When I was growing up, my family didn’t go to church. For awhile my parents sent me to Sunday School at a nominal mainline church, but even then I rarely attended the worship service. On the few occasions when I actually went to the service–and I only went a handful of times–I was struck by the superficiality of the whole thing. All the people were dressed up to look their best. Everyone pretended that things were going well, even though many of their lives were falling apart (as I learned later). It struck me, as an unbeliever at the time, that church was just one big show, where people tried to outdo each other with putting on a good appearance.
I’ve often spoken to people who think they need to be at their best before they can come into God’s presence. When you witness to people like this, they may truly believe that you’re telling them the truth, but they say things like “maybe someday. I’m just not ready yet. I need to get my life together first, then I’ll be able to start coming to church.” They understand that being in church involves coming into God’s presence, but they think they need to “get their act together” before they can turn to Him. They certainly can’t come to Him just as they are. It would be like going to church in my hometown without dressing up and putting on a good face for everyone.
But the truth is just the opposite. It’s when we’re at our worst–when we’re “in the depths”–that we’re most in need of God’s help. We always need His help, but when everything is going well we tend to be less aware of our need. We’re likely, when everything is going well, to think we can wait for a better time. But when we’re in the depths, when everything is falling apart and life seems to be at a standstill, we become painfully aware of our spiritual poverty and need. And at those times when we’re most aware of our neediness, we need to know that God hears us from the depths. We can cry out to Him when we’re overwhelmed with despair and know that He will hear us.
Thomas Merton tells of how he began praying for the first time: “The whole thing passed in a flash, but in that flash, instantly, I was overwhelmed with a sudden and profound insight into the misery and corruption of my own soul, and I was pierced deeply with a light that made me realize something of the condition I was in, and I was filled with horror at what I saw, and my whole being rose up in revolt against what was within me, and my soul desired escape and liberation and freedom from all this with an intensity and an urgency unlike anything I had ever known before. And now I think for the first time in my whole life I really began to pray–praying not with my lips and with my intellect and my imagination, but praying out of the very roots of my life and of my being, and praying to the God I had never known, to reach down towards me out of His darkness and to help me to get free of the thousand terrible things that held my will in their slavery” (The Seven Storey Mountain, p. 124).
We can cry out from the depths because God is merciful. The psalmist doesn’t give any details of how he ended up in his condition. He is crying out for mercy, and he’s acutely aware of his own sinfulness. It may be that he has committed a grievous sin–like David in his sin with Bathsheba–and is now crying out in repentance. But it could also be that he has been living a godly life without any major offenses, but that he is suffering physically or emotionally in some way. He may be crying out in repentance, or he may be in despair because of his afflictions. Suffering makes us more aware of our need for mercy. All our false confidence is wiped away, and we see more clearly how weak and fallible we are. The psalmist is aware of his spiritual poverty. His smugness has been overwhelmed by his experience in the depths. He doesn’t pray, “Lord, I thank you that I’m not like other people.” He prays “Lord, hear me.... If you, O Lord, kept a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand?”
When we reach that point, we need to know that God is merciful or we’ll be overwhelmed. During my brief time at Westminster Theological Seminary, I used to hear stories about John Murray, one of the early theology professors from that school. His academic standards were very high, and he expected a lot from his students. He had a glass eye, which I think had resulted from an automobile accident. Everyone said that if you went to John Murray asking for mercy because you hadn’t completed an assignment and thought you could see a gleam of mercy in his eye, you were sadly deceived. It was only the light shining on his glass eye. Mercy just wasn’t an option. He maintained very high standards in his own work, and he expected students to complete their assignments on time. And, from what I understand, students learned not to go to him asking for mercy. John Murray didn’t really need to be merciful in that setting. His strictness gave students an incentive to complete their work. But our condition as sinners is such that when we see ourselves as we are we’ll never come to God unless we know He is merciful. When we come to Him crying out from the depths, we know that He is merciful and that He will receive us.
