1 I waited patiently for the Lord; he inclined to me and heard my cry. 2 He drew me up from the pit of destruction, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure. 3 He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God. Many will see and fear, and put their trust in the Lord.
Psalms 40:1–3 ESV
Last year, I felt the Lord leading me to do a deep study into the Psalms. It was through that study that the Lord gave me a clearer understanding of Himself through a better understanding of the man He chose to write the words above. As odd as that may sound, I will explain how exactly the Lord did such a thing. If you were to look through David’s life beginning as a young boy in the books of Samuel and into his reign as king. You would see what we would call a “trainwreck”. You would see a young boy with the brightest of futures transition into a man with the darkest of sins. You would see a young boy who was known for his ability to play the harp and sling a stone, to a king who was known for having an affair with a woman and setting her husband up to be slaughtered in battle. However, despite how bright his future was or how dark his life had gotten, one thing remained steady in his life… His pursuit for God’s heart. Whether David was walking along the mountain top of life or through the valley of the shadow of death, he worshiped the Lord God while doing so.
This is why I say with confidence that David is the most relatable human being to have ever lived. David knows more of what it means to be a sinful man that has a relationship with a Holy God. We see it exemplified throughout Psalms of David’s back and forth battle with a pulsing inward despair that was brought because of his sin. Yet, even in those moments of suicidal-like groanings, David’s priority is not for his troubles to cease so that way he can feel better. Rather, it is for God to be worshiped, known, trusted, loved, and glorified. And is what we will be seeing more clearly here in Psalms 40.
Taking a step backwards, I want to examine David’s statement in verse 1… ” I waited patiently for the Lord;” How relatable is that portion alone?! Our entire lives lived by faith on this Earth involves waiting for the Lord– waiting for the Kingdom to come, waiting for His glory to finally be revealed, waiting for our bodies to be redeemed. The difficult part for us to comprehend is the “patiently” part. I believe many of us who are aware of our sin and its consequences, as David clearly was, run into phases where if we don’t feel that “drawing up” and delivering from our internal restlessness as soon as we ask for it, then presume God is not listening or He is needing time to cool off because we have made Him angry. Let me be clear, both the expectation for God’s immediate action and our presumption are woefully mistaken. There is a reason peculiar to God alone that God allows us to wrestle with our sin in our process of sanctification: His glory. Without knowing the dark miseries of the miry bogs and the pits of destruction, we would not know the bright joys of God’s glory!
Not only that, but in order to fully know God’s mercy, we first must fully know our sin. Notice that David does not specify how long that he was in the pit. He doesn’t say “I waited patiently for this many days for the Lord and then He drew me out.” Instead, he says “I waited patiently.” There is no defining marker of time when it comes to that of the Lord’s timetable. Often, to us it seems as if He is not working in our waiting. But in reality, God is working through our endurance just as He is in our deliverance. He uses our pains from the dark pits and the miry bogs as notes in the new songs of deliverance that The Composer lays on our hearts and conducts from our mouths! And He does so, not by calming the storm AROUND us, but by calming the storm WITHIN us. Our bodies may still waste away, our debts may grow, our sicknesses may worsen; but, brothers and sisters, when God delivers the soul from despair, the songs of His praise will most certainly be sung with great triumph!