Is it okay to ask God "how long"?

In Psalm 13, David cries out "How long, O LORD?" four times in just six verses — and then ends in worship. Dr. Toby Holt shows that honest lament and real faith can go together.

David feels forgotten and overwhelmed, and tells God so plainly. Our struggle is often the duration of hardship, not only its severity. Yet David does not stay in despair: he remembers God's past faithfulness — rescue from the lion, the bear, and Goliath — and chooses to trust again.

Questions this study answers:

1. Why did David, "a man after God's own heart," feel abandoned? Because faith does not erase real pain. David honestly voiced his anguish even while continuing to trust God.

2. What does this psalm teach about honest prayer? That God welcomes our raw, honest cries. Lament is not the opposite of faith; it can be an act of it.

3. How can worship rise even from pain? By remembering God's past faithfulness and trusting His mercy. David sang again because he recalled how God had dealt bountifully with him. "But I have trusted in Your mercy… I will sing to the LORD, because He has dealt bountifully with me." — Psalm 13:5-6 (NKJV)

Dr. Toby Holt is President of New Geneva Theological Seminary, and his sermons have been downloaded more than 1.9 million times on SermonAudio. Find more verse-by-verse Bible teaching at newgeneva.org; support this ministry at newgeneva.org/give.

A couple of weeks back I was driving down the interstate and as I looked in the rearview mirror

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there was this black truck and it was flying up and I knew that within 10-15 seconds it was going

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to catch up with me. Now as the guy raced past me and he almost caused actually an accident it was

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probably about 50 yards in front of him but he almost caused an accident as he was doing this.

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So as I saw this going on I experienced this frustration because there I am you know driving

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55 stay alive and as this happens this guy goes by there's one other vehicle that I was looking

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for at that time. Can you guess what it was? Exactly. I did what we all do. I look at this

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truck go flying by me, and I look around, and I say, surely, surely there's going to be a cop.

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Surely someone saw what I have seen. Surely someone with the power and the authority to

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redress this situation will come flying in, and this guy will get pulled over, and he'll get a

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ticket. Surely that's what will happen. Well, I regret to tell you I was disappointed. There was

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no siren, there was no lights, there was just the smoky emissions of this vehicle clouding the

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interstate as he proceeded down the road. Have you ever had such an experience? If you've been on I-10,

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I assure you that you have. You've seen traffic injustices, but you've seen other sort of injustices

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as well. There's times in life where you've seen things happen, see things go down, and you've seen

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people get away with things that seems totally unacceptable to you. You've seen things happen

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in life that offends your sense of what's right and what's wrong. And when that sort of stuff

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happens, when these injustices occur, you want the same thing that I want on the freeway. You

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want someone with the authority and the power to intervene and to deal with it, and it doesn't

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always happen. And so the question you can have in any number of circumstances is how long? How

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long till the wrongs are righted? How long till injustice is dealt with? How long till the wicked

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are punished? How long until the hurting are exalted? How long? Now another thing that causes

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us to ask how long is when we're undergoing something terrible. If you've ever undergone

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chemotherapy or cancer treatments and the like, or you've had a loved one undergo them, then you

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can have a sense of how long. We can wonder how long when we're undergoing some circumstance or

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situation that just seems endless, one that leaves us frustrated, one that leaves us fatigued with

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more questions than answers. We can become frustrated and ask God how long when he allows

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something into our life that just seems so bad, and it doesn't seem like it's going to go away.

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Or when he takes something out of our life that it doesn't seem like is ever going to get put back.

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We can feel the hole, we can feel the hardship, we can feel the angst,

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we can cry the tears, and we can ask God, how long?

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In today's reading, that's going to be the exact phrase the psalmist is going to use.

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In fact, he's going to use it four times in six verses.

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By any metric, that's a lot.

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Four times in six verses, he's going to ask, how long?

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How long are you going to let this draw out, God?

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Will you forget me forever?

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That's the question he's going to ask, and it's a question we might have wondered at some point, too.

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Well, here's the good news.

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By the end of our reading, by the time we get to verses 5 and 6,

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the psalmist is going to answer his own questions.

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By the end of today's reading, the psalmist is going to recognize

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that there are seasons and times that, yes, they're difficult,

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and yet these are seasons and times when our faith is growing

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as we are called to wait upon the Lord,

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knowing, knowing that in His time, He will right all the wrongs.

