Isaiah
26:16
16 LORD [Y@hovah], in trouble [tsar] have they visited [paqad]
thee, they poured out [tsuwq] a prayer [lachash] when thy chastening [muwcar]
was upon them. KJV-Interlinear
16 O LORD, in distress they sought you; they
poured out a whispered prayer when your discipline was upon them. ESV
The phrase, poured
out in prayer, refers to a whispering or a muttering, as in embarrassment or in
grumbling. And so it is with people who
ignore God, until they have their backs to the wall, and even then they call
upon God as a last resort, or even in their bitterness.
While God calls us
to call upon Him, this calling should be in both prosperity as well as in
suffering.
Most people, when
prosperous, tend to lose their interest in God.
And only when things in life become too dicey, then do we call upon God,
if not in desperation.
And oddly enough,
when God pours out blessing, we are or become, more distant from Him, and when
life pours out cursing, then we direct our attention toward Him, and thus become
closer to God, because of our suffering.
And so we are
reminded that prayer should come from us toward God, through Christ, and in the
Spirit, as a normal part of our day to day life. And not just when we are in trouble.
Likewise, we are
reminded that calling upon God is not only normal but the expected behavior,
especially in times of trouble.
But, realize that
these verses are contained in the middle of the prophetic discourse from Isaiah,
and thus when we notice that in the end times, all prayer will have been
forgotten, and especially when the end times grow terrible to the extreme, then
people will still not look to God. This demonstrates
the tremendous spiritual dysfunction that will exist in those fateful days.
