During those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel
groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for
rescue from slavery came up to God. And God heard their groaning, and
God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.
—Exodus 2:23–24 ESV
Your Challenge: Cry out to God with Urgency
When was the last time you cried? Before you answer too quickly, I’m not talking about a sniffly, tissue-stifled whimper—I’m talking about a powerful vocal exclamation.
In the literary world, we only have so many ways to describe the way in which a character speaks: she said, she exclaimed, she whispered, she cried, and so forth. We tend to reserve “she cried” for times when we want to express intensity. Urgency. Exasperation, even. When a character cries out, “Oh, Lord! Help me!” you know she’s at the end of her rope. She’s reached the end of her wits, the end of her abilities, and her gaze has turned upward, toward the source of strength she should have relied on to begin with.
So I ask again, when was the last time you “cried,” that is, cried out to the One who sits on heaven’s throne?
The Israelites in Exodus 2 were groaning—sighing, says another translation. They were enslaved, oppressed, desperate, and apart from God, absolutely, completely helpless. At the end of their collective strength, they cried out with one intense and urgent voice, “Oh Lord! Help us!” and God heard. He remembered. He saw them. He took notice.
Believers in my generation have, for the first time it seems, come to the end of our collective rope. With our medical prowess, political prowess, church program prowess, and everything else we’ve tried coming up empty, we’re looking around at our world with an ever-growing sense of desperation. We only have one choice, and it should have been our first. We must cry out with urgency to the God who helps, who hears, and who remembers His people.
As a mother is drawn toward the cries of her helpless, tiny baby, our great God is moved to bring comfort and supply to us at the sound of our prayers, as they are poured out in the midst of the fiercest battle. Those prayers are the “battle cry” that Heaven loves to hear; they move our King to send supernatural reinforcements to engage with us in the fray. —Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, Heaven Rules
How to Pray
Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me,
for in you my soul takes refuge;
in the shadow of your wings I will take refuge,
till the storms of destruction pass by.
I cry out to God Most High,
to God who fulfills his purpose for me.
He will send from heaven and save me;
he will put to shame him who tramples on me. Selah
God will send out his steadfast love and his faithfulness! (Psalm 57:1–3 ESV)
What to Pray
- Pray for your generation, that whether young or old, affluent or impoverished, Republican or Democrat, the people of God would stand together with one voice and cry out, “Oh, Lord! Help us! Hear us! Remember us!”
- Pray that your church would sense the urgency of these times—that every moment of these days of grace draws us ever closer to the moment of Jesus’ return. And, oh, how we need Him to breathe life into our tired souls, that we might share the news of His coming with our friends and neighbors who have no hope apart from Him.
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