Ex 2:23, Now it came about in the course of those many days that the king of Egypt died. And the sons of Israel sighed because of the bondage, and they cried out; and their cry for help because of their bondage rose up to God. 
We are in the process of seeing the importance of calling out to God for His salvation ministry and guidance and comfort and deliverance in our every day to day walk on this earth. Too often, we only cry out to God about our big issues and problems, after we have exhausted every other possibility which our minds conjure up as a way out. We will freely discuss our problems with others while considering God as only our absolutely last resort.
When we do this, we utterly fail to recognize that God desires only our best and wants us to talk with Him as our Friend and Confidante, Spirit to spirit and heart to heart before we turn anywhere else. He wants us to learn to trust Him in every decision of our lives and to teach others that He is the very first place to turn for every large or small aspect of our lives on this earth. 
This is the main reason that we are spending so much time on this element of our lives as Christians. We are especially desirous after coming to know God in this living manner as it will influence how we teach our young people what is absolutely true for their lives right now. So often we have a tendency, as we grow up, to push the things of God off, into the future time at some point after we have reached some greater level of maturity. The reality is that we need to come into this living relationship of trust in order to become developed into any level of maturity in God. Unless we come to know God as our every source of help and deliverance and guidance and wisdom, we will never really come to know Him in any increasing measure.
Listen to the Psalmist as he declares all that is part of knowing God through the fact that He will deliver to the utmost those who call upon Him. Ps 22:23-26, You who fear the Lord, praise Him; All you descendants of Jacob, glorify Him, And stand in awe of Him, all you descendants of Israel. For He has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; Neither has He hidden His face from him; But when he cried to Him for help, He heard. From Thee comes my praise in the great assembly; I shall pay my vows before those who fear Him. The afflicted shall eat and be satisfied; Those who seek Him will praise the Lord. Let your heart live forever! 
	It is in the knowledge of God as Our Deliverer and Our Savior that we are brought into that place which desires to worship Him with all praise and adoration and awe. We truly begin to realize the magnitude of what God has accomplished in our lives as He presents His living work as the course of how we walk and interact with Him. It is no longer some sense of distance that needs to be bridged through our efforts, but rather the full recognition that He so loves us that He has blessed us with everything in Jesus Christ. This everything fully includes the moment by moment covering of who we are and how we live before Him and before man. We are to be so overwhelmed with the fact that God makes Himself our everything that we must praise Him and honor Him and glorify Him as the natural outcome of our daily salvation under His mighty hand of deliverance. 
	The Lord reveals Himself unto us through all those times of His glorious and wonderful daily deliverances. This is recorded by the Psalmist in Ps 81:6-10. "I relieved his shoulder of the burden, His hands were freed from the basket. "You called in trouble, and I rescued you; I answered you in the hiding place of thunder; I proved you at the waters of Meribah. Selah. "Hear, O My people, and I will admonish you; O Israel, if you would listen to Me! "Let there be no strange god among you; Nor shall you worship any foreign god. "I, the Lord, am your God, Who brought you up from the land of Egypt; Open your mouth wide and I will fill it. 
	God, in His gracious and magnificent working power in our lives shows us only the best of all that is His heart for us. Not only does He deliver us, but He reveals His ways into our hearts and minds through the course of these marvelous rescues. He promises that He will continually sustain us as we keep our hearts and minds focused upon Him. He will never leave us or forsake us nor will He let us wallow in our grief and misery and hunger if we will but seek Him. All that we have to do is to call out to Him and He will respond in all His lovingkindness and tender mercies. 
	Again hear the Psalmist as this tremendous love of God’s salvation is at hand. Ps 107:19-22, Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble; He saved them out of their distresses. He sent His word and healed them, And delivered them from their destructions. Let them give thanks to the Lord for His lovingkindness, And for His wonders to the sons of men! Let them also offer sacrifices of thanksgiving, And tell of His works with joyful singing. 
	This passage opens us unto what should be our every response, day in and day out. This is why it is that we desire to worship and to honor and to reverence and to declare the goodness and the faithfulness of Our Lord God Almighty. This is why is it so important that we dwell with Him in His Word and seek for Him to open it unto us as our healing balm in the midst of every crisis and dilemma. He heals us with His Word! He guides us out of our times of pain and suffering and affliction with the soothing and marvelous splendor of the Holy Spirit’s operation of making His Word to be our every source of comfort and ability to bear up under every pressure. It soothes and heals our every pain and wound from the arrows of hatred and ridicule and tribulation in this realm.
	Not only this, but as He delivers us, we are brought into that place of thanksgiving unto Him. There is a true sense that should develop within our beings that we are to give Him thanks with all gratitude. 
As a side note, true gratitude is something that we are taught as we develop in maturity. Many of us are not so apt to be thankful these days. This world power is manifesting the lie and cultivating the lustful idea that we are owed everything that we get in this life. Whether it is by the efforts of our own hands or our cleverness or our heritage or our devious employment of cunning, we believe the lie that what we get is what we are owed. There is a true lack of gratitude to God for all His blessing and graciousness upon us. We need to learn how to be utterly thankful for His every provision, day by day by day.
	This is one of the reasons that we do not think or choose to call upon Him immediately in our times of distress or need. To do so is to admit that we are incapable of making the way for ourselves in all that we gain or achieve. This attitude of ingratitude is a demeaning slap in the face of God by Whom all that is good and right and honorable is revealed and over-abundantly deposited into our lives. 
This is especially declared to us in James 1:16-18, Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren. Every good thing bestowed and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation, or shifting shadow. In the exercise of His will He brought us forth by the word of truth, so that we might be, as it were, the first fruits among His creatures. Knowing this, we learn to offer true thanks to God in the daily release that He gives us as He faithfully makes Himself Our Provider and Our Protector. 
