My groaning!

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"Lord, all my desire is before You. My groaning is not hidden from You." Psalm 38:9

The Lord's people are very subject to carnality, darkness, hardness, deadness, barrenness, and lukewarmness. And sometimes there seems to be only just so much life in their souls as to feel these things—and groan under them.

Under these feelings, therefore, they cry to the Lord—they cannot bear that carnality and darkness, barrenness and death—which seems to have taken possession of them. They come with these burdens to the throne of grace, beseeching the Lord to revive His work in their hearts.

What is implied in the expression, 'my groaning'? Do we not groan under a sense of pain? It is the most natural expression of our feelings when we are under acute suffering. The woman in travail of childbirth—the patient under the keen knife of the surgeon—the man afflicted with some painful internal disease—can only give vent to their distressing feelings by groaning.

 And is it not so spiritually? When the Lord's people groan, it shows there is some painful sensation experienced within them—and these painful feelings they can only express by groaning aloud before the footstool of mercy!