Hope in Darkness
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Introduction
Introduction
Tough times in our walk with God usually sends us to Psalms or at least it should. The Psalms as we are learning are songs and poems written from the heart and for the heart. They address a myriad of human emotions and experiences in the different circumstances of life that the psalmists find themselves in and they are great for us today as we find ourselves in similar circumstances.
We can instinctively turn to Psalms and find one that ministers to us much like grabbing the Nyquil off the shelf to address generic illnesses. There are times when a more targeted approach is necessary much like visiting the doctor to address your symptoms specifically and getting a specific prescription for what ails you.
Psalms can do this target approach for us as well. There are different types of Psalms; Praise (Psalms 113-118 or Psalms 145-150, Instructive (Psalms 1), and also Psalms of Lament. The Psalms of Lament express thoughts and feeling sin response to the difficult problems we face in life. Lament Psalms comfort us and offer us perspective that our struggle isnt that unusual and we arent unspiritual because we experience what we are going through. Through this we find spiritual relief - generally. We can however laser focus in the Lament Psalms because there are Psalms of lament that focus on different problems.
Psalm 38 is good for experiencing the consequences of sin
Psalm 55 is a good Psalm for when you have been betrayed by someone close
Psalm 70 is a good place to turn when people are out to get you.
Tonight we turn to Psalm 13 and something to point out is that we have no clear details about the historical background. The italics or heading (remember is inspired word of God) tells us David wrote this Psalm and that it is intended for the Chief Choir Director, perhaps intended for public tabernacle and Temple worship. We cannot identify the problem David was experiencing that motivated him to write this Psalm. However we do have clues to what was going on. David was very clearly experiencing a sort of trial and while we dont know what specifically we know that this was a long term trial. There also appeared to David no end in sight.
It is a blessing for us that no details are given because we can apply this Psalm whenever we experience any kind of problem that continues on without an end in sight. Psalm 13 is the Psalm for when our problems dont go away and God can even seem distant becuase the problem prolongs.
I am not sure how common this is since most leaders may not admit - but I know for myself there are times where I feel dry where God seems distant in where I am. There are times where it seems God shows up right away and other times where He seems to either be ignoring or just distant
The questions begin to come - how long will this last? Forever? How long will I be unemployed, how long will I struggle medically, financially, etc, How long until I find someone to marry, How long until they recognize my work, how long until my family comes to God - How long until my family talks to me again. How long until whatever it is over and things go back to normal. How long will I wait for justice? This list of questions can go on and on because each of us perhaps has a long term issue we are struggling with.
Psalm 13 tells that this struggle we are going through doesnt need to be ignored or bottled up. When long-term issues are troubling us, there is only one place that we can go and that is to God’s throne in prayer.
1 How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? 2 How long will I store up anxious concerns within me, agony in my mind every day? How long will my enemy dominate me?
3 Consider me and answer, Lord my God. Restore brightness to my eyes; otherwise, I will sleep in death. 4 My enemy will say, “I have triumphed over him,” and my foes will rejoice because I am shaken.
5 But I have trusted in your faithful love; my heart will rejoice in your deliverance. 6 I will sing to the Lord because he has treated me generously.
Express Your Despair
Express Your Despair
1 How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? 2 How long will I store up anxious concerns within me, agony in my mind every day? How long will my enemy dominate me?
In the midst of an on going trouble David asks the same questions “How long?” He asks this question four times and repetition in the Hebrew indicates that the nature of the struggle was ongoing and seemingly without end. The problems are not usually the biggest “problem” but when it continues for a long time it begins to wear on us.
How long LORD? Until when? Will you forget me forever? David is curious will this be forever? Is there an end? David in his ongoing trouble feels forgotten by the Lord or even that the Lord is ignoring him, or his plight. If you havent asked this question yet, you will. If you have asked this question before you know the feeling of the psalmist and the desperation in his heart for an answer from the Lord. Sometimes there is much passage of time between prayers for help and the deliverance of the help provided. How long is the critical question. Often times it is not the weight problems that overwhelms us it is the wait of the problems. We could endure most anything if only we knew when it would end.
In the 1950s, Curt Richter, a professor at Johns Hopkins, did a famous drowning rats psychology experiment. This experiment, though cruel, demonstrated the power of hope and resilience in overcoming difficult situations.
In a series of experiments that are fairly cruel and unpalatable, yet interesting in their findings, Curt Richter demonstrated that hope is a powerful factor in perseverance.
Curt’s experiments focused on how long it takes rats to die from drowning. He conducted his experiments by placing rats into buckets filled with water and seeing how long they survived.