The psalmist’s confidence doesn’t cause him to become flippant about sin. I’ve often heard people say that the message of free grace gives people an excuse to continue in sin, because they know God will forgive them anyway. This is the accusation that people in the first century leveled at the apostle Paul. He found himself answering this charge repeatedly: “It’s simply perverse to say, ‘If my lies serve to show off God’s truth all the more gloriously, why blame me? I’m doing God a favor.’ Some people are actually trying to put such words in our mouths, claiming that we go around saying, ‘The more evil we do, the more good God does, so let’s just do it!’ That’s pure slander, as I’m sure you’ll agree” (Romans 3:8, The Message).
The psalmist is confident of God’s mercy and forgiveness, but notice what he adds: “But with you there is forgiveness; therefore you are feared.” A genuine experience of God’s mercy and forgiveness has just the opposite result of what we’d expect. The genuine fear of the Lord, a sense of reverential awe and fear of offending Him, isn’t produced by legalism. Legalism, in fact, produces a more calculating attitude toward God. It doesn’t lead to holy living at all. But those who’ve experienced the free gift of God’s mercy, who’ve seen themselves as lost sinners with no hope apart from Christ, and have been assured of His mercy and acceptance–these are the ones who learn to fear the Lord. J.I. Packer, in Knowing God, said: “Those who suppose that the doctrine of God’s grace tends to encourage moral laxity... are simply showing that, in the most literal sense, they do not know what they are talking about” (p. 124). The psalmist’s experience of mercy doesn’t encourage him to sin. It drives him away from sin.
We can cry out from the depths, also, because we know God cares about us. The psalmist says, in verse 7: “with the Lord is unfailing love, and with him is full redemption.” He cares about us when we are in the depths, even if we are there through our own fault. We’re often harsh with one another. We say things like, “you got yourself into this mess; it’s your job to find a way out.” We can be especially judgmental towards people who get into financial trouble because they haven’t made wise decisions. But God doesn’t deal with us in this way. He lovingly comes to our rescue when we’ve gotten ourselves into trouble.
God has provided redemption because He loves us: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16, NLT). Or this, from Romans 5: “When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners.... But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners” (Romans 5:6, 8, NLT). God didn’t provide redemption because He made an abstract decision that this was the proper and benevolent thing to do. Have you ever been helped by people who did it coldly and distantly, out of a sense of doing “the right thing?” They may not like you very much, but they believe it’s the right, moral thing, to do. That kind of help feels demeaning and dehumanizing. God provided redemption because He loves us.
And because He’s gone this far in providing redemption, we can also be confident that He cares about us when we’re in the depths. Paul makes a similar argument in Romans 8. He points out in chapter 5, as we just read, that God sent Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. Then he goes on, in chapter 8: “Since God did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won’t God, who gave us Christ, also give us everything else?” (Romans 8:32, NLT). He’s arguing from the greater to the lesser. Since God has done this incredible thing in providing for our redemption, do we doubt that He will care for us now that we are His own adopted children?
When we’re in the depths, we can know that God cares about what is happening to us. It doesn’t matter how we got there. The thief on the cross was there by his own fault–he admitted that this was true–but he heard those comforting words from Jesus: “this day you will be with me in paradise.” God’s people fall into sin and do foolish things, and sometimes their foolish acts have irreversible consequences. David couldn’t undo the horrible murder of Uriah that he committed to cover up his adultery. A prodigal son who is suffering from AIDS because of his sinful lifestyle can’t undo the past. But he can cry to God from the depths and know that God loves him and has provided for his redemption. A recovering alcoholic who’s fallen off the wagon and gone on a binge can’t go back and change the past. But he can cry out to God from the depths and find that He is merciful and loving. When we reach these lowest points in our lives, we need to know that God cares about us, no matter how we got there.
