Hurry Up, God!

Psalm 70

As we begin, I want to advise you that this Psalm is a repetition, almost word for word, of the last part of Psalm 40. This theme was so important to David, he included it in two of his Psalms.

VS. 1 Hurry Up, God!

When we try to rush God’s Timing it is because we feel an urgency to have things resolved—However, God resolves things in His time.

Some years ago my family traveled to a family reunion. There not being enough room in either car for all of us to go we traveled in two different cars. My brothers and I rode together and followed mom and dad. We left early in the morning for a journey of approximately four hours. A large amount of coffee attributed to our alertness and before long—our need for a rest stop. Without cell phones or C.B. radios there was no way to communicate to our parents that we planned to stop. We zoomed ahead and rushed into the rest stop and back out and spent the next hour attempting to catch up with our parents—and we never saw them on the road. We rushed like mad to catch them—never realizing that they were really still behind us. We got to Fresno and had to call information to get directions to the house. This was made even more difficult because Uncle Jake’s first name wasn’t really Jake. I managed to remember this and we got the information and arrived at the house nearly an hour ahead of our parents.

Sometimes, when we try to rush God, our timing puts us in a similar mess. We speed on and on, while God is taking His time and doing it right. As we speed, we feel a sense of urgency that is based on human stress and emotion rather than faith in Almighty God.

David experienced some of the most stressful times that any human being ever experienced. First, he had professional problems. God had given him a calling (to be king) but not the placement. David continued to wait on God to place him as King. His patience seems to be something like that of Job because he waited for God to make him king of Israel in fact, not just in calling. If this wasn’t stressful enough, he was working for the king.

Now, I want you to take a minute and think how ironic (okay, how almost funny it is) that David was brought in to play his harp in an attempt to quiet Saul’s depression, guilt, moodiness, etc. What was the source of Saul’s stress? Wasn’t it the fact that David had faced the giant Goliath and obtained fame and glory for his act? Wasn’t it the fact that he knew that God was going to give the kingdom to someone else? He may or may not have realized it was David that God planned to replace him, but David was turning out to be a pretty good candidate. The people were already singing David’s praises in a song about Saul slaying thousands but David had slain ten thousands. So, it was kind of stupid to place the source of irritation (David) in the path of the irritated king. It would be like me coming home from a hard day and my daughter bringing me a glass of iced tea and telling me to put my feet up and listen to some music and then putting on some loud rap music (if you can truly classify rap as music)…

Saul’s reaction to this placement was to try to kill David. Not once, but twice. So David’s professional problems were larger than anything we have ever faced. We may have worked for some jerks in our lives, but I don’t think any of us ever had a boss who tried to kill us. Can you imagine the worker’s compensation claim?

David also had family problems. We just said that his boss was trying to kill him, right? Do you remember that one of the rewards for David’s victory over Goliath was that he married the king’s daughter? That’s right! David had a serious in-law problem. He was working in the family business and his father-in-law hated him. Eventually David had to flee from his father-in-law\boss, running for his life.

So David began to pray that God would HURRY UP!!!!

There are other Bible characters that experienced the stress of waiting for God’s timing. Abram and Sarai waited for years for the coming of Isaac. They even tried to solve the problem themselves and Ishmael came along. Joseph probably thought he was due to be released quickly after the butler returned to Pharaoh, but the butler forgot Joseph and another two years went by before he was brought out of prison.