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In His time, He will vindicate the oppressed.

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In his time, he'll deal with the wicked.

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In his time, he'll wipe away every tear.

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And in his time, he'll validate every ounce of faith you place in him today.

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We wait knowing that our waiting is not in vain.

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All right, let's look at verses 1 and 2,

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and let's work our way through the balance of this text.

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We'll go from a position of frustration in the first two verses

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to ultimately one of faith in the last two.

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Verses 1 and 2.

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how long, O Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How

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long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily? How long will my enemy

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be exalted over me? All right, let me ask you another question. Who wrote Psalm 13? David?

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Okay, yeah, absolutely, David. If you're ever in doubt who wrote a particular psalm, you've got a

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real sporting chance if you guessed David. In this case, you would have guessed correctly. David wrote

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Psalm 13. He wrote a lot of Psalms. And David, as you know from any study of David, he knew a thing

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or two about suffering. David knew a thing or two about hardships. Despite being a king, despite

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just being a guy who was the apple of God's eye, David still knew a great deal about hardships and

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difficulty and suffering. If you were to open 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, virtually on every page,

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as you read David's story, there's someone on that page who wants to kill him. Basically,

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every page of David's story, there's someone on that page that wants to kill him, to maim him,

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destroy him, dethrone him. It starts, of course, with Goliath. It goes on to Saul, Philistines,

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Moabites, Ammonites, even his own son, Absalom.

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There were enemies outside of David's house.

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There were enemies within David's house.

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Now, if you'd spent on virtually every page of your life,

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every page of your own story,

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if you spent the bulk of your life contending with enemies,

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if you'd been betrayed by your friends and your family alike,

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if you'd held your own son in your arms as he died,

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wouldn't, on top of all that you'd faced, all the hardships and difficulties, and the people

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wanted to kill you, and seeing death up close, wouldn't you be tired and fatigued and frustrated?

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Wouldn't your question be, how long? How long? If you'd seen as much bloodshed as David had,

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you and I would be ready for it to be over, ready for it to end. If we'd experienced maybe even half

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of the grief that David had, we'd be asking God, how long can this continue? Our problem is not

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necessarily the severity of hardship. Our problem is the duration of hardship. Do you see the

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difference? The doctor calls and the doctor says, all right, next week, I'm sorry, we're going to

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have to have you in for a heart cath. We're going to have to have you come in for open heart surgery

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next Monday. Well, between now and next Monday, you just live in dread and fear and doubt and

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anxiety. You couldn't eat or sleep well as you anticipated this terrible thing that was coming.

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Monday's going to be the worst, hardest day of my life. Get everyone praying. Let's gather the

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horses. Let's do everything we can to insulate and protect this day because it's going to be the

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hardest day to undergo this terrible, terrible thing. But then you have the surgery and then

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the next day it's over. And of course there's a recovery, but at the same time, at least you can

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look back now. You're through the hardship. You can look back now at this difficult day and you

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can wipe the sweat off your bow and say, at least I don't have to do that again. But what if you did?

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What if Tuesday you had another surgery? What if Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, what if

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something horrible to the level of open heart surgery occurred to you every day of your life

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from now until the day God calls you home? Your problem isn't necessarily the severity of something

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hard you're undergoing. The problem, the hardest thing to deal with is the duration, is when it

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just doesn't seem to end, when I just can't get past it, when every day I wake up and it's the

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same thing, the same hole in my heart, the same difficulty I have, the same angst that I'm facing.

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That's the hardest thing, and that, that's at the core of David's question. When he asked how long,

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this is a guy who'd faced the equivalent, so to speak, of open heart surgery, or at least the

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difficulty and the stress and anxiety of that sort of thing a lot of times in his life the problem

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was it seemed to just be endless and even in his own house in a place where he could not escape it

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with that said even though he was frustrated frustration is not incompatible with faith

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if you're frustrated today because you're going through something that god's letting you go

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through it and you know he loves you but you also know he has the power to deal with it and yet he

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hasn't dealt with it yet it's like a thorn in the flesh it hasn't been taken away you can be

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frustrated, and that frustration is not incompatible with faith. Do you understand that? David was

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frustrated, but in no way here do we see this remarked out as sin. This is a guy who's pouring

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out his heart before God. He was frustrated, but he was also faithful. Let's see how that faith

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germinates or comes forth in the verses that follow. Let's look at verses three and four.

