Psalm 40Sample

The Psalmist-poets ask the same questions we ask, and they cry out in the same ways we cry out, desperately seeking relief and help. The cries of the Psalmists are guttural, honest, real. “Poets use words to drag us into the depth of reality itself.” 1 Aren’t we all dying to be a little more real and to be around people who are honest in the “depth of reality”? Psalm 40 serves us with an example of how to cry out in the midst of our deepest pain and questions. But, it is also a call to remember God’s faithfulness.

So how do we reconcile His love and trustworthiness to our fearful, sometimes arrogant ways of thinking, living, and feeling? We tell the truth.

Can you imagine singing Psalm 13:1 in church? “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?” It’s honest though, right? Raw, real, recognizable? U2 singer Bono puts it bluntly when he says, “Why I’m suspicious of Christians is because of this lack of realism.”2 God is not afraid of our honesty.

God allows honest and vulnerable prayers and songs in a spirit of humility. He even shows us examples of saints of old addressing Him with accounts of their honest pain and confusion because of their limited human understanding.

The beauty of truth telling with each other and before God is that it clears the way for us to come out of hiding and into the light, where we see and acknowledge our pain and questions and confusion. When we do this, when we let the truth out, we are better able to ask God to help us heal. When we trust Him with our pain, we grow to know Him more as a loving Father who draws near to the brokenhearted, sits with us in our hurt and confusion, and leads us to gospel-anchored hope, joy, peace, and purpose. When we do this, when we let the truth out, we are better able to see the pain and questions and confusion of others and love them in it, not rushing their processes with God, just as God has been graciously patient with us in ours. To sing together with honest lyrics is to corporately sit with each other and agree that pain and praise are both threads that weave this tapestry of life.

1. Eugene H. Peterson, Answering God: The Psalms as Tools for Prayer (New York: Harper Collins, 1991), 11.

2. Fuller Studio, “Bono & Eugene Peterson on THE PSALMS,” (video), Available at https://fullerstudio.fuller.edu/bono-eugene-peterson-psalms/