The Wilderness: What the Bible Actually Says About Praying When You’re Overwhelmed

Pastor Aaron opened with a youth backpacking trip in the San Gorgonio Wilderness in Southern California. The plan was an easy descent off the mountain and a night under the stars. Instead the temperature climbed, the greenery gave way to brown hills and tumbleweeds, and about ten miles in the water ran low. The group climbed one more hill expecting a stream on the other side. It was dry.

They found a stream, drank straight from it, and learned too late about the beaver dam upstream. They made it out, sick and exhausted — and trudging along, dry and thirsty, he found it hard to criticise Israel’s complaining in the wilderness.

Psalm 63 is headed as a psalm of David written in the wilderness of Judah, and its first verse sounds like that dry hill.

David is in more than a physical desert. Most scholars place Psalms 63, 61, 42, and 43 in the season when his son Absalom turned the hearts of Israel against him and took Jerusalem. After David’s adultery and murder, the prophet Nathan had told him the sword would never depart from his house. David was forgiven, but he still lived with the consequences. A warrior who could have defended the palace fled by night instead.

And the wilderness he fled into was familiar ground. It runs down to the Dead Sea, near Jerusalem and Bethlehem, where David grew up as the youngest son keeping his father’s sheep. A shepherd there had to find pasture and water in a place that had little of either. That is the landscape behind the green pastures and still waters of Psalm 23:1–2.

Twenty-plus years later, David is back on the same ground as a king. Pastor Aaron pictures him falling to his knees in the sand and crying out, realising that his soul has become a wilderness too. Psalm 61 is the prayer that comes out of that place.

The wilderness runs all through Scripture — Moses on the backside of the desert, Israel’s forty years, Elijah under the juniper tree, Paul in Arabia, John on Patmos, Jesus’ forty days. Each is a place of desperation, stripped of normal comforts.

Many psalms move through three prayer movements, and Psalm 61 shows all three:

• Lamentation — offering your thoughts, feelings, and emotions to God.
• Consecration — opening yourself to be changed by God.
• Adoration — lifting your praise and worship to God.

Lamentation comes first, and that cuts against habit. Many of us open prayer with flowery praise, almost buttering God up. There is a place for “Hallowed be thy name.” But in the wilderness it matters that you recognise where you really are and say it to God. He already knows. It is good for you to recognise it.

“Hear my cry… attend unto my prayer” says the same thing twice for emphasis. A warrior who has had power and control admits that his heart is overwhelmed. His son’s betrayal is layered on top of his own sin and its consequences. Our habit is to push that down, come to church, and tell everyone we are doing great. David is open and raw with God instead.

That can sound like, “God, I’m angry with you. I gave my life to serve you and I didn’t expect this.” God desires truth in the inward parts (Psalm 51:6). Job brought his complaint, too.

God did not rush to correct him. He answered Job, but much later, out of the whirlwind, and he let Job sit in his lament first. Hebrew culture calls that sitting shiva, after the seven days of mourning. Job’s friends get criticised a lot, but they began well.

But David does not stay in lament. He shifts to consecration: “Lead me to the rock that is higher than I.” Then he preaches to himself — “I will abide… I will trust.” The Hebrew word for abide in verse 4, gur, means to turn aside from the road for lodging, the way a family stops for the night on a long drive. Tabernacle is language from Israel’s own wilderness, when they set up a place of worship in the desert. David can see only mirages on the horizon, and he says he will set one up anyway. The word for trust, chasah, means to flee for protection. David had just fled for his life. Now he flees to God.

Consecration does not always change your circumstances. Some things that leave your soul in a wilderness will not be undone this side of heaven — a childhood, an experience, a season where you feel like a zombie walking around. Consecration is the prayer that says, “God, change me, not just the circumstances.”

Then comes adoration, and notice the tenses. “Thou, O God, hast heard my vows: thou hast given me the heritage…” is past. “Thou wilt prolong the king’s life” is future. David reasons from what God has done to what God will do. Samuel did the same when he set up a stone and said, “Hitherto hath the LORD helped us” (1 Samuel 7:12).

In verse 7 David speaks of himself in the third person: “He shall abide before God for ever.” This second abide is a different Hebrew word, yashab — to dwell, to remain, to make a home. It is close in meaning to Jesus’ invitation in John 15.

The prayer begins as a stop for the night and ends as a home. In the wilderness, adoration may be tear-filled praise and broken hallelujahs.

You may be in a personal wilderness right now. Even successful people, and pastors, are human and broken and need a Saviour. Pray Psalm 61’s three movements this week, slowly:

• Lament: name where you are before God, as bluntly as you need to — “Father, I’m hurting,” “I’m overwhelmed,” “this sin is overtaking me.”
• Consecrate: then turn the focus on yourself and ask, “God, change me — my heart, my perspective, my attitude, my spirit.”
• Adore: do not stop there. Thank him for what he has done, and thank him in advance for what he will do.

If you do not feel like you are in a wilderness, or do not feel like you need to change, ask God to change that spirit. On the mountain, in the valley, or beside plenty of water, he can still change you.

Underneath all three is an invitation from Jesus to stop and make your home with him.