	Once more listen to the Psalmist in the pronouncement of God’s faithfulness to be our safety day in and day out as it develops true hearts of praise and thanksgiving unto Him. Ps 138:2-8. Ps 138:2-8, I will bow down toward Thy holy temple, And give thanks to Thy name for Thy lovingkindness and Thy truth; For Thou hast magnified Thy word according to all Thy name. On the day I called Thou didst answer me; Thou didst make me bold with strength in my soul. All the kings of the earth will give thanks to Thee, O Lord, When they have heard the words of Thy mouth. And they will sing of the ways of the Lord. For great is the glory of the Lord. For though the Lord is exalted, Yet He regards the lowly; But the haughty He knows from afar. Though I walk in the midst of trouble, Thou wilt revive me; Thou wilt stretch forth Thy hand against the wrath of my enemies, And Thy right hand will save me. The Lord will accomplish what concerns me; Thy lovingkindness, O Lord, is everlasting; Do not forsake the works of Thy hands. 
	Do we know Him in this manner? The Lord will accomplish what concerns me… Do we really believe that the Altogether Holy and Awesome Lord God Creator of heaven and earth has very personally invested Himself into our moment by moment walk on this earth? He is not just some nebulous God in Heaven Who oversees the general welfare of mankind. He has made Himself to dwell within each one of us, through His Holy Spirit. He is responsive to rule and to overrule in our lives as we learn to call upon Him and trust Him and obey Him. His heart is that we would want to know Him in an increasingly intimate relationship set in His love and His faithfulness and His compassion and His grace and His mercy. 
	This is true even in terms of the nation of Egypt, as we are told by the Prophet Isaiah. That nation, who so suffered under the plagues of God because they afflicted and abused His Chosen people, would come to know God and become the recipients of His love as we read in Isa 19:19-21. In that day there will be an altar to the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt, and a pillar to the Lord near its border. And it will become a sign and a witness to the Lord of hosts in the land of Egypt; for they will cry to the Lord because of oppressors, and He will send them a Savior and a Champion, and He will deliver them. Thus the Lord will make Himself known to Egypt, and the Egyptians will know the Lord in that day. They will even worship with sacrifice and offering, and will make a vow to the Lord and perform it. 
	God’s faithfulness and compassion and love extends to all nations and all mankind in His giving of Jesus Christ, His Only Begotten Son. We are considered as Egypt in the fact that it was because of our sins and trespasses that He had to die in order to become the Passover Lamb for all who would but call upon Him for salvation. This loving and compassionate nature of God is highlighted for us in Lam 3:31+32. For the Lord will not reject forever, For if He causes grief, Then He will have compassion According to His abundant lovingkindness. In our turning to Him, and seeking Him and counting on Him constantly, we come to know The Living God in all His compassionate Grace and Mercy. 
	Christ so knew Him always, giving us the example that we are to have instilled into our hearts and minds as displayed in the Garden of Gethsemane. Even as He was facing the task for which the Father had sent Him, Christ did not do so on His own power or strength. He turned to the Father and called out to Him. The One Who knew the Father so intimately did not hesitate to seek Him to be the every source of obedience, even unto death on the cross. Luke 22:41-44, And He withdrew from them about a stone's throw, and He knelt down and began to pray, saying, "Father, if Thou art willing, remove this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Thine be done." Now an angel from heaven appeared to Him, strengthening Him. And being in agony He was praying very fervently; and His sweat became like drops of blood, falling down upon the ground. 
	Christ’s strength and obedience unto the will of the Father is the prime example of why and how we are to call out to God, day in and day out. We are never strong enough to face the daily tasks that assault us! We were never intended to do so! It has always been in the plan of God that we would live by the power of His Holy Spirit directing, guiding, strengthening, and enabling our sojourn, now and for all of eternity. This is something that we will know in perfection as we are brought into the increasing understanding and comprehension of exactly Who God is in our lives.
	Again, turning to the Letter of James, this time Chapter 5, verses 4-11, we want to see what it means for us to call out to God in order to learn more and more of His excellencies in action in our lives. James 5:4-11, Behold, the pay of the laborers who mowed your fields, and which has been withheld by you, cries out against you; and the outcry of those who did the harvesting has reached the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. You have lived luxuriously on the earth and led a life of wanton pleasure; you have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. You have condemned and put to death the righteous man; he does not resist you. Be patient, therefore, brethren, until the coming of the Lord. Behold, the farmer waits for the precious produce of the soil, being patient about it, until it gets the early and late rains. You too be patient; strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand. Do not complain, brethren, against one another, that you yourselves may not be judged; behold, the Judge is standing right at the door. As an example, brethren, of suffering and patience, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. Behold, we count those blessed who endured. You have heard of the endurance of Job and have seen the outcome of the Lord's dealings, that the Lord is full of compassion and is merciful. 
In the every dealing of God within our lives, we can be certain that He is full of compassion and is merciful! He continuously works to this end in order that we may grow up into those men and women of God who freely and utterly call upon Him and rely upon Him to make every provision for this life and for all of eternity. To so know God in all His love and compassion and faithfulness is to know that when we call, He will hear and respond and make us more fully thankful that we belong to Him. So be it!
… And the sons of Israel sighed because of the bondage, and they cried out; and their cry for help because of their bondage rose up to God. Amen.

	This morning’s benediction is Ps 115:14+15. May the Lord give you increase, You and your children. May you be blessed of the Lord, Maker of heaven and earth. Amen.