Living Complaints

"Lord, all my desire is before you; and my groaning is not hidden from you. My heart pants—my strength fails me; as for the light of my eyes, it also is gone from me." Psalm 38:9-10

If I were to say, that a living soul never has desires, groanings, or pantings; that his strength never fails; and that the light of his eyes is never withdrawn, (all which things are contained in the text), I would speak not only contrary to the experience of God's people, but contrary to the express word of truth. But, on the other hand, if I were to say, that the Lord's people are always filled with desires; that they are perpetually groaning after God; that their heart is ever panting after his presence; that their strength is always failing, and the light of their eyes is continually gone, I would speak just as contrary to the teachings of God's Spirit in the hearts of God's people, and contrary to the express word of inspiration.

Change and fluctuation are stamped upon everything in nature; and change and fluctuation are stamped upon everything in experience. Spring succeeds winter, summer spring, autumn summer, and winter autumn. Day follows night, rain comes after drought, and drought succeeds rain. Moons wax and wane; the tides of the ocean ebb and flow. Man is born a babe, grows up a child, becomes a youth, and finally dies. Thus, change and fluctuation are stamped universally upon nature. And so, in the kingdom of grace—change and fluctuation are perpetually going on; as we read, "Because they have no changes, therefore they fear not God." (Psalm 45:19.)

The Psalms are a manual of Christian experience. In them we see the ebbings and flowings, the changes and fluctuations of living souls; and in them, so far as the Lord may have taught us, do we find from time to time our own experience traced out by the finger of the Spirit.

The Lord's people are very subject to carnality and darkness, to hardness, deadness, barrenness, and lukewarmness; and sometimes there seems to be only just enough life in their souls as to feel these things, and groan under them. Under these feelings, therefore, they cry to the Lord; they cannot bear that carnality and darkness, barrenness and death, which seem to have taken possession of them. They come with these burdens to the throne of grace, beseeching the Lord to revive his work in their hearts.

And how does the Lord answer their prayer? For the most part, not in the way which they expect. He answers them by some heavy affliction, some stroke in providence, or some stroke in grace, which falls very heavily upon them; but the effect is, to stir up their souls, to make them more earnest to thus remove that darkness, deadness, and barrenness under which they have been previously groaning.

David, in this Psalm, is pouring out the feelings of his soul before God; he is lying under a sense of God's displeasure; his sins are brought to view; his iniquities are discovered in all their loathsome and horrible character; his heart is bowed down within him under a discovery of the corruptions of his fallen nature. He cries, "O Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger or discipline me in your wrath. For your arrows have pierced me, and your hand has come down upon me. Because of your wrath there is no health in my body; my bones have no soundness because of my sin. My guilt has overwhelmed me like a burden too heavy to bear. My wounds fester and are loathsome because of my sinful folly. I am bowed down and brought very low; all day long I go about mourning. My back is filled with searing pain; there is no health in my body. I am feeble and utterly crushed; I groan in anguish of heart." Psalm 38:1-8. Here we have the experience of a living soul when sin is laid upon the conscience; when its iniquities are opened up in the light and life of the Spirit's teachings, and it sinks down before God under a feeling sense of its wretchedness and ruin.

But is no other feeling there than of shame, guilt, and sorrow? Are no other sensations alive in the heart than self-loathing and self-abhorrence on account of manifested iniquity? Here is the grand distinction between the sorrow of the world that works death, and the sorrow of God's people that works unto life. In carnal, earthly sorrow there is no crying unto the Lord, no panting after his manifested presence, no desires after the light of his countenance; no movings, no breakings, no meltings of heart at his blessed feet—but a dark cloud of sorrow takes possession of the mind, and through this dark cloud no gleam of light breaks. But it is not so where there is the light and life of God in the heart. There, however dark the cloud may be that rests over it, there is divine life in the soul, which heaves up below this overlying load, struggles underneath this burden that presses it down, and cannot be satisfied without some manifestation of the Lord's presence and favor.

This we see in the words of the text. We find David not merely bowed down with a sense of sin and shame, not merely troubled and distressed on account of the workings of inward corruption, and the bringing to light of the hidden evils of his heart; but in the midst of these burdens there is a cry and sigh in his soul that the Lord would appear to and for him—"Lord," he says, "all my desire is before you; and my groaning is not hidden from you. My heart pants—my strength fails me; as for the light of my eyes, it also is gone from me."

These words then, with God's blessing, I shall take up in the order that they lie before me; and endeavor from them to trace out something of the experience of a living soul in its pantings and longings after God's manifested favor.

