My Hope Is in You

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1. Observe

   What period of life is in focus in verses 5-6 versus verses 9 and 18?

   • Verses 5-6: youth and womb ("my confidence from my youth"; "I have relied on you from the womb"); verses 9 and 18: old age ("don't reject me in my old age"; "even when I am old and gray-haired")
   • All verses focus on the same period
   • Only middle age
   • Only adolescence

2. Observe

   What does the psalmist want to accomplish before he dies (v. 18)?

   • Personal vindication
   • To declare God's strength to the next generation and his might to everyone who is to come
   • Material legacy
   • Political reform

3. Interpret

   What is the specific spiritual vulnerability of old age in this psalm?

   • None
   • Decreased prayer ability
   • The fear of being abandoned when strength fails — that decline in physical and social capacity might be matched by a felt withdrawal of God's presence; enemies sense opportunity in weakness ("God has forsaken him"); the elderly believer must trust that lifelong faithfulness will be matched by God's lifelong faithfulness even when strength is gone, even when external evidence seems to support the enemies' claim
   • Loss of doctrinal knowledge

4. Interpret

   What does it mean to address God as the source of bitter troubles while still trusting him (v. 20)?

   • Theological confusion
   • Loss of faith
   • A mature theology that holds together God's sovereignty over all of life (including its bitter portions) with continued covenant trust; the troubles are not denied, downgraded, or detached from God's hand, but located within a story whose author can also revive; this prevents both a deistic God who is absent from suffering and a malicious God who cannot be trusted — it preserves the God who wounds and heals
   • Anger at God

5. Apply

   What would it mean to organize life around the intergenerational purpose of v. 18?

   • Only the elderly should think about it
   • It is meaningless
   • To deliberately invest in the spiritual formation of younger believers — teaching, mentoring, modeling, telling stories of God's faithfulness — and to view one's own discipleship not as a private project but as material to be handed on; whether young (preparing oneself to hand on) or old (actively handing on), the believer lives with one eye on the generation that comes next and the strength of God they need to receive
   • Avoid all younger people

6. Apply

   How long is one's own list of God's faithful acts, and have they been told?

   • There is no such list
   • Such a list is likely longer than first thought — answered prayers, sustaining grace through hardship, providential meetings, deliverances, conversions, daily bread — and most have probably gone untold, kept private rather than declared as testimony to others; the discipline is to write the list, name the acts, and share them, so the accumulating evidence becomes both personal anchor and public encouragement
   • Lists are forbidden
   • Telling is impossible

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