Cry Out !

The Lord has been speaking to me this past week through a passage in the book of Exodus which we will be looking at in a moment. However, I wanted to lay down some ground work on the issue of suffering and affliction from the point of view of a child of God who has entrusted their life to the Redeemer and Savior the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Bible speaks of suffering and afflictions to be inevitable in the believer’s life. We can see this clearly in the following passage from Philippians 1:29

“For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for him…”

We also read in many other passages that in the midst of our sufferings and afflictions that we are to rejoice in the Lord at all times and we are to not feel that these trials are “unusual”. I see mainly two major “types” of sufferings/afflictions in the believer’s life. One type may come in the way of discipline or correction from the Lord. This is not a punishment of wrath but rather correction in which God wants to teach us and to discipline us to get us back onto the right track in our relationship with Him. The other type of suffering/affliction has nothing to do with discipline or correction but rather the suffering is there because He has a bigger purpose or plan in view for you.

We see this in the book of Job. Job was a blameless man, upright, and feared God but we see in one day a major calamity that comes upon him and stays with him for some time. Job did not quite understand it until the end when God’s purposes behind the suffering were made evident and Job makes this statement from Job 42:5 –

“I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear; But now my eye sees You..”

So regardless of the type of suffering/affliction we are going through we know that God is good and has a good purpose in mind for us. We can rest in His divine sovereignty and have comfort in knowing that He loves us and that He is trustworthy. The Bible says in Romans 8:28

“And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.”

However, keeping all of this in mind we find a tension in Scripture in which we rejoice in our sufferings, we rest in God’s ultimate purposes and plans in our suffering, but “we are not to live or act fatalistically in this world”. As believers we should not just say “it is fate” and sit complacently in our suffering and afflictions. We must pursue God and come to Him for deliverance, to hear His voice and find His will for our lives.

Let us look at this in the following passage from Exodus 3:7-9

“The LORD said, "I have surely seen the affliction of My people who are in Egypt, and have given heed to their cry because of their taskmasters, for I am aware of their sufferings.

"So I have come down to deliver them from the power of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and spacious land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanite and the Hittite and the Amorite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite.

"Now, behold, the cry of the sons of Israel has come to Me; furthermore, I have seen the oppression with which the Egyptians are oppressing them.”

Keep in mind that in the context of this passage we remember that the children of Israel have been in oppression for hundreds of years at the hands of the Egyptians. However, at this particular time God calls Moses as an instrument in His hands to deliver His people from their bondage. We see in verse 7 that God “sees and is aware” of His people’s suffering. In Hebrew this literally means intimately connected to or concerned with the suffering of His people. I want to encourage you as a believer that God sees your suffering and He cares for you!

In verse 8 we see that not only does God care for His people who are suffering but He has a plan of deliverance for them. We as believers have a “living hope” in God who is the one who breaks the bondages of suffering in our lives. Not only does He desire to break the oppression in your life but also take you to a “new and spacious land”. However, this is in His timing and in His way and according to His will.
However, He does it via His people “crying out to Him” (see verse 9). Now this cry is not out of a complaining nature but rather out of desperation. We can see this clearly in the previous chapter in the 24th verse:

“And the sons of Israel sighed because of the bondage, and they cried out; and their cry for help because of their bondage rose up to God.”

When we take this into context we see the children of God crying out to God for deliverance from their oppression. This “crying out” is not a simple stoic prayer, but it is an emotionally charged prayer from the heart of a believer out of desperation and dependence on God. I do not believe in formulas for our prayer lives like if I pray x number times God will answer or if I pray a certain way mustering up my faith He will answer me.

However, I do see two major principles of intercessory prayer found in the Word of God. The first is God looks at the heart of the individual and our heart must be in utter “dependence” upon Him. We must understand He is in control of our lives and we come to Him boldly but humbly to find grace in our time of need by way of dependence upon Him. The second is “persistence” in prayer. We must come persistently to God with our needs in prayer. We can see this articulated in our passage where it is says “the cry of the sons of Israel has come to Me”. This literally means that the fullness of the cry of the people of God in persistence has come to God and He is now going to move in His delivering power. I believe these are two very important points which we need to take to our personal and corporate prayer lives.

If I can, let me challenge you to have an extraordinary prayer life in crying out to God. When was the last time you cried out in a loud voice to the living God? Are you desperate for Him to move in your life? Are you persistently in hope seeking His face daily by faith in the prayer closet? I encourage you to cry out to God and believe upon Him in faith for the deliverance, and at the same time resting in fact that He is good and His compassions they fail not.

“The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much.” – James 5:16

So, crying out to God in prayer for deliverance from suffering and affliction is powerful and God sees and is aware of His people’s suffering and oppression and He desires to set us free, but we must cry out to Him persistently knowing our help cometh from the Lord the Maker of Heaven and Earth.

Let me end with saying that knowing Jesus and abiding in Him is entering that “land flowing with milk and honey”. Let us come to Jesus and allow Him to break through in our lives with His desires and purposes. The Gospel of Luke chapter 4 verses 17-18 says speaking of the Messiah Jesus of Nazareth:

The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:
"The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to release the oppressed”

Blessings,