Moaning because of my Lord

When I remember God, then I am disturbed;
When I sigh, then my spirit grows faint. Selah (Psalm 77:3 NAS95)

In recent years, I have come to appreciate the book of Psalms a lot more in my walk with the Lord of glory. Not that I was ever indifferent to the Psalms, on the contrary, even in my early years as a believer, the Psalms were a source of comfort, revelation, prophesy and study to me. However, lately I have been reliving the Psalms, as it were. This is what I mean: in earlier days I’d look at the Psalms from the point of view that these were written in response to what David and the other psalmists endured in their lives and also as prophecies related to the Messiah and His kingdom, but now the Psalms have taken a more active role in my own personal, spiritual life. It feels like these spiritual songs have become alive in me, like I am reliving them, like I am one of the psalmists or even my Lord Himself.

“My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?” (Psalm 22:1 NAS95). Yep, I have come to experience that feeling of abandonment from God that my Lord underwent while suffering for sins, my sins. “You have removed lover and friend far from me. My acquaintances are in darkness” (Psalm 88:18 NAS95)- yes, this also has been my experience in recent days when my Heavenly Father has deprived me of the love and companionship of friends, family and even of my wife. “O my God, I cry by day, but You do not answer;
And by night, but I have no rest” (Psalm 22:2 NAS95): I know what it is to seek the face of God, day and night, and find neither answers to my problems nor rest for my weary and afflicted soul.

Psalm 77 is a very intense and personal Psalm. Asaph, the writer, must have been going through a lot when he penned verse 3. The following is the crisis and controversy of this Psalm: the God of heaven commands all mankind to seek Him while there’s time (Isaiah 55:6), and if we seek Him with all our hearts, we will find Him, He says in Jeremiah 29:13. Moreover, the same God of heaven promises to be a refuge and a help to those who trust in Him and in His Son in times of trouble (Psalm 46:1) and at all times. How is it then that Asaph was disturbed and sighed when he remembered God as verse 3 of Psalm 77 indicates? The Hebrew word for disturbed is hāmâ, which means to growl, to cry aloud, to be disquieted, to rage, to mourn. It is a very profound experience the psalmist lived in his relation to God. The hardest part of this song, which is what Asaph was enduring, is the seeming indifference, inaction and coldness of the God of his salvation in respect to his suffering. This is what I am living right now. I feel just like Asaph felt. My soul refuses to be comforted (verse 2); “I am so troubled that I cannot speak” (verse 4).

My soul meditates, and my heart asks:

” Will the Lord reject forever?
And will He never be favorable again?

Has His lovingkindness ceased forever?
Has His promise come to an end forever?

Has God forgotten to be gracious,
Or has He in anger withdrawn His compassion? Selah” (Psalm 77:7-9 NAS95)

My answer to all these questions is a big and unequivocal NO. I join my voice and hope with the apostle Paul when he stated: “I say then, God has not rejected His people, has He? May it never be!” (Romans 11:1 NAS95). Amen.