They say, “When it rains, it pours.” They don’t have to tell you that.
You have lived it. Maybe you were on of the people living it last week during the historic winter storm in Texas. I mean, you could handle one or two little problems like a coffee stain on your shirt and paying for family vacation.
Throw in a couple more troubles like back pain and your three-year-old not wanting to take naps, and it would take some effort but you’d still be in good shape.
Ah, but life is more complicated than that. Problems are often much deeper. Troubles multiply.
David agrees when writing in Psalm 25:17, “The troubles of my heart have multiplied, free me from my anguish.” Pay close attention now. David is closer to the solution because he understands something extremely important. You need to understand this, too.
There is a difference between all your troubles, and how you respond to all our troubles. What is your heart feeling? What is it saying, remembering, fearing, dreaming about each one?
Can you admit with David that the troubles out there have caused troubles in here? In your heart. How you respond to troubles—not the troubles themselves—becomes the root cause of anxiety or anguish, addiction or anger. It becomes overwhelming. “Free me,” David prays. Not from troubles out there. But from heart trouble. Anguish.
He prays. He stops listening to the troubles, stops talking to each one like he’s going to bargain with it. He prays. He goes to God. “To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul; in you I trust, O my God” (Psalm 25:1).
This turning to God, when real and honest, confesses that our biggest problem is “affliction and distress” not out there but in here. Not what we suffer, but the way we’re suffering it. The ways our own heart deceives us. “Take away all my sins” (Psalm 25:18).
So troubles multiply and sins of heart abound, but there is one solution for it all. “Good and upright is the Lord; therefore he instructs sinners in his way … All the ways of the Lord are loving and faithful” (Psalm 25:8,10).
Loving and faithful, good in all he does, God forgives your sins and teaches you to trust, to follow his way. To not fear. To not be troubled by your troubles any more. There is a better way.
God is the way. Here’s some music for you to rejoice in that: https://youtu.be/MOzsJlk8p6I
PRAYER: You are the way, O God, and the only source of salvation for me and all my troubles. Teach me to turn to you with my whole heart and follow your way. Amen.
FURTHER MEDITATION: Keep your Bible open to Psalm 25 this week and spend some time meditating on it. Where do you see this theme again and again, that our problems are many, they are multiplied in our own hearts, but the redeeming way of God saves us from them all?
