A Desperate Cry

Dannah Gresh: If you ever think, God isn’t answering my prayer, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth has this to say.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: He doesn’t always answer prayers on our timetable, but that doesn’t mean that He is unmoved by our cries or that He is unresponsive to our needs. 

Dannah: Welcome to the Revive Our Hearts podcast for December 27, 2022. I’m Dannah Gresh. Our host is Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of The Quiet Place.

Nancy: At a recent recording session I asked our studio audience this question: “How has the Lord been your strength? How has He been your shield? How have you trusted in Him? How has He helped you in this past year?

A woman named Christine shared a heart-wrenching trial that she and her family faced a year ago, in December of 2021.

Christine: We had a very close friend and my sister sick with COVID: one hospitalized, one bearing it out at home. [We were] praying for both of them to live. One didn’t and one did. So, my sister is living, our good friend passed.

Nancy: He was only fifty-two, leaving behind a young widow, Christine’s best friend. So how did Christine and her friends and family make it through?

Christine: Just praying, obviously, through that for the Lord’s strength and crying out to Him with everything we had and just trusting Him, that He is God, and He knows best. And understanding that He is a good Father, and He desires good gifts for His children.

Even though we don’t understand it right now, I know someday we will.

Nancy: Christine is modeling for all of us how to view a difficult situation with eyes of faith, the kind of faith that trusts God when you can’t see what He’s doing. Christine’s soul is anchored to the God that she knows is both strong and good!

Dannah: What a blessing! This month our theme has been the idea that no matter how hard the winds are blowing, our anchor holds!

Nancy: That’s right, and at Revive Our Hearts we want to do all we can to continue pointing people to the only sure Anchor, Jesus Christ Himself! And you can help us do that with your prayers and your financial support at this important time.

As you may know, this week is the final week that your donation to Revive Our Hearts will be matched dollar-for-dollar by some friends of this ministry who have extended a matching challenge of 1.4 million dollars. We don’t want to leave any of those dollars on the table, so we’d love to hear from you before midnight on Saturday.

Ask the Lord what He would want you to give, and then contact us by heading to ReviveOurHearts.com or by calling us at 1-800-569-5959. And if you’re mailing your gift, remember that it needs to be postmarked by this Saturday, December 31.

Thank you so much! Your support at this time means more than you can know to all of us here at Revive Our Hearts.

Dannah: It sure does, Nancy. And you know, the faith Christine expressed is the same sort of faith that King David demonstrates for us in Psalm 28. I’d like to encourage our listeners, if you have a copy of the Bible nearby, why don’t you just pick it up and turn to the 28th Psalm, and let’s listen while Nancy teaches.

Nancy: This week we come to the end of another year. They go by so fast, don’t they? And we’re turning the page to a brand-new year. I want to leave you with a passage of Scripture that I’ve been meditating on through the past year.

I started last January, and off and on. Through the course of this year I’ve come back to this passage again and again. So let me invite you to turn in your Bible (if you’re where you can to do that) to Psalm 28.

Last year my psalm for the year was Psalm 29, and this year I went back one to Psalm 28, a psalm of David, who was of course, the king of Israel. Now, we’re not told anything else about the occasion or the setting for this psalm, but as we dive into it we’ll know it could have been in a number of different periods in David’s life.

It’s just nine verses, a short psalm. Within these verses we find both some really low “lows,” and some high “highs.” You’ll see that it’s a desperate prayer for God to act. So we have desperation, but it also includes joyful praise for God’s amazing deliverance! 

This is true with many of David’s psalms, where you see this mixture of desperation and exhilaration. And they can come within just several verses. Isn’t that the way life often is for us as believers? 

And thanks be to God, our distresses are meant to drive us to the Lord, who is the One who lifts us out of those depths. And in time—God’s time and God’s way—the deepest griefs can sometimes result and even produce in our lives the highest joys.

 

So I want to take time this week to just soak in these nine verses with you, and I hope that you’ll take this psalm, these verses, with you into the new year. We’re going to read the whole psalm in just a moment.

And as we read, I want you to see that it’s got four stanzas. Each stanza has two verses, except for the second stanza which has three verses. And if your Bible is like mine, it looks like paragraphs, little breaks between those stanzas.

Each day this week we’ll take one of those stanzas, and then look at the whole as we come to an end. So let me read the whole psalm first, Psalm 28.

