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.

Psalm 86:5-7 – Prayer and Our God

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

⁵Because You, Adonai, [are] good and forgiving and abounding [in] love to all ones calling on You. ⁶Hear, LORD, my prayer and be attentive in the voice of my request for favor. ⁷In the day of my distress I will call to You, because You will answer me.

Some miscellaneous notes: In verse 5, as in verses 3 and 4, David refers to the Lord as Adonai. This is the name that actually gets translated in the OT as “Lord” as opposed to the name Yahveh (YHVH, Jehovah) which gets translated “LORD.” Adonai means literally “master.” I’ve always loved this name Adonai, Master. One old commentator once noted (since he still lived in the days of slavery) that one could see a group of servants and they were all well dressed, healthy, and cheerful, then see another group that was shabbily dressed, sickly, and bedraggled. What was the difference? Their master.  The Lord is my Master – and I’m one of those well-cared for, loved servants. “The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not lack.”

Interesting too, in verse 5, the word for forgiving is a word only used of God. That makes me think of Isa 55:7-8, “Let the wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts. Let him turn to the Lord, and He will have mercy on him, and to our God, for He will freely pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, declares the Lord.” Only God forgives like He forgives. True believers long to forgive like He does but it is ever an effort of faith. God forgives because He is forgiving. Unlike us, it is His nature.

… Which leads me to probably my major thought rising from these verses, which is to marvel at Who God is. I remember noticing many years ago that prayer is a very doctrinal business, a very theological business. What I mean is, I realized that practically every doctrine we study, every point of theology all coalesces in the business of prayer. Prayer is all about Who God is. Spurgeon said, “Prayer itself derives from the nature of God.” David says, joining verses 4 and 5, “… I lift up my soul to You, because You Lord are good and forgiving and abounding in love to all who call upon You.” We could pause here and spend weeks studying the goodness of God, then the forgiveness of God, then His love, then the very fact that He allows people to call on Him. Such a study could only make us better pray-ers. Spurgeon was right, “Prayer itself derives from the nature of God.”

We can pray because of Who God is. To know Him better can only be to pray to Him more.

One commentator suggested that people must not be pray-ers who can study theology and turn it up dry and uninteresting. The very act of prayer makes theology live. Our prayers will be “good” prayers only to the extent we understand our theology, or should I say to the extent we truly know God. To know Him better can only make us to pray more.

The Psalm before us is case in point. David is coming to God in a time of distress. He himself is confident he can lift up his soul to the Lord, because He is “good and forgiving and abounding in love”. In the ancient world, many of the people’s gods were not good. Many of the ancient gods were fickle and vindictive and even sometimes sinister. But we need have no such worry. Our God is good. Every fiber of His being is good. He is all goodness. And we can go to Him in prayer with confidence because of that absolutely faithful goodness. It is sad to hear believers talk about God as if He were fickle or capricious. Such thoughts only reveal that person’s immaturity. But thankfully they can grow out of such thoughts because the God to Whom they pray is good. The more they know Him the more they themselves will find Him good. Because He is.

But, as Spurgeon also said, “It were not enough for God to be good in general, did He not also extend to sinners His forgiving mercy …” He is good and forgiving. Once again, David can go to God in his distress confidently because our God is forgiving. Perceived guilt is one of the great hindrances to prayer during times of distress. I have heard people weeping in deep distress say things like, “I don’t know if God will hear me because of …” Once again, it is a matter of knowing God. Perhaps I have unconfessed sin in my life. Perhaps I really do. But how hard is confession? I only need to own my sin and ask His forgiveness. And He is forgiving. But what if the problem is not any particular sin but simply my sinfulness? I can still go to Him confidently because He is forgiving. The entire plan of redemption and the Cross are driven by the forgiveness of God. God longs to have relationships with His creation. He is forgiving. So He Himself made a way that a fallen creation could be forgiven. Then He Himself says, “… since we have a great High Priest, Jesus, … let us, therefore, come boldly unto the throne of grace to obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Heb 4:14-16). Prayer is possible for us misfits because our God is forgiving!

And He abounds in love to all who call on Him. Abounds. He abounds in love to all who call on Him. I dare say we cannot ponder enough the love of God. The more one truly knows God the more and more we stand amazed at this incomprehensible love. Oh the depth and the height and the length and the breadth of the love of Christ, which passes knowledge! I love Zeph 3:17: “The Lord your God is with you, He is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, He will quiet you with His love, He will rejoice over you with singing.” The more we believe this, how can it not draw us more constantly into prayer?

As Spurgeon said, “Prayer itself derives from the nature of God.” … and what a nature that is! To know Him more is only to wonder more, to love Him more, and to find more and more that He fills all of our minds all of the time.