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Consider, hear me, O Lord my God, enlighten my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death. Lest my

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enemies say i prevailed against them lest those who trouble me rejoice when i am moved now let

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me stop at verse 3 it said consider me lord my god enlighten my eyes this is not spiritual

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enlightenment that he's looking for here any time in scripture you see something about the eyes the

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eyes were oftentimes the equivalent of the power or the fervor of the man as moses got older what

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scripture say it says his eyes did not grow dim here we'll see enlighten my eyes the idea is that

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he's fatigued. He's fatigued. He's overwhelmed. He says, consider me. I'm overwhelmed. I'm frustrated.

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Enlighten my eyes, lest everything I'm going for leave me to sleep the sleep of death. Lest my

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enemies say I prevailed against them, and those who trouble me rejoice. You know, over the years,

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there in verse 4, was a reference to an enemy. Over the years, theologians have tried to guess,

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well, who's David talking about here? When was this psalm written? Some folks wonder. I mean,

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David had hardships, really, from when he was a ruddy young youth,

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really on until the time he died.

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He had troubles and enemies the whole way.

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So with that said, is there a particular enemy in mind here?

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Could this psalm have been written, say, when he was younger?

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Maybe he's dealing with Saul.

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Saul's a king.

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Saul's trying to kill him and chasing him all over the countryside.

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Is that when he wrote it?

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Well, I don't know, maybe.

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Others think, well, maybe it was written later in life.

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and the enemy was Absalom, his own son who was looking to take the kingdom from him. Now could

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it have been Absalom? Again, sure. We can't be certain who is being talked about here in verse

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four. David had a lot of enemies that wanted to defeat him. There were a lot of guys who wrote in

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their diary, dear diary, I would like David to sleep the sleep of death. There was a lot of people

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who that was their burning desire. So we don't know who it was that wrote it. But if you were

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to look way back in 1 Samuel 17. That was the first most formidable enemy that David had, and

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that was, of course, Goliath. In 1 Samuel 17, Goliath told David words that he probably heard

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countless times in the years after, but Goliath looks at this young David and he says, come to me.

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Come to me. Run to me. Advance on me. Fight with me. Come to me. I will give your flesh to the birds

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of the air and to the beasts of the field. So David heard that threat from Goliath. As a side

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note, how did that work out for Goliath? Not too well. I think the only thing the birds feasted on

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that day was him. See, God protected David that day. We know that. We know God protected David

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because David walked up to Goliath as this young guy going against this giant, as this guy with no

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sword, no armor, against a guy who was just armed to the teeth, 8, 9, 10, 12 feet tall, depending on

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how you do the measurement, this giant of a man, and yet God protected him against this giant of a

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man. It was God that enabled David to defeat Goliath, to survive King Saul, to defeat the

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Moabites and the Ammonites and the Philistines and virtually every tribe and tongue that existed in

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his day. God had been with David through all this, and David learned to rely upon God's presence.

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With that said, why is he worried here in today's text?

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Why is he worried here?

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If he had the bravery to go up against Goliath,

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why is he worried here when he wrote this text?

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Well, worry, I don't know if that's the right word,

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but I know this much.

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David realized he had to turn to God every moment.

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Because if God were to stand back even an inch from David,

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that would leave more than enough territory for the enemies to swoop in.

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David knew that if God stepped back an inch, he was dead man walking.

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Again, he had more enemies than you and I have hair.

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It's a sliding scale for some of us, but he had a lot.

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And given the nature of his enemies, David asked God, in verse 4, he says,

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Protect me, watch over me, lest my enemies prevail against me.

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And if they prevail against me, he says to God,

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if he prevails against me, the idea is that they're prevailing against you.

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See, it's not his own ego or glory or even life that is his foremost consideration here.

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One of his concerns is that if his enemies prevail against him as the king,

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then in a sense, it would appear they prevailed against the God

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who'd always been with the king, with David.

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Well, as is usually the case, God would respond to this prayer.

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David would survive the writing of Psalm 13.

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He would live days, weeks, years beyond this.

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And furthermore, despite being a warrior and a soldier all of his life,

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despite being a guy who fought countless other guys,

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who fought men and beasts and animals and giants and the like,

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how did David die?

