Let go of the past—God’s doing something new in you today.
Have you ever read straight through the Psalms? I know most of us tend to view this book like a salad bar: choose what we like (Ooh, Psalm 23! I’ll have that) and leave the rest behind. But the book is arranged intentionally, and often beautiful truths emerge when we look at the psalms, side by side.
Take, for instance, Psalm 88 and Psalm 89. These two psalms present some of the enigmas of the Christian life. Psalm 88 is a lament, about as dark as you can get. But Psalm 89, the very next chapter, is a declaration of hope.
Why have these two next to each other? It’s to remind us that when we are experiencing a Psalm 88 season, God’s Psalm 89 steadfast love and faithfulness is still real.
No matter the chapter of our lives, we can rest assured in the six fundamental truths about God we find in Psalm 89:
1. God’s steadfast love rules over everything in your life (Psalm 89:8–14).
The Bible tells us that God rules the raging sea, representing the most chaotic elements of life. He rules over the cancer cell, the unexpected job loss, the unforeseen bill, and the random accident. He stands guard on all sides, ensuring that no power coming toward you commandeers his good plan for your life. Nothing falls outside of his control.
Psalm 89:8 says, “O LORD God of Heaven’s Armies! Where is there anyone as mighty as you, O LORD? You are entirely faithful” (NLT). That means that in our darkest times of suffering and chaos, we can say, “There is no part of you, God, that is against me, no failure on your part to control all things according to your promise. You are entirely faithful. You will not take back a single word of all that you have said.”
I love verse 14: “Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne; steadfast love and faithfulness go before you” (ESV). I’ve held onto this in my pain, disappointment, and unanswered prayer as much as any other because it means that one day, when I get to heaven, I will see that God ruled everything in my life with faithfulness, love, and justice. I won’t get to heaven and think, “God, you did me wrong here. I really deserved better than that. There was a better way to do that.” I know that what will amaze me when I look backwards from eternity is not the severity of his wrath but the depth of his mercy.
2. God’s steadfast love is not always immediately apparent (Psalm 89:46).
Even in Psalm 89, the author, Ethan, said, “O LORD, how long will this [pain] go on? Will you hide yourself forever?” God’s goodness seems to hide from us sometimes, and we look around and think, “Where is the goodness of God in this chapter of my life?” But just because we can’t see it, that doesn’t mean it’s not there. It’s just hiding.
Have you ever noticed how the best movies create tension that doesn't resolve until the very end? There’s a promising beginning, a long middle of struggle, then a victory that required the intermediate struggle and left the characters better off for having gone through it. It’s not just that bad things happen, then good things happen, but the good things are good-er because of the bad.
That’s how our lives work, too, so we have to avoid the temptation to declare that nothing makes sense until we get to God’s finale. Only then will we see his good plan in it all and understand how we’re better, stronger, and more beautiful for having gone through it all.
3. God’s steadfast love shapes the glorious conclusion of his plan (Psalms 146–150).
Let me step back for a minute and make an observation about the book of Psalms. The majority of the psalms are laments, like Psalm 88, with statements of faith mixed into them, asking, “God, when will you act? How long, O LORD? When will you help me?” But then, the last five psalms, 146–150, are all praise. Not a single word of lament or complaint—only praise. It crescendos in Psalm 150:
“Praise God in his sanctuary; praise him in his mighty heavens! Praise him for his mighty deeds; praise him according to his excellent greatness! Praise him with tambourine and dance; praise him with strings and pipe! Praise him with sounding cymbals; Let everything that has breath praise the LORD! Praise the Lord.” (vv. 1–6)
Eugene Peterson said the shape of the book of Psalms itself is designed to teach us a lesson, namely that “all prayer, pursued far enough, becomes praise.” The irony, Peterson says, is that in a book called “Psalms,” or “Praises,” the majority of the psalms feel like complaints or calls for help. “Is that,” Peterson asks, “false advertising, like an attractive smile pasted on the cover of a book that contains so much pain, doubt, and trouble?”
No, he says. Here’s the truth:
“The title is accurate because it accurately describes the end, the finished product. After all these psalm-prayers complete their long travels through the unmapped back countries of pain, doubt, and trouble, with only occasional vistas of the sunlit lands along the way, they finally pull back into the station of praise.”
The journey there may take a lifetime, but you can rest assured the end will be unbroken, unqualified, unhesitating praise. The question is whether we are patient and confident enough in God to let him take us there.
4. We behold God’s steadfast love for us in the rejection of his Anointed One (Psalm 89:38–45).
Psalm 89 takes a strange turn toward the end:
“But now you have cast off and rejected your anointed. You are full of wrath against him. You have renounced the covenant with him; you have defiled his crown in the dust. You have breached all his walls ... All who pass by plunder him; he has become the scorn of his neighbors. … You have cut short the days of his youth; you have covered him with shame.” (vv. 38–41, 45)
The Hebrew word for “your anointed” is literally “Messiah” (v. 38). Psalm 89 is a prophecy of the coming Messiah. Years later, Paul said God made the Messiah, who knew no sin, to become sin for us (2 Corinthians 5:21). Luke tells us a spear was driven through the walls of Jesus’ heart so that blood and water flowed out. John tells us that after they’d crucified him, soldiers divided up his garments and plundered him. Matthew says they spit on him and mocked him and put a crown of thorns on him and said, “Hail, King of the Jews.”
