Psalm 13:1 NKJV
How long, O Lord? Will You forget me forever?
How long will You hide Your face from me?
Praying Through the Silence
MY NOTES
“How long, O Lord? Will You forget me forever? How long will You hide Your face from me?” — Psalm 13:1 (NKJV)
David doesn’t open this psalm with a polished prayer. He opens with a raw question that most of us have asked when the trouble stretches longer than we expected: How long? He asks it four times in the first two verses. That repetition isn’t poetry for its own sake. It’s the sound of a man who has been waiting until the waiting itself hurts.
This isn’t a polished, formal prayer designed to impress anyone. It is the raw, unedited groan of a man whose patience has worn thin under prolonged strain. The beauty of the Psalms is that no matter how low you sink or how isolated you feel, you can flip to David’s words and find that someone has walked that exact dark road before you.
When affliction lasts, it is easy to slide from patience into the fear that this will never end. A week inside hard circumstances feels longer than a month of ordinary days. Time doesn’t fly; it crawls. And when joy stays away long enough, hope can start to thin out too. David gives himself permission to say that out loud to God. The title of Psalm 102 calls it a prayer of the afflicted when he is overwhelmed and pours out his complaint before the Lord. There is room at the throne of grace for that kind of honesty. God is not fragile. He already knows the weight of our weakness, and He invites us to bring it instead of polishing it first.
Psalm 102:1
“Hear my prayer, O Lord, And let my cry come to You.”
The Gap Between Feelings and Reality
When trials linger, our emotions naturally drag us toward heavy conclusions. We start to wonder: Has God forgotten me? Has He turned His back on my situation forever?
It is important to recognize how feelings work in our walk with God:
- Feelings Are Real, But They Aren’t Ultimate Truth: God created us with emotions, and taking our sorrow, anger, or confusion directly to Him is healthy and biblical. God welcomes our honest complaints at the throne of grace.
- Feelings Can Deceive Us: Because of our human fallenness, our feelings often present a distorted view of reality. David felt forgotten, but the truth was that God could never forget His covenant child.
God’s silence is not a sign of His absence, and a hidden face does not mean an unloving heart. Just as night and shadows are necessary for flowers to grow, seasons of divine silence serve a deep purpose in our spiritual development. They strip away self-reliance, deepen our hunger for God Himself, and give faith room to stretch its muscles in the dark.
Psalm 30:5
For His anger is but for a moment, His favor is for life; Weeping may endure for a night, But joy comes in the morning.
Inscribed on the Palms of His Hands
Can the God who holds the universe together actually forget one of His children? Omniscience doesn’t suffer from memory loss.
Through the prophet Isaiah, God gives us an unshakable assurance that answers David’s anguish:
Isaiah 49:15–16
“Can a woman forget her nursing child, and not have compassion on the son of her womb? Surely they may forget, yet I will not forget you. See, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands”
Sometimes God turns His face away for a season—because of our wanderings, or simply because He is doing a deeper work—but the turning is temporary. His anger may last through the night; His love lasts forever. Isaiah 54 puts it plainly:
Isaiah 54:7–8
“For a mere moment I have forsaken you, But with great mercies I will gather you. With a little wrath I hid My face from you for a moment; But with everlasting kindness I will have mercy on you,” Says the Lord, your Redeemer.”
When trouble lasts long, remember that Jesus doesn’t always calm the storm on our preferred timeline. He let the disciples row into the wind until the fourth watch of the night before He walked out on the water to meet them. He lets the trial go deep enough to prove His grace is sufficient.
Mark 6:48
“Then He saw them straining at rowing, for the wind was against them. Now about the fourth watch of the night He came to them, walking on the sea, and would have passed them by.”
The delay was not neglect. In the same way, seasons when God’s face feels hidden can deepen humility, sharpen hunger, and give faith something solid to grip when it cannot see. The absence is not the end of the story. It is part of the way God brings us back to the smile of His face with greater steadiness than we had before.
A Prayer for Seasons of Waiting
Abba Father, You know the heavy weight of my heart today and the exact count of my silent cries. There are days when my circumstances feel overwhelming, and my emotions tell me that You are distant or that You have forgotten my struggle. Forgive me for letting my feelings dictate my belief in Your faithfulness. Do the work You intend in this stretch of shadow; I choose to anchor my soul in Your Word rather than my shifting emotions. Thank You that I am inscribed on the palms of Your hands and that You will never abandon me. Give me the grace to endure this season of waiting, knowing that You are working even when I cannot see it. Restore to me the joy of Your presence and let Your face shine upon me once again. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Key Takeaways
- Honest complaint has a place before God; the throne of grace is not reserved for tidy prayers.
