your conscience.  He’ll sit on one shoulder and say “Well, be the man.  You’re to blame—you know what you did; just suffer it out.”  Well I want you to say in the name of Jesus to the devil when he does that to you, “Up yours!  Up yours!”  You can take this verse of Scripture and diagram the sentences—there’s not one word in there about cause.  It does not matter whether you’re to blame or not.  “Blessed men,” and that’s the next word I want you to underline, “go through valleys of weeping.”  You can beat yourself to death with your conscience—camp out and build a house in it.  There’s not a word in this verse about cause, just the statement “Blessed men go through.” 

If you’re to blame for your mess, commit it to the Cross.  Christ died to cover our sins.  You only have to be honest about it with God, nobody else—and with Him only once.  It doesn’t matter to you that are in a valley of your own ‘mess up’—my message to you today: “Blessed men go through!”  Cause doesn’t matter.  Quit blaming yourself.  You can’t rewrite history.  That’s the goodness of God’s Grace.  Commit it to Him.  “Well, I’m not to blame!”  Just the opposite.  “There ain’t no reason for what’s happening to me.  I’ve been faithful!  I’ve done my best and the whole world’s dumped in on me.”  The devil will jump from the shoulder of accusation to the shoulder of sympathy.  Oh, he loves to do that!  “That’s right.  I wouldn’t serve a God treats you that way or lets that happen to you.  You’re not to blame for anything.”  When that happens, you say “Up yours!” again because it doesn’t matter.  It doesn’t matter if you’re innocent.  Valleys of weeping are part of the trip, but blessed men go through.  Sympathy will kill you.  “Oh gloom, despair, and agony on me!”  Quit camping out in your valley.  I’m preaching a grown-up religion!  Valleys of weeping are part of the trip.  “The rain falls on the just and the unjust alike” but blessed men go through those valleys.

          They not only go through them—well, let me add one other thing: there’s nothing in the verse about how long they are.  You might go across in one long step or you may be in it for a long time.  The verse doesn’t say “Blessed men go through valleys they don’t think will kill them,” just the certainty of God’s promise “You’re gonna make it!”  This is not some fantasy-land religion that says what’s real is not really real.  Your valley’s just as bad as you think it is but it doesn’t matter whether you’re to blame or innocent—“Blessed men go through.”  “I’m coming out; today could be the day!”—don’t ever turn loose of that attitude!  “Blessed men go through!”

Most of my life, it’s getting better.  I have to analyze it today and it almost makes me mad to admit it, but it’s getting better.  It used to be my life was just one long valley with occasional humps….  You are awful!  You’re impossible!  You can’t keep these people in a spiritual frame!  Now how do I say it’s getting better?  Let’s go on.

Not only do blessed men go through, “Blessed is the man… who passing through the valley of Baca,” or ‘weeping,’ “make it a well.”  The original says they make it to become ‘a place of springs.’  Don’t you know we could have sat in the valley of Hope Street?  And, as always, the worse valleys come from those that are supposed to be Christian brethren.  But we made it into this ‘place of springs’ because we would not say ‘No.’  We would not accept circumstance as the final answer.  Blessed people don’t die in their valley.  Indeed, the goal of the blessed man of this verse is not just to last it out—this kind of person transforms the valleys.  They see them as an opportunity to turn them into ‘a place of springs.’  There’ve been a few times….  I used to when I traveled a lot—would at least one night during a campaign, or one evening—go with the Pastor to the hospital.  I’ve had those experiences where I’ve gone to visit people in extremity and walked