I. One strong mark of a quickened man is this—the deep conviction which ever dwells in his conscience, that he is living under the eye of an all-seeing God. "Lord, all my desire is before you." We do not find this deep-seated conviction in the heart of any but those whom the finger of God has touched. Man may naturally recognize an overruling and all-seeing Providence; but it is not deeply rooted in his conscience; he does not live under a feeling sense that the eye of God is upon him. There is no fear of the Lord in his bosom—that "fountain of life to depart from the snares of death." But wherever the Lord shines into the soul, he there raises up, by the light of heavenly teaching, this conviction, which he ever maintains, and which is rather a growing than a decreasing feeling—"God sees me!" This we find in the words before us. "Lord, all my desire is before you." As though David thus appealed to the heart-searching God—"Lord, you can read my heart; Lord, there is not a desire in my soul which your eye does not behold; Lord, there is not a feeling within me that your omniscient eye does not see. Every thought of my heart, every desire of my soul, every feeling in my conscience—all are so open before your heart-searching eye, that I need not tell you what I have been, what I am, and what I desire to be."

Such is the feeling of every living soul in which the Spirit of God dwells. He gives to that soul such a deep sense of God's omniscience and omnipresence, that it knows the eye of God is ever looking into the depths of the heart.

But what were these desires? "Lord," he says, "all my desire is before you." There were then certain desires that were working in David's soul, that were springing up from the bottom of his heart. These desires are such as will be found, more or less, in all living souls.

1. One desire was, for the Lord's manifested favor. David at this time was laboring under a sense of guilt; the corruptions of his heart were laid open and bare; the Lord was manifesting his solemn displeasure against his iniquities; and he was bowed down greatly by a sense of sin upon his conscience. The blessed Spirit raised up in his soul, under these heavy loads, a desire for God's manifested favor. And is not this the feeling of every living soul—earnest breathings after God's manifested favor and mercy? It will not satisfy him to see these things merely in God's word; it will not content him to hear them explained from the mouths of ministers; it will not satisfy him to hear them spoken of as felt in the hearts of God's people. He desires to have a sense of this manifested favor imparted to his own bosom, that it may come powerfully into his own soul that he may receive some sweet testimony of the mercy of God by the shedding abroad of that divine favor in his own heart. He desires thus to have God's mercy manifested to his soul by the discovery of his personal loving-kindness to him as a guilty sinner before him.

And what is all religion that does not stand in the enjoyment of this? It leaves the soul needy and naked, unless from time to time there is some discovery of God's manifested mercy and favor. And what brings us to this point? Is it not guilt, shame, and sorrow? Is it not a feeling sense of our vileness and iniquity before God? Is it not seeing and feeling that "in us, that is, in our flesh, dwells no good thing?"

2. Another desire that was then springing up in David's heart was, for the Lord's manifested presence; that presence in his bosom which makes crooked things straight and rough places plain; that presence which had so often cheered his heart when drooping down in this valley of tears; that manifested presence, which, like the sun, illumines the soul into which it comes with its heavenly beams, and enables it still to press forward and hope to the end.

3. He desired also to experience the sweet revivings of God in his heart; that he might not be carnal, cold, dead, stupid, lifeless, barren, and unfeeling; but that there might be those gracious revivals in his soul, those divine refreshings, that heavenly dew and unction falling into his heart, whereby he would live under a feeling sense of God's manifested favor, and enjoy that love which alone can cheer the downcast spirit.

4. He desired too that the Lord would bless him from time to time with those discoveries of his saving interest in the love and blood of the Lamb, which alone can purge a guilty conscience; that he might receive the sprinkling of atoning blood upon his heart; feel Jesus to be his surety and sin-bearer; see his name cut deep upon Jesus' heart and worn upon his shoulder; look into his sympathizing bosom, and there see love engraved in living characters—characters never to be erased.

"Lord," he says, "all my desire is before you;" all the cravings of my heart, all the longings of my soul, all the heavings of my bosom; everything that passes to and fro in the secret chambers within. "All my desire is before you." You know it; you see it; for you can read my heart; there is not a single breath of living prayer in me, nor is there a going forth of a single desire, which your eye does not behold.

Now, many of the Lord's people cannot clearly read their names in the book of life; many are the doubts and fears that work in their bosom whether the Lord really has begun a work of grace upon their souls, and whether they truly are among the living family. But this thing they must know—whether at times and seasons they can lie in humility at the footstool of mercy, and appeal to a heart-searching God—"All my desire is before you." They must know whether they ever fell down in humility and brokenness of heart before the divine Majesty, and felt those living desires going out of their bosom into the ears of the Lord almighty; and whether they can, with honesty, uprightness, and godly sincerity, say to God in the language before us, "O Lord, all my desire is before you. You see my heart, and know everything that passes in my troubled breast."

