Your soul finds its home in God. It’s a beautiful thought.
At least when things are going well.
Like when you’re sitting by a pristine lake at sunset on a summer evening and everything is right in the world. At that point, it’s easy to believe that God wants your soul to draw close to him. It feels so natural. So perfect. Anyone can be spiritual by a lake.
But unfortunately, we can’t live there. I don’t mean by a lake—I mean in a glorious and perpetual state of serenity and tranquility. Our souls go through emotional upheavals more often than we’d like to admit. And it’s confusing. Shocking. Disconcerting.
For example, I remember when The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air changed the character of Aunt Viv. That show was a staple of my childhood years, but about three years in, for no apparent reason, they changed Aunt Viv. I remember watching the first episode of the new season, and I’m like, Why is he calling her Aunt Viv? That is not Aunt Viv. Lady, you are an imposter. Where is Aunt
Viv? The first three years it was the real Aunt Viv, and from then on it was the illegitimate Aunt Viv, the non-real Aunt Viv.
Mentally, of course, I knew what had happened. I recall telling myself, Judah, my goodness, get ahold of yourself. It’s a sitcom. It’s a TV show. It’s not real.
But I missed Aunt Viv, and I still miss Aunt Viv on the reruns.
Another surprising moment in my apparently overly dramatic childhood was when Rocky IV came out. Remember when Ivan Drago killed Apollo Creed? Of course you do. An entire generation of children was instantly and permanently scarred by that movie.
I absolutely could not understand my emotions watching Rocky IV. I cried. I punched the air. I yelled at the screen. “You killed Apollo Creed! Are you kidding me? He was my friend!”
It was a movie. I knew that. But clearly I struggled with some intense emotions—and I still do.
Recently Chelsea and I wanted to watch a movie at home. She said, “You pick one.” So I started looking through On Demand, and I chose The Fault in Our Stars. Obviously I didn’t watch the preview.
By the time I figured out it was a tragedy, it was too late. I was already immersed in the calamity and chaos and pain of humanity.
When the movie ended, I looked over at Chelsea. She had fallen asleep, as if we were watching a comedy or something. Apparently my wife doesn’t care about the plight of the world.
But I was devastated. I lay there, tears soaking my pillow, and all I could say—and I said it out loud—was, “Man, this planet sucks!” I was so emotional.
I kept trying to tell myself, These are actors. When the credits roll and the sound track ends, they are going to go on and live prosperous, healthy lives. But I couldn’t shake myself out of my emotional funk.
I woke up the next morning. It was Tuesday, and I had to lead a staff meeting at the church with about a hundred staff members. But I was still in a dark place. I kept asking people, “Have you seen The Fault in Our Stars? We have to do something! Life is so painful.” So bizarre—I was rallying people to a completely fictional cause. What is wrong with me?
One last example. A while back I played in a golf tournament at our local golf course. I had high hopes and expectations for my performance because I’m an optimist, and against all odds I always believe there is a pro golfer inside me who will manifest someday.
I had a terrible game, to put it bluntly, and I was hurting inside. I held myself together for all eighteen holes, but only because I was playing with legitimate adults. A couple of them knew I was a pastor, unfortunately. So I was like, “Oh wow, a bogie! No big deal. Who cares? Listen to the birds. Look at the blue sky.”
It was totally fake. That’s not me at all. Who cares about the birds and the sky? I just bogied for the fourth time, and I wanted to die. Or at least cuss. But I played it off like it was no big deal. “It’s golf. It’s just a game.” Inside I was thinking, No, it’s not just a game! It’s the most important thing in the universe right now! But I didn’t say that.
I shot an 88, which is bad for me. I knew that my golfing friends would call me and ask me how I played, and I was embarrassed. But I was still playing it cool.
Until I got to my car.
My whole family—Chelsea and our three kids—was waiting for me inside the vehicle. I got in and shut the door. The first thing my five-year-old said was, “Hey, Dad, how did you do?”
That was when I snapped. I lost it. I started punching the dashboard like a loved one had passed away or something. Then between punches I heard my ever-observant eight-year-old say, “Not so good, I guess.”
