You arrive early at the restaurant and order an iced tea while waiting for a friend whose advice you desperately need. One refill comes, then another, until the condensation has left the table damp and the agreed time is long past. An hour and a half later, you leave more dejected than when you arrived. Psalm 13 asks the same question that fills that silence: How long, O Lord?

Study Questions

The following study questions are AI generated and may contain errors.

When have you experienced a situation like the missed restaurant meeting in the sermon, where waiting felt like abandonment, and how did that shape your prayers to God?
The sermon explains that “forgetting” in the Old Testament refers to a lack of action rather than a lapse of memory. How does understanding that distinction help you process the feeling that God isn’t acting in your situation, and why do you think David repeats “How long?” four times in Psalm 13:1–2?
How does the “plasma bubble” analogy connect to seasons when God’s presence or blessing feels hidden, and what practical steps—staying in the Word, prayer, community—help you remain focused during those periods?
David describes both internal worry and external enemies gloating in Psalm 13:2. In what ways have you faced similar internal and external opposition while waiting on God, and how did you respond?
The sermon draws on Jesus at the cross and Douglas Hegdahl to illustrate endurance through focus. What does it look like for you personally to “stay focused on the mission” when despair feels overwhelming and the mocking feels loudest?
The sermon closes with the idea that bringing our gut-wrenching despair directly to God transforms it into genuine hope, rather than clinging to temporary fixes. Where in your life right now might you need to make that exchange?

Transcript

This transcript has been automatically generated and may contain errors.

How long? It’s a question we ask about all kinds of things all the time. We ask how long it’s going to be before our package is delivered from Amazon. We ask how long it’s going to be before we have our meal ready. We ask how long it’s going to be before the church service starts. We ask how long it’s going to be before we arrive at our destination, whether we’re flying or driving. We ask in all kinds of different situations. Sometimes it’s curiosity. Sometimes it’s more than that. We need that arrival, that end of the long, to arrive now.

Returning to Psalm 13 tonight as we reach the second part of our series, The One Who Does, we begin with that question: how long? Once I thought about that, I remembered a time a number of years back. I was going to meet a friend at a restaurant to talk about a real problem I was facing. It was weighing heavily on me. I was trying to figure out how to sort it out. This friend had some connections that could potentially help. Also, I thought of this person as someone who had wise advice. So I was really looking forward to this. It was one of those situations where every day it weighed on me deeply. We’ve all been in those places where something isn’t just waking us up occasionally at night. We think, “Oh, I should deal with that at some point.” But it’s the sort of thing where every day as you’re going through your day, you’re dealing with it. So the day finally arrived. We found a time that our schedules aligned and we were going to meet and talk.

I arrived early at the restaurant because I didn’t want to keep my friend waiting. I ordered something to drink, nice iced tea. I drank my tea. The waiter filled it up again. I got another tea. We passed the time we were supposed to meet. I thought, well, I guess he’s running a little late. I drank another tea. But on my third tea, I started to think, I don’t think he’s coming. An hour and a half later, I finally gave up, paid for what I had consumed at the restaurant, and left feeling more dejected than I did to begin with. I had my original problem, and I’d waited. Nothing had happened from someone I was counting on helping out, encouraging at least. We’ve probably all been in that situation too.

Sometimes, we wonder if God is the one who’s forgotten to show up at the restaurant. We pray to Him. We read His word. We come to church, and we’re sitting there getting our iced tea refilled. The condensation from so many glasses of tea has made the table damp because it’s just been sitting there as we’ve been slowly drinking it. We wonder, “How long, oh Lord?” But when we turn to Psalm 13, we see something really, really important: that God knows that we’re waiting. He hasn’t forgotten. Even in the desperation of this first part we’re going to look at, that’s what we find. We fear that God’s forgotten us. God wants to assure us: you might be waiting, and as we come time and again, we confront the mystery of God’s plan that we don’t necessarily fully understand. But He wants to make it very clear: even as we’re waiting, no, I haven’t forgotten you. I really am going to do exactly what I said I was going to do.

