Introduction
I don’t usually share my own private Bible studies, but Psalm 119: 57-64 and 73-80 really hit home for me, and I wanted to share what I gained from reading it closely because I know I’m not the only one in my immediate circle or even my extended circle on here going through an extended period of difficulty and in need of encouragement. Hopefully, this will be encouraging to others too.
The last three to three-and-a-half months have been particularly rough for me. I’ve been sick with everything under the sun, including a suspected case of the Delta variant of COVID, which made its rounds through my whole family. I’ve been fortunate if I’ve managed to go a week of feeling semi-healthy between bouts of colds/flus/COVID. It has really been a depressing and discouraging time, and as I’m writing this, I’m recovering from Omicron. While I haven’t been deathly ill with either case of COVID and this one is much more like a cross between flu and an obnoxious cold, I can definitely say that I’m not feeling like a happy camper right now with the symptoms! I’ve barely had time to recover from one blow to my health before I’m being hit with the next, and it has left me utterly exhausted and wrung out.
Not Exactly the Paragon of Faith
In all of this, I’ll admit I haven’t exactly been the paragon of faith. At first, it was easy to brush it off and just say “I’ll get better soon and then I’ll be fine”. But as weeks turned into months and every time I thought there was a light at the end of the tunnel I caught the next thing, that false hope quickly petered out, and I began to ask God why He would let me keep getting sick.
Why did He allow me to get ill when He knew that my boss begrudged me my sick time, the holidays were on us, and I couldn’t take any time off because my boss was off for the holidays? Why wouldn’t He answer my prayers for health? It didn’t seem like very much to ask; it still seems pretty small in the grand scheme of things.
Those questions then morphed into a deepening sense of defeat, bitterness, and despair. I have continually struggled with the question “Does God even care, because it sure doesn’t feel like it, and what difference does my health even make to His glory? If I’m sick, He can still be glorified, and if I’m healthy, again, He still gets His glory, so why would it matter to Him either way?” This isn’t the first time I’ve struggled with such questions. Seven years ago, when I was first diagnosed with IBS, I asked many of the same questions as the illness ravaged my physical health and left me with what was then a life-sentence of physical pain.
Satan didn’t even need to step in to tempt or draw me away; my own depression and choice not to make time in God’s word during this difficult time of late did all the work for him. I really don’t believe this has been an attack of the devil so much as it has been a test of my faith that I have been, regrettably, failing.
I’m not proud of where my thoughts have been, and if ever there was a starker example of why God tells His people not to forsake the gathering together of the saints regularly, I am it. I didn’t realize how big of a difference just being around other believers made or how much it encouraged me and bolstered my faith. For the last three months, I’ve made it to church maybe three or four times, if I was fortunate enough not to be sick on the weeks when I didn’t have to stay home to be available for work right after the service.
The first service I made it to in a month, I sat there and almost burst into tears when someone simply said that they’d been praying and that I wasn’t alone in the struggle because many others were dealing with the same thing. It was a much needed reminder that I did matter to people and that God wasn’t somehow singling me out or punishing me; in other words, other believers were the reality check I needed. But then I became ill again and missed more church, and the sense of despair returned as I kept catching things.
Looking at Psalm 119
As I felt the most recent illness hit on Saturday evening and Sunday morning, I felt like I should just give up because I’d been doing everything right to boost my immune system and stay healthy but was now sick again. I was coming down off the stress from my sister’s wedding, though I’m very happy for my sister and was glad that the wedding turned out beautifully for her happy day, and feeling wrung out. After that and dealing with work and personal struggles continually over the last three months, I was at my rope’s end and couldn’t take anymore.
So in desperation for some encouragement and light at the end of the tunnel, something my family was too exhausted themselves to offer anymore, I opened my Bible, which is something I certainly should’ve pushed myself to do sooner. I didn’t have a specific place I was reading, so I kind of just opened it (not a method I’d usually commend for Bible studies, but it works fine for reading if you’re not reading on a plan). I landed near the end of Psalm 119. This is the passage in Psalm 119 that I read:
“Thou art my portion, O Lord: I have said that I would keep thy words.
I intreated they favour with my whole heart: be merciful unto me according to thy word.
I thought on my ways, and turned my feet unto thy testimonies.
I made haste, and delayed not to keep thy commandments.
The bands of the wicked have robbed me: but I have not forgotten thy law.
At midnight I will rise to give thanks unto thee because of thy righteous judgments.
I am a companion of all them that fear thee, and of them that keep thy precepts.
The earth, O Lord, is full of thy mercy; teach me thy statutes.
Thy hands have made me and fashioned me; give me understanding, that I may learn thy commandments.
They that fear thee will be glad when they see me; because I have hoped in thy word.
I know, O Lord, that thy judgments are right, and that thou in faithfulness has afflicted me.
Let, I pray thee, thy merciful kindness be my comfort, according to thy word unto thy servant.
Let thy tender mercies come unto me, that I may live: for thy law is my delight.
Let the proud be ashamed; for they dealt perversely with me without a cause: but I will meditate in thy precepts.
Let those that fear thee turn unto me, and those that have known thy testimonies.
Let my heart be sound in thy statutes; that I be not ashamed.
