The Cry of Faith - Part 2 of 2
January 26, 2010Normally, as I have found in my own personal “struggle to obey G-d” (the name of my testimony which is on the right side of the front page of this website) that He still creates very painful and difficult situations in our lives, that only He can solve by His power. They force us to cry out for Him, at this point, all other help is lost to us. By this excruciating process, He is asking us to enter into His deliverance, His way out, simple by believing on His power and not the power of ourselves or any other.
The genesis of this mighty work of heaven assist in bringing His purposes to pass on the earth for the sons of Adam; He invades the earth by our “cry of faith”. This cry for help is instigated by the work of “our” trouble in the way of being an anointed servant of G-d, chosen by Him to walk in “His” way of faith.
Or, as in recent time with me, when our G-d allows our holy plans to build His Kingdom to fall apart midstream, things we are doing for Him and His Kingdom, are seemingly being destroyed --- then up from the depths of us, His struggling servants, comes our personal “cry of faith”. Interestingly, we knew instinctively that Our heavenly Father knew all along what was going to happen to us, how would respond with that very painful thing happened to us. He knew what would break us down, what would make us cry, what would put a spirit of desperation on us... He, the G-d of Israel, created the entire event and the entire solution, if we hold on to His way and not our own.
These impossible jams open the door for a G-d moment, a miracle, a divine intervention. We will now see “history” being made, right before our eyes. Watch out world, here comes the G-d of the universe, the stars, the seas, and of the earth! The G-d of fortresses will go down!
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We observe this truth most prominently in the life of our Lord Jesus. Just a cursory glance at the gospel record of the Garden of Gethsemane, we observe His vehement cry with faith, Oh, the power of the cry of His faith! Meditate with me on Our L-rd passionate plea that poured out of his broken heart,“Father, if Thou are willing, remove this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Thine be done.”
Gaze also at the most passionate cry in all of human history, “My God, My God, why have Thou forsaken Me”. His “cry” changed the entire course of space - time history for mortal and very sinful men. Without His Majestic “cry” gushing out of the Rock – our Jesus our Savior and our King (note the connection to Mt. Horeb Ex. 17:1-7); we see the fomentation that forcefully gushed from his sacred and holy bowels, the end of our faith. Here we obtain access to heaven. We gain a permanent salvation. A glorious heavenly kingdom. A most powerful earthly millennial reign. Everlasting peace and bliss. And the consummation of the entire age. The eternal grafting of the natural and wild olive branches into the “Tree of life” we abandoned in Eden.
Jesus heart “cry” has forever changed man's way. He did accomplish so great a salvation with simple work a guttural release of raw human emotion. By being totally pressed to nothingness, staring straight in the face, a searingly painful death, his torn olive-like heart releases a “human cry” that has forever set in motion “the way” of salvation for all men.
The standard has been set for all mankind to find their way to G-d. Only through a desperate cry of the heart do we really connect with the heart of our Maker. His most blessed people, Israel, we delivered from the worst of pits and impending doom when they cried out. “But when the sons of Israel cried to the L-rd, the L-rd raised up a deliverer for them...” Judges 3:15
This is the place we all find ourselves from birth – ensnared by the grip of death itself. Only the “cry” the heart will bring real deliverance. A holy venting of our hearts for the Living G-d will save us. Like our Jesus, His sacred heart cry saved His people from the penalty of their crimes forever. These heart cries also make our way in the sanctifying process (the pressing) that brings us closer to Him.
“in the days of His flesh, He offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears to the One able to save Him from death, and He was heard because of His piety.” Heb. 5:7
A cry of faith is the only real thing of value that we possess. It's these genuine cries from His people that establish their ultimately blissfully and eternally happy state. If you haven't learned, money and popularity can solve some of our problems, but our God can create situations that money and popularity can't solve. Today you might have a money problem. Tomorrow you may have a relationship problem that your human resources can't solve. In the end, we all need the touch of Divine affirmation and love to fix our bleeding hearts. Mighty deliverances from issues that our minds or our human alliances can't resolve.
