Psalm 63: A Lifeline for Anxious Nights (SEEN SERIES)

Today I share one of my favorite Psalms of all time. During a painful season of my life, Psalm 63 became my lifeline. It helped calm my anxiety. It reminded me of God’s nearness. It brought about praise, despite pain.

As we walk through this powerful psalm, my hope is that if you’re navigating your own wilderness, you’ll be reminded that even in your most desperate moments, you will find yourself tucked under God’s wings, clinging to Him with all of your soul. And when you find that you can no longer hold on, you realize He’s been upholding you all along.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Panic, Night Watches, And Psalm 63
• 2:56 Reading Psalm 63 Aloud
• 4:28 Why Wilderness Shapes Faith
• 6:14 Thirst That Only God Can Quench
• 9:05 Glory, Hesed, And Chosen Praise
• 13:07 Satisfaction Of The Soul In Exile
• 15:06 Night Meditation And Under His Wings
• 20:04 God’s Right Hand And Justice
• 23:06 Leah’s Weariness And Real Hope
• 26:20 Blessing, Resources, And Closing Prayer

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

During that season that I talked about earlier, that season where I was getting up and having panic attacks in the middle of the night, there were times when I would literally get in my bed and I would lay the Bible open to Psalm 63 on my chest. And I would just close my eyes and then I would take the covers and I would wrap them tightly around myself. And I would say, I'm under your wings. I'm under your wings. We are under God's wings. He's got us. We are in the safest place. Yeah, you might be in a wilderness right now. You might be in a place of hunger and soul thirst and loneliness and pain. And also you are tucked tightly under God's wings. Hi, friend. If you've ever wondered how God's word connects with the messy, broken parts of your story, you're in the right place. Welcome to Beauty and the Brokenness, where we have honest conversations about the Bible, our real life struggles, and the hope God brings for healing. I'm your host, Teresa Whiting, an author, Bible teacher, and trauma-informed life coach, but mostly a friend and fellow struggler. No matter who you are or where you've been, I'm inviting you to encounter the God who is still creating beauty right in the midst of your brokenness. Well, welcome friends. I am excited to share Psalm 63 with you today. This psalm makes me smile. Every time I see it, I smile because I think back to the time about 20 years ago when this psalm was a lifeline for me. Greg and I were going through a really difficult time. We actually talked about it in our 30th anniversary episode. If you ever want to go back and listen to that, I'll link it in the show notes. But during that season, I started waking up at like 4 a.m. And I would start shivering. I would just shake and shake. And I would get on the floor and crawl to the bathroom and dry heave. And then I would crawl back to my bed and I'd get back in bed and I would just shiver and shake. Now I didn't know it at the time, but I was actually having panic attacks. My body was just revolting against the stress and the anxiety that was going on in my heart, in my mind. And during that season, I memorized Psalm 63. I don't know if you ever do that, if you're ever in a difficult season and you choose a passage of scripture and you meditate on it and you memorize it and you just soak it in. I can't recommend that highly enough because Psalm 63 became my lifeline. I can't wait to dive into it with you today. So let's start by just reading through Psalm 63 together. And I'm going to read this in the English Standard Version. And it says, A Psalm of David when he was in the wilderness of Judah. Oh God, you are my God. Earnestly I seek you. My soul thirsts for you. My flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory, because your steadfast love is better than life. My lips will praise you. So I will bless you as long as I live. In your name I will lift up my hands, my soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food, and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips when I remember you upon my bed, and meditate on you in the watches of the night, for you have been my help, and in the shadow of your wings I will sing for joy. My soul clings to you, your right hand upholds me. But those who seek to destroy my life shall go down into the depths of the earth, they shall be given over to the power of the sword, they shall be a portion for jackals, but the king shall rejoice in God. All who swear by him shall exult, for the mouths of liars will be stopped. Now, if we go all the way back to the beginning of Psalm 63, it talks about the fact that it was a Psalm of David written when he was in the wilderness. Now, we've already encountered the wilderness in Hagar's story, but we're revisiting it because the wilderness is something that we go through often. And um, Dustin Crowe and I talked about this on the episode, Your Wilderness Isn't a Waste. I wrote this quote down, which I pulled off of Bible Hub, actually, and it says, In the wilderness, God often encounters his children in unique ways. Midbar, now, Midbar, Midbar is the Hebrew word for wilderness, is far more than desolate terrain. It is God's chosen environment for revelation, testing, protection, and promise. From Genesis to revelation, the wilderness stands as a vivid reminder that the Lord forms his people in unpromising places, sustains them apart from human resources, and transforms barrenness into fertile joy for his own glory. And I have found that to be true in my own life. Nobody wants to go through a wilderness season. We don't ask for them, we don't seek them out. And yet, when we are in the wilderness, God does this beautiful, amazing work in us. Interestingly, I just thought