Our God Saves

Have you ever found yourself praying to God and asking Him over and over again to help you in some way? Maybe you needed guidance because you didn’t know what to do or you were hurting and longed for relief, or you were praying for the salvation of your children. And during the times you so desperately were calling out to God and looking for an answer, did God ever seem silent? If so, then Psalm 6 will speak directly into your soul.

Psalm 6, which is a Psalm of David, is a clear picture into the heart of one who was experiencing a tremendous amount of grief and affliction because of some undisclosed trouble. The first seven verses of the psalm describe in great detail the condition of David’s soul and body.

The Psalmist’s Desperation

If we look through verses 1-7, we see that David cried out to the Lord with seven requests:

1. Vs. 1a: do not rebuke in your anger

2. Vs. 1b: do not discipline me in your wrath

3. Vs. 2a: be gracious to me

4. Vs. 2b: heal me

5. Vs. 4a: turn (back to me)

6. Vs. 4b: deliver my life

7. Vs. 4c: save me

These urgent requests are matched only by the psalmist’s own description of himself which show us his absolute desperation:

1. Vs. 2a: languishing (growing weak or feeble)

2. Vs. 2b: bones are troubled (describes his depression which has reached his innermost being)

3. Vs. 3: soul is troubled

4. Vs. 6a: weary with moaning

5. 6b-c: floods his bed with tears and drenches his couch with weeping every night

6. Vs. 7: eyes waste away and grow weak because of his grief

The requests and description of the psalmist communicate clearly that David seemed to be at his spiritual and physical end; he did not think he could survive any longer! He was spiritually suffering as he languished and experienced deep depression to the very core of his being, and he was physically suffering through exhaustion, insomnia (the inability to sleep), and weakness from constant crying. He felt he had no other path to walk except the path of death.

But what made his suffering worse was that God was silent through all this. David reasoned that God’s silence meant the LORD was punishing him and pouring out wrath upon him. In verse 1, David requested that God stop rebuking in His anger and disciplining in His wrath, and when David asked the LORD to turn in verse 4, we see that he thought the LORD was acting against Him and he wanted him to stop.

The idea we get from Psalm 6 is that the psalmist David was desperate; he was in the utter throws of depression and the LORD was silent.

I know for a fact that many of you listening to this (or reading this) right now personally relate to this psalm. You are walking through the valley of the shadow of death and God is silent. Many of you are experiencing physical difficulties and have been for a long time. Some of you have been praying desperately for the salvation of your children or spouses or for some physical or spiritual need. You have likely felt at times just like David did here in Psalm 6: You keep calling out to the LORD and asking, begging for healing and deliverance. You are physically and spiritually exhausted and don’t know how much longer you can keep going; death seems to be the only path before you, and perhaps it’s the path you desire just so the pain will end. You spend nights crying and wondering where God is, and you may even be tempted to think these things are happening because God is angry with you.

In a small way this happened to me this weak; I found myself not knowing what to think and kept asking God “Why?” I was distracted and felt lost and desperately wanted answers from God, but the answers didn’t seem to come.

Have you been there? Are you there right now? Do you feel spiritually and/or physically weak? Is your soul troubled and are you desperate for healing and deliverance? Are you longing to feel the warmth of God’s affection? If you are, then let me encourage you to persevere a little longer because there is comfort.

The Answer to Our Prayers

We know there is comfort because Psalm 6 does not end at all like it began. Take a look for a moment at the last three verses of the Psalm. Do you notice something? It seems like a totally different person speaking! It’s clear that something dramatic changed in David’s situation. One moment David is desperate and depressed and the next he is confident and sure. How could this be? Many scholars think these last 3 verses of the psalm were written at a different time when David’s situation got better. Clearly there is hope, but what is it? What happened in-between verses 7 and 8 that caused such a dramatic transformation?

The LORD heard and answered David’s prayers.

The comfort for you and me through our physical and spiritual battles is that God loves us and hears every word, every groan, and every tear-filled cry that finds its way from the depths of our souls to our mouths. He even hears those cries that never turn into sound because He hears the thoughts of our minds. The eyes of the Lord are on those who love Him, and His ears are attentive to their prayer…He listens to the person who does His will (1 Peter 3:12, 1 John 9:31). And if we ask anything according to His will, whatever we ask, we know that He answers us (1 John 5:12-15).

God hears and answers our prayers!

Now, we know that while God answers our prayer, He sometimes does not answer them in the way we want because no prayer will be answered as we prayed it if it’s against God’s will for our lives. However, God always answers our prayers according to His will and in the ways we need most. And when Christians finds themselves in the depths of hopelessness with battles that exhaust to the very core of the soul, I believe that any answer we receive from the Lord will almost always begin with the healing of our hearts.

Healing of the Heart

While studying Psalm 6, I found an interesting and deeply convicting truth right in the center of David’s cry of despair in verses 4-5: In the midst of his depression, David was concerned with bringing praise to the LORD.

