for a believer to get to the point where they're just thirsting to be in the presence of God, where that is that becomes the preeminence and everything else just kind of fades away.
In verse number three, he says, "My tears have been my meat day and night, while they continually say unto me, where is thy God?" And it wears on you. This world that we live in today, this uh both the church world and the secular world, and in one way or another, somebody's always like, "Where's your God? Your God doesn't mean anything to me." Look, we're winning. And the world can say, I don't know if you see it. All right. The world can say, "Where's your God at? We're winning. There's more disease now than there's ever been. There's more war now than there's ever been. There's more depression, depression now than there's ever been. And I don't mean economic depression, I mean people. There's more hopelessness. There's more rejection of the divine. There's more religious infighting. There's more and and it's like they're saying to us all the time, "Where's your God?"
When I remember these things, David says, "I pour out my soul in me. For I had gone with the multitude. I had went with them to the house of God with the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept holy day. Why art thou cast down, oh my soul? And sometimes we have to stop and we have to take a inward inventory. We have to ask ourselves, why are we cast down? Why do we feel like we're losing? Why are we so bothered by what's going on around us? Why art thou cast down, oh my soul? And why art thou disqued in me? Man, it's so easy to get disqued, to not be at rest, to not be at peace in our soul. um because of the noise. Again, not just the noise that's going on around us in the world, the noise of social media, the noise of politics, the the noise of entertainment, but the noise that they bring into the church services, the noise in in religion, the noise in Christianity, the non-stop videos. uh you you get on YouTube and you try to find some things that teach you that encourage you and it's just wrangling and fighting back and forth and it's just constant noise and it's hard to be it's hard to not be disqued.
But David asks his soul, "Why art thou disqued in me? Hope thou in God for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance." Now, he's not saying here, there's going to come a day when all this stuff's going to away go away and I'm going to praise God. No. Yet is right now. In spite of all the noise, in spite of the conflict, in spite of um the feeling, rightfully so, and properly so, that I'm in this world, but I am a stranger passing through. I don't belong here. I just don't fit here. This is not my home. And in spite of that, he says, "Look, hope thou in God. Hope thou in God for the future. No, hope thou in God for today." That he will [snorts] hold you in his hand. That he is your comfort. That he is your strength. He says, "I will yet," that means I will continue. Um, where is he at? For I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance. for the help of his count. His countenance is his face. He looks upon us individually all the time on a daily basis and it is a help. Oh my God. He's praying my soul is cast down within me. And we get to that point um we get to the point where our soul is just cast down.
And he says, "Therefore will I remember thee from the land of Jordan and of the Hermonite and from the hill Misra." He said, "I am cast down. I am despondent of the situation today, of the condition of things around me today. So, I'm going to remember um the times when God blessed uh in the notsodistant past when when God moved, when I felt the peace and the presence of God, when I felt the strength of God, when he did this in my life and pulled me out of the jaws of a wolf that was about to pull me down, the jaws of one of those hounds uh when I was exhausted ed and tired and I came upon one of those brooks of water and was just refreshed and recharged and ready to go. And he said, "I will remember that." And and there's times when we have to say, "Look, today is today's a pretty rough day, but it hasn't always been like this. And it's not always going to be like this. And I'm going to just sit down and remember times in the past where things got rough, where things got frightening, where things got depressing, where I felt isolated and alone. And I'm going to remember that. You know, I mentioned this before. I don't know. I think it was Awtoer maybe said something along the lines of never doubt in the dark what God has shown you in the light. And that's what we do. Um we we get through dark times in our Christian life and we forget that we what God has shown us before.
You know, you my my dad and I when I was 12 years old, he took a a Maul M AU, a Maul 4, which is a little small single engine bush plane. And uh we picked it up in Texas and we fed it. He flew it to Alaska for a guy. And we were it was like a 10-day trip in that little airplane to get to Alaska. And you know, I remember we're we're going along and it's bright and it's sunshiny and it's a beautiful day and there's a cloud in front of us and we fly into that cloud and then all you see is the cloud around you. You don't see the sun anymore. You don't see the blue sky. You don't see the green of the ground down below. Uh you don't see any of that. But you don't say, "Well, this is the rest of my life. this is what the rest of this journey is going to be. No, outside of the cloud is the light of day. And you just keep flying and you punch out the other side of that cloud.
