Ash Wednesday: Psalm 13:1-6 How Long, O Lord

Hope doesn’t begin where pain ends; it begins where honesty does. For our special Ash Wednesday Service, We open the door on weariness from a broken world, and let Psalm 13 teach us how to bring unfiltered grief to God without losing our grip on joy. Along the way we sit with Job’s protest, David’s hunted years, and Jesus’ own cry of abandonment to confront a hard truth: faithfulness doesn’t exempt us from suffering. It shapes us through it.

You’ll hear why escapism and cynicism both fail the soul, and how lament can coexist with resilient action: planting gardens though weeds will come, serving neighbors though systems disappoint, loving enemies though hatred seeks a louder stage. This is not about plastered smiles or denial; it’s about learning a deeper song that can be sung in the dark.

We also reflect on mortality through the lens of Ash Wednesday, not as a morbid detour but as a clarifying gift. Life is brief; eternity is real; and that clarity frees us to spend our days on what lasts—worship, justice, mercy, and a joy rooted in Christ rather than outcomes. If you’re asking “How long, O Lord?” and wondering how to keep going, this conversation offers Scripture, story, and a path toward steadfast hope.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome to the City Life Church podcast. We hope it encourages you. If you'd like to learn more about City Life or our mission, connect with us online at CityLifeSandiego.org. And while podcasts and Sunday mornings are helpful, they are no substitute for deeper personal relationships in the church.