Five minutes later, of course, I was mortified. Shocked by my reactions. Embarrassed by my behavior. Really, Judah? I thought. There is already a five-year-old in this family, and it’s not you. It’s a golf game. Get some perspective.
I apologized to my wife and kids. As far as I know, no one I knew walked by during my meltdown. That would have been awkward.
“Pastor? Is that you?”
“Hey, God bless you! I’m just punching my dashboard here. Randomly. Praise God.”
Have you ever been surprised by your soul? Shocked by your feelings? Stunned by your reactions?
Do you know what it’s like when your emotions are so raw and so real? You can’t help yourself. You are in a horrible space, a really low place, because what you are experiencing is so tangible to you.
But a few minutes later, you say to yourself, My gosh, I thought I was bigger than that. I thought I was more mature than that. I thought I had journeyed a little bit beyond that. But here I am, acting like a child again.
You feel surprised by your soul—by how badly you feel and how strongly it affects you and controls you. You can’t seem to gain perspective in the moment.
The source of pain can be almost anything, by the way—a word, an event, a loss, a fear. It can be big or small or momentary or ongoing. I’m using lighthearted examples here, but I certainly don’t mean to gloss over genuine tragedy. My point here isn’t so much what triggered the emotional spiral as what to do about it now.
What do you do when your emotions are so out of alignment that you can’t see straight? When your thoughts betray you, accuse you, and confuse you? When the world around you and the world within you are equally devoid of hope and happiness? When you find yourself pounding dashboards or grieving the loss of fictional characters?
What do you do when your soul hurts?
I’m probably the most sentimental member of my family. I’ll admit that. Emotional moments are a regular occurrence for me. I don’t know if it’s hormones or Seattle weather or the fact that my older sister and my mom raised me to like shopping and fashion, and somehow that translated into extreme emotional sensitivity—who knows? All I know is that the inside me is not always as stable as I’d like.
My second-born child appears to be a lot like me, and I feel for him. If you are a parent, you know what I mean. The quirks in your kids that bother you the most are the ones they inherited from you. You recognize them instantly because you’ve dealt with them your whole life. You just want to warn them, “A dark road awaits you. Turn back now.”
Luckily for our emotional selves, there is an entire book of the Bible dedicated to feelings: Psalms. It’s about more than just feelings, of course, but emotions definitely play a role in this book.
I think King David, who wrote many of the psalms, was an emotional kind of guy. He was a warrior, he was a king, he was a fighter—but he was also a lover and a poet. He was complicated, just like us.
Psalms 42 and 43 are examples of the kind of soul turmoil that people everywhere experience nearly every day. Most scholars believe these were originally one song rather than two. I’m not going to quote them in their entirety, but they are worth reading if for no other reason than to marvel at the emotional carnage as the psalmist repeatedly climbs out of the depths of despondency only to lose his footing and fall back in. Here are the first six verses:
As a deer pants for flowing streams,
so pants my soul for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God,
for the living God.
When shall I come and appear before God?
My tears have been my food
day and night,
while they say to me all the day long,
“Where is your God?”
These things I remember,
as I pour out my soul:
how I would go with the throng
and lead them in procession to the house of God
with glad shouts and songs of praise,
a multitude keeping festival.
Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you in turmoil within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my salvation and my God.
My soul is cast down within me;
therefore I remember you
from the land of Jordan and of Hermon,
from Mount Mizar.
The first couple of lines are great. The songwriter sounds spiritual and stable. He’s in touch with nature. He’s even talking about deer and stuff.
Then suddenly, out of nowhere, he starts screaming. “When shall I come and appear before God?” (verse 2). Okay, I added the emphasis. But I’m sure he was yelling at this point.
After a few lines of emotional chaos, he tries to pull himself together. Grabs some Kleenex. Looks around for his man card. Asks himself in verse 5, “Why are you cast down, O my soul?”
He actually repeats this phrase three times in these two psalms (42:5, 11; 43:5). In other words, Self, what is wrong with you? Soul, why are you so down in the dumps? He’s talking to himself, and we get to listen in.
