Help! Love, MOM

Psalm 27: 9-14
9 Do not hide your face from me,
    do not turn your servant away in anger;
    you have been my helper.
Do not reject me or forsake me,
    God my Savior.

10 Though my father and mother forsake me,
    the Lord will receive me.

11 Teach me your way, Lord;
    lead me in a straight path
    because of my oppressors.

12 Do not turn me over to the desire of my foes,
    for false witnesses rise up against me,
    spouting malicious accusations.

13 I remain confident of this:
    I will see the goodness of the Lord
    in the land of the living.

14 Wait for the Lord;
    be strong and take heart
    and wait for the Lord.

Clearly, Psalm 27 doesn't end where it begins. 

While some scholars say that David wrote this psalm early in his life when he ran from Saul’s persecution. Other scholars point to the time later when David was king and he ran from his son Absalom’s coup as the backdrop for this writing.

Whatever the context, the psalm powerfully opens with bold declarations—light, salvation, an unshakeable heart even when surrounded by armies. Admirable, inspirational, unshakeable, fearless faith!

But by verse 7, the tone shifts. David now pleads with God.

“Hide not thy face far from me. Leave me not, neither forsake me.”

He names false witnesses, “breathing out cruelty” against him. The same man who declared fearlessness in verse 3 is now crying out in verse 9, terrified, it seems, that enemies might devour him and that God might turn away.

This isn’t a contradiction.

It is honesty. Authentic faith lived in real time rarely sings one song. As a modern take on an old hymn asserts, “And through it all, through it all; My eyes are on You.”

You probably already know, but may not have the language to admit that Christians can move between confidence and crisis, sometimes within the same breath.

Job knew this intimately. 

Battered by loss after loss after loss and mocked by the original “frenemies,” Job cries out to God “my friends scorn me… mine enemies sharpen their eyes upon me (Job 16:9-10). 

It appears that this great man of God felt stirred, shaken, set up as God’s target if you will (Job 16:12). Yet, even gasping under that weight, Job insisted to the hecklers amid their dismissive diatribes that his witness was in heaven, his record on high (Job 16:19-21). 

He kept appealing upward to God even as trouble continued to rain down on him through “friends”.

Notice that he wrestled with his friends and with God.

You may ask, what makes Job’s wrestling even possible? Good, biblical theology. 

Job doesn’t blame chance, or his friends for his circumstances, or even himself. 

Job names God as the Divine One who has “torn” at him in wrath, and that God is also described as “biting Him” (Job 16:7-9). 

That’s a hard thing to say about the God you’re also appealing to.

But it’s precisely because Job believes God authors all things—even this present calamity—that he keeps speaking, that is, Job keeps praying to God about the thing that God has allowed.

Dr. John Piper makes clear in his popular teaching series Ask Pastor John #2265:

“the Bible teaches that God is sovereign over every detail of the universe. Not a bird falls without his will (Matthew 10:29). “The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he wills” (Proverbs 21:1).

“The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord” (Proverbs 16:33). We’re supposed to say, according to James 4:15, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” Everything that happens is planned and governed by the sovereign will of God (Ephesians 1:11; Isaiah 46:10).”

If suffering were random, a byproduct of “the universe” there’d be no one to address.

If some other power were behind it, Job’s appeal would land in the wrong place. 

Job’s relationship with the reality of the sovereignty of Almighty God is strong and what makes the wrestling coherent.

Job knows that the only One who could have allowed this is also the only One who can answer it, vindicate it, redeem it and mercifully sustain Job’s life while slogging through it: Yahweh Himself.

For you the wrestling might likely look different:

Is it your employees who are making your bottom line and, therefore, your life really tough right now?

Is it your family?  Is it your online life? 

Or, has Father’s Day weekend been one of wrestling with the present or the past?

This is not doubt versus faith, but, rather faith doing its work through and in spite of doubt and fear.

Today’s version of false witnesses and casual cruelty often arrives through a screen.  However, just this morning I remembered a particular aspect of the relentless in-my-face belittling I suffered with my parents after having my daughter.

I waged a mostly lonely and desperate battle for years.

However, Psalm 27 offers a third way: bring that fear (upset, anger etc) into God’s presence rather than attempt to manage it alone. “Thy face, LORD, will I seek” (Psalm 27:8) isn’t said from strength—it’s said from great need to be in God’s presence and for rescue.

The psalm closes not with resolution but with instruction: “Wait on the LORD: be of good courage. Wait, I say, on the LORD (Psalm 27:14).”

My brother and my sister, stay in the faith: WAIT on the LORD. He will strengthen your heart.

Blessings,

Kimberly