24 God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. 25 So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them.
As you read these verses you might be thinking, “Was God asleep and was awoken by the groaning?” God doesn’t need sleep. He lives on double espressos! Not really! It is not that God was not paying attention to what was happening to His people, but God does not intervene until His people want Him. They have not been ready for God’s intervention. Perhaps they have been thinking they could handle it on their own. Now they are desperate and cry out to the Lord. We get ourselves in a similar situation at times, don’t we? We think we can do it without God. We feel like we have some power apart from Him, and we are going to handle this one without any help. That is always a big mistake. Because, when we think we can handle it, God will let us. Sometimes we can pull it off, and we get puffed up thinking how great we are. But sometimes God lets the circumstances get so great that we can’t handle it, so our world falls apart. He allows it in order to give us a chance to call out and trust Him. He allows us to fall short so that we can see how great He is. The Israelites have been floating along for years on their own. They have not had a need for God, so God withdraws in an effort to get them to call out to Him. Pain, sorrow, suffering, discomfort, setbacks. These, and many others, are all opportunities for us to turn to the Lord, to cry out, to groan. When we admit our need, and our own inability to meet the need, then God is able to intervene. He will not violate our will. He won’t force Himself into a situation. He waits for us to ask. The Israelites finally get to a place of asking. Then the Lord responds.
The Arnold Journey 