Lord, how long will you stand there, doing nothing? Act now and rescue me, for I have but one life and these young lions are out to get it. Save me, and I will thank you publicly, before the entire congregation, before the largest crowd I can find.
Psalm 35: 17-18 (LB)
Scripture: Psalm 35
We get very frustrated when God does not answer our prayers on our time tables. When that happens, we sometimes try to negotiate with Him to get the answer for which we are looking. This devotion explores how we should respond instead.
I bet the Lord gets tired of hearing it – Are You blind? Can’t You see I’m in trouble? You’re supposed to be able to see everything, so why can’t You see everyone’s out to get me?
Are You deaf, too? I’ve been praying and praying to You, and You just sit there like a bump on a log. Are You against me, too?
Here, I’ll make You a deal. You get me out of this mess, and I’ll do this for You. Just make it snappy!!!
What This Means
We go along in life, forgetting about God – until trouble comes. Suddenly, we remember He is there and can help us.
But it seems God is not accepting the charges for our collect calls. He’s letting our calls go to voice mail instead. So, we franticly keep trying to get His attention.
Finally, when we think God just might be listening, we try to make a deal. We’ll do anything to get out of our troubles. After our troubles are over, a lot of times, we conveniently forget the promises we’ve made to Him.
From God’s Perspective
Go back and read the opening paragraphs again. Only this time, pretend someone is saying that to you. Can’t you feel the anger and frustration the words convey?
Now pretend you’re someone who knows why all this is happening and what these events are leading up to. What could you say to this angry person that will deescalate the situation? How could you get the person to listen to reason?
We put God in this position. We order Him to make it all better right now, but we are only looking for one solution — our way.
When He doesn’t do it our way on our time table, we all but go off the deep end. We shut down even more.
We don’t want to know why. We don’t ask for explanations. Too much time has been wasted in just getting Him to answer us. We want results – NOW.
Wrong Focus
Those sentences start with a lot of “we’s.” There aren’t too many “Him’s” mixed in.
That’s our problem. We tend to exclude Him from our lives until we think we need Him. Then we wonder why He doesn’t hop to it the first time we yell.
Part of the problem is we don’t fortify the relationship with God when things are going right. We think, as long as everything is going smoothly, we can handle it ourselves – you know, show our independence.
By doing that, though, we take our eyes off God. Why should He answer our questions when we’re not maintaining eye contact with Him?
Then, when things do go south, we pretend we are focusing on God. Instead, we are focusing on our problems, our solution — ourselves.
We become like Peter — we sink in the water because we take our eyes off Jesus. (Mt. 14:30). We have to get our relationships with God in line. We have to put Him in control again.
But then we forget about verse 18. “Save me, and I will thank you publicly, before the entire congregation, before the largest crowd I can find” (Ps. 35: 18 LB).
When the road smooths out, we sometimes forget to thank Him. We think that we’ve made it through on our own power. Or we are so glad it is finally over, we just want to forget about it.
If we’ve been dealing with something privately, we may not want to make it public knowledge. We forget that God uses our experiences to further His kingdom (Es. 4: 14).
How Do We Apply This?
The next time you feel God is ignoring you, breathe. Don’t fly off the handle. He isn’t ignoring you.
We’ve talked before about how I think there are four ways God is answering our prayers. If He isn’t immediately telling us yes, we have to figure out if God is telling us no, to wait, or that He has something bigger and better in mind.
To read Did Jesus Struggle with His Mission?, click the button below.
Sometimes, God will explain through His Holy Spirit why He is telling us no. He doesn’t have to because He is God. When He is silent, He may think we actually know the answer because what we are asking is clearly outside His Will.
If you think about it, wouldn’t it be counterproductive if God answered us to tell us to wait? I can see, sometimes, where He might give us a little encouragement by nudging us to keep waiting.
But if the issue is that we have to give God control and rely on Him, isn’t waiting part of the learning process? It is all about focus, faith, and trust.
The question then becomes, what are we going to do while we are waiting? We can take stock and see where God is trying to get us to grow. We can solidify our relationship with Him. We can dig deeper into the meaning of His Word.
We need to keep going and focus our eyes on heaven. God will answer in His own time. Just keep looking up.
Lord. Forgive us for trying to order You around. We get so discouraged by our trials that we all think about is ourselves. We look inward instead of upward to You. Please forgive us. Thank You, Lord, for your unconditional love. Amen.
What do you think? Do you agree that the waiting time allows us to take stock in where we are at and where we need to be? What hinders us from doing that? Leave me a comment below (about this or anything else) or head over to my Facebook group for some interactive discussion.
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