Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord. 2 Lord, hear my voice: let thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications. —Psalm 130:1-2
What should our response be when we’re put in the position of waiting on the Lord? In verse one, the author is crying out from the depths. That implies sinking. Sinking takes time. And time means waiting. To paraphrase the psalmist, “I have sunk to the depths, Lord, and I have cried out to You all the way down! Hear my voice and answer my earnest prayers.”
Look at Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane: “ . . . He knelt down and prayed, saying, ‘Father, if it is Your will, take this cup way from Me; nevertheless not My will, but Yours, be done.’ Then an angel appeared to Him . . . strengthening Him. And being in agony, He prayed more earnestly. Then His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground” (Luke 22:41-44). Truly, no one can ever say that they’ve suffered during a period of waiting in the way that Jesus did. He knew what lay before Him, and even though He was the second Person of the Godhead, He had to endure in real time and with real emotions the horror that lay before Him. So He continued to “pray more earnestly.” And He certainly wasn’t praying a “Now I lay me down to sleep” kind of prayer, or any other memorized lines. This was an earnest, “great drops of blood” kind of prayer that came from the depths of His soul.
And the writer of our psalm today has also been waiting on God’s answer to his prayer, and though still in the depths, he cries out to the Lord, the only One who can deliver him. This brings us to one of those points we mentioned yesterday that we should watch for while waiting, and that is this: Do not allow waiting to cause you to grow weary in prayer. Some may ask, “What’s the use of praying, since God is sovereign, and provision, deliverance, or healing will come in His time, not ours, and according to His will? What’s the point?” The answer is simple. First of all, God tells us to pray. Look at these examples: “Hear, O Lord, when I cry with my voice! Have mercy also upon me and answer me.”
When You said, ‘Seek My face,’ my heart said to You, ‘Your face, Lord, I will seek” (Ps 27:7-8). And, Jesus speaking: “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened” (Mat 7:7-8). And again, “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1 Thes 5:16-18). So we see that we’re to pray because God tells us to, and He tells us not to stop even when we feel like we are sinking to the depths.
Another thing that we wait watchers need to consider is this: For some of us, sadly, if we didn’t have problems and never had to wait, we might not even have a prayer life. Friends, we need to pray without ceasing. In other words, we’re to be people of prayer at all times. During times of waiting, when we feel like we’re sinking, or we feel like God is taking too long in delivering us, or providing for us, or healing us, even then we must never allow ourselves to stop crying out to the Lord. We must guard our hearts from growing weary of praying during those times of silence. It is crucial both to our own wellbeing and to our relationship with our heavenly Father that we continue to cry out to Him even during the darkest of nights. He does hear our cries, and He does know our hearts. We’re promised that He will not allow us to be tried or tempted beyond what we’re able, but that He himself will provide the deliverance (1 Cor 10:13). But deliverance will come in His time and not ours. Can you trust Him enough to wait? He will rescue you, but many times we must discipline ourselves to wait for it, trusting that He knows what is best.
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