And when we cry out to God from the depths, we can know that we are not alone in our experience. We’re part of God’s kingdom, and though we may feel like we’re all alone in our difficulties, the truth is that we are part of the body of Christ. We’re part of a body of people, many of whom have been in the depths and can testify, from experience, that God is faithful. The psalmist is not only concerned about himself. He begins by crying out to God from the depths, but at the end he exhorts his fellow pilgrims: “O Israel, put your hope in the Lord, for with the Lord is unfailing love, and with him is full redemption.” He’s experienced God’s faithfulness, and he now turns to help others who might be facing the same struggle. When we’re overwhelmed with difficulties, when we’re in the depths, we need to know that others have been through the same sorts of things and have found that God is merciful and faithful.
Elijah was one of the great prophets of the Old Testament. He rebuked Ahab, one of the most wicked kings of Israel, and he confronted 250 prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel. God did great things through Him, answering with fire to prove to the nation that He is the true God. But right after Elijah’s greatest moment, Jezebel, the wife of Ahab, threatened to kill him and he fled into the wilderness. While he was there, God said to him: “What are you doing here, Elijah?” And Elijah replied: “I have zealously served the Lord God Almighty. But the people of Israel have broken their covenant with you, torn down your altars, and killed every one of your prophets. I alone am left, and now they are trying to kill me, too.” He felt alone, isolated. Everyone had turned to idolatry, and he alone was left. And it’s true that he was the only one taking such a bold stand in public. But God said to him: “Yet I will preserve seven thousand others in Israel who have never bowed to Baal or kissed him!” (1 Kings 19:13-14, 18, NLT). He felt alone, but he wasn’t really the only one left. He was part of a bigger group than he realized.
Maybe you’ve had the experience of listening to someone sharing a testimony about a struggle, and you think, “I thought I was the only one who struggled with that.” Part of the problem with the church I went to as a child was the lack of openness and genuineness. People’s lives were falling apart, but they came to church on Sunday and pretended that everything was fine. We need to follow the example of the psalmist; he cried out from the depths, and then spoke encouraging words to his fellow-pilgrims, urging them to hope in the Lord.
Jesus, our great High Priest, cried out to God from the depths. When He began to pray in the garden of Gethsemane, he said to Peter, James and John: “My soul is crushed with grief to the point of death. Stay here and watch with me” (Matthew 26:38, NLT). He was overwhelmed with grief at the thought of what was coming, so He cried out to the Father repeatedly, asking Him to let the cup pass from Him. He knows what it is to cry out in grief. “This High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for he faced all of the same temptations we do, yet he did not sin. So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it” (Hebrews 4:15-16, NLT).
When we cry out to God from the depths, we can be confident that He hears us. He is merciful, and He cares about what’s happening to us. But that doesn’t mean He’ll do what we want or that He’ll act on our schedule. Jesus cried out to God, but then He went to the cross. Because God answers in ways we wouldn’t expect, and because He usually doesn’t work on our schedule, we need these words in verses 5&6: “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning.”
The problem is that when we’re in the depths it usually doesn’t feel like God is with us. We feel isolated and abandoned, and we often can’t even imagine how God’s deliverance is going to come about. In 1986, Annie and I moved to Philadelphia so I could begin my studies at Westminster Theological Seminary. After one semester, I dropped out, partly because of the hectic schedule I’d been keeping (I was working 4pm to midnight and taking classes during the day), and partly because I just didn’t fit at Westminster. We had also run out of money, and the seminary had very little financial aid to offer. On several levels, it just wasn’t working out. I found a job working evenings in a warehouse and applied to graduate school at Temple University and University of Pennsylvania. I was accepted into both programs, but at first it looked like I wouldn’t be getting any financial aid. So we gave up on the idea of graduate school.
At that point, in the spring of 1987, it looked like the Lord had led us to Philadelphia and abandoned us there. We had been part of a good church before we moved, but in Philadelphia we hadn’t been able to find a church where we fit in. We didn’t really know anyone, and we hated living in the city. As far as we could tell at the time, God was no longer with us. He was no longer leading and blessing us. We had moved to a place we didn’t like so that I could work in a warehouse on the 4 to midnight shift for a boss who resented the fact that I had more education than he did. But just a couple of weeks after that low point, I received a letter from Temple University saying that I had been granted a teaching assistantship, which would enable me to begin graduate school in the fall. The Lord was with us all that time, and He was doing things we weren’t aware of. It felt like He’d abandoned us, but He hadn’t abandoned us at all. His purposes were better than what we had planned for ourselves.
