O Lord, you hear the desire of the afflicted;
    you will strengthen their heart; you will incline your ear
to do justice to the fatherless and the oppressed,
    so that man who is of the earth may strike terror no more.
Psalm 10:17-18 ESV

When we are in trouble, we often busy ourselves in an attempt to find a solution or waste valuable time complaining to others. But while we are rushing around trying to fix things on our own, we forget to simply put our trust in God and ask for His help. Talking about prayer without actually doing it, when we are in a crisis, is like talking about a life jacket, without putting it on after we have fallen overboard! I love that today’s verse, comes at the end of a prayer which King David began in verse one in which he starts by saying. “Why are you so far away?” and “Why are you hiding Yourself?” When we are in trouble, David’s prayer is a great model for us to follow. Notice, he doesn’t start out by mouthing some lifeless, holy sounding words. He tells God exactly how he feels! If you read through the Psalms, you will discover that, not all of them are, “The Lord is my Shepherd” kind of prayers. In fact, complaining to God is actually one of David’s favorite things and God included those prayers of lament because He wanted us to know, that He is listening and that He hears us when we cry out to Him.

First, David begins by being specific in his complaints. As we move on through the next several verses, we find that he doesn’t waste time by just saying, “Everybody hates me, I guess I just go eat worms.” No! David itemizes the things about which he is ticked off and honestly tells God about them. “The wicked is pursuing the poor…the wicked is boasting of his desires…His mouth is filled with cursing…He says in his heart, ‘God has forgotten.” When David does get to the end of his laundry list of issues in verse fourteen, he takes a deep breath and moves on to requests.

Then, David doesn’t pray like we sometimes do – “Bless all the missionaries or bring revival to our nation.” Those are great sounding prayers, but “Rescue the schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram or heal my grandchild who is suffering with kidney disease”, are the kind of specific requests, that David prays believing God for specific answers. “Break the arm of the wicked… call his wickedness to account… hear the desire of the afflicted… strengthen their heart.” If you are like me, you may find that writing your requests down will help you to stay on track. Every few weeks when I update my list, I am amazed at how many prayers that God has answered. That brings us to the kind of prayer in today’s verse: specific praise.

Finally, just as we need to be specific when we complain and when we ask for help, God loves it when we are specific when we praise Him. “God is good all the time.” is kind of okay, but “God You were so good when you healed my wife! It was amazing when you brought our mission team home safely from Africa!” and ” Thank you that my granddaughter is getting baptized this week!” are ways of bringing us right into the throne room of God. God does hear, when we cry, but He is interested most in building a true personal relationship with us. A strong relationship with God is forged when we really talk to him as we would to a friend. We tell Him exactly how we are feeling, what are needs are (daily bread), every sin we are sorry for, every commitment we are ready to make, and then give Him praise because we know that He is listening and we trust that He is in control!