"AS PANTS THE DEER"
AS PANTS THE DEER
Psalm 42
Sunday, November 10, 2013, the Year of Our Lord
Pastor Carolyn Sissom
In the past 15-years, the Lord has apprehended a remnant of people and by His Great Grace taken them into realms of Zion (the Glory of God). For some of us, and I speak of myself, my desire is to live in the heights of Zion in the realm of the Holy of Holies. However, we soon learn that we were apprehended to go out again and apprehend that for which we were apprehended. We who are apprehended for Zion will not stay in the Most Holy Place. We shall return to the Outer Court and become the GATES for the rest of creation.
This assignment is the ministry for which we were apprehended. Our maturity is measured by how we handle the immaturity of others. We soon discover that though we have tasted the clear air at the top of the mountain, the world and apostate church aren’t looking for us to help them to the top of the mountain. We are called to a measure of grace and graciousness to not only rise above the arrows from the quiver of man, but to help those who are bleeding from arrows of cruelty. Until we are dead to the pain of the pride of our carnal soul, we too will faint along the way becoming a stumbling block to others.
Obadiah 21: “Saviors shall come up on mount Zion to judge the mount of Esau; and the kingdom shall be the Lord’s.”
I believe we (the called out ones) are part of this deliverance described by Obadiah; and are called to be deliverers. As the Lord has been preparing us for this day, we have overcome many arrows of tribulation and deliverance from tribulation. We have continued to press through tribulation to apprehend Kingdom Blessing. This is the journey of the Overcomer. However, now we are being sent out to help others apprehend Kingdom Blessing; and help them to overcome.
Psalm 42 is the song of an exile among enemies who have no sympathy with his Godly convictions. He cries out after God with great intensity. His greatest grief is their mocking inquiry after his God. In the midst of his grief, he appeals to his own soul in the language of hope and confidence.
We are living in a time when Christians are facing intense persecution, abuse, and mocking even by our own government in the United States of America. Prayer in our public government gatherings is being challenged in the Supreme Court. Prayer has been taken out of our schools. Our media can use the Lord’s name in vain exponentially, but Christians are scorned when they speak of Jesus’ name as the Christ, the Son of the Living God. To speak of the person of the Holy Spirit scandalizes people.
Psalm 42:1: “As a deer pants after the water brooks, so my soul pants after thee, O God”.
The deer is fond of feeding near the waters. When hunted he will take to the river, and stay submerged as long as his breath permits, then swim down stream in the middle so as not to touch the branches of trees on either side. Thus, preventing the hounds from finding his scent; sometimes he will stay in the water submerged with only his nose out, until he is routed. In a chase he becomes faint and longs for the water intensely.
We can infer from Psalm 42, “that it was the wounded stag which David now saw, seeking the brooks---the deer hit by the archers, with blood drops standing on its flanks, and its eye glazed with faintness, exhaustion, and death. But for these wounds it would never have come to the Valley. It would have been resting still up in it its native heath---the thick woods and cover of the mountain heights of Gilead. But the shaft of the archer had sped with unerring aim.
This is a picture of David and the many who have been driven to drink of that “river, the streams whereof make glad the city of God.” They are wounded spirits; the arrow festering in their souls, and drawing their life-blood. Faint, trembling, forlorn, weary, they have left the world’s high ground---the heights of vanity, and indifference, self-righteousness, and sin---and have sought the lowly Valley of humiliation.
What are some of these arrows? There are arrows from the quiver of man, and arrows from the quiver of God. The arrows of man are the cruelest of all. ‘Lo the wicked bend their bow, they make ready their arrow upon the string that they may privily shoot at the upright in heart.’ (Ps. 11:2). Envy is an archer. His shaft is dipped in gall and wormwood. Jealousy is a bowman, whose barbed weapons cannot stand the prosperity of a rival. Revenge has his quiver filled with keen points of steel, that burn to retaliate the real or imagined injury. Malice is an archer that seeks his prey in ambush. He lurks behind the rock. He inflicts his wanton mischief---irreparable injury---on the absent or innocent. Contempt is a bowman of soaring aim. He looks down with haughty, supercilious scorn on others. The teeth of such ‘are spears and arrows, and their tongue is a sharp sword’. (Ps. 57:4).
Deceit---he is, in these our days, a huntsman of repute---a modern Nimrod---with gilded arrows in his quiver, and a bugle, boasting great things, slung at his girdle. He makes his target the unsuspecting; decoys them, with siren looks, within his toils, and leaves them, wounded and helpless on the mountains of prey.” (John Ross MacDuff)
Ps. 42: 2-4: “My souls thirsts for God, for the living God, when shall I come and appear before God? My tears have been my meat day and night, while they continually say unto me, where is your God? When I remember these things, I pour out my soul in me; for I had gone with the multitude, I went with them to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept holyday.”
The Psalmist has experienced not only the awful proximity of death and the cutting taunts of his oppressors, but at times he has even felt abandoned by God Himself. Nevertheless he gives us hope in God for vindication and deliverance. This is the Psalm of the cry for revival, or the thirst for the House of God.
“As Pants the hart for cooling streams,
In parched and barren ways,
So longs my soul for you, O God,
My thirsting soul will pine;
Oh, when shall I behold your face?
Your majesty divine?
God of my strength, my tears have been
By day and night my food;
The mockers taunt continually,
And say. ‘Where is your God?”
