James and Jill Stord were working in Asia when James began feeling ill, his condition deteriorated and during the night, he was, he was so sick, Jill was jolted awake by a heavy thud.
James had fallen out of bed and he was writhing on the floor gasping for breath.
He was showing signs of viral meningitis. Please. God, she prayed, don’t let him die.
And she ran for neighbors and they managed to get him into a makeshift stretcher into a boat and across the river and into a waiting ambulance.
And day after day passed and James grew worse.
His fever and his suffering increased and one long day passed after another, each moment was prolonged agony for Jill.
Her emotions flew across the gamut.
She was in a foreign hospital with an apparently dying husband and she wanted to know how long before he turned the corner and started to improve or if he would, you know, it’s hard to be in an extended crisis, isn’t it?
We know that now after 14 weeks of what we’ve been experiencing one long day after the next is filled with moments of stress and anxiety and anger and sadness.
And hope sometimes hopelessness. It’s a toxic brew of bubbling emotions that eat us alive from the inside out.
But I’m glad to tell you that James did turn the corner and he was able to return to England for a full recovery.
But it was an event. The family will never forget.
Later, James and Jill wrote their story for a book and the book is called When The Roof Caves In.
And their section of the book is where is God when it hurts.
And their final answer was he’s with us when it hurts too some time in every life in your life and in mine, we find ourselves in a dark tunnel where no light seems visible.
You weep and you cry, you’re frustrated and you plead Lord, I can’t take it anymore.
I have no more patience and no more strength to hold out. I’ve got to hear from you today.
Most of us have been there. What about you?
It may have been because of a long drawn out sickness might have been because of a long term financial problem.
Maybe you’ve had a struggle with grief or maybe you’ve been an alcoholic spouse or an unsafe loved one or dysfunction is going on in your family.
Or perhaps you’re suffering through a problem at work, a demanding unreasonable boss or a jealous, spiteful fellow worker whom you have to cope with every single day with no resolution in sight.
And before you know, it.
You find yourself in David’s shoes and you can understand his heartfelt words and emotions.
This man is a hero. He’s a man of God. The favorite son and sweet singer of Israel.
David is a man after God’s own heart and yet he’s a man of anguish and suffering.
He’s a man given to the depths of depression and he cries out to God with these words.
How long let me fill in some of the background.
David’s boyhood had been one of a shepherd boy, just one of several sons in a large family.
What a fateful turn of life had taken from the moment David killed the giant Goliath.
He himself became a hunted man. One moment he was the toast of the nation.
And the next he was a young man hiding out in caves, the king, the insecure and temperamental.
Saul was bitterly jealous. You see, Saul stock had plummeted as that of the shepherd boy had skyrocketed.
The women of Israel celebrated the victory of David over Goliath by singing a song that is recorded for us in first Samuel 18 7.
Here’s the song, Saul has slain his thousands and David his 10 thousands.
That was an intolerable situation for an egotistical monarch. And Saul began to eye David from that day forward.
You see, we often forget that David was a fugitive for eight or nine years.
We forget that he lived a life on the run in the very country where he was a national hero.
Furthermore, his life and his plight were complicated by all kinds of personal entanglements.
Get this Saul David’s enemy, the same ruthless king whose life was dedicated to hunting David down and murdering him.
Saul was also the father of a son who was David’s best friend and a daughter who had stolen David’s heart.
Can you imagine a more complicated personal scenario than that?
There was a time when David had the protection of 600 of his faithful men, he settled in a place called Zig Lag where he managed to live peaceably for 16 months.
But one day he left on a military mission and when he returned home, the city of Zig Lag had been burned to the ground.
All the wives and the Children whom the soldier had left behind were carried away including David’s own family.
David’s men were not merely grief stricken, they were filled with fury and they turned their anger on David and they threatened to stone him to death.
It was all David’s fault. That’s the way they saw it as far as they were concerned.
David, their leader had cost them their wives and their Children. For Samuel 30 tells of David’s deep distress.
He’d lost his own family. He was blamed for the loss of hundreds of other women and Children.
And now he faced death by stoning out of his pain in his heart.
He cried out to the Lord and out of that furnace of his desperation came the incredible words of Psalm 13.