- Long trouble tempts us to believe it will last forever, but God’s hidden face is temporary, not final.
- Feelings are a gift, yet they are not the final measure of God’s heart toward us.
- Waiting has purpose: it can deepen humility, hunger, and the grip of faith.
- God has inscribed His people on the palms of His hands; He does not forget.
Proverb for Today
The righteous will never be removed, But the wicked will not inhabit the earth. The mouth of the righteous brings forth wisdom, But the perverse tongue will be cut out. The lips of the righteous know what is acceptable, But the mouth of the wicked what is perverse. Proverbs 10:30-32 NKJV
Daily Scripture
I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Galatians 5:16-18 NKJV
Closing
“The Lord bless you and keep you; The Lord make His face shine upon you, And be gracious to you; The Lord lift up His countenance upon you, And give you peace.” Numbers 6:24-26 NKJV
Grace be with you. Amen.
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Commentaries:
Charles Spurgeon
“How long?” This question is repeated no less than four times. It betokens very intense desire for deliverance, and great anguish of heart. And what if there be some impatience mingled therewith; is not this the more true a portrait of our own experience? It is not easy to prevent desire from degenerating into impatience. O for grace that, while we wait on God, we may be kept from indulging a murmuring spirit! “How long?” Does not the oft-repeated cry become a very HOWLING? And what if grief should find no other means of utterance? Even then, God is not far from the voice of our roaring; for he does not regard the music of our prayers, but his own Spirit’s work in them in exciting desire and inflaming the affections.
Time flies with full-fledged wing in our summer days, but in our winters he flutters painfully. A week within prison-walls is longer than a month at liberty. Long sorrow seems to argue abounding corruption; for the gold which is long in the fire must have had much dross to be consumed, hence the question “how long?” may suggest deep searching of heart. “How long wilt thou forget me?” Ah, David! how like a fool thou talkest! Can God forget? Can Omniscience fail in memory? Above all, can Jehovah’s heart forget his own beloved child? Ah! brethren, let us drive away the thought, and hear the voice of our covenant God by the mouth of the prophet, “But Zion said, The Lord hath forsaken me, and my Lord hath forgotten me. Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee. Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands; thy walls are continually before me.” “For ever?” Oh, dark thought! It was surely bad enough to suspect a temporary forgetfulness, but shall we ask the ungracious question, and imagine that the Lord will for ever cast away his people? No, his anger may endure for a night, but his love shall abide eternally. “How long wilt thou hide thy face from me?” This is a far more rational question, for God may hide his face, and yet he may remember still. A hidden face is no sign of a forgetful heart. It is in love that his face is turned away; yet to a real child of God, this hiding of his Father’s face is terrible and he will never be at ease until, once more he hath his Father’s smile.
