Knowing God through His Word … Day by Day

Psalm 40:1-2

I waited patiently for the Lord;
he inclined to me and heard my cry.
2 He drew me up from the pit of destruction,
out of the miry bog,
and set my feet upon a rock,
making my steps secure.

Dr. John Piper, in a message, “In the Pits With a King:”

So perhaps what we are to imagine is falling into a well and sinking deep in the sludge at the bottom and going deeper every time we try to lift a foot and then all of a sudden there is roaring water coming from somewhere and it rushes around us in the dark. And then comes the sense of helplessness and desperation, and all of a sudden air, just air, is worth a million dollars, worth more than all the cars in Michigan and all the cabins in Minnesota. Helplessness, desperation, apparent hopelessness, the breaking point for the overworked businessman, the outer limits of exasperation for the mother of three constantly crying children, the impossible expectations of too many classes in school, the grinding stress of a lingering illness, the imminent attack of a powerful enemy. It is good that we don’t know what the experience was. It makes it easier to see ourselves in the pits with the king.Anything that causes a sense of helplessness and desperation and threatens to ruin life or take it away—that is the king’s pit.

David Cries Out to the Lord

Now the king’s cry (v. 1): “I waited patiently for the Lord; he inclined to me and heard my cry.” One of the reasons God loved David so much was because he cried so much. Psalm 6:6, “I am weary with my mourning; every night I flood my bed with tears; I drench my couch with my weeping.” Psalm 56:8, “Put my tears in thy bottle; are they not in thy book?” Indeed they are, because, “blessed are they that mourn.” It is a beautiful thing when a broken man genuinely cries out to God. Not like the jock who gets a cramp while swimming but struggles to get to shore unassisted lest he appear to be weak, but like the little child who wanders too far out in the turf and starts to get taken by the undertow and cries out immediately, “Daddy! Daddy!” God loves to answer childlike prayers.