Out of the Slimy Pit

Psalm 40:1-5

October 11, 2026 • Mount Pleasant UMC

On the wall hanging between my children’s rooms at our previous house was this sign: “Lord, give me patience to endure my blessings.” When we moved here, I put it outside Rachel’s room and it’s still outside that room today. My kids are a blessing, but they have tested my patience—a time or two. But I’ve rarely actually prayed that prayer because even I know that it seems the only way to develop patience is to be tested. And I think it might be dangerous to ask for that.

This morning, we are continuing our visit to God’s “Waiting Room,” looking at what we can learn when we are waiting, either willingly or not (probably most often not), for God to move, for God to answer a prayer, for God to do something, anything, please Lord! As I said last week, generally we are a culture that does not like to wait. We want what we want when we want it! But the Bible talks a lot—I mean, a LOT—about waiting—specifically, waiting on the Lord. There is story upon story of God’s people faithfully praying and asking and waiting—because God’s time is not ours. God’s time is never ours. Like we talked about last week, Abraham was told he and his wife Sarah would have a baby and then they waited. And waited. And waited for the promise to come true. The Israelites were enslaved in Egypt, and as their treatment got worse, they asked God to rescue them. And they waited. And waited. And waited while Moses grew up, and then went off to the desert to figure out who he was, and then came back to Egypt to lead them out. That was eighty years or so of waiting. And even then, when they got out of slavery, they had to wait another forty years before they could enter the promised land. And I could go on: David, wanting to build the Temple and being told to wait. The people who were taken away into exile, waiting to return home. The prophets waiting for the promised savior to come. God’s people spend lots of time in the waiting room.

But we don’t wait without reason. When we are waiting, God is wanting to and trying to teach us something; I firmly believe that. He has endless patience, though; we do not. And so sometimes, it seems, he lets us wait so that we might learn to be more like him in our patience. After all, patience is one of the character qualities Paul describes in Galatians 5:22-23, what he calls the “fruit of the spirit” or the evidence that God’s spirit is working in us. Just be careful what you pray for. Because you might end up in a slimy pit.

We don’t know what caused the psalmist to write what we know as Psalm 40, and we don’t know exactly who wrote it. As I mentioned last week, the title “of David” can mean “by David” or “for David” or even “in honor of David.” So it has some connection to King David, we just don’t know what. Then there’s the other note at the top: “for the director of music.” Again, we don’t know exactly what that means, but there are about 1/3 of the psalms that have that notation, and some scholars think they might have made up an earlier collection of songs. Most likely, they are songs that were meant to be sung in Temple worship or meant to be recited by the song leader. So it’s sort of like we’d say, “Josh is now going to recite this for us” (cf. VanGemeren, “Psalms,” Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 5, pg. 34).

Sometimes I think not knowing the exact background of a psalm allows us to relate to it a little better. Just reading through this psalm gives us a sense that this author is in a rough place. Verse 12: “Troubles without number surround me; my sins have overtaken me, and I cannot see. They are more than the hairs of my head, and my heart fails within me.” Verse 14, where there are enemies threatening him: “May all who desire my ruin be turned back in disgrace.” Verse 15, people are mocking him, or as Eugene Peterson translates it in The Message, they get “a kick out of making me miserable.” And all of this is weighing on him, probably waking him up at 2:00 a.m., to the point where he sees himself as “poor and needy,” or, again using Peterson’s translation, “I’m a mess. I’m nothing and have nothing” (40:17; cf Vroegop, Waiting Isn’t a Waste, pg. 57). And by the time we get to the end of this psalm, we believe it. He is a mess. His life is one unmet expectation after another. Nothing seems to be going right. And, in moments of quiet honesty, we also know we’ve been there. Hopefully you’re not there right now, but I bet some of you are. And the rest of us have either been there or will be there in the future. Because life just doesn’t always work out the way we think it should. Don’t believe those well-curated profiles on social media; no one’s life is perfect and there is going to come a time where the expectations we have simply don’t line up with the reality of life. And in those moments, we may very well feel like the psalmist, that we are in a slimy pit, deep in the mud and mire. Is this all life has to offer?

And then someone shows up and says, “Be patient.” I bet someone told the psalmist that. I’m picturing him stuck in the mud and the mire of a slimy pit and someone hollers down, “Just be patient. It will get better.” Don’t you just want to slug that person? Because our tendency, just like the psalmist’s, is to ask, “Why does it have to be like this anyway? Why isn’t it getting better right now?”