Psalm 86:3,4 – Pondering Joy

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

³Be gracious to me, Adonai, because to You I call all the day. ⁴Gladden the soul of Your servant because to You, Adonai, I lift up my soul.

Practically every word or phrase in these two verses is loaded with instruction and encouragement. But for me personally, what stands out is the reference here to joy. David says in verse 4, “Gladden the soul of Your servant.” The Hebrew word I’ve translated “gladden” is a root word that means literally “to brighten” or even “to lift up.” It can be translated “Give joy.” David is asking the Lord to give him joy in the midst of whatever he is facing.

Joy. An interesting subject. “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace …” I noticed several years ago that I could read through the list of the fruits of the Spirit and feel I definitely know the presence of each one in my Christian life … except joy. I feel I’ve learned very little of real Holy Spirit joy. I certainly know what it is to be happy, to have happy (even joyful) things in my life. I know what joy is specifically when I’m thinking about God, about His love for me, His gracious oversight of my life, etc. But I feel those are like fleeting glimpses compared to the real thing. I know that real joy is something much deeper than that. And I just haven’t felt I knew much about it.

I have compared it to the man standing in the Wal-Mart parking lot with three fingers slammed shut in his car door … which unfortunately is also locked. As he stands there in pain, one could ask, “Are you thankful for the beautiful sunshine today?” “Are you thankful you have a wife and three wonderful children?” “Are you thankful you have a job?” He could answer yes to each of those questions. “So would you describe yourself as a joyful man?”  “What do you mean joyful?” he asks, “IT HURTS!!”

That is where my enigma has entered. How can I be “joyful” when life is so full of pain? Do I have things that make me joyful? Yes. Do I find joy in the Lord? Yes. But I also have a lot of pain that never seems to let up. This world is truly a “Valley of Bacah.” So how does one have Holy Spirit joy in the middle of it all? At this point, one can throw out pat answers and clichés, but I’m talking about being real. Really. How can I actually really have some kind of on-going, underlying Holy Spirit joy even while the fingers of my life are pinched in the door?

The first time I began to glimpse the answer to my question was the first time I realized that Peter walked on the water in a storm. Peter experienced that miracle in a storm they all thought would drown them. He walked on the water in the storm as long as he kept his eyes on Jesus. But it was in the storm. While we’re in the storms – while our fingers are pinched in the door – like Peter, we have to keep our eyes on Jesus. We have to prayerfully, sincerely try to never let up seeing Him in the storm with us, see His sovereign hand over it, see His great eternal purposes in it, embrace His love even in it. Then I find there is in fact a supernatural strength, even a joy in that storm, in that pain.

 I feel like I’m barely touching this truth. My soul grasps it feebly. And yet it is there. And I believe it really is Holy Spirit joy – the fruit of the Spirit. Not just the fleeting joy of happy circumstances but a joy that lives and breathes even as I’m dying, even as the pain of life seems unbearable. I feel what I need is just more “practice,” more time deliberately spent sincerely trying to keep my focus, to keep my gaze fixed on Jesus, to be seeing Him even in the storms. I don’t like the fact that this means I need more storms to practice in (!). I don’t want any more storms. I don’t want any more pain. But then again, I do want to see Jesus in the storm. I want to walk on the water with Him. And that takes storms. I’m glad in His own trials, He prayed, “Not my will, but Thine be done.” I’m not asking for pain, but I am asking for the strength and grace to learn a joy that really is above circumstances, good or bad. “Bring joy to Your servant, Adonai, for I lift up my soul to You.”

Another thought before I stop: as I pointed out above, the Hebrew word means literally “to brighten” or even “to lift up.” That’s really what joy is. From within one’s soul, joy is a brightening, a lifting up. The opposite is of course “to darken” and “to push down.” The natural effect of pain and trouble is to darken our lives, to push us down, even to crush us. And we all have plenty of that. I think this is why it has to be Holy Spirit joy. It can’t just be happy circumstances. Those are great but they don’t help when suddenly something else darkens my world and knocks me down. Something supernatural has to happen for me to be brightened though my world goes dark, to feel “lifted up” while troubles are crushing me down. And what is that something? It is essentially faith. Faith practiced. Faith applied. Standing on the promises. Seeing Jesus, truly seeing Him, in the storm. I’m thinking it helps to know exactly what is this Holy Spirit joy, what exactly it is that I might experience – and this is what it is – a brightening or a lifting up of my heart at all times, good or seemingly bad.

And finally, knowing this, it is interesting that David asks the Lord to brighten his world, to lift him up. We want God to do that for us. But shouldn’t we do that for others? Wouldn’t it make a great goal to actually seek opportunities all through our day to deliberately “brighten” someone else’s world? We can’t give them Holy Spirit joy, but still we can sincerely try not to be a dark cloud, try to be a brightening presence – by saying things to brighten someone else’s day, to do something that “lifts” their spirit. Only God Himself can give Holy Spirit joy, but I am thinking that, while I try to let Him do that in my life, I should be constantly aware of how much it means to me, then try in my own feeble way to do the same for others. “An anxious heart weighs a man down, but a kind word cheers him up” (Prov 12:25). “A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones” (Prov 17:22).

