Psalm 13 Commentary
How long, LORD? Will you forget me forever? David is speaking for countless generations of God’s children. Who hasn’t prayed this kind of prayer? These are moments when you feel like you are running in unending cycles. You fear for your own end. Will it all end this way? And you know it will if the LORD doesn’t intervene. It is a point of total dependence on the LORD God.
Thoughts can be more troubling than physical pain. How do you reconcile the fact of God’s unending love for the saint and the apparent abandonment? It is a conflict that is really never solved. One moment, after a good prayer session, you feel like you understand. But the next moment the questions come flooding and you no longer know if you understand at all. Confusion reigns until another moment of prayer. It becomes a cycle, a painful one.
How long, LORD? Will you forget me forever? The will to live becomes weak and so does the energy to pray. Then you know only the LORD can solve this problem. Otherwise, the enemy will triumph. But David knows better. The LORD has been good to him regardless; he will sing the LORD’s praise.
It is a fact of life for the saint that there is never a night so long and so dark that grace and light fail completely. By the power of His Word, the LORD has ordained relief for the saint with the assurance that His grace is sufficient. So the saint can know peace; the saint can experience grace. Above everything else, the saint can also rely on the fact that the LORD is at work, actively directing events to serve His own purposes and plans. And these are good plans, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
So in the midst of darkness, let the saint sing songs of praise to the LORD, for He has been good. Let every prayer session end this way; on a note of truth and reality.
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