Past Issues- Psalm 143:5-6

As we continue in our study of Psalm 143, we recall that David reports being harassed by an enemy, that the enemy of his soul has been whispering in his ear, harassing him to the point that he has all but lost all purpose and meaning in his life and is about to give up. We then see that he next, in the verse at hand, looks back to his past, to a time in his life when he did have a sense of meaning and purpose in his life. He wonders how he has come to this point in his life, how has what was so right before suddenly become so very wrong? The Hebrew word remember here is a word which essentially means to “reflect upon”. David reflects upon the time when he was king and things were going well for both Israel and for David. As he reflects on the good, God begins to get through to him, to show him the reason why things in his life have reached their present state. He tells us here that he “meditates on all your (God’s) works”, and “considers what your hands have done”. He knows that God is the one behind his being in this cave hiding for his life, that all of the circumstances which have brought him here have been orchestrated by God, that God (not Absalom) has brought him to this point in his life. He also recalls how Good has loved him in the past and has used difficult circumstances in the past to ultimately work good in and through David. As David reflects upon his understanding of who God is and how has worked in the past, he begins to see a glimmer of hope in the darkness of his despair. If God has led him to this place, he knows it must ultimately be for his good, that God has a purpose in his being here that David does not presently understand. He is about to give up, and he runs to God here almost as a last resort, when all other hope begins to fail him, he then turns to God. He is at the “end of his rope”, and, like most of us, it seems to be only when we are at the “end of our ropes” that we finally cry out to God to rescue us. It is only when David takes his eyes off of the circumstances and puts them upon God that he begins to see hope again. We find that David turns to God in verse 6, in which David tells us that “I spread out my hands to you”, which here poetically represents worship, David basically saying “nothing in my hands I bring, only to thy cross I cling”. His desire for God has reached the point where he desires God like a parched land desires water. His life has become barren and unproductive, circumstances in his life have gotten far beyond his control, and have brought him to the point where he is hiding for his life in a cave, and has lost all sense of meaning and purpose in his life. So what does David learn in his experience related in these two verses, and how can what he lays bare here help those who read it now? What David learns here is that he is ultimately the reason he is in this cave. He is here because there are family issues in his past, particularly having to do with Absalom, which David, as the family head, has failed to properly deal with, has never resolved. These unresolved issues have become the “fuel” through which his enemy (the devil) stokes the fire of doubt and despair in his life. It is these unresolved issues which the enemy uses to whisper in David’s ear, through which the enemy harasses him, and if he had dealt with this situation properly in the past, none of this would have come about in his life. And what we all can learn from this is to deal with the “issues of life” as they occur, to not leave issues unresolved, but to deal with them immediately and not give the enemy the subject matter through which he may be able to whisper in our ear to the point where despair replaces hope and we lose all sense of meaning and purpose in our lives. It is the failure to resolve issues immediately which ultimately brings David to his present situation, and may we learn from this to deal with the “issues of life” immediately, and not give our enemy the opportunity to use any unresolved issues to bring us to the point in which we lose the sense of meaning and purpose in our own lives.