Today’s Scripture: Psalm 119:145, NKJV- “I cry out with my whole heart; Hear me, O LORD! I will keep Your statutes.”
We all make mistakes and often this is where we find God or cry out to Him to help us. I made a mistake yesterday and it has brought me to a new perspective on crying out to God. We do learn from our mistakes though, don’t we?
For my Celebrate Recovery friends you will know that we often refer to the program as CR. I am working on a project to provide a searchable database of the almost twenty-nine thousand affirmations I have harvested from the Bible over the years. In the process of providing keywords I thought recovery was a more common term. I decided to do a quick find and replace search in my spreadsheet.
Sometimes our short-sighted vision can have consequences. I soon recognized that in my haste or lack of awareness, everywhere cr appeared, in any word, it inserted Celebrate Recovery. Instead of choosing to undo the replacement, I decided to look-up and fix each word impacted manually and there were over a thousand instances. Words like scriptures, Creator, created, increase, secrets and others did not surprise me.
However, one word did surprise me that it appeared almost two hundred and fifty times. This word was cry as in “cry out.” I began to wonder to myself, as I corrected each one, how often do I truly cry out to God with my whole heart. Am I simply speaking with God in my prayers or am I truly, from the bottom of my heart, crying out to Him?
From Psalm 120:1, I had affirmed “In my distress I cry out to the Lord and He hears me.” We all cry out a little louder when we are in distress, don’t we? “Out of my depths, I cry to the LORD” from Psalm 130:1 made me wonder how deeply do I cry out? I was also thankful for Psalm 138:3 where I affirmed “I cry out to You God and You answer me; You make me bold with strength in my soul.” Aren’t you glad God answers us and makes us strong?
As 1 Chronicles 5:20 teaches us, we can cry out to God during our battles.1 Peter 2:2, suggests that we cry out for the nourishment of our spirits. (NLT) 1 Samuel 7:8 advises us, “Do not stop crying out to the LORD our God.” There are times in our desperation that we may even say “LORD, come quickly when I cry out to You.” From Psalm 141:1. Some verses say we call aloud with our voices. We even cry Abba, Father.
2 Chronicles 20:9 promises that when we cry out to God in our distress and afflictions, He hears us and saves us. 2 Chronicles 32:20 says we pray and cry to heaven. I must ask myself if my prayers to God are sent with the passion and depth of a cry? In Ezekiel 9:8, he fell face down and cried out. I want to be found in this position before my God every day.
Like Isaiah 42:14, I must have a sense of urgency to know that now is the time to cry out. I am also thankful for the promise of Isaiah 58:9, when we call to the LORD, He will answer and say “Here I am.”
Here I am LORD crying out to You because I love you and praise You for who You are. Thank You for hearing and rescuing us. Will you cry out to God today?
Today’s Prayer: Heavenly Father, thank You for hearing the cries of our hearts. Thank You for hearing us, answering us, and rescuing us in our afflictions. I am thankful that we can cry out Your praises. Here I am LORD, hear my cries of thanksgiving. You are my LORD. I am praying to cry out to You with my whole heart. Please teach me Holy Spirit to pray with the heart of Jesus. Amen.
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