Praying with Hope

“When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered themselves together to Aaron and said to him, “Up, make us gods who shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” Exodus 32:1

We can pray with great expectation. We eagerly jot down our request in a prayer journal. We pray with great fervency for weeks. The request constantly close to our heart. We have faith in God we know he will answer our request. 

And then nothing. Silence. There is no change. We begin to wonder…what did we get wrong? Did we have too little faith? Are we not praying hard enough? Is our request low on God’s list of priorities? Have we upset God? Or even worse is God there? 

In Exodus chapter 32, we can see the Israelites had a similar crisis of belief. They were waiting on a word from God through their leader Moses. They had been waiting for a while and no word was coming. Loosing hope that they are going to hear from God or Moses, they decide to act on their own by building a golden calf that they could worship and pray to. A calf that would be physically present with them in their moment of desperation. 

The problem is they had misplaced their hope. In the agonizing silence, in the tedious waiting, in their longing desires they have failed to keep trusting and hoping in a perfect loving God who can and will answer their prayers. Instead, they turned in hope to a temporarily present idol that has no ability or power to answer their prayers. 

How often in my own prayer life do I lose hope in God’s perfect character? Do I keep crying out to him in faith believing that he can and will answer in his perfect time or do I grab for a physical man-made idol to provide the answer that only God can?