Psalm 4 When in a tight place God helps us breath or I Cant Breathe
1. You Gave Me Room
• The Psalmist is talking about someone needing rescued
• It seems that someone is in a confined place in dangerous and potentially deadly circumstances.
• In the opening verse, the psalmist asks for God’s help because God had previously helped him. “You gave me room when I was in distress,”NRSV
• The Psalmist is saying “you gave me some space in a tight place.” The Message Bible renders the line, “Once, in a tight place, you gave me room.”
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2. It’s a apparent someone is in a tight place we have been in tight places haven’t we
• Tight placed is jargon for being in a difficult situation. For example, “When my spouse couldn't work, we were in a tight spot living on just my salary.”
• Tight places is what the psalmist needs help from the writer says “Give me relief from my distress; have mercy on me and hear my prayer.”
• Tight places are struggling moments like divorces, loss of job, low income, situations seemingly no way out, times we say the wrong thing or times we do the wrong or silly thing. When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, Lord, and my prayer rose to you, said Jonah
3. Remember Jonah he was in a tight place and certainly he needed some room to breathe and so were the Folks of Nineveh
• God certainly rescued him from a “tight place” — the belly of the great fish —
• Listen how Jonah described his tight space. From deep in the realm of the dead I called You hurled me into the depths, into the very heart of the seas, The engulfing waters threatened me,
the deep surrounded me; seaweed was wrapped around my head. the fish, vomited Jonah onto land.
• God not only allowed Jonah to breathe fresh air again but he allowed the Ninevites to breathe although they were enemies of Israel.
• Jonah fulfilled his mission to warn the Ninevites of God’s punishment, and they repented and God relented, Jonah grumbled to God about it: “O LORD! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning, for I knew that you are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from punishment” (Jonah 4:2).
• Our God delivers from tight places he give us room to breathe again
4. When were in those Tight Places its time to get a plan start thinking I can fix this step out of the comfort zone
• The Psalm says, When you are disturbed,[a] do not sin; ponder it on your beds, and be silent.
• When we are on the wrong road or path we need time to to be convinced of our sin. We need time to grow in the Spirit and mature in faith.
• We cannot become the people God calls us to be overnight, and thankfully God is slow to anger
• God puts up with a lot of unholy behavior from humankind, some of which is painful to him.
• We’d be in big trouble if he didn’t put up with it — or give us some space —when we’re in tight places
5. God Gives us Room in our Tight Places
• God really wants us out of the pits or tight places he asks How Long you people, shall my honor suffer shame? How long will you love vain words, and seek after lies?Selah
• God loves us and God disciplines God teaches us and God enables us
• How will we respond to God? Jonah had to respond the Ninevites had to respond us5 The people of Nineveh believed in God,and they declared a fast and put on sackcloth,. 6 When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he got up from his throne, took off his royal robe, put on sackcloth, and sat on ashes. 7 He issued a proclamation and said, “In Nineveh, by the decree of the king and his nobles: No human or animal, cattle or sheep, is to taste anything; they must not eat and they must not drink water. 8 Every person and animal must put on sackcloth and must cry earnest to God, and everyone must turn from their evil way of living and from the violence that they do. 9 Who knows? Perhaps God might be willing to change his mind and relent and turn from his fierce anger so that we might not die.” 10 When God saw their actions—that they turned from their evil way of living.[—God relented concerning the judgment he had threatened them with and did not destroy them.
• Remember No matter how many times we miss the mark, fall short, fail to follow through on our best intentions or even commit a great wrong, God patiently calls us to begin again.
• Sometimes we just need a little time and space. And God knows exactly how much.
The 2022 movie Thirteen Lives recounts the true rescue story of 12 boys, ages 11 to 16, and the 25-year-old assistant coach of their junior soccer team. The group was trapped by underground flooding while exploring the Tham Luang Nang Non cave system in northern Thailand in 2018.
The incident is recent enough that some of us will remember hearing about it in the news, but unless you were paying close attention to the reports, you may not have realized how remarkable the rescue was.
It all started after a team practice, when the boys and their coach went to explore the cave system, which was open to the public. The cave has many deep recesses, narrow tunnels, boulder chokes, collapses and sumps, as well as stalactites and stalagmites throughout the caverns, but the athletic boys and their young coach were able to maneuver around them. They eventually penetrated 2.5 miles into the cave. But outside the cave, monsoon rains had begun while they were exploring. When the group tried to exit the cave, they found all routes blocked by water that had flooded the passageways. They took refuge on a shelf above the waterline.
No one would have known they were in the caves, if it weren’t for one boy who had been picked up after the practice and was able to tell the head coach where the rest had gone. Still, it is a huge cave system, and it wasn’t until nine days later that divers — part of what became an international rescue effort involving 10,000 people and more than 100 divers — found the group of 13. None of the boys knew how to dive, however, so simply suiting them all up with wetsuits, tanks, and breathing apparatus and having them swim out through tight and winding channels — clutched by fear and without cave diving experience — was almost certain to end in their deaths. Already, a Royal Thai Navy SEAL had died of asphyxiation in the water on a return trip after delivering supplies to the stranded group.
They were finally extricated using a previously untried technique. One at a time, each boy and the coach were outfitted with breathing devices and tanks, and then given an injection to deeply sedate them. In that state, they were hauled by divers through the flooded passageways and then taken to hospitals to recover. The extraction of all 13 took two days, with the last one being rescued 17 days after the group entered the cave. But in the end, all 13 lives were saved.
