Psalm 86:6-7

Psalm 86:6-7

I call to You because You answer me

I hope you will agree with me that our prayers can, at times, be rather robotic and mechanical. A lot of liturgical prayer is like that, it sounds good but lacks immediacy and emotion. The prayers of King David are rather different, some might venture to suggest that they are too emotional, “Do we really need to cry for mercy?  Surely God knows our situation, He doesn’t really want us to get down on our knees and beg!” I once knew a man who boasted that he never asked God for anything, he just gave thanks. Such an expression of faith sounds wonderful, but can we really say that we don’t need anything from the Lord? It seems to me that such a state of mind implies that we’ve got it all together and are not prepared to humble ourselves and plead. Let’s put it another way, if King David had to cry out for mercy, we need have no fear of doing the same.

In fact, the Lord’s antidote for distressed believers is that they call to Him and, wonder of wonders, when we are desperate, He answers! Part of our spiritual journey is to discover that we can cast our cares in Him, that we can plead in the midst of anxiety, that the deeper our longing, the greater His mercy. David had discovered that if he cried out when he was distressed, God always answered! His experience had led him to believe that God’s answers were waiting on his pleading, he feared that if he did not offer a full blown, deeply anguished cry to the Lord, he might not get an answer! This is an important lesson, the Lord God does not want us to keep our anxieties quietly hidden, He wants us to know that we should give voice to them and that when we do, He will answer us. Hallelujah!

 

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