Tag Prayer

When All You Have is God

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Photo by Greg Willson on Unsplash

Near the end of Book 3 in the Psalms (43-89), several Psalms read like cries for help by writers at the end of their rope.  In Psalm 86:14, for example, David writes: “O God, insolent men have risen up against me; a band of ruthless men seeks my life, and they do not set you before them.”  While the exact circumstance is unclear, David knows there is a wide conspiracy against him, and his only hope is to turn to God.  The Psalm opens with “Incline your ear, O LORD, and answer me, for I am poor and needy.”

Likewise, when we feel desperate and don’t know where to turn, these Psalms remind us that God will never turn us away.  On Psalm 86 John Calvin comments that “the more severely any one is oppressed, and the more destitute he is of the resources of human aid, the more inclined is God graciously to help him. That despair therefore may not overwhelm our minds under our greatest afflictions, let us support ourselves from the consideration that the Holy Spirit has dictated this prayer for the poor and the afflicted.”  In other words, because these Psalms are in the Bible, we can be sure that, no matter the mess our own choices or the actions of others have put us in, God in His steadfast love will listen.

Throughout the Psalm, David writes reminders of the character and works of God as a contrast to both his circumstances and his feelings of futility.  Like him we must always remember that our character is never so bad that God loving us is inconsistent with His character, and that our circumstances are never so bad that loving us is beyond His power to achieve.

When all you have is God, He is enough.

Even for the most desperate, there is always a way out, as Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 10:13 – “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.” In Psalm 86, David does not just pray for a miraculous deliverance, but in verse 11, David looks for the way of escape: “Teach me your way, O LORD, that I may walk in your truth; unite my heart to fear your name.”  A united heart is one that feels no anxiety because it knows it is seeking God’s will and willing to act on it based on reverence for Him.  God may urge us to merely wait for His deliverance, or prod us to actions we may not expect, but in all cases, He knows the way, because He is the Way. Only He can unite our hearts.

Bring your desperate anxiety to Him and let Him show you the way forward.  When all you have is God, He is enough.  When you feel your faith is weak because you can’t see or feel God in your life or the world around you, begin with “Incline your ear, O LORD, and answer me, for I am poor and needy,” and He will listen.

Learning Godly Fear

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Does being forgiven by God cause us to fear Him less, or to fear Him more?  Perhaps it’s both.

Psalm 130:4 tells us this about God: “But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared.”  To one way of thinking, this seems backwards: why does knowing that God has forgiven us make us fear Him more?  Shouldn’t we fear Him less when forgiven?  It depends on what we mean by fear.

For me, getting Psalm 130:4 to make sense with the order of forgiveness and fear required a re-thinking of repentance.  My conclusion was: the one who has not been forgiven has not repented, and the reason they did not repent was that they did not fear God.  They did not understand Him properly.  They might be afraid of God, but that’s not the kind of fear referred to in Psalm 130.

In contrast, the one who has been forgiven has repented, and they repented because they understood it was the best thing for them to do, out of a fearful respect for God.  A proper understanding of God’s character makes us turn to Him with our guilt, rather than run away from Him.  We should not be afraid of God, where we are motivated to be passive – avoiding mistakes that would anger the one we fear.  We should fear God in that we revere Him and respect His authority, and therefore actively seek to please Him.

A lot goes into repentance.  When we pray and ask for forgiveness, it’s often a simple prayer made with the proverbial faith of a child, but there are a lot of assumptions we make when we say that prayer.  Every prayer of repentance directly or indirectly acknowledges some or all of these things:

1) God as the source of the law, the ultimate arbiter of right and wrong
2) Him as the righteous judge who is personally offended by our sin
3) His omniscience, knowing we cannot hide our sin
4) His uniqueness, as there is no other God to turn to
5) His steadfast love for us, knowing He bore the cost of our sin, therefore enabling us to approach Him
6) His compassion for us, since He lived as a man
7) His power and willingness to heal us of sin
8) His consistency of character: that He is not arbitrary

If we don’t implicitly or explicitly believe these things, why would we repent and ask forgiveness from God?  Why would we expect to get it?  Exploring that set of statements could fill multiple volumes of theology books, but we don’t need that knowledge.  In His grace, He honors our simple, heartfelt confessions.  He paid the price for all our inadequacies – even when we don’t fully understand our own prayers or who we’re praying to.  The Spirit pleads with the Father on our behalf[1].  Mercifully, our forgiveness is based on His faithfulness to us, not on our detailed theological knowledge.  1 John 1:9 tells us: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

Even our faith is imperfect, but His faithfulness bridges the gap between our childlike faith and His omniscience.  He knows all our doubts and all their answers.  We come as we are, but with fearful respect, and are forgiven.

