◄ What Does Psalm 13:2 Mean? ►

How long shall I take counsel in my soul, Having sorrow in my heart all the day? How long will my enemy be exalted over me?

Psalm 13:2(NASB)

Verse of the Day

This lament of David is a cry of the heart from someone who feels that he is alone and forsaken; isolated, forgotten, and cut off from the favour of the Lord. David's soul is crying out in bitter anguish of mind and inner confusion of the soul because the Lord seems to have forgotten all about him and has apparently hidden His face from His servant.

David could not understand why the Lord was delaying the help he desperately needed, and so his heart was grieving and his soul cried out in bitterness and distress: "How long O Lord?" David felt that the enemy was triumphing over him while the Lord seemed to have distanced Himself far away from His faithful servant, and so he challenged the Lord with multiple questions: "How long O LORD, will You forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart all the day? How long will my enemy be exalted over me?"

David wanted to know how long the bitter trial and manifold difficulties that were flooding into his life would continue, before the Lord would step in to right the wrongs and comfort His servant. And in our day of distress and difficulties, we too often find ourselves in David's position, calling out in desperation to the Lord as we become increasingly submerged by the struggles and sorrows of our day. And as we cry out to an iron-clad heaven, we find ourselves wrestling inwardly with the same rhetorical questions that burdened David's heart and flowed from his pen, three thousand years ago.

How often we too feel that God has forgotten us and that like David we seem to have been cut off from the favour of the Lord. How often we experience deep depression, anguish of soul, and bitter heartache as the enemies of our soul seem to be attacking us from every side, and we discover ourselves to be increasingly overwhelmed by all that is coming on the earth today.

But David is a man after God's own heart, and although that does not preclude him from having to go through the inevitable trials and tribulations of life, his confidence stands firm in the goodness of the Lord and his bitter pleas for help come from a man who trusts in God's loving-kindness and rejoices in the joy of his salvation.

It was not long before the bitter lament of David turned into a hymn of praise when he remembered the many precious promises of the Lord, for he knew that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us in the days to come. The same is no less true today. Indeed, the difficulties and dangers that we face in life today should be considered as momentary, light affliction, which are producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond what we could ask or think.

My Prayer

Heavenly Father, thank You for the example of David who despite the many problems, pressures, disappointments, and pain that he was called upon to suffer, trusted in Your never-failing promises and kept in his remembrance Your never-ending faithfulness. Help me to follow his example when life’s pressures bear down on me, and keep me under the shadow of Your goodness and grace. This I ask in Jesus' name, AMEN.