And so he says, I will remember uh deep calleth verse number seven, deep calleth deep at the noise of thy water spouts. He's talking to God and God's power. All thy waves and thy bills are gone over me. Um, and actually that's not talking about God's power. That's talking about the the difficulty that he's going through. Yet the Lord will command his loving kindness in the daytime. And in the night his song shall be with me and my prayer unto God of my life. I will just keep praying. I will say unto God, my rock, why hast thou forgotten me? And we do. Sometimes it feel like we've been forgotten. Sometimes we don't hear the voice of God like we have in the past. And you know in King Hezekiah at one point he he uh it said God withdrew from Hezekiah and did not speak to him at a time when the when Babylon came to check things out. and and God did not speak to him to see what Hezekiah's heart was, to see how he was going to handle this situation. And there's times where God is speaking to us and we feel like we're holding his hand, walking down, and we feel like nothing could harm us, nothing can get to us. Um, we we have God right there. And there's sometimes where it feels like God is no longer there. We can't see him. We can't hear him. We can't feel him. We We were like, "Where is God?" Uh, and what I want to encourage you in that is that's normal. That's normal. It does not make you a bad Christian. It does not automatically, now sometimes it's the case, but it does not automatically mean that you're backsliding, that there's somehow some wicked something has come between you and God because you feel, as he says here, um why have you forgotten me? It's just part of the human condition. And it's easy to follow God. It's easy to follow the path that God lays out for us when he's visibly right there with us. But faith requires when we can't see him, when we can't hear him, when we feel like he has forgotten us. Do we have the faith to continue on the path that he set us on until we come out of that cloud out the other side and we see, oh, he's always been there. Um, and that cloud was not stretching to infinity. It has an end. We all get that way where we no longer see the face of God for a season.
David said, "I will say unto God, my rock, why hast thou forgotten me? Why go I mourning because of the oppression of the enemy, as with a sword in my bones, mine enemies reproach me, while they say daily unto me, where is thy God?" And then he answers himself. He's talking to himself, "Why art thou cast down, oh my soul? Why art thou disqued within me? Hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise him. I'm going to continue to praise him in this time of darkness, in this time of questions, in this time of doubt, in this time of fear. I'm still going to praise him. And there's no reason for my soul to be cast down or to be disqued, to be restless. Um, hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise him who is the health of my countenance and my God.
Life is life. Okay. But for the child of God, it has a whole another dimension. And that dimension is God. And he's always there. And we are going to go through hard times. We are. And I don't mean hard times like I don't have the money to pay my electric bill or the engine blew up in my truck and I don't know what I'm going to do about it or I've just developed this sickness, this disease. And that's all there. Okay? That's all a part of it. But you know, a lot of times and sometimes you have the right frame of mind and you can look at that and it's actually a little easier. You can say, "Okay, I'm going through a physical difficulty and God's going to get me through and I trust in God and you know, but sometimes the hardest darkness to go through is a darkness of the heart. It's a darkness of the soul. It's a darkness of the faith. Don't wait until you come out of that cloud to praise God for coming out of the cloud. Praise God in the cloud because you know that on the other side of the cloud and in front of you there's the sunshine. God is there. He's always been there. He is your shield. He is your deliverer. And when you need it the most, those waterbrooks will appear. And if you keep moving in the strength of the Lord, the hounds of hell will never catch you.
It's not a question of doctrine. It's not a question of keeping all the rules that everybody puts in front of you. It's not a question of being right. It's a question of being in God. You cannot put your faith in the fact that you are doctrinally or behaviorally correct. At the time of doubt and the time of sorrow, the time of despair and the time of disqu, you're putting your faith in you and that will not sustain you. You will yet praise the Lord. You will yet trust in him. You will yet, and that means continuously, you will continue to know uh that God has always been there. He's always there, and he will always be there. And your hope is not that you have what it takes to get through. Your hope is always in the Lord.
And for those of us who who watch what's going on and who understand what's going on, it can get really disheartening. Um, and it can feel very isolating. Um, but if you're a child of God, you're you're never isolated. You're never you're never alone. one one time years and years ago, Jesse, our second son, and he's I don't know, 34 now, but he was like three, and we were in Walmart, and uh or a grocery store, I don't remember. And we had just come in. [snorts] We had just come in. And we had come through that first opening, that first set of doors where the carts are. And we'd come in the second end of the main part of the store. And we were going down that where at the end of all the cash registers. And uh Jesse just he was three. And the boy never spoke. He he never talked. He kept his own counsel in his head. all the way back then. And he turned around and walked away. And I I looked at his mom and I'm like, "Where's he going?" She's like, "I don't know." So I turned and followed him and he went down and went to that first set of doors. Course they're automatic. They open and he walked through them and he went up to the second set of doors that go out on the sidewalk and they opened up and he walked on through and headed across the sidewalk and headed out to the parking lot. And I caught up to him and I caught him. I'm like, "Son, where you going?" And he just turned around and looked at me. He didn't know I was watching over him at all times. And when he took a path that was not a path that he needed to take, his father saw it. He did not see his father. He did not hear his father. He did not know his father was there, but his father was behind him, watching over him all the way and appeared and showed up and stopped him before he got into a situation that he was not able to get himself out of. That's our father today.
So my message to you today is just be of good cheer. Whatever you're going through right now, just praise the Lord for who he is, for what he has done, and for what he's going to do. And don't feel isolated and alone. You're not alone. Okay? You're not alone. There's a lot of us out there who are just quietly watching and waiting for the Lord to come back. And he will for me and for you. And until then, we will stay faithful and we will ignore the noise and we will ignore the confusion and we will ignore the rattling of the swords and rattling of the sabers from the other side who say, "Where is your God?" We know where our God is. And don't forget it. All right? Just be of comfort. Be of good cheer. Hope you guys have a good Sunday. and we'll catch y'all next time.