Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Is God in the Fog With You? | The Writings | Psalm 143

Episode Date: December 23, 2024

Where do you turn when life falls apart? Can we be real with God? How has God been faithful to you? In today's episode, Keith shares how Psalm 143 encourages us to rely on God in the fog of life. Read the Bible with us in 2025! This year, we’re exploring the Historical Books—Joshua, Judges, 1 & 2 Samuel, and 1 & 2 Kings. Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Psalm 143

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. What do you do when things don't turn out the way you wanted them to? How do you handle disappointment? Let's say someone betrays you and really hurts you deeply. What do you do with that? Where do you go?

Who do you turn to? See, everybody has their go-to reactions when life doesn't go the way they want it to. Maybe you vent to a friend or you distract yourself with endless scrolling or you throw yourself into fixing the problem somehow. But when the problem is too big, when it's too heavy, too messy, when everything he try to do falls short, where do you turn? Like, where do you go when the weight of life presses you down and it doesn't feel like there's any escape?

Psalm 143 is David's answer to that question. David is in crisis. He's overwhelmed. He's being pursued. He's absolutely desperate. And what he does is turn to the only one who can truly help him. In this Psalm, David shows us how to approach. God when we are at our lowest.

And the first thing we have to do, and sometimes it's the hardest thing to do, is just be real with God. In verse one, David begins by saying, Lord, hear my prayer. Listen to my cry for mercy. In your faithfulness and righteousness, come to my relief. David doesn't waste time pretending. He's not trying to act strong. He's not trying to hold it all together.

He's not trying to keep a stoic face. He's not trying to play his cards close to his chest. Instead he just lays everything out there in front of God. In verse three, he continues, The enemy pursues me. He crushes me to the ground. He makes me dwell in the darkness like those long dead. This is a raw prayer.

It's David showing his vulnerability. He's not worried about sounding polished or put together. He's not trying to impress everyone. He's overwhelmed. He's scared. He's desperate. And he lets God know it. For many of us, this is really hard.

We hesitate to bring our raw emotions to God. Maybe we're afraid that being real will show a lack of faith. Maybe we think God doesn't want to hear our complaints. Or maybe we feel like we need to clean ourselves up before we come to him. But the Bible consistently shows us a God who invites us to come as we are. He already knows the depths of our heart. There's no use in hiding. Did you catch that?

God already knows what you're feeling. He knows every word you will speak before. it comes off your tongue. So there's no need to hide anything from God. Being honest with God is actually an act of faith. Because if you didn't believe that he cared, if you didn't believe that he loved you, if you didn't believe that he heard you,

then you wouldn't bother crying out to him. I mean, think about a child who falls and scrapes their knee. They don't stop to think how to phrase their cry for help. They just run to their parent, tears streaming down their face because they trust that their parent will respond. They don't go to the neighbor. They don't go to random strangers on the street. No, when your kid is hurting, your kid turns to you.

That's what David is doing here. He's hurting and he turns to his father who loves him. And his honesty reveals his trust in God's character. David's example reminds us that God isn't looking for polished prayers. He's looking for honest hearts. He wants us to bring our fears and our frustrations, even our doubts to him because he cares deeply for us. Do you trust that God cares about the problems in your life? After we've been real with God, the second step is just to remember, to remember the truth of who God is. After pouring

his heart out, David shifts his focus in verse 5, and he says, I remember the days of long ago. I meditate on all your works and consider what your hands have done. David takes time to intentionally reflect on God's past faithfulness. He doesn't dwell only on his current crisis, He remembers the ways God has shown up in his life before. And in doing so, David finds hope. See, David is reminding himself that the God who has been faithful in the past will be faithful again. This act of remembering is powerful because it reorients our perspective.

