AUTHENTIC PRAYER

 Psalm 13 NLT 

 

O LORD, how long will you forget me? Forever? How long will you look the other way? How long must I struggle with the anguish in my soul, with sorrow in my heart every day? How long will my enemy have the upper hand?

Turn and answer me. O LORD my God! Restore the sparkle to my eyes, or I will die. Don't let my enemies gloat, saying, "We have defeated him!" Don't let them rejoice at my downfall.

But i trust in your unfailing love. I will rejoice because you have rescued me. I will sing to the LORD because he is good to me. 

 

Does this psalm express your current feelings? Or have you felt like this in the past? Like the writers of many of the psalms, we face troubles in our life, and we respond as they did, seesawing between feelings of abandonment and frustration and then maybe eventually back to hope and gratitude.

In this Psalm, we hear David telling God how he feels about the situation in which he finds himself. David's enemies chased him relentlessly in an attempt to kill him for many years. He was constantly on the run, living in the wilderness and hiding out in caves. He lived in fear of the possibility of his pursuers catching up with him and defeating him. He also pictures them gloating and rejoicing about it afterwards.

Thankfully, you and I are most likely not on the run, being literally chased by an enemy, but life can often metaphorically feel like we can't catch a break. Maybe you've had one of those days...or one of those weeks...or more, where it seems like everything is going wrong. Your car breaks down on the way to work, you spill your coffee all over yourself, you miss an important meeting, your dinner burns, your favourite sports team loses, you toss and turn all night, and then repeat a similar scenario the next day, and the next, and the next. Sadly, you my friend, are wandering in the wilderness, so to speak.

What is your response?

I had to ask myself, how do I respond to situations like this? Do I, like David in verse 5, tell God that I trust Him? Do I tell Him that I am happy because I trust that everything is going to turn out all right in the end? Do I sing a happy song in gratitude to Him because I feel He is good to me?

When I first read this psalm this morning, what I noticed was that David authentically expressed His feelings to God. He didn't say "I'm fine", like I tend to do. He spoke to God honestly. He said what He was truly feeling, but He followed it up by expressing his trust in God. David acknowledged that he knew from God responding to difficult events in his life in the past, that "all things work together for good" (Romans 8:28). David loved God and did his best to obey God's commands, and from past experiences he knew that God would be good to him no matter in what circumstance he found himself. We know, because of David's honesty, that it seemed like God had forgotten him in his current situation in the wilderness, but he trusted. He held onto hope. He was grateful.

Greig's Caves, Bruce Peninsula

Reading this psalm feels like reading David's journal, where he's pouring out his personal thoughts and feelings. He writes down his feelings of abandonment, his grief, his emotional despair at feeling forgotten by God and continually pursued by Saul's army. But then his writings shift in tone from anguish to hope and gratitude. Reading more of David's psalms reveals a pattern of lament turned to praise. 

When we experience difficulty, or witness injustice and suffering, we can pray and express our thoughts and emotions honestly to God. In this process we, like David, will remember that even though it may currently seem hopeless, or although we are in the middle of our grief, or we presently feel abandoned, God is there. We will be reminded that God is there, and we will recall that like in the past he is also in control of the present. We can rejoice in that He is good to us.

"The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness." Lamentations 3:22-23

The next time you pray, listen to your words. Are they authentic? If not, try consciously changing them to reveal your true heart to God, and remember who it is to whom you're praying, and how he has worked in your life in the past. Perhaps, like David's, your lament too will shift to praise.