of this. Jesus did seek out the wilderness. Like the Holy Spirit led him into a wilderness for temptation, for testing, for strengthening, for growth. And God leads us into wilderness seasons. So I don't know if you're in one right now, if you've just come out of one, or if you're going into one soon, but probably one of those three. So verse one says, Oh God, you are my God. Earnestly I seek you. My soul thirsts for you, my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. So just thinking about the fact that the first thing the psalmist does is he turns to God. You are my God, like you're personal, you're mine, you're with me in this. I'm seeking you. And I think about how often, when we're in a dry and thirsty season, do we hold out our cup and we say to our husband, to our friend, to our mom, to somebody in our life, fill me up. Maybe you do that on your social media. You post things and you're just waiting for those likes. You're waiting for the affirmation of other people, and you're saying, fill me up, fill me up. I'm so thirsty. I love that the psalmist says, God, I'm turning to you. I am thirsty. My soul is thirsty. But I'm I'm looking to you to be satisfied, to quench that thirst. It says, um, I'm in a dry and weary land where there is no water. Now, Psalm 63 is the one I have given to Leah in my scene Bible study. And I think Leah could so relate to this psalm, the weariness of her heart, the weariness of her longing, you know, always hoping and looking for Jacob's love and never getting it. And interestingly, her name literally means weary. And I think Leah so so could have related to this psalm. And now we're we're gonna move on to verse two. All of that was just from verse one. It says, So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory. And that looked upon literally means seen. It's saying, God, I've seen you. I have beheld, I have looked upon your power, your glory. That word glory has kind of lost the weightiness that it really and truly implies. When we hear the word glory, you know, we might think of like a glorious sunset, or, you know, we sing glory to God in church. But the word glory literally means weight. It attracts and terrifies. It's really a word that should be reserved for God alone. And he graciously manifests his glory to us. And the psalmist is saying, I've I've seen you, I've seen your glory, and you and I have seen it too. When we are in those dark places, when we experience God's presence, we're experiencing that glory for ourselves. And then we're getting to my favorite verse, verse three. Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you. Now, that word, steadfast love, is the Hebrew word hesed. That is a word that really and truly has no English equivalent because it refers to so many aspects of God's character, his loving kindness, loyalty, faithfulness, his mercy. This word saturates the scripture. Not only that, God uses it to describe himself. So in Exodus 34, we see this beautiful encounter between God and Moses. And Moses is saying, Lord, show me, show me who you are. And it says in Exodus 34, I'm gonna read verses like five through eight. Uh, verse five says, The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there and proclaimed the name of the Lord. The Lord passed before him and proclaimed the Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children to the third and fourth generation. And Moses quickly bowed his head toward the earth and worshiped. God in his self-description uses the phrase steadfast love twice, that Hebrew word, Hesed. And here the psalmist is saying, Because that steadfast love is better than life itself, my lips will praise you. In other words, I'm in a wilderness, I'm in a desperate situation, but I know, I know your steadfast love. And I know that it's better than what this life is offering me. And so my lips will praise you. I'm gonna open my mouth and I'm gonna speak your praise. I'm gonna sing your praise. So we're um in the middle of a move right now, and I uh was unpacking yesterday. I spent the whole day unpacking and I put on my Spotify and I was blasting my speakers and singing at the top of my lungs. I'm like, I don't know if these new neighbors are gonna be like, what's going on in that house? But there are times when your heart acknowledges the goodness of God and sees his steadfast love. And you just have to sing, you just have to come out with it, you just have to burst out with it. And there are times when it feels near impossible to even speak a word of praise, to even think a word of praise. And I want to argue that those times are so precious when you choose to praise God, when you say, God, I believe you, I believe your steadfast love is better than life. And you you choose to sing, you choose to praise God in those moments, he actually will literally lift your soul out of the pit, out of the darkness. He he pours his light on us when we sing praise to him. And I hope you know by now that I am not saying we forsake lament. I would never ever say that there isn't a place for lament. There is, but there is also a place for choosing to praise, even in the midst of our pain. Verse four says, So I will bless you as long as I live. In your name, I will lift up my hands. We think about the significance of names. You know, the whole chapter on Leah, we talk about all the names that she gave her sons and how reflective they were of her heart condition, of her longings, of her desires. And the psalmist is saying, In your name I will lift up my hands. That's where the praise is, that's where the power is, that's where the glory is, in the name of the Lord. Verse five says, My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food, and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips. So that word soul. So we're we're looking at