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Enduring Word
How long, O LORD? It seems that every child of God has asked this question at one time or another, and that every follower of God has felt neglected by God – or at least that he has waited a long time for God to do what needs to be done. (Guzik)
i. “If the reader has never yet found occasion to use the language of this brief ode, he will do so ere long, if he be a man after the Lord’s own heart.” (Spurgeon)
ii. How long? “This question is repeated no less than four times. It betokens very intense desire for deliverance, and great anguish of heart…. It is not easy to prevent desire from degenerating into impatience. O for grace that, while we wait on God, we may be kept from indulging a murmuring spirit!” (Spurgeon)
iii. How long is the critical question. Often we faint under the simple length of our trials. We feel we could endure almost anything if we knew when it would come to an end; yet sometimes we are tried under problems that make us cry out, “How long?” (Guzik)
iv. “Whenever you look into David’s Psalms, you may somewhere or another see yourselves. You never get into a corner but you find David in that corner. I think that I was never so low that I could not find that David was lower; and I never climbed so high that I could not find that David was up above me, ready to sing his song upon his stringed instrument, even as I could sing mine.” (Spurgeon)
Will You forget me forever? How long will You hide Your face from me? The pain in David’s heart came from a sense that God had forgotten him and that God was distancing Himself from him. No doubt, David had faced worse circumstances but had faced them more bravely when he had sensed the presence of God with him. Yet now, feeling distant from God, it did not take much to send David into despair. (Guzik)
i. God will never forget us: But Zion said, “The LORD has forsaken me, and my Lord has forgotten me.” Can a woman forget her nursing child, and not have compassion on the son of her womb? Surely they may forget, yet I will not forget you. See, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands. (Isaiah 49:14-16)
ii. “The final absence of God is hell itself. ‘Depart from me, ye cursed,’ is worse than ‘into everlasting fire.’ To be punished from the presence of the Lord is the hell of hells, 2 Thessalonians 1:9.” (Trapp)
Forget…. Hide Your face: Of course, God did not forget David. God did not hide His face from David – but David felt like it. When we have such strong feelings, then the feelings create their own reality. David felt God had forgotten him, and felt God was hiding. So, in a sense, it was true for David – but true according to feelings, not according to fact. (Guzik)
i. There is a balance in life when it comes to feelings. Some people ignore feelings and think that feelings should have nothing to do with our relationship with God. This is an extreme viewpoint, because God has given us feelings as an expression of His image in us. We can feel anger, love, care, sorrow, and many other feelings, because God feels those feelings. Feelings are a gift from God and a sign that we are made in His image. (Guzik)
ii. On the other side, some live their lives ruled by feelings. They believe whatever reality their feelings present them. The problem with this is that though we have feelings because we are made in the image of God, our feelings are affected by our fallenness. We can’t trust our feelings because of this. It was all right for David to feel these feelings, and good to take them to God, but he should never accept the reality of feelings as “real” reality.
iii. “This is a lesson of profound value. If the heart be overburdened and Jehovah seems to hide His face, let the story of woe be told to Him. It is a holy exercise. Men may not understand it. They may even charge us with failing faith.” (Morgan)
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Albert Barnes
How long wilt thou forget me, O Lord? — literally, “until when.” The psalmist breaks out into this cry “in the midst” of his troubles. He had apparently borne them as long as he could. It seemed as if they would never come to an end. We may presume that he had been patient and uncomplaining; that he had borne his trials long with the hope and belief that they would soon terminate; that he had waited patiently for deliverance, uttering no words of complaint; but now he begins to despair. He feels that his troubles will never end. He sees no prospect of deliverance; no signs or tokens that God would interpose; and he breaks out, therefore, in this language of tender complaint, as if he was utterly forsaken, and would be forever. The mind, even of a good man, is not unfrequently in this condition. He is borne down with troubles. He has no disposition to murmur or complain. He bears all patiently and long. He hopes for relief. He looks for it. But relief does not come; and it seems now that his troubles never will terminate. The darkness deepens; his mind is overwhelmed; he goes to God, and asks – not with complaining or murmuring, but with feelings bordering on despair – whether these troubles never will cease; whether he may never hope for deliverance.
Forever? — He had been forgotten so long, and there appeared to be so little prospect of deliverance, that it seemed as if God never would return and visit him with mercy. The expression denotes a state of mind on the verge of despair.
How long — Referring to a second aspect or phase of his troubles. The first was, that he seemed to be “forgotten.” The second referred to here is, that God seemed to hide his face from him, and he asked how long this was to continue.
Wilt thou hide thy face from me — Favor – friendship – is shown by turning the face benignantly toward one; by smiling upon him; in Scriptural language, by “lifting up the light of the countenance” upon one. See the note at Psalms 4:6. Aversion, hatred, displeasure, are shown by turning away the countenance. God seemed to the psalmist thus to show marks of displeasure toward him, and he earnestly asks how long this was to continue.
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John Gill
How long wilt thou forget me, O Lord? for ever?…. When God does not immediately deliver his people from their enemies, or help them out of an affliction; when he does not discover his love, communicate his grace, apply the blessings and promises of his covenant as usual; and when he does not visit them in his usual manner, and so frequently as he has formerly done, they are ready to conclude he has forgotten them; and sometimes this continues long, and then they fear they are forgotten for ever; and this they cannot bear, and therefore expostulate with God in a querulous manner, as the psalmist does here; but this is to be understood not in reality, but in their own apprehension, and in the opinion of their enemies; God never does nor can forget his people; oblivion does not fall upon him with respect to common persons and things; and much less with respect to his own dear children, for whom a special book of remembrance is written; See Gill on “Ps 9:18”;
how long wilt thou hide thy face from me? his love, and the manifestation of it, from his person; his gracious presence, the light of his smiling countenance, which sometimes God hides or withdraws from his people by way of resentment of their unbecoming carriage to him; and which is very distressing to them, for they are apt to imagine it is in wrath and hot displeasure, when he still loves them, and will with everlasting kindness have mercy on them; see Isaiah 8:17. The Targum renders it, “the glory of thy face.”
