The lowest spot on earth is the Dead Sea. Geologists tell us that it sinks a little lower every day. Some estimates say it is sinking at a rate of thirteen inches per year. But in the ocean is a place even darker and deeper. No light has ever penetrated its darkness. The deepest part of the ocean is called the Mariana Trench. If you dropped Mt. Everest, the tallest mountain on the surface of the earth, into this part of the ocean, the top of Everest would be more than a mile below the surface. The pressure at that depth is eight tons per square inch. That is like trying to hold sixteen thousand pounds with just two fingers, while an equivalent amount of weight is bearing down upon every square inch of your body.
Have you ever felt like you were living in the lowest spot on earth? Like the Dead Sea, you sink a little more every day. Like being in the depths of the Marianna Trench, the pressures are almost more than you can bear. Is that what life is like for you? Do you find yourself so far down, that you feel like you have to reach up to touch bottom? If so, you can understand the feelings of David when he wrote these words.
Out of the depths I have cried to You, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice! Let Your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications. If You, O Lord should mark iniquities, O Lord who could stand? But there is forgiveness with You, that You may be feared. Psalm 130:1-41 Out of the depths I have cried… Psalm 130:1
David Was In The Depths
Was it the depths of sin? Was it the depths of despair? Was it the depths of danger? Was it the depths of poverty? Was it the depths of sorrow? The depths have been described as that point in your life where: “Earth is hollow, heaven empty, the air heavy, every form a deformity, every sound a discord, the past a gloom the present a puzzle, the future a horror.” C. H. Spurgeon: The Treasuries of David
The depths describes the very bottom of your circumstances, the very bottom of life. It is as low as a person can go. That’s where David was. He was in the depths!
What Can You Do in the Depths?
You can cry. And most people do. The depths is the lowest of all places in life. But it is more than a place. It is an attitude—an outlook—one of the most intense hopelessness and despair. It is the dungeon of the soul. How does a person survive such a place, such a period, such a season of life?
Even strong men cry in the depths, for in the depths, a man realizes that he has come to the end of his own resources—that he has nowhere to turn. So in the depths you cry. You weep secretly, sometimes silently, sometimes invisibly to those around you. David was in the depths, and there in the depths he cried.
To Whom Do You Cry in the Depths?
In the depths, that deep, dark, depressing dungeon of the soul, one can conclude that all is utterly hopeless. A person might decide that there is nowhere to turn, that there is no place to cry, that there is no ear that will hear. We can even decide that God’s shoulder is not available to cry on. But David said, Out of the depths I have cried to You, O Lord. Psalm 130:1
Not only so, but in the depths, a person might detest himself or herself, and so, feel that even God loathes them and their condition. But listen to what Paul said when he asked, “What shall separate us from the love of God?” 38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:38-39
The depths can’t separate us from our Lord’s love or His presence. David was in the depths. And there he cried, but not just into his pillow. He cried to the Lord! C.H. Spurgeon said, “Prayer is never more real and acceptable than when it rises out of the worst places. Deep places beget deep devotion. Depths of earnestness are stirred by depths of tribulation.”
It was out of the depths of slavery in Egypt that the children of Israel began to groan earnestly. “They sighed by reason of their bondage, and they cried out..” Exodus 2:23b But while their souls were chained in the dungeon of the depths, their prayers took flight. Their cry for help rose up to God, and God took action to initiate their deliverance!
Out of some pit of life, whether despair, or sin or sorrow—out of those depths, David cried to the Lord. Could it be that you are the person in the depths—that deep, dark, depressing, dungeon of the soul? Are your eyes weak from sorrow? Is your pillow wet with your tears? Then turn those cries heavenward. Your situation may be desperate, but God’s love, compassion and salvation reach even into the depths.
How Does a Person Come to Be in the Depths?
When I find myself in the depths, I usually get there as a result of my own folly. In my own personal experience, I have found that sin will take you to the depths! It will take you deeper in the depths than you want to go. It will keep you longer in the depths than you want to stay. The depths of sin will cost you more than you ever wanted to pay.