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He died in his bed.

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He died of old age. In God's providence, no man was ever permitted to take David's life. He was

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never given to the birds of the air or the beasts of the field. David had a lot of battle scars,

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but his wounds hadn't been fatal. Now, you and I have lived very different lives from David,

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and we have our own battle scars. They differ, but we can relate to an extent. We can't relate

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to everything David went through, but we can relate to some of it. We can relate to this

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world taking a pound of flesh from out of us. We can relate to the scars that have been laid on

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our own back. And yet, like David, we can say, yet I'm still here. Yet I'm still here. My enemy has

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not prevailed against me. God has sustained you in times past, and if he's done that in the past,

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he'll do it in the future. Let's look at verses five and six. Verse five. But I have trusted in

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your mercy. My heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord, because he

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has dealt bountifully with me. You know, way back, 1 Samuel 17, it must have taken a lot of faith for

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David to go against Goliath. In human terms, it was no contest. In human terms, it was a picked

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squeak versus a giant. If you were a betting man, you wouldn't take this bet. With that said, no one

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thought David had a chance, and that even included King Saul. You remember what Saul said to David?

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David is the only guy who thinks he's going to go up against the giant. Every other man stood down.

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They said they wanted no part of it. David, this young guy, goes up against Goliath. Saul takes

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one look at him and says, no, you don't. Not going to work out. He says to David, you are not able to

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go against this Philistine to fight with him for you're a youth and he's a man of war. When Saul

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said that to David, was he wrong? Well, no, not in a human sense. Left to his own devices, David

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wasn't able to go against the Philistine. What Saul forgot is that David wasn't the only soldier

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on Israel's side that day. He wasn't the only warrior on the battlefield. Rather, there was

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another who was greater. And that's what David told Saul back for Samuel. He told Saul, he says,

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look, he said, I used to keep my father's sheep. And when a lion or a bear came and took a lamb

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out of the flock, I went after it. I struck it down. Your servant has killed both lion and bear.

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And because of that, this uncircumcised Philistine is going to be like one of them.

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because he's defied the armies of the living God.

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The Lord, now listen to this reference,

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the Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear,

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he will deliver me from the hand of the Philistine.

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The Lord will deliver me.

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How did David know that for sure?

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How could he be confident that God would deliver him from the giant?

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Well, because he looked at his encounters with the bear and the lion

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and other beasts of the fields,

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and he knew God had delivered him from these things.

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Whenever David had a concern about the future, he looked to the past.

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And what he saw when he looked to the past was that he'd had a lot of hardships, and yet he was

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still here. He had had a lot of hardships, and yet God had rescued him, saved him, preserved him,

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sustained him every single time. If you're in this room this morning breathing, you have no idea how

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much God has already sustained you thus far just to get you to this point. So as you think about

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something anxious next week, next month, next year, maybe, maybe look back and see all the times

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He's preserved you and taken care of you

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and strengthened you and helped you and aided you.

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And don't you think that he might yet do it still?

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See, when he got down about how today was going,

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he became excited when he would look into the past or the future.

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In the past, he could see God's hand.

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In the future, he could see God's promises.

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And this quickened his faith.

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He says, you've dealt bountifully with me.

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He says, I look back and I see all you've done.

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You've had mercy with me time and time again.

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and I've learned to trust in that. Beyond that, he knew that final salvation awaits. If you look at

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verse 5 and 6, he says, I've trusted in your mercy. My heart shall rejoice in your salvation.

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I sing the Lord because you have dealt bountifully with me. Salvation was also something God had

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given him. He had a promise that even if he was to die that very moment, with that pin stroke,

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that God would take him home and be able to dwell with him for eternity. No matter how bad David's

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week was going, don't you think that gave him some confidence? Don't you think it gave him some

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confidence that whatever the hardship was here on earth, it wasn't going to last forever?

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It wasn't going to last forever. The best week you'll have here on earth

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is far worse than the worst week you'll have in heaven. Same time, the worst week you'll ever

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have on earth, the most hard, difficult, painful trials you'll ever go through here on earth is a

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lot better than the best week a man could ever have in hell. Quite honestly, being saved from

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hell and death should have the effect of putting all your other trials and circumstances in

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perspective. If you know what God has already rescued you from and how bad and terrible that

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is, it should put what you're going through today in perspective and say, he's already saved me from

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the greatest cataclysm that could ever befall me. Can he not save me from what's going to happen

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next Monday or next Tuesday and so forth? All right, the remaining time this morning,

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I want to return to the question of how long.

