Psalm 77:1, 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.
In this psalm, the author is crying out to God. He feels abandoned by the Lord. He continues in verses 7 through 9,
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.
Do you ever feel like God has forgotten about you? Like he's abandoned you? Like he doesn't know that you're even there anymore—or that he does know you're there, and he simply doesn't care?
I recently had someone ask me if it’s okay to doubt. To have doubts in your faith. To question the Bible—to even question the character of God. And the response I gave is basically how I always answer those questions: look at the Psalms. Look at how the psalmists speak to and about God. They had doubts. They had questions. They had uncertainties.
But they knew where to go with their uncertainties. They went to the Lord.
Psalm 77:10, Then I said, I will appeal to this, to the years of the right hand of the Most High.
The psalmist is going to go to God and he's going to appeal to the works of God across the years: across the decades of his own life and the centuries of his people’s existence.
Is this where you go with your doubts? Do you go interior and ruminate, turning the doubts around in your head over and over and over again? Or do you fix your gaze elsewhere? Friends, the only way doubts resolve is for you to get outside your own head. You must fix your gaze outward—upon God and upon His works.
Psalm 77:11, 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.
The psalmist resolves to think about that which is not inside his own head. He is going to remember the things that God has done. Remember his works from of old and ponder all his works.
Do you ponder God’s work—his mighty deeds—in creation? Do you, like David in Psalm 8, look up at the sky and wonder, “when I look at the heavens, the work of your fingers, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?” Do you look at the butterfly and consider the God who designed that marvelous creature cares about me?
I was just recently on a hiking trip in the Black Hills of South Dakota, and some of the scenery there is simply staggering. I was walking around and thinking—the God who fashioned and formed this magnificent and grandiose landscape is the same God who considers the ant. Whole feeds the fieldmouse. And who cares for me.
And what about the good things that God has done in your life? The blessings he has poured your way? Have you considered those, my friend?
Think of the words of the old hymn, “Count Your Blessings”, by Johnson Oatman:
When upon life's billows you are tempest-tossed, when you are discouraged, thinking all is lost, count your many blessings, name them one by one, and it will surprise you what the Lord has done.
Have you ever sat and counted God’s blessings when you face doubts?
And what about considering the works of the Lord from of old? Do you remember his wonders? Do you consider his works in the book of Exodus: leading the people out of bondage and slavery in Egypt and into the promised land? Do you remember his deliverance of the people of Israel by the hand of a shepherd boy with a sling and a stone? Do you remember the work of Christ on the cross for you?
Psalm 77:13 continues,
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
He goes on to recount the way that God delivered his people from Egypt.
Is it okay to have doubts? Of course it is. But do not linger in your doubts, nor should you wallow in them. Too many today glory in doubt as if it were some sort of a badge of honor. Doubt is a reality of our human weakness, frailty, and lack of sight. God does not hold these things against us—he remembers our frame, he knows that we are dust (Psalm 103:14). But he does expect us to do something with those doubts. And that something is to bring them to him.
The way the psalmist regains his spiritual footing is to reestablished in his confidence in God: to remember—to meditate—on who God is and what he has done.
May we go and do likewise.