Why restless, why cast down, my soul?
Hope still and you shall sing
The praise of him who is your God;
Your health’s eternal spring.”
(By: Nathan Tate and Nicholas Brady)
There are many in this church who are pushing through personal tribulation, persecution, misunderstanding, financial challenges, painful relationships, and fear of an uncertain future in a country that has become strange to us in many ways.
“The wounded deer of this Psalm, on receiving the sting of the arrow, might have plunged only deeper and deeper into the toils of the huntsmen, or the solitude of the forest. It might have gone with its pining eye, and broken heart and bleeding wound, to bury itself amid the withered leaves. How many there are whose afflictions seem to lead to this sad consequence; who, when mercies and blessings are removed, abandon themselves to sullen and morbid fretfulness; who instead of bowing submissive to the hand that is able to heal, seems to feel as if they were divested of their rights.
Blessed is the man whose cry, like that of the child, is answered by his heavenly Parent bending over the cradle---who feels as the psalmist did, that his gracious Father and God is never so near him as in a time of trial. “When my spirit was overwhelmed, then You knew my path”.
Church I ask you, “are you panting for God”? Since you received the Baptism of the Holy Spirit and began the journey to the top of the mountain from the Outer Court of salvation through the Holy Place of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, have the arrows caused you to lose that joy unspeakable and fullness of Glory? Did you cross the Golden Altar into the Holies of Holies, and taste the mountain air of Zion only to be offended at the first arrow of rejection in your assigned ministry?
“The world is panting, but not for God. They are panting up the hill with their ambition as a huge stone---no time to take a breath. Pleasure is panting up the hill---pursuing her butterfly existence---a phantom chase---rushing from flower to flower, extracting all the luscious sweets she can. Fame is panting up the hill, blowing her trumpet before her, eager to erect her own monument on the coveted apex of power. Mammon is pushing up the hill with his panting team, to erect the temple of riches. Multitudes of hapless wayfarers in the same reckless scramble have tumbled into crevices, and are crying for help. Mammon’s wheels are locked, ---his treasure-chests have fallen into the mire; ---and yet, on he goes, driving his jaded steeds over the poor, and weak, and helpless---ay, those that assisted him to load before he started at the mountain base.”
“The high and lofty one who inhabits eternity, the Holy One, says this: “I live in that high and holy place with those whose spirits are contrite and humble. I refresh the humble and give new courage to those with repentant hearts.” Isa. 57:15
Church the Holy Spirit of God has poured out upon us gifts, revelation, healings, Apostles, Prophets, Teachers, Pastors and Evangelist. The church at large is panting after recognition and limelight for their flesh to display their giftings. The spirit filled ministers are panting and competing for noses, fame, name, popularity and nickels. We are shocked at the arrogance of our government leaders. Until the church begins to truly pant after God again, there is no standard bearer for our government.
We cry out “the separation of church and state means the government cannot interfere with our preaching the Word of God”. However, they know the hypocrisy of the standard of the church. The church leaders have sold out for the same standards our government leaders have sold out. The world and even the church is presenting us with muddy streams and broken, leaky cisterns.
Are we panting after the streams of salvation? The Shepherd who feeds His flock by these ‘still waters”, thus addresses us---“Let him that is thirsty come.”
Has an arrow either from the quiver of man, or of God, wounded your heart?
God’s arrows wound only to heal; or rather, which, from the wounds they create, send the bleeding, panting, thirsting soul to seek the waters of comfort in God himself. I count it all joy, for except for these shafts I might be sleeping on the mountain heights of self-righteousness, pride, religiosity, or worldliness with no thought of my soul, forsaking the “Fountain of Living Waters.”
Are you, in your agony, seeking rest and finding none? ---There is a balm of Gilead, and a Physician there.” Jesus this day in the 21st Century stands by the glorious streams of his own purchased salvation, and cries saying---“if any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink” “Yes Lord” be it your reply---“Lord, I come thirsty, faint, forlorn, wounded, weary I come, just as I am, without one plea. You are all I need.”
“Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet My unfailing love for you will not be shaken, nor My covenant of peace be removed.” Says the Lord, who has compassion on you.” (Isa. 54:10)
‘As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God”
We are so blessed at Eastgate Ministries! I am blessed! Our church carries the Presence of the Lord. Our Praise and Worship touches Mount Zion every time we gather. The Word of God and Gifts of the Holy Spirit flow deep and rich in our assembling together. We have the five-fold ministry within our church as well as the Lord sends to us His Apostles, Prophets, Pastors, Evangelists and Teachers.
Let us not become content but may we seek God for more and more of His Glory and the Grace to minister that Glory to those who are wounded. Bob Jones once spoke to me that the scars on my back is the anointing that I carry. I thank God for every arrow whether from the quiver of man or God--- that each arrow kept me panting for God.
I ask you today to check your heart to see if you are still panting after God. I checked my heart and found myself wanting. I do not pray for an arrow, but for mercy.
Carolyn Sissom, Pastor
Eastgate Ministries, Inc.
(We stream our messages weekly)
Scripture from K.J.V. --- I entered into the labors of John Ross MacDuff, The Heart Wounded; and Nathan Tate and Nicholas Bradley, As Pants The Deer for Cooling Streams. Comments and conclusions are my own and not meant to reflect the views of those who I entered into their labors.