And this, the author of the psalm says, reveals God’s steadfast love for us. How? Because he was wounded for my transgressions, he was bruised for my iniquities; the punishment that brought me peace was put upon him, and by his stripes I am healed (Isaiah 53). I see God’s steadfast love for me in the rejection of his anointed one. And that means that feelings of Psalm 88—abandonment, despair, loneliness—though they seem so overwhelming, are only an illusion. Jesus walked through the reality of Psalm 88 so that for us, it would only be an illusion.
It may feel like God has forsaken you, but it has to be an illusion! If Jesus didn’t abandon you in the dark hours of the cross, when your sin was literally crushing the life out of him, then surely he won’t leave you now that you belong to him. If he didn’t turn his back on you when they were driving the nails into his hands for your sin, he won’t turn his back on you now that you are his
child.
From the cross, in his darkest valley, he saw the mess you were in and he stayed. He stayed! And that means you can be assured of his presence now, when you are in your dark valley. Even in the darkness and chaos of Psalm 88, we can say, “You are entirely faithful, O LORD” (Psalm 89:8). There’s an empty tomb in Jerusalem that assures me he will not take back a single word of all that he has said. I love the words of the old spiritual: “You can’t make me doubt him, ‘cause I know too much about him!”
5. We experience God’s steadfast love for us in his steadfast presence with us (Psalm 89:15).
The psalmist says in verse 15, “Happy are those who ... walk in the light of your presence, O LORD.” Even in the midst of the darkness of these psalms, we have the light of God’s presence. Likewise, Romans 8:28 says “All things work together for good ...”
The difficulty is that we often can’t see how it is all working for good. And sometimes, we die without seeing how God was using it all for good, so we ask, “Where was your goodness in the middle of all my pain?”
Brad Hambrick has a great article about this, in which he points out that, unfortunately, we overlook the verses around Romans 8:28. The verse right after Romans 8:28 tells us that the ultimate good God is after in our lives is growth in Christlikeness. The ultimate good, this side of heaven, is not a pain-free life, but growing in the beauty of Christlikeness, a beauty that will stay with us for eternity. But it takes the Psalm 88 chapters.
Just as importantly, the verses right before Romans 8:28 tell us that as we suffer, “the Spirit inside of us “searches our hearts ... making groanings on our behalf that cannot be uttered.” “Searches” means “explores.” So the Spirit explores the contours of our pain, becomes intimately acquainted with them, feels them with us, and then verbalizes them on our behalf to God with groanings we can’t articulate.
If you’ve received Jesus, God is inside of you, feeling your pain and praying it back to Himself right now in ways you can’t even understand. He feels it even more than you. Ours is not a distant God who merely promises us that one day “it’s all going to work out.” Ours is a God who has united himself to us in our pain, suffering with us in it.
When I cannot grasp his plan, I will cling to his presence. In heaven, I’m going to see that during the worst, darkest chapters of my life, he was with me the whole time, feeling all my pain, weeping as I wept, carrying me, interceding for me with groanings and emotional yearnings that couldn’t even be captured in words.
6. Assurance of God’s steadfast love emboldens us to ask for inbreakings of God’s goodness (Psalm 89:46)
In Psalm 89:46, the author calls out for God to act. He doesn’t just resolve that “one day in heaven everything is going to be better,” and until then, he should just “grin and bear it.” He says, “God, how long until you act, O LORD? Help me now! Help me today!”
Some Christians act like it’s wrong to ask God to release you from suffering. It’s not. I know that suffering is part of God’s good plan for me, but I want to see God’s goodness break into my family, into my church, so I’m going to pray for that. I’m going to be like the Syro-Phoenician woman in Mark 7, tugging at Jesus’ arm, saying, “Don’t forget my daughter. Don’t pass us by.”
One of the saddest verses in the New Testament to me is Matthew 13:58: “Many wonderful works Jesus did not do [in Nazareth] because of their unbelief.” Nazareth was where Jesus grew up. It was where some of his most affectionate relationships were. The only reason he didn’t do wonderful, healing works was that there was no one there to believe. Is that going to be true of you?
Whether you’re in Psalm 88 or Psalm 89, you can be certain that God’s steadfast love and faithfulness are yours. He will bring his good plan for your life to fruition, even when you don’t see or feel him working. He is with you always.
Photo Credit: SWN Design
Pastor J.D. completed his Ph.D. in Theology at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. He serves as a member of the Board of Directors of Chick-fil-A, serves as a Council member for The Gospel Coalition, and recently served as the 62nd president of the Southern Baptist Convention. Pastor J.D. and his wife Veronica are raising four awesome kids.
"Editor's Note: Pastor JD Greear's "Ask the Pastor" column regularly appears at Christianity.com, providing biblical, relatable, and reliable answers to your everyday questions about faith and life. Email him your questions at [email protected]."
