Essential Readings for A Godly Living

The Appeal and Prayer of a Waiting Soul

THE APPEAL AND PRAYER OF A WAITING SOUL

By JC Philpot

"And now, Lord, what wait I for? my hope is in Thee. Deliver me

from all my transgressions; make me not the reproach of the

foolish." Psalm 39:7, 8

This psalm was written under peculiar feelings, and whilst the Psalmist was passing through a peculiar experience. This indeed is the case with well nigh every psalm, though we cannot always so distinctly trace out the experience as in the one before us. Let none think that David could sit down at pleasure and throw off a psalm. Before he could pen one of these divine compositions, he must have been brought by the Spirit of God into a special experience; special feelings being thus wrought in his soul by the power of the Spirit, he must next have special words dictated by the same almighty Teacher. And when he was under such solemn impressions and such inspired feelings, and was taught such inspired words, he sat down and poured forth those heavenly strains which were first sung in the tabernacle, and then laid up with the other scriptures to be perpetual breasts of consolation for the exercised family of God. Nor let anyone think that he can understand the meaning, or use the words of the psalm, except as he is taught by the same Spirit and brought into the same experience. If he have not the same key, he cannot turn the

wards of the lock.

By examining this psalm, we may, with God's blessing, gather some of the peculiar feelings of the Psalmist when it gushed warm from his heart and mouth.

1. It seems to me, then, that he was at this time stretched upon a bed of sickness; for we find him dwelling much upon the uncertainty and frailty of life. "O spare me," he says in the last verse, as if the Lord were about to cut short his days, "that I may recover strength before I go hence and be no more."

Again: "Lord, make me to know mine end, and the measure of my days, what it is, that I may know how frail I am," or, as we read in the margin, "what time I have here."

2. But besides the bodily affliction under which the Psalmist seems to have been labouring, it appears as if the Lord was at this time chastening him very heavily in soul, for he prays, "Remove Thy stroke away from me; I am consumed by the blow of Thy hand." He cries out here as one who was writhing under a sense of God's displeasure.

3. But further, these strokes of God's chastening rod, and these blows of His heavy hand, were laying bare the iniquity of his heart; for he says, "When Thou with rebukes dost correct man for iniquity, Thou makest his beauty to consume away like a moth; surely every man is vanity."

4. Lying, then, in this way under the double stroke of God, stricken in body, and smitten in conscience, he looks, so to speak, out of his chamber window, and takes a survey of mankind in general. Viewing with spiritual eyes their useless cares and vain disquietudes, and yet seeing how by all these they

were kept from divine realities, from the true knowledge of God and of themselves, he bursts forth, "Surely every man walketh in a vain show; surely they are disquieted in vain: he heapeth up riches, and knoweth not who shall gather them."

5. Put besides this, it would appear that his conscience was now made exceedingly tender, so that he durst not speak lest sin should be stirred. "I said, I will take heed to my ways, that I sin not with my tongue; I will keep my mouth with a bridle while the wicked is before me."

6. Coupled with this (not to enlarge further upon the point), we see also a blessed submission to the will of God wrought in his soul. "I was dumb, I opened not my mouth, because Thou didst it."

Prostrate, then, in body and spirit under the afflicting hand of God, and having these divine impressions wrought in his soul by the blessed Spirit, he breathes forth the words of the text, "And now, Lord, what wait I for? my hope is in Thee. Deliver me from all my transgressions; make me not the reproach of the foolish."