So tonight, as we come to Psalm 13, let’s pray that God would help us to understand how God is the God, the one who does even when it seems like He’s not doing. Would you pray with me, please? Father, thank you for this evening. We thank you for your word. We thank you that we can come to the Psalms and be comforted by them. We can find hope in them, that we can find encouragement in them, even in those times where we want to cry out with King David here, how long? As we do, Lord, remind us that you are there with us, that you have not forgotten. We pray this in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.

It does sometimes feel like that, doesn’t it? If you want to turn there in your Bible with me to Psalm 13, we’re picking right up from where we were in Psalm 12. These two Psalms go really well together. They’re dealing with the same sorts of concerns—just slightly different angles. As we turn to verse 1, here’s what it says: “How long will you pay no attention to me?” Those are good questions, aren’t they? How long? How long am I going to wait?

If you look at the first two verses, we’ll get to verse 2 in a moment, the Psalmist asks in those two verses how long, four different times. Why the repetition? Because that’s exactly how we feel when we’re the ones saying “how long.” When something is bearing down on us and we feel utterly uncertain, all we can think of is how long, how long, how long. Are we there yet? It’s not just because we’re impatient. It’s because we’re desperate. David here, he’s desperate. He wants to know how long.

What does this tell us right up front? It tells us that it’s okay to feel stuff. That stuff that’s hard to even define in us—that emotional soup of what’s going on here, how do I make sense of this, where are we going? It’s okay to feel that because God’s given us here a Psalm. The people would have sung this Psalm. People have prayed this Psalm over the ages. It’s okay to feel and say the things that we find in the Psalms.

So when we wonder, “God, how long?” God wants us to know it’s okay to ask Him. We’re not unfaithful for wanting to know how long, even when it feels like maybe He’s forgotten us. That’s what we see here. David says, “How long, oh Lord, will you forget me forever?” Does David really think that God forgets? Sometimes we feel that, right? We say, “Does God not really remember?” And we say, “No, I know God doesn’t forget, but sure feels like it.” Now, it’s a little bit more nuanced here, crucially, and I think that’s something important for us to keep in mind. Forgetting and remembering in the Old Testament is talking about action. When something’s forgotten, it’s not happening. When something is remembered, it is happening. So what does God do when He rescues His people? He remembers the plight of His people, and that means He is going and rescuing them.

David, to some degree, is really just asking, “How long before you act? How long before the one who does, does?” But at the same time, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this forgetting and remembering language is used, because when we’re waiting—even if someone hasn’t genuinely forgotten, couldn’t forget, as in the case with God—it still feels like forgetting when it’s not happening. And so again, I think this is giving us a certain level of permission. Yes, intellectually, we ought to know and affirm God doesn’t forget. He doesn’t say, “Oh, I left the miracle button off for that person.” Oh no, He doesn’t do that. But here it’s acknowledging how we feel when we’re waiting and it hasn’t happened yet. God remembers. God works in His time. He will be faithful throughout all the ages. And yet, when it doesn’t quite feel like it, well, we’re not weird for feeling that way.

It’s okay to come to God and say, “How long will you forget me?” We shouldn’t stay there, obviously. That’s part of the point of this series. We’re not trying to stay and dwell in our disappointment and sadness so that we can’t see God’s faithfulness. But let’s face it, we are going to be in this state at times. And so we can then compound that with guilt: “Oh, I shouldn’t be feeling this,” or we can recognize, no, God’s saying faithful people through the ages have felt this and they can come to Me with it, and I’ll love them even though they’re going through this.

David goes on here in the second part of verse 1. He says, “How long will you hide your face from me?” And that also has a reference to something more. It’s not talking about God’s hands going over His physical face. God the Father doesn’t have a body. It’s talking about His blessing being shown. Think about the blessing in Numbers 6:25, the blessing that Aaron is to give: “The Lord make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up the light of His countenance upon you and give you peace.” What is it saying there? God’s face—the blessing—is facing God. So the point here is God’s blessings are being withheld. They’re not being experienced at the moment. What do I do in that situation?

The first part of it is recognizing that scripture is totally open about it. God accepts His people coming with that question. He’s priming us to understand there are going to be times where we feel that. It’s not a sign of our unfaithfulness that we find ourselves waiting. It’s not, “Oh, I guess I don’t have enough faith yet, and when I do, I won’t be waiting any longer.” No, sometimes God’s going to ask His people to wait. And waiting is disconcerting no matter what. But waiting is even more disconcerting when we don’t know that it’s even going to happen. God’s saying it’s going to happen. You’re going to experience it. It doesn’t mean that I’ve forgotten you. It doesn’t mean that I’m angry at you for wondering. Quite the opposite.

