Psalm 40:13

"Be pleased, O LORD, to deliver me! O LORD, make haste to help me!"

I am glad to learn from this Psalm that it is important to be willing to "wait patiently" for his answers (verse 1), but also that I may be bold enough to ask the Lord to "make haste."

The psalmist has waited patiently in past troubles, and has found that God comes through. We know this because he testifies in verses 2 and 3 about past experience with prayer results: "He drew me up from the pit, out of the miry bog." If God can do it once, He can do it twice---and a thousand times. And it is the memory of past deliverances that helps us to hang in there with present afflictions. But we can never have those empowering memories unless we begin now to walk in faith in present troubles.

It is beyond me why the Lord tarries. But one thing is evident: The Lord is interested in making us into habitual prayers. Immediate answers and rescues do not make for inveterate life habits of continuous prayer; they make for amnesia. And they make for a God-as-my-personal-valet mentality. You can't deny that we hardly remember answers granted too quickly.

A Peruvian pastor told me that on New Year's Eve, a pastor he knew had his parishioners write their major personal prayer requests on a piece of paper and put them in a sealed envelope and keep them safe. One year later the pastor asked them if they could remember what was written on the paper. Most of them could not. Prayer requests that we are not invested in with much daily prayer leave no footprint in the mind.

It is not for His sake but for ours that God delays answering prayers. He likes the effect it has on us. We learn how to surrender more and more of ourselves and our agenda and our will. We may start off praying like this: "Lord, please give me a new job; this one stinks." When nothing happens after a few weeks, we may start praying like this: "Lord, please teach me what you are trying to teach me by keeping me in this job." A little more time passes and we may pray like this: "Lord, help me to be content and show me how to honor you while you have me in this job."

It is obvious that the psalmist has been holding on for a long time, and doesn't know how much longer he can. He has, in the meantime, perhaps unknown to himself, created a deep groove in his soul, running from his mouth to God's ear; he prays constantly. Paul Miller writes in A Praying Life: "Instead of trying to suppress anxiety, manage it, or smother it with pleasure, we can turn our anxiety toward God. When we do that, we'll discover that we've slipped into continuous praying." Imagine "slipping" into praying all day long. It is wonderful, and feels normal and right.

And when we have done that, we have become like Jesus---which is God's big idea anyway. Did you really think He was as interested in you keeping your job as in your trusting Him through the loss of it? Did you really think God was as interested in your present comfort as in the growth of your faith in Him? Did you really think He was as interested in you having a good reputation with everyone as in your trusting Him through the pain of a bad reputation?

To read Andrée Seu's series on Psalm 40, click here.

To hear commentaries by Andrée Seu, click here.