How long? Oh Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?
How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily?
How long will my enemy be exalted over me? Consider and hear me. Oh Lord, my God, enlighten my eyes.
Lest I sleep the sleep of death.
Lest my enemy say I have prevailed against him, lest those who trouble me, rejoice when I am removed.
But I have trusted in your mercy. My heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
I will sing to the Lord because he has dealt bountifully with me.
David wrote this psalm when he was physically exhausted, he was emotionally depressed.
His troubles with King Saul had gone on year after year and he was discouraged and this psalm was run out of the extremity of his soul.
He simply could not go on as we examine this psalm. We learn some things about ourselves from David.
First of all, we discovered that our struggle happens when God delays on those occasions.
When you struggle with God’s timing, it’s good to know these feelings didn’t originate with you.
Not only did David express the feelings you had, he did so repeatedly.
If you read through the Psalms, you’ll find a number of Psalms like the one we’re exploring in this message just as a song has a refrain this Psalm has one, a recurring phrase that always comes back around this time.
The chorus or refrain is repeated four times. Here it is.
How long aren’t you grateful for the Psalms? That are such remarkable illustrations of honest prayer?
I mean, I don’t always pray with total honesty. You may, you may not either.
You force a smile into your prayers and you say I couldn’t be better Lord, but God knows what you’re going through.
And he has been looking forward to talking it over with you and he’d be much happier with an exasperated.
How long than with your forced smile. When God delays, sometimes we feel forgotten.
Psalm 13 1 says, how long? Oh Lord, will you forget me forever.
You come to a point sometimes of believing that God has forgotten. You don’t worry.
It’s a common experience and we all go through it one time or another feeling that God isn’t there.
Or at the very least he’s forgotten us. Perhaps our problems aren’t important to him.
We imagine the psalmist encounters, those buried doubts in Psalm chapter 10 and verse one, here’s what he says there.
Why do you stand a far off? Oh Lord, why do you hide in times of trouble?
You see everyone has a point somewhere in the geography of their souls marking the limits of their faith.
It is the point at which faith begins to unravel.
Only we ourselves know where the point lies and we find out during a season of testing, a trial will build to a crescendo in your life.
You attempt to handle it and you pray about it, but life will not cooperate.
And as the days turned to weeks and then weeks to months and months, even to years, you reach that personal point.
Somewhere in the scheme of your suffering.
When you begin to give up on God, what you believe is that He has given up on you.
You may even be feeling that way right now as you watch this message.
If so, please allow me to remind you that what you’re contemplating is a simple impossibility.
God never gives up on you.
He never ceases to care about you and He will not abandon his work on you, of which your trial is a part.
I love the poignant words in Isaiah 49 verses 15 and 16. Listen to these words.
Can a woman forget her nursing child and not have compassion on the son of her womb?
Surely they may forget, but I will not forget you.
See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands. Your walls are continually before me.
God wants us to realize that even if that woman could somehow forget the precious child at her breast, he would never forget you.
He even says that your name is written on the palms of his hands.
Your very name is tattooed on the palms of God’s hands. It is engraved there.
It cannot be removed and such is God’s concern for you.
He cannot forget you no matter what storm you’re weathering. Now, you have never left God’s mind or his heart.
Yes. Sometimes when God delays, we feel forgotten, but it can even get worse.
Sometimes when God delays, we feel forsaken. Read on in Psalm 13: verse 1.
How long will you hide your face from me? We can feel the frustration and despair in David’s words.
It seems as if God has forgotten Him. Yes, even worse.
It feels as if God has purposely averted his eyes from David.
So as not to be bothered by the troubles of his suffering child, perhaps he knows better.
But David feels as if God simply doesn’t care.
David feels forsaken now forgotten is one thing, but forsaken is another matter entirely.
We very innocently forget people, people we love and care about that could happen in the hectic pace of life.
But the act of forsaking is very intentional, premeditated, forgetfulness. And that is how David feels.
That is how you have felt my God. Why have you forsaken me?
You might recognize those words, Jesus said them in his anguish on the cross.
Do you know where Jesus got those words? He pulled them from Psalm 22.
If you study that Psalm, you’ll find the same man.