Psalm 119:57-64, 73-80, KJV
Learning from Psalm 119
There are a few things I want to draw attention to in this portion of Psalm 119 as a comfort to all of us struggling with seasons of difficulty. First and foremost, notice what the author says he’s done: he said he would keep God’s words, he intreated God’s favor, he thought on his ways and turned his feet where needed, he made haste to obey God’s commands, he didn’t forget God’s law, he rose to thank God, he kept company with those that were godly, he had hope, and he asked God for more than relief from his temporary struggle.
But more important even than what he did are the reasons why and the ways in which he did these things. Consider that he didn’t just intreat God’s favour half-heartedly. He says he did so with his whole heart. What was the basis for his intreating? Not his emotions! Based on what we know from the rest of Psalm 119, it’s pretty clear that he had every reason to be depressed and wonder where God was. Other places in the Psalms, the author does ask God if He has forsaken him or His people. But here, he asks God for things with his whole heart and calls on God to fulfill His promises. Notice that he prays for God to “be merciful unto me according to thy word”, “let…thy merciful kindness be for my comfort, according to thy word unto thy servant”.
Notice then what he does in his own time of suffering. He does intreat God to be merciful, but he also looks at himself to be certain that he isn’t doing anything he shouldn’t be to warrant God’s loving correction, and he admits that God afflicts in faithfulness to him, not out of a desire to simply cause pain. So he determines to learn what it is he can learn out of the trial.
He trusts that God will fulfill His promises, both conditional and unconditional, and then he strives to do what has been required of him for those promises that are conditional to be fulfilled. In this portion of Psalm 119, he seeks to make sure nothing is in the way of God’s desire to bless him or of drawing close to his God. He says he “thought on” his paths and “turned [his] feet unto [God’s] testimonies”. He’s making sure he continues to head the right direction even in the midst of the suffering, and he is placing his hope only in God’s promises and God’s laws, not on a transient emotion of hope or defeat.
He also takes time to praise God for who He is, not just His promises and the comfort that he has asked for on the basis of those promises. He tells God the things he genuinely loves about God: “I will rise to give thanks unto thee because of thy righteous judgments”, “the earth, O Lord, is full of thy mercy”, “I know, O Lord, that thy judgments are right, and that thou in faithfulness hast afflicted me”, “thy law is my delight”.
Encouragement from Psalm 119
So what encouragement can those of us currently dealing with difficulty and trials–with health or otherwise–draw from this? Well, here’s what I personally found encouraging.
I am an individual who prizes reason and reality, and I have been that way for a very long time. Even on the best of days, I sometimes struggle when it comes to accepting and processing my own emotions because I tend to view them as a hindrance to dealing with things rationally, but I particularly struggle when I start to lose my grip on reality because stress or illness have been crumbling my emotional and mental energy for too long of a period. I have always said that reality is a cruel mistress, but I would rather have reality than the master of deception, who speaks kindly and then stabs you in the back.
But even as I prize reason and reality, the truth is that both can be really hard to swallow and can also be really easy to lose sight of in times of seemingly unending difficulty. That’s where I’ve been sitting the last three months, and it certainly didn’t help that I was either wallowing in it, giving up, or too sick to read my Bible while also being mostly unable to meet with believers I could’ve spoken to and found encouragement from.
What a difference it makes to have someone who loves you and God step in to be that reality check! But people can’t always be there, and I am so glad that I opened my Bible when I did because I needed a serious reality check to pull me out of the depths of depression, stress, and despair to remind me that this is temporary and that my hope isn’t in how I feel that day. My hope isn’t flimsy nor is it an irrational emotion; it is rational and reality, based in tangible promises that God has made to every believer. He has fulfilled them time and time and time again for the men and women who have chosen to place their whole heart on the line with those promises.
I haven’t been doing that, so as I was reading a few nights ago, I stopped and looked at the situation rationally. I did what the Psalmist said he did; I thought on my ways, and turned my feet back to God’s testimonies in the way that they should’ve been going the whole time. I’m certainly asking for quick recovery from this newest bout of illness and renewed health, but I am also trusting that God will do what is best, both for me and for His glory, because the two are not at odds as He promises that ultimately He loves us and seeks to glorify Himself through transforming us to become more like His Son. That growth is always to our benefit even as it is to His glory, and no hardship we go through cannot be used to teach us and perfect us if we respond to it properly. (So not in the way I’ve responded for the last three months!)
The Conclusion on the Matter
Even though my response hasn’t been very good for the last three months, I have grown through this struggle. I am trying to bring to constant remembrance His precepts and His Word instead of allowing despair to rob me of reality and of the reason to know that God loves me a great deal, something I can prove by pointing to instance after instance where He was gracious and merciful (sometimes when I truly did not deserve it). It would be easy to forget those in the midst of all the seemingly negative things happening, but that isn’t the right or the reasonable response.
So, I am going to praise even if my heart isn’t totally on board at the moment because I have thought on my ways and I know that my emotions are the caboose, not the engine, of my life. If I place my mind and faith where they belong, the rest will follow.
I know it doesn’t mean that everything will be easy or rosy all the time. The last three months are ample evidence of that! I’m definitely feeling buffeted by the storms of life! But it does mean that I can objectively state with the Psalmist that I know that the Lord’s judgments are right and that He in faithfulness has afflicted me. I hope that this will provide others with encouragement like it did for me so that other believers will be able to say the same of themselves!