Psalm 42: 1 – 11
Are you talking to yourself?
To the Chief Musician. A Contemplation of the sons of Korah.
1 As the deer pants for the water brooks, so pants my soul for You, O God. 2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? 3 My tears have been my food day and night, while they continually say to me, “Where is your God?” 4 When I remember these things, I pour out my soul within me. For I used to go with the multitude; I went with them to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept a pilgrim feast. 5 Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him For the help of His countenance. 6 O my God, my soul is cast down within me; Therefore, I will remember You from the land of the Jordan, and from the heights of Hermon, from the Hill Mizar. 7 Deep calls unto deep at the noise of Your waterfalls; All Your waves and billows have gone over me. 8 The LORD will command His lovingkindness in the daytime, and in the night His song shall be with me—A prayer to the God of my life. 9 I will say to God my Rock, “Why have You forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?” 10 As with a breaking of my bones, my enemies reproach me, while they say to me all day long, “Where is your God?” 11 Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; For I shall yet praise Him, the help of my countenance and my God.
Come on now, fess up and shame the devil. Do you talk to yourself?
I talk to myself a lot. And I don’t mean only in the privacy of my own home. I talk to myself while I’m walking down the street, when I’m in my office or when I’m driving.
Thinking out loud helps me materialize what I’m thinking about. It helps me make sense of things.
It also makes me look insane. Crazy people talk to themselves, right? They’re conversing with the voices inside their heads. If you’re yammering on to nobody, everyone thinks you’re a mental patient.
I’m sure many people have seen me wandering down the streets of Philly and thought, “The crack addiction is strong with that one.”
Well, the joke is on the judgmental folk who give me a side-eye on the train.
Talking to yourself, it turns out, is a sign of genius.
The smartest people on earth talk to themselves. Look at the inner monologues of the greatest thinkers. Look at poetry! Look at history!
Albert Einstein talked to himself. He wasn’t an avid social butterfly when he was growing up, and he preferred to keep to himself.
There are reports on Einstein that he “used to repeat his sentences to himself softly.”
So, you see? I’m not alone, and I’m not completely bonkers. I’m just smart also.
In a Psychology Journal a study revealed that talking to yourself makes your brain work more efficiently.
According to the study, saying things out loud spark’s memory. It solidifies the end game and makes it tangible. If you want to find something, speaking the object's name out loud is helpful when you're familiar with its appearance. In other words, you can’t make sense of something without knowing what you’re dealing with. If you know what you need and verbalize its name, you will better your chances of finding it.
Babies learn to speak by listening to grownups and mimicking what they say. Talking is all about practice. Self-directed speech can help guide children's behavior, with kids often taking themselves step-by-step through tasks such as tying their shoelaces, as if reminding themselves to focus on the job at hand.”
Think about all the munchkins you know. Haven’t you seen them talking to themselves while they play with a toy car or favorite stuffed animal? If a small boy is playing with his toy cars, he might say, "The small car can fit through this garage door, but the big truck is too big.” At the same time, he'll test which of the cars fit inside the toy garage.
A child learns by talking th rough his actions. By doing so, he remembers for the future how he solved the problem. Talking through it helps him or her make sense of the world.
What helps me the most when I talk to myself is that I'm able to organize the countless wild thoughts running rampant through my brain. Hearing my issues vocalized calms my nerves. I'm being my own therapist: Outer-voice me is helping inner-brain me through my problems.
Talking out loud to yourself helps you validate important and difficult decisions. “It helps you clarify your thoughts, tend to what’s important and firm up any decisions you’re contemplating.”
Everyone knows the best way to solve a problem is to talk it out. Since it’s your problem, why not do it with yourself?
Talking to yourself helps you achieve your goals. Making a list of goals and setting out to achieve them can be hard to do. It can be overwhelming.
Talking yourself through those goals is a much steadier way to achieve them. If you walk yourself through the process, each step will seem less difficult and more concise.
Things will suddenly seem doable, and you’ll be less apprehensive about diving into the problem.
Saying [your goals] out loud focuses your attention, reinforces the message, controls your runaway emotions and screens out distractions. It puts things in perspective and grounds you.
Talking to yourself means that you are self-reliant. Albert Einstein, who “was highly gifted and acquired early in his life the ability to exploit his talents,” people who talk to themselves are highly proficient and are able to figure out what they need.
We “crazies” are the most efficient and intelligent of the bunch. We take the time to listen to our inner voices, out loud and proud!
I really love talking out loud to my Holy God El Shaddai, in prayer, in worship, and especially in reading His Holy Awesome Word.
Today we are going to learn firsthand regarding a Godly Saint who prayed out loud. You will see that he talks to himself. And what he has to say is great.
To the Chief Musician. A Contemplation of the sons of Korah.
The word ‘maschil’ means ‘understanding’, ‘a meditation’, bringing understanding. The chief musician. or choirmaster, was responsible for the music in the Temple.
It is clear from the Psalm that the writer is somehow prevented from coming to the House of God, and so enjoying His presence in fellowship with His people. He would appear to be in North West Jordan near Mount Hermon (verse 6, and that he found this situation very distressing. His distress lay in the fact that this prevented him from enjoying the deep experience of God that he had found there, not just in missing out on festal occasions. It is a Psalm for all who love God and find themselves in isolated situations.
1 As the deer pants for the water brooks, so pants my soul for You, O God. 2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?
