What Do You Do When You Get Desperate?

“Make haste, O God, to deliver me! Make haste to help me, O LORD!” (Psalm 70:1).

The literal Hebrew read “God, to deliver me; LORD, to my help, hurry.”

In other words, the psalmist is saying, “God, don’t delay in Your deliverance.” The phrase “make haste” (In the NIV – which is a better translation – is “come quickly.”) means “to act quickly.” The psalmist wants God’s actions and reactions to be speedy.

This Hebrew word (koosh) was sometimes used in a military context to describe a surprise ambush and quick attack (e.g., Israel ambushing the Benjamites in Judges 20:37).

There is a real cry for desperation here.

James Montgomery Boice observes, “Prayer is the amplifier for the small voice of the saint in desperate need. David gets right to the point here; he does so because he needs help and he needs it now. He believes tomorrow will be too late. When things get urgent in our lives, there is reason to bypass normal prayer protocol and get right to the point.”

The opposite of praying to God is seeking to manage the “fight” alone or giving up in the fight altogether. These are people that grow desperate and don’t respond in godly ways to their predicament.

We don’t like to admit when things get desperate, because we think too highly of ourselves. But when we do cry to God in desperation, the kingdom of heaven draws near. The psalmist does not respond on his own, without help or without assistance. He goes to a completely sufficient God. He is desperate to not look to Himself; he is desperate to look to God.