I think the poet who wrote this song was surprised by his soul. He seems confused by the depth and the violence of his emotions. I love the fact that this is in the Bible, by the way. It validates our own emotional wonderings and wanderings, and I think that’s the point.
This is reality. This is human nature. If you have never been surprised by your soul, you are obviously an android, and you are not real. You are a clone. But we humans have those days where we are like, “Wow, I just lost it. I went to Starbucks, and they were out of orange scones, and I went off on the barista. What is wrong with me?”
That didn’t happen, but it could. I’m keeping this at scone levels so no one feels picked on.
Another thing to notice here is how many questions the songwriter asks. I count nearly a dozen questions in only sixteen verses. Things like, “When is God going to pay attention to me?” (42:2). “Where is God?” (42:3). “Why has God forgotten me?” (42:9). “Why are my enemies winning?” (42:9).
This is real. This is relatable, because when we are discouraged, we tend to ask a lot of questions. Especially the unanswerable kind—the ones that start with when and why. Just like the songwriter, we tend to ponder the huge, galactic questions about the existence of God and pain when we are at our lowest points.
That is the worst time to try to answer those questions, by the way. You can ask them, but don’t attempt to answer them. Don’t make massive conclusions about the reality or goodness or presence of God in the middle of an emotional meltdown. For that matter, don’t take out a loan, get divorced, get married, or do anything else overly life-altering just because your emotions are crying out for escape. In the journey of life, emotions make great companions but terrible leaders.
But anyway, back to our passage. I’m amazed—even comforted, I’ll admit—by how many changes of emotional direction there are in these few verses. I counted those as well, and there are at least nine. Nine different times the psalm alternates between positive and negative, between hopeful and depressing, between the heights of happiness and the depths of despair.
When I first noticed the emotional up-and-down nature of this passage, I wondered, If I could put a sound track to this emotional trajectory, what would it sound like? Bear with me—this is just how my brain works when I read the Bible. It’s chaos.
I concluded that it would probably sound like a roller coaster. So when the psalmist is going up emotionally, when he is relatively controlled and hopeful, that would be represented by the click-click-click-click of a roller coaster climbing.
If you’ve been on any roller coasters, that isn’t necessarily the most comforting sound, because we have all heard that what goes up must come down. But at least you aren’t currently going down. You are going up, thank God, and you can breathe the fresh air and see the countryside or at least the parking lot far below, and no one around you is screaming.
Yet.
Click-click-click.
Then inevitably you reach the top. And you start going down. And everything changes.
The sound track for that portion would be something like this:
Aaaaahhhhhhhh!
Frantic, desperate, panicked screams. Really, the written page doesn’t do it justice. I’m looking forward to recording the audiobook for this.
If we replace the text of Psalms 42 and 43 with our sound track, here is what the psalmist’s emotional journey would sound like over the course of sixteen verses:
Click, click, click, click,
Aaaaahhhhhhh!
Click, click, click,
Aaaahhhhh!
Click, click,
Aaaaahhhhhhh!
Click, click, click,
Aaaaahhhh!
Click, click, click.
He ends on a positive note. Sort of.
Again, this is real life. Some of us, especially those of us who are Jesus followers, want to pretend that life is just click, click, click all the time.
“How are you?” someone asks.
“I’m great!” Click, click, click, click. “No problems here. No worries or anxiety or depression or confusion of the soul. Why do you ask?” Click, click, click.
But the truth is, for normal people, our lives are more like click, click, aaaahhhhh! click, click, aaaahhhhh! click, click, click, aaaahhhhh! That’s our story all day, every day.
Think about it—when someone asks how your day has been and you reply, “Good,” what you are really saying is, “I only went into free fall three or four times today. That’s not bad. Bad days are more like ten free falls. So it’s been a pretty good day.”
I love these two psalms, because this is actually what life on this troubled planet sounds like and feels like. High highs and low lows. You don’t even have to be an emotional person. You could be a cerebral person, a math person. Regardless, you are going to feel emotions. We all have them. God gave them to us. And it can be really challenging and alarming when we find ourselves on this pained planet called Earth and we can’t seem to find any stability or clarity.