Only through acceptance of the cross, where Christ’s atoning blood was shed for us, can God in His Holiness commune with us.  Only through forgiveness will the Holy Spirit come and live in us.  Only by tasting of His goodness do we really know what He is like, not before.  And if we never repent, we don’t learn what it tastes like, we only know what you’ve been told about God, and we might not have been told the truth.

Psalm 130:4 shows us that genuine repentance leads to forgiveness and gives us a better appreciation of who God is.  As we experience Him more, we live Psalm 34:8 for ourselves:

“Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good!
                        Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!”

[1] Romans 8:26-27

A Prayer of Complaint: Psalm 64

Todd R 1 Comment

Do you ever just feel like complaining about the bad things and people in this world?  While we might hold back complaining to God, thinking He prefers ACTS prayers – focused on Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication – He is infinitely and steadfastly loving and patient, and will listen to whatever we have to say.  David shared Psalm 64 with us as an example.

Read how David begins the Psalm:

“Hear my voice, O God, in my complaint;
            preserve my life from dread of the enemy.”

Basically, David begins this Psalm by letting God know what’s coming: a series of complaints.  In the next verses, David complains about evil plots against him happening in secret, and those who can’t wait to ambush him.  David complains about how good evildoers are at what they do.  He writes:

“Hide me from the secret plots of the wicked,
            from the throng of evildoers,
who whet their tongues like swords,
            who aim bitter words like arrows,
shooting from ambush at the blameless,
            shooting at him suddenly and without fear.
They hold fast to their evil purpose;
            they talk of laying snares secretly,
thinking, ‘Who can see them?’
They search out injustice,
saying, ‘We have accomplished a diligent search.’
            For the inward mind and heart of a man are deep.”

By “diligent search” they have found every method available and used every skill they have to attack David, and the evildoers are impressed with their ability to be unjust and to attack “the blameless”, “shooting at him suddenly and without fear.”  A lot of time and effort has been put into these secret plots.

The blog’s mascot: Ebenezer, the “But God” squirrel.

How will David stand against such attacks?  He won’t, but God[1] will, as David continues in verses 7 through 9:

“But God shoots his arrow at them;
            they are wounded suddenly.
They are brought to ruin, with their own tongues turned against them;
            all who see them will wag their heads.
Then all mankind fears;
            they tell what God has brought about
            and ponder what he has done.”

The wicked, after much “diligent search,” gathered their “swords” and “arrows,” the words they would use to attack David and God’s people.  But because we have God, when we complain in prayer we don’t stop once our complaints have been aired – we continue with the “but God” part of the prayer, which comes with these three main implications:

  • First, that we need not respond in kind, because God needs only one arrow to bring them “suddenly” to ruin.  We are saved by His strength.
  • Second, we need not respond in degree – If our enemies are extraordinarily diligent or skilled in their plots, we do not need to match their effort, because it is God who takes care of us.  All the time and effort put in by the wicked in brought to nothing in a moment, and in that moment, “all mankind fears.”  We need not be intimidated.
  • And finally, any success of God’s enemies is temporary.  Someday He will resolve every complaint of injustice and silence every accusation against His people.

Therefore, as the Psalm ends:

“Let the righteous one rejoice in the LORD
            and take refuge in him!
Let all the upright in heart exult!”

Amen

[1] See the earlier posts Two Words That Might Save Your Soul and Meet Ebenezer, the Blog’s New Mascot, on the significance of Ebenezer the squirrel and the words “But God”

An Audience With Our King

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Do you ever feel like God wouldn’t listen to someone like you?  Who has done what you’ve done or thought what you’ve thought?  Or that He just doesn’t have time for you?  There’s an Old Testament story which shows that a good king, our King, is willing to listen to anybody.

