“Your fathers cried out to the LORD. ”
1 Samuel 12:8
SOME MONTHS AGO, a nineteen-year-old Russian boy named Dima dived into a shallow river. He broke his neck and back, punctured a lung, and sustained other internal injuries. He was taken to the nearest hospital, many miles away, where doctors concluded there was no way he could survive.
Dima had visited our ministry headquarters several years earlier, so when we learned about this incident, we realized it would be a wonderful opportunity for God to show His power. Therefore we cried out, “O God, deliver Dima from death and raise him up for Your glory.” We also contacted others in our ministry network and urged them to cry out for Dima, which they did.
A week later, we talked with Dimas grandmother, who
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thanked us for crying out, and announced that the doctors had now reversed their prognosis. Dima would live. He is receiving therapy and learning to use his hands and arms.
When we call out to the Lord for His mighty help in the face of an impossible situation, we are following in the footsteps of both Old Testament saints and New Testament believers from the very dawn of the church.
Christians in those early days were known as people who called upon the name of the Lord. They thought of themselves in those terms, 27 and Paul used that designation for believers as well. 28 This was no randomly chosen description, but a phrase that captured the most exciting dynamics in the long story of Gods dealings with His people.
We’ve begun discovering that the concept of crying out to God is a frequent pattern in Scripture. How often that moment of crying out to God becomes the very turning point and climax of biblical stories dealing with God’s deliverance of His people!
The most honored and remembered Old Testament story of God’s salvation was His rescue of His people from slavery in Egypt. What triggered this rescue? Very early in Exodus we read,
1 he children of Israel groaned because of the bondage, and they cried out; and their cry came up to God because of the bondage. So God heard their
groaning, and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. And God looked upon the children of Israel, and God acknowledged them. 29
The people cried out to God, and He heard and remembered. In a sense, the story is now already over practically before it begins! The peoples rescue from slavery is now assured and guaranteed—a done deal. Already the victory is won. It’s only a matter of time until the world sees exactly how the victory plays out.
Right away God clued Moses in on what was happening and why. He said to Moses,
“I have surely seen the oppression of My people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows. So I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and large land, to a land flowing with milk and honey.” 30
Moses was given a position of leadership on the side of the guaranteed winner in the coming conflict, though there were still plenty of seemingly impossible hurdles on the horizon. In fact, when their flight from Egypt was halted at the Red Sea, and the people in fear looked back to see approaching chariots from Pharaoh’s army, all seemed lost.
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But again, “the children of Israel cried out to the LORD ,” 31 and God mercifully heard them. And you know what happened next!
MISERY THAT GOD CAN’T ENDURE
In the days of the book of Judges, the people repeatedly disobeyed God and as a result found themselves oppressed by a host of enemies. But the experience of God’s deliverance was repeated each time as well. Again and again, a cry from the people triggered it.
The children of Israel served Cushan-Rishathaim eight years. When the children of Israel cried out to the Lord, the LORD raised up a deliverer for the children of Israel, who delivered them: Othniel....
The children of Israel served Eglon king of Moab eighteen years. But when the children of Israel cried out to the LORD, the LORD raised up a deliverer for them: Ehud....
And the children of Israel cried out to the LORD; for Jabin had nine hundred chariots of iron, and for twenty years he had harshly oppressed the children of Israel. [This time, Deborah was God’s chosen deliverer.] 32
Years later, the cycle of their disobedience occurred again, and in this instance the people included repentance in their cry to the Lord:
The people of Ammon crossed over the Jordan to fight...so that Israel was severely distressed. And the children of Israel cried out to the Lord, saying,
“We have sinned against You, because we have both forsaken our God and served the Baals!”
This time God s answer was a rebuke:
“Did I not deliver you from the Egyptians and from the Amorites and from the people of Ammon and from the Philistines? Also the Sidonians and Amalekites and Maonites oppressed you; and you cried out to Me, and I delivered you from their hand. Yet you have forsaken Me and served other gods. Therefore I will deliver you no more. Go and cry out to the gods which you have chosen; let them deliver you in your time of distress.”
“I will deliver you no more”! So the cycle of the Lord’s deliverance of His people at last was broken.
Or was it?
At once the people cried out again:
“We have sinned! Do to us whatever seems best to You; only deliver us this day, we pray.” So they put away the foreign gods from among them and served the Lord . 33
Would this further cry and accompanying obedience make any difference to God?
Yes. “His soul could no longer endure the misery of Israel.” 34 He sent His people yet another deliverer, Jephthah the Gileadite, “a mighty man of valor.” 35
What a picture of the abounding mercy of God; always faithful to His covenant, and ever ready to hear the cry of His covenant people!
THE CRV OF TRUST
In David’s day this crying out was the story’s main theme as he sang about his nation’s past:
Our fathers trusted in You;
They trusted, and You delivered them.
They cried to You , and were delivered;
They trusted in You, and were not ashamed. 36
But finally Israel’s repeated pattern of disobedience caused God to destroy Jerusalem and send His people into captivity in faraway Babylon. There in Babylon, the captive Daniel read from the Scriptures the prophecy given to Jeremiah that this captivity would be over in seventy years. Daniel therefore set his face “toward the Lord God to make request by prayer and supplications, with fasting, sackcloth, and ashes.” 37 He cried out to God in humility, worship, and confession and ended his prayer by pleading aloud:
Now therefore, our God, hear the prayer of Your servant, and his supplications.... O my God, incline Your ear and hear; open Your eyes and see our desolations, and the city which is called by
Your name_O Lord, hear! O Lord, forgive! O
Lord, listen and act! Do not delay for Your own sake, my God, for Your city and Your people are called by Your name. 38
God indeed listened to the cries of righteous Daniel; soon, in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah, He sent the captives back to Jerusalem to rebuild the city and its walls and the temple.
It is the heartfelt cry that always reconnects the people back to God and His grace and His mercy.
ALL OUR STORIES
Finally, lets look at one more stream of Scripture where crying out to God is the repeated theme—and where God shows us how significant it is to Him.
In Psalm 107, He gives us four descriptions of people in great need, and these serve as pictures of every kind of vulnerability and hardship we might encounter—physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
First we read of those who “wandered in the wilderness in a desolate way,” fainting from hunger and thirst.
Then come those “who sat in darkness and in the shadow of death,” subjected to prison and bitter labor
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because of their rebellion against God.
We then read of those who are labeled “fools” because of their sin, and who experienced wasting disease that drew them “near to the gates of death.”
Finally, there are the adventurers “who go down to the sea in ships,” and who encounter the worst of storms on the ocean, melting their souls in fear.
In all these different scenarios, what would cause God in mercy to reach down with His rescue and release? The psalmist shows us. In all four stories, the turning point and climax is the same:
Then they cried out to the LORD in their trouble,
And He delivered them out of their distresses. 39
Again and again, in story after story—in the Bible’s pages and in all history since then—we see God’s active involvement triggered by the cry of His people.
Joints to bonder
Read through verse 32 of Psalm 107, thinking about the circumstances of those who “cried out” to the Lord in their great distress. Have you ever found yourself in a similar circumstance? Are you experiencing one now? Cry aloud to God in your trouble—and then “give thanks to the Lord for His goodness” (Psalm 107:8).