Crying Out of the Depths (Part 2)

Naïve, uninformed faith can be dangerous. I have a friend whose older brother once assured her that an umbrella had enough lift to hold her up if she would only “believe.” So “by faith” she jumped off a barn roof, fell twenty feet straight down, and knocked herself out. And then, because she believed that the problem was a failure of faith, she tried again with precisely the same result. She got the message the second time around!

Faith must be informed—grounded on a clear understanding of what God has actually said. Faith has no power in itself. It counts only when it is based on a plain and unambiguous promise from God. Anything else is wishful thinking.

Case in point: God has promised, “Ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit” (John 15:7–8).

This is not an unequivocal promise that God will respond affirmatively to every prayer we utter but rather a promise that He will grant every longing of ours for the fruit of the Spirit—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. If we hunger and thirst for holiness and ask Him for it, He will begin to satisfy us. That’s a promise  we can count on, and “God don’t make promises He don’t keep,”  as Bob Dylan once pointed out.

Next Jacob moved to confession: “I am unworthy of the least of  your love,” he prayed, using a word for “least” that suggests the tiniest object. “Deliver me!” (see Genesis 32:10–11).

What an odd juxtaposition: “I am unworthy of salvation . . . Save me!”

Unlike those who have it all together, Jacob realized that anything he brought to God had already been ruined by sin. He saw himself as the man least worthy of God’s grace. Yet he could pray for mercy, for his hope lay not in his own worth but in the promise of God to look with favor on those who throw themselves in penitence at His feet. Humility and contrition are the keys that open the heart of God.

Authentic prayer is a crying out of the depths (Psalm 130:1). It wells up from the soul that acknowledges its own deep depravity. Such prayers are offered by those who are thoroughly convicted of their sin and shame but at the same time convinced of God’s grace that flows forth to undeserving sinners. God hears best those who cry out like the tax collector in Jesus’ parable, “Be merciful to me, the sinner!” (Luke 18:13 NASB).

Yet isn’t it odd? Jacob had scarcely finished his prayer of contrition and trust when he resorted to his earlier tactic, relying again on his own ingenious scheme for self-preservation (Genesis 32:7–8, 13–21). It would have been better for Jacob to wait for God to show him His plan. This would have led him in ways he could never have imagined.

Not so odd, however, as I think about it. Jacob is just like me.

Taken from Seeing God, © 2006 by David Roper. Used by permission of Discovery House Publishers, Box 3566, Grand Rapids MI 49501. All rights reserved.