In a crisis, it's easy to focus on the problem right in front of us. Our struggles feel all-encompassing, and it's hard to see beyond them. But when we take time to reflect on God's faithfulness, it reminds us that he's still in this with us. He's still at work. He has shown up in our life and provided what we needed so many times before. So we can trust him with the problems we face today. We can trust him with the problems we face tomorrow. Corey Tinboom, who endured unimaginable suffering in a Nazi concentration camp, famously said, never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God. Man, I like that a lot. Sure, our future is unknown, but we know who our God is.

Psalm 143 says, he is a faithful God, he is a righteous God. His unfailing love is always with us. He is gracious and compassionate. Even in the darkest moments of her life, Corey Tinboom found strength by remembering how God had been faithful to her before. Those memories anchored her trust in God's ability to carry her through, and the same can be true for us. This practice of remembering isn't just about the big dramatic moments of deliverance. It's also about the small everyday moments that God showed up. Maybe it's the time God provided a friend when you were lonely, or gave you wisdom when you didn't know what the right course of action was.

Or maybe he just gave you strength when you felt particularly weak. Reflecting on those moments builds our confidence in God's ability to meet us in our current struggles. If David was able to remember the faithfulness of God before, how much more so should we? we who live on this side of the cross be rooted in the faithfulness of God. We are people who have been saved by the death of Jesus. We've been sealed by His Holy Spirit. We've been bought with his blood. Despite our circumstances, we know that death has been defeated and that the king is on

the throne. And because we know our God, we can trust that he will be faithful in the unknown. But it's not just enough to be real and to remember. we must also rely on God. That's what David shows us in verse 10. He says, Teach me to do your will, for you are my God. May your good spirit lead me on level ground.

David doesn't just ask for deliverance. He also asks for direction. He doesn't demand that God fix everything the way he wants it to be. Instead, he submits himself to God's will and he trusts God to lead him. This kind of reliance is challenging because it requires us to let go of control and trust in God's promises, even when the outcome feels uncertain, do I believe that God knows best? Do I believe that God will give me what's best for me, even if it's not what I want? Florence Chadwick was the first woman to swim the English Channel. In 1952, she attempted to swim from Catalina Island to the

California coast. As she swam, a dense fog settled over the water and blocked her view of the shore. So after 15 grueling hours in the water, she asked to be pulled out and to get into the boat. When she got into the boat, she realized she was only a mile away from her goal. Two months later, she tried again. This time, even though the fog was just as thick, she succeeded. Why? Well, she said she kept a mental picture of the shore in her mind. The vision gave her the strength to push through the fog and through the exhaustion.

You see, that first swim through, if she had known how close she was, she could have made it. But she couldn't see the shoreline because of the fog. When we're in the fog of a crisis, it feels impossible to keep moving forward. We can't see the other side. The pain and the uncertainty or the grief, it clouds our view, and it makes it hard to see God's promises. But the Bible gives us a clear picture of the shore we're swimming toward, a day when God will wipe every tear from our eyes, a day when there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, as laid out in Revelation 21. This is the hope we rely on, even in the hardest times.

Relying on God doesn't mean we ignore our pain or pretend everything's fine. It means we grieve with hope, trusting that the God who holds the future is also walking with us in the present. It means we keep on swimming, not because we can see the end, but because we trust the one who promised to bring us to the end. This is the type of reliance that Jesus demonstrated the night before he was crucified. In the Garden of Gassimony, overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death, he cried out to his father. He prayed, My father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me, yet not as I will, but as you will.

And what gave Jesus the strength to endure the unimaginable pain of the cross? Well, the writer of Hebrews tells us, for the joy set before him, he endured the cross. Jesus kept his eyes on the joy that awaited him, on the joy of redeeming his people, of defeating sin and death, of bringing resurrection life to a broken world. Because of Jesus, we know that God meets us in our suffering. Jesus entered into the depths of human pain and grief and loss to bring about resurrection and hope. The joy set before us is the same joy that strengthened Jesus, the promise of eternal life. And in Jesus, we can grieve with hope and endure with trust, knowing that the resurrection is always on the other side of the cross.

Amen.