“Praise be to the Lord, for he has heard my cry for mercy. The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and I am helped. My heart leaps for joy and I will give thanks to him in song.” (Psalm 28:6-7 NIV).
Christian’s enjoy the most potent power in the universe–prayer. God invites us to “. . . approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” (Hebrews 4:16 NIV emphasis mine). Sadly, however, most of us neglect this invitation until times are desperate; until there is nothing left we can do but pray. Yet, even this God accepts. The song-writer was correct when he penned, “Oh, what peace we often forfeit, Oh, what needless pain we bear! All because we do not carry everything to God in prayer.”
As we read through the Psalms, we are impressed with David’s quickness to go to God in prayer. The result? “Praise be to the Lord, for he has heard my cry for mercy. The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and I am helped. My heart leaps for joy and I will give thanks to him in song.”
Did you catch it? I didn’t want to help you. When we cry to the Lord, we can be absolutely certain that He hears. The Bible says, “This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.” (1 John 5:14 NIV). Now, just for the what it’s worth department, the way to know God’s will is to read His Word. God has revealed His will to us and it is found in the Word (the Bible). God’s will will never go against God’s Word–count on it! God hears our prayers.
Second, since God hears we can count on His help. It may not always be in the way we expected it, but you can be absolutely certain that His help will be exactly what we need when we need it. No, that last sentence is not a contradictory statement. Sometimes when I pray it must be with the understanding that God’s answer may take a totally different form than I expected. In fact, sometimes God’s answers may appear to be a “no” answer or we may mistake them as no answer. Don’t be too quick on that. If God doesn’t do what we think, we can be sure that what He is doing is far greater than we could have imagined!
Third, when our hearts trusts in Him, the response of that heart is joy and song. God is good all the time! Count on it!
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