This Psalm is attributed to David. At some point during his life, he felt depressed, deserted, and alone. This is a natural experience for humans; we all go through this emotional let-down. Some people cope by using drugs and/or alcohol, others bully people, some gossip about family, friends or neighbors. David’s answer was prayer.
In his prayer, David told God how he felt about his situation; he was expressing his feeling of abandonment; we can almost hear him say, “God, why have you deserted me?” This could have happened when Saul was chasing him through the countryside, when the Philistines were invading, when his top general (his nephew) disobeyed an order or even when one of his sons tried to usurp the throne.
There can be so many things that send us into an emotional spiral that we seem to live in the desert valleys more than in green pastures, rolling hills or mountaintops. And we have those feelings because we are imperfect people living in an imperfect world among other imperfect people. There are so many little irritants and sometimes big issues that shake our world it makes our emotional lives like a roller coaster ride. How can we deal with these issues positively to straighten out our emotions.
David found the answer. Because he couldn’t see the future, David put his faith in the promises of God. In verse 9, David by faith wrote “The Lord has heard my plea; the Lord will answer my prayer”. By faith, David knew the Lord “has heard” (it has already happened) and the Lord “will answer” (he was certain); these are statements he had no visible proof of. Hebrews 11:1 says, “Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see”. David had confidence that what God told him was his life’s purpose God would make sure it happened.
Like David, we have a choice between two approaches; one approach is easy and the other is difficult. Approach # 1 is “seeing is believing”; approach # 2 is “believing is seeing”. The Israelites spent 40 years wandering in the wilderness using the “seeing is believing” approach. Everyone 20 years old and over when they left Egypt died in the wilderness because of their lack of faith. David received everything God had promised him because of his faith; he was described by God as a man after God’s heart.