Pleading With God

Pleading With God

By Kenny McKinley

Psalm 43

Turn in your Bibles to Psalm 43 (read). When David wrote this he was in some trouble. Things weren’t going so well for him. Most Biblical scholars agree that this psalm was written when David was in hiding, while King Saul was trying to kill him. I’m sure that most of you know the story. Well it was during that time of David’s life that he wrote this psalm.

Now I don’t know why it is that some people think that once they come to Christ their lives will be a walk in the park. Christianity is not a bed of roses, and the Bible never promises that it will be. But thank God, when life gets tough, and it seems like its just one problem after another, just like David, we can go to our heavenly Father.

See in Psalm 43 David was praying, and his prayer in this particular Psalm was kind of like our prayers can be from time to time. He starts his prayer by saying, “God, I’m in a mess here. I need your help, and I need you. Deliver me.” But then in verse two David kind of gets off track. He starts to ask questions, “Why do you cast me off?” That is a classic example of a faith falter. We can all do it from time to time. David started out his prayer really good, “Deliver me, for you are the God of my strength…” but then his faith faltered. He took his eyes off of the Lord, and he was like, “Hey! God! Where are you anyway? I thought we were close. Why is this happening? Why are the wicked prospering? I thought I was the one who you anointed to be king? What’s the deal here?”

Now if you’ve never prayed that way before, then you’ve been blessed. But more than likely we have all prayed like this at least once in our lives. Or at least we’ve thought about it a time or two. You know the feeling. Lord I’m doing what I’m supposed to. I’m going to church faithfully, I’m reading my Bible, I’m tithing. Whats the deal? Why is this happening? I mean, I’ve been telling people how good you are, and they’re watching me Lord, so come on!

The problem is, that’s where a lot of our prayers end, with us complaining, but in verse three David got back on track. “Oh! Send out your light, and your truth.” That is illumination, that’s revelation. That’s the Word of God! “Let them lead me.” In other words, I don’t want to be tossed about by my circumstances any more. I don’t want to be controlled by my feelings or by all the bad situations I’m going through. Ephesians 4:14 tells us that if were being tossed about by every wind of doctrine then we are as children. In other words were immature in our faith. But God’s Word is constant. It’s unchanging, and when you know and believe what God’s Word says, then your circumstances and situations don’t matter. When you know that Jesus Christ, the Son of God shed His blood, and died for your sins and was raised for your justification then there is nothing that can come against you that can knock you off that rock. It’s like the song says, “My faith is built on nothing less than Jesus blood and righteousness. On Christ the solid rock I stand, everything else is sinking sand.” Send your light and your truth.

Now look at verse four (read it). David started out this prayer good, then he had a faith falter, he then went back to a right prayer, but in verse four he messes it up again. He is saying, “God if you help me with this, if you just get me out of this mess, I’ll serve you with all my heart. I’ll praise you like I should, and do what’s right.” Basically David’s trying to play let’s make a deal with God. David said, “God if you’ll help me then I’ll praise you.” But it doesn’t work that way. Philippians 4 says, “rejoice in the Lord always.”

So in verse one to verse four of this prayer of David we can see that he is sort of flip flopping in and out of faith. He trusts in the Lord but then questions Him. He seeks Gods aid, but then tries to bargain with Him. But then something happened to David between verse four and verse five, because in verse five David is no longer blaming God, he is no longer questioning Him or trying to bargain with Him, but instead he looks at himself, and he realizes that his problem isn’t with God, it’s with himself.