my soul, my mouth, my hands. Like this is an embodied experience. The psalmist is saying, with all of me, well, first of all, with all of me, I'm thirsting, I'm longing, I'm hungry, and with all of me, I'm responding in praise with all of who I am, with my soul, with my heart, with my whole being. Now remember, David is still in the wilderness. He hasn't gone out yet. He's still in this difficult time. So the fact is, what is so beautiful is God's presence. So we can be in a wilderness season, but if we are there with the Lord, if we know that he is with us and we are with him, that's where praise can spring from. I want I want to keep reading because because this is so it's it's all tied together. Verse six when I remember you upon my bed and meditate on you in the watches of the night, for you have been my help, and in the shadow of your wings I will sing for joy. Okay. I told you that verse three was my favorite, but I actually think it's verse seven. Because think about this. David is saying, When I remember you on my bed and meditate on you in the watches of the night. When you are going through a hard season, what's the worst part of the day? The night, right? It's like our head hits the pillow and the spiral begins, right? The thoughts, the what ifs, the what's gonna happen next, what if this happens, the replaying of conversations, the projecting of what you're gonna say in your next conversation, right? We we get in our beds and our mind just starts to go and go. And David is saying, I'm gonna remember you when I'm on my bed. I'm gonna meditate on you in the watches of the night. And I looked up, what is the watches of the night? Well, the night was um actually divided into three sections, three watches. So they have night watchmen. The first session would be from sunset to 10 p.m. The next night watch would be 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. And the last one would be 2 a.m. to sunrise. So we're basically talking sunset to sunrise. All of it. That whole time when we are tempted to get in bed and stew and oh, what's that word I'm looking for? It's like, what's that word? Where you're just like going over something over and over in your head. You probably know the word. Why don't you text it to me or or email me and tell me the word I'm looking for? But you know what I'm talking about. When you get in your bed and your mind just is doing the thing that we don't want it to do. So he's saying, at that time, when I'm remembering you, that's when my soul is satisfied because I'm thinking of you, because I'm remembering you. And because you've been my help, you've been my aiser. Ah, I love that word. Aser, that is the word that God used when he said, let us create a helper fit. That was the word, a help, an aid, one who comes to our rescue. That's exactly what that means. It's he's saying, I'm gonna think about you, and I'm gonna think about the times and the ways you have come to my rescue, God. And then this phrase, and in the shadow of your wings I will sing for joy. During that season that I talked about earlier, that season where I was getting up and having panic attacks in the middle of the night, there were times when I would literally get in my bed and I would lay the Bible open to Psalm 63 on my chest. And I would just close my eyes and then I would take the covers and I would wrap them tightly around myself and I would say, I'm under your wings. I'm under your wings. I was in the process of memorizing Psalm 63, and I would basically try to just imagine myself tucked under God's wing. I love that phrase. I love that David is using it because you know the first time this phrase shows up in scripture is in the book of Ruth. When Ruth meets Boaz, and Boaz says to her, May you be richly rewarded by the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge. And I just love that image. And so a little fun fact, you know, I love to tie things together. Boaz was David's great-grandfather. And I wonder if that's, you know, if Boaz tucked Obed into bed at night and said, You are under God's wings. And maybe Obed taught that to Jesse, and Jesse taught that to David, and now David's teaching it to us. And now I use it for myself. We are under God's wings. He's got us. We are in the safest place. Yeah, you might be in a wilderness right now. You might be in a place of hunger and soul thirst and loneliness and pain. And also you are tucked tightly under God's wings. It says, My soul clings to you. My soul, everything in me is clinging to you, God. And your right hand upholds me. That is the hand of strength and power and authority. And it says, your right hand is holding me up. It's holding me together. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, one more thing about being under the shadow of his wings. You think about how close that is, the nearness that we have to God in that place, in that safety. I remember learning when my kids were babies that when you hold a baby on your chest for an extended amount of time, your heart begins to beat at the same pace. And I think about being under the shadow of God's wings, like being that close to his heart, and that our heart would beat at the same pace as his. There's a calming sense of his presence. There's a safety and a protection there. That no matter what is going on around me, I'm safe. I'm safe here. And in that place, in that place, the psalmist says, I will sing for joy. In other words, I'm gonna cry out, I'm gonna sing joyfully because my soul clings to you. In that place, not just am I wrapped tight under your wings, but my soul is clinging to you, and your right hand upholds me. In other words, you're my source of strength, you're my help, you're my power, you're my support. God's right hand is used in scripture to show his mighty, mighty power. It says that