Why Should You Cry Aloud To The Lord?

"But you, O Lord, are a shield about me, my glory, and the lifter of my head. I cried aloud to the Lord, and he answered me from his holy hill. Selah"- Psalm 3:3-4

A while ago, I heard Dr. Henry Cloud talking about tears. He said that it was interesting to him that God decided to place our tear ducts on our face and not on our arm pits. If they were in our arm pits, he says, we could easily hide our tears from everyone. We could perhaps buy some anti-tear deodorant and that would help us tremendously. But instead, our tear ducts are located at the one place everyone sees, our eyes.

In Psalm 3, David is in a bad place. His son has turned people against him and is trying to usurp his authority. David is surrounded and people are saying that even the Lord cannot save him. David's faith though, is not in what others say, but in what the Lord says.

But David is in anguish. His son has broken a sacred bond of trust. His enemies are surrounding him. It looks bleak. Even the Lord has been quiet. So David cries. Now, as you know, there are several types of cries - you can cry softly to your self, you can weep, you can cry aloud. David cries aloud.

I picture David at this moment with his cries bellowing out of his innermost being. I believe he is sobbing. He's not trying to hide his cries. He doesn't care that his tear ducts are on his face. He is crying loudly. He knows the Lord is his protector, his shield, but he also know that sometimes you just need to cry loudly to Him.

In our culture, crying is shunned in a lot of ways. We are ashamed of crying. David is not ashamed. He knows where his help is going to come from and he means to draw attention to the anguish he is feeling. Sometimes I think we don't receive an answer to something in our lives because we are not passionate enough about it to cry to God. Throughout Scripture, we see God answer the cries of his people. The beginning of Exodus starts with this idea. God hears the cries of the Israelites after 400 years of slavery.

One of our chief enemies is apathy. And oh how some of us loathe to even consider fighting it. We are too lazy to lift a finger to fight against the very thing that is holding us back. David cannot relate to that. He is fighting this with everything inside of him. We should do the same. The beautiful thing is, God hears him. He hears David. And He hears you too.

Prayer - Lord, help us to fight against our apathy. Help us to be passionate about life and the things you care about. Lord, help us to cry loudly to you. We thank you for hearing us and answering our cries. Thank you for fighting for us even when we are too apathetic to cry aloud to you. Amen.