Psalm 86:8-10 – Prayer and Our God – 2

As usual, here is my fairly literal translation of these verses:

⁸[There] is none like You among [the] gods, Adonai, and none like Your doings. ⁹All [the] Gentiles which You have made will come and bow down to Your face, Adonai, and honor Your name, ¹⁰ because You [are] great and doing amazing things. You [are] God alone.

As I study these verses, it strikes me that really the Psalm consists of requests in vv. 1-5, which then pick up again in verse 14, while the section from verse 6 through 13 is basically a study in the Doctrine of God.

These words may sound threateningly dry, “a study in the Doctrine of God,” but as I noted in the last post, as Spurgeon says, “Prayer itself derives from the nature of God.” Certainly the youngest child or the most uninformed adult can cry out to God in their distress, but how much better to actually know Him. How much better, like David, to be able to frame our praying, even our cries, upon a sure knowledge of this God with Whom we have to do.

Many years ago, I noticed in the Psalms how the writers, mingled with their requests, often pause to rehearse in their minds just who God is. It was clear to me this is an excellent practice. It is essentially worship but it necessarily gives a supernatural strength to those prayers. When I come to pray, I am so often nearly overcome with the griefs and pains of life, like David when he prayed, “The enemy pursues me, he crushes me to the ground; he makes me dwell in darkness, like those long dead” (Ps. 143:3). I can simply rehearse all my sorrows to God and beg His deliverance – and walk away not encouraged at all.  But if I will stop myself and ponder on the person of this God to Whom I cry, I find my heart lifting, the despair lightening, and even a strength (and even a wee little bit of joy) arising in my trembling heart.

What David does here in this Psalm is case-in-point. In verse 1 he opened with, “Extend Your ear, LORD; answer me, because I [am] miserable (afflicted) and needy (in dire straits)”. Later in verse 14 he will say, “The arrogant are attacking me, O God; a band of ruthless men seeks my life …” How could anyone find encouragement in such a situation? That is exactly my point. David’s encouragement doesn’t come from the simple fact that he prayed, that he told God his troubles. His encouragement comes from the truths of verses 5 through 13 – the Person of God.

In verse 5, he rehearsed that the Lord is good, forgiving, and abounding in love to all who call on Him. As I wrote in the last post, each of those truths is a jewel of strength and encouragement even in the midst of our storms. But David goes on now in verses 8-10. In a sense verses 5-7 established that God is good – which is a good thing. But I think verses 8-10 establish that He is great. To truly be encouraged, one needs to be assured of both! We must be assured that our God is both great and good! What comfort would there be to know our God is good if He were not great, if He somehow lacked the power to actually deliver us? On the other hand, what a scary world it would be if our God were great but not necessarily good??? I have known times when it seemed my dying breath was to remember that “all things work together for good.” And why is that so absolutely true? Because God is good. And I can be assured it will “work together” for good because God is great. “He can work it out” we remind ourselves.

Go back and read verses 8-10 again. All over the world, the “nations” and peoples have embraced gods of all sorts of names. But there is none that even compares to our God. “There is none like You.” How unlike satan, who said, “I will be like the Most High!” But how like the archangel Michael, whose very name means “Who [is] like God?” (Mi-cha-El?). In fact, our God is so great, that although the nations worship a pantheon of their fabricated gods, the day will come when all will recognize their folly and come to worship at the throne of our great God. He alone is God.

We can pray, we can be encouraged in prayer, we can emerge from those prayers actually helped and encouraged and strengthened because of Who God is. But it requires that we, like David, pause in our tears to deliberately rehearse in our minds the greatness and goodness of our God, to ponder His love, His forgiveness, His power, His wisdom. Only in the light of Who He is, can we find the strength and the joy to face another day with hope.

One final thought is – I hope the more I know such a God as this, the more I enjoy the blessings of His love, the more it will make me like Him toward the people around me. I can come to Him assured I’ll find Him good and forgiving and abounding in love when I call to Him. I hope my children always felt free to climb in their Daddy’s lap assured they would find me good and forgiving and abounding in love toward them. I hope my wife finds me that way, and the people I work with. The world is a hard, cold place. But, as we would know this great and good God, as we would treasure the love of our Christ Who died for us and rose again, as we would come again and again to Him in our prayers and find Him embracing us, may we more and more be made in His image.