This is part four of Praying the Psalms on Your Worst Day. Today, Psalm 13, for the day you have prayed and nothing has happened.

If you read Teach Us to Pray, you have already met Psalm 13. In The Prayers That Got Angry we sat with its first two verses, the four times David asks how long, and the fact that God put complaints against Himself into His own hymnbook.

I will not repeat that post. This time I want the whole psalm, because most of us only ever pray the first part.

How long, O Jehovah? Will You forget me forever? How long will You hide Your face from me? How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily? How long will my enemy be exalted over me?

Psalm 13:1–2 NKJV

We know how to pray that part. Or we know how to feel it, which on a bad night amounts to the same thing. You have asked God for something for months, maybe years. The prodigal is still gone. The marriage is still cold. The test results keep coming back the same. You have prayed every way you know how, and the ceiling has not moved.

Psalm 13 is six verses long, and it moves in three steps. Complaint in verses one and two. Request in verses three and four. Trust in verses five and six. The man who wrote it did not stay in the first step, and that is why it is worth praying all the way through.

The Face Again

Before we go on, look at the second question. How long will You hide Your face from me?

Two posts ago David begged God, Hide Your face from my sins (Psalm 51:9). Now he is afraid God has hidden His face from him. The same Hebrew phrase carries the opposite fear. The guilty man wants God to look away from what he did. The waiting man is terrified God has looked away from him.

Both are honest prayers, and both are prayed to the same face.

The Request

Consider and hear me, O Jehovah my God; enlighten my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death; lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed against him”; lest those who trouble me rejoice when I am moved.

Psalm 13:3–4 NKJV

The complaint becomes a request. That is a bigger step than it looks. A man who only complains is talking about his situation. A man who asks still expects something from God.

Look at what David asks for. Enlighten my eyes. In Hebrew that is the language of strength coming back into a worn-out body. When Jonathan was faint with hunger in the middle of a battle, he dipped the end of his rod into a honeycomb and ate, and the Hebrew says his eyes brightened (1 Samuel 14:27). Ezra used the same picture when he prayed that God would enlighten the eyes of the returned exiles and give them a measure of reviving in their bondage (Ezra 9:8).

David is not asking for the whole problem to be solved by morning. He is asking for enough light in his eyes to get through tomorrow. Sometimes that is the most honest request a tired believer can make. Keep me alive in it.

But

But I have trusted in Your mercy; my heart shall rejoice in Your salvation. I will sing to Jehovah, because He has dealt bountifully with me.

Psalm 13:5–6 NKJV

Something happens between verse four and verse five, and it is not in David’s circumstances. Read the psalm again. The enemy is still there. Nothing has been answered. There is no word from a prophet, no victory, no letter in the mail. What changes is where David puts his weight.

But I have trusted in Your mercy.

The word mercy here is chesed, the same lovingkindness David leaned on in Psalm 51:1. When he could not see God’s face, he held on to God’s character. And trusted is batach, to lean your full weight on something, the way you trust a ladder or a footbridge over a creek.

Then he says something that sounds strange in the middle of unanswered prayer. He has dealt bountifully with me. The verb looks back. David does not claim the current crisis is over. He is reaching into his own history and pulling out every time God came through before. The lion and the bear. The giant in the Valley of Elah. The cave at En Gedi. The years running from Saul with God hiding him in the wilderness. Jehovah had dealt bountifully with him, and the God who did it before had not changed.

That is how a waiting believer gets from verse four to verse five. You do not wait until you feel it. You remember until you can say it.

Nothing in David’s circumstances changes between verse four and verse five. What changes is where he puts his weight.

The Words Under the Words

Word	Original	Strong’s	Meaning
shakach	שָׁכַח	H7911	To forget, to cease to care for. “Will You forget me forever?” verse 1
chesed	חֶסֶד	H2617	Lovingkindness, covenant loyalty. “Your mercy,” verse 5, the same word as Psalm 51:1
batach	בָּטַח	H982	To trust, to lean on with full weight, to be secure. Verse 5
gamal	גָּמַל	H1580	To deal fully with, to bestow, to bring to ripeness. “Dealt bountifully,” verse 6

Hold on to the first and last of those. In Psalm 103, five posts from now, David takes the word forget and turns it on himself, and the benefits he lists there come from the same root as gamal.

For the One Still Waiting

I cannot tell you when your answer is coming. I do not know. Neither did David when he wrote verse five.

What this psalm gives you is a shape to pray in when you have nothing left. Say what is wrong, all of it, the way David did. Then ask for what you actually need, which may be smaller than the answer you have been demanding. Light in your eyes. Strength for tomorrow. Then say the word but, out loud, and finish the sentence with something God has already done.

If you cannot think of anything, start at the cross. “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?” (Romans 8:32). Every believer can point to that bountiful dealing, whatever the rest of the week looks like.

Pray It This Week

Write your own Psalm 13 in three short sections, on paper, by hand. First, say what is wrong. Use David’s how long if it fits. Second, ask for what you need, and be specific. Third, write one sentence that begins with the word But, and finish it with something God has already done for you. Read all three sections out loud to Him every day this week, whether you feel the third one yet or not.

How long, Jehovah? I have asked and asked, and I cannot see Your face in this. Look at me. Hear me. Put some light back in my eyes before I give up. But I have trusted in Your lovingkindness. You have dealt bountifully with me before, and You have not changed. I will sing to You, even now. Amen.

Discussion Questions

1. Which of the three movements of Psalm 13 is easiest for you to pray? Which is hardest?
2. Why do you think David asked for his eyes to be enlightened instead of asking for the problem to be solved?
3. Verse 6 looks back at what God has already done. What does David gain by remembering before the answer comes?
4. List three times God has dealt bountifully with you. How does remembering them change the way you pray about what is still unanswered?
5. Read Psalm 51:9 and Psalm 13:1 side by side. What do they show you about the two ways we fear God’s face?

Going Deeper

Read Psalm 77, which follows the same pattern over twenty verses. Asaph complains through verse 9, and then in verses 10 and 11 he says he will remember the years of the right hand of the Most High and the works of Jehovah. The rest of the psalm walks back through the Exodus. It is Psalm 13 at a slower pace. If you want to study lament as a way of praying, Mark Vroegop’s Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy is a careful, pastoral book on the subject.

Next in the series, Psalms 42 and 43, for the soul that is cast down and will not get up.