This is why we need to wait on the Lord. Very often we don’t understand what He’s doing. But we know Him. We know that with Him there is unfailing love. He cares about what is happening with us. When I was a very young Christian, someone said to me, “don’t forget in the darkness what God has shown you in the light.” We all go through times of darkness, times when nothing seems to make sense and we lose all realization of God’s comfort and presence. But what we know of Him is enough: “Oh Israel, wait and watch for God–with God’s arrival comes love, with God’s arrival comes generous redemption” (The Message). We may not understand what is happening, but we know God.
So what do we do when we find ourselves in the depths, when everything seems bleak and there’s no light to be seen at the end of the tunnel? We cry out to God from the depths, knowing that He is merciful. We may not feel His mercy, and we probably won’t feel like praying. We may not even be able to come up with any words to pray. It’s enough, at such times, to use the words of this psalm: “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord; O Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy.” Use them over and over, and then sit silently in God’s presence. He’s there, and He is at work. You just can’t perceive Him. So keep on calling out to Him, accepting by faith that He is there and that He hears you.
As you continue calling out to Him from the depths, wait on His time. He will be faithful to His Word: “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope.” The psalmist compares himself to a watchman, anxiously and expectantly waiting for the morning. I used to work as a security guard at Certain-Teed Corporation. We didn’t do any productive work for the company. By the time we got there, most of the employees had gone home. We just watched, and made rounds once an hour. I used most of the time to study, with the approval of those who had hired me. They didn’t really want me to do anything except be there and walk through the building several times a night. Often when we’re in the depths we feel like we need to do something to get ourselves out. But what God calls us to do is pray and wait. We can wait expectantly because we know He is at work and will fulfill His promises. Here’s how Eugene Peterson describes this waiting: “The psalmist’s and the Christian’s waiting and hoping is based on the conviction that God is actively involved in his creation and vigorously at work in redemption. Waiting does not mean doing nothing. It is not fatalistic resignation. It means going about our assigned tasks, confident that God will provide the meaning and the conclusions. It is not compelled to work away at keeping up appearances with a bogus spirituality. It is the opposite of desperate and panicky manipulations, of scurrying and worrying. And hoping is not dreaming. It is not spinning an illusion of fantasy to protect us from our boredom or our pain. It means a confident alert expectation that God will do what he said he will do” (A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, pp. 139-40).
When we’re in the depths, we cry out to God and we wait and hope in Him, confident that He will come to our rescue. We’d also do well to speak to ourselves, the way the psalmist speaks to Israel in verse 7. We often get into trouble by listening to ourselves. We go around saying, “things are really bad; I don’t see how they can possibly get worse. I just don’t know what to do about this situation. Things are really hopeless.” And, of course, the more we talk to ourselves in this way the worse we become. We need, at times like this, to take ourselves in hand and preach to ourselves, as the psalmist does in Psalm 42: “Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God” (Psalm 42:11). Instead of listening to ourselves complain, we remind ourselves of the truth. We speak to ourselves, and to one another, as the psalmist does: “O Israel, put your hope in the Lord, for with the Lord is unfailing love and with him is full redemption.” “O my soul, put your hope in the Lord, for with the Lord is unfailing love and with him is full redemption.”
Doing these things may not make us feel better at the moment. That’s not the point. We do these things with the assurance that God is truly at work, knowing that in His time He will come to our rescue and lift us out of the depths. We cry out to Him and then go about our duties, trusting Him to know when to intervene. And we look forward, with anticipation, to the day when we’ll look back and say, “He reached down from heaven and rescued me; he drew me out of deep waters.... He led me to a place of safety; he rescued me because he delights in me” (Psalm 18:16, 19, NLT).
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