When you reach the limit of what you think you can handle and you begin to feel that a situation is hopeless, it is then that you must choose to let yourself sink into depression or hang on to the belief that all is not lost. Even when we know there is nothing we can do to change things, it is still possible for God to step in and rescue us.

The feeling of being stuck in a hopeless situation can be very painful. It is not until we realize that we are stuck that we are willing to ask for help. The reason why I think God often lets us get ourselves stuck is because he wants to move us in a new direction.

After David escaped from Achish the king of Gath, he sent his parents to Moab, the home of his great grandmother Ruth, and he took his men to a hold or fortress where he thought they would be safe. While David was in the hold, it says in 1 Samuel 22:5, “And the prophet Gad said unto David, Abide not in the hold, depart, get thee unto the land of Judah.”

David’s family were members of the tribe of Judah and his family had an inheritance in that land. David had disassociated himself from his inheritance by sending his parents to Moab and taking up residence in the hold. Although the hold felt safe at first, it became a prison that kept David locked up in fear and immobilized in despair.

When David was in the wilderness of Judah, he wrote psalm 63 which begins with the declaration, “O God, thou art my God” (Psalm 63:1). Once David was back where God wanted him to be, his relationship with the LORD was restored and David said, “early will I seek thee” (Psalm 63:1).

I think it is interesting that human nature sometimes causes us to wait until there is no hope left to seek God’s help. We are so used to depending on our own resources and capabilities that we forget there is a God available to us, one that is much better equipped to handle adversity. The word translated seek, shâchar (shaw – khar´) means to dawn and in a figurative sense it implies to be up early at a task (7836). It would be so much better if we would look for God’s help in the morning rather than at midnight, in the middle of a sleepless night.

David used the phrase “My soul followeth hard after thee” (Psalm 63:8) to describe a recommitment of himself to his relationship with the LORD. The term followeth hard means to cling to and is symbolic of glue wherein two things or people are permanently attached as in a marriage bond (1692). This kind of attachment is representative of love, a permanent love that can never be lost.