Psalm 64: Dread

They say that confession is good for the soul, so I’ll make a confession, I have an unhealthy and unreasonable fear of doctors, dentists, needles and most all things medical. I put off all of these things, wait to see if minor issues will just get better on their own and have to generally be coerced into making, much less keeping regular checkups and annual appointments. I’ve had what I would describe as a couple of bad experiences, but that’s the unreasonable fear talking, I’ve had what everyone has had, a few medical treatments and procedures that had to be initially painful, so that they provide long term health. My fears don’t spring from things that I’ve experienced, but from things I don’t want to experience. The first time a doctor ever told me they would need to draw my blood, I stood up to go with him to the lab and abruptly passed out. I awoke to hear the doctor ask my mother, “Does this happen often?” My fear was not founded in past experience, but in very present but unfounded fear. I was not afraid of something that I knew was difficult, I was afraid of the possibility of difficulty. Am I alone or does any of this sound familiar? Maybe it’s not medical treatment, but do you have fears surrounding things you don’t want to experience? Do you live in dread of something that might not ever happen, or are you afraid that something you desperately want, or need will never come to pass? In Psalm 64 David uses his own prayers to show us how to deal with these unhealthy and unreasonable fears.

The psalm begins with a prayer, “Hear my voice, O God, in my complaint”. This first request is where many of our fears begin, a fear of not being heard. We live in a culture where every voice gets a platform and yet, while we are all talking there is now so little listening that many of us fear not being heard. We live in the sensation of voices just getting louder and louder, drowning each other out to make sure that we can be heard. We don’t have conversations any longer, we jump right into arguments. While we like to think this is new, that we’ve come to this, David begins his prayer asking to be heard, believing that there is a chance, confessing his fear, that maybe God isn’t listening.

In John 11, as Jesus stood at Lazarus’ tomb, when the stone was rolled away, He began to pray, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me.” Jesus didn’t believe that He had to wait for the result to determine if He had been heard. He prayed from the confidence of being listened to, He prayed not in hopes of getting God’s ear, but in the assurance that God’s ear was always tuned to His voice. We’ve made a terrible mistake with our language; we have decided that “answered prayers” are when God does what we’ve asked Him to do. The reason this is a mistake is that it gives our fear room to move in our hearts. If answered prayer is when we get our way, then we are left to wonder if God even heard us when our prayers seem to go unanswered. We then pray and watch rather than watch and pray. The first waits to see if God will move the way we’ve asked Him, the second knows that God is moving and prays to join Him.

Jesus then prayed, “I knew that you always hear me . . .” Prayer is not an effort to get through to God, it’s the response of a people that are convinced that God has gotten through to them. We pray because God is listening, not to try to get Him to listen. This is why Jesus taught “Pray then like this: ‘Our Father . . .’” Pray like children being listened to by their Father, pray from the protection of that relationship, pray not to be heard, but because you are listened to. We don’t have to pray loud; we don’t have to pray long; we don’t have to pray with great power we must simply pray from the confidence that we are loved by the One we are praying to. Because we are loved He is listening, because He is listening, we don’t ever have to fear that we are not or will not be heard.

David then made the main request of Psalm 64, “preserve my life from dread of the enemy.” This is a statement of self-awareness. David didn’t pray for God to protect him from his enemy, he prayed that God would protect him from his own fear, from fearing things that he might never have to face, from believing the worst when God had promised Him the best. Those who read or listen to me often are familiar with what I’m going to share next. What if the only thing that needs to change is us? What if the problem isn’t too great, what if the waiting hasn’t been too long, what if the main thing that needs to change is me? What if the problem isn’t the enemy it’s how much I’ve allowed my fear to control my thinking? What if the problem isn’t how long I’ve been alone but that I’ve given in to the lies of loneliness? What if it’s not the healing I need nearly as much as the faith to truly believe that “I can do all things through him who strengthens me”? In this psalm David’s faith had grown so much that he didn’t ask for God to change anything other than his own heart, to paraphrase, “Protect me from my fears”.

Too many of us are living in dread when we’ve been promised love. We live waiting for the other shoe to drop without even realizing that we are being held in God’s hands, that even if there was a shoe to drop, He would bat it away. David knew there would always be enemies, there would always be battles to fight, troubles to navigate, struggles to overcome. In this psalm he didn’t pray for smooth sailing, he prayed to be protected from himself, from the places he allowed his heart and mind to go when his circumstances were not what we had hoped or expected. That’s what dread is, it’s not what happens to us, it’s the fear of what is and the disappointment about what’s not happening. So I must ask, why would we live in dread when we’ve been adopted into peace? Why would we give room to worry when we’ve been purchased by love? Why would we entertain anxiety when we’ve been promised strength? Dread, fear, worry, anxiety, however you define it or whatever level you see it present in your heart is not something to be ashamed of or to get over. It’s not even something that we need to conquer or overcome, it’s something we must learn how to confess and acknowledge. It’s not something we need to learn to pray against, it’s something we must learn how to pray through. Dread will leave when prayers stop being about what God needs to do for us and turn to what we will let God do in us.