Dysfunctional Problem Solving

Not wanting to rely on the foolishness of this world to find possible resolutions, the lament was a common way for believers of the Bible to seek council from God on how to escape the hardships of life. Out of the 150 Psalms of the Bible approximately 1/3 or 59 of them are laments. Prayer we are told in Scripture is powerful and effective and often leads to the recipient receiving a miraculous escape from life’s calamites. Who could ever forget God’s response, the Ten Plagues of Egypt, to Israel’s cries of oppression? Who could ever forget God’s response to Hezekiah’ lament, the tearing of his clothes, putting on a sackcloth and going into the temple of the Lord to pray for deliverance; to put to death 185 thousand of the Assyrian army (2 Kings 19)? Who could ever forget the king of Nineveh taking off his robes and sitting down in the dust to plead and receive relief from God’s hand of destruction? Who could ever forget in response to the earnest prayers of the church and angel of the Lord freed Peter from prison the very night before his trial and most likely his execution (Acts 12)? Since God alone establishes a person’s footsteps (Proverbs 16:9), Asaph started out his lament correctly by asking the only one who could solve his problem of afflictions to do so!

The problem for Asaph was that God’s response was not the miraculous removal of his tribulation but silence! All day long Asaph prayed to the Lord into the wee hours of the night and still no response. With untiring hands outstretched to His creator Asaph pleads over and over again to hear even the slightest whisper in the wind of God’s voice (1 Kings 19:11) but unlike Elijah, God remains silent. We all know what it is like to go through both physical and spiritual hardships. Truthfully, we do not handle pain of any kind very well. When faced with overwhelming situations like a terminal illness, loosing our job or death of a loved one, we cry out to God because He alone is sovereign and capable of removing our circumstances and misery. So we plead and cry out to God for escape but when not even His voice is heard what are we to do, drown in our own misery? Tribulations are hard enough to endure when God has His arms wrapped around us but His silence can truly crush our souls back into the dust in which they came! How is one to feel unspeakable joy when comfort seems so very distant?

Attempt 2: Meditating on Better Days

3 I remembered you, God, and I groaned; I meditated, and my spirit grew faint. 4 You kept my eyes from closing; I was too troubled to speak. 5 I thought about the former days, the years of long ago; 6 I remembered my songs in the night. Psalms 77:3-6a, NIV

Since God remained silent, Asaph goes onto attempt number two, meditation. As he lies on his bed he begins to remember what it was like to walk and talk with God in the past. He remembers the former days when God used to speak to him continuously. How amazing it was to feel God’s presence while leading the nation of Israel to sing songs and express their genuine love for God! He loved singing these songs so much that he often continued praising God into the late hours of the night. Instead of these memories bringing comfort to Asaph they became a source of profound fear and anguish. Being one of the three musicians appointed by David for worship it must have been terrifying to have one’s object of faith, the God of Israel, no longer talking to you! How would king David, a man after God’s heart (1 Samuel 13:14), feel about having a worship leader whose soul is barren from God’s presence? How could he get in front of Israel and lead them in worship when God’s voice and maybe even His favor has been removed from his very soul? In response to these fears of abandonment, Asaph engages God both outwardly (“voice” and “hands”) and inwardly (“soul”). When God remains silent to these cries, fear overwhelms Asaph that instead of a solution or a path of escape he has been abandoned to drown in his own misery.