LORD, I call to you;
my rock, do not be deaf to me.
If you remain silent to me,
I will be like those going down to the Pit.
Listen to the sound of my pleading when I cry to you for help,
when I lift up my hands toward your holy sanctuary.

Do not drag me away with the wicked,
with the evildoers,
who speak in friendly ways with their neighbors
while malice is in their hearts.
Repay them according to what they have done—
according to the evil of their deeds.
Repay them according to the work of their hands;
give them back what they deserve.
Because they do not consider
what the LORD has done
or the work of his hands,
he will tear them down and not rebuild them.

Blessed be the LORD,
for he has heard the sound of my pleading.
The LORD is my strength and my shield;
my heart trusts in him, and I am helped.
Therefore my heart celebrates,
and I give thanks to him with my song.

The LORD is the strength of his people;
he is a stronghold of salvation for his anointed.
Save your people, bless your possession,
shepherd them, and carry them forever.

That last verse is a beautiful prayer for the people of God! We’re going to walk through that prayer together at the end of this series, as we close out the year.

So, Lord, as we move into this passage that you’ve just been stirring up in my heart over the past months, I pray that You would give us understanding. Give us to hear and hearts to receive what the Spirit is saying to the church, saying to us, in these days. Edify your people, and may the gospel go forth even more powerfully as a result of what You do in our hearts during this series. I pray in Jesus’ name, amen.

Today, we’re going to look at just the first two verses of Psalm 28, the first stanza. And as we saw, the psalm begins with David in desperate straits! He’s in a hard place; he’s in serious trouble. He’s pleading with God. He’s in a hard place; he’s in desperate trouble.

So, what does he do? He looks up. Verse 1: “Lord” the first word. “Lord, I call to you.” Now, it’s natural to cry out when we’re in trouble. Think of your little kids, those of you who have little children or grandchildren.

They’re in trouble or in a hard place or in a fix—they’ve got their foot stuck in something or their hand stuck in something. They’re going to cry out. The question when we get in trouble is, who do we cry out to? Where do we turn when we’re in need, when we don’t know what to do, when we’re stuck in circumstances beyond our control?

Do we call out to the Lord? Who do we call? Who do you call, who do I call? David says, “Lord, I call to you.” Do I expect my husband to fix the problem? Do I call a friend? Now, there are lots of things friends and husbands can fix.

I said something to Robert yesterday about a lightbulb that’s out that’s where I can’t reach it, so there are things that we can call on others for. But where do I turn first when my heart’s in trouble, when my life is in trouble?

Or, maybe instead of calling somebody else, we just muscle on, relying on our own wits, our own experience, our own wisdom, and we end up thrashing around. You’ve seen a little child do that, too. Maybe they’re not calling for help. You know they need help, but they’re saying, “No, me do it! Me do it!” 

You know they can’t do it, but they’re going to thrash around and try and prove that they can. Sometimes that looks like us. 

Sometimes, maybe we just give up. We throw in the towel, or we sink into depression. We become bitter and resentful.

Well, David begs God to hear him and, by implication, to help him and to respond to him! So he says, “Lord, I call to you; my rock, do not be deaf to me.” As I’ve been meditating on this passage, that struck me as a little odd, because we don’t think of a rock as being able to hear or being able to do anything to help us.

But the Scripture likens God to our Rock who does hear. He does engage with His people, and He is like a rock: strong, stable, secure, unmovable, unchanging. That’s the description we’re seeing, faithful! We’re seeing God our Rock, and David says, “My rock, don’t be deaf to me. If you remain silent to me . . .” Let me just pause there.

“If You remain silent to me . . .” It sounds like he’s been praying for a long time. He has been asking God, but it seems like God hasn’t heard him. It seems like God isn’t listening; it seems like God isn’t responding. 

And as you think about this passage, what comes to mind is the perplexing apparent silences of God. It seems like He can’t hear; it seems like He isn’t hearing; it seems like He’s not doing anything—the apparent silences of God.

And they’re perplexing. They’re confusing. They’re mystifying to us. They can be discouraging. I think of Psalm 22, which we know as a Messianic psalm that foretells the experience of Jesus on the Cross.

And you remember that opening of Psalm 22: 

My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?
Why are you so far from my deliverance
and from my words of groaning?
My God, I cry by day, but you do not answer,
by night, yet I have no rest. (vv. 1–2)

So, on the Cross, part of what Jesus endured for us was this mystifying, perplexing, apparent silence of His own Father. And David says, “If You remain silent to me, I will be like those going down to the Pit.” (i.e.) “If You don’t listen to me, if You don’t respond when I pray, I might as well be dead!”

