Cry Out to the Lord...

By Michael Q. Pink

You know how the cop shows on TV are not an accurate portrayal of real law enforcement? The same is true for medical dramas, etc. Well, in a similar vein I must tell you that the real fight of faith, especially when the stakes are high is much different than how it is so often communicated in overheated sermons and such.

All my battles of faith have been for chump change it seems. Now, suddenly and without warning, we have found ourselves thrust into the middle of a high stakes battle where any error can be fatal. I had hoped our story would be neatly summed up with a tidy victory. Instead, the battle is bloody, tear stained, relentless and utterly exhausting. Not like the stories I remember hearing or the romantic vision I held of a relatively sterile, somewhat effortless victory, executed with a confident smile.

Let me take you to the real battlefield… A few days ago, the stress was so high, the burden so heavy, the prayer so anemic, the hope so being tested that I took the advice of my best friend and went to a place of solitude for truly desperate prayer. There is a place in Scripture where the righteous cry out to the Lord and that doesn’t mean to send a polite text message… In fact, Psalm 34:17 says, “The righteous cry, and the LORD hears, and delivers them out of all their troubles.” The word translated “cry” literally means “to shriek”.

Have you ever shrieked in your prayer time? Until a few days ago, I had only done that once, but on Friday I believe it was, I got in my car well before sunrise and headed to a nearby beach to walk alone in the dark, cloudy night and cry out to God. The waves were crashing. The moon was hidden. There was no one in sight. I shrieked things like… “God help me!” and “God help Brenda!” It felt like my soul was ripping from the force of the anguish that had I had bottled up for the last four weeks.

Jesus knew anguish. It says in Hebrews 5:7 “Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared;” I believe God heard me too.

I told God I didn’t want any angels standing at my wife’s bedside if all they could do was stand by and idly watch. They were fired if that’s all they could do! Before you get offended at that, God knew my heart and quite frankly, seeing a hundred angels surrounding my wife would mean absolutely nothing to me, if that didn’t translate into the help that is so desperately needed. Can you understand that?

I wore my lungs out crying out to God with all my strength, all my voice, all my heart. It was utterly to the bone. As it turned out, what I thought was just between me and God was overheard by some condo dwellers several hundred yards away, who called the police. They came to investigate and I broke down in exhausted tears trying to explain the “why” behind the “what” of what I was doing. Words fell out of my mouth rather incomprehensibly at times, but I was able to assure them that there was no one drowning… Just me fighting for my wife’s life by crying out to the One who can make all the difference. They got that.

That, my friends, is what the battle is really like, at least from my perspective. It’s not pretty. It’s not glamorous. In so many ways, it doesn’t even feel spiritual. But it is. Thanks for letting me be real.