“How the king rejoices in your strength, O Lord! He shouts with joy because you give him victory. For you have given him his heart’s desire; you have withheld nothing he requested.”
Psalm 21:1-2 NLT
Something significant happens when God comes through for us. With David it was the realisation that God had given him victory over his enemies. In fact, David testified that God had “given him his heart’s desire” and had “withheld nothing he requested”. The “something significant” for David was a manifestation of “shouts of joy”. David had a freedom in his personality that allowed him to outwardly express the feelings of joy within him. In our conditioned cultures today, such an ebullience is unusual, although it can be seen in healing meetings, where people have been divinely healed of illnesses or disabilities, people expressing “shouts of joy” following the realisation that God had freed them from an incurable condition. But I have never heard anyone, including myself, offering “shouts of joy” in public just because God is who He is. Instead, we act all religious and sing hymns or worship songs. Or offer up long-winded prayers of thanks. We consider ourselves so much more refined than those who outwardly show their emotion. But in a private place, sometimes on my early morning prayer walks, I can be heard to call out the name of Jesus, startling the birds close by.
There was an occasion when the Jewish exiles had laid the foundation of the new Temple, being built to replace the one destroyed by the Babylonians. An amazing outpouring of emotion followed, as we read in Ezra 3:12-13, “But many of the older priests, Levites, and other leaders who had seen the first Temple wept aloud when they saw the new Temple’s foundation. The others, however, were shouting for joy. The joyful shouting and weeping mingled together in a loud noise that could be heard far in the distance”. The Jews had no hang ups in those days about expressing their emotions in public, and in many places in the world today we find the same. But not in the West, with our “stiff upper lip” culture. It takes a momentous event, usually the death of a loved one, to release a public display of emotion, but this is usually well suppressed by the person involved – after all what will people think? Bottling up our emotions within us is not a good idea because that is not how God designed us, and a physical or mental illness can result in many cases. (Try Googling “problems caused by suppressing emotions”).
But it was the realisation that God had answered his prayers completely that David thought worth recording. This builds a picture of a relationship so close that he seemed to walk hand in hand with God, in constant communication and with effective outcomes. Nothing that David asked God to help him with was refused. Is that the experience of us modern day pilgrims? Jesus said to His disciples, “You can ask for anything in my name, and I will do it, so that the Son can bring glory to the Father. Yes, ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it!” (John 14:13-14). This is a hard scripture to believe because we intuitively know that it can’t be true in every case. For example, if two people ask God to change the weather, each praying prayers with opposite requests, one for sun and the other rain, how would God answer such a prayer? The significant bit about what Jesus said was “in His name”. Our prayers must align with His will and character, and anything we ask for must therefore bring glory to God. And even then, adding “in Jesus’ name” to our prayers won’t always bring on the result we require, because the name of Jesus is not a magical incantation. David realised the importance of a relationship with God, and tempered his request accordingly.
Looking back over my life, there are many occasions that deserve “shouts of joy“. God has brought about miracles in my life, and in the lives of most believers, where prayers have not been uttered. Jesus said, “Don’t be like them, for your Father knows exactly what you need even before you ask him!”(Matthew 6:8). There are other times when our spirits and the Holy Spirit are in direct communication, bypassing our mental faculties. Paul knew this when he wrote, “And the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. For example, we don’t know what God wants us to pray for. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words. And the Father who knows all hearts knows what the Spirit is saying, for the Spirit pleads for us believers in harmony with God’s own will” (Romans 8:26-27).
Why don’t we pilgrims rejoice with “shouts of joy”? Without the manifestation of even a little squeak or suppressed whoop? We watch athletic events or football matches and observe outpourings of corporate emotion when our favourite athlete wins a race, or when our team’s ball crosses the line of the opposing team’s goal. Why can’t we “shout for joy”, when we remember again all that Jesus has done for us, an event infinitely more significant, with eternal consequences, than any human victory. Jesus died for us so that we can live forever. Surely that is worth “shouts of joy”, isn’t it?
Dear Father God. Please forgive us for suppressing the praise that is Yours by right. You deserve all the glory. Amen.
Being a Pilgrim 