Keep Praying

Please read Psalm 88 before proceeding.

Lord, you are the God who saves me; day and night I cry out to you. May my prayer come before you; turn your ear to my cry. -Psalm 88:1

One of the things I’ve learned since beginning these devotionals is just how hungry people are for a word from the Lord. People want a meaningful relationship with God. People long for the spirit of God to fall afresh on them. I can’t tell you how many people, after reading these devotionals, have expressed these desires to me. You might be surprised at how many of your friends feel overwhelmed with their lives. Despite their white-picket fences and well-kept lawns, troubles lurk in the homes of many families. They feel isolated and alone. They wonder if they’ve been cut off from God’s care. Waves of depression, anger, debt, loneliness, and the like are crashing against them and the undertow is pulling them out into a deep and dark abyss.

What? You thought that you were the only one feeling like that? Not hardly.

Psalm 88 describes someone named Heman who had a similar experience. His life was a wreck. He was convinced that God had forgotten him. He didn’t feel like he had anyone to talk to. (I know, you’re not supposed to end a sentence with a preposition). He felt trapped. He was overcome with grief. He and God were in a game of hide-and-seek, only he wasn’t the one hiding from God…God was hiding from him.

If you’re familiar with other psalms, you know that many of them begin with some sort of lament but end with an encouraging word of hope. Well, you really have to look for hope in Psalm 88. Sometimes life stinks so badly, it’s hard to find hope. But it’s there.

I see hope in Psalm 88 in that, despite how bleak life appeared for Heman, he continued to pray. He began his psalm by expressing his belief that God saves (the NIV translation is present tense, not past). He had probably experienced God’s salvation before and he hadn’t given up that he’d experience it again. He wanted to believe. He wanted to hope. He wanted to praise God for delivering him from the pit in which he found himself.

Maybe that’s what you need to hear today: God saves. Others have been where you’ve been. It wasn’t easy. It wasn’t pretty. It seemed as if God was inattentive to the voice of their supplications. But they kept praying to the God who saves. They kept reaching out and up. (I did it again, ending another sentence with a preposition). They were completely honest with God about what they were feeling and what they felt they needed.

I’ll end with two illustrations. A young girl and her family were staying at a very rustic cabin with one of the old hand pumps for water outside. After being asked to go fetch some water from the pump, the girl returned to tell her mother that the water looked dirty. The mother’s response, “Keep pumping, honey. It’ll come clear.” And then a favorite quote from Abraham Lincoln: “I have been driven to my knees many times by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go.”

Take heart, friend. Keep pumping. Keep praying. And may, by God’s grace, you find refreshment from Living Water today.