Naming Brokenness And Temptation To Numb

Choosing Engagement Amid Corruption And Fatigue

Reading Psalm 13 And Opening Prayer

Faithfulness Still Suffers

David And Job Speak Boldly To God

Doing Right And Paying A Price

Following Jesus Means Suffering And Hope

Joy Beyond Circumstance

SPEAKER_01 0:31

Some of those images are very real, very recent. Even Jesse Jackson was only a few days ago. But we we are here today to celebrate and mourn and grieve and lament, but not like those who have no hope. Each person, but I can generally assume that just about everyone in the room has been hit by brokenness, by death, by pain, by suffering, by cancer, by the brokenness of this world. There are times when it just feels like things are getting worse. And then we ask a question how long, oh Lord, how much longer? How long? And it's the kind of thing that makes you just want to like lock yourself up in the house, right? Like with like a bucket of ice cream, a supersized bag of funyins, and just binge watch a show. Like just let the world burn outside because does God even care? If he doesn't care, I'm not gonna care either. Let the refugees suffer, let the unborn children disappear, let historically racist policies persist, let the exploitation of women continue, let the church be destroyed by a few loud, proud haters. I'm grabbing this oversized blanket. I'm gonna watch the extended edition of the Lord of the Rings and 4K. That's what I'm gonna do. But if you don't despair and you decide that you want to be a part of the change, you will see corruption up close, unchecked hatred, organizations designed to make men rich off the poor rather than help them. Even organizations that are for the poor, supposedly. Or if you help someone in their addiction, in their poverty, it's only a matter of time before they run back to their drug of choice and they will hate you for not doing enough for them. You know what? Fine then. I am going inside to watch 37 seasons of The Simpsons. I'll see y'all in heaven. I bet some of you are tired. Is there anyone in the room that's tired? Tired of all this? Tired of the pain? Tired of asking, how long, oh Lord, like you get your stuff together, you get everything in a row, ready to work, ready, ready for it to finally be your time. And then something happens. Just speaking to someone before the service today, during the service, and then uh you get hit by a car, get a car accident, just when things are starting to line up. But our God is still patient with us in this, in our impatience with him. Even when he could demand a holiness of us that we could never keep, he is patient with us, he is kind. Just like he was to the man Job, when he pushed back against the divine design of our God, his profound ways that we couldn't fathom, Job fought back. And he said, How long, O Lord, will you look and see injustice? Will will the unjust get everything they want? Will the just receive nothing? A paraphrase. But today we're gonna be looking at Psalm 13. We're gonna be reading a text that asks those kind of questions. And so um, I'm gonna read to you. Um, if you have your Bibles, we have the lights on low, so good luck. This is a better day, actually, to have your phones for once. Um, but let me read to you from Psalm 13, 1 through 6. How long, Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long will I store up my anxious concerns within me, agony in my mind every day? How long will my enemy dominate me? Consider me, answer. Lord my God, restore brightness to my eyes, otherwise I will sleep in death. My enemy will say, I have triumphed over him, and my foes will rejoice because I am shaken. But I have trusted in your faithful love. My heart will rejoice in your deliverance, I will sing to the Lord because he has treated me generously. This is God's word. Would you pray with me? Father, who watches over us in the worst moments of our life. Many of them are bad because of our own doing. We thank you for loving us still. We thank you for your son who died for us, so our suffering might not be forever. Even though weeping is here for the night, joy comes with the morning. Even in death, yes, death, we will find an unfathomable joy in you. But while we wait, we thank you for your Holy Ghost, who is with us in the pain, who never leaves us alone in our pain. He is always with us and he comforts us. Thank you. Father, write your name on our hearts and teach us this evening. May the words of my mouth and the thoughts of our hearts be pleasing to you. We pray this all in Jesus' name. Amen. Today I'm gonna give you two quick, hopefully, thoughts on lament and faithfulness because I smell the food you cooked, and I just want to get to it. My first point is this faithfulness doesn't mean you won't suffer. Faithfulness doesn't mean you won't suffer. And sometimes we won't ever fully understand it this side of heaven. Sometimes we won't ever fully understand it this side of heaven. King David, a man after God's own heart, ask these bold questions. How long, Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long will I store up anxious concerns within me? Agony in my mind every day? How long will my enemy dominate me? Consider me and answer me, Lord my God. Restore brightness to my eyes, otherwise I would sleep in death. Otherwise, my enemy will say, I have triumphed over him, and my foes will rejoice because I am shaken. See, David wanted to know, why does it feel like you don't care about me, God? Has anyone felt that way? Why does it feel like you're ignoring me? Can you not see my suffering? I feel like I'm gonna die. Where are you? It's amazing to me that David could talk to God a way that my kids could never talk to me. He's saying, Can you not see my suffering? I'm gonna die. Me, your servant, the one who follows you. Don't you even care? Now, in the book of Job, we talked about it, the righteous man Job saw his fortune fail him. His children died within moments of each other, and his body ended up covered in oozing blisters that he would have to use pottery shards to break open, and the dogs were licking his wounds. It was a bad place. His friends came and they sat with him in silence for days. And then they spoke up. And they told him he was basically a loser. They told him that