You see, communication and relationship with God, between man and God, women and God, between us and God, is what makes our lives different from those who are without God. Apart from being able to speak to God and know that He hears and that He will respond to us, apart from hearing His voice in His Word and by His Spirit, we would be no different than the rest of the world that is under the wrath and judgment of God. We would have no relationship with Him at all! We would be as those who are perishing without God, without hope and without life.

So David says, “If You don’t speak to me, if You remain silent, if You don’t come to my aid, I might as well be not alive! I might as well be like those who are going down to judgment!” So this is what moves David to cry out for help. He can’t bear for God to be silent any longer!

But what I love here is that when it seems like God is not hearing or answering, David doesn’t quit praying! He doesn’t move on: “Since that didn’t work, let’s try something else. What can I do to fix this?” He cries out all the more. He refuses to let the temporary silence of God, the apparent silence of God, he refuses to let that keep him from praying.

It’s one thing to pray when we’re just like in the moment, “Lord, fix this, change this,” but then when it’s a year later or two years later or ten years later or twenty later . . . I had an email from a woman this week who for twenty-two years prayed earnestly for issues in her family, that there didn’t seem to be a change.

But she kept praying, she kept praying, and she’s in the process of seeing God water and bring life and bring results and responses, answers to those prayers. So David says in verse 2, “Listen to the sound of my pleading when I cry to you for help, when I lift up my hands toward your holy sanctuary.”

David’s situation is helpless, and it’s hopeless without God. If there is no God, there is no hope. But I love that he’s not crying out in anger or in bitterness or resentment. He’s not shaking his fist at God. I mean, there’s an earnestness here, but there’s a respect, and there’s a reverence. He’s not doubting God, though there are times when he can’t make sense of God’s ways.

 

But this is actually a prayer of faith. It’s because he believes God that he keeps praying, that he keeps crying out. He knows that God is the only One who can help him. So he says, “I lift up my hands.” This is an outward expression of an inward heart attitude.

In your church maybe they lift up hands when they sing or pray. Maybe in your church they sit on their hands . . . or something in-between. But we’re not talking about the outward posture being what matters here. 

The outward posture is reflecting an inward heart attitude. It symbolizes lifting up the heart to God, lifting up my life to God, lifting up my self to God, lifting up my circumstances to God, lifting up my situation to God, lifting up my desperation to God! 

It talks about being dependent on God. He is who I need; He is what I need. It also speaks, “lifting up hands to the Lord,” of being ready to receive whatever God gives, ready to receive the response, ready to receive God’s provision. Empty hands pleading for God to have mercy, to supply what is needed. David is longing to receive help and blessing from the Lord.

He says that he lifts those hands up towards God’s holy sanctuary. Now, the temple wasn’t built until after David. His son Solomon built it. But we know there was a tabernacle, and it had a holy place. It was a holy sanctuary, and this was where God’s presence dwelt. This was where God would come and meet with those who represented mankind.

And you see in verses 1 and 2, two places, two realms. You'll see all through the psalms examples of this, and this is one, Hebrew poetry that has parallelism. Sometimes that parallelism is with repeated thoughts that are just said a little differently. We’ve seen that already in these first two verses.

Sometimes it’s the opposite, it’s contrasting views. That’s a characteristic of Hebrew poetry. So in verse 1 he talks about going down to the pit. That’s where the ungodly are, that’s where their hearts are inclined, that’s where they’re at home. David says, “I don’t want to go there!”

And then in verse 2 he talks about lifting his hands up towards God’s holy sanctuary. That’s where God is! That’s where David wants to be. So, where is the inclination of your heart? Where is your heart at home? Where do you long to be? We have to go to where God lives in order to find Him. 

David says, “I’m going to go to Your holy sanctuary. I’m going to go to your presence.” My long-time-ago friend, Charles Spurgeon says about this verse, “We stretch out empty hands for we are beggars. We lift them up, for we seek heavenly supplies. We lift them toward the mercy seat of Jesus, for there our expectation dwells.” Lifting up holy hands. It reminds me of Hebrews chapter 4, where we’re exhorted to “come boldly in our time of need” where? “to the throne of grace, where we may receive mercy” which we all need and then, “grace to to help us (in our time of need).” (see verse 16 KJV).

