Psalms for your life – Part 2
By Rev. Dr. Brent Russett -Asbury Free Methodist
October 27, 2024 – Psalm 13
Last week, we started a new series titled “Psalms for Your Life.” We looked at a wisdom Psalm. This morning we’re going to look at Psalm 13, a Psalm of Lament.
Speaking on Lament is weird sometimes. I know that most of you have areas in your life that you lament. But you are not in a place where life is crushing you – Where grief has overwhelmed you, where the pain in your life wants to become life’s primary focus. I also know that a small number of you are there.
So, when we come to Lament, it will presently resonate with a minority of you. Yet, when we look around the world, there is a lot to lament. Radical evil scars the lives of so many people. It is right and good to lament with those who find themselves in a season of Lament.
By choosing Psalm 13 as one of the “Psalms for your Life,” I want to show you how the people of God dealt with their pain. I want to give you some tools that you can use right now if you are in pain or that you can have in your back pocket when you experience pain. You don’t have to go looking for pain – life will bring enough of it your way.
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We come to church on Sunday because it is the day that Jesus rose from the dead. On that day, he conquered sin, evil, and death. Our services are usually upbeat because that is something worth celebrating. A lot of you tell me that you feel better when you leave than when you came. That is a wonderful thing.
However, one of the unintended consequences of repeated Sunday celebrations is that it looks like we should be celebrating all the time. The message that can be caught is that I should always be celebrating, even when I am walking through the gloomy valleys of life.
So, when we encounter deep pain, we tend to do one of three things. We are in denial, we detach, we drug our pain.
When we deny it – and often we will use a spiritual form of denial – I’m ok. God’s got this. It’s not that bad. It doesn’t matter. We recognize that we have pain, but we don’t recognize its effect on us. We stuff down our emotions. That is a bad strategy. They will pop up in unexpected places.
When we detach from our pain, we essentially numb ourselves. We don’t allow ourselves to feel anything. The problem with that is that life becomes gray. If you detach yourself from your emotions – you might be numb to the pain, but you will also be numb to love and, joy and peace. You won’t experience those moments of happiness. Detachment isn’t a good strategy.
We deny or detach or we can drug ourselves. We, of course, can do that with alcohol. Apparently, given the number of Cannabis stores around Perth, this is a well-used coping mechanism. But there are a lot of ways to drug ourselves in a socially acceptable way. We can become workaholics. We can lose ourselves down the rabbit hole of YouTube shorts or Instagram reels. We can drug ourselves with food through emotional eating. We can make ourselves so busy that we don’t have a chance to think about the pain.
If you are a follower of Jesus, there is a better way to deal with your pain.
Psalm 13:1–6 (NIV)
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.
5 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.
This is a Psalm of David. David was from one of the most insignificant families of one of the most insignificant tribes in all of Israel. Yet God directed Samuel to anoint this lowly shepherd boy, King.
The problem was that Israel already had a king. A mad king, to be sure. But they already had a king. David went from being a lowly shepherd to being anointed as king. He then went on to kill Goliath and became a hero. Hero status helped him to attain the position of musician to the present king. Then he fell out of favour with the present king. He went from there to being hunted and stalked and having to hide in the wilderness, running for his life.
He spent 10 years in the wilderness. God had anointed him to be king. But he was in the wilderness, fleeing for his life. There were times when he didn’t know whether or not he was going to make it. Death seemed close at hand. It seemed like everyone had deserted him. It felt like God had deserted him.
This is where we pick up the story. At least the story of David’s heart. It wasn’t only David’s body that was in the wilderness. His heart was there as well.
Psalm 13:1 (NIV)
How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
When you are in the wilderness, you wonder about a lot of things. Has God forgotten you? Does God care about you? When David says, how long will you hide your face from me, that is a reference to God’s graciousness. When his face is turned towards us, then we sense his blessing and his grace. When God hides his face from us, it is like we miss all the blessings of God. David was anointed king by the prophet of God, but he felt like God had forgotten him.
Have you ever been there? Have you ever wondered if God was there? If he was there, have you ever wondered if he cared? Have you ever wondered if God had forgotten about you? Have you ever felt like God had totally turned away from you?
Psalm 13:2 (NIV)
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?
If you have had those thoughts, then you can identify with David. Can you imagine being anointed king and then spending the next 10 years of your life on the run?
I can just hear David’s thoughts. Maybe God won’t come through on his promise to make me king. If I am killed, then not only am I dead, but my faith in a faithful God is problematic. Can I really trust God? Will he do what he said he would do?
Or I can imagine him wrestling with thoughts like, Maybe I have done something to disqualify me from being king. Maybe when I ate the bread that was only meant for priests, or maybe when I lied to the Philistine king, or maybe I have killed too many people in war. Maybe God no longer cares for me because of something I have done.
Have you ever had to wrestle with your thoughts? Have you ever had self-doubts, —–, and God doubts? If you have, then you know what the wilderness is all about.
I know that some of you know what it is like to wake up at three o’clock in the morning – worrying about finances. I am going to have enough. Is God going to provide? I know some of you know what it means to have your mind get on the hamster wheel – worried over a child, a marriage, a business, a friend, a secret, a betrayal…
Some of you have had doubts come on you because you prayed for something very important to you, and God didn’t come through. Some of you have had those doubts come on you because of sin, and you wonder if God still loves you. You ask yourself, “Where is God?”
