Here‘s another insightful place in the Psalms where we see David battle
the overwhelming.
I cry aloud with my voice to the LORD;
I make supplication with my voice to the LORD.
I pour out my complaint before Him;
I declare my trouble before Him.
When my spirit was overwhelmed within me,
Thou didst know my path.
Psalm 142:1-3a
Again, it is good to see the honesty that David brought to God. He wasn’t hiding from himself. He wasn’t hiding from his Father. He wasn’t stuffing his feelings. He didn’t seem to be afraid to express the
true anguish of his experience with the holy God.
When David voiced this
prayer he was literally in a cave. He had been forced by Saul to hide out in a
dark cavern. His desperation was great
and he could see no way of escape… do you know the feeling?
Have you ever wondered
if it’s okay to tell God the truth about how you feel? Is it okay to tell him the truth about what
you need and how you want him to help you?
Is it alright to even complain to Him with great intensity and fiery
emotion?
There is no doubt that we are created to approach God with a holy
reverence. We are clearly instructed to
fear Him.
Because of this, I was a bit surprised to see that the word “cry” here
actually means to shriek. And “with my voice” means just that- to call
aloud. David even uses the word complaint, and he declares his trouble…to GOD! I don’t believe this was a silent
prayer, head bowed and eyes closed. This
was an expression erupting from deep within a soul in distress. David’s spirit was overwhelmed.
It seems to me that crying out in this way takes courage. Courage to face the circumstances of our
lives, and courage to allow the pain to surface and present itself. For many of us it takes courage to allow the
expression of agony to find it’s way out.
This seems particularly true for those who have difficult issues in
their lives that last longer than they’d like.
They’ve cried out more than once.
Over and over again they’ve prayed for desired answers but those answers
haven’t come.
At this point in time the heart may become faint or weak. Waves of doubt come crashing and the truth
may fade and obscure. Hope may run
out. Desperation wants to settle even
deeper. Unbelief threatens to wash us up. Questions linger. Where are you God?
I believe that in the
frailty of our humanness, it is not possible to withstand the undercurrent of
life’s most tragic challenges. The challenges that threaten to knock us off of
our feet and drown us in pools of dark emotion and inner turmoil. We are simply
not able to persevere through the tumultuous riptide, and find life again on
our own.
But as we follow the
example of David, we see that He applied faith to every life event. He prayed and he waited. He expressed his heart and he trusted God. And in
facing the Father with his turmoil, he was affirming his confidence in
Him. God was all he had. God was his place to run to. God was his refuge and his portion.
Verse 3 says,
When my
spirit was overwhelmed within me, Thou didst know my path.
In other words God knew
David. But the beauty of David’s poems
and songs is that David knew his God. David knew God’s thoughts and ways were
higher than his. David knew God’s plan
was for good and that his God would come to the rescue. David knew that God’s timing was not his own
but that it was even better than his own.
David consistently
placed his trust in God despite his circumstances, and he continually
proclaimed the truth of God’s character and believed
in who God is.
Praying and waiting… a rugged and wearisome journey.
And a journey to the divine place where our faith is tested and
(if we chose to believe) rooted and grounded and built. And it is the place where the persevering,
glorious, and invincible character of God is designed in us. It is a journey that sweeps us to the
surprise places where our desire becomes His presence over our “rescue”, and
His intimacy over our “healing”. His
calm over our “fix” and His plan over our “ideal”. What a glorious surrender is found in the
tears of the desperate.
There is no cave so deep, so dark,
but we may out of it send up our prayers,
and our souls in
prayer,
to God.
Matthew Henry
And there is no creature
hidden from His sight,
but all things are open and laid bare
to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.
Heb 4:13