David has repeatedly said those words, Psalm 22 1 and two, my God, my God. Why have you forsaken me.
Why are you so far from helping me? And from the words of my groanings. Oh my God.
I cry in the daytime but you do not hear and in the night season and I’m not silent.
It’s helpful to know that David suffered and felt forsaken.
But it’s life changing to realize that even Jesus himself, the Lord of heaven and earth enclosed in flesh, experienced the same emotions.
Imagine the Lord Jesus Christ, not only felt forsaken, he was forsaken.
God turned his back on Jesus because he was a holy and just God who could not look upon the sin that Jesus carried to the cross, your sin and my sin.
The next time you feel forsaken, lift up your voice to pray to Almighty God.
Do this, go to a private place and spend significant time reflecting on the incredible truth that the one who hears your prayers has been there too.
He knows exactly how you feel. He knows what it means to be forsaken.
And here is the truth you must fully comprehend and stake your life upon.
If you remember no other words from this message, Jesus hung upon the cross and God turned his back upon his son so that he would never have to turn his back on you.
That was the excruciating price he paid because He loves you that much.
He loved and died and suffered on this earth.
So you wouldn’t have to be forsaken So when God delays answering us, we sometimes feel forgotten, sometimes we even feel forsaken.
But when God delays, we often feel frustrated. Have you felt frustrated with God lately?
I mean, if we’re honest, we’ve all had times when we’ve said, or at least felt like saying God, I’m really upset.
I’ve been praying about this for years for months. And it doesn’t seem as if you’re there.
Listen to the words of the psalmist in the 2nd verse of Psalm 13.
How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily.
How long will my enemy be exalted over me? Now, let me help you understand what’s going on here.
David is frustrated for two reasons. He’s frustrated. First of all, because of his own emotions.
He says in the Psalm every day I go through this, every day, I have to deal with this.
Someone said that the problem with life is that it’s so daily.
Each morning we rise and face our challenges and the same ones are there every day, rain or shine, summer, winter, spring or fall, whatever we have to deal with when we get up and reboot our minds.
All the same crisis take up, right where they left off, the problem begins to take over in our lives.
Have you ever experienced the frustration of something painful or negative or sad? Becoming your constant and daily companion?
Of course, you know what to do.
You’ve been taught to read your Bible and pray and spend time with God’s people, but you’re no longer dealing with the problem.
The problem is now dealing with you and it has taken over and it’s gotten you into such an emotional bind that no matter how hard you try, you know, you can’t do the thing you should do.
This is what happened to David.
He was frustrated by his emotions and number two, he was frustrated because of his enemy.
David cried out in verse two. How long will my enemy be exalted over me?
Now, remember David was the king in waiting?
He had been anointed by Samuel as the king of Israel back in his days as a shepherd.
Listen to me. Do you know how much time passed between David’s anointing?
And the moment he actually became king 15 long years, David became the enemy of Saul.
Saul was jealous of David. He wanted to kill him.
And David spent most of those 15 years running from Saul hiding out in caves.
What was the meaning of all this?
David shook his fist at the sky above him and he said, how long Lord is my enemy going to be exalted over me?
Whose side are you on God? And if the answer was David’s, you could have fooled. The young man.
God seemed to give Saul everything and David got nothing, isn’t it a comfort to know David had the kind of black days we do.
Aren’t you glad the psalm doesn’t stop there.
David may have thought he didn’t have a prayer, but in fact, he was just where God wanted him to be.
We’ve noticed our struggle when God delays. What about our suffocation when God delays? What about our prayer?
Let’s talk about the foundation of it.
David repeats one little word, one little phrase three times in his prayer of desperation.
Here’s the word lest L est.
You can put a circle around that in your Bible because it’s a key to David’s thoughts.
This is the kind of small inconspicuous word on which the entire meaning of a scripture passage can hinge.
Lest is a conditional word. First. David says, Lest I sleep, the sleep of death.
God hear me, how long before you hear me? Lord? Hear me. Lest I sleep, the sleep of death.
David was so worn out physically and emotionally that he fully expected to die.
He seemed to have come to the last page.
And since the book of his life story was about to close, it seemed like an appropriate time to pray.