When I find myself in the depths, I am never there alone. Satan is always there to assault me and to remind me of my faults and failures. He is there heaping sorrow upon sorrow and discouraging me from calling on my God who is mighty to save. The same is true of all of God’s people. The enemy not only accuses us of being unworthy to call on God, He accuses God as either weak or unwilling to save us from our despair. He reads in our hearing the record of our sins. The devil keeps a detailed record of our sins against God so that he can accuse us, and dishearten us, and accuse us before God, pointing at our sin list with his crooked finger. The devil keeps a list. But listen to what David said about God.
David said, “If You, LORD, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with You, That You may be feared.”
If God held a grudge—if my sins were kept in His heart all would be hopeless. Make no mistake, there is a record, but against that record stands the promise of full and free forgiveness. Peter preached, “Repent ye therefore and be converted that your sins may be blotted out.” And Paul wrote in Colossians 2:13-14 that he has “forgiven us all our transgressions, having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us and which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.”
Yes—there is a record! But there is also a Redeemer!! So, when in the depths, it is not necessary to plead your merit when pleading for God’s forgiveness. You have no merit. The ground on which to stand is the ground of God’s mercy and grace. The ground on which to stand is the ground of the Cross! No dungeon is so dark or deep that the Savior can’t see and save! David was in the depths. He cried to the Lord—daring not to stand on his own character—but on the grace and mercy of the Lord.
When darkness seems to hide His face,
I rest on His unchanging grace.
In every high and stormy gale,
My anchor holds within the veil.
His oath, His covenant, His blood,
Support me in the whelming flood.
When all around my soul gives way,
He then is all my Hope and Stay.
On Christ the solid Rock I stand,
All other ground is sinking sand;
All other ground is sinking sand.
Where Does One Wait While in the Depths?
David waited in the depths. Bombarded by his doubts—bludgeoned by his fears—there he cried out to God—hanging on precariously as he waited for God’s deliverance and hoped for God’s help. There in the depths, he cried for God’s mercy, while clinging to God’s word.
Sometimes, that is all that we have in the depths. We have just one precious promise, just one verse to cling to. Tell me what else is there—when your money is gone—when your health is gone—when your wife has told you that tomorrow she’ll be gone—when your hope is gone—what is there to hold on to? David held on to the promises of God!
I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning. Psalm 130:5-6
Can Anything Good Come Out of the Depths?
Can any lesson be learned in the depths of distance from God, in the depths of disobedience, in the depths of discouragement? Remember Jonah. How deep did Jonah sink in the depths? Jonah described his circumstances as having sunk to the belly of Hell. He prayed, 5 The waters closed in over me to take my life; the deep surrounded me; weeds were wrapped about my head 6 at the roots of the mountains.nI went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever; yet you brought up my life from the pit, O Lord my God.7 When my life was fainting away, I remembered the Lord, and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple. JONAH 2:5-7
God delivered even Jonah from the depths. In the throes of the desperation that you now experience, you may be wondering if any good could come from it. It seems right now that it will destroy you emotionally, physically, and spiritually. But in the depths, David learned to call on God. He was forced to look to God. He was forced to pray. And he was forced to wait. Listen to his testimony:
O Israel, put your hope in the LORD, for with the LORD is unfailing love and with Him is full redemption. He Himself will redeem Israel from all their sins. 130:7-8
What David might never have known in life’s noon, he discovered in life’s midnight. The depths is a place where a person can meet God!What secret is God teaching you as you travel through the tremendous soul-crushing pressures of the depths? Do you feel as if you are living through the lowest spot of life? Like the dead sea, do you feel like you sink a little more every day? Like being in the depths Marianna Trench. do the pressures seem almost more than you can bear? Do you find yourself so far down, that you feel like you have to reach up to touch bottom? Then cry out to the Lord. He plumbs the depths and the darkness. Neither height nor depth can separate you from his love.
Photo by Alice Alinari
