Today, we are on Psalm 22 and it is definitely worth reading. David starts out by crying, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish?” Have you ever had a prayer request that just kept going unanswered? An area of your life or a situation that you prayed fervently and consistently about and yet, nothing happened?

I have. I understand what it’s like. To feel like your prayer is perfectly legitimate and that if God were truly loving, he would do something about it. It’s a frustrating feeling to say the least. It has the power to make you question your entire belief system. My prayer in those times may not sound like psalm 22, but I understand David’s sentiment. I just want to walk up to heaven and see God face to face to understand why there hasn’t been an answer. A little bit of bitterness begins to creep in. What’s the point in praying? Clearly God can do something and he chooses not to, which makes him unloving. Either that, or he wants to do something and can’t, which makes him impotent. Either way, I don’t want to deal with him anymore.

It would be a grim situation if we just stopped there, but we don’t. We begin to coach ourselves in some different ways. God has his purposes….I don’t understand what he understands….maybe he is going to bring something good out of this…maybe there is something big that I’m missing here….perhaps if I had all the facts, I would be thanking him for not answering. This is difficult ground to traverse, but it is so incredibly vital. We all will have psalm 22 days. Days when we just can’t understand why heaven is so silent when our prayers are so loud. In those times, some conclude that God just doesn’t exist. While I think I understand the basis for their conclusion, it is an arrogant perspective to maintain. What we’re saying in those times, by concluding that God doesn’t exist, is that our perspective is perfect. We essentially have to make ourselves God in order to conclude that God doesn’t exist…how ironic. We’re saying that clearly God couldn’t possibly have a plane of understanding that so far exceeds our own that we flat out just don’t get it.

Are you in a psalm 22 season? Study psalm 22 and see where David goes for encouragement. He looks to the past and to what his ancestors experienced with God. He proclaims the truth that he knows so that it gets louder than the facts that he sees. This will prepare us to move onto the completely different note of psalm 23.