Prayer! with an exclamation point

Answer me when I call, O God of my righteousness!

You have given me relief when I was in distress.

Be gracious to me and hear my prayer!

Psalm 4:1

Prayer can be urgent, wasting no words, wanting real answers. When that is the state of our souls, it is good that we pray. David’s urgent plea to lead off the fourth psalm captivates me personally right now. There are seasons where my lead in words in prayer are exactly like this pattern David lays out. The first words aren’t a quiet and reflective “Dear Heavenly Father…” Instead they flow from an unsettled soul, the words are rougher, desperate, confused, and urgent… “O God… please…!” The directness and exclamation points in David’s first words in this psalm comfort me. It’s OK to want God to hear, to plead with Him in earnest, to roughly cry out in our need, even if our underlying incredulity is driving us to ask of Him.

How many times have I prayed this way in my life? I can recall a few seasons of knowing this kind of urgent prayer. How many times have I been overwhelmed in urgent, emotional, desperate one-sentence exclamations of my soul’s distress in the last five months? Almost daily. Not all day on any one day, but certainly at least at one point in each day feeling like an overwhelming need MUST burst forth to God like a geyser of want from my soul. And I am starting to see that in this season the great care of God is there for me in ways I have may not have appreciated before this season. I will praise Him for this depth of care. I feel His undeserved favor in my bursts of need.

I notice that sandwiched between David’s two urgent exclamation point requests is a sturdy observation of faith. It makes a kind of “sandwich of security” to help frame our most desperate moments:

Answer me when I call, O God!

You have given me relief in my distress.

Be gracious to me and hear me!

Right in the middle of the “sandwich” is faith firmly grounded in the faithfulness of God. And that sweet insight provides perspective and solid hope for my heart to stand upon when my soul cries out with exclamatory “prayer pleas”.

Lord… God of my life,

Thank You that You hear us in our urgent, emotional, sometimes bewildered moments. You bring relief in our distress. You bring peace in our disquiet. You ease our pain and use our sufferings to pour grace into us to make us see Your holiness, Your mercy, and Your great love. May my first response, whether in crisis or in calm, be to seek Your sustaining grace!

Amen