Read Psalm 13: 1-4:
A Psalm of David
1 How long, LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? 2 How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me? 3 Look on me and answer, LORD my God. Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death, 4 and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,”
and my foes will rejoice when I fall.
I love David’s honesty here. David is feeling forgotten and abandoned. The series of questions David asks in this Psalm have been uttered by me and nearly everyone else when in the face of doubt. For David, and I think for us as well, it is so important to be able to be real with God; we don’t have to pretend to be ok. It reminds me of the fact that God can handle it. He can handle my expressions of frustration, or anger or whatever other emotion my doubt may take. David is not being disrespectful or insolent— he is being transparent. It is real and it is raw and it is necessary. At some point in time, I have to get to the place in my relationship with God, where I, like David, lay it all before God and know that He can handle it.
This Psalm begs this question for me: how real can I get with my God? Do I put on a good show, pray the things that I think He wants me to pray, or do I bare my soul in transparency?
Now look at David’s conclusion to the Psalm (vs 5-6):
But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. 6 I will sing the LORD’s praise, for he has been good to me.
Now David, in the midst of the feelings laid out in the first 4 verses, does something important here. He returns to a point of affirmation, of certainty. David is not sharing what he feels; he is sharing what he knows or believes about his God. This belief in the “unfailing love” of God seems to transcend David’s current circumstance. It is a pillar or foundation that, despite being a place of feeling rejected and alone, David reminds himself of this simple truth: “But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation.”
Herein lies the balance— David is honest with God about where he is at and yet his faith is not defined by his circumstances. What he knows and believes about God has been set in place prior to this place of doubt. Now, David is able to be real with God and yet in doing so, reminds himself that “he has been good to me."
1 How long, LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? 2 How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me? 3 Look on me and answer, LORD my God. Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death, 4 and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,”
and my foes will rejoice when I fall.
I love David’s honesty here. David is feeling forgotten and abandoned. The series of questions David asks in this Psalm have been uttered by me and nearly everyone else when in the face of doubt. For David, and I think for us as well, it is so important to be able to be real with God; we don’t have to pretend to be ok. It reminds me of the fact that God can handle it. He can handle my expressions of frustration, or anger or whatever other emotion my doubt may take. David is not being disrespectful or insolent— he is being transparent. It is real and it is raw and it is necessary. At some point in time, I have to get to the place in my relationship with God, where I, like David, lay it all before God and know that He can handle it.
This Psalm begs this question for me: how real can I get with my God? Do I put on a good show, pray the things that I think He wants me to pray, or do I bare my soul in transparency?
Now look at David’s conclusion to the Psalm (vs 5-6):
But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. 6 I will sing the LORD’s praise, for he has been good to me.
Now David, in the midst of the feelings laid out in the first 4 verses, does something important here. He returns to a point of affirmation, of certainty. David is not sharing what he feels; he is sharing what he knows or believes about his God. This belief in the “unfailing love” of God seems to transcend David’s current circumstance. It is a pillar or foundation that, despite being a place of feeling rejected and alone, David reminds himself of this simple truth: “But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation.”
Herein lies the balance— David is honest with God about where he is at and yet his faith is not defined by his circumstances. What he knows and believes about God has been set in place prior to this place of doubt. Now, David is able to be real with God and yet in doing so, reminds himself that “he has been good to me."
Pastor Sterling Moore
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2 comments:
What he knows and believes about God has been set in place prior to this place of doubt. The problem becomes, for me, what I know to be true, was as a chid, then I got the doubt and have been trying to rid myself of the doubt ever since. I wish it was as easy as saying it, reading it and thinking it. In all the great things that God has given me and continues to give me, like love, family, support, friends, job and enough money to help others, I still struggle some times why bad things happen to me, or at least I think they are bad. I will try this approach, but confess that I am having trouble, hmm that is admitting that I am a failure. Thats not easy to take.
But on a side note, This whole blog has helped me a lot. I enjoy and can't wait to read this every weekday morning. Some times I even read it again and again. When it really talks to me,rereading it helps a lot. THANKS!
I completely agree. I wish it was as simple as "saying it, reading it and thinking it" It is not that simple. I appreciate your transparency, although I don't think that it makes you failure, merely human, like the rest of us.
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