Take a look here. I’ve put it in my word. This is an experience that happens and you can come to Me with it. We don’t like waiting, but I think we know intuitively it is so much easier if we know we’re going to. I still find myself thinking back—and I apologize for bringing it up again; I just can’t resist it—that incredible Artemis mission that we saw over the last couple of weeks. I’m still enjoying as the photos are trickling in and so on. I was thinking back this week in particular to that experience many of us shared as we watched the astronauts come back into the Earth’s atmosphere. There was a weight in there because, as they approached, they were very clear up front. They’d been saying for days—and said it again very clearly in the broadcast so people wouldn’t panic—”We’re going to lose radio communication with the astronauts for six minutes.” It’s going to happen.

I was reading a little bit about exactly why it happens. It’s because as it enters the atmosphere, there’s that incredible amount of heat. There’s actually a bubble of superheated atmosphere, a plasma bubble that goes around the ship, and it becomes a shield to radio communication because there’s this thing around them—the thing that would like to incinerate them, so to speak. But in any case, this thing around them. They know that’s going to happen. It’s part of the process. So they know that there’s going to be six minutes of radio silence.

If you’ve been following them, and if you’ve been like me where you’ve been really enjoying this whole process—following them while they were going to the moon and hearing everything they were sharing and seeing the photos and all that—and then them arriving and knowing they’re going to go into that silence, it still felt really long because these four astronauts seemed like they brought so much joy and hope to this world that often feels at the moment like it desperately needs it. It’s such a good thing. You couldn’t help but think, “What if it doesn’t work? What if they don’t come back from that silence? How long?”

Even though we knew that it was going to be six minutes and it was pretty well right on the dot exactly as they said, it still felt really, really long. But how much longer would it have felt if we didn’t know how long? They said they’re going to be out of contact for a little while, and you’re watching and think, “Well, they’ve been out for a minute. That’s a little while. Three minutes, that’s a long little while. Five minutes, that’s a really long little while. Has it gone wrong?” It helped to know. Maybe as you were watching it, you saw a countdown on the screen: here’s about how long they’ve been out of contact, here’s how long it’s supposed to be. That helps because it says it’s part of the plan. Everything is okay.

That’s what God wants us to know here. A lot of times in life we come to those places where we’re wrapped around in a plasma bubble. Sometimes of our own creation. Our sin makes it harder to see how God’s working, or the sin of the world makes it harder to see how God’s working. Sometimes it’s more tapping into that mystery of God’s plan, where there are things that we don’t fully understand that God’s doing that are a reason why He’s not acting right now. But in any case, those things become that plasma bubble.

Earlier, it felt really easy to hear from God. We read His word and we felt like, “Oh, God’s just speaking to me in this.” At that moment when we’re saying, “How long, oh Lord,” it feels really, really long. I can only imagine, even though they knew it, how long those six minutes felt for the astronauts’ families. How long? We find ourselves in that place. How long? But at least we have something to count to, right? At least we know God hasn’t forgotten, that this is normal, that the plasma bubble won’t go on forever. Just because we can’t hear from God right now doesn’t mean we won’t hear from God. Just because we don’t feel like at this moment we see how He’s working doesn’t mean He’s not going to work. Just because it feels like His promises and His blessing are far away right now doesn’t mean His promises and blessings will remain far away.

In fact, if you trust in Jesus, you can say unequivocally that’s not the case. You will feel His blessing again, even if you don’t right now. But what Psalm 13 is helping us to understand is all those wills—that God is the one who does, even if right now it seems like He doesn’t. We need to know that. God’s telling us there are going to be those times of plasma bubbles around us. And in that, the crucial thing is to keep focused. If you were piloting that craft coming into the atmosphere—maybe someday we’ll all have space cars and we’ll actually do that, I don’t know—you need to stay focused, even if you can’t talk to anyone at the moment. You need to understand where you’re going, even if at the moment nothing new is coming in.