In the gospel account that clearly reveals to us the difference between the public prayer of a self righteous Pharisee the compared to the gut-wrenching “cry” of a publicly shameful tax collector. We learn from the mouth of Jesus that the man who beat his breast, “went down to his house justified.” Salvation from a real condemnation came when the shameful tax collector beat his breast and vomited up these fateful words, “God be merciful to me a sinner!”
For the people of G-d today, as in the past, when trouble looms, must always resort back to the ancient way of bringing heaven's power and deliverance into our needy situation. We must all understand, whether in the torments of war, the ravages of a plague, or the desolation of a famine, and the tyrannic oppression that awaits us. We must know how good ultimately triumphs over evil. Good overcomes evil when men look to Goodness and Grace and nowhere else.
When evil pours out it's venomous invectives that have one purpose -- to destroy the life of all men -- the righteous, with all the gusto they can muster, must cry in the spirit of David, mentioned in Ps. 61:1-2, “Hear my cry, O God; attend to my prayer. From the end of the earth I will cry to You, when my heart is overwhelmed; lead me to the rock that is higher than I.”
I believe that Our G-d's ultimate desire for any of you who are being trained to lead the people of G-d in these days, must know that you will be pressed to the point of a cry. In this cry we reach into the core of G-d's heart, we reach Him by our faith imbedded in our cry.
We must cry out from “the place” where our troubles land us and have us bound and chained. Is it financial disaster? Is a mortally sick spouse? Is it a overwhelmingly difficult addiction to shake? Are you being black-balled in your desperate search for a job? Has your spouse left you and gone off with another? Are your children rebelling and running free in this nasty world?
Our Divinely ordered shipwrecks are intended to motivate a cry that comes from the depths of our humanity. Why do these time-sensitive “cries” emotionally move our Living God to move His awesome power closer to our desperate need? I believe it is the thinning of self-reliance. The breaking down of our natively prideful hearts, that only hardship, rejection from our peers and family, can reveal to us!
Notice the cry of David in Ps 61:2 “from the end of the earth”. Think of the worse place in the world for you to be. Think of the place most far from any comfort. Is it the bottom of the ocean – the middle of the Sahara Desert – from the thicket of a snake-infested jungle overwhelmed with poisonous vipers – the dark murky glacial waters of the Arctic circle – an abandoned small forgotten island. No matter where -- Our G-d's toll free number can always be reached!
David's “heart cry” reveals to us today that no matter how perilous our predicament, we are able to “cry” personally to an amazingly high and holy God who really responds to us. From this sad place of neediness, our hearts make sounds that strike a chord that beautifully synchronizes with the frequency of heaven. Angels move to attention and orders are released from the throne of the Almighty. I don't understand why this is so, but we know that it true from history -- and the lives of God's servants.
What David sought when he vented his simple penitential, “Hear my cry?” He got, he said, “Lead me to the rock that is higher than I” Ps. 61:2b Why does David want to go up “higher” on a rock? We must see with righteous David, a man after G-d's own heart, that a higher position in the mountain of G-d's provision, grants us the perspective we so desperately need when we are in the depths.
Soon perfect relief comes to us, straight from the heart of a Loving Creator who released His Son from heaven to save us from the worst of places --- sin and death. “for we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin.” Rom. 3:9
When we find ourselves deeply buried underneath a torrent of flooding waters of trouble and searing pain, from this place of drowning, underneath an ocean of grief, we cry out to be lifted up to a place of solid and “eternal refuge”. The place God designed for us before time began, and the only place where we find true peace and comfort from our deepest torments of our souls.