Not only did he fear his own death, he also feared his own defeat.
He said in verse four, lest, there’s that word lest my enemies say I have prevailed against him.
There’s the word lest again, David is certain that Saul will come out. The winner.
David knows he has been anointed king.
He knows God has put him in this place and he’s preparing to surrender as a prisoner and it seems like an appropriate time to pray.
Perhaps worst of all. David feared his own disgrace.
Notice verse four, here’s the word lest again, lest those who trouble me, rejoice.
When I am moved, you see everyone in Israel knew that David was being pursued by Saul.
When the enemy caught him, David would be humiliated.
A subject of mockery and the terrible thought of that for one who has been promised a kingdom made it seem like an appropriate time to pray.
David prayed in Psalm 13 because he was desperate through the years.
I’ve often observed how God steers us into that emotional cul de.
He likes to corral us into a corner where the only way out is the way up.
We have nowhere else to turn and that’s when we get serious about praying.
So if you’re going through a time of trouble right now, as so many of us are, don’t rail against God for what he has done to bring you to this place.
Instead ask him how you can learn to be his trusting child.
How you can hang on to the desperation that brings about sincere heartfelt prayer.
When we become desperate, we cry out oh Lord, help me and he always does the foundation for our prayer.
Notice the form of the prayer verse three, consider and hear me.
Oh Lord, my God, enlighten my eyes in his desperation David prayed three prayers in verse three first.
He said, Lord, consider me the words actually mean, Lord, look on me, look at me, what he wanted to say was Lord don’t turn your back on me anymore.
Turn around and look at me and see me. His second prayer is Lord hear me.
David is pleading with God to answer his questions. Lord please hear what I’m saying.
And then there’s this very curious third request. He says, Lord enlighten my eyes.
Now, when I first read that my interpretation was that David was saying, Lord, show me what you’re doing, enlighten me, giving me insight, but that’s not the meaning of the phrase at all.
Here’s what it means. David was saying, Lord put the light back in my eyes.
Isn’t that a curious thing to put in our prayers? Put the light back in my eyes.
You can easily spot a person who’s suffering through depression. His face gives him away.
Depression transforms one’s countenance into a mask, empty and rigid.
Most of all the light in the person’s eyes has been extinguished.
That’s where David is and he prays oh Lord, I have no hope. Please see me.
Please hear me and oh God put the light back in my eyes. What a moving prayer.
This is the foundation in the form and notice the focus. He prays to the Godhead.
Two persons in the Godhead consider and hear me.
He says in verse three, oh Lord Jehovah, my God, Elohim, enlighten my eyes. Jehovah reflects God’s promises.
Elohim reflects God’s power. So David is saying, oh God of power and promise, I appeal to you in this moment of transformation.
I believe David’s mind must have gone back to the promise that was given him the promise that he would be the king.
I believe he had a resurgence of faith that he would sit on Israel’s throne.
God had promised him something despite all that had transpired and that meant something had to. He suddenly realized.
David’s heart suddenly realized and returned to the conviction that the God who promises is the God who is powerful, who can stand behind his promises.
David’s faith rebounds and reasserts itself.
I often think of Jeremiah 2011 when I’m feeling difficulty, even borderline depression. Here’s what it says.
The Lord is with me as a mighty awesome one.
Therefore, my persecutors will stumble and will not prevail. They will be greatly ashamed for, they will not prosper.
Their everlasting confusion will never be forgotten. There’s a similar promise in Psalm 138 verses seven and eight.
Here’s what it says though I walk in the midst of trouble, you will revive me.
You will stretch out your hand against the wrath of my enemies and your right hand will save me.
The Lord will perfect that which concerns me, your mercy. Oh Lord endures forever.
Do not forsake the works of your hands.
We find tremendous hope of victory in the midst of the deepest pits of life.
But it’s no simple process. There isn’t a handy guaranteed formula for hope in the midst of suffering.
It takes absolute fall on your face, humility and genuine gut wrenching honest prayer.
We must come to the point where we hear ourselves saying, Lord God, my life is devastated.
I’ve been victimized by my emotions and overwhelmed by my problems.
Life is all it can at me and I’ve caved in. I’ve experienced none of the victory.
