Then I said, “I will appeal to this, to the years of the right hand of the most high. I will remember the deeds of the Lord. Yes, I will remember your wonders of old. I will ponder all your work and meditate on your mighty deeds.”
– Psalm 77:10–12
I love Psalm 77:10–12 and I know you will if you realize the context in which they were written. So, the first nine verses of this song, the psalmist is crying out to God. That’s the literal language in verse one. I cry aloud to God, aloud to God. He says it again. He’s crying out to God. Verse two, in the day of my trouble. In the night when my hand stretches out without wearying, and my soul refuses comfort. He’s moaning. His spirit is fainting. He is hurting. He’s walking through a dark time, period, season in his life.
God has displayed His faithfulness in the past.
And that’s what he talks about for nine verses. And then he gets to verse 10 and he said, “Then I said, ‘I will appeal to this.'” So, what do I do in this dark time? I appeal to the years of the right hand of the most high, and I will remember the deeds of the Lord. Yes, I will remember your wonders of old. I will ponder all your work and meditate on your mighty deeds. And that’s what he does the rest of the Psalm.
These Verses Remind Us of the Faithfulness of God
He just talks about how great God has shown himself, how faithful God has proved himself, how loving God has been, how God has shown his power, his mercy, his wisdom, his love throughout the years of old. Throughout his years, the years of the right hand of the most high. What a phrase. There are wonders of old that he has shown that when we face dark days, it is good to remember.
Remembering God’s Faithfulness Can Help Us in Dark Days
Sometimes one of the best ways to get through dark days in the present is to remember God’s faithfulness from the past, and in this to find hope amidst the darkness of the present as we look toward the future.
I obviously don’t know everything you’re walking through in your life right now. I’m guessing that some who are listening to this right now are in one of those dark, wearying seasons, where you find yourself crying aloud to God, aloud to God, for help. And in the middle of this dark season, dark day, challenging time, I just want to encourage you based on Psalm 77:10–12 and to lead you in prayer to remember the years of the right hand of the most high.
Psalm 77:10–12: Praising God For His Faithfulness
Oh God, we praise you for how you have shown yourself faithful to your people throughout history. We remember your deliverance of your people from slavery in Egypt. We remember how you brought them to the land that you had promised to them and how you kept your promises, all of them. And we remember how you guided them with a pillar of cloud by day and fire by night, how you provided bread from heaven and water from rocks for their every need.
God, we praise you for how you have given your people strength when they were weak. You give them wisdom in the midst of their confusion; you give them joy amidst suffering. God, we could recount story after story after story from the Old Testament as we think about Daniel in the lion’s den, as we think about Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in a fiery furnace.
God Shows His Faithfulness Through Jesus
You have shown yourself faithful over and over again in such powerful ways. And ultimately, when we think about the revelation of the word, of your word in the flesh, your son, Jesus, and his wonders, his healing people of diseases and his love for the weak and his care for the downtrodden and his taking and him, and we remember him showing the fullest expression of your love and dying on a cross for our sins and not staying dead, but three days later rising from the grave.
We remember him ascending into heaven and your spirit being poured out on all who trusted in you. And then speaking in all kinds of different languages and thousands of people coming to know you. We remember people being healed of their diseases, remember the gospel spreading, even in the middle of persecution and suffering. God, we look at the last 2,000 years since your word was finished and we see you faithfully providing for your people over and over again, through every epic of church history.
Meditating on God’s Deeds
And so right now in our lives today, we haven’t even talked about, prayed about all the different ways you’ve shown your faithfulness in each of our lives. But today, based on all you’ve done over centuries, we say we trust in you. We appeal to the years of the right hand of the most high as we remember your deeds, your wonders of old. As we ponder your work and meditate on your mighty deeds, according to Psalm 77:10–12, we say today we trust in you.
We trust in you with everything going on around us in our lives and the world around us. We trust in you and we know you will prove yourself faithful to the end. And toward that end, we pray that you would help us just as you have helped your people throughout history, that you would help us today and tomorrow and the next day and the next day until the day when we see your face, and we see in a deeper way than we can even fathom right now that our trust in you was well-grounded. We love you, God, and we appeal to the years of your right hand, oh, most high, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
David Platt serves as a Lead Pastor for McLean Bible Church. He is also the Founder and Chairman of Radical, an organization that helps people follow Jesus and make him known in their neighborhood and all nations.
David received his B.A. from the University of Georgia and M.Div., Th.M., and Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Some of his published works include Radical, Radical Together, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, and Don’t Hold Back.
He lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area with his wife and children.