So, here’s kind of the progression in these first couple of verses: we have serious needs, so the psalmist says, “I call to You. I cry to You for help!” Prayer recognizes God’s presence and His power and it pleads with Him for help. It says, “There’s nowhere else to turn.” We have nowhere else to go! We go to the Lord.

But sometimes it seems like He’s not listening, so what do we do? We keep praying, and those prayers express faith. We keep turning to Him. We keep saying, “Lord, we have nowhere to go but You! No one can help us but You! So, we’re going to keep crying, we’re going to keep calling!”

Some of you have a mate or a child or a grandchild for whom you cry yourself to sleep at night thinking how this person is not walking with the Lord. They’re headed toward the Pit. They’re not in relationship with God, and maybe they’re acting out in ways that make other people’s lives miserable.

You’re a mom or a wife or a grandmom or a friend or a roommate, and you cry out! And then you don’t see anything happening. What do you do!? You keep crying out; you keep praying. Maybe there’s a situation you’re facing at work and it’s desperate. You’re working in an ungodly environment and there are all kinds of toxic, ungodly things going on in that workplace, and you’re thinking, “I don’t know that I can survive this!” You feel so alone, you feel so opposed, you feel . . . In our world we’re not at home. We’re pilgrims, we’re strangers “just a-passing through; this world is not our home.” So that wears on our souls.

What do we do? We don’t accommodate to the world, we don’t blend in with it. We are different because we know God. Through Jesus Christ we approach Him, we come toward His holy sanctuary boldly, and we pray.

What do you need? Cry out to Him, don’t stop praying, persevere in prayer. When it doesn’t seem like God is hearing or doing anything, keep praying. Wait for the Lord. He doesn’t always answer prayers on our timetable, but that doesn't mean that He is unmoved by our cries or that He is unresponsive to our needs. 

Now, as we think of this Old Testament psalm in the context of the new covenant—which thank God we have and are a part of—there’s a problem here. David says, “I lift up my hands to your holy sanctuary,” but we know from Scripture that sinners cannot go into God’s holy sanctuary.

Sinners are barred, and even the sacrifices that were made had to be these lambs without blemish; they couldn’t be diseased or sick. And sinners could not go in. I mean, there was all kinds of stuff of making sacrifices and washing hands and symbolic things in the Old Testament, in the old covenant.

Just like a whole book of Leviticus, it’s over and over and over again. You get like, “This is a little boring, there’s a little bit too much of this.” Well, the reason is because sinners can’t go into the presence of a holy God. We have to be cleansed; we have to be separated from our sin.

Only a priest designated, ordained by God, carrying the blood sacrifice of innocent slain animals could go into that holy place and make a sacrifice and intercede on behalf of God’s people. It was cumbersome, it’s wearisome, it was difficult, it’s impossible for sinners to go into God’s holy sanctuary.

But praise God! We see it hinted at, glimpsed in the Old Testament. In the New Testament we see it in technicolor. God has made provision for us to be able to go into His holy place! But our prayers have to be directed toward Christ, our Great High Priest who shed His own blood. He went first into the holy place so that we could be purified and enter with Him, in Him, and through Him. 

And through the power of His cleansing shed blood, we can enter that holy sanctuary! Things David could only faintly imagine when he wrote this psalm, but things we, looking back on the sacrifice Christ has made for us—the Lamb of God slain for the sin of the world—we say, “Thank You, Jesus. We can come into Your holy sanctuary!”

So as we pray, it’s not because we deserve anything, as if there’s anything smart or wise or good about us. We say, “Lord, I have no basis on which to approach Your holy throne, your holy sanctuary, the holy place where You live.

“I deserve to go to the Pit, but You have made provision that I can come, I can be related to You. I can converse with You. I can pray to you. I can keep praying. I can keep crying out. I can’t always see what You are doing. I can’t always hear what You’re saying, but I trust You! And I’m going to keep coming.”

I received an email just a few days ago here at the ministry from a woman. It’s a long email. I want to just read some excerpts from it for you. She starts by saying, 

I’ve been suffering my entire life from a genetic condition that has given birth to more and more complications. Suffering and pain are part of my waking and going to sleep.

And she also talks about how one of her children has some unrelated but also severe and chronic health issues. So this mother and this daughter . . . it’s just been her life for years. She says, 

I’ve just come home from a seven-week hospital stay [the mother herself], the first two weeks in a major hospital and the remaining in a rehab hospital. I’m having to relearn to walk due to a rare, paralyzing and blinding disease.”