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Matthew Henry
His troubles extort complaints (v. 1, 2); and the afflicted have liberty to pour out their complaint before the Lord, Ps. 102 title. It is some ease to a troubled spirit to give vent to its griefs, especially to give vent to them at the throne of grace, where we are sure to find one who is afflicted in the afflictions of his people and is troubled with the feeling of their infirmities; thither we have boldness of access by faith, and there we have parreµsia–freedom of speech.
God’s unkindness; so he construed it, and it was his infirmity. He thought God had forgotten him, had forgotten his promises to him, his covenant with him, his former lovingkindness which he had shown him and which he took to be an earnest of further mercy, had forgotten that there was such a man in the world, who needed and expected relief and succor from him. Thus Zion said, My God has forgotten me (Isa. 49:14), Israel said, My way is hidden from the Lord, Isa. 40:27. Not that any good man can doubt the omniscience, goodness, and faithfulness of God; but it is a peevish expression of prevailing fear, which yet, when it arises from a high esteem and earnest desire of God’s favor, though it be indecent and culpable, shall be passed by and pardoned, for the second thought will retract it and repent of it. God hid his face from him, so that he wanted that inward comfort in God which he used to have, and herein was a type of Christ upon the cross, crying out, My God, why hast thou forsaken me? God sometimes hides his face from his own children, and leaves them in the dark concerning their interest in him; and this they lay to heart more than any outward trouble whatsoever.
How he expostulates with God hereupon: “How long shall it be thus?” And, “Shall it be thus for ever?” Long afflictions try our patience and often tire it. It is a common temptation, when trouble lasts long, to think it will last always; despondency then turns into despair, and those that have long been without joy begin, at last, to be without hope. “Lord, tell me how long thou wilt hide thy face, and assure me that it shall not be for ever, but that thou wilt return at length in mercy to me, and then I shall the more easily bear my present troubles.”
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Miscellaneous Comments
“How long wilt thou forget me, O Lord?” etc. The departures of God from true believers are never final; they may be tedious, but they are temporary. As the evil spirit is said to depart from Christ for a season (Luke 4:13; though he quitted that temptation, he did not quit his design, so as to tempt no more), so the good Spirit withdraws from those that are Christ’s, for a season only, ’tis with a purpose of coming again. When he hath most evidently forsaken, ’tis as unquestionable that sooner or later he will return; and the happiness of his return will richly recompense for the sadness of his desertion; Isaiah 54:7, “For a small moment have I forsaken thee; but with great mercies will I gather thee;” here is not only a gathering after a forsaking, but “great mercies” to make amends for “a small moment.” He who hath engaged to be our God for ever, cannot depart for ever.
—Timothy Cruso, 1696.
“How long wilt thou forget me, O Lord?” Whatever be the pressing need of Christ’s followers in troubles, and their constant cleaving to duty for all that; and whatever be Christ’s purpose of love toward them, yet he seeth it fit ofttimes not to come to them at first, but will let the trial go on till it come to a height, and be a trial indeed, and put them seriously to it; for before he came he lets them row “about five and twenty or thirty furlongs” (the last of which make near four miles, eight furlongs going to a mile); and (Mark 6:48) he came not till the fourth watch of the night, which is the morning watch. We are indeed very sparing of ourselves in trouble, and do soon begin to think that we are low and tried enough, and therefore would be delivered; but our wise Lord seeth that we need more.
—George Hutcheson, 1657.
I know that, as night and shadows are good for flowers, and moonlight and dews are better than a continual sun, so is Christ’s absence of special use, and that it hath some nourishing virtue in it, and giveth sap to humility, and putteth an edge on hunger, and furnisheth a fair field to faith to put forth itself, and to exercise its fingers in gripping it seeth not what.
—Samuel Rutherford, 1600-1661.
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