Why are you in despair?

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"Why are you in despair, O my soul? Why are you disturbed within me? Hope in God! For I shall still praise Him, the saving help of my countenance, and my God." Psalm 42:11

Do you forget, O soul, that the way to heaven is a very strait and narrow path—too narrow for you to carry your sins in it with you? God sees it good that you should be cast down. You were getting very proud, O soul. The world had gotten hold of your heart. You were seeking great things for yourself. You were secretly roving away from the Lord. You were too much lifted up in SELF.

The Lord has sent you these trials and difficulties and allowed these temptations to fall upon you, to bring you down from your state of false security.

There is reason therefore, even to praise God for being cast down, and for being so disturbed. How this opens up parts of God's Word which you never read before with any feeling.

How it gives you sympathy and communion with the tried and troubled children of God. How it weans and separates you from dead professors. How it brings you in heart and affection, out of the world that lies in wickedness.

And how it engages your thoughts, time after time, upon the solemn matters of eternity—instead of being a prey to every idle thought and imagination, and tossed up and down upon a sea of vanity and folly. But, above all, when there is a sweet response from the Lord, and the power of divine things is inwardly felt, in enabling us to hope in God, and to praise His blessed name—then we see the benefit of being cast down and so repeatedly and continually disturbed.