“In my distress I called to the Lord; I cried to my God for help. From his temple he heard my voice; my cry came before him, into his ears.”
When I was a young man, my brother and I were kind of obsessed with hunting. We would dream about it, read magazines about it, practice it, and relive the stories when we did go hunting. We lived in the country, and at night you could hear coyotes when they had circled something they wanted to eat, because it would sound like a spaceship landing with aliens talking. As hunting nerds, Chuck and I would dream about killing those pesky coyotes. One evening we convinced our dad to get a tape recorder and put a distress rabbit call tape in, so we could play it at dusk and see if we could get any coyotes to respond. The distress rabbit call was nothing short of tear-jerking. As it played, you were reminded of how this rabbit must have felt. It was a surreal sound that was sure to get some predator’s notice. We did not see any coyotes that night, but we learned a good lesson, not all distress calls get a response. We tried several times using this distress call and saw no coyotes. I guess the coyotes knew the difference between real and Memorex.
David is running from Saul right before this Psalm. God delivers David from the hand of Saul here, and he is writing about it. When David was backed in a corner, he called to the Lord. I wonder if he exhausted all his own efforts, and maybe all the good schemes from his band of strong men following him, before he called to the Lord.
Who do you call on when the chips are down in your life and you have to play a hand? Some turn to substance abuse, some turn to relational abuse, and some even turn into relational zombies. How we respond to distress in our lives reveals what rock we depend upon. David turned to the Lord in Psalm 18. In fact, two very old church hymns come from this Psalm. In other words, David’s prayer of praise turned into our reminder of who we call on when life gives us runny eggs and soggy toast.
One thing we don’t say very often is, “Cry to the Lord in your distress!” Psalm 18 is full of verses that remind us the Lord is our strength, he hears our prayers, and he will deliver us. Let the distress in your life have its full lesson. The rain falls on the just and the unjust, Jesus told his disciples, so just like Casting Crowns sings in their song I Will Praise Him in the Storm:
And I’ll praise you in this storm
And I will lift my hands
That you are who you are
No matter where I am
And every tear I’ve cried
You hold in your hand
You never left my side
And though my heart is torn
I will praise you in this storm
God is in the middle of your storm and time of distress, and he hears your cry. Learn to praise him in the storm and watch for his hand of deliverance.
Prayer: Father, I pray that we would hold you on high in every episode of life. I pray we would not let the circumstances dictate our feelings and emotions, but rather rejoice and praise you because you are in the middle of every storm in our lives. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Let It Go 
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