I haven’t honored you. I am at the point of surrender.
But oh Lord God, in the midst of all of this help me to see and to know my mighty awesome one, Jehovah Elohim our strength.
When God delays our supplication, when God delays and now the end of the Psalm, Psalm 13, our song when God delays, I’ve told you during this series that most of David’s psalms start with a sigh and end with a Psalm.
You see his trouble in full color. He’s not bashful about letting it all out.
But if you hang in there with him to the end, he gets back to the right place.
And there’s a threefold progression in this Psalm, moving from tears to triumph right in the center lies the ultimate truth that makes the difference.
The truth is that Jehovah Elohim almighty. God is in charge. No wonder David breaks in the joyful song.
First of all our song is a song of triumph.
David writes in verses 5 and 6, but I have trusted in your mercy, my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
I will sing to the Lord because he has dealt bountifully with me.
David’s song is a song of triumph. And how did he reach that point?
He began to see God. Our troubles can cause us to avoid the places where we’re most likely to see God.
Have you ever noticed that? I’m always puzzled when trouble people fall away from the church, they may be strong pillars of the local fellowship.
But when trouble comes along, they disappear.
Somebody says, have you ever noticed that what happened to Old Joe or we missed you in church?
Well, the truth is they say we’re having trouble in our marriage.
If that’s true, you should get up early and go to both services.
You need all the church you can get when you’re in a time like that.
Our faith isn’t a luxury intended for periods of smooth sailing. Neither is our fellowship when trouble comes along.
That’s when it’s wonderful to be a part of a faithful bible believing body of people who will rally around you and help you.
They’ll pray for you and support you with their resources and they’ll encourage you and counter you in the tough decisions.
The devil is the only one whose opinion is that you should take a sabbatical from church during hard times, David says I have trusted in your mercy, my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
What does that word salvation mean to you?
I hope you realize that it’s more than just being saved from sin.
It can also be about salvation from predicaments that occur in the here and now God saves us in the big picture.
But the Bible assures us that He saves us also in the small ones too.
When we ask him, you might question that conclusion because you think about poor beleaguered.
David, how exactly has God saved him in this situation? Saul is still coming after him.
The armies are still on the March. Things look as hopeless as ever on the face of things.
What really has changed? Nothing except David’s memory.
He has recalled as the spirit of prayer took hold of Him and God counted his hurting soul that nothing has changed about God.
He has recalled that his Lord is changeless. He’s been mighty in the past and that has not changed.
He’s been loving and full of blessing and that has not changed.
He’s had a plan for David and that has not changed either.
David has remembered these things and he begins to sing with joy and words that simultaneously reflect past promises and future fulfillment.
God you have delivered me. Our song is a song of triumph and it’s also a song of Thanksgiving.
David writes in verse six, I will sing to the Lord because he has dealt bountifully with me friends.
If you want to stay healthy as a Christian, you need to go back and remember what God has done for you in the past.
I think I told you a couple of weeks ago of a woman who wrote to me who watched our online service.
And she said she had heard me talk about how important it was to remember what God had done.
And she said, I went back, I took a pin and a card and I wrote down what I thought were the top 10 things God has done for me in my life.
And she said, when I did that and I began to read those things.
I realized what a rich and blessed person I am.
The devil wants to minimize everything that God has done for you and maximize all of the problems you have.
Don’t let him do that to you when you feel least like it, you need to remember God’s goodness.
I wrote in my bible one day.
Don’t forget to Polish your monuments, don’t forget to Polish the monuments of victory in your life.
That’s the most wonderful reason for keeping a journal.
David consults the journal in his mind, in his dealings with the Lord and he realizes God has dealt bountifully with me.
We know from the Psalms that David called upon his memory often to nurture and refresh his faith when anxiety for the future built up as it did from time to time.
Even after this time in his life, David faced it with the testimony of the past his life may not have been what he might have chosen, but it was a life that could never have lasted this long without God’s intervention.
What a terrible thing it is to become trapped in the claustrophobia of the present.
That’s our first impulse.
The clear and present danger is so huge, so imposing that it blocks our view behind us so that we don’t see the Lord’s blessings and ahead of us so that we’re afraid of what’s to come.