his right hand is majestic in power, it scatters his enemies, it plants Israel in the land, it assures our protection. And also, I think about when Jesus was on the earth and he extended his hand toward people. He lifted people with his hand, he lifted, he brought people back to life with his hand. He used his hands to give sight to the blind and to lift up the lame. And then ultimately, I love to think about the hand of God when we are with him one day. And he wipes every tear from our eyes with that righteous, right hand. Then we get into the part of the psalm that's kind of um, I don't want to call it imprecatory because he's not like calling down curses on his enemies, but he's he's acknowledging the truth that those who seek to destroy my life will go down into the depths of the earth. They shall be given over to the power of the sword, they shall be a portion for jackals. In other words, um, those who are after me, those who are attacking me, they're going to be the ones that come to ruin. David was running for his life at this time, and actually, God did defeat his enemies for him. And we don't always have physical enemies, we don't always have people in our lives. Sometimes we do. And the good news is God is a God of justice. He will make all, he will right every wrong at some point, either on this earth or after judgment comes, after this time on earth is over. But God will right every wrong. He is a God that does not stand or allow injustice to just slip by under the radar. I think ultimately what David is saying is my enemies are not going to triumph over me. And friends, that is something we can say with absolute confidence that our enemies do not get the last word. The last word is that we, because of the blood of Jesus, we walk in victory. We walk in hope, in eternal life, in the assurance that one day we are going to be with God forever and ever. And right now, whatever we're walking through, we are not alone. He sees, he cares, he knows, and he is walking with us. And then verse 11 ends with, but the king, that's David, he was the king at the time, shall rejoice in God. In other words, he's saying, I'm gonna rejoice. Yeah, things are tough, but I am going to rejoice in God. All who swear by him shall exalt. And then I love how it ends that for the mouths of liars will be stopped. And literally, in Hebrew, that means will be shut up. In other words, the lies, the deception, the trickery, that does not get the last word. God is going to shut that up and he is going to proclaim truth and honesty and integrity. God isn't just gonna refute falsehood, he's going to lock it down. He's going to clamp shut every lying mouth eventually. Oh my goodness, I can't wait for that day. One one thing that I just hate is lying. I hate the thought of somebody telling me something and not being able to trust that it's true. And we never have to worry about that with God. And the good news is he is going to shut the mouths of every liar and his truth is going to prevail. So Psalm 63 is obviously one of my favorites. And I hope you will take the time to just look over it, meditate on it, even memorize it. If you're looking for a longer passage of scripture to memorize, like more than just one verse or two verses, this is a fabulous thing to memorize. I so often I've come back to it over and over throughout my life. I have used this psalm as a source of comfort and encouragement and hope. I think about Leah. So Psalm 63 is going with Leah in the scene study. And I love to imagine her that she understood and lived these truths. That Leah understood that because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you. I think about her naming Judah and saying, This time I will praise the Lord. I think, I think she came to understand that though her life was not pleasant, God's steadfast love was. She chose to bless his name. When it says, My soul is satisfied with marrow and fatness, my mouth will offer praises when I remember you on my bed. I think of so many lonely nights. I'm sure Leah did not sleep with Jacob most of the time. And I think of her on her bed at night and going through the things that she walked through, directing her heart, directing her soul, her mind to the Lord. I know that he was her help. I hope that she found herself under the shadow of his wings. And that is my prayer for you. That's my prayer for everybody who is listening to this podcast. That you will know the steadfast love of God, that you will let it satisfy your heart, despite your unfulfilled longings, despite your wilderness season, that when you lay in bed at night, you find yourself clinging to the only one who can uphold you. I pray that as your soul is satisfied in him, you'll have the strength to offer joyful praise, and that you will know what it feels like to be enfolded under the shadow of his wings. And when you do, you will be able to say, like Leah, this time I will praise the Lord. Thanks for hanging out with me today on Beauty in the Brokenness. To find anything I mentioned on the episode, go to TeresaWiting.com slash listen, which is where you can find the show notes. So a couple times during this episode, I refer to my Bible study scene that I am in the midst of writing. And you can, if you are interested in getting seen, you can sign up to be on my prayer team and you will get updates as that study progresses. I even have some of my listeners give me feedback as I work through the study, as I work through editing and refining chapters. If you'd like to be a part of that prayer team, I'd love to have you and you can sign up through the link in the show notes. In closing, I want to leave you with this prayer from number six, twenty four. The Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you. The Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace.