God Heard Your Silent Prayers — Help Is Coming Soon

• I want you to let something settle into your spirit tonight. I want you to let it go past the hearing of the ear and sink down deep where the real weariness lives. You don’t have to pretend anymore. You don’t have to muster up that brave smile or force that spiritual vocabulary that says everything is fine when your soul is faint.
• You can let the facade fall here because the very first word heaven has for you in this exhausted hour is not a rebuke. It is not a lecture. It is a recognition. A divine, gentle, allseeing acknowledgement. God knows. He knows you’re tired.
• I’m not talking about the kind of tired a good night’s sleep can fix, though perhaps you haven’t had one of those in a long while. I’m speaking of the fatigue that seeps into the marrow of your faith. The weariness of a prayer that seems to hit the ceiling and fall lifeless back to the floor. The exhaustion of holding on to a promise for years. Watching the calendar pages turn while your hope feels thin and brittle.
• The soul deep drain of caring for a loved one who doesn’t get better. Of fighting a battle that has no visible end. Of trying to keep your heart soft in a world that seems determined to make it hard and cynical. You are tired of the fight, tired of the waiting, tired of the constant gnawing pressure. You feel it in the quiet moments when the noise stops.
• A heaviness, a sigh that comes from a place words can’t even reach. And perhaps the most wearing part of all is the guilt you’ve begun to feel about being so tired. You’ve wondered, “Is this a lack of faith? Where is my victory? Why am I so weak when I serve such a strong God?” Let me take that burden from you right now. Look at the great procession of faith in the scripture.
• Do you think Elijah was not tired after the tremendous fire fell from heaven on Mount Carmel? After the prophets of Bal were defeated, what did that mighty man of God do? He heard a threat from Jezebel and he ran. He ran for his life and he collapsed under a solitary broom tree in the wilderness. And his prayer was not one of triumph but of utter depletion.
• I have had enough Lord he said take my life. That is not the prayer of a faithless man. That is the raw honest cry of an exhausted one. He was physically spent emotionally wrecked and spiritually isolated. He felt absolutely alone in his work for God. And what was heaven’s response? An angel did not appear to scold him. The Lord did not thunder from Sinai about his ingratitude. No.