Our Cries for Help

Sometimes when we ask God for help with something, he first answers us by showing us just how bad it is (spoiler alert: it’s much worse than we think). Just when we are beginning to feel that we can’t go on, that this sin, or struggle, or unbalanced equation must be killed, defeated, or solved, it’s as if it rears up before us stronger than ever! Now the waters really begin to rage. Now we catch a whiff of just how foul the cauldron really is. It can feel so discouraging. Why doesn’t he just help us?

He is helping us. He’s showing us our desperate condition so that we might move into real, earnest, desperate prayer. He wants us to cast ourselves fully and completely upon him. Consider our dear brother David:

The cords of death encompassed me;
    the torrents of destruction assailed me;
 the cords of Sheol entangled me;
    the snares of death confronted me.

 In my distress I called upon the Lord;
    to my God I cried for help.
From his temple he heard my voice,
    and my cry to him reached his ears.

Psalm 18:4-6

Don’t lose heart! It has often been noted that the darkest hour comes before the dawn. Lean into your guilt, mark your temptations, stare your challenges in the face; behold the depths of evil, the powerful snares, and the impossibilities all around you. And then, when you are almost completely overwhelmed, you will call upon the Lord in distress and anguish of spirit. And then he will do something amazing. He will bow the heavens and come down (verse 9), he will fly to you upon a cherub (verse 10), he will unleash his fury against your enemies and save you by his own hand, and you will praise him for it (whole psalm). For he loves to save the broken spirit out of all its troubles.