Thursday, January 20 – Lamentations 3:25

It doesn’t work, so why pray?

“The Lord is good to those who await Him,

To the person who seeks Him.”

Have you seen a child waiting for their parent to come home? Maybe you have been on the receiving end of this exchange and seen your child with their face pressed up against the window, waiting to see you long before you pulled in the driveway. For that child, the promise that the parent is coming home soon is enough to get prepared for their arrival. No GPS or sound has alerted them to the parents’ return, but they believe the parent will return and respond in anticipation.

Over time, as we reach adulthood, we lose this childhood innocence. We have been burned by the world and have been let down personally by people who didn’t show up in the way we thought. As a result, we put these anxieties and frustrations on God. If we don’t get the answer we desire, after spurts of trying to match the formula we see in Scripture, we give up and grow bitter to the subject at all.

There is a Christian song that has the line that repents for this approach we have to God “Oh, forgive us all for seeking Your hand and not Your face.”[1] This approach is all too familiar. We look for God to answer the prayers we want in the way we want as evidence that prayer works instead of looking at His faithfulness through the ages and who He is. This verse says the Lord is good to those who await Him, not those who await the things He will give them. He will be good to the one who seeks Him because He is God. God is so gracious to us; He wants us to come to Him with these things we need so that we can recognize He is what we truly need. May our faith never be based on the list we have set before Him. Look at His Word; He is deserving of our worship, prayer, and adoration in the storms and the sunshine.

• What does it look like when we want things from God more than we want a relationship with Him?
• Can you remember a time when you wanted things from God more than you wanted to know Him?
• Pray and ask God to open your eyes to the areas in your life you have been seeking things from Him more than a relationship with Him.

[1] Selah, “More and More of You,” 2014, Curb Records, track 4 on You Amaze Us, 2014.