Psalm 13 - How Long, O Lord?

1 How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?
2 How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?

3 Consider and answer me, O Lord my God; light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death,
4 lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed over him,” lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken.

5 But I have trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
6 I will sing to the Lord, because he has dealt bountifully with me.

      In the last couple of Psalms (Psalms 10-12) we have continued to see David crying out to God for help and relief. With each Psalm this theme of David’s continue to intensify to now David feels that God has abandoned him. …Let me say that again... the man after God’s own heart feels abandoned by God. Four times David cries how, “How long?” I think too many people believe that the child of God will never feel this way at all. But that is really not so. There are times in our lives were God feels distant to us and so we perhaps do feel abandoned by God. In times of despair that seems to go one and one we can feel that there is no end in sight. Perhaps it has been so long that we struggle to remember a time that was free of despair.  I think it is important for us to understand that this is many times the very nature of the trials we face. We rarely see an end to trails or what the outcome will be until they are well behind us.

    This is the state that we find David in. David declares to God that his emotions are eating him up inside. David is fighting a hard battle against himself and his negative feelings during these times of adversity. Doesn’t that describe us? One writer said, “How many times we must wrestle with our emotions when we are suffering or in the midst of trail! Our minds may tell us to give up, to give in, and tell us things that are not truthful.” The truth of the matter is…David has not been abandoned. A reality that David will note this latter.

   Again, this Psalm points to an all too familiar answer to aid in this great difficulty…PRAYER. How many times have we talked about this already in 13 Psalms? Many times however, because we are consumed with feelings of loneliness and despair, and we feel God has turned His back on us, that instead of appealing to Him we TURN on God and BLAME HIM for our problems and we give up on God. Let us do that no longer. Instead of throwing in the towel and giving up on God, we need to turn to God and ask him to consider us like David does in Psalm 13.

   Finally, David doesn’t abandon God because He knows that God has been there for him in the past, and he will be there for him again.  Let us never turn our backs on God and abandon Him, but always turn to Him in prayer when we feel, “How Long, O Lord?”