Psalm 55:22 NLT
“Give your burdens to the Lord,
and he will take care of you.
He will not permit the godly to slip and fall.”
Oh, how often I need that reminder! To give my burdens to the Lord and to remember and trust that He will take care of me. I chose to open with Psalm 55:22 because it comes from an honest, heartfelt prayer in the Psalms regarding the hurt from the betrayal of a friend. In my last newsletter, I shared about how our expectations in friendships impact our hearts towards God and others. Relationships in this life are messy and often leave us hurt or disappointed because of the stain of sin in each of our hearts. Today I want to walk through a portion of Psalm 55 together as a guide for biblically handling the pain that things like betrayal and disappointment in friendships bring. I’ll be going through several chunks of this passage to understand the context and implications this Psalm has for our relationships.
Psalm 55 starts with David crying out to God for rescue in a time of despair and deep need. As he is hiding and running from his enemies, we see an example of how to go to the Lord in prayer with our pain and raw emotions:
Psalm 55:4-8 NLT
My heart pounds in my chest.
The terror of death assaults me.
Fear and trembling overwhelm me,
and I can’t stop shaking.
Oh, that I had wings like a dove;
then I would fly away and rest!
I would fly far away
to the quiet of the wilderness.
How quickly I would escape—
far from this wild storm of hatred.
While I have definitely not been in the type of physical danger that King David experienced, I can still relate to his descriptions of emotions here. None of us like conflict or the bad emotions it produces, but they are often unescapable: pounding heart, shaking from fear (or anger), desiring to fly away and escape. Conflict and its resulting emotions are opportunities for us to choose to cry out to the Lord like David did, rather than stuffing them away or using them as an excuse to respond poorly.
So how did David’s cry to the Lord affect or help him? After taking his raw emotions to God, David continues to bring up more specifics about his ordeal:
Psalm 55:12-14 NLT
It is not an enemy who taunts me—
I could bear that.
It is not my foes who so arrogantly insult me—
I could have hidden from them.
Instead, it is you—my equal,
my companion and close friend.
What good fellowship we once enjoyed
as we walked together to the house of God.
Not only is David in relational conflict, he is facing betrayal by someone who used to be his “companion and close friend.” What’s even sadder about this situation is the fact that the conflict and betrayal are coming from someone David used to fellowship with, therefore someone who also claimed to follow and love the Lord.
If you are a member of a church (which I pray you are, Christian friend!), you will be closely acquainted with the fact that God’s people are made up of sinners. We are saints redeemed by grace, but in this life we still struggle in the fight with sin. Because of that, people will hurt us, and we will hurt others. Sometimes friends hurt us unintentionally, while other times it is intentional. King David experienced the intentional betrayal of friends, close allies, and even his own children. After honestly taking this complaint and disappointment to the Lord, we then read the following verses which include our opening verse:
Psalm 55:20-22 NLT
As for my companion, he betrayed his friends;
he broke his promises.
His words are as smooth as butter,
but in his heart is war.
His words are as soothing as lotion,
but underneath are daggers!
Give your burdens to the Lord,
and he will take care of you.
He will not permit the godly to slip and fall.
In these verses we see a stark comparison—a human friend who breaks promises, whose words sound nice but whose heart is “war” and “daggers,” compared to the Lord who carries our burdens, takes care of us, and does not let us slip or fall. The way David soothes his own hurting heart in the midst of relational conflict is by taking his hurt and complaints to God, because he truly believes that as he gives his burdens to the Lord, God will take care of him. This model of biblical lament can help guide us in our responses to being disappointed or rejected.
When friends hurt, betray, or abandon us, we have a choice of how we will respond. Will we let the fear, anger, or bitterness consume us? Will we allow our feelings to guide what we say and do? Will we run away from conflict, hide from it, or stuff it away? Will we return evil for evil, insult for insult, or hurt for hurt? No matter how you feel or how deep the hurt is, God has given you the ability to choose your response. We do not have to respond sinfully when we are hurt by others, and we do not have to live in the lies of shame and guilt if we are the ones who caused the hurt.
Instead, we can choose to be honest with God about our feelings, hurt, and temptations. We can cry out to Him for help and ask for Him to take our burdens. We can ask Him to work in our hearts and in the one who hurt us. We can ask God to grow our trust in His care for us, even when He allows conflict to happen. We can dig deep into His Word to see what righteous living looks like, and then we can ask His Spirit to help us live in those ways. Living this way is hard—because living in this sin-cursed world is hard. But when we seek the Lord to help change our motivations and to pursue His way, He is faithful to equip us with what we need to fight the good fight (Ephesians 6:10-18).
Matthew 5:38-48 is a passage I’ve talked about before on Speaking Truth, for it truly models to me the way to respond like Christ when I am sinned against. Jesus tells us to turn the other cheek when hurt and desiring to seek revenge, and He instructs us to love and pray for our enemies rather than to hate them. His own life was the perfect example of how to do this, the true embodiment of Psalm 55:22.
I pray that if you are experiencing anything I’ve covered today in your friendships—hurt, disappointment, betrayal—that you will choose to lament to the Lord. Go to Him, seek His Word, and ask for a desire to respond in the way He has called His people to. I pray you will seek to embody Christ in whatever your circumstance may be.
Next time, I will touch on another harder issue regarding friendships: loneliness. I look forward to seeking more encouragement and help from God’s Word with you here on Speaking Truth. Thank you for listening or reading along!
When It Hurts