#DailyDevotion Is The LORD Not Answering Your Prayers Quick Enough?

Psalm 13 How long, O LORD? Will You forget me forever? How long will You hide Your face from me? ²How long should I be planning by myself, and my heart be grieving during the day? How long is my enemy going to triumph over me?

Four times in the Psalms the psalmist asks directly, “How long, O Lord.” Nine Psalms in total the question is asked of the LORD. Twenty times in fifteen verses the question is asked. You might get the idea the LORD takes His own sweet time in getting around to helping those who seek Him. You know it seems that way to us. Like David we think the LORD has forgotten us forever because He isn’t the divine vending machine or some geni answering our every command or complaint. He isn’t our servant or butler. Believe it or not, God may have some bigger plan brewing when answering our request for help. He may be testing our faith. There may be other requests, prayers by others which must be fulfilled first before ours can be answered. We are generally stuck in our own little box not thinking about much other than ourselves and our concerns. On good days we get out of ourselves to some extent and are concerned about the people closest to us, who affect our lives.

It does seem as if God forgets us. That he hides His face from us when we pray to Him. While our flesh has its doubts of a loving God and thinks God may hate us, because we have these evil things happening to us, the spirit in faith cries out to our Father in heaven anyway these words of our complaint.

We would like to know how long we should be planning by ourselves and how long our hearts will be grieving every day. I don’t know. Maybe we should be trying to be still and let God be God instead. We can turn our grief over the LORD but instead of being torn up inside with plans to thwart the enemy we just need to be spending more time handing things over to the God who says He cares for us and trusts He has heard us and is doing something about it. Nevertheless this is how we feel about it.

³Look and answer me, O LORD my God! Give light to my eyes, or I’ll sleep the sleep of death, ⁴and my enemy will say, “I overpowered him,” and my foes will be delighted because I’ve fallen.,

So we in faith still call out to the LORD and seek an answer from Him. We need Him to give us inward strength to go on. He needs to give light to our eyes lest we waste away in grief unto death. We may not have human enemies that will boasts over our dying but there is the devil and his minions who oppose us in every step of our lives. Because of them, we appeal to the LORD Jesus Christ to give heed to our prayers and give us a positive answer.

⁵But I trust Your kindness. I’ll take delight in Your saving me. ⁶I’ll sing to the LORD, because He has done so much for me.

David places his trust in the LORD’s chesed, God’s kindness, His stead-fast love as revealed in Ex. 34:6. In the New Testament we identify this as Jesus’ agape love. We too need to trust in the chesed, the agape, the love of God which Jesus is the exact expression of and delight in knowing our Father hears our prayers and answers them in the manner which is best for us and those we love even if we can’t always see that right now.

Heavenly Father, grant our “How longs” prayers may be prayed in faith, give us patience to wait for the answer, and let us see your love for us revealed. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.