Bring Your Despair To The Lord Until You Once Again Find The Joy Of Trusting Him (Psalm 13)
Life is filled with hardships. I have jokingly stated that teething is God’s way of first teaching children that there is pain in this life. Whether or not it’s really the case, from early on in our lives we grow in our understanding of their being pain in this life, both emotional and physical.
And sometimes we go through tremendous times of grief and despair. These periods may last one day, or they may go on for weeks and months.
Our society has changed tremendously in recent decades. Pain and sorrow seem to have no place in the human life for modern man. In fact, modern man believes that the end goal of life is to be happy. And because of this there is no time given to how to respond amid despair. We have become entirely incapable of even wrapping our minds around how to behave during times of despair because we are not supposed to live in sorrow or sadness. All of life is to be puppies and rainbows, so we don’t direct our thoughts to times when Cruella has captured the puppies and the rain won’t end.
If life has taught you anything thus far, it is that hard times come. There are times of sadness and sometimes that sorrow is deep. And we have to prepare for those times before they come.
And in those times of sorry bring your despair to the Lord until you once again find the joy of trusting in Him.
What we will see in Psalm 13 is that David is in great sorrow. Some have believed that this Psalm was written when Saul was hunting David from town to town in the Book of 1 Samuel, but the truth is that we don’t know. There is not enough detail given to jump to that conclusion, but we do know that David was in the midst of despair concerning his situation. And in David we see both the process of dealing with sorrow, or the path it can oftentimes take and the way we should deal with it.
Bring Your Sorrow To The Lord (Psalm 13:1-2)
This psalm begins in a place that may be a bit too familiar for some of you. It begins in a place of sorrow and despair. It begins in a night that feels like it will never come to an end.
We don’t know how long this situation lasted for David, but it has at least felt like a very long time for David. Isn’t that how these things go?
God seems very distant to Him. The hardships that he is facing are just too much for him to bear. He takes counsel in his soul, which likely means that it is constantly what he is thinking about and it is bringing incredible sorrow to him all day long. When I read this it really seems like depression and anxiety due to the circumstances that he is facing. And, like many struggles of this life, it feels as if he is losing (Psalm 13:2).
In the beginning of Psalm 13 all that David can muster is a complaint to the Lord. And this is just how things will go at times.
Life is not all puppies and rainbows, and neither is Christianity. It is not a bed of roses. And it does not take away the suffering of this life. In fact, we may find that we suffer more in this life because we are Christians.
In God in the Dock, C.S. Lewis writes,
“As you perhaps know, I haven’t always been a Christian. I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity.” (C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock)
We are not saying that the evils of this life will not come upon us. Nor are we saying that we will not feel that pain when it does come. But Christ gives us meaning and someone we can turn to who loves us and cares about us when the pain does come.
The Christian can trust that God is with Him always, even when it doesn’t feel that way. And there are definitely times when it doesn’t feel that way.
“To acknowledge in the midst of our afflictions that God has really a care about us, is not the usual way with men, or what the feelings of nature would prompt; but by faith we apprehend his invisible providence. Thus, it seemed to David, so far as could be judged from beholding the actual state of his affairs, that he was forsaken by God. At the same time, faith, penetrated even to the grace of God, although it was hidden in darkness. When he saw not a single ray of good hope to whatever quarter he turned, so far as human reason could judge, constrained by grief, he cries out that God did not regard him; and yet by this very complaint he gives evidence that faith enabled him to rise higher, and to conclude, contrary to the judgment of the flesh, that his welfare was secure in the hand of God. Had it been otherwise how could he direct his groanings and prayers to him? Following this example, we must so wrestle against temptations as to be assured by faith, even in the very midst of the conflict, that the calamities which urge us to despair must be overcome; just as we see that the infirmity of the flesh could not hinder David from seeking God, and having recourse to him; and thus he was united in his exercise, very beautifully, affections which are apparently contrary to each other.” (John Calvin, Calvin’s Commentaries Volume IV, The Book of Psalms p. 182)
Even though we don’t feel as if things are going well, and may even feel as if God is not listening to us, we trust the Lord enough to go to Him, even when things are really bad. And this going to Him is in itself an act of faith that we as believers do.
Even when we can’t muster up the words to pray, we go to the Lord with our groanings. And at that time we trust that the Holy Spirit works on our behalf.
“Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And He who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.” (Romans 8:26-27 ESV)
Bring Your Requests To The Lord (Psalm 13:3-4)
David now moves from complain to request. He can now muster up his request before God. And the request is to save him from his enemy. David has now passed through despair to plead and pray for deliverance. But the situation still seems dire. In fact, the situation has not change. It is David that has changed.
The situation that David is in does seem to be very dire. He pleads for God to answer his prayer, and if God does not answer he believes it will result in David’s death (Psalm 13:3). And knowing some of the situations that David found himself in, it is very likely that he was in an incredibly dangerous situation. And, for David it seems that a fate worse than death might await him if he dies and his enemy gloats over him in the process. This is a completely undesirable situation.
This is where the Christian ought to always go with his worries and cares. We ought always to go to God with our troubles. We are God’s children. We should go to Him with our worries and cares. This is what He wants to do.
God made a way for us to go to Him through the perfect life, death, and resurrection of His Son. It is through Christ that we have fellowship with God and the right to go to Him in prayer. Go to Him.
We have a tendency to want to do things ourselves. We try to fix our problems on our own and only when things get really bad do we go to God in prayer, but this is not how it should be.
“Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time He may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on Him, because He cares for you.” (1 Peter 5:6-7 ESV)
We need to teach this to our children. I believe that I say this a lot, but it is important to pray through our children’s major concerns even if they seem small to us. Let’s help our children learn to go to the Lord with the small things so that they know where to go when things get hard.
I love that this is a praying church. Praying for one another is an incredible thing for us to do for one another. We should always be known as a church that prays for one another.
Bring Your Joy To The Lord (Psalm 13:5-6)
The Psalm ends with what seems like a switch being flipped. Immediately David trusts the Lord. Now His heart had been made to trust the Lord and to rejoice. Immediately, even before the answer to prayer, David is rejoicing because he knows that God will deliver him.
David has now come full circle. He has gone from only being able to bring his groanings to the Lord to now fully trusting that God will answer his prayers. He has gone from a place of despair to a place of rejoicing.
Life and prayer seems to work in this manner, from my own experience. I am sure that many people feel the same way. And the period of despair could last for a long time, but then it seems like, in a moment our hearts are turned to joy and trust in the Lord. God does a work in us as we seek refuge in Him. Not only does He answer our prayers, but He brings us to place greater and greater faith in Him.
Christian, go to the Lord amid your troubles, even the darkest of times when you are tempted to wallow in the mire. Go to Him. Eventually your sorrow will turn to joy, even before God has answered your prayer. Go to Him. And go to Him expecting for Him to answer your prayer.
Conclusion
I often say that I love the psalms, and I really do. And the biggest reason for that is that the inner workings of the human heart are on full display. We see life come at someone and their response to the Lord. And we see a model for how we should behave and think in those circumstances.
Here David teaches us a valuable lesson. This lesson is valuable because we know that pain and suffering will come. And we see in David’s response that we are to bring our despair to the Lord until we once again find the joy of trusting Him.
R. Dwain Minor