he had probably sinned to earn this. And they were awful, miserable comforters. They mocked and derided Job. They judged him for his secret sins that didn't even exist. And Job cried out because he'd been serving God faithfully, and his reward? It was suffering. And what's crazy to me, you guys, is when you read these texts, you're like, he can't say that. Like, we can't talk to God that way. Nobody can talk to God that way. And yet we're like, this is God's word. And this is how people speak to the Lord. Now it doesn't mean that God doesn't clap back. But here, this is what Job says in Job 23. He says, Today also my complaint is bitter. His hand is heavy, despite my groaning. If only I knew how to find him so I could go to his throne, I would plead my case before him. Guys, have you not prayed like this too in your suffering, in the darkest moments of your soul? Father, I married this spouse and I tried to follow you, and now what's going on? I joined a church and tried to honor you. I went back to school like you wanted. I volunteered to help people. I shared all I had with others, and they stabbed me in the back. I did the right thing, and all I got was this mess. All I get is pain for this. That was the prayer of Job. That was the prayer of David. See, David, the author of our psalm, was a man who knew, who understood suffering. He served a king who wanted to kill him, to destroy him. For being, you know, kind of handsome and a good fighter and a good musician and influential and popular. So he had to flee to the mountains, the deserted places, the caves to hide out until his master changed his mind. David served his boss well, and what did he get for it? King Saul wanted to kill him for it. David was too famous. And so every chance he could get, King Saul tried to kill David and failed. Now David had multiple chances to king kill uh to kill King Saul, and still he decided to honor God and he didn't do it. He consistently did the right thing. And so the question becomes how did God reward him in those moments? Well, more exile, running, starvation, hunger, people hating him and teasing him and mocking him on his journey away from King Saul. Later, after David became king, his own son Absalom forged a coup and took over David's throne, and still David honored God. Now, I'm not telling you he's perfect. Actually, he is far from perfect. But have you ever heard the phrase, no good deed goes unpunished? But, church, I thought good things happen when you do the right thing. Well, sometimes this is just the life of a Jesus follower. To follow Jesus, he says to take up your cross. To follow Jesus is to court death and suffering, it is to be ridiculed. Jesus sums it up in Matthew 24 when he says, You will be hated by everyone because of my name. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. If you follow Jesus, don't be confused. You're gonna suffer. And I will tell you, you will also suffer because there are unseen forces that will hate you for following Jesus. And they would love to make your life so terrible, so awful that you deny his name. But that's not the way it is when you belong to Jesus. When Jesus was dying on the cross, he even suffered. He suffered verbally by quoting a Psalm, Psalm 22, when he said, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Even Jesus here, God in human form, cried out, Jesus our King, suffered. How can we expect anything less? To follow Jesus is to follow his path. His path is a path of suffering. But as our world burns in brokenness, faithful Jesus followers, we expect suffering and decay, but we find joy in the ashes. Now I mean our sin already hurts us. Like nobody in here is like, oh, I'm perfect. Nobody in here is perfect. God delivers us from our sin. To walk with God, though, means Jesus makes us holy over the course of a lifetime. Now, my life would not be better if I were pursuing alcoholism, I promise you, or drugs, or multiple women, or that gang life. It wouldn't be better. But sometimes when you reject those things, temporarily things may actually seem worse. Addiction always fights back, don't it? The devil always fights back. He doesn't want you obedient. And sometimes he can actually make things worse for you for a little while, hoping that you just won't stay the course, hoping that you will give up hope. But Jesus offers us joy beyond that. Not happiness that has to do with our situation, but joy that is above and beyond our situation, rooted in Christ. And that's what our second point is. Faithfulness leads to hopefulness. Faithfulness leads to hopefulness. Verse 5, but I have trusted in your faithful love. My heart will rejoice in your deliverance. I will sing to the Lord because he has treated me generously. So here, even in the face of trials, tribulation, and struggle, there is rejoicing with David. And with us there can be rejoicing, there can be singing. Now, Romans 5, 1 through 5 is one of the most sobering and encouraging texts in the Bible to me. I want you to listen to these encouraging words. And you can listen to them through two different lenses. One, a positive lens, or a negative lens. So which one are you going to choose? I encourage you to think positive, but if you're going to be negative, you have good examples in the Bible. So let's look at Romans 5, 1 through 5. Since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. We have also obtained access through Him by faith into this grace in which we stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. And not only that, but we boast in our afflictions, in our suffering, friends. Because we know that affliction produces endurance. And endurance produces proven character, and proven character produces hope. This hope will not disappoint us because God's love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us. See, you guys, what it's saying is, what it's saying is that as we endure, as we suffer, again and again and again, we get strength in God. And when we get our strength from the Lord in the lowest places, we have hope. Because the hope doesn't come from us anymore. Friends, I have come to the conclusion that joy, not happiness, is more about the person and less about the situation. Have you noticed that? Have you ever been around someone who thinks