He commences by describing the great longing that he has to enjoy the presence of God, and compares it with the gentle hind which, in a season of drought, pants and longs for water with its tongue hanging out (Joel 1.20 - ‘for the animals in the wild pant to you, for the water brooks are dried up’. So, in the same way does the Psalmist long after God, the living God. He has a great thirst for God. And he wonders how long it will be before he can again enjoy entering His presence in the company of His people.
The idea of the living God as the One Who satisfies the thirst of His people appears constantly in Scripture. Isaiah 55.1-3 “1 “Ho! Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; And you who have no money, come, buy and eat. Yes, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. 2 Why do you spend money for what is not bread, and your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good, and let your soul delight itself in abundance. 3 Incline your ear, and come to Me. Hear, and your soul shall live; And I will make an everlasting covenant with you— The sure mercies of David.
To enter God’s House worshipping with His people was for him to see the face of God, to be aware of His presence, and to know that He was there. And he longed for the experience again.
3 My tears have been my food day and night, while they continually say to me, “Where is your God?”
So powerful are his feelings that he describes himself as weeping day and night so as to satisfy his emotional state, because his enemies taunt him continually about the fact that God does not help him. His desire to join in worship with God’s people was so great that he could not stop thinking about it, and weeping over his loss. Reference to the words of his captors may suggest that even in his present condition he had been testifying about the greatness and splendor of his God. It may also indicate that he was being kept short of food. His tears were his food.
4 When I remember these things, I pour out my soul within me. For I used to go with the multitude; I went with them to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept a pilgrim feast.
The idea here is not that he just remembers the joys of the past, but that he talks to himself and makes it quite clear to himself. His soul, as it were, speaks to his inner heart. And he brings home to himself the joy of his regular experiences at the three great feasts of Israel, when he had regularly gone with the crowd of worshippers and had walked in procession with them to the House of God, crying out with joy and praise. It was a festive crowd keeping holyday. It is this very thought, with its confidence and certainty in the power and goodness of God, which now causes him to lift himself up. Should a man who has a God like he has mope? With a God like Israel’s, past blessings are a guarantee of future glory.
5 Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him For the help of His countenance.
And so he rebukes himself and speaks to his inner soul, and asks it why it is upsetting within him. He reminds himself that because he serves the living God (verse 2) he can have confident hope in God, knowing that God will come to his aid. He is sure therefore that one day he will once again be found in His House praising Him, because God will look on him with favor (give him the help of His countenance) and will therefore ensure his final restoration.
6 O my God, my soul is cast down within me; Therefore, I will remember You from the land of the Jordan, and from the heights of Hermon, from the Hill Mizar. 7 Deep calls unto deep at the noise of Your waterfalls; All Your waves and billows have gone over me.
His uneasiness is not, however, totally removed by his previously expressed confidence. The struggle goes on within him. And now he calls on God to witness the cast down state of his soul. Nevertheless, this causes him to remember God, even from where he is. But even this only makes him think of overflowing and unfriendly waters. His faith is fluctuating between confidence and despair.
The description suggests that he is in the north west part of land around the River Jordan, near Mount Hermon. He would appear to be on the hill Mizar (‘the little mountain’).
He describes his emotions very powerfully. He feels as though he is being drowned at sea in a storm, ‘all your waves and billows are gone over me’.
He may well, however, have been able to hear the sound of powerful, rushing waterfalls nearby, and have seen them as calling to each other to drown him in their torrents as he is ‘caught’ between them (‘deep calls to deep’), especially if it was at the time of the winter rains when such torrents would pour down in majestic fashion from Mount Hermon and other mountains, before flowing down to swell the waters of the Sea of Galilee. Flood water would be very much in mind. Possibly it was a combination of a number of these factors, recalled by the raging torrents and waterfalls caused by the winter rains, that made him think in these terms. But the final point is that he is drowning in despair.
8 The LORD will command His lovingkindness in the daytime, and in the night His song shall be with me—A prayer to the God of my life. 9 I will say to God my Rock, “Why have You forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?” 10 As with a breaking of my bones, my enemies reproach me, while they say to me all day long, “Where is your God?”
But he thinks back to the days when in the daytime YHWH used to command His covenant love, while in the night time he would remember God’s songs, which contained a prayer to the God Who had given him life. They had been happy and secure days when it had seemed that nothing could ever go wrong. Surely then God had not now forgotten him. Thus, he determines to lift himself up, and to ask God, Whom he sees as his rock and fortress why He has forgotten him, and has allowed him to find himself in this predicament. Why should he be living in mourning at the oppression of his captors, which makes him feel as if he is being crushed. Why should God allow his adversaries to reproach him, as they continually say to him, ‘Where is your God?’
Please take note of the mention of YHWH. His good memories have brought back the thought that God is his covenant God, which is why he speaks of covenant love. or perhaps it was precisely because he was about to speak of covenant love, that he uniquely speaks of YHWH. The two go together. He saw himself as very much within God’s covenant.
The point here is that he will not allow the circumstances to make him forget that God is his Rock, and thus forget about God’s goodness, and willingness to act on his behalf.
11 Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; For I shall yet praise Him, the help of my countenance and my God.
So once again he calls on his soul and demands to know why it should be so churning within him. Rather should he hope in God, for he is confident that one day he will again praise God in His House, and this because God is the One Who enables him to lift up his face and is his God. Thus, he knows that He cannot finally let him down.
