17 O God, You have taught me from my youth,
And I still declare Your wondrous deeds.
18 And even when I am old and gray, O God, do not forsake me,
Until I declare Your [l]strength to this generation,
Your power to all who are to come.
19 [m]For Your righteousness, O God, reaches to the [n]heavens,
You who have done great things;
O God, who is like You?
20 You who have shown [o]me many troubles and distresses
Will revive [p]me again,
And will bring [q]me up again from the depths of the earth.
21 May You increase my greatness
And turn to comfort me.22 I will also praise You with [r]a harp,
Even Your [s]truth, O my God;
To You I will sing praises with the lyre,
O Holy One of Israel.
23 My lips will shout for joy when I sing praises to You;
And my soul, which You have redeemed.
24 My tongue also will utter Your righteousness all day long;
For they are ashamed, for they are humiliated who seek [t]my hurt.
I don’t think it’s a secret at this point, that we are going to experience hardships, even as we follow Jesus. Or perhaps I should say, because we follow Jesus. Many times, as we see in verse 20, God is the one responsible for our trouble. It seems odd, but we don’t build character or anything worthwhile when we live on easy street. Sometimes, probably more than we’d like to admit, the trouble is of our own making.
Yet in all of it, there are a few constants. If we will look to God and set our eyes on him, his peace will still our heart. His praise will be on our lips, and His joy will cause us to shout. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, because our minds have a hard time grappling with what our eyes cannot see. That doesn’t make it any less true, that God is faithful, and never leaves us.
At times it feels that way, but God hasn’t actually gone anywhere. If we will press in, if we will praise him through the storm, we will find his joy once more, we will discover the comfort that only God can bring. We’ve seen Him do it time and again, even if we are new to faith, we can see the examples of God’s faithfulness all over his Word. He will “revive us again” and He will “bring us up (again) from the depths of the earth”. It isn’t a one time deal, because we aren’t perfect, but God is, and He never gives up on us.