David says every day, I have sorrow in my heart.
If you are in the wilderness, then you are well acquainted with the feelings of sorrow and sadness. You know what mild, maybe even major depression is like. You may or may not be able to fake it on the outside. Those around you may or may not know anything about your private battles. But you know, and they are depressing. You are just surviving not thriving.
Psalm 13:3 (NIV)
3 Look on me and answer, Lord my God.
Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death,
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If you have ever been in this wilderness, and you are a Christian, then you are probably very familiar with prayer. David prays that God will do three things. Look, answer, and give light.
God, turn your face towards me. Look at me. Don’t forget that I exist. Be gracious to me. Let your blessing fall on me. God, don’t oppose me. Bless me.
Then he prays, God, answer me. God answer my prayer. Get me out of this situation. Or get me through this situation. God, change this situation. God, can’t you see that I am in pain? God, can’t you see that I’m hurting? God help me. Answer me. God help!
Give Light, Oh Lord. Give light. I do not understand. If I understood why– then this burden would be easier to bear. If I understood that you were working in this situation, then that would be one thing. But right now, I am in the dark. I do not understand. I do not know what to do. I don’t know which way to turn. I feel helpless and hopeless. Dear God, give light, come to my aid.
Then David goes on to pray, God, if you don’t come through, I am going to die. Lord, my only hope is you, and you seem to have turned your back on me. I am doomed. And God, when I die
Psalm 13:4 (NIV)
4 and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,”
and my foes will rejoice when I fall.
Lord, those who have opposed you. Those who have seen my faith in you. Those who have sinned against you will feel righteous. They will feel smug. God, I will not only die, but I will die ashamed.
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I don’t know if you have ever been in the wilderness. Some of them are worse than others. Some are bad, but you know you are going to make it. There are others that are so barren you wonder if you will ever get out. There are times when you’re in the wilderness, and it feels like night. God has removed all sense of himself from you. You can’t feel his presence. You can’t get anything out of his word. You can’t pray. And you don’t see any light or any way out.
The old mystics used to call times like these the Dark Night of the Soul. And if you have ever been there, you know how dark it can be. Your body, your mind, your spirit, is in torment. And your hope is all but dissipated.
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To make matters worse, when you get here, your soul is in danger. It is not how long journey between lost hope and the belief that God is not good. Someone has rightly said, “Every sin has at its root, a failure to believe that God is good.”
If anyone had a right to think that God was not good, it was Job. If you read Job’s story, you will know that he lost everything. His wife told him to curse God and die. But Job chose another path. He said of God, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust him.”
There was a time when that dark night of the soul was my companion. Even where there was very little hope, I chose to say, God, I am going to trust you. Let me tell you what happened.
In darkness, I started to get glimpses of the goodness of God. I saw his love and his graciousness, and his benevolence, in ways that I knew he didn’t have to show them. There were other times when I have caught glimpses into why God does things the way he does. Why he still allows evil to continue. There are other times when I am still completely baffled.
There were times when prayers went unanswered. But I realized that God knows much more than I know. There are times when I say, why, Lord why? And I realize that there are some things that I will never understand until I get to heaven.
But the further I went down this path, the more I realized, not only by faith but also by sight, that God is good. There are some things that will remain a mystery. And sometimes we have to live in the middle of the mystery. But God is good.
That is the conclusion that David came to.
Psalm 13:5–6 (NIV)
5 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.
David said I am going to trust in your unfailing love. I am going to worship for he has been good to me.
Process of Lament
How do you pray prayers of Lament? You start off by stating your complaint. How long, Oh Lord? How long? Will you forget me forever?
You state what it is doing to you. I am wrestling with my thoughts. You tell God what is going on within you. To do this, you have to identify what you are feeling. It is helpful to name your feelings. You are not denying or detaching or drug your feelings. You are facing those feelings head-on – and saying, God, this is where I am at. This is what I feel.
Then, you tell God what you want him to do. “Look on me and answer.” Out of the middle of what you are feeling, pray. Take it before the Lord. Tell God what you want him to do. God, I need you to come through.
When you have done that – move to an expression of faith. But I trust in your unfailing love. Reach out to God in faith. Put your trust him. Depending on the depth of the darkness, it may take you a little while to get here. But you are going to say with Job – though he slay me yet will I trust him.
Then express gratitude for what you can, “I will sing of the Lord’s love because he has been good to me.
The Process of Lament
Complaint
What it is doing to you
What you want God to do
Express faith
Express gratitude.
If you look at the Psalms of Lament – most of them follow this pattern.
That is how you lament. It is also appropriate to do this in community. Many of the evils of this world go beyond our private domain. We lament the war in Israel and the Ukraine. We lament when we see the injustice in the Congo or the oppression of the persecuted church. It is good and proper and right to lament together to God.
People, I know that some of you find yourself in dark places. It is ok to feel what you are feeling. Name what you are feeling. Then take that feeling to God – and walk through the process of Lament.
Instead of denying, or detaching or drugging your pain, name it and, take it to God and lament over it.
If you do this, you will be dealing with your pain in a healthy manner. God can use this process to bring healing and wholeness in your life over time.
I am going to invite Lynda to come and sing Psalm 13 again to us. I would like you to sit with whatever is going on in you and give it to God.