If you can say that, it is a mark of life. If that has been the feeling of your heart from time to time, you find it was the same feeling that worked in the bosom of David. And God saw fit that it should be written by the finger of the Spirit, and placed upon solemn record for the consolation and encouragement of souls in similar circumstances.

II. "And my groaning is not hidden from you." What is implied in this expression, "My groaning!" Do we not groan under a sense of pain? It is the most natural expression of our feelings when we are under acute suffering. The woman in travail, the patient under the keen knife of the surgeon, the man afflicted with some painful internal disease, can only give vent to their distressing feelings by groaning. And is it not so spiritually? When the Lord's people groan, it shows there is some painful sensation experienced within them; and these painful feelings they can only express by groaning aloud before the footstool of mercy. How many things there are that cause pain in a living conscience!

1. One frequent cause of pain is, backsliding from God; and when our base backslidings are laid with guilt upon our conscience, it makes us groan. When a man sees how his covetous heart, his idolatrous nature, his adulterous eye, draws him aside on the right hand and the left, it makes him groan with internal pain. When he sees and feels what a wretch he is; how, when he has been left but five minutes to himself, immediately he has turned aside into some forbidden path; and if he has not fallen into sin, has walked upon the very borders of temptation; it will make him groan through his internal sensations of guilt and shame before a heart-searching God.

Those who are dead in sin, or dead in a profession, know nothing of the painful sensations that are produced by a sense of the inward backslidings, idolatries, and adulteries of our deeply fallen nature. But whenever God's monitor takes up his abode in the bosom—a conscience made honest and tender in God's fear; and when that living monitor in a man's bosom goes where he goes, stays where he stays, maintains its continual watch, keeps a check-book in which it writes down every transgression of the heart, the lip, or the hand, and brings a solemn reckoning before the eyes of a heart-searching God—it will make him groan.

He will not be able to go to bed with smiles upon his face; it will so haunt him when he comes before God's footstool, that he will be compelled to sigh and groan because he has been what he has been. And thus God's monitor, whose voice never can be silenced, tells him how he has transgressed, and in how many ways he has backslidden from the Lord.

2. But people groan who have to carry hurry burdens. The very laborers, to use a common illustration, who are engaged in the arduous occupation of paving our streets, can hardly bring their mallet down without a groan, so hard is the occupation. And those who have to labor under the corruptions of their nature and the evils of their hearts, will often have to groan on account of the heavy labor that they are thus put to.

3. Groaning also implies a desire to be relieved from the pain endured; as a patient from the keen knife of the surgeon, or a woman in travail from the source of her distress. Thus groans not merely express a sense of inward suffering, but they also testify to a desire for deliverance. Remove the pain, and you remove the groaning; take away the cause, and the groans cease immediately. So that, the silent, or to speak more correctly, the speechless language of groans, signifies there is some deliverance looked for, wanted, or expected.

And do we not find this character stamped upon living groans in the 8th chapter of Romans, where the Apostle says, "We know that the whole creation groans and travails in pain together until now; and not only they, but ourselves also, who have the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body." (Ro 8:22, 23.)

And then, to show that these groanings after deliverance are not the language of nature, the Apostle traces them up to their heavenly origin. "Likewise the Spirit also helps our infirmities; for we know not what we should pray for as we ought; but the Spirit himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered." (ver. 26.) How he traces up every living groan to the power of God! It is, he says, the Spirit of God in a sinner's bosom, speaking in him, and for him, interceding in his heart before the footstool of mercy.

Some of the Lord's people are tried because their prayers are not better put together. They have "no language," they say, "to express their desires; when they fall down upon their knees before the Lord, they cannot put sentences together in good order." It is a good thing they cannot. This dove-tailed prayer suits hypocrites, and those whose religion lies on the tip of their tongue, but who know nothing of the work of the Spirit upon the heart. When sentence is nicely fitted into sentence, it suits those whose religion never sinks below their throats! But the prayers of God's people, the sighs and groans that come out of their bosom, are living testimonies that they have something more to come to the Lord with, than lip service—something more weighty to pour out before him than mere head notions and the language of man. It is the 'feeling desires of their souls' which they are thus obliged, from deep necessity, to pour out before the footstool of mercy in broken cries.

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