Series: Songs of Worship—Getting Real With God
Sermon: Forsaken
Speaker and Writer: Elia King

​Refresh: Open with prayer. Ask God for understanding through the Holy Spirit.

Refresh: Open with prayer. Ask God for understanding through the Holy Spirit.

Read: Psalm 22:19–31 (NLT). As you read the New Living Translation, note 1–3 insights.

Reflect: There are very few times in my life that I have felt forsaken. Rejected? Lots of times. Disappointed? You bet. Betrayed? Sure. But to feel completely and utterly alone is a rare thing for most of us. It is rare enough, in fact, that most of us don’t know what to do with it. More often than not, we associate being forsaken with feelings of abandonment.

When I was a kid, I had a recurring nightmare that my mom would forget me at camp meeting. It was an odd thing to dream about, because I only really ever had happy memories of camp meeting. But for some reason, as a kid I kept coming back to the idea that she would take me there and drop me off and I would be lost in the crowd—that she would just forget to come back for me. I knew logically that it could never happen. As an only child, I just knew I was far too important to be abandoned. But for some reason, it was still a real fear for me. And yet, just as surely as I would wake up in a cold sweat from that dream, I also knew that my mom would never leave camp meeting without me.

I wonder if that is the same tension the Psalmist lives in within this song. In the first verses, we hear in vivid detail about his fear that God will abandon him to dogs, bulls, lions, and accusers. But in the last half of the song, we hear about the praise of the people and God’s deliverance. It is almost as if pain and hope go hand in hand for the Psalmist.

Recalibrate: Where do you find hope when the reality of life seems hopeless?

Respond: Pray that God will help you to find hope, rather than simply rescue, in a difficult situation.

Research: Search for the lyric video for “I Won’t Let You Go” by Switchfoot on YouTube. As you watch the video, what questions does it raise for you about pain? About abandonment? About the character of God?