A Plea For Deliverance

We’ve been there… The place where the deep trial of our circumstance has caused us to get down on our knees in fervent prayer and even to lay prostrate before God, pleading for His divine intervention.  In those distraught moments, we can wonder if God is real, if He hears our cries and if He will answer our plea for His deliverance.  That is where we find David in Psalm 22:1-11.  But greater than David’s trial is his trust in God.  He knows God’s track record in Israel’s history and he knows God’s track record in his own life. So nothing, not mockers nor naysayers, can detract him from his faith in a faithful God.  I pray that you will hold onto God even when you can’t feel His presence or see evidence of His answer yet in your circumstance.  Amen

Click here to listen to Marvin Winans, Marvin Sapp and Randy Short singing “For I Have Heard Your Cry”

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish? My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, but I find no rest. (Psalm 22:1-2)

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?  These words were written by David, but more importantly, they were the words infamously uttered by Jesus from the cross.  David was obviously in a place of despair and anguish, wondering where God was in that moment.  He wondered if God even heard his cries.  Despite his cries both day and night, he had received no response or answer from God for his situation.  Have you ever been in a situation when you wondered where God was and if He would save you in your moment of despair, anguish or need? 

Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One; you are the one Israel praises. In you our ancestors put their trust; they trusted and you delivered them. To you they cried out and were saved; in you they trusted and were not put to shame.  (Psalm 22:3-5)

David wondered why God’s answer and deliverance had not come yet.  He knew God’s history of delivering His people.  God had heard Israel’s cries and delivered them from enemies many times, whether in Egypt or in the Promised Land.  David’s ancestors had trusted God, and God was faithful, so that they were never put to shame for their complete faith in God to save them.  Do you have complete trust in God?  What is that trust based on? (biblical history? history of God’s faithfulness to others? His history of faithfulness to you?)

But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by everyone, despised by the people. All who see me mock me; they hurl insults, shaking their heads. “He trusts in the LORD,” they say, “let the LORD rescue him. Let him deliver him, since he delights in him.” Yet you brought me out of the womb; you made me trust in you, even at my mother’s breast. From birth I was cast on you; from my mother’s womb you have been my God. Do not be far from me, for trouble is near and there is no one to help.  (Psalm 22:6-11)

David outlined the attitudes of those around him in his situation.  He was scorned and despised by them. He was mocked and insulted by them as they looked at his circumstances and ridiculed him for trusting in God.  Despite the hostility of those around him, David continued to trust God to save him.  He refused to stop trusting in the God who had delivered him from the womb and had been faithful to him since his birth.  So his concluding plea was for God to come near to him, because trouble was already near, and no one else could do what God could do to help him.  Do you trust that God is able to do what no one else can do in your life and in your circumstance?

David’s anguish, despair and need is evident in this psalm.  But his trust in God was greater than his anguish and despair at his circumstance.  David had defeated the giant Goliath, largely because he concluded that the bigger the problem, the bigger the opportunity for God to show out and get the glory.  To David, Goliath being a giant just meant that he was harder to miss when David slung a stone at him!  Do you trust God to show up in your circumstance, despite the size of your problem and despite the noise of those around you?  Are you trusting in His promises?  Are you making sure that God gets the glory for your deliverance so that others will know that it was God who did it?   Despite the appearance at times that God is far away and has not heard our cries, He does hear us. And when we draw nearer to Him, He draws nearer to us and provides exactly what we need in our deepest moments of trial and tribulation…  His divine answer to our plea for deliverance!

Blessings, Rev. Glenn