Recounting The Good, Enduring The Bad (Psalm 13)

How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever?

How long will you hide your face from me?

How long must I take counsel in my soul

and have sorrow in my heart all the day?

How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?

Consider and answer me, O LORD my God;

light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death,

lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed over him,”

lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken.

But I have trusted in your steadfast love;

my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.

I will sing to the LORD,

because he has dealt bountifully with me.

[Psalm 13, ESV]

For some reason, Psalm 13 has been on my heart for the past few days. It is quite a short Psalm, but it means a lot to me, and I hope that, by the end of this essay, it means a lot to you too. 

We do not know the context of Psalm 13, but we know about a lot of David’s life. Before I began writing this essay, I prayed, read about the psalm, and took some time to ponder its meaning. While the exact situation that caused David to feel like he was helpless is not known, there are some theories. The theory that makes the most sense to me is that Psalm 13 was written when King Saul was trying to kill David. While David’s life had its fair share of ups and downs, I cannot think of something more frightening than knowing that the king is trying to kill you, and he is using everything at his disposal in order to find you. Saul’s plans to kill David become known in 1 Samuel 19, but there is nothing specific that we must read about in order to understand the meaning of Psalm 13. I like to imagine that Psalm 13 is about King Saul trying to kill David, but only because it helps me understand the way David must have felt as he wrote Psalm 13. Perhaps the aforementioned theory about the circumstances surrounding Psalm 13 is correct, or perhaps it is not. The meaning of Psalm 13 is self-contained, meaning that we do not need to understand what took place before it was written, we just need to understand the meaning of Psalm 13, itself.

Psalm 13 consists of three parts. David begins by crying out to the Lord, asking Him, “How long, O LORD?”. David is dealing with something that has brought him to such a low place that, in the second part, he fears that his sorrow will kill him. The third part of Psalm 13 is the part that tells us how we should respond when we find ourselves in a situation that makes us feel as David felt in parts one and two.

How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever?

How long will you hide your face from me?

How long must I take counsel in my soul

and have sorrow in my heart all the day?

How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?

The first part of Psalm 13 consists of the first two verses, which tell us about the place David was in when he wrote this psalm. David has been enduring some form of hardship, and he has called out to God, but it seems as though God has not answered him. David makes his emotions clear, and his emotions are incredibly serious.

He asks God, “How long?”. David wants to know how long God will forget about him, how long God will hide His Face from David. We know that God does not forget about us, and we know that God is always with us, but sometimes it becomes very difficult to remember how much God loves us when we are dealing with so much pain. The devil knows very well how hard trials can be, and he will do whatever he can to make believers feel as if they have been forgotten by God, as if they are all alone, as if the whole world is out to get them. I am not saying that David was necessarily being attacked by the devil, but the way he describes his emotions remind me of the days where I felt like nobody cared about me, like God was not going to help me, and like I would never be free of the misery that I was experiencing at the time.

David asks God, “How long must I take counsel in my soul?”. The phrase, “take counsel in my soul” is not used (at least, not among the people I know), but its meaning is incredibly powerful. The NLT translates the phrase as “How long must I struggle with anguish in my soul”, the NIV translates it as, “How long must I wrestle with my thoughts”, and the NASB, “How long am I to feel anxious in my soul”. When David says that he takes counsel in his soul, he is telling God how his soul is being weighed down by anxiety, by negative thoughts, and by pain. David is not having a bad day, he is dealing with a sorrow that is in his heart day after day. How long, God? How long will I have to deal with the sorrow that has been on my soul, and weighing on my heart, for so long now?

David concludes verse 2 with a statement that might not sound as important as it really is. David is asking God, “How long will my enemies be able to walk all over me?” How long will those who have wronged David be allowed to get away with their actions, how long will they be able to escape responsibility, how long will they be able to raise themselves up by tearing David down? They have been “exalted” over David, meaning that his enemies had been in a higher position of authority or status than David. David has been dealing with sorrow in his soul and in his heart, and he has seen his enemies being exalted above himself. He has endured this pain for a while, and he cries out, “How much longer, God?”

I have had my fair share of prayers that are very similar to Psalm 13. I have spent many days weeping, crying out to God, “When will I be free of this pain in my heart? When will You deliver me from this situation? What more do I have to do? Everybody else seems to be doing so well, yet I am still here, I am still suffering, and it feels like things will never change.”

While I could dismiss David’s emotions, while I could explain to him that God never forgets about us, what good would that do him? He is grieving, he is dealing with so much sorrow, and he feels like he is all alone. I have been in that position, and it is truly horrible. The pain that David describes is one that I would do anything to spare another person from experiencing, yet I do not know if I would have the strength to take it from them if I could. It is such a horrible feeling, and I have felt the way David felt. It is something that, even after God has delivered me, I feel my heart hurt at the memory of how I felt. I am no longer burdened by the pain that once held me down, but I remember the way I felt, and it still hurts my heart to imagine myself dealing with such pain ever again.