From the heights we can see our problems from God's perspective. From God's place of absolute power, we are able to gain a new strength that stirs our heart to continue on in our difficulties. To leave G-d stuff to G-d, instead bearing things we were never meant to bear. Here we move up and out of our troubles. By seeing what God sees, we are free to smile at our adversaries, knowing that in the end we get it all. We can actually sense the change in our emotions, we are to “feel” the fullness of being free of life's pain.
Phil. 4:6 states clearly, “Be anxious for nothing; but in everything by prayer and supplications with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to G-d.” To float up into the glory of God's perfections, we come into our righteous mind, our sanity revives and we finally connect to the “truth” that our G-d reigns, and that is all that really matters.
Here we worship and rejoice that our G-d reigns. Here our worship becomes beautiful and heartfelt. When worship becomes real to us, our worship impacts the lives of those who are around to hear our heart cries, just like we have gained much from meditating on the life of David, so we, the modern day faith struggler, ministers out of “our personal pain” to our family and friends. By our transparency and by openly pouring our hearts out by faith to the Rock of ages, we are actually moving things forward more then we we felt really good and strong.
Life is hard. Going for the lofty G-d-centered goals found in the life of Jesus and His servants is really hard. Doing any ministry for G-d that really changes the world we live in, well... that's impossible. In our way of moving forward in the fulfillment of the plans that G-d has determined best for us, we must seek to prosper our ministry His way. Jesus said clearly, “I AM the way, the truth, and the life.” John 14:6
In our place of pain and deliverance, we make the same “vows” that David made in his time of affliction. These vows will keep us faithful to G-d after our deliverance is assured.
How many times we make promises to bless the L-rd with our money and time in the depths of sorrow, but later on, after life gets good and safe, our appetite for the world grows, and we forget about the pit from which we have been dug. David says in Ps.61:5, “For You, O God, have heard my vows; You have given me the heritage of those who fear Your Name.”
These words were uttered while David was overwhelmed and in deep grief and in real danger. G-d is still working in us and all around us in the world, in the lives of His People, the same deep work of “pressing” us to “cry out” to Him.
Our road to heaven is marked with many dark encounters; they are pre-set quagmires designed specifically to line our obedient pursuit of Christ's call on our lives. Our stumbling into these G-d ordained “pits of trouble” move us to “vow” with very “real” words of promise to obey, serve, and honor our G-d. Once Yah, the L-rd G-d, fulfills His word to us, His will is then established in the earth when we uttered our simple “heart cry.” So is happens over and over again until the end of the age... no new thing under the sun.
Our continual worship of Our G-d, Our Powerful Deliverer, accomplishes the fulfillment of our vows. Our very real heart worship is such a big deal to G-d. Observe how Ps. 61 ends, “He shall abide before G-d forever. Oh prepare mercy and truth, which may preserve him! So I will sing to Your name forever, that I may daily perform my vows,”
Look at the call of G-d's Israel to return to the Father of their original faith. Is. 51:1-2, “Listen to Me, you who pursue righteousness, who seek the L-rd: Look to the Rock from which were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug. Look to Abraham your father, and to Sarah who gave birth to you in pain; when he was one I called him, then I blessed him and multiplied him.”
When they, and we, are finally rescued from the pit of our babylonian destruction, we will forever keep the promises of performing our daily sacrifices and service to the Lord who saved us! So let's stop being surprised when our circumstances make us “cry out”, this is, and was our L-rd's intent for His People all along. Our oppressors drive us to the foot of the cross and on to the right hand of the throne of heaven. We will “see” His salvation in the earth.
Ex. 14:14, “The L-rd will fight for you while you keep silent.” So hard for a crier like me, but yet after we cry, we wait.
Hab. 2:3, “For the vision is yet for an appointed time; it hastens toward the goal, and it will not fail. Though it tarries, wait for it; for it will certainly come, it will not delay!”
Praise the L-rd with me today, for our righteous desires will be fulfilled!
Richest Blessings,
Jonathan David Keener
Posted by Jonathan Keener. Posted In : Faith