S30P5 – The honest prayer: time is short
Psa. 143:6-7
I reach out my hands to You; my throat thirsts for You, as a parched land. Selah. Answer me quickly, O Lord , my spirit fails; do not hide Your face from me, or I will become like those who go down into the pit.
We are bound by the constraints of time. In certain situations, this creates a feeling of urgency. Specifically, time can be a critical component of a person’s financial struggles. When the bank says you have 30 days to come up with more money than you have before losing your car or your home, time is of the essence. When the refrigerator is bare and it will be another week before your next paycheck, time is of the essence. These are times when prayer becomes urgent. We are taught that God’s timing is different from ours, and that we must exercise patience in our faith, but then the eleventh hour comes. We cannot imagine making it through without an answer from God. We have prayed and waited, but now something must happen. This is the urgency with which David prayed this prayer for help.
We will encounter times when we feel as if another moment cannot pass if God does not intervene. In those moments, we may feel the urgency boiling up inside of us. We might stifle the words that we would like to pray because we think that asking God to move right now is wrong. We think that the only option we have is to wait patiently and quietly. But God already knows what is building up inside of us. He already knows how urgent we believe our requests are. He already knows how dire the situation looks to us. No prayer of urgency from us will be a revelation to him. He does not feel urgency, but He understands it. Although we are to remain patient, we also are to be like the persistent widow. Our Father in heaven desires that we pursue him for the justice we need, and sometimes that justice cannot wait.
Urgency begets persistence. When we feel as if the hourglass is about to empty and our window of opportunity for deliverance is closing, that is when we must ramp up our prayer. God knows the confines within which we are required to live in this world. Accordingly, He knows the pressure we can be under when it is crunch time. A prayer of urgency is not a prayer that shows lack of faith. If anything, it shows faith that there is still time for God to move and work on our behalf. It shows that our last ditch effort for a solution is the same as our first effort, which is to take it to the Lord in prayer. He never desires that we throw in the towel and simply stop pursuing him for deliverance. Father, fill us with the widow’s persistence, and cause us to pursue You for all things even to the last moment.