Encouragement: What To Do When You Feel Like Running Away | Courtney Joseph

hi i’m courtney at women living well.org home of good morning girls and we are reading through the Bible cover-to-cover just one chapter a day and so this week we began our study in Psalms chapter 51 to 100 I am so glad that you are joining us for this series I love The Book of Psalms and so we’re gonna look at Psalms chapter 55 today and in this song David is feeling like he just wants to run away okay he is in a situation where he is fearful and he just wants to escape it and I’m wondering if you’ve been there before where you’re just thinking gosh what I have to go through in the next few days it’s gonna be so hard I wish I could just sprout some wings and fly away that’s exactly what he says in Psalm 55 verse 6 he says oh that I had wings like a dove I would fly away and so here in Psalm 55 we see that he identifies what is stressing him out and he’s having relational conflict and I really don’t know what is more stressful than a relational conflict with someone who was really close with you whether it is a spouse or a parent a sibling a child a co-worker a boss a pastor or someone that you maybe go to church with whatever it is when conflict happens we have this temptation to just run to be like I’m leaving that church I’m quitting my job I’m not going to that family get-together right we have this temptation to want to escape and so here we see that he is wanting to break free in the sense and I have been there I have been there as a mom of teenagers where I’m just like oh this is too hard I just want to hide away because of fear is sometimes hard I get worried about things and and I’m concerned and as a result I will clamp down maybe in and get overprotective out of my fear and then that causes conflict with my kids right and I just want to sometimes just run away and back down and then I realize no I need to stay in it but when I stay in it it causes that fury the tempers flare and all of that and actually I do get to the point where I’m like okay I just need to have faith I need to trust God with my kids and we see that David is gonna cycle through these things where he is facing fear and then he wants to flee and then he gets furious and then he realizes he’s just needs to have faith and God and so we see in Psalm 55 he identifies what his relational conflict is its betrayal he says friend it’s not an enemy who taunts me then I could bear it but is you a man my equal my companion my familiar friend we used to take sweet counsel together within God’s house he has a really close friend who has betrayed him and that is causing him to want to run away and have you been there have you been betrayed because I have and it is shocking and it is devastating when someone that you love and that you trust you suddenly see this other side of them that you didn’t know existent and that is painful and it makes you just want to run away or worse in verse 15 David has prayed and he actually prays he says let death steal over them he says let them go down to Sheol you know and so it’s interesting because he’s praying for them to die and I’m like wow that doesn’t sound very godly I’m gonna look up the commentaries on that so I looked it up and I found that it said that you know in both Deuteronomy and in Romans 12 god says vengeance is mine saith the Lord I will repay and so David was actually doing the right thing rather than scheming rather than planning to get revenge instead he was handing them over to God and he’s like God you take care of them and because it was an extreme case where his betrayal these the person who betrayed him was actually seeking to kill him he was thinking God you kill them before they kill me please and so this prayer he was praying was how he felt that that was like the only way that they could be stopped but then we come to verse 22 which I love it’s a verse I memorized many years ago and reading it and studying it in its context this week it came even more alive because in verse 22 he says cast your burden on the Lord and He will sustain you he will never permit the righteous to be moved David is saying cast your burden on the Lord you know when we cast our burden on God that doesn’t mean that then it suddenly disappears no the promise here is that when we’re in the midst of it while we’re still in it God will sustain us that he will not permit us to be moved and so we see David is going from fear to wanting to flee to fury to now faith he’s saying I’m gonna give to God and it was that further the very last verse he says but I will trust in you he’s in complete peace now he’s not running he said God I just trust you you know I don’t know what you might be dealing with today what relational hurts what pains what betrayals you face what conflicts you might be in but I know this I know that in the midst of whatever you’re going through when you place your faith in God and give your burdens to him that he will sustain you in the midst of your trial you know I have gone through some just multiple betrayals in the last five years and I am here to tell you that when you don’t take revenge that you get to experience the sweetness of God providing for you and protecting you that I have experienced the sovereignty of God’s hand watching over me as he has taken care of me despite the conflict that I have been in and so I want you to know that is the god you serve that you serve a God who is so faithful to you and I want to encourage you to stay in God’s Word keep reading every song every day because what you will find is as we read God’s Word that’s how he sustains us that’s how he helps us to not be moved because somehow even though our trials don’t go away it’s our hearts become lighter and we see that we are becoming stronger and we see God’s fingerprints all over our lives that is the God we serve we don’t need to live in fear we don’t need to flee we don’t need to be furious we can have faith keep trusting in God and keep walking with the king