Psalm 54:2
O God, hear my prayer;
give ear to the words of my mouth.
Does God hear us when we cry out to Him? Will God answer our prayers? I think many times we wonder if God is really listening; if He really does care about our troubles and the daily stress that crops up in our lives. I know I have felt this way before when troubling times came my way. It is almost a natural instinct to feel this way, but why is that?
I think one reason is that we do not fully rely on God. We seem to think that we can handle life's situations using our own strength. We forget that we have the most powerful weapon only a prayer away. But when those hard times come, we do not have time for prayer. We think we should take action immediately, and sadly God is left out.
But this was not true for David. When those hard times came, Davide relied on God. David was fearing for His life at this point. Saul had found out where David was and still sought to kill him. So what did David do in this troubling time? Well he did not rely on his own strength. Instead He called out to God and prayed for help. He filled God in on the situation (even though God knew exactly what was going on). He had that close relationship with the Lord and trusted Him enough to tell Him all his troubles. He expected God to intervene and help Him. And that is exactly what God did.
God will do the same for us today. He is still only a prayer away, and He wants to help us through those tough situations as well. Now the problem we face is that we do not always like God's solutions. He may guide us in His direction, but because it is not our will we sometimes do not take His advice. When we trust on God, we have to give Him 100% of our attention and 100% of our trust. We cannot even keep 0.000001% (you get the idea) of trust in ourselves because we have no power when compared to the Almighty One.
But it does not stop with trust in God. We know that God will help us when we fully rely on Him. We know that He will help in the way that He sees best. But even when we get this part right, we neglect to thank Him for all that He does for us. David offered a sacrifice up to the Lord out of thanksgiving. He did not forget to thank the Lord for His daily provisions.
And neither should we. True we sometimes struggle with fully trusting God. But there are those times that we expect Him to help us through life. We do depend on Him, and we find ourselves trusting Him like we should. But the question that remains is, "How much do you thank Him?" I told my kids this summer that there are 2 types of prayer: praising and asking. We tend to do more of the asking and less of the praising when it should be the other way around. Because of all He has done for us (specifically dying on the cross) our lives should be filled with praise to God. So my challenge today is to think about your praying habits:
1. Do you truly depend on God?
2. Do you find yourself praising God or asking of God more? Neither are bad, and neither are wrong. I just feel that we get it backwards sometimes.
Matt
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