Perfect Timing (Psalm 69:13)

I am weary with my crying out. My throat is parched. My eyes grow dim with waiting for my God.
– Psalm 69:13

What a verse. This picture of David, the psalmist here, crying out for God’s help. From the very beginning… The first words in Psalm 69 are, “Save me, oh God, for the waters have come up to my neck.” He feels like he is drowning.

Psalm 69:13 portrays real emotion and real fatih that we can identify with.

Do you ever feel like that? I’m guessing some of you feel like that right now. Maybe just generally in life, just overwhelmed on a big-picture level, or maybe in a specific way. When you hear these words in Psalm 63, “I’m weary with my crying out. My throat’s parched. My eyes grow dim with waiting for my God,” maybe there’s something specific you’ve been crying out to God for help in for a long time, and you’re just tired. Your eyes have grown dim with waiting. You’re weary from even praying about this, and resolution not coming over days, weeks, months, years. This is real emotion here in Psalm 69:3 that we can identify with.

Then I want to jump ahead and also read Psalm 69:13, because David gets to this point where he says, “But as for me, my prayer is to you, oh Lord, at an acceptable time, oh God, in the abundance of your steadfast love, answer me in your saving faithfulness.”

Psalm 69:13 is a picture of trust amidst the struggle.

So David is weary, longing for help, resolution, and at the same time saying, “But I will trust in your timing. And I’ll trust that at some point in the abundance of your steadfast love, you will answer my cries.” What a picture of faith that is waiting and longing for resolution, for peace, for help, for strength, and struggling in the middle of it, and at the same time trusting: “Okay, it may be a long time, but in God’s time, he’s going to show his steadfast love and answer me in his saving faithfulness.” What a phrase in Psalm 69:13.

So I just want to lead us to pray with the raw nature of this Psalm, in light of things going on in our lives. Oh God, we pray to you because we trust in you. We trust that you hear us. God, thank you for hearing our prayers. Even when we grow weary in crying out, help us to still cry out just as Jesus who taught us in Luke 18 to pray and not give up. And God, we confess … I just want to confess on behalf of many people listening to this right now, that there’s weariness in us, that our eyes grow dim with waiting, that we find ourselves waiting in different ways, specific ways, hard ways.

This verse encourages us to ask God to strengthen us in every way.

And God, we pray yet again today for your help, for your strength in the waiting, for your mercy to meet us where we are and to help us. God, we pray for your peace. We pray for your wisdom. We pray for your perspective. God, we pray for all the help that only you can give. You are our hope, oh God. So we cry out to you in a fresh way today, and we pray for grace and faith for today, and we trust that you’ll meet us with new mercy tomorrow. And we pray for grace and faith that we need for tomorrow, trusting that in your sovereign, wise timing, in the abundance of your steadfast love, you will answer us according to your faithfulness to us. Yes, God, we say that together with Psalm 69:13.

And God, even as we pray all of these things, we praise you that we’re not waiting for the good news of your grace and your love and your mercy. In Jesus, we praise you that we have the gospel in our hearts. We have the promises of your Word before us to lean on and trust in God. We pray for people who don’t even have that amidst the struggles of this world, who don’t know that you’re near to all who call on you through Jesus.

Prayer for the Wodaabe Fulani People

God, we pray specifically today for the Wodaabe Fulani people of Niger, for all 100,000 of them to be reached with the good news of your steadfast love and your saving faithfulness, that they might hear that for the first time. God, may it be so for the Wodaabe Fulani people of Niger. Please oh God, cause them to be reached with the gospel. And use our lives, our prayers right now, your church to get the gospel to them, however you want to use us. Oh God, we cry out to you according to your Qord in Psalm 69:3–13. In Jesus’ name, amen.