Holding Onto the Goodness of God

The Psalm That Keeps Changing Its Mind

Psalm 40 does something that most people can relate to but few are willing to admit. It starts with praise and ends with desperation. It opens with a declaration that God has lifted the writer out of the pit, set his feet on solid ground, and given him a new song to sing. And then, barely a few verses later, it circles back to trouble. Sins piling up. Courage lost. A plea for God to come quickly.

It is, by any measure, a mess. And that is exactly what makes it so honest.

The Back and Forth That Feels Like Real Life

The speaker in this talk made an observation that cuts right to the heart of why the Psalms resonate so deeply: they are human. Wildly, uncomfortably human.

"I find all of these things so encouraging. Because I am like this. I am sure we are all like this. We have days where we are full of praise and admiration for God, for him coming through and saving us. And then the next day we are back to going back to him."

There is a particular kind of guilt that can attach itself to this pattern. The feeling that a truly faithful person would not swing between confidence and despair quite so rapidly. That someone who had genuinely experienced God's goodness would not be back at square one twenty-four hours later, begging for help again.

Psalm 40 dismantles that guilt entirely. David, the writer, was described as a man after God's own heart. And here he is, ricocheting between triumph and crisis within a single poem. If David did it, there is permission for everyone else to do it too.

"It is not something to beat ourselves up over. It simply is being human."

Steadied as I Walked Along

Buried in the opening verses of Psalm 40 is a phrase that the speaker highlighted as one of the most tender in the entire psalm: "He steadied me as I walked along."

Not carried. Not teleported to safety. Steadied. As in, David was still walking. Still moving. Still on his own two feet. But there was a hand holding him steady as he went.

"It feels really parental. That action. You can sort of picture a parent teaching a small child to walk and holding their hand as the child is walking. And there is something really soft and lovely about that."

This is a different image of God from the warrior God that appears in many other psalms. No armies. No dramatic rescues. Just a steady hand, quietly keeping someone upright as they take one shaky step after another. For anyone who has ever felt that they should be further along in their faith, stronger, more together, that image offers a different kind of reassurance. The expectation is not perfection. It is simply putting one foot in front of the other, with help.

The Most Humble Ending

The final verses of Psalm 40 contain a moment that the speaker found particularly moving. David has been asking God to fill other people with joy and gladness, to let everyone who seeks the Lord be filled with good things, to let them shout that the Lord is great. Big, expansive, generous prayers for others.

And then, for himself, David asks for something remarkably small.

"I am poor and needy. Let the Lord keep me in his thoughts."

Not joy. Not gladness. Not triumph or success or vindication. Just keep me in your thoughts.

"It is so emotional reading that, because it is a sign of real desperation. I do not even want to feel joy. I am not even asking for gladness. Just keep me in your thoughts."

There is something devastating about that level of honesty. It strips away every layer of religious performance and gets down to the raw nerve of what faith looks like when you have nothing left. It is not a confident declaration. It is a whisper. And somehow, it is one of the most profound statements of faith in the entire Bible.

Too Many Wonders to Count

In the middle of all this back and forth, David makes a statement that connects to one of the speaker's favourite themes: remembering.

"O Lord my God, you have performed many wonders for us. Your plans are too numerous to list. You have no equal. If I tried to recite all your wonderful deeds, I would never come to the end of them."

A similar sentiment appears at the end of John's Gospel: if everything Jesus did were written down, the books could not contain it all. The point is the same in both cases. God's goodness is not occasional. It is constant and overwhelming, far more than anyone could catalogue.

And yet people forget. Constantly.

"Someone told me recently that the second most common instruction in the Bible is to remember. And I have been really holding on to that."

The speaker described a personal practice of journalling, of keeping physical lists of the good things God has done. Not because the memory is bad, but because the forgetting is so quick.

"It is absolutely astonishing how quickly I forget them. And if I am having a day where I feel really low or have not got much hope coming to me naturally, I find it really helpful to go through and have written down physical lists of the good deeds God is doing in my life. Because there are so many. There are so many."

This is practical advice, not just spiritual encouragement. Writing things down. Keeping a record. Not trusting memory alone to sustain faith through the difficult days. Because the difficult days will come, and when they do, a written list of God's past faithfulness becomes something tangible to hold onto.

Remembering That He Will Do It Again

The logic of remembering is straightforward. If God came through before, he can come through again. If he lifted you out of the pit last time, he can do it this time. The evidence is already there, written in your own handwriting, in your own journal, from your own experience.

"Remembering them reminds me that more will come. So when I feel like I am in a pit, or I feel like God is not there, it is a reminder to keep asking, keep remembering what God has done. Because he will do it again."

Psalm 40 is proof of concept. David goes from the pit to the mountain and back to the pit again, all within the same poem. But he keeps going back to God. He keeps asking. He does not let the return of trouble invalidate the previous rescue.

That refusal to give up, that stubborn insistence on returning to God even when the emotions are saying otherwise, might be the most important thing in the entire psalm.

Something to Hold Onto

The Psalms were never meant to be tidy. They were meant to be true. And the truth about human experience is that it is rarely a straight line from despair to triumph. It loops. It doubles back. It revisits old fears even after old prayers have been answered.

Psalm 40 says that is normal. It says that going back to God when you are struggling does not mean the last rescue did not count. It means you know where to go.

What would change if you started writing down the good things God has done, so that on the hard days, you had something to read?