You can find more about my weekly Bible readings HERE.
This week I am focusing on Psalm 13 (Monday, July 6 – Sunday July 12)

1. If all scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness (2 Timothy 3:16-17), then how is THIS scripture teaching me? rebuking me? correcting me? training me?

Teach: explaining the way things are, what is true about God, me, life, reality, sin, God’s will, the world, etc!
Rebuke: point out where I am falling short, messing up, going against God’s will, sinning!
Correct: challenge and inspire to change, show me what I should do, what steps I should take!
Train: encourage and support me with strength/wisdom to follow through, to make changes, to obey!

I have not heard what the Lord is saying to me in this Psalm if I cannot answer these questions: how is the Lord teaching me? rebuking me? correcting me? training me?

2. Psalm 13, For the director of music. A psalm of David.

¹ How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?
    How long will you hide your face from me?
² How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
    and day after day have sorrow in my heart?
    How long will my enemy triumph over me?

³ Look on me and answer, Lord my God.
    Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death,
⁴ and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,”
    and my foes will rejoice when I fall.

⁵ But I trust in your unfailing love;
    my heart rejoices in your salvation.
⁶ I will sing the Lord’s praise,
    for he has been good to me.

3. I see Jesus in this Psalm in two ways. First in David’s need for a Savior. Life in this world is overwhelming and hopeless, unless the Lord steps in to help. Unless He helps me, I will also ‘sleep in death’. Death is the final destiny for us all, unless He gives light to our eyes. Our enemy will defeat us, unless He answers our need. Jesus is the ultimate answer to our deep and ultimate need.

4. Second, I see how Jesus joins us in our misery to lead us to victory. He becomes one with humanity in the curse. Jesus lived this Psalm, wrestling with His thoughts, sorrow in His heart, attacked by the Enemy, and defeated in death. He also cried out to God in desperation, ‘My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me’. He clings to the goodness of God, waits for God to save Him, and sings His praises right to the every end. And He is given light to His eyes AFTER He sleeps in death. And in the end He triumphs over His enemy. As this Psalm ends with hope, so Jesus leads us from despair to hope.

5. What I love about this Psalm is that it expresses both the heartache and the hope. It allows me to express what I am struggling with without feeling guilty. I can definitely relate to the ‘wrestling with my thoughts’. And my favorite word in this is BUT. It redirects the focus away from the heartache to the hope beyond. We can be honest with God about our struggles… BUT  our struggles are not the last word. Unfailing love, salvation, goodness – in other words, Jesus – these are the final word.

6. I feel a gentle rebuke in how I don’t always end my sentences on the positive side of the BUT. Too often I spend more time dwelling on the heartache, and not expressing the hope. If my heart is like an old-fashioned scale, with one side being the heartache and the other side being the hope, which side do I add more weight to? If I put more thought into the negative side, is it any wonder that my life and attitude tips towards the negative? Through this Psalm the Lord is encouraging me to spend more time on the right side of my BUT – on His love, His goodness, His salvation. “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” (2 Corinthians 4:18)

7. I sense another general rebuke for the church (myself included). Do we allow people to struggle, to express their doubts without challenging their lack of faith. People need to express their struggle honestly, after all there is evil in the world. Don’t just celebrate the happy believers, honour the struggling believers. Don’t make people feel guilty when they go through times when God feels distant. Don’t look at them as weaker, lesser believers. Actually, I feel they are being more honest than many of the ‘happy face’ Christians. If even Jesus struggled, why can’t we?

8. God inspires David to be honest. This psalm is “God-breathed”, and David is inspired to say “will you forget me forever”? God is not opposed to our honestly expressing our fears, our struggles, our doubts, our despair. “For he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.” (Psalm 103:14) God wants us to come to Him “in spirit and in truth”, that is inwardly real and honest, just as we are. When we pretend to be good, we are being fake. God sees through our fakeness. When we are honest, then He can lead us through honesty to hope, to where only He can lead us. We can’t fake our way into hope. He inspires us to come just as we are, so He can help us become what He made us to be.

9. Lord, I sense You inspiring me to be honest with You too. Honestly, I struggle with living out my faith. I believe, or want to believe, Your victory over sin, death and hell. But personally, practically, I struggle to experience it through each day. I have times of doubt, I have many times of distraction, I am susceptible to discouragement. My greatest struggle is with the thoughts I wrestle with. My life in this world is relatively easy compared to what others around the world experience. And yet the battle for my mind is ongoing, and real, and difficult. “How long must I wrestle with my thoughts?”  I want to know Your peace on the inside, a peace that is not tied to my circumstances. A peace that knows that it is well with my soul. Not just know it with my mind, but know it in my being, experientially.

