How long O Lord

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

But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation.
I will sing to the Lord, for he has been good to me. Psalm 13: 1 -2 and 5 – 6

It is an unfortunate fact of Christian life that sometimes things go wrong and in some cases very badly wrong. In the last 24 hours I have spoken to people whose lives have literally fallen apart leaving them feeling that God has forgotten them and does not care about them.

Nothing of course is farther from the truth but that is certainly how it looks and feels and David must have felt exactly the same in order to write this psalm. So often our first thought in these awful circumstances is either ‘why me?’ or ‘what have I done wrong?’ There can also be an implication that God is punishing us for some misdemeanour.

Let me assure you, you have done nothing wrong and God does not punish us. All of our sin was punished on the cross when Jesus paid in full for our salvation. However we live in a fallen world, full of fallen people who do not necessarily do or say the right thing, egged on by a devil who wants to cause as much misery to as many people as possible. It is not personal. The devil is horrible to everyone.

What the devil wants more than anything else is to drive a wedge between you and God and fill your head full of lies about how much God does not care for you and has no interest in your life. He wants you to believe that the horrible things happening to you were orchestrated by God.

Dear friends, God only does good things. He does not send us nasty things to teach us lessons. He does not send sickness and cancer to help us grow in faith. He does not break up marriages because we have not been a good husband or wife. What God does do is promise never to leave you or forsake you. He promises to be your healer when sickness does strike. He promises to be your provider at all times of everything you could need (II Corinthians 9: 8).

Neither does he leave us in the lurch. How can our loving heavenly Father leave us at our most awful times? He can’t - he is there with us. The thing we have to do is find him in the midst of difficulties that are threatening to swamp us. We must do as David did: But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord, for he has been good to me.

Hard as it may seem, with the world around you collapsing, that is what will get you through. God and his unfailing love for you. I pray you find him and his love to strengthen you in your hour of need.