You've Got A Friend!

Psalm 61

1 Hear my cry, O God;
    listen to my prayer.

2 From the ends of the earth I call to you,
    I call as my heart grows faint;
    lead me to the rock that is higher than I.

One of the most popular songs in the early 70's was sung by James Taylor.  It was called, "You've Got a Friend".  The lyrics go like this,

"You just call out my name, and you know where ever I am I'll come running to see you again.Winter, spring, summer, or fall, all you have to do is call and I'll be there, yeah, yeah, you've got a friend."

The presupposition in this song is that a true friend will come when you call on their name. In today's psalm, King David talks about calling out to someone he considers a true friend ... God!  In the first verse he says, ,"Hear my cry, O God; listen to my prayer."  

A natural question resulting from this verse is, doesn't God always hear my cry?  Did David worry that God might not hear his plea for help?  The bible is replete with verses concerning God hearing our praying and caring for what we are going through.  I.e. Psalm 139:4 which states, "Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it."

Jesus encourages us to seek out God in prayer when he says in the Sermon on the Mount,   “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

So although the bible is clear that God hears our prayer, it can be challenging when we don't see the answer to our prayers.  So we might equate not seeing an answer to our prayer with God not hearing our prayers.  But this would be like assuming that just because we ask something here on earth, if we don't get what we want that the person did not hear us.  

So if God hears us but we do not necessarily see the answer to our prayer, what are we do?  If you read the rest of the psalm you can see that David cries out to God for him to hear his prayer, but also trusts in his experience of God answering his cries. We might say that just because David still doesn't see the deliverance from his foes, his fervent cry is for God to answer his prayer.  David is beseeching God in prayer, just like we would do so if we were pleading for someone to hear us and answer us hear on earth. 

I think all of us probably have something going on in our lives where we would say, "God I cry out to you, hear my prayer!" 

This shows that we trust in God, which is at the very essence of prayer.  Don't hesitate to cry out to God he hears you, because he loves and cares for you.