10. I am convinced that the key to knowing this peace is what follows the BUT (v.5). If I get stuck in the honesty part (vv.1-4), and don’t move beyond to also expressing the hope part, I will not find the peace that only God can give me. God not only inspires me to be honest, He inspires me to be hopeful. To say out loud, “but I trust in Your unfailing love, my heart rejoices in Your salvation, I will sing the Lord’s praise for He has been good to me.”

11. Based on 2 Timothy 3:16-17, I sense the Lord teaching me to be honest and hopeful. I sense the Lord gently rebuking me for not bringing my struggles to Him in prayer, and for getting stuck in my struggles, not moving beyond towards hope. I sense the Lord correcting me through David’s example to start expressing my hope clearly as well. I sense the Lord training me to take time every day to name my struggles AND my hope, making sure that my prayers end with hope and not defeat. The Lord is teaching and training me to pray with honesty AND hope. So that is what I am going to do. To be honest in my prayers, and to put into words my hope in Him, whether I feel it or not.

12. Today the Lord used the words “I will sing the Lord’s praise, for he has been good to me” to change the direction of my thoughts. I was wrestling with some negative thoughts relating to a specific situation, and I sensed the Lord urging me to review all the ways He has been good to me. I was alone at the time, so I started to list specific ways that He has been good to me. The list ended up being long. My thoughts started to shift from ‘what ifs’ and other worse case scenarios to ‘thank Yous’ and how He has worked in other difficult situations. I sensed Him saying to me, don’t worry about this situation, I’ve got you covered! And sure enough, something that I feared and worried about turned into a very positive encouragement through a good friend. I now hear Him gently reminding me, I was dwelling on the wrong side of the ‘BUT’.

13. As I reread this psalm this morning, it struck me that I am not in the same place as David. I am not feeling forgotten. I am not feeling on the verge of death. Though I have had some dark times, seasons of gloom or defeat, I don’t think I have ever been this low. I do know people who have been here, and a few who took steps to end their lives. I am not one to judge, and I am confident that people in these dark places also receive God’s mercy and grace, just like I do. I need to pray for them, not criticize or moralize. If they can’t get to the other side of ‘BUT’, then I will pray it for them. Lord, please give light to their eyes, so they do not sleep in death.

14. As I was reflecting, the words of 2 Corinthians 1 came to mind.

8 We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about the troubles we experienced in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. 9 Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. 10 He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us again. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us, 11 as you help us by your prayers. Then many will give thanks on our behalf for the gracious favor granted us in answer to the prayers of many. (2 Corinthians 1:8-11)

Despairing of life itself, feeling the sentence of death, nothing left but the hope that God would raise them up again… somehow, someday. But notice that they were helped through this “in answer to the prayers of many”.  We cannot heal or help people battling depression or darkness or despair, but we can pray for them. We can hang on for them, when they cannot hang on for themselves. We can stay by their side, be with them in their darkness so that at least they do not feel alone.

15. One more thought for today. The Lord is focusing my attention on the words “wrestle with my thoughts”. I know personally what it is to battle negative thoughts. The battle for the mind – or mental warfare – is something everyone faces in one way or another. Mental health issues come in a multitude of shapes and sizes, but there are common denominators.

• To some extent there are physical contributors (chemicals, diet, sleep issues, other physical health concerns, etc.).
• To some extent there are social contributors (life circumstances, family, social context, trauma, abuse, etc.).
• To some extent there are volitional contributors (things we have done, or are doing, choices, behaviours, habits developed over time, etc.).
• To some extent there are mental contributors (ways that we think, ideas that we have, what we believe or refuse to believe, lies that have take root in our minds, negative thought patterns, etc).
• To some extent there are spiritual contributors (sin in general separates us from God, but also how sin messes up our whole life physically, socially, morally, mentally, behaviourally; and don’t forget our spiritual enemy who is always stirring the pot, looking for a way to bring us down).

How these contributors mix together is unique in every person, there is no simple answer (pray, medicate, make better choices, stop it!etc.). It is so messy and complicated. We really need God’s help, along with every other support (medication, therapy, support, prayer, positive thinking). We will not overcome all our struggles and issues in this life, but salvation and victory are guaranteed in Christ… some day. “I believe in the resurrection of the dead!” Through it all, my main hope is that I belong to God. I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation.

16. This reminds me of the Bob Newhart therapy model, which many Christians seem to imitate. How often don’t we look at those who struggle, question, despair, etc., and tell them to STOP IT!!! If only it were that easy…

17. Lord, thank You for teaching me to open my heart honestly to You. And thank You for reminding me to end all of my honest prayers with hope. All of my prayers are now including the word BUT, finishing every sentence on the upbeat. Thank You for Thursday, for leading me through that time of wrestling, and showing me in a very real, personal way, that You were with me. I have hope. My week is ending in the same way as this Psalm: But I trust in Your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in Your salvation. I will sing Your praise, for You have been good to me.