When the Storm Moves Inside You
Years ago, in college, a few friends and I decided it would be exciting to chase a tornado. We loaded up in my car and drove toward a storm that had rushed past our town, thinking we could handle it. For a while we felt in control. Then the sky grew darker, the wind picked up, and we kept driving anyway. Eventually the storm forced us down to five miles an hour, then stopped us completely. The wind was literally pushing my Ford Explorer sideways. The rain turned horizontal. I couldn't see anything outside the windshield. It was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life, because I realized I was not in control at all.
That's what our souls can feel like. We think we're steady, that we can handle the pressures of life — until something shifts. A loss. A disappointment. A wave we didn't see coming. Suddenly we're overwhelmed, and the storm has moved inside of us.
Psalm 42 and 43 were written from exactly that place. The psalmist isn't describing a literal storm, but his soul feels like one. "All your breakers and your waves have gone over me," he says. He feels forgotten by God, rejected by God, cut off from God's presence. And instead of pretending everything is fine, he does something remarkable: he prays. He brings the storm to God. He questions. He pleads. And then, astonishingly, he turns and preaches hope back to his own soul.
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 my God? Psalm 42:1-2
These two psalms — really one prayer, tied together by a refrain repeated three times — teach us what to do when sadness overwhelms us. How to pray when the waves don't stop.
God Is Not Afraid of Your Honesty
Some of us live by the rule: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. That's often good advice for how we speak to other people. But we sometimes apply the same rule to God — we filter our prayers, we censor our questions, we offer only the sentiments we think are appropriate for a holy God to hear. Or worse, we simply stop praying, because it feels safer to stay silent than to bring the truth of how we're feeling before the Lord.
But look at what the psalmist actually says: "My tears have been my food, day and night." He's not eating. He's weeping instead. He asks God directly, "Why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of my enemy?" That's not polite prayer. That's an accusation aimed at heaven.
And this is not unusual in Scripture. Bonhoeffer estimated that about a third of the psalms are laments or complaints. The psalmist pours out sorrow in Psalm 137, anger in Psalm 140, fear in Psalm 69, confusion in Psalm 102, desolation in Psalm 22, depression in Psalm 88. Job complains to God at length, over and over, about the injustice of the world and the suffering he doesn't understand — and God doesn't condemn him for it. God answers him. God blesses him.
Spurgeon put words to this kind of unexplainable sorrow: "Sometimes, quite involuntarily, unhappiness of the mind, depression of the spirit, and sorrow of the heart will come upon you. You may be without any real reason for grief, and yet may become amongst the most unhappy of men." William Plumer went further, warning that the devil delights in driving believers to despondency, because "if they cannot destroy, they are determined to torment God's people."
So here is the first practical step: talk to God honestly. Don't wait until you feel composed to pray. Don't bring him only the parts of your heart you think are acceptable. Bring the mess. Bring the fear. Bring the questions you hesitate to say out loud. He has seen it all already — he knows what's in your heart before you speak it. This boldness is not unbelief. It is faith refusing to give up.
Preaching to Your Own Soul
Three times in these two psalms, the exact same refrain appears — once at the end of Psalm 42:5, again at 42:11, and once more at 43:5.
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. Psalm 42:11
Notice what's happening. The psalmist doesn't just talk to God — he turns and talks to himself. "Why are you cast down, O my soul?" There's something almost paradoxical about it, as if there are two parts of him, and one part is addressing the other. But this is exactly the pattern we need to recover, especially in a culture that constantly tells us to listen to our feelings, to follow our hearts. The psalmist does the opposite. He doesn't listen to his heart — he talks to it. He preaches to it.
Three times in these two psalms, the exact same refrain appears — once at the end of Psalm 42:5, again at 42:11, and once more at 43:5.
Martin Lloyd-Jones has a line about this that I think is exactly right: "Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? ... Someone is talking. Who is talking? Your self is talking to you." The psalmist's soul had been crushing him with its narrative. So he stood up inside himself and said, in effect, "Self, listen for a moment. I will speak to you."
What does that sound like in practice? Something like this: "Listen, self. If God is for you, who can be against you? He did not spare his own Son for you — how will he not give you everything you need? Who's going to bring a charge against you? It's God who justifies. You can't work hard enough to be good enough — that's not how this works. Jesus died, and he was raised, and right now he is at the right hand of God interceding for you. What could possibly separate you from the love of God?"
That's not denial. That's not pretending your feelings don't exist. It's refusing to let a feeling be the final word when Scripture has already spoken a truer word. Left unchecked, our emotions will dictate how we treat our spouse, how we discipline our children, whether we give our full effort at work, what we do with our money. We are not called to let emotions rule us. We are called to take every thought captive and preach truth to our own hearts.
Jesus Has Been Cast Down Too
There is something else in this refrain worth pausing on. The word for "cast down" — sorrowful — shows up again in the Gospels, in the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus says, "My soul is very sorrowful." My soul is cast down. And in John 12, Jesus says his soul is "troubled," the same word the psalmist uses for turmoil.
For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted. Hebrews 2:18
Jesus is not distant from what you're feeling when your soul is cast down. He felt it — a sorrow so deep it doesn't compare to what we typically carry. And that same man who wept in Gethsemane now sits at the right hand of the Father, interceding for us. He takes our prayers, however broken, and delivers them to the Father himself. We can be confident our prayers are heard, understood, and received — not because we prayed them well, but because he carries them.
Five Ways to Pray When You're Cast Down
Putting all of this together, here are five practical steps for praying through a downcast soul, drawn straight from these two psalms.
First, talk to God honestly. Don't pretend to be fine. Bring your confusion, your grief, your anger, without censoring it.
Second, talk to your own soul faithfully. Read a verse out loud and address yourself with it directly. "Soul, God is my refuge. He has not changed." Take the truths of Romans 8 and preach them to yourself by name.
Third, move back and forth between complaint and praise. This psalm doesn't move in a straight line — it weaves between crying out and reminding the soul of truth, again and again. Prayer through sadness isn't four steps and you're done. It's a wrestling that continues.
Fourth, beg God for his nearness. This is the real ache underneath both psalms — not the absence of sadness, but the absence of God's presence. "Send out your light and your truth. Let them lead me." Pray expectantly for God's nearness; it is not overbearing to ask for exactly what he has promised to give.
Fifth, anchor every prayer in the hope of Christ. End your prayer time not with emotion but with truth — with the one who was truly forsaken, truly forgotten, so that we never would be.
We will again praise him, our salvation and our God.
The psalmist ends both psalms exactly where he began — not with the storm resolved, but with hope restored in the middle of it. We are not yet home. Sadness doesn't vanish in a moment. But because Christ has gone before us into sorrow and out the other side into resurrection, we can say with confidence that we will again praise him.