In the 1980’s, U2 sang this psalm to close their concerts each night. It’s amazing to think that what amounted to a secular band with a huge following would end every evening singing, “I waited patiently for the Lord; he turned to me and heard my cry” (40:1). It was a message that resonated then and still resonates today. I waited patiently. But I’m going to let you in on a little secret this morning: there is no word in the original text that should be translated “patiently.” The Hebrew word for “patience” isn’t in the original text; the translators have inserted it for clarity because what the psalmist actually sings would be closer to this: “I waited and waited and waited for Yahweh” (40:1, Peterson, The Message). In other words, I waited a long, long, long time for God to show up and do something. “Patiently” has a nice, socially-acceptable ring to it. But the original text smacks of desperation—it’s more like, “I desperately waited. And then I waited some more. And then I waited some more.” Which tells me patience really means “waiting more and longer than I anticipated.” Patience is about unmet expectations plus time. It means holding on and not giving up when every indication is that God is not going to come through, that God is not going to show up. Patience is all about expecting something other than what we have right now and trusting that one day, God is going to come through in some way, even if it’s not in the way we want.

In the King James Version, the idea of “patience” is often translated as “longsuffering.” That’s a made-up compound word, but it fits the Bible’s notion of patience. It’s longsuffering. It’s suffering longer than you want to, longer than we expect. To me, it brings up images from my second heart surgery. The doctor said I would be fine in 6 weeks, recovered and ready to go back to work. And Advent was in 6 weeks, so I thought that was perfect. And I did what the doctors told me to recover, and then I preached on the first Sunday of Advent and every Sunday after that, but I have to tell you: I wasn’t completely well. I look back now and realize it was at least a year before I felt like myself again. I sometimes described it as like someone had turned me inside out. Some days were better than others but none of them were what i expected or what I, personally, wanted. Longsuffering. Suffering longer than you expect to. That’s what the Bible describes as patience: dealing with unmet expectations and waiting for God to move.

So what do we do in that time? When we find ourselves in a time of longsuffering, how do we respond or what should we learn? Like a good preacher, I have three things I think this psalm points us toward. First of all, times like this in our lives cultivate a humble dependency—on God and on others around us. We can’t do it on our own. Or we shouldn’t. God created us for community. He made us in such a way that we need each other. The psalmist certainly turns to God over and over in the psalm; he’s learning to let God be in charge instead of himself. “Blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord,” he sings (40:4). “None can compare with you” (40:5). And he also sings about going to the community of the faithful: “I proclaim your saving acts in the great assembly” (40:9), which is the same as saying, “I gathered with my brothers and sisters to lift praise to you. I continued to worship.” Far too often, when we go through difficult times, people will distance themselves from the church, from the community of faith. I’ve seen it happen over and over again. I don’t know if it’s because they are embarrassed or angry or what, but this psalmist and, in fact, the writers of all of Scripture tell us we need to do the opposite. When things get hard, when our expectations aren’t being met, when we are longsuffering, that’s exactly when we need the community of faith the most. In a time when persecution was rising for the church, the author of the letter to the Hebrews doesn’t say, “Go hide and wait it out by yourself.” No, he told the church, “Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching” (Hebrews 10:24-25). Because we need each other. I need you to stand beside me. I need you to pray for me. I need you to help me keep waiting and waiting and waiting for the Lord. And you need me for all of those same reasons. James, the half-brother of Jesus and later the leader of the Jerusalem church, put it this way: “Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed” (James 5:16). A humble dependency on God and on each other will allow us to begin to let go of what we thought was going to be true about our lives. Sometimes what we expect isn’t what will happen. And that is the beginning of waiting in patience (cf. Vroegop 59).

A second thing that the psalmist does is to remember God’s faithfulness in the past. He does this over and over again as he sings. “Many, Lord my God, are the wonders you have done…were I to speak and tell of your deeds, they would be too many to declare” (40:5). “I speak of your faithfulness and your saving help…” (40:10). “You are my help and my deliverer” (40:17). And you can read elsewhere in the psalms, and in the rest of the Bible for that matter, and see how in times of stress and hardship, God’s people remember what God has done. Many times, particularly in the Old Testament, when something significant happened, when God showed up in a particularly powerful way, the people were told to build a monument so that future generations could remember. When their children ask that that pile of rocks is for, they were to tell the story of what God had done, to remember God’s faithfulness. That’s true still today. When I take people to the Holy Land, I try to prepare them ahead of time and tell them there are a lot of things we don’t know exactly where these events happened. But we will visit a lot of sites that have been set aside to remember. This is what God has done. This is how God was faithful. When we are waiting, the psalmist reminds us it is important to remember.

