Have you ever cried out to the Lord? I mean really cried out to him for help in a situation where you knew without his intervention you’d be in serious trouble? I confess that I can’t remember the last time I needed that level of intervention, but I know there may be those of you who find yourself in that place right now. If you are, remember that God is all-powerful and that he loves you. But also remember that he is sovereign, and that he is still God. Being that he is holy and sovereign may help us to remember to exercise humility in our desperation when crying out to him. David’s psalm, which reads like a prayer, ends with these words in Psalm 39:12-13:
“Hear my prayer, O Lord, listen to my cry for help; be not deaf to my weeping. For I dwell with you as an alien, a stranger, as all my fathers were. Look away from me, that I may rejoice again before I depart and am no more.”
You see, David was desperate, but he knew that he was approaching a holy and sovereign God. I like how he says, “look away from me, that I may rejoice again before I depart and am no more.” To me that shows true humility on David’s part. Think about it, David was king here on earth. He had men bowing at his feet, ready to do whatever he commanded. It could’ve been easy for him to approach God with boldness and even a bit of arrogance. But irregardless of his position on earth, David knew his place with God. Whatever you might be going through, I encourage you to do as David did. Cry out to God, but remember that he is holy and sovereign and we should humbly approach him – especially if we’re asking something of him.
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God loves it when we talk to him. It says so in the Bible. But we need to remember that he is God. He patterned man after himself. And like us, he has feelings and desires, so we shouldn’t approach him as if he were a machine in which we insert a request and he spits out an answer. He has a personality and gets angry, pleased, and disappointed just like our earthly fathers do. But unlike us, he is holy and sovereign. People knelt at David’s feet when they needed something from him because he was an earthly king. With God, shouldn’t we be all the more humble and reverent?