The songwriter’s attitude is especially interesting when you realize he was some sort of public figure. Psalm 42, verse 4, says,
These things I remember,
as I pour out my soul:
how I would go with the throng
and lead them in procession to the house of God
with glad shouts and songs of praise,
a multitude keeping festival.
In other words, this is a person with great influence. He says, “I led the people. I led the crowd in praise to the creator God. I had a platform.” This would have been in Jerusalem, the capital of Israel. The songwriter was the artist, the public figure, the VIP.
Maybe you aren’t a public figure in the Hollywood sense of the word, but you have influence. We all do. So what do we do when we find ourselves leading others externally, but we are unhealthy internally? When we are helping throngs of people, but inside we are weak and unwell?
This songwriter seems to relate to that. Notice what he says in verse 6:
My soul is cast down within me;
therefore I remember you
from the land of Jordan and of Hermon,
from Mount Mizar.
Just listen to his condition and his circumstances. He is saying, “I am nowhere near Jerusalem. That place of success and importance and fame is nothing but a memory. Here I am by this random mountain, wishing I were back there on a platform, leading multitudes of people. Instead, I am far away, and I am not well. I am broken. I am surprised by my own emotions and my own inconsistencies.”
This songwriter is facing that dichotomy. He has helped others, but who will help him? He’s a leader. He should know better. He should be better. But he’s struggling, because he’s human too. His popularity and platform only add to the angst, the pain, and the shame.
That sounds a lot like our culture today. It’s the paradox of leadership and influence. Just because you lead people and help people doesn’t mean you are always going to be healthy on the inside. If anything, the pressure of public influence increases the unhealthy tendencies of our souls. If we aren’t careful, it can make us defensive and isolated. Instead of looking for help when we need it, we pretend to have it all together.
Scriptures like Psalms 42 and 43 remind us that God knows exactly what is going on inside us. God is the master architect of the complicated, confusing, and even contradictory constructs that we call our souls.
Maybe our souls surprise us—but they don’t surprise God. He isn’t shocked or scandalized by the up-and-down tendencies of our hearts. He isn’t embarrassed just because our feelings get out of hand. He sees the craziness and chaos, and it doesn’t bother him a bit. He knows us better than anyone, and he loves us more than everyone.
If God designed the human soul, then it’s only logical that he would know how to fix it when it is out of alignment. Yet sometimes we are so embarrassed by our emotions and so freaked out by our feelings that we avoid the one who knows our souls the best.
So we try to fix ourselves on our own. But the results are usually underwhelming, because it’s surprisingly hard to feel better just because we want to. It’s difficult for our souls to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps—whatever bootstraps are—because emotions are so complicated and even subversive.
The problem with discouragement is that discouragement never leads to encouragement. Have you noticed that? Discouragement leads to more discouragement. We are down because we are down. We feel sad about how sad we are. We can’t believe that we got so frustrated over a scone or a golf game or Aunt Viv, and the revelation of our immaturity depresses us even more, and the whole thing self-perpetuates.
How do we interrupt the cycle? How do we short-circuit this discouragement that leads to more discouragement until finally we need an intervention just to shake ourselves out of the funk we are in?
This passage shows where the songwriter found his stability and clarity. As we saw earlier, he asks three times, “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me?”
Each time he asks the question, he comes up with the same answer. It’s a definitive, clarifying statement. It’s a perspective that pushes away the cloudiness, the murky moments, the confusing feelings.
“Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God” (42:5, 11; 43:5).
How did he get to that place? We know this: it didn’t happen instantaneously. That’s obvious just by charting his roller-coaster ride.
Maybe you have been beating yourself up because it has taken you a long time to recover your focus and your faith. You need to stop. I’m pretty sure that’s called being human. Don’t lose hope just because you’ve struggled for a while. Notice this: the songwriter is in frantic free fall for four full verses before he comes to himself and says, “Wait a minute—what am I feeling and why am I feeling it?”
Two things stand out in this musician’s journey. First, he’s willing to question his feelings. Why am I feeling this way?
This is incredibly important in today’s culture and society. If we want to be healthy on the inside, we have to question our insides. We have to question our souls. We have to question our feelings.
That seems so simple. But we are living in an age where feelings have become the unquestioned, unassailable bastions of individual truth and identity.
