Jim Van Gelderen: Welcome to the Thee Generation Podcast. This is Jim Van Gelderen. I happen to be broadcasting today from land O lakes, Florida, and it’s a beautiful seventy something.

Certainly enjoying a good day here. However, for all you northerners, I’ll be joining you in a few short days and getting ready to join you with the cold weather. Well, I trust you’re doing well and your heart for God, but I want to address something that’s been a blessing to me and helped to me over the years.

I want to read a couple of verses from Psalm twenty five that hopefully will be a help. And this is verse number fifteen. Mine eyes are ever toward the Lord, for he shall pluck my feet out of the net.

Now that’s followed by several verses where you can catch the pathos in the psalmist, as he’s obviously going through a great trial. Turn unto me. The next verse says, and have mercy upon me, for I am desolate and afflicted.

The troubles of my heart are enlarged. Oh, bring me. Bring thou me out of my distresses.

Look upon mine infliction in my pain. And forgive all my sins. You can certainly catch the fact that the psalmist is got some problems.

He’s got some burdens. He’s got some trials. Perhaps there’s.

The greatest issue is there’s a spiritual struggle in his life. Now, the verse, which is my text, is mine eyes are ever toward the Lord, for he shall pluck my feet out of the net. Now here’s the problem that many Christians face.

They get into struggles. They find themselves bound up. They find themselves entangled in some net.

It could be the net of a temptation. Could be the net of sin. It could just be the net of spiritual darkness or spiritual confusion.

It could be the net of not being able to figure out how to grow spiritually. And here’s how we often live. We don’t live like the verse says, mine eyes are ever toward the Lord, for he shall pluck my feet out of the net.

We live this way. Mine eyes are ever toward the net. Well, obviously that’s not going to work.

So when there’s spiritual struggle in your life, or there’s defeat or discouragement or whatever, anything that hinders you, we have a tendency to look to the net and try to figure out, how am I going to get out of this net? How am I going to get out of this problem? How can things get better?

How can I get my Christian life back on track? But when you focus on the problem, you focus on the net. You’re not focused on solution.

And we don’t have the human wisdom to figure out how to get out of problems. Notice the verse says, mine eyes are ever toward the Lord, for he shall pluck my feet out of the net. Let me encourage a young person.

If you’re struggling with something, look to the Lord. Say, God, I need you to help me figure out what the problem is, how to get out of this malaise that I’m in, how to get out of this problem that I’m in. The focus always needs to be on the Lord, not on the problem.

Now, second problem can be this. I think of another verse. Search me, O God.

I think most people don’t live that way. We live. Search me o me.

There certainly is a problem, first of all, with looking at the problem, getting asphyxiated with that. The second is the issue of looking to ourselves. Sometimes we’re trying to figure out the problem so we get into an introspection.

Now let me just say the Bible, I don’t believe, teaches us to have human introspection. I believe it teaches us to trust the Lord for Holy Spirit inspection. And what I mean by that is simply saying, Lord, I’m not going to search myself, but I’m going to give you permission to do that.

And for your Holy Spirit to make it clear what the issues are, what the problems are in my life, and what the solution is. The point, friends, is simply this, that when we have spiritual darkness, spiritual problems, difficulties in our life, the focus should not be on the problem. The focus should not even be on ourselves trying to figure out what the problem is.

You know, search me. Oh, me. Trying to be introspective, trying to figure out why is my Christian life not working, trying to figure out if there’s some sin that we’ve committed that has grieved the Holy Spirit.

We can’t think of it, but we’re trying to figure it out. Well, I believe both of those are wrong emphases. We’re looking at the wrong thing.

We’re looking at our problem. We’re looking to ourselves, to trying to figure out us out. But the answer is never that the answer is the Lord.

We need to have him search us. Lord, you show me what? What my heart’s about.

You show me what the problem is and the solution. And the focus is on him to take us out of the net. Lord, you are the one that can show me how to get out of this spiritual darkness, spiritual problem that I’m facing right now.

Now, I think of several biographies over the years. I’ve read a lot of biographies of men and women who have been used of God. Some of the greatest used men and women of God are men and women who went through great spiritual darkness.

Much of that darkness occurred as they were really seeking usefulness in their Christian life. David McCaslin has a wonderful biography of Oswald Chambers, who is well known for writing that classic devotional book, My Utmost for His Highest. And in the book, there’s a wonderful chapter.

I say it’s wonderful because it helps us understand what people go through called the dark night of the soul. And chambers went through five years of spiritual darkness, spiritual torture, you might even say. And of course, the problem was he was focused on the darkness.

Uh, he was focused on himself. But after those five years, a preacher pointed him to his need of the Holy Spirit, his need of God. Of course, the Holy Spirit already lived in him, but the point was that that was the solution.

And that’s when usefulness began. When he got his eyes off his problem, off himself and on the Lord. Uh, C.H.

Spurgeon, another greatly used preacher, recently read a quote, just recently tried to find it, couldn’t find it, but basically talked about the fact he had had depths of depression in his life. Of course, Spurgeon knew great usefulness, and I think we all know the reason he found great usefulness is because he made it a habit of not focusing on the depression, not focusing on himself. What’s wrong with me, but focusing on the Lord.

Lord, show me myself. Show me if there is any issue I need to deal with in my life and and show me, uh, the way out of the problem. Uh, my eyes are ever toward the Lord.

So for he shall pluck my feet out of the net. Turn thee unto me, and have mercy upon me. The psalmist writes, for I am desolate and afflicted.

When you are desolate and afflicted, cry out to God. Put your focus there. Cry out to him to turn to you and have mercy upon you, and he will.

Undoubtedly. Somebody listening to this podcast is finding this food for your soul because you’ve been going through darkness, sometimes assurance of salvation, sometimes other spiritual problems that just seem insurmountable. Just like you can’t get out of the wrong thinking and your Christian life seems to go nowhere fast.

You have a heart to live a dependent, surrendered life, but it just doesn’t seem to work. Well, let me encourage you to put your eyes on the Lord. Now, one other thought.

We do have an enemy, the Bible says, and no marvel, for even Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. We have an enemy who masquerades as the Holy Spirit, and we need to recognize. Sometimes he comes along and complicates the problem.

But thank the Lord. If you’re submitted to God, you can resist the devil. He’ll flee.

So, friends, the answer always is to put your eyes back on the Lord. Claim a victory he’s already won, and turn unto him and cry out to him to turn unto you, and he will and see the victory over whatever the problem is that you’re facing. Well, may the Lord continue to bless each one of you in your pilgrimage to serve the Lord.

And remember again that the generations all about total surrender to the will of God and a total dependence on his grace, his word, his spirit to live in.