The God who listens (contd)
Meditation 6: The God who rends the heavens when I cry for help
Psalm 18:3-19 I call to the LORD, who is worthy of praise, and I am saved from my enemies. 4 The cords of death entangled me; the torrents of destruction overwhelmed me. 5 The cords of the grave coiled around me; the snares of death confronted me. 6 In my distress I called to the LORD; I cried to my God for help. From his temple he heard my voice; my cry came before him, into his ears. 7 The earth trembled and quaked, and the foundations of the mountains shook; they trembled because he was angry. 8 Smoke rose from his nostrils; consuming fire came from his mouth, burning coals blazed out of it. 9 He parted the heavens and came down; dark clouds were under his feet. 10 He mounted the cherubim and flew; he soared on the wings of the wind. 11 He made darkness his covering, his canopy around him-- the dark rain clouds of the sky. 12 Out of the brightness of his presence clouds advanced, with hailstones and bolts of lightning. 13 The LORD thundered from heaven; the voice of the Most High resounded. 14 He shot his arrows and scattered the enemies, great bolts of lightning and routed them. 15 The valleys of the sea were exposed and the foundations of the earth laid bare at your rebuke, O LORD, at the blast of breath from your nostrils. 16 He reached down from on high and took hold of me; he drew me out of deep waters. 17 He rescued me from my powerful enemy, from my foes, who were too strong for me. 18 They confronted me in the day of my disaster, but the LORD was my support. 19 He brought me out into a spacious place; he rescued me because he delighted in me.
What is wonderful about this attribute:
All this happened just because of the first two words in verse 3 – “I call.” What imbalance between the cause and the effect! The tiny squeak of a broken man brings about the shaking, burning and rending of heaven and earth, and the swift, glorious and devastating movement of the Almighty! When you cry out to God, offering true prayer (the cry of faith to the ears of mercy), not even all the loud shouts and praises of ten million angels around His throne can drown out the sound of your voice in the very palace in heaven. God is like a mother whose ears are so sensitized to the cries of her baby that she can hear them above anything. They wake her from her sleep, and without any thought or consideration they move her heart more powerfully than any other influence. In a fraction of a second they affect the color of her skin, her heart rate, her blood pressure – the orientation her soul there was is instantly redirected from whatever was occupying her attention toward that child. Few influences are more powerful than that of the real cries of pain or terror to the ears of a mother. But the effect that has on her is zero compared to the effect your cries have on the heart of God. Mothers don’t mount up on clouds and split the heavens in half and flatten the mountains.
As a parent I remember well the several times I heard that sickening sound of that shrill kind of scream from one of my children that signaled some serious pain. That sound instantly squeezed the very core of my body with pain and flooded my mind with thoughts and set me running instantly as fast as I could. Do your cries really come to God’s ears that way?
Psalm 103:16 As a father has compassion on his children so You have compassion on me.
Oh Lord, what a fool I have been in those times when I imagine You will place fellowship with You out of my reach! What righteous Father would not allow Himself to be found by His children? You are the God who listens and considers and understands and cares and responds. I believe that Lord, but help my unbelief. When I pray most of the time the earth seems to remain completely unshaken and the heavens decidedly unrended – no smoke, no fire, and my enemies unrouted. But Lord, I believe Your Word above the way things seem in my infinitely limited observation. Either You have responded this way already or You will. Help my unbelief.
What effect would it have on your heart if you were to consciously experience God’s drastic and disproportionate response to your prayers today?
_______________________________________________________________________________
Experiencing this attribute:
Experience this kind of response from God by crying out to God for grace. When my kids were young and would cry some half-hearted, distracted cry designed just as a reaction against an irritation but without any real pain, I often did not respond at all. Every parent knows the difference between a real cry and a manipulation. And now that they are older I am deeply interested in anything one of them says to me that is of deep concern to them and comes from their innermost thoughts and desires. But I have no interest if they just rattle off some words to me that they think they have the duty to recite.
Lord, may I offer to You real cries and not whinings. Heartfelt pleas, not grumbling. Beseaching, not complaining. Let my prayers rise up from the deepest part of my soul that is moved by great things; not the surface nerve endings that bellyache about trifles. Let me never offer You jumbles of words that have no relation to the core of my soul. Let me offer to You not my words but myself each time I pray.
Think: How genuine are your cries this at this moment?
Promise to trust today:
Psalm 18:3-9 I call to the LORD, who is worthy of praise, and I am saved from my enemies. …9 He parted the heavens and came down
Write your own prayer:
