Monday, January 29, 2018

Can You Hear Me Now?

Monday, January 29, 2018
O Lord, oppose those who oppose me.  Fight those who fight against me.  Put on your armor, and take up your shield.  Prepare for battle, and come to my aid.  Lift up your spear and javelin against those who pursue me.  Let me hear you say, “I will give you victory!”  Bring shame and disgrace on those trying to kill me; turn them back and humiliate those who want to harm me.  Blow them away like chaff in the wind—a wind sent by the angel of the Lord.  Make their path dark and slippery, with the angel of the Lord pursuing them.  I did them no wrong, but they laid a trap for me.  I did them no wrong, but they dug a pit to catch me.  So let sudden ruin come upon them!  Let them be caught in the trap they set for me!  Let them be destroyed in the pit they dug for me.  Then I will rejoice in the Lord.  I will be glad because he rescues me.  With every bone in my body I will praise him:  “Lord, who can compare with you?  Who else rescues the helpless from the strong?  Who else protects the helpless and poor from those who rob them?” Psalm 35:1-10(NLT)
Have you ever shifted between two extremes, one being:  you are totally alone and different than everyone else on the planet…and the second:  you’re in the same boat as every other member of the human family…struggling with no help at all? 
Either of these extremes can identify with David.  The shepherd boy would become king looked at his life and screamed:  It’s not fair!  Now, before you write him off as a whiney, complaining brat, remember that God called David a man after his own heart[2].  David was praying with hard fought integrity. 
Many of the Psalms written by David are heart-searching prayers as he lays his life open, crying-out to God.  And in not just a few of those prayers David asks the LORD to conquer or obliterate his enemy.  If you check out Psalm 109 you find 31 verses of David complaining to the Lord that people want his children to be fatherless and suffer; as David prays he turns all the evil plots of his enemies right back on their heads, asking God to take-them-out with as much vengeance as possible.  Like this Psalm David seems fond of asking God to let his enemies fall in the pit they dug for him; it’s a kind of Golden Rule in reverse!  This is not your Grandma’s now I lay me down to sleep kind of prayer!
But it occurs to me that God would probably rather have me grapple with the hard stuff of life, rather than rattle off a memorized, safe little prayer ditty.  The hard stuff comes out when you pray for success on your job when you’ve been lazy and not giving your boss a full day’s work.  You pray to pass a test in school, but you partied into the night instead of studying.  The hard stuff comes out when you pray for protection and you’ve ignored the weak and powerless you could have easily helped.  That hard stuff makes you swallow hard when you want to be healed, but you won’t even try to give up that habit.
Prayer is exactly what you see in David’s repertoire, laying out before God who you are and what you think you’ve been, and what you think God can do to set the whole situation right; then you cease talking and start listening, waiting, and watching for what God will do.  The answers aren’t always pretty, but they’re always on-time and worthwhile when it comes to making a person after God’s own heart out of you. 

For You Today

If you want Heaven to remain silent, just go on using someone else’s prayer ditty; prayer that won’t grow and strengthen you is safe and won’t change a thing.
You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road…have a blessed day!

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[1] Title Image Courtesy of Pixabay.com
[2] Acts 13:22

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