Reading Reference

Psalm 67–69

The Human Question

What do you do when you’re trying to remain faithful, but life still hurts?

I think most Christians eventually wrestle with this question, whether they admit it or not.

When we’re younger in our faith, it’s easy to assume that obedience and blessing will always arrive together. We read stories of God’s faithfulness, we hear testimonies of answered prayer, and somewhere along the way we begin creating a simple formula in our minds: follow God and things should generally work out.

Then real life shows up.

You pray and the answer takes longer than expected.

You try to do the right thing and still face criticism.

You help someone and they don’t appreciate it.

You remain faithful in a difficult season and wonder why it keeps getting harder instead of easier.

Looking back, some of the seasons that stretched my faith the most were not the seasons where God felt absent. They were the seasons where I knew He was present, but I couldn’t understand what He was doing.

Those seasons have a way of creating questions.

Not rebellious questions.

Honest ones.

The kind of questions people ask when they’re trying to trust God while also making sense of reality.

Psalm 67–69 takes us into that territory. The psalmists are not writing from comfortable positions. They are writing from real life, and because of that, their words still resonate thousands of years later.

The Wisdom Beneath the Passage

Psalm 67 begins with a prayer for God’s blessing, but what stands out is the reason behind the request. The psalmist doesn’t simply want blessing for personal comfort. He wants God’s favor so that the nations might know Him.

That perspective feels refreshing.

Most of us naturally think about how God’s blessings affect us. The psalmist thinks about how God’s blessings can point others toward Him.

As I get older, I find myself asking a different question than I used to ask. Instead of asking, “How can God help me?” I’m increasingly asking, “How can God use me?”

Those are very different questions.

Psalm 68 then expands into a grand celebration of God’s power and faithfulness. The psalmist looks back over Israel’s history and sees a pattern that many of us miss while we’re living through our own stories.

God keeps showing up.

Not always on the timetable people prefer.

Not always in the way they expect.

But He keeps showing up.

I’ve noticed that hindsight often reveals God’s faithfulness more clearly than the moment itself. There have been seasons where I couldn’t see what God was doing while I was living through them. Years later, however, I could look back and recognize His fingerprints all over the situation.

Then we come to Psalm 69.

This Psalm feels much different.

The celebration gives way to struggle.

David is overwhelmed. He feels misunderstood, attacked, exhausted, and alone. At one point he describes himself as sinking in deep waters with no place to stand.

That’s powerful imagery because most people know exactly what that feels like.

Maybe not physically.

But emotionally.

Relationally.

Spiritually.

There are seasons when life feels like that.

The responsibilities keep coming.

The pressures keep building.

The answers seem delayed.

And you begin wondering how much longer you can keep your footing.

What I appreciate about David is that he doesn’t pretend.

He doesn’t put on a brave face.

He talks honestly to God.

And in doing so, he gives the rest of us permission to do the same.

The Manly Training Lens

One of the lessons life keeps teaching me is that faith and honesty belong together.

For years, I thought maturity meant always having the right answer. Then life became complicated enough to teach me otherwise.

Maturity is not having all the answers.

Maturity is continuing to trust God when you don’t.

David demonstrates that throughout Psalm 69. He brings his confusion, frustration, disappointment, and pain directly before the Lord. He doesn’t clean it up first. He doesn’t pretend he’s stronger than he is.

He simply tells the truth.

That may be one of the most overlooked disciplines in the Christian life.

Honesty.

Not just with other people.

With God.

After all, He already knows what we’re carrying.

He already knows what we’re feeling.

The invitation is not to inform Him but to bring our hearts into the conversation.

I’ve found that many men struggle with this. We tend to carry things internally. We analyze them. We strategize about them. We try to solve them. Sometimes we carry burdens for months before talking honestly to anyone—including God.

David shows us a healthier way.

He talks to God early and often.

That doesn’t immediately solve every problem.

But it prevents the burden from becoming heavier than it needs to be.

This is where Psalm 69 points so beautifully toward Christ.

Many of the experiences David describes would later be fulfilled in Jesus. Rejection. Mockery. Misunderstanding. Isolation. Suffering.

Jesus entered fully into the human experience of pain.

Not so He could observe it from a distance.

So He could walk through it with us.

That means when we bring our struggles to Him, we’re speaking to someone who understands.

Reflection Question

What question have you been carrying lately that you have not yet brought honestly before God?

Final Thought

Psalm 67–69 reminds us that faith is not the absence of struggle.

Sometimes faith looks like celebration.

Sometimes it looks like gratitude.

Sometimes it looks like remembering God’s faithfulness.

And sometimes it looks like crying out from deep waters while holding onto hope.

The psalmists teach us that all of those responses can coexist within a healthy relationship with God.

Looking back, I’ve discovered that some of the most meaningful conversations I’ve ever had with God came during seasons when I had more questions than answers.

Maybe that’s because faith grows strongest when it learns to trust the character of God even when the circumstances remain unclear.

Through Christ, we are reminded that God is not intimidated by our questions.

He invites us to bring them to Him.

And that invitation remains one of the greatest gifts of all.

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About the Author

Eduardo Quintana is the founder of Manly Training and has spent more than three decades leading teams, developing leaders, discipling men, and helping people navigate the challenges of faith, family, leadership, and personal growth.

His passion is helping others develop the spiritual strength, wisdom, composure, and character necessary to thrive in an increasingly challenging world.

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Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible.

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