In verses 4-5 David prayed, “Turn, O LORD, deliver my life; save me for the sake of your steadfast love. For in death there is no remembrance of you; in Sheol who will give you praise?” The significance of these verses for us is that while he was suffering tremendously and expecting death to be his end, he was concerned for someone other than himself! He was concerned that if he died with his prayers going unanswered, the LORD would not receive praise.

A hard truth about suffering is that it can easily make us selfish. In our pain, we can quickly become consumed with ourselves thereby forgetting others and God. This is not what we want to hear when we’re wrestling against God or feeling discouraged by our circumstances but it’s often what we need to hear.

See, when we are self-focused, we will never experience the healing God has for us. By our selfishness, when we think more about our own pain than we do about God’s majesty or about someone else’s needs, we demonstrate to God that our problems are not first with someone else or even something physical. No, we demonstrate that the problem is with the state of our souls before God.

Self-centeredness is at the very root of sin; It’s the powerful concern for the self above God and others that broke humanity’s fellowship with God and brought curse of sin into the world. Unfortunately, selfishness is humanity’s default setting. Without even think about it, we think and act selfishly, especially when we feel hurt or wronged in some way.

If we were to compare physical suffering to the destructive power of selfishness, which do you think would be most important problem to deal with? Is the way we feel more important or is our fellowship-destroying selfishness more important? It may or may not not be God’s will to remove us from whatever situation is distressing us, but I guarantee that it’s our own selfishness that makes our situation truly unbearable. It’s our selfishness that makes us forget God and so the first step of our deliverance is often to be humbled before God.

When we are humbled by God, no matter what God’s further answer to our prayers might be, we will find that much of our distress at whatever situation we are facing will melt away; we will find that God deeply loves us, and His grace truly is sufficient for us because His power is made perfect in our weakness. If our weakness persists than we may boast of our weakness because God is being glorified through it (2 Corinthians 12:9). While we might not like to hear it, we don’t need to be delivered from our troubles to have a heart of praise and thanksgiving. What we need is to be humbled before God and reminded that He loves us and that He is enough.

But does all this mean God won’t also bring physical deliverance from whatever trouble we might be having? Perhaps not. God does not give only spiritual answers to our prayers. I am guilty of spiritualizing everything and forgetting that God does in fact care about our physical and day to day problems. After showing me my self-centeredness this week, He also gave me the insight I was looking for. God absolutely does more than humble us. He is strong and mighty and deeply loves His children and often does miraculous things to help us in our times of need, so never think that God will never answer your prayer, However, we must understand that God may not remove suffering from our plate. It may be His good and perfect plan that we suffer. After all, that was His plan for Jesus.

Suffering leading to glory

In John 12:27-28, Jesus was talking to a group of people when He said, “Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this hour. 28 Father, glorify your name.” With His betrayal and crucifixion rapidly approaching, Jesus was deeply troubled and felt the spiritual distress of what was about to happen. Yet He accepted the lot that was given to Him by God the Father; He accepted that it was His purpose to suffer and die. In this acceptance, Jesus prayed that the Father would be glorified. Do you know what God said then? “I have glorified it already and I will glorify it again.”

I know many of you are hurting and suffering. There are various degrees of suffering but no matter what degree is experienced, it’s difficult and it hurts. I cannot stand before you today and declare that God will take away the pain you have. I do not know if God will heal you or answer your prayers in the way you want. But I can tell you these two things.

First, God will perform spiritual surgery on your soul to enable you to have joy and peace even in the middle of trial.

And second, God has already been glorified through your suffering and He will be glorified again.

Here’s one final encouragement for you as we near the end.

The moment it will all end

As the Psalmist said in his closing, a day will come when all enemies will be ashamed and turned back. The people who would come against us and the enemy of sin dwelling within us will, in a singular moment, all be dealt with by the hand of our Savior Jesus. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, we shall all be changed. Jesus will descend to the earth as the victorious King and the dead will be raised imperishable and we shall all be changed (1 Corinthians 15:52). Death will be no more, neither will there be any mourning or crying or pain for those former things will have passed away (Revelation 21:4). One way or another, God saves His children.

Conclusion

God has heard every one of your prayers and He will answer them according to His good and perfect will. Expect God to perform a spiritual transformation in your heart to turn the eyes of your heart away from yourself and toward Him, and know that He has received honor and glory through your suffering and He will be glorified yet again before it’s all over.

Whatever work of grace God performs in your life, shout it from the rooftops and declare today and for the rest of eternity that our God saves!

Application and Meditation Questions:

1. In what ways can you relate to the desperation of the psalmist in Psalm 6?

2. How do you feel when it seems like God is silent when you are calling out to Him?

3. What requests are you currently making to God that you desperately want Him to answer?

4. Could you willingly and even joyfully accept that God might not answer your prayers in the way you want? Why or why not?

5. Do you find it difficult to think about God and others more than yourself when you experience suffering? Why or why not?

6. Think or talk about this truth for a while: If you are a Christian, the Almighty God of the universe hears and answers your every prayer!

For further meditation, read these verses:

1. Philippians 2:17

2. 2 Timothy 4:6