“How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me? Look on me and answer, Lord my God. Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death, and my enemy will say, ‘I have overcome him,’ and my foes will rejoice when I fall. But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing the Lord’s praise, for he has been good to me.” (v1-6)
“How long…?” David asks this question four times. Clearly David was feeling disconnected from God. I can empathize since I too have felt disconnected from God at times.
We can’t be physically separated from God since He is omnipresent, so how do we get through these times of emotional and/or spiritual separation? Here are some seemingly random, yet carefully chosen verses: Hos 6:1,4,6,7; Hos 12:6; 2 Chr 15:1-4; Jer 3:13,14,22; Isa 55:6-7; and perhaps my favorite of the bunch: ” ‘God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.’ Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.” (Jam 4:6b-8)
Now, I’m not trying to imply by those verses that David sinned and was therefore far from God, however, every verse I found implies (or specifies) separation from God is a result of sin (even if we go back to Genesis 3:8-10 when Adam hid from God).
It’s clear that sin separates us from God, and that God’s desire is to destroy the separation (He sent Jesus to break the barrier that sin created between us). I think David has it right as he closes his Psalm by saying “I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation” because God’s salvation (God’s grace and mercy exhibited through the death & resurrection) is the only thing that will repair this separation.
Father, I come before you with filthy hands and an impure heart – please cleanse me me again from any unrighteousness that would separate me from you, and help identify any double-mindedness within me so we can renew my mind for a singular focus on You. I long to draw near to you, so that you may in turn draw near to me. Even when I don’t “feel” you near, I can rest on the promise that your love is unfailing, and I can rejoice in your salvation. (a prayer par. from Jam 4 & Psa 13)
~ Conqueror in Training