We desperately need perspective and we can’t change the future till it arrives, but we can gain wisdom from the past.
It should hold for us an absolute conviction on the question of who God is and what He’s done for us previously.
So make your list, check it twice. Just what has God done for you?
You were under quarantine for months and you were scared of getting sick. How did God sustain you?
You lost your job and you thought the world would end? What did God do for you?
Your marriage was in trouble. You got in more trouble during the sheltering or perhaps you even faced the devastation of a divorce.
What did God do then? How about when one of your Children broke your heart?
Do you remember God’s love for you then make a detailed inventory of His faithfulness?
In your life and you’ll be surprised at what he has done.
Psalm 40 verses one through three says this, I waited patiently for the Lord and he inclined to me and heard my cry.
He also brought me up out of a horrible pit out of the my clay and set my feet upon a rock and established my steps.
He has put a new song in my mouth. Praise to our God.
Many will see it and fear and will trust in the Lord.
In Psalm 28 7 says it this way, the Lord is my strength and my shield, my heart trusted in Him and I am helped therefore, my heart greatly rejoices and with my song, I will praise him.
Does it seem strange to you that Psalm 13 so filled with misery builds to a final note of triumph, trust and praise to the Almighty God.
Nothing strange about it at all. That’s the way faith should work.
We come to God honestly, we pour out our hearts to Him and we experience renewed faith as He prods our memories and reaffirms his love.
The same God who has been there for you in the past is the God who is going to be there for you in the future and He will bring resolution in his own time according to his own purposes, we become preoccupied with our circumstances, but God is preoccupied with our character.
He will allow the tough times for the higher good of our character until he is finished with the great work that is invisible to our eyes.
The writer of Psalm 13 concluded I will sing to the Lord because he has dealt bountifully with me.
I hope you’ve learned the joy of singing. When God delays.
I’m preaching today in a building that I was a part of constructing, raising money, getting this building built.
I remember that time in my life because it was a very trying time, believe it or not.
From the day we began, it took us eight years to get permission to build this facility.
I can’t tell you how many days there were in my life when I said, Lord, how long, how long before we’re gonna get to do this?
We need this building. We don’t have room for the people who are coming, how long?
And the more I cried out to God, the more more it seemed to me like he wasn’t listening and then something happened that was really amazing in our inability to build the building so that we could reach more people locally.
God opened the door for us to begin a ministry on the radio.
It was during that waiting period when God wasn’t answering my prayer and I was crying out how long?
And God was basically saying, I’m going to put this on pause for a moment so I can build the foundation for something that will go way beyond any of your dreams for what will happen through a local church.
And he did. I wish I had time to tell you all that’s happened since then.
But what I learned is that God never delays for no reason at all.
Maybe he’s waiting on something to happen in your life.
Maybe he has a plan he wants to execute and he can’t do both at the same time because it won’t work for you.
But God never delays without a purpose. He knows you. He knows your heart.
He knows everything you’re asking him for.
If He’s not doing what you think he should do, just be patient because God loves you. Don’t forget.
It’s got your name tattooed on his palm. He knows who you are.
He hasn’t forgotten and he never will.
And maybe you’re watching this service and you don’t know this God, you’re saying, well, that sounds pretty good to have a God like that.
Well, he’s available to you. You can know that God, you can have your name inscribed on his palm, but you must become a Christian.
You must accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior.
You must come to God in the same honesty that David used in his prayer and said, dear God, I’m not doing so good.
I want my life to be different. I need you in my life. Lord.
God, I am not complete without you. Please come into my life. And if you’ll ask him to do that.
You’ll be directed to receive his son, the Lord Jesus Christ, the savior of the world, the son of God who came into this to this world and lived a perfect life and went to the cross and died and paid the penalty for your sin and mine.
If you will say to God in prayer, dear God, I know I’m a sinner.
I know I need to be forgiven. I ask you to forgive me of my sin.
I repent of my wrongdoing.
And I ask Jesus Christ for you to come and live with my life and take up your residence in my heart and begin to help me understand your love for me.
Lord put my name on the palm of your hand as I accept you as my savior and he will hear your prayer.