Question what I feel? No, that would be disingenuous. Unauthentic. I just need to go with what I feel. Be organic and real and unscripted.
I’ve been a pastor and speaker for almost two decades now. I can’t recall how many times I’ve sat down with a college dude at a coffeehouse somewhere in Seattle or LA or some other city, and the first thing out of his mouth was, “Well, I just feel . . .”
And I would share a scripture or a thought, and he would respond, “But, Judah, I feel . . .”
Feelings are the language of the day. And telling someone that what they feel might be incorrect is a cardinal sin in our society.
True story: recent research has shown that human beings are irrational.1 That’s not really news to any of us. According to these researchers, we make definitive, moral decisions impulsively and irrationally. And then we spend an inordinate amount of time defending those impulsive, irrational decisions.
We make decisions based on feelings and we call them facts. Why? Because they feel true. These are really my feelings, says this logic, so whatever belief or idea these feelings are attached to must also be true. It feels true to me, so this is my truth, and you had better not tell me it’s fiction because that would be to deny the validity and authority of my feelings.
I’m not being mean to emotional, feelings-oriented people. I am one, remember? I would be totally in favor of this kind of personal, subjective way of living and acting if it worked. I would be totally down with this philosophy if it produced lasting joy, fulfillment, and meaning.
But let’s look at this logically. What if we all counted to three and then simultaneously did whatever we felt like doing? Play it out mentally. It would be complete and utter chaos. You think zombies are bad? Imagine billions of people whose only criteria for decision making were their feelings and emotions and desires. It would be like shopping on Black Friday.
At the time of writing this book, I’ve only been sucking oxygen on this planet for thirty-eight years, so bear with me. In my limited experience, I have not met a single person who has told me, “My general philosophy in life is to do what I feel like when I feel like doing it, and it has brought me incredible happiness and fulfillment and peace. I just follow every fleeting feeling. That is how I live my life, and it’s the secret to my happiness.”
I have never met that person.
What I have found instead is that fulfillment, peace, joy, and health on the inside are, ironically, often found by doing the exact opposite of what we feel like doing in the moment.
Let me clarify: I’m not advocating an emotionless life. That would be both impossible and boring. Nor am I saying our emotions can’t color and shape our decisions either, because they should and they do. And I’m a huge fan of spontaneity and living in the moment.
But as I said earlier, our feelings don’t rule our lives. That is why we must question them. It is helpful, healthy, and humbling to admit that maybe what we feel is flat-out wrong.
The second thing that stands out in these two psalms is the answer the songwriter gives us: “Hope in God.”
It’s a simple statement, but keep the context in mind. The author is lost, confused, and hopeless. So he looks at his options, and he comes to this conclusion: Either life is meaningless and my existence doesn’t matter—or God is the only hope I have.
When we consider the magnitude and proliferation of pain and suffering on this planet, those are really the only two conclusions we can come to. On one hand, maybe God isn’t real and life is an accident. If that is true, then our lives have no significance beyond the present. Our existence is a quirk and a coincidence. There is no right or wrong. Someday we will cease to exist. We will pass into oblivion and none of this will have mattered.
But on the other hand, maybe there is a God. Maybe there is a rhyme and a reason to our existence. Maybe we are here because a creator, an architect, a being bigger than us is actively at work in the universe. If that is true, it stands to reason that he would reveal himself to us. Not only that, but he would be committed to preserving and protecting and loving his creation.
Therefore, when we find ourselves tumbling down melancholy rabbit holes of discouragement and depression, we have to choose. Either we believe that nothing matters, or we put our hope in someone who is bigger than us—God.
I think this mental wrestling match is exactly what is happening in these two psalms. We are witnessing the inner turmoil of someone who is facing his options. And he chooses hope. He chooses to turn to God, and that makes all the difference.
Notice that the artist has a history with God. He says, “Hope in God, for I shall again praise him.” The word again means that he has praised him in the past, back before life got confusing and his soul slipped out of alignment. Things might be terrible now, but there was a day where he had seen and proven God’s goodness.