Domesticated Rats
12 domesticated rats were used in Curt’s first set of experiments. The first of these rats initially swam around the surface, then dove to the bottom of the bucket and explored what was there for a while. It lasted a total of two minutes before it drowned.
Two of the other domesticated rats did roughly the same thing, and survived for roughly the same period of time.
The other nine domesticated rats though did something completely different. After an initial exploration, the predominantly spent their time and the surface. And the just kept swimming. They survived for literally days before eventually succumbing to exhaustion and drowning.
Wild Rats
The second set of experiments Curt undertook involved 34 wild rats. Wild rats are excellent swimmers, and these savage and aggressive ones had only recently been caught. Obviously, Curt expected them to fight hard for their survival
Surprisingly though, this wasn’t the case at all. Despite their ferocity, fitness and swimming ability, not one of the 34 wild rats survived more than a few minutes.
In his own words he said: “The situation of these rats scarcely seems one demanding fight or flight — it is rather one of hopelessness… the rats are in a situation against which they have no defense… they seem literally to ‘give up.’”
Leads David and us to then ask will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me. There is a great deal of pain and despair from the thought or the idea that God has left us, forgotten us, or is ignoring us, but God will never forget us.
14 Zion says, “The Lord has abandoned me; the Lord has forgotten me!” 15 “Can a woman forget her nursing child, or lack compassion for the child of her womb? Even if these forget, yet I will not forget you. 16 Look, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands; your walls are continually before me.
How long will I store up anxious concerns within me, agony in my mind everyday? God did not forget David and nor did He hide His face from David but nonetheless David felt like it. When we have strong feelings those feelings can attempt to create their own reality. David felt like God had forgotten Him and was hiding from Him - in a sense it was true for David - but only true in feelings and not facts. Just because we feel something is true does not make that thing true factually.
When it comes to our feelings some would say we must ignore our feelings and that feelings have nothing to do with our walk with the Lord. I think this a wrong extreme because God gave us our feelings as part of our being made in His image - we have the wide expression of anger, love, sorrow, and many other feelings. The other extreme is being ruled by our feelings. We cannot trust the reality our feeling create our feelings have been affected by the fall and because of this we cannot live by our feelings.
David was taking counsel from anxious concerns creating agony in his mind everyday. We must not look to our own self in discouragement or despair but rather to look to the Lord. To think on the problems brings anxiety and worry which only provide my mind with agony, but to pray about my problems brings a release and peace.
How long will my enemy dominate me - when the Lords help seems far and the problem continues on sometimes it can feel like our enemies our problems are gaining the upper hand. Another course could be the enemy of depression a downcast and trodden soul dominates us as we endure and carry on under the crushing weight of our situations.
When you feel like David and your trial(s) seems to last forever, you should express your duress and deep despair to God. Don’t hold it in, and don’t complain to others. Speak to God. After all, you know he’s there – you’re just not sure why he isn’t responding.
Speaking to God this way is being honest and demonstrates your faith in God, even when you’re hurting. It’s certainly better than complaining to a spouse, friend or even venting your frustrations to the world via social media.
Seek the Lord
Seek the Lord
3 Consider me and answer, Lord my God. Restore brightness to my eyes; otherwise, I will sleep in death. 4 My enemy will say, “I have triumphed over him,” and my foes will rejoice because I am shaken.
As we turn to the Lord in our never-ending trials, we can do more than just express the depths of our despair. David continued to ask for God’s intervention and to supply His aid. David didnt stop seeking and speaking to the Lord just because He wasnt perceiving His presence. David calls out to the Lord consider me and answer, LORD my God. LORD again being the name of God Yahweh and LORD my God intensifies the appeal to God and personalizes it as well. Like David when the Lord appears to be absent from us, this isnt the time to desert our faith but rather we need to double down in our devotion to the Lord for He is our God. David never considered going to another source even while feeling forgotten or ignored - he knew his hope remained only in the Lord.
Consider me David says pay attention and answer or hear. Take note of me and act in response to the my request for help. There are times where God waits until our prayers are desperate until He hears us. The cause of powerlessness of much of our prayers is because the lack of desperation. We pray wanting God to care more about things that we dont really care too much about.
Desperate prayer has power not because it in itself persuades a reluctant God, but instead it demonstrates that our heart cares passionately about the things God cares about - Guzik
7 If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you want and it will be done for you.
Restore brightness to my eyes. Give spiritual insight, give me light, give me hope, let me see in this darkness. Lord give me spiritual insight to this situation that I may see it from your eyes and not my own. David knew from his feelings creating a false reality that perhaps he wasnt really seeing reality. His vision has been darkened by his feelings and so He asked God to restore the brightness to his eyes. No matter what problem we are facing we need to cry out with all our heart for God to restore brightness to our eyes. Paul understood the need for being enlightened by the Lord.