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Speaking of things that take a long time,

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every year our family watches the three movies,

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The Lord of the Rings.

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Now, when we bought The Lord of the Rings,

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we didn't buy just any version.

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We bought what's called the extended version.

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Some of you know what I'm talking about.

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It comes in a DVD case about that thick.

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It takes a movie, any one of those three,

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a movie that at first glance was like three and a half hours

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when you saw it in the theater, it makes it like 15 or so by the time you get through

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any one of these discs. They're just, they're endless. We do enjoy them, but they take a

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long time to go through. So we don't watch just any version. We watch the extended version

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and that means we're staring at hobbits, you know, from dawn till dusk on the day we start

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watching this. There are few time commitments in life that are greater than watching The

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Lord of the Rings, the extended version. With that said, every time we watch, every time

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we watch and after scene after scene, these hobbits go from, you know, frolicking in the

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fields and the woods to just being greasy and covered with dirt and sweat and blood like the

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entire rest of the series as we watch this as we watch their difficulty you know you get empathetic

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with what they're going through and yet you don't have any doubt how the story is going to end it

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helps if you've seen it before but you don't have any doubt how the series is going to end as you

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watch it there's no doubt that how much difficulty or pain they go through these hobbits they're

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going to complete their journey and they're going to accomplish their goal, even if they get beaten

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up during the process. We know that they're going to be victorious by the final scene, even as we

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feel the weight of the struggle, how long they endure their hardships. In the same way, but the

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same way you're probably confident, if you're a Christian, if you spend any time in God's Word,

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you're probably confident that your struggles today and next week are going to end. You're

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probably confident, if you're a Christian in the room this morning, that you will be victorious

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come the final scene, but that doesn't necessarily make the journey any easier.

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The fact that you know how it's going to end, as David did, doesn't necessarily make the journey

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any easier, and because it can be so rough, we can ask, how long is God going to allow this

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to continue? Let me tell you a secret. All of the heroes of the Bible, all the heroes of the

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scripture, they ask the same question. If you're wondering how long God's going to let something

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go on in your life that you don't like and you don't want, the heroes of the Bible, they ask

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the same question. The prophets ask this all the time. Again, in today's text, four times in six

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verses, the heroes of the Bible grew tired and fatigued and frustrated. They threw their hands

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up in the air. Can you think of any times when that happened? Elijah. Elijah goes running out

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into the wilderness, 40 days, ends up crying on a ball under a broom tree. How long is this going

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to continue? What's going on? I'm the only one left, he says at that time. He's fatigued and

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he's frustrated. He's crying under the sycamore tree. God's people got frustrated. They didn't

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get it. They didn't understand it. They didn't like it. Even some of the prophets, the one that

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God spoke to, didn't have all the answers. And when they didn't have the answers, they

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got tired and fatigued and they got to the end of the rope. Do you remember Moses? Moses, man alive.

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God sends Moses in to deal with Pharaoh, which is no small task. All sorts of plagues are going down.

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Finally, Pharaoh breaks. I can't take it anymore. Let's them go off in the wilderness, then changes

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his mind and chases them down. And then you have that great event where the Red Sea parts and God's

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people go across. And you would think that the people would be like, yeah, Moses, Moses, our man,

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moses he's he's our guy well how long did that last not long because it seems like moments later

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days later their tummies start to rumble with rage and they're looking at moses and saying that guy

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he's the reason we're in this pickle we're hungry we had milk and bread and honey and you know all

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these goodies back in egypt but now we're going to die of frustration they got angry at moses and

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they were always frustrated angry at moses if you read through exodus and deuteronomy the people

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never really seemed to care for Moses that much, which is ironic because now the Jews look back at

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Moses as the paragon. But at the time, they were constantly throwing poor Moses under the bus. Even

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his own sister and brother, there was times when they did that. So Moses goes up the mountain. He

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goes up to meet with God. This amazing thing, there's lightnings and thunderings. He goes up

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the mountain. He meets with God. Of course, he's gone just a very short time. And in that time,

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the people get together and go, well, what to do? Moses isn't coming back anytime soon. And I know,

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I know. A gold calf. Let's do the gold calf. So they start putting together the gold calf. Well,

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what happens? Moses finally comes down the mountain, and he says, what is this I'm hearing?

