Thursday, January 15th | Daily Devotion
- Jan 15
- 3 min read
How long, O Lord, 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
TRANSCRIPTION:
Great morning, how you doing? It’s an incredible Thursday. I’m Dr. Powell here with our weekly devotional. And if you’ve been with us, you know that we are couched in the book of Psalms.
On this wonderful and beautiful Thursday morning, I’d love if you could open with me to the 13th division of Psalm—the 13th division of Psalm. I’m going to read a little bit, and as you know how we do, my expectation is that you’ll read it in its entirety. But just a few nuggets for us, some marching orders to inspire us on this morning.
“How long, O Lord, 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?” And it goes on.
Here’s the incredible and most important thing: there is nobody under the sound of my voice who has never felt like this, who has never experienced this area and space of feeling forgotten and/or dismissed and/or put on the back burner as it relates to their faith—especially with the one and true Savior who is always there.
It’s interesting to me that even though we often find ourselves in this existential space, we have the ability to echo these words—“How long?” and “Have you forgotten me?” Now, before we judge the psalmist, David echoed something that I think helps us garner a little bit more of the reality of the vicissitudes of life.
On yesterday, it was challenging for me because in certain areas and spaces we experienced a nationwide outage as it related to Verizon. It was strange. Phones were going down. People were unable to make calls. There I was, standing in the Verizon store, only to watch this Psalm play out for many individuals on a much more basic and carnal level.
People were showing up at the store, and everyone seemed to have the same problem. They even identified with each other in the parking lot. “Is it my phone? Is it your phone? I can’t get anything through.” They went inside, and the workers were so overwhelmed by an outage that was outside of their control that all they could say was, “Hey, we’re working on it. We’re trying to fix it. We’re trying to get it done.”
People began to grow more and more frustrated, and they began to justify it. “No, no—I paid my bill on time. I’ve consistently been here, and there’s no reason for this type of egregious activity.” They were livid—rightfully so.
But at no point did they say the reason they were livid was because they had developed a certain level of expectancy from Verizon to remain in constant and continuous communication with the ones they love. And I understand how existentially we can identify with that, because so many of us have gotten used to the blessings. We’ve gotten used to the overflow. We’ve gotten used to God’s consistency that when life brings something a little inconvenient, a little challenging, we find ourselves echoing the same words as this Psalm.
But if you read on in that Psalm, it gives us some beautiful context to help us move forward in our day. Two things. Number one, it won’t last forever. It was, in fact, an outage. It was not a complete and destructive disconnection from God.
It wasn’t a terminal or ultimate disconnection from Verizon either—but it could feel like that. And when God brings us through seasons and places that make us feel disconnected, we have to be mindful of the God that we serve. We have to be mindful of His continued past faithfulness, and we need to take counsel and joy—just like every Psalm—and echo those words at the end: “I will bless Thee.”
So today, I don’t know what life will bring you, and I don’t know what your church context will be, but I can tell you this: no matter what this Thursday has to offer, God is still with you. God will counsel you, and there is nothing He can’t do and nothing you won’t be able to overcome.
So don’t let it get you all the way bent out of shape. The outage won’t last forever. God bless you. Have an incredible Thursday. Can’t wait to see you on the mount. Be blessed.