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I find the psalms profoundly comforting because they reveal that King David struggled with many of the same raw and agonizing feelings we all have. David also models honest, bare-souled communication with God, openly sharing questions, doubts, pleas, and fears.
Scholars believe David wrote this when he was physically ill, mentally tortured, and dealing with opposition, and thought perhaps it was because God was punishing him.
Oh, how agonizingly familiar!
David's anguish, and mine, is magnified a hundred-fold when seen as a consequence of sin or a sign of our eternal Father's displeasure. David is suffering terribly and cries out for grace and mercy.
In the fullness of time, God poured out grace and mercy in Christ, who bore all the punishment we rightly deserve on the cross. While those same fears and feelings of judgment, punishment, and condemnation may still torture us, they are "lies from the pit of hell and smell like smoke" (credit Steve Brown . Letting them go will lighten our load a lot!
If you're feeling those feelings today, receive Your Father's unconditional love in Christ anew. We are forgiven, once and for all time, and loved more than we can ever imagine .