This well-known story of King Solomon comes from 1 Kings 3, in two parts.  In the first part, Solomon asks God for wisdom to rule Israel instead of asking for “long life or riches or the life of your enemies,”[1]so God grants him wisdom, but also the riches and honor he didn’t ask for.  In the second part, an example is given of the wisdom God gave to Solomon.

This example comes in a story of two women who came to Solomon, both claiming that a newborn baby belongs to them.  One claims the other took their child after killing their own child by lying on him in her sleep.  The other claims the living child is their own.

Solomon’s judgement?  “Bring me a sword…Divide the living child in two, and give half to the one and half to the other.”[2]  Surprisingly, only one of the women objected to killing the baby, saying the other woman could take him.  Solomon announces that this woman must be the mother instead of the woman who just said, “He shall be neither mine nor yours; divide him.”[3]  In his wisdom, Solomon preserves this child’s life, gives justice to the mother, and demonstrated the great gift God had given Solomon and his people.

But there’s another important detail in this story.  These women were “two prostitutes,”[4] and therefore both babies were probably illegitimate.  There are many conclusions I could draw from this, but for now, just notice that King Solomon (surely a very, very busy king) found time to give audience to two prostitutes and provide justice between them.  He did not send them away because of who they are.

Our king Jesus is similar.  No matter who you are or what you’ve done, He will give you an audience.  You could be a prostitute, an unwanted child, or maybe you look like a model citizen, and God will listen to you, because the blood of Jesus shed on the cross covers all sins, not just some of them.

Anyone, really anyone, who sincerely comes to Him looking for wisdom and justice will find it in God’s kingdom.

“Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” – Hebrews 4:16

[1] 1 Kings 3:11
[2] 1 Kings 3:24-25
[3] 1 Kings 3:26
[4] 1 Kings 3:16

There Goes John Bradford (to Paradise): History for February 24

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Born in 1510, John Bradford was a rising Protestant minister during the reign of King Edward VI in England and was well known for his pious dedication and unselfish nature.  After studying at Cambridge and preaching regularly around London, he was appointed as Chaplain to the King in 1551.  The common expression “There but for the grace of God go I” is often attributed to him and was a reminder to himself that grace alone has saved him.  An 1822 book on prayer says that:

“The pious Martyr Bradford, when he saw a poor criminal led to execution, exclaimed, ‘there, but for the grace of God, goes John Bradford’. He knew that the same evil principles were in his own heart which had brought the criminal to that shameful end.”[1]

Bradford and others in the Tower of London, from John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs (1563). Public Domain.

His worldly fortunes changed in 1553 when the Catholic Mary I became Queen, and one of her first priorities was persecution of prominent Protestants.  Bradford was arrested within a month, imprisoned in the Tower of London, and sentenced to death.  While in the Tower, he wrote a letter to his mother on this date, February 24, in 1554, that included a powerful statement about prayer: God “doth put off our prayers, that he might recompense it with abundance, that is, that he might more plentifully pour upon us the effect of our petitions.” [2]  On July 1, Bradford was burned alive at the stake.

In another book on prayer, Donald McKim wrote about Bradford’s letter:
“We can imagine that no one would seek an answer to his prayers more ardently than Bradford while awaiting death. Yet he believed that even with no apparent answers to prayers, God plentifully pours abundance on those who pray!
At the end of his letter Bradford mentions God’s promise-which believers receive and anticipate, even in the midst of their sufferings and afflictions. Paul recorded the promise: “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Cor. 2:9) Plentiful abundance! Now and forever!”[3]

In John Bradford’s story, there is a terrible irony between two things he is known for – a common phrase and his martyrdom – but in the end, God is faithful, and I hope to meet Bradford someday in Paradise, where the grace of God has bought me a place.

[1] Bickersteth, Edward.  A Treatise on Prayer.  (1822).  Sourced from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bradford
[2] McKim, Donald K.  Everyday Prayer with the Reformers (2020).  P. 92.
[3] Ibid.