That’s incredibly crucial as we live the Christian life. There are going to be times that we feel like we can’t hear from God. So important in those times: what do we do? We keep in His word. We keep praying. We keep with His people. We keep focused on what He’s called us to do because He’s prepared us. Now He wants us to keep on that until the day that once again we find ourselves back in radio communication, back connected with Him.

That’s the first part of what Psalm 13 is doing for us. But there’s another part that makes this so much harder for us. Even as we’re experiencing wondering if God remembers and it feels like maybe He doesn’t, well, the opposition, so to speak, feels very much like it remembers. Let’s go on to verse two.

“How long must I worry and suffer in broad daylight? How long will my enemy gloat over me?” There’s two different kinds of opposition going on here. Both of them are painful and unpleasant. The first one is internal. David says, “How long do I need to keep worrying? How long do I have sorrow in my heart all the day?” We know that, right? When we’re asking how long, it’s not merely an intellectual musing: I wonder how long this is going to be. I wish I had a spiritual GPS and I could find out and I could decide exactly what I’m doing today because I know how long. It’s not that. It’s how long because I feel like I’m going to be crushed under this.

That’s what David’s asking. He takes counsel in his soul, but his soul feels awful. He has sorrow in his heart all day long. David says, “How long do I have to keep doing that, Lord? I want to be talking to you. I don’t want to be talking to myself because it’s nasty.” We know we shouldn’t spend all our time worrying. What did Jesus say? “And which of you, by worrying, can add even one hour to his life?”

Should we feel guilty then? How dare we worry? That’s not Jesus’ point. Jesus is saying you don’t need to spend your time worrying. Trust in the provision of your heavenly Father. You can do that. But he’s not saying, “And by the way, now you need to start worrying about your worry because you’re worrying and you shouldn’t be worrying.” I’ve done that. I think many of us have. “Well, God said I shouldn’t worry and I’m worrying. Does that speak badly of me? I am an unfaithful, ungrateful person who isn’t doing what he said I should do?” That’s why we have Psalms like Psalm 13. David is worrying here.

The point that Jesus is making is it’s not productive. David would say, yeah, I agree. It’s not productive. I’m miserable doing it. And we probably would too. So should we worry? Well, no. We should trust that God has it all under control. We don’t have to wonder where we’re going ultimately if we’ve trusted Him. If you trust in Him tonight, and this is the first time you’ve ever asked Him to be your Lord and Savior and asked for forgiveness of your sins tonight, you don’t have to worry about your destination in life any longer. That’s true. But you’re still going to be worried at times. I wish I could tell you you wouldn’t. Ask any long-time believer and you’re going to get the answer, yes. If you happen to get the answer no, it’s because someone’s been calling you yes.

If you happen to get the answer no, it’s because someone’s been guilted into saying they shouldn’t worry. They’re still worrying. All of us worry. And scripture, unlike a lot of what we hear in Christian living material, is honest about this. There is going to be worry. There’s going to be that internal opposition that as we’re wondering where God is, we sure can hear that internal worry shouting, “Oh boy, this is falling apart.” Then we add in the rest of the choir: the external opposition. Because we want God to hear, and it seems like maybe He isn’t, but all the people that think we’re crazy for following our God, all the people that would like to see us fail, they seem to hear because they can point out how we’re going to fail. They can point out all the things they see wrong. They can outright mock us.

David’s experiencing this. He says, “How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?” His enemy, he seems to hear David just fine. To David’s detriment, it’s back to the question: how long before God hears? Again, this is just giving us a realistic sense. We are going to experience those times where it feels like I want someone to hear me, but I sure wish it were God, not the people who want to point out how I’m miserably failing and crashing and burning. And yet it seems to be the opposite of what I want.

That’s saying that’s going to happen, but it doesn’t mean “I don’t hear you,” and it doesn’t mean that there isn’t an answer. Best of all, I actually understand. Because who experienced the same sort of thing? Jesus himself. Take a look at Luke 23:35. We look at this oftentimes over Holy Week. People who stood there watching—this is at the cross. People also stood there watching, but the rulers ridiculed Him, saying, “He saved others; let Him save Himself if He is the Christ of God, His chosen one.” The soldiers also mocked Him, coming up and offering Him sour wine and saying, “If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.” There was also an inscription over Him: “This is the King of the Jews.” One of the criminals who was hanging there railed at Him saying, “Aren’t you the Christ? Save yourself and us.”

