Lord, Why Won’t You Fight For Me?

CHORUS

You say you will fight for me,

You who are faithful and true,

You assure me that one day I will see,

You ask me to place my trust in you.

VERSE 1

God Almighty, fight for me,

Stop this injustice against your own,

Oh I pray you might finally agree,

Give me hope beyond my dreary moan.

CHORUS

You say you will fight for me,

You who are faithful and true,

You assure me that one day I will see,

You ask me to place my trust in you.

VERSE 2

God Almighty, make this right for me,

Begin to do what only you can put right,

Turn this situation that I might be,

Put right in my world in the day of my sight.

CHORUS

You say you will fight for me,

You who are faithful and true,

You assure me that one day I will see,

You ask me to place my trust in you.

VERSE 3

God Almighty, you won me long ago,

Now I wonder whose side you’re on,

You seem to watch on when I’m so low,

You made me weak when I need to be strong.

CHORUS

You say you will fight for me,

You who are faithful and true,

You assure me that one day I will see,

You ask me to place my trust in you.

Psalms of imprecation are bellows from the depths of our being against the injustices we’ve suffered where God appears silent. The above song is an example.

I’ve been in these situations and so have many of my friends; indeed, I really do think we’ve all been in these situations — we’ve been faithful to God in trusting him, yet things occur that are always beyond our control and seemingly beyond God’s intervention. We wonder, “Why, God… why are you so impotent?”

Then, finally, we find ourselves sitting silently when the Lord speaks up: the wrath of God, Almighty. This is the Word of the Lord in the mood of Job 38 and following, where God dresses Job and all his ‘friends’ down. “What on all the earth do you know? Did you create that which you now criticise?”

Again, we sit.

Again, we lament.

Again, we are faced with a horrible reality.

No longer is this about how impotent God is. Now it’s about how conditional our faith was on being blessed. Now it’s about us being exposed. God is vindicated and we are guilty. We realise that God is no cause-and-effect God. He cannot be coerced. We can no more bargain with God than we can bring about pleasure and ward off pain.

Then we sit. We repent. We turn back to God. We have nothing left.

Then we sing:

You say you will fight for me,

You who are faithful and true,

You assure me that one day I will see,

You ask me to place my trust in you.

Then we simply respond: “I WILL.”

A prescription for someone angry with God: have a conversation with God like Job did in chapters 38 – 41. Go and read these chapters. Understand that Job was written for people like me and you. We need to know the truth:

Faith has nothing to do with twisting God’s arm for a blessing.

Faith has everything to do with waiting on and trusting the Lord.

With time we will see that the Lord was fighting for us all along. But we will only see that reality if we have faith enough to trust.

© 2015 Steve Wickham.