What’s impoverishing you these days? What’s making you feel needy, or captive?

When I think of these questions, I can’t help but be reminded of our Resilience and Recovery Ministry at CrossWalk. This ministry has been a huge blessing to our congregation.

And I think I know why.

As David says here in Psalm 69, all of us are going to deal with feeling poor and needy and captive at times. If you know David’s life, then you know he certainly did!

In our Resilience and Recovery Ministry, we use different terminology, but we mean the exact same thing. We call them “hurts, habits and hang-ups.” There’s really no difference -- other than the words we use to describe the situation.

And we all have hurts, habits and hang-ups, don’t we? This is no specialized group of people. This is not just someone who by some weird situation in their life has been afflicted. This is the human experience. And we all deal with it, to one extent or another.

Which is precisely why David writes about it. And why he states so clearly what we are to do with our hurts, habits and hang-ups — with our poverty, our need and our captivity.

Seek God. Because God has the most powerful medicine for our souls. It’s the gospel of Jesus Christ. When we find Christ in his words and promises, when we locate our Savior in the very sacraments he instituted, when we walk to the cross and the empty tomb -- our hearts will live!

As David writes so poetically (and so factually), we will see our gracious and merciful God and be glad. We can be assured God loves us.

David reassures us God has not lost his hearing either. Not one of our prayers or pleas for mercy slips past him.

So, in faith, joy and gratitude, let’s trade in our pain for praise!

“The poor will see and be glad—you who seek God, may your hearts live! The LORD hears the needy and does not despise his captive people. Let heaven and earth praise him, the seas and all that move in them” (Psalm 69:32-34).

Our Bible reading for June 4, 2015 is 2 Samuel 5:6 – 6:23, Acts 1:23 – 2:21 and Psalm 69:29-36.

One last thing. If you haven’t checked our Resilience and Recovery Ministry on Saturday nights at 6 at Cesar Chavez High School, let me recommend—strongly—you give it a shot! It’s for you, it’s for me, it’s for all of us.

Header image based on "A Need" by Richard Camacho, CC By 2.0