So she’s had this physical issue for years, now she’s got this new diagnosis. And she just describes very graphically some of the horrific physical stuff she’s going through, and then she’s got this child she’s caring for as well. She says, 

I live in the medical capital of the world, yet I leave doctors in my wake speechless, no one with a word of help or direction . . . just a slew of apologies for my grief and pain . . . suggestions to go travel to major health clinics that do scientific research. 

So here I am, experiencing the post-hospital-stay blues. I’ve been lamenting all the new doctors’ appointments that have just piled up on top of all the last ones we didn’t finish before this new illness hit me . . . bitterly detesting them, wondering how any of this could be good . . . but still knowing better than to question all He is and what He has delivered us through. 

And then here’s the part that just so stood out to me, 

God has never kept us from the torrents, but He has kept us anchored in them. I have learned not to hate the thing that causes me to cast myself on Him.

Let me read that again. She says, “God has never kept me from the torrents.” David could say “amen” to that! He’s going through some torrents himself in this passage and in many other psalms, “but He has kept us anchored in them.” And that’s what we see here in Psalm 28. David’s in these torrential downpours or floods or storms, or whatever they are. 

The floodwaters are rising, but he’s anchored to the Lord! She says, 

God has kept us anchored in the storms. I have learned not to hate the thing that causes me to cast myself on Him. 

The year ahead is going to bring some warm and sunny weather and clear skies, but it will also bring some cold and cloudy and stormy weather.

Most of us will have some happy, easy days, but most of us will also have some problems and pressures and pains that we can’t begin to imagine as we sit here today. God has not promised to keep you and me from the torrents, but He has promised to keep us anchored in them.

And my prayer is that, throughout this year ahead, we will learn not to hate the things, not to despise, not to resent, not to resist anything that causes us to cast ourselves upon Him. So, every day in every season, throughout this year ahead whatever you’re going through now, whatever surfaces next week that you hadn’t anticipated—or next month, or the next month—purpose to pray, to cry out to the Lord, to lift up your hands toward His holy sanctuary. Say, “Lord, by the blood of Jesus I come. Just as I am, I come.

“I come to Your throne of grace. I need Your mercy. I need Your grace, and I’m going to keep crying out, keep lifting up my hands, giving to You everything I have, ready to receive everything You have or [willing to give everything] You want from me.” Keep doing it!

Song:

When darkness seems to hide His face,
I rest on His unchanging grace.
In every high and stormy gale,
My anchor holds within the veil.¹ 

(“On Christ the Solid Rock I Stand” by Edward Mote)

Dannah: What a great reminder! Is your anchor holding tightly to Christ the Solid Rock? Today Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth has been showing us from Psalm 28 that even though God often doesn’t spare us from the storm, He is our reliable Rock. Nancy will be back in a few minutes to pray.

But first, as you look back on your year, I hope you can see moments where God proved to be your Strength and Shield. 

Just a quick reminder that your donations this month are being matched dollar-for-dollar, but time is running out. We need to hear from you by this Saturday night. To give, visit ReviveOurHearts.com, or call us at 1-800-569-5959. 

Open your eyes wide, look around. Notice anything different? Tomorrow, Nancy will encourage us to do that in a spiritual sense—to have eyes wide open to the mercy of God. She’ll explain more on the next Revive Our Hearts. Now, she’s back to pray. 

Nancy: Lord, I pray that You would give grace and encouragement and hope, maybe to somebody who is in those torrents right now. Our anchor holds within the storm, so by faith we say, “Thank You.” We bless the hand that sometimes wounds us so that You might heal and help us. So keep us praying, keep us clinging, keep us believing, keep us holding fast, keep us walking day by day into Your holy sanctuary, living there! Thank You for Your deliverance from the Pit! That is not the outcome of our lives, by Your grace, and because of what Christ has done for us.

May our lives be such that in the year ahead, we will be able to be a means of hope and grace to others who are right now headed toward the Pit. But we’re going to cling to You and cry out on their behalf, and say, “Lord, would You rescue, would You redeem, would You save, would You do a great work in their lives as well?” We wait on You, we love You, we bless You! In Jesus’ name, amen.

Encouraging you to cry out to God in your moments of desperation, Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth is calling you to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ!

1”The Solid Rock,” Grace Community Church, Waves of Grace ℗ 2008 Grace Community Church.

All Scripture is taken from the CSB.

*Offers available only during the broadcast of the podcast season.