Our memories are short, though, and they fail us often. And you could build a pile of rocks to remind you of what God has done, but it might be more effective today to write down what God has done. That is, in essence, what the Bible is: a record of God’s faithfulness to God’s people. Now, you’re not going to write a new Bible, that job has already been done, but you can record God’s work in your own life and in the life of your family in a journal or some record keeping tool. Now, I’ll admit even as I suggest you do this that I am terrible at keeping a journal or even of writing things down that I want to remember. This is a growing edge to me. But a great friend of mine some time ago challenged me that writing things down, putting pen to paper, helps put things in our memories more permanently. That’s not made up; that’s actual neural science. And besides that, you will also have a record of what God has done to pass down to your children and their children. I’ve known some who use the same journal for five years, dividing each page up into five pieces so that when they go back through the next year, they can see what God did the year before on the same day. Remembering. When we can map God’s faithfulness through the year and even through the generations, we can find assurance that the one who was faithful then will continue to be faithful now (cf. Goldingay, Psalms: Part 1, pg. 129). And that, then, helps us persevere in patience. Eugene Peterson described it this way: “Perseverance is not the result of our determination; it is the result of God’s faithfulness. We survive in the way of faith not because we have extraordinary stamina but because God is righteous, because God sticks with us” (A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, pg. 126-127).

The psalmist remembers God’s work at the very beginning, from that time when he was in a “slimy pit.” He describes it this way: “He set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand” (40:2). The image of being in a slimy pit is often used to describe being close to death, and so whatever the writer experienced was particularly horrible, maybe a sickness that he became convinced would end in his own death. And yet, God. God stepped in and gave him “a firm place to stand.” Quite a contrast to a slimy pit. Again, whatever happened, we are led to believe that the psalmist could not have rescued himself. God picked him up and settled him in a good place, a firm place, a place from which he would not fall again (cf. VanGemeren 318-319). True patience requires remembering God’s faithfulness, God’s action in the past, because God is always working on our behalf. He loves his children and he will always work for our good and his glory. But seeing it come to pass will require remembering.

And then, the third thing that helps us with our patience is what one author calls “praying with faith-filled imagination” (cf. Vroegop 62). This is about dreaming about what we need and what we desire God to do. It’s not about telling God what to do or demanding that God do this or that. It’s about dreaming and sharing what we long for with our loving God. “Patient waiting is not fatalistic or pessimistic. It’s the hopeful commitment to seek God’s help creatively and faithfully while staying put” (Vroegop 64). I believe that’s at least part of what is happening when the psalmist begins to sing “a new song” (40:3). The patience he is learning is allowing his desires to align with God’s desires for him. God “put a new song in my mouth” (40:3). You can do this by skimming the psalms, looking for promises and assurances and faith-filled statements. There are hundreds of encouraging passages in this ancient hymnbook that God can use to fuel our imagination. Don’t just read the promises. Ask God to help you infuse those promises into your life. Imagine what life after this hard season will look like (cf. Vroegop 64). How will God shape you because of this time? How will you be a new creation in Christ? And, maybe most of all, remember what Paul told the Philippians: “I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work in you will continue to complete it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6, NRSVue). He will continue to complete it. He will continue to complete it. Say that with me this morning: he will continue to complete it. He has started something in you and he will complete it, and on the other side of this difficult time, on the other side of the waiting room, you will be more like Jesus than you were before. So pray imaginatively about that and allow God to do his work in you, the work that required this time of patience.

Now, I am not saying any of this will be easy. Or that we can drift through times of struggle with ease. Not at all. That’s why people say don’t pray for patience—because learning it and becoming more like Jesus in that way is not easy. And I don’t speak from any sort of expert position. My psalm would read something like, “I wanted to wait patiently for the Lord, but instead I got out ahead of him and made a mess of things.” Several years ago I went through one of the hardest times of my life and I failed miserably at waiting for the Lord. I told God what to do and when. (He didn’t do what I said.) I kept track of exactly how long all of this had been going on; I actually had a post-it on my desk with the number of weeks. And I pushed a lot of people away who said they wanted to be supportive. I am not a saint, but by God’s grace I pray I am more like Jesus now than I was then. The very nature of what patience is means it is hard. Like a toddler who is being lifted up and pulled away from a dangerous situation, we wrestle with what God is doing and we push back. God knows what is for our good and for his glory. Can we trust him to lead us to it? Can we trust him to carry us through it?

If you want to be shaped more like Jesus, if you want to have Godly patience through the difficult times, if you want to be one who willingly waits on the Lord, then read this verse with me as a prayer today.

I waited and waited and waited for Yahweh.

At last he looked; finally he listened.

He lifted me out of the ditch,

pulled me from the mud.

He stood me up on a solid rock

to make sure I wouldn’t slip…

Now, Yahweh, don’t hold out on me,

don’t hold back your passion.

Your love and truth

are all that keeps me together (Psalm 40:1-2, 11, MSG).

Let’s pray.