After reading psalm 118, I “serendipitously” came across a portion of Luther’s exposition of the same psalm.  This is vintage Luther.

Ps. 118:5-6 From the straits I called to Yahweh, Yahweh answered me in a wide-open place. The Lord is for me, I shall not fear. What can humankind do to me?

Luther: You must learn to pray and not sit alone or lie about, hanging your head and shaking it, brooding over your thoughts, worrying about how you can escape and looking at nothing but yourself and your sad and painful condition.  Get up, you lazy villain, then fall on your knees, lift your eyes and hands toward heaven, take a psalm or the Lord’s Prayer, and pour your trouble with tears before God, lamenting and calling upon Him…God desires it, and it is His will, that…you not let it lie upon yourself, dragging it about with you and being chafed and tortured by it, so that in the end you make two or even ten or a hundred calamities out of one.  He wills you should be too weak to bear and overcome such trouble, in order that you may learn to find strength in Him, and that He may be praised through His strength in you.  Behold, this is how Christians are made!