Joy is a good thing. Our worlds could all use a whole lot more of it.

Psalm 86:1,2 – Blessed Assurance

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

¹A Prayer of David.

Extend Your ear, LORD; answer me, because I [am] miserable (afflicted) and needy (in dire straits). ²Keep close watch over my soul because I [am] a loved one [of You]. You, my God, deliver Your servant, one trusting recklessly in You.

Lots of things cross my mind as I’ve pondered these verses.

First of all, I have to pause and ponder the unspeakable blessing of who our God is. In verse 15, David will say, “But you, Lord, are a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.”    How can I be anything but eternally grateful that my God is not a stern heartless cruel king? He could be. Too many people thing He is. Too many people teach such that is what people think He is like. But the true God is “compassionate and gracious.” He said so Himself in Exodus 34:6,7, “The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, …”

David, like us, finds himself “miserable and needy.” How can I ever thank God enough, that in those times, I can call to Him, “Incline Your ear, O LORD, hear me …” in the assurance He actually cares?? Hmmmm. “Love divine, all loves excelling.” Blessed assurance!

I like the metaphor “extend your ear, LORD.” We could translate it, “Incline Your ear” but I chose “extend” because that is the basic meaning of the Hebrew word. Think about it. So often, when someone actually cares, when they actually want to hear what you’re saying, they “incline their ear” toward you. It’s probably rarely something we do consciously, but when we do it, we are in fact communicating to a person that what they are saying is important to us. So, drawing from this human inclination, David asks God to do the same thing, “Extend Your ear.” Isn’t it amazing that we could even dream the God of the Universe, while He keeps the galaxies spinning, would incline His ear to us when we call? How amazing to find such tenderness in The Infinite?

David asks God for this gracious favor because he is “miserable (afflicted) and needy (in dire straits).” I chose to offer some explanation in parenthesis because it is hard to communicate in English the Hebrew word pictures. The first word pictures someone actually being afflicted in some way with the attending sense of misery. The second speaks of someone lacking some necessity, as someone facing bills with nothing to pay them. If you pause and ponder on those pictures, you’ll realize they overlap to a large extent, though their root meanings differ. They both speak of the whole problem of human miseries, whatever their source.

We all know what it is to be miserable and needy. Again, what an inestimable blessing, that in those times we can call out to God!

It is a good thing to know I’m needy. It is a good thing to be in dire straits if they draw our hearts toward God. No one wants to suffer (definitely including me!) but it is sadly true that is often what it takes for us humans to seek our God. Then, in our misery and needs, let us in fact “come boldly before the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need!”

In verse 2, David implores the Lord to “guard” his soul. The word mean to “keep a close watch over” something, and thus to guard, keep, protect. We live our lives in a world of mortal physical and spiritual dangers. May in fact God be the guard over our souls!

He then says literally, “because I [am] a hassid.” Hassid comes from the word for love, hesed. If one consults commentaries and lexicons, this is one of those words that gets a few hundred translations, varying from “loved one” to “devoted,” to “holy,” to “godly,” and a whole host of others. I think this is just another case where there simply is no English word suitable to translate all the color and meaning of the Hebrew “hassid.” The root idea definitely seems to me to be the love relationship between two persons, which then easily morphs into “devoted” as in a marriage, which then easily morphs into “holy” or “godly” in one’s relationship with God. But still I think the root idea is that strong love relationship. David is asking God to guard his soul because of the relationship the two enjoy. Of course, the Lord would want to guard and protect him. He loves him.

Finally, I love the last line, “You, my God, deliver Your servant, one trusting recklessly in You.” English translations usually just say “trust” but I like to add the “recklessly” since that is the meaning of the Hebrew verb “batach.” It is not only “to trust” but actually to cast your soul, your life, your hope, your future on God.

Salvation itself begins when we literally hang our eternal souls on the nail of God’s promise, goodness, and love in Christ. We literally entrust to Him the difference between an eternity in Heaven or hell. But that kind of reckless trust doesn’t stop there. It is the very blood that runs in a true believer’s veins.

And, if I may bring this all full circle, we can in fact confidently and recklessly cast our hope on the God of the Bible, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, because He is a God of love, compassion, mercy, and faithfulness. It’s just who He is … praise His name!

“Nothing is more suitable to the nature of God than to succour the afflicted: and the more severely anyone is oppressed, and the more destitute he is of the resources of human aid, the more inclined is God graciously to help him.” (John Calvin)