IBS Application for Psalms 77

“I cry aloud to God, aloud to God, and He will hear me. In the day of my trouble I seek the Lord; in the night my hand is stretched out without wearying; my soul refuses to be comforted. When I remember God, I moan; when I meditate, my spirit faints. Selah You hold my eyelids open; I am so troubled that I cannot speak. I consider the days of old, the years long ago. I said, "Let me remember my song in the night; let me meditate in my heart." Then my spirit made a diligent search: "Will the Lord spurn forever, and never again be favorable? Has His steadfast love forever ceased? Are His promises at an end for all time? Has God forgotten to be gracious? Has He in anger shut up his compassion?" Selah Then I said, "I will appeal to this, to the years of the right hand of the Most High." I will remember the deeds of the Lord; yes, I will remember Your wonders of old. I will ponder all Your work, and meditate on Your mighty deeds. Your way, O God, is holy. What god is great like our God? You are the God who works wonders; You have made known Your might among the peoples. You with Your arm redeemed your people, the children of Jacob and Joseph. Selah When the waters saw You, O God, when the waters saw you, they were afraid; indeed, the deep trembled. The clouds poured out water; the skies gave forth thunder; Your arrows flashed on every side. The crash of Your thunder was in the whirlwind; Your lightnings lighted up the world; the earth trembled and shook. Your way was through the sea, Your path through the great waters; yet Your footprints were unseen. You led Your people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron.”

I know that it’s perhaps a bit out of the ordinary to do a study based on an entire 20-verse Psalm, but I need to be reminded of this Psalm. I’ve not been doing very well this week. I read this Psalm a couple of weeks ago, and I remembered that I was broken and comforted in reading it the first time. I figured it would be good to reflect upon this one again, in an attempt to be put into the correct state of mind again by God.

I find a lot that I can relate to in the first 4 verses. There’s a lot of pain there, pain and anguish enough to keep someone awake at night, even in trying to seek the Lord in the midst of this kind of pain. I know what it’s like to feel so without rest that even in trying to look to God it feels like running up a mountain that has no top. To not have the right words to express the pain. It can seem like there is no rest when “days of trouble” come upon us, and that seeking God won’t help. But it’s still the right thing to do in times like this. That’s why Asaph starts this Psalm the way that he does: “I cry aloud to God, aloud to God, and He will hear me. In the day of my trouble I seek the Lord.” The key to getting out of despair is to cry to God, for He is ever faithful to hear us. Seeking Him is the first step to deliverance from trouble.

Asaph then goes on to try to remember the way things used to be before the trouble came, and even the times when there was trouble and God came to deliver him and to deliver his ancestors from trouble. But before doing this, he says that his spirit made a “diligent search” of what was in his heart. He asked himself a number of questions that I have asked myself at times like this: “Will the Lord spurn forever, and never again be favorable? Has His steadfast love forever ceased? Are His promises at an end for all time? Has God forgotten to be gracious? Has He in anger shut up his compassion?” I remember reading this for the first time two weeks ago and breaking down in tears as I read these questions. I had at that point been asking myself these very same questions, and had been answering them wrongly in my heart up to that point, with doubt and despair. But in reading this in the words of Asaph, and being moved by the Holy Spirit, I couldn’t help but be repentant, and feel compelled to answer each of these questions appropriately, and say “no” to every single question. The next step to seeking God and to be delivered, it seems, is to take inventory of whatever lies you’ve ended up believing about God, and offer those doubts to Him in repentance and in brokenness.

Instead of continuing to entertain these lies, Asaph goes on to look back on the years that God has spent being faithful to him and to Israel. He takes note of how there is no one else like God, and that by His hand He delivered and redeemed His people from evil, working wonders before their sight. Asaph notes the great miracles that God is able to work in the world, yet without ever being seen in person. This last thing was something that I found to be particularly important to remember in this entire process, because of how often it seems like God seems to be absent from that which we suffer, and even in being delivered from that suffering. What is important to look for is the work that God does in delivering, because as Asaph says, “Your way was through the sea, Your path through the great waters; yet Your footprints were unseen.” We don’t see where God intends to take us all the time, or if we do, we often aren’t shown how we’ll get there. So in following Him, it can feel like we’re trying to follow the wind. But we can trust that He’ll get us there, because He has always proven to be faithful to us individually in the past, and we can see this by how far He has taken us along the path, and by examining the means by which He got us to where we are. But today, we also know what God’s character is like by His Son, Jesus. In looking to Him, we can perhaps see a bit more beyond the supposedly invisible afire of God, and know that just as Jesus was present in the lives of those whom He called, we can be comforted by knowing that He is also present in our lives, because He has called us.

He ends by making an observation about how God brought Israel out of Egypt using Moses and Aaron, as a shepherd leads a flock to safety. As a shepherd cares for his flock, and is willing to fight with his life to protect them out of love, so too does God fight to protect us. As we have seen in the numerous comparisons God makes between Himself and a shepherd, we can take comfort in this fact. He will stop at nothing to protect us and to deliver us unto safety and still waters.

In reexamining this Psalm, I have indeed been comforted. And I can continue to be comforted by taking the same route Asaph took to finding rest and comfort from the Lord. My application for this moment, and for every moment of trouble to come in the near future, will be to follow Asaph’s example for seeking the Lord in the day of trouble. I will cry out to Him about my trouble, allow the Spirit to take stock of my doubts, offer them up to Him in brokenness, remember how God has worked in my life and he lives of those who have come before me, pray to know through Jesus that He is present in my life in this time and every time to come, and to know Him as my shepherd, who is taking me into His promises, and into safety and comfort.