all the bad stuff in the world happens to them? Some people have a legit gripe, no doubt. But some people put themselves in those situations. But even if they did nothing to deserve their pain, some people just constantly look at the dark side. And let me just say, um, that's probably been all of us in the room at some point, right? Like we have looked at the dark side. I'm not talking about Star Wars. But what God's Holy Spirit does is he helps us to do something special. Like we don't have to fake the funk anymore. We don't pretend like everything is great anymore. But we also aren't defeated by suffering. When we suffer, we acknowledge the suffering, just like King David did here. But we also look to our good Savior. We also see God in our suffering because it's not about this person, me, it's about the person in me, God's Holy Spirit. When you embrace Jesus, life doesn't become better in the ways of the world around you. It just means you have a better comfort in God for the same situations. Have you ever been around someone who is peace-giving? Have you been around people like that? People of peace that, like, man, when things just seem to be going wrong, they just have this joy that bubbles up out of them. It's annoying sometimes, isn't it? I will tell you, I know people like that. I know people like that. Have you ever been around Miss Flora Stance? Um, I'm gonna say she's probably in her 60s because if I said anything else, that would be uh not nice, but she's been around uh many years. She lives just down the street, and it doesn't matter where she is at in life, if I'm struggling, that woman will sing over me and bless me. And it doesn't matter if she's not well enough to get out of a chair, she will sing and she will worship God. That's who I want to be. I want to be someone that it doesn't matter what the situation is, my trust is in the Lord. I want to be someone that no matter how much I suffer, and I don't pretend I don't suffer either, I still find joy in the Lord. That's my hope for you too. Don't pretend that's not what we're talking about. Don't pretend everything is okay. It's not. There are times when we feel like the world is falling apart. There are times when we feel like we have every disease in the book. There are times when we feel like our pocketbook has drained from us like sand. But we can find joy in those moments because it's not about our situation, it's about our God. We don't have to be defeated by suffering. When we suffer, we can acknowledge it, but we acknowledge our good Savior and we see God in our suffering. Miss Dance doesn't pretend to be happy, she just has joy in Jesus. You think she doesn't have aches and pains? She buried her husband. She doesn't put on a fake smile, but she has joy in Jesus. She doesn't put on a happy Jesus mask either. No one's asking you to have a happy Jesus mask. That's not real. She just has joy in Jesus. That's what we want to find. See, when hatred seeks influence, when rust and disease seeks victims, Christ's followers choose hope. God gives us strength to shine his light with hope for a brighter tomorrow. Friends, you will suffer. And one day you will probably die. Or you will see everyone you love die in first. So what are you gonna do? You're gonna plant gardens and weeds will grow. There's a couple options. One, you can eat and drink for tomorrow you die. That's 37 seasons of The Simpsons. You can live as if life is cheap. It's short-sighted, it will lead to pain and suffering, but it's an option. Or we can celebrate the shortness of our life with an eye toward eternity. We can enjoy God in the moment. This moment, in the middle of our suffering, we can find that God meets us in the middle of our anxiousness, in the middle of our depression, our suffering, our pain. See, the moment you were born, you began dying. And so you can live like someone who is dying and you could get selfish real fast. Or you can live like someone with a few precious moments to live for the glory of God. That's what I want to choose. A few precious moments to live for others before a beautiful eternity. When you belong to Jesus, tomorrow will always be synonymous with hope. When you belong to Jesus, you will plant gardens because you have hope. You know the weeds will come, but also you know flowers will grow too. Yes, there will be thorns, but there will also be roses. And if you suffer now, you can find Jesus is in the middle of all of it. You can have his spirit here encouraging you now. Weeping may last for the night, but joy comes with the morning. Church, let's enjoy God's creation now and live for the one who died for us. Let's die gracefully and be about God's business while we can. Church, as our world burns with brokenness, faithful Jesus followers expect suffering and decay. But when hatred seeks influence, when rust and disease seek victims, we choose hope and extravagant love toward those who revile us. God gives us strength to shine his light with hope for a brighter tomorrow. Friends, in a second, we're going to celebrate Ash Wednesday. And when I say celebrate, it's weird, man. It's weird. I can tell you that when I first uh anointed people's heads with ashes, when I would do someone very, very old and I'm telling them, You're gonna die, it was a very emotional experience for me. And then when someone would bring me their baby and I would tell their baby, you're gonna die, it was a very emotional experience for me, very difficult. But friends, we need to live in light of eternity. We need to live with an understanding that we only have a few moments to live for God, and we can use them for ourselves, we can hide. From the world, we can ghost everyone around us, or we can take what He's given us and use it for His glory. I hope you'll choose that. I'm gonna pray, and our people are gonna come up and they're gonna get to ashes, they're gonna set up here. You can just walk up to them and they will tell you from ashes you've come to ashes you'll return, or some variation of that. And I hope you'll take a second to consider the fact that your life is short and that's not a bad thing. Because you will live in eternity one day, and you have this moment to live for eternity now. Let's pray. Father, we're grateful that we get to be.