When It's Almost Too Hard to Pray

What prayer will God always answer?

Life is hard. I get that.

Some days too hard to care about grand existential questions or what we’re doing wrong. If God comes into it at all, his character and his role in this mess are confused and less than helpful.

More than answers, we want relief. With nowhere else to turn, we might even pray—an important step toward making life a little easier.

Let me share something I wrote about this very thing.*

Psalm 119.41

Let your mercies come also to me, O Lord—your salvation according to your word.

Let me tell you a secret. There’s a prayer when offered sincerely that God will always answer, no matter who asks it, and no matter how often. What is this prayer? The heartbroken plea for mercy. Mercy is always his will for a penitent heart.

How can we know this with such confidence?

Because this is the first thing the Lord says about himself when giving his Name. in the Bible, a person’s name is synonymous with his character. When God revealed his glorious name to Moses, he began with

“I am Yahweh, merciful and gracious” (Ex 34.6).

In Hebrew, merciful is a sweet term, applied only to God in Scripture. It identifies another’s misery or pain as one’s own. This is not empathy, which simply recognizes another’s emotions. Neither is it sympathy or pity, which are responses to the person’s condition.

Rather, it is compassion, sharing the angst along with the sufferer, feeling what they feel as they feel it. Can anyone do that who is not right inside of another? (Ps 94.11; 1Co 2.11)

But God is more than just aware of what we suffer. He understands our experience in need, and he acts with lovingkindness. In Scripture, the actions he takes to alleviate our suffering and wretchedness are called “his mercies.”

Jeremiah reminds us that not only are the Lord’s mercies new every morning, they never fail (La 3. 22-23).

David reminds us that the Lord is abundant in mercies (Ps 5.7).

Paul reminds us that God is rich in mercy, and that he has bound all people over to disobedience, so that he might have mercy on us all (Ep 2.4; Ro 11.32).

To know and rely on his merciful love is the one right response to the whole revelation of God—in Christ, in the Gospels, in the entire Bible.

This is exactly why Jesus commended the publican, who asked nothing of God but mercy. Surely, Jesus said, that man went home justified before God (Lk 18.9-14).

The man didn’t seem to be asking to be justified, in the sense of repayment for a debt. But, according to the word used, to be justified implies an action that conciliates, brings back together. Jesus says, he was made right with God. Only mercy on God’s part can do that.

This is more than just a parable, although Jesus told it as such. I suspect he’d seen it happen while visiting Jerusalem, the cross looming large and near at this point in his public ministry. He knew full well what God soon intended to do for such a man.

Jesus spent a fair amount of time in the temple. (An interesting pastime for God in the flesh, off the throne and moving around in his house.) Perhaps a great deal of what he observed was along the lines of the Pharisee’s prayer in the parable—that God should help the pray-er on the basis of merit.

But there in a quiet corner a man bowed with his face to the ground, dejected and hopelessly aware of the chasm between himself and his God, knowing he could do nothing to bridge it, but longing still to be restored and clean. Can you just picture Jesus, the God-man, overhearing this little prayer as he walked past?

The publican himself maybe didn’t realize it, but surely Jesus did. If ever there was a plea for the cross.

Same plea different century, it echoes our miserable psalmist’s long ago prayer.

And, it’s exactly what brought Jesus to earth—to seek and save the lost (Lk 19.10), to lay down his life as a ransom for many (Jn 10.17; Mk 10.45), to bring us to God (1Pe 3.18).

Oh the merciful heart of God, who reconciled the world to himself! (2Co 5.19)

Not surprising that Jesus stood up in the temple one day, maybe that same day, and cried out, “Let all who are thirsty, come to me and drink” (Jn 7.37).

What if the publican was there? Would he have gone to Jesus to be reconciled to God?

Would you?

Take a minute. Look into your soul. Ask yourself, What lovingkindness do I need from God?

Then breathe your broken-hearted longing.

Ask for mercy.

I guarantee he will give it to you.

*This excerpt is from Why Is Life So Hard? Volume 3: God’s Ways (Chapter 6).