17 I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, would give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him. 18 I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened so that you may know what is the hope of his calling, what is the wealth of his glorious inheritance in the saints, 19 and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the mighty working of his strength.
It by this restoring of the brightness of our eyes that we begin to see through the darkness to the hope that has been promised and given to us in Christ.
Otherwise if I do not have my eyes restored in brightness than I will sleep in death, my enemies will claim victory and rejoice because I am shaken. Hebrews also referred to dim eyes as a sign of vanishing life. David is calling out for God to bring him back from the brink of death unto life again.
8 We don’t want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, of our affliction that took place in Asia. We were completely overwhelmed—beyond our strength—so that we even despaired of life itself. 9 Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death, so that we would not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead.
Sometimes God seems distant and allows us to go to the brink of ourselves so that we might begin to trust Him more. Whatever their intensity all trials have the express purpose of perfecting us in our faith in the Lord.
14 for what makes everything visible is light. Therefore it is said: Get up, sleeper, and rise up from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.
Decide to Trust
Decide to Trust
5 But I have trusted in your faithful love; my heart will rejoice in your deliverance. 6 I will sing to the Lord because he has treated me generously.
But I have trusted in your faithful love. David says I have believed in and put my trust in Your faithful (loyal, unfailing and covenantal) love. After verbalizing his doubts and feelings on the situation David focuses on his trust being in the Lord and His faithful love.
The word but is like a sudden u-turn in the Hebrew
My heart will rejoice in your deliverance. What is so interesting about this statement is that in this time nothing has changed about David’s situation. His problem is still ongoing and his enemies are still watching and waiting, yet David says my heart will rejoice in Your deliverance. David wasnt delivered nor was a timeline of when the deliverance would come was given, but yet David trusted that deliverance was coming because of the faithful love of the Lord. So trustworthy is the faithful love of the Lord that David set his heart to rejoice in deliverance that still could not be seen for a situation that still had not changed. When we put our trust in the faithful love of the Lord we too can lead our hearts to rejoice in deliverance even before we are delivered because the Lord is trustworthy.
Nothing had changed in circumstance but it was a change in David’s heart. Instead of looking to circumstance for confidence in God’s deliverance, presence and love, David found confidence and hope in the character of God. God’s promises are always greater than our problems no matter how long they last.
Instead of his feelings directing his actions David used his actions to direct his feelings. David says I will sing to the Lord because He has treated me generously. We can sing praise and worship even in the midst of the storms and trials. Singing not only expresses our joy but it also will increase our joy.
There is not half enough singing in the world… …I remember a servant who used to sing while she was at the wash-tub. Her mistress said to her, ‘Why, Jane, how is it your are always singing?’ She said, “It keeps the bad thoughts away.’” — Spurgeon
David had moved from despair and depression about his situation to singing with joy. God in the scriptures teaches us that He still loves us and will be faithful to us regardless of our feelings.
Because David’s eyes were brightened once again he could see God’s goodness and have a different perspective.
Conclusion
Conclusion
This Psalm like much of our God-sent testings begins with a sigh and a cry but end with a song of joy and praise. In six verses David goes from despair to rejoicing in song. Why? Simply put because he prayed. The longer version because as he prayed God met with him, not to necessarily change his circumstance but to change his eyes and perspective and allow him to see Hope through the darkness.
Now the rest of the story
The last set of experiments that we’ll focus on were concerned with the impact that introducing hope would have on the perseverance of the rats in buckets. In these experiments Curt’s hypothesis was roughly that introducing hope to rats would increase their survival times.
To test his hypothesis Curt selected a new cohort of rats who were all similar to each other. Again, he introduced them into buckets and observed them as they progressed towards drowning. This time though, he noted the moment at which they gave up then, just before they died, he rescued them. He saved them, held them for a while and helped them recover.
He then placed them back into the buckets and started the experiments all over again. And he discovered that his hypothesis was right. When the rats were placed back into the water they swam and swam, for much longer than they had the first time they were placed in the buckets - they swam for over 60 hours. The only thing that had changed was that they had been saved before, so had hope this time.
As this feeling of abandonment wore on, David resorted to his own counsel – his inner thoughts. As McGinniss explains, “The presence of continued suffering and the lack of divine help caused David to look inside his own soul for much needed relief.” When he did this, he found nothing but sorrow. He was unable to provide himself any relief. The only thing he could offer himself was more grief.
The test of your faith is not when God’s presence is real, when you see God at work in your life. The real test of your faith is when God seems distant. Do you seek Him then? Those who diligently seek me shall find me is the promise of the Lord.
Prayer changes things - beginning with our eyes and our hearts.