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There's some sound going on. He rounds the bend. He's got the Ten Commandments, the tablets, and

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he comes around the bend, and it's like his eyes just bug out of his brain. He sees a gold calf in

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the midst of the people, and the noises, and people bowing down, doing all that. What did Moses do at

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that time. What did he do with his end commandments? He throws them down, shatters them. God's people

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got frustrated. Even God's leaders, even the best of the best, got to the end of their rope. If they

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could get to the end of the rope, then so can you. In fact, there'll be times when God will put you

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there. It won't be an accident. It won't be happenstance. That's because God can and does

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Use the hard edges of life to sanctify us.

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If you're going to temper iron, how do you temper it?

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Over the hottest of heat.

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God will put you in situations that make you cry out, how long?

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He hasn't done it yet.

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He'll do it at some point in the future.

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With that said, how did the heroes of the Bible cope going through some of these difficulties?

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Well, what we see in Scripture is that even though they grew tired and fatigued during their journey,

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they learn to stop focusing on the journey and to start focusing on the destination

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psalm 27 king david said this he says i would have lost heart i would have lost heart unless

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i had believed that i would see the goodness of the lord in the land of the living wait on the

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lord be of good courage he shall strengthen your heart wait i say on the lord if king david had

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always been focused on the journey and not the destination, he would have been inclined to give

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up. In fact, that's what he said. He says, I would have lost hope. He says, I would have lost heart

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unless I believed this, unless I was looking ahead through eyes of faith that there are better days

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ahead. There's got to be hardships in your life. Anyone who tells you different is selling you

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something, even if it happens behind a pulpit, even if it happens in a church circles. Anyone

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one who tells you that you can have your best life now, that life is prosperity and peace and

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health, and all you have to do is say a few magic words or throw some money in the plate, if they

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tell you that you can reach that nirvana by doing some action or deed, they're selling you something.

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And it's not the truth. As long as you live in a fallen world, you'll be set by fallen ills.

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With that said, all Scripture tries to lift our gaze and say, yes, it's bad and hard here.

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Yes, there is death. Yes, there is cancer. Yes, there is sickness. Yes, there is disease. Yes,

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there's poverty. Yes, there is COVID. Yes, there's all that. Scripture doesn't hide that. It doesn't

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put it in the dust jacket. It's front and center in its pages. But in this pages, there's also a

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sense in which God cups our chin, focuses us upward, and reminds us it's not all about the

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journey and the difficulties here and the horizontal. It's about the vertical. It's about

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the hope we have eternal. That's what keeps us going. What's going to keep you going this week?

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What's going to keep you going?

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2,000 years ago, a man hung on a cross on Calvary.

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He was a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.

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He bore mankind's sorrows.

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He was bruised for our iniquity, and our Lord has laid upon him the iniquity of us all.

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2,000 years ago, God looked down upon broken people like us

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and determined to rescue us and save us by giving that which was most precious to himself.

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My hope today, my hope this week, as a pastor, you deal with a lot of difficulties, a lot of hardships.

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The reason I'm, generally speaking, pretty upbeat is because you learn to look past that.

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And just to expect it.

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I mean, it just comes with the territory.

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But you look past it and you say, you know, yeah, this is my favorite week.

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This is my favorite month or year or what have you.

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But I'm looking on to something better.

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What hope do you have?

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My hope is that there is one in heaven who has the power to take away sin's curse.

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My hope is because I don't confuse the journey with the destination.

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My hope is because there is one who sits even now at the right hand of God the Father,

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who lives and breathes to make intercession for me and for you.

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And my hope is also this, that just as he came 2,000 years ago

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to live, breathe, and die amongst his people,

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just as he came 2,000 years ago, Scripture says this,

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he's coming back.

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And that day has never been closer.

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That makes me smile.

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That makes me excited.

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Don't you long for that day in the midst of all the tears that you've shed.

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don't you long for that day. The entire universe is on pins and needles waiting for it. And again,

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it's never been closer. The passages we see this morning remind us that this life is hard. This

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life is difficult. We will ask how long. God does have an answer. He does have an answer. There are

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better days. And scripture reminds us that we have not seen anything yet. Let's pray.