That memory gives him the hope he needs. So instead of allowing his thoughts to stay mired in the quicksand of his emotions, he looks at the future. If he could trust God in the past, he can trust him for the future. He might be surprised by his soul right now, but he’s not subject to his soul. He is not trapped by his feelings forever.
He says, My life feels upside down right now, but I’m going to fix my gaze on God. I’m going to put my hope in him. I know him, and he’s going to work this thing out. Yes, these feelings are confusing, but they are going to fade, and I will praise God again.
Chances are you’ve seen God’s hand at work in your life. Maybe you didn’t recognize it for what it was. Maybe it was hard to believe that God could be found anywhere in what you were going through. But later you looked back and realized that even in dark times, God was right there with you.
Take time to think about those experiences. Remember God’s goodness, presence, and power. Your feelings come and go, but God remains the same, and you will praise him again. It’s only a matter of time.
The songwriter goes on. He says, “Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.”
That is interesting language. My salvation. My God.
A lot of people believe in a God. That’s within reason. That’s logical. But the artist calls him his salvation and his God. In other words, God isn’t just an impersonal, distant, unfeeling boss of the universe. He is personal. He is present. He is with us and he is for us even when we can’t see past our problems.
I am convinced that an awareness of God’s care for us is the key to emotional sanity. Life is too big, too unknown, and too confusing for us to figure it out on our own. Many people think that whatever happens to them is up to them, that they are the navigators and controllers of their destiny. That’s great when life is smooth—but ultimately it is a self-defeating approach, because when they most need help, they have no one to turn to.
God is our God. He is our salvation. His full attention is toward us. It is hard for our finite selves to fathom that the most powerful person in the universe could be intimately involved in our everyday lives, but it’s true. And this reality and knowledge and awareness will rescue us from the cycle of despair.
No one else in the universe can be our hope, by the way. Your best friend can’t save you. Your spouse will let you down. Your pastor is just as human as you are.
One of the occupational hazards of pastoring is that sometimes people want me to be their hope and their salvation. That’s scary, because it’s impossible. I can’t save anyone—I need a savior myself.
Someone will say something like, “Man, I thought we were friends, but sometimes you just aren’t there for me. The other day I needed help with my marriage. But you didn’t call me. You didn’t text me back. You started to, because I saw those little blue bubbles on my phone, but then they disappeared. Why didn’t you help me, Judah?”
And inside I’m thinking, The reason I didn’t text you back when you asked for marriage counseling was because when you wrote me, I was actually in the middle of a fight with my wife. So I wasn’t really in the mood to hand out advice.
Maybe we don’t trust in others, but we trust in ourselves. We think, I’m going to try harder. I’m going to be better. I’m going to pick myself up out of this pit. But sooner or later, we realize we can’t be our own hope. We can’t save ourselves.
That is why the artist says, “Hope in God.” Not other people. Not ourselves. Not knowledge. Not hard work. Not rules or religion. Not good intentions or good works or good luck.
Please understand what I’m saying. Those things are admirable. But they won’t make you whole on the inside. The God who created the universe is constantly concerned and involved in your life. That is the most emotionally stabilizing force that could ever exist.
God is not just the God of the universe. He is your God, your salvation, and your hope. He is available to you. His attention and care are perpetually toward you. They will never be removed from you. You can talk to him. You can involve him. He knows your feelings and emotions better than you do. He knows what you are going through. He knows your ups and he knows your downs.
The reality of God’s care for you makes you healthy on the inside. It enables you to rise again, to believe again, and to walk again.
His care and concern do not depend on your performance, by the way. Remember, it wasn’t your idea to ask for God to look out for you—he promised to do so long before you were even born. The Bible is full of God’s promises to guide your steps and keep your soul. You can approach him with confidence no matter where you find yourself, because he cares for you more than you could ever deserve or describe.
Yes, life is complicated and unpredictable. You can’t always explain—much less control—the emotions and feelings that wash over you from time to time. When your emotions surprise you and your feelings betray you, you need a source of hope greater than your soul. You need an anchor for your soul. And as we’ll see in the next chapter, God has already provided that anchor. It’s not a concept, a philosophy, or an ideology.
It’s a person. And his name is Jesus.