The God who listens to His people (contd)
Meditation 2 - The God who listens, cares and responds to my sighing
Psalm 5:1-3 Give ear to my words, O LORD, consider my sighing. 2 Listen to my cry for help, my King and my God, for to you I pray. 3 In the morning, O LORD, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay (Heb. “make a case” or “arrange a sacrifice on the altar”) my requests before you and wait in expectation.
Listen, dear Father. Let me offer to You this morning that which You will be inclined to attend to and consider.
What is wonderful about this attribute:
This text shows us the very inner workings of the Spirit as He inspires a prayer – from conception through birth. David’s prayer in verse 1 is mere sighing. Unarticulated expression of emotion as his feelings and attitudes and affections and ideas and mood begin to coalesce in the caldron of his soul. In verse 2 there are strong, loud cries for help. By verse 3 he is laying out before God an arranged case.
It begins with sighing. David asks God to consider his sighing. God already knows the full meaning and significance of everything even before it happens. So what does it mean for Him to consider something? It means for Him to regard it and respond to it in a favorable way. David was asking God to answer not just his requests, but his feelings and emotions and groanings too. God can make sense out of what does not yet make sense in our own hearts. He understands what we cannot.
Psalm 104:21 Lions roar for their prey and then seek their food from God.
This is not to suggest that lions have any conscious awareness of God. Their roar is simply a sound they make when they are hungry that God takes as a kind of a prayer. If the lion’s ignorant, instinctive roar can be taken as a prayer for help, how much more the groans of your heart! Even your weak and broken sighings that cannot be put into words, if you direct them heavenward, are accepted and heard by God, and touch His heart of compassion. To direct them heavenward means to have the inclinations and affections of your heart, and the determination of your resolve be set on Him as your Helper.
Beware, then, of lying prayers - asking for something in prayer that you do not desire enough to seek it diligently. The lions in Psalm 104 roar their “prayer,” but they also work hard. It takes all the effort that is within them to catch food. Their dependence on God does not lessen their need to strive.
If you truly desire something, pray for it, and then act accordingly.
Psalms 34:15 The eyes of the LORD are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their cry
Like a mother, whose ear is so sensitized to her baby’s cry and will hear it over all other noises or even in her sleep, the Lord has promised to attend to the cries of those who fear Him. Human parents know the difference between their children’s various cries.
Thank you, Father, that You hear my cry, and You know what the cry means and what I need.
What effect would it have on your heart if you were to consciously experience God’s attentiveness to your sighs today?
__________________________________________________________________________
Experiencing this attribute:
Thank You, dear Lord, that You “consider my meditations.” Shape me, Lord, more and more so that all my groanings are prayers to You. You are the God who listens.
You see and understand my sighs, groans, and desires, You allow Your emotions to be gripped by the shrill cries for help that come to Your fatherly ears from Your injured child.
Whenever I’m musing in my heart about serious things or have powerful feelings – even if they are powerful feelings of emptiness or lethargy – let that remind me that You are a God who considers all that (if offered to You as prayer), and who responds with blessing. And let me enjoy the presence of such a God. Whenever I’m crying out to You asking for something, let that remind me that You allow the strings of Your heart to be plucked, like mine are by the desperate cries of my children. And let me enjoy belonging to such a God.
Think: Are your prayers the product of sincere affections and feelings and thoughts and resolve coalescing in the caldron of your soul? Or are they just words that you crank out because it’s time to say your prayers?
Promise to trust today:
Psalm 10:17 You hear, O LORD, the desire of the afflicted; you strengthen their heart, and you listen to their cry[1]
Write your own prayer:
[1] Author’s translation.
