Answer me when I call, O God of my righteousness! You have given me relief when I was in distress. Be gracious to me and hear my prayer!  Psalm 4:1 (ESV)

I know I am not the only one who sometimes feels like God is not answering me when I call.  It’s that forever thing that has  not been resolved (the way I want it to be resolved). It is that thing that doesn’t go away.  Sometimes it slides into the background and I get relief, but it always comes crawling back out… usually when there is other stress.

Of course, the night is when doubt rears its ugly head the most.  The persistent prayer request that I cannot leave in God’s hands and rest comes boiling into my heart and mind.  The Psalmist must have felt it too.  We see the questioning throughout the Psalms.

“Answer me, O God.”

“Are you there?”

“Do you hear me?”

“What are you doing about this?”

“When will you act?”

It gives me comfort that one whom God loved and blessed was a person with human weaknesses.  He wasn’t always at the top of his game.  He had times of frustration and even doubts.  But he didn’t stay there.  Doubt was not his habit;  turning to God for help and healing was his habit.  He struggled with opposition, enemy warfare, a dysfunctional family, and his own horrific sinfulness.  But he didn’t stop at the complaint, or the doubt or the pain.  Every time he eventually acknowledged the truth that he knew from his experience, and in his mind.  Even if the emotions were charged, he always came back to “God is faithful.

“You have given me relief.”   Not once, but over and over again.  That has been my experience as well.  So many times, and in so many ways God has blessed, healed, protected, answered, and I can also say, “You have given me relief, and I will trust you.”  I won’t let the night take my song away.  I won’t let it take my joy away.   I hope you will not either.

I cried aloud to the LORD,

and he answered me from his holy hill. Selah

I lay down and slept;

I woke again, for the LORD sustained me.

Psalm 3:4-5 (ESV)