Here Jesus is taking on the sin of the world. He’s going through absolute horror. What does He hear? He hears the mockers mocking. “What’s wrong? Can’t you fix this now?” Of course, He knew He was on the mission, right? He’s focused in the plasma bubble. He is focused on what He’s needing to do. He could take Himself off the cross. He’s not doing it.

But how much harder because people are mocking? How hard is it to hold our tongue when we know we should, but people are mocking us? It’s really hard. How hard is it to keep doing what is righteous when people are mocking us and making fun of how we act righteously? It’s really, really hard when we’re already down on the ground and someone’s kicking us while we’re down. It is hard. But God understands. These things are going to happen.

The challenge here that we’re getting in the journey through this Psalm is, can we stay focused? Because the Psalm is going to take us out of this. We’re not going to stay here. Can we stay focused on what God is doing? Can we keep our eyes on the mission, on the future of freedom in Christ, even when we don’t feel like it’s tangible at the moment? Because everything is going wrong. Everything is uncertain. Our worry is overcoming us. Our opposition is overcoming us. God seems silent. Can we do it in those moments? So hard.

I read a few months ago the story of Douglas Hegdahl. Hegdahl is a veteran. He’s alive today. He served in the Vietnam War. He was on a ship off the coast of Vietnam when he went out to go for a little stroll. He was off duty as I understand. He went for a stroll and to his own future suffering, he didn’t pay attention to the fact that the ship was actually engaged with the enemy and firing its guns when he went out on deck. The impact on the ship of the guns firing pushed him overboard. He fell off the ship. The ship sailed on, not realizing he’d fallen off. He found himself not far from enemy territory, out in the ocean. He was bound and determined to survive. So he fashioned an inner tube out of his pants so that he could float for a while.

Some fishermen found him. The fishermen promptly handed him over to the North Vietnamese. They gave him a one-way ticket to the Hanoi Hilton, as it was called, the infamous prisoner of war camp of the Vietnam War. The Vietnamese thought they had gotten a prize. Here was this American sailor they could use for propaganda purposes. As they interrogated him very early on, he came up with a plan. He was going to act like he was incredibly, incredibly dumb. He was going to act like he couldn’t read and couldn’t write, couldn’t really handle any complex tasks.

The Vietnamese, again thinking they could use him for propaganda, tried to teach him to read and write. He faked failing to read and write, and eventually they concluded he was relatively harmless. He was this incredibly stupid one, as they called him. Because he was the incredibly stupid one, they mocked him. They looked down on him, but they didn’t even pay attention. They let him wander around the camp, which allowed Hegdahl to get a good survey of whom else was being held prisoner, to sabotage several enemy pieces of equipment so they couldn’t be used, to do all these things that he would have been able to do because he was so focused on the mission: twofold, to help get word out about the others and to survive himself.

He was willing to endure mocking rather than going ahead and unleashing, saying, “No, I’m really the smart person. Yeah, I’m so capable. I can do all this stuff.” No, he endured the mocking because he was focused. So hard to do. Now, he did say self-deprecatingly later on that it was a pretty easy role to play because falling off a ship kind of just makes everyone assume you’re dumb. So he was able to run with that. But it only would have worked if he stayed focused. If at some point he’d slipped up and acted like he was actually pretty smart and they caught on to it, what would have happened? He may not have survived at all.

The Vietnamese were looking for a propaganda advantage and they wanted to release somebody. His fellow compatriots in the camp all agreed he should be released because the Vietnamese didn’t realize all this information he collected. They’d even take him into the city to get glass and he’d memorize information about how everything was arranged. He had all that. They knew, his compatriots knew that. They all agreed he should be the one to be released. They encouraged him to accept that release because he could take back to their families that they were alive. He could take back to the United States government that these people needed to be rescued and where they were, what was going on. That’s exactly what he did.

