Awake! Why are you sleeping, Lord?: A Bible Study from Psalm Forty-Four for small groups or personal devotions.

Why have the powerful victories of the past collapsed into catastrophe today? There seems to be no reason for it, for God's people have not forsaken him. The nation argues it has not broken covenant. Why, then, are they abandoned? Has God failed? Does he not keep his Word? Has he become our enemy, and thus fights against us?

These are the bitter questions over which the entire bewildered nation laments. With brutal honesty, the humiliated and shamed people of God pull no punches. They bare their battered souls and call God to account. But no matter how much they cry with anguish for answers, their pain only intensifies as God offers no response. Instead, he hides his face.

How should we act when there is a huge gap between the covenant-keeping God we know and love, and his apparent failure to keep his promises? How do we explain the inconsistency? Is he no longer all-powerful? Has he been defeated by some other god? Perhaps he is exhausted and fallen asleep...

Psalm 44 shows the depth of the nation's dilemma. But it also reveals that though we cannot understand, we have permission to passionately 'speak freely' of our pain to the God we love and serve. In the end, all the nation could do is throw itself unreservedly on God's mercy, and so must we.

Did God hear this cry of his people? Has he heard the lament of many a suffering saint down through the centuries? Yes, God has heard, but the sons of Korah could never have anticipated the bountiful way God would answer their cry.