When the bomb drops in your life and Satan colors the shockwave of this experience with

black hopelessness don't yield believe how do we fight despondency or hopelessness that's the

question John Piper answers from Psalm 73 21 to 26 in this episode of light and truth the sermon

was originally preached at Bethlehem Baptist Church on the 4th, 1988 I want you to focus on verse 26

for just a few minutes my flesh and my heart may fail because that's the definition of

despondency that I want us to work with you see the three parts to that little phrase my flesh

and my heart may fail my flesh that means there's a physical component to despondency isn't there

the body weakens there's fatigue there's a sense of listlessness and sluggishness

secondly and my heart that means there's this emotional spiritual dimension to despondency our

hearts are discouraged ejected gloomy burned out third fail the word means come doing it and run

out be exhausted of resources it's like your life is a a tank and in it is water that you need

for refreshment and somebody pulls the plug at the bottom and it just all runs out and this word

in Hebrew kalah means just come to an end be exhausted depleted of resources to handle problems

and life now the question is is unbelief the root of that experience of despondency the answer is

yes and no it's not simple in other words so I'm going to pick a simple sentence to get from

scripture because we need clear simple things to live by here's the sentence that I think is

simple and true unbelief is the root of yielding to despondency

I'll just pass over the issue of where despondency comes from because it's very complex and you

can read the manuscript if you want to read some about that complexity that I've written about

wherever it comes from unbelief is the root of making peace with it yielding to it giving

no spiritual warfare to fight it being negligent in putting on the armor of God and so on

now I want to illustrate this briefly by just looking quickly at the Psalm and looking at Jesus

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