Consider and answer me, O LORD my God;

light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death,

lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed over him,”

lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken.

David explains his fears about the pain that he has been enduring. The second part of Psalm 13 is contained in verses 3 and 4, and David uses the two verses to expand upon what he wrote in the first two verses. David asks God to hear him, to answer his calls for mercy. He is begging God to deliver him from his sorrow, and he is begging God with all the strength that he has left. This type of prayer is one that I have made, and the words that David uses are similar to the words that I have used in my prayers. I have been at such a low point in my life that I have wept like a baby, without caring if people saw or heard me. I have sobbed, I have begged God, and I have asked Him to help me. I have told God how I felt so much pain in my heart that I thought it would kill me. I was not exaggerating, I was being totally honest. The way I felt was so hard on my heart, so hard on my mind, and so hard on my spirit, that I felt like it would drain whatever life was left in me. I begged God with every ounce of strength that I had left, and I meant every word that I prayed.

David begs God to restore the light to his eyes, so that he does not die. The Bible often uses euphemisms, and death is often referred to as a form of sleep. What purpose the euphemism may have served is thrown out with the words, “of death” that follow it. David is not in the position to speak with elegant phrases and poetic language, he is crying out to the Lord. David feels as if he could die from the sorrow he felt, and the way he called out to God demonstrates just how much sorrow David felt.

David asks God to give him strength, so that his enemies do not think that they have defeated him, and so that his enemies do not rejoice at his suffering. David’s mind must have been filled with thoughts of those who had persecuted him being overjoyed at the way David was suffering. David must have thought about the people who had caused him so much pain, and he must have imagined the way they might be encouraged at the news that David had died of the sorrow that they had caused him.

I have felt this way about people in my life. I have felt like I had been betrayed, like the people I trusted and loved the most had turned their backs on me, like they were celebrating as I was suffering. I imagined those people being happy and carefree, while I was suffering, while I was begging God to help me survive each day, and while I could not look at the next day without being overcome with sorrow at the thought of what might happen by then.

As I continued to pray, as I continued to ask God for help, I began to feel my heart being strengthened. I realized that, while it may have seemed like everybody had left me behind, like they were so much happier without me, like they could not care less about me, there was far more to my situation than I had known. God spoke to my heart, He comforted me, and He gave me little bits of information that encouraged me. God spoke to my heart about what He had planned for me, and He also told me things that really brought comfort to my heart. There is nothing more encouraging than hearing God speak to my heart and telling me that He is working, and that He is fighting on my behalf. There is nothing more beneficial to the soul than being able to forgive those who have caused such pain. God gave me the ability to know that there was more to things than what I could see and understand, that God was working, that He was still working, and that He will use my suffering to do something better than I could ever imagine.

But I have trusted in your steadfast love;

my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.

I will sing to the LORD,

because he has dealt bountifully with me.

David concludes Psalm 13 with something that encourages him. David describes how, when his soul was grieved to the point of death, he was strengthened when he recounted the good things that God had done, when he remembered God’s promises, and when He remembered God’s faithfulness. God always keeps His word, He loves us unconditionally, and He will deliver us from suffering when we trust in Him. When we seek God’s will, when we ask Him to lead us, and when we surrender ourselves to Him, He will deliver us. He might not deliver us immediately, but from the moment that we commit ourselves to God’s plan, we can rejoice in the knowledge that every moment of suffering will be used for our good.

The final two verses of Psalm 13 have been on my heart, and they have been repeated in my mind for a few days now. The phrase, “He has dealt bountifully with me” has made its way into my personal journal, and that phrase has found its way into my heart. At the time of writing this essay, I am watching God work powerfully in my life. I have seen God take my little ministry and grow it by a lot. I have seen more people reading what I have written, completing the plans that I have published, and telling me about how they have been enjoying them. Everything I do, I do for the Lord. There is nothing more encouraging than waking up to an email, a text message, or some other form of correspondence, telling me about how I wrote something that impacted them in a positive way. I do not write about the blessings that God has given to me because I am proud, I write about them because whenever I look at those blessings, I feel my soul being strengthened.

 There are things that I have prayed about for a long time, many of them have come to pass, but many have not. At least, they have not come to pass yet. It is easy to become discouraged about what has not happened when we forget what God has already done. We lose our hope for the future as we lose our memory of the past. The Lord has dealt bountifully with me, despite how I spent years disobeying Him, despite my flaws, despite my emotions, and despite my sin. No matter what, God is quick to forgive, quick to show mercy, and slow to anger. He will always use things for our good, as long as we love Him and seek His will for our lives, and I have seen Him do just that with my life. Every moment of my suffering has been used for good, and I will recount the good things that God has done, so that I do not become overwhelmed by the things that have not happened yet. God is good, and God does good.