When the Vietnamese tried to claim they didn’t have prisoners that they were torturing, he was able to actually be sent by Ross Perot, the billionaire, to Paris to confront the Vietnamese diplomats with firsthand knowledge. He was able to do all that because, even though I’m sure he wanted to say, “How long am I going to have to do this? How long do I have to endure the mocking of being the incredibly stupid one?” he stayed focused on the end goal, on the thing he’d committed to when he made an inner tube out of his pants that he was going to survive. He was going to get back home.

What Psalm 13 is saying is sometimes we’re going to find ourselves in that place where we are the incredibly stupid one, where everything and everyone seem to be against us, and we feel like we’re being mocked, where we feel like everything’s challenging, where we can’t get a hold of home. We won’t lose focus. We just want to cry out in rage, and we want to somehow defend ourselves. God’s saying, I’m still with you. Stay focused on the mission. There’s something I’m working on with you. If you hold on to that, I’m going to use that, and you’re going to see in the end, I never forgot you at all.

Many of those people in the prisoner of war camp, they’ve been written off as dead. People didn’t think they’d survive. They didn’t think they’d survive. Douglas himself had been marked down as lost at sea. They didn’t think they were going to find him. But God hasn’t lost anyone at sea. He hasn’t lost you. He hasn’t lost me. He hasn’t lost King David. David knew here it felt like he was in a prisoner of war camp. It felt like everyone thought he was the incredibly stupid one. Sometimes it felt like maybe he really was the incredibly stupid one because, as he was staying focused on the mission and others were succeeding through unrighteousness, his righteous calling was actually leaving him behind. It felt like failure.

We’re given these Psalms to say it’s not failure. Martin Luther said, “Hope despairs and yet despair hopes.” Kind of an interesting phrase if you think about it. But I think it gets to the heart of this. Because a lot of times we just say, “Just give me some hope.” Sometimes we have that hope; we have that earthly hope. You know what? That earthly hope leads to despair because it ultimately comes up empty. But when we take our actual, deep, abiding, gut-wrenching despair and we bring it to God, even in that despair, we actually meet real hope. Because we’re coming to Him and we know the one who actually can fix things. We know the one that we actually can draw close to. That’s the beauty even in this desperation. David, the reason he’s asking these questions is because he knows he can be close to the Lord. He knows that God’s face can shine on him. Because of that, there’s hope even in the despair.

Where are we going with our despairs? Whatever haunts you the most, whatever leaves you feeling desperate, we’re actually saying, “God, just help me stay focused on the mission because I know you hear me. I know your face—it feels obscured to me, but I know it’s still there.” When we can do that, then we can rest in that hope, even in the midst of the despair. It’s despair into hope. In that, we find that God is faithful. It’s okay to feel despair. What we don’t want to do is stay attached to some unbound and ultimately failing, illusory hope. We want to hold on to the one who actually can overcome despair. When we stay focused, God meets us in that despair every time. He’s going to turn that despair into hope, even when it doesn’t feel like it in the moment.

Would you pray with me, please? Father, would you help us to be a people focused on hope in You? Lord, a lot of times it doesn’t feel like we can hope. A lot of times it feels so uncertain. But we know that You are the God who is the God of hope, God who provides Your goodness day in and day out. Would You help us to see it when we can’t see it? Would You help us to hold on to it when it feels like we’re too weak? When we can’t hear You, would You remind us, yes, there is radio silence, but I haven’t forgotten you. You will come out of that plasma bubble. You will come into my presence. Would You promise that to each of us? Would You help us to hold on to that tonight? We pray in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.

I hope this has been an encouragement to you tonight. If it has, would you hit that share button? It’s right below or right above. Just hit that button, whatever social media app you’re in right now, so that someone else who needs hope—and maybe is thinking, “Well, maybe once I feel hope I can come to God”—would understand, no, it’s despair into hope when we bring our despair to God. You can hit that share button and encourage someone tonight. Please do that. Hit the like button as well. These things are not just things you do that are meaningless. They actually help us get the message out. Please hit share right now.

If there’s any way I can be encouraging to you, if you need prayer, you can always leave a comment below or use our texting line, which is 833-356-4032. That’s 833-356-4032. Just text us and we’d be glad to pray with you. Either way, comments or text, great to hear from you. Hope you have a wonderful and blessed week, and I’ll see you again very soon.