01.15.2023 - Prayer that Moves Us - The Prayer of Trust

Scripture: Psalm 40:1-11

Psalm 40:1–11 NRSV

1 I waited patiently for the Lord; he inclined to me and heard my cry. 2 He drew me up from the desolate pit, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure. 3 He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God. Many will see and fear, and put their trust in the Lord. 4 Happy are those who make the Lord their trust, who do not turn to the proud, to those who go astray after false gods. 5 You have multiplied, O Lord my God, your wondrous deeds and your thoughts toward us; none can compare with you. Were I to proclaim and tell of them, they would be more than can be counted. 6 Sacrifice and offering you do not desire, but you have given me an open ear. Burnt offering and sin offering you have not required. 7 Then I said, “Here I am; in the scroll of the book it is written of me. 8 I delight to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart.” 9 I have told the glad news of deliverance in the great congregation; see, I have not restrained my lips, as you know, O Lord. 10 I have not hidden your saving help within my heart, I have spoken of your faithfulness and your salvation; I have not concealed your steadfast love and your faithfulness from the great congregation. 11 Do not, O Lord, withhold your mercy from me; let your steadfast love and your faithfulness keep me safe forever.

Inherited Prayers

Last Sunday, we prayed a covenant prayer together and committed to listening to and following God faithfully this year. Would you hear those words once more?

I am no longer my own, but thine.

Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt.

Put me to doing, put me to suffering.

Let me be employed for thee or laid aside for thee, exalted for thee or brought low for thee.

Let me be full, let me be empty.

Let me have all things, let me have nothing.

I freely and heartily yield all things to thy pleasure and disposal. And now, O glorious and blessed God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,

thou art mine, and I am thine. So be it.

And the covenant which I have made on earth, let it be ratified in heaven.

Amen.

Those are old words shared from generation to generation to give a shared faith to the next generation. Sometimes we look at ancient prayers like this as anchors that keep us from moving forward, and we question their worth. It is true. Sometimes, they act as anchors holding us in a particular place. However, they are simple to eliminate. All we have to do is stop teaching them. We don’t even have to stop saying them. If we stop teaching them, our children will stop saying them, and our grandchildren will never even know them.

Most of the hymns from the 1600s are gone, which is impressive because J.S. Bach wrote new ones for his church every Sunday. I only know one hymn older than that, and its music was adapted to a more modern tune in the 1800s. In the 2000 years that the church has existed, most prayers and praises have evaporated into the winds of time. It is a miracle that things like the Apostle’s Creed and the Lord’s Prayer exist after all these centuries. Our entire book of Psalms could have been left in the dust were it not for those who faithfully copied them down over thousands of years so that we might know the love of God through the prayers of those who went before us.

Sometimes we are lost and need anchoring prayer words like these to help us get back to safety. As we grow in our faith, though, we often find ways to put these prayers into our own words, into our faith. We may invite others to pray with us. As we grow and pray, we can write those prayers down, line them up beside our ancient anchors of faith, and see pretty clearly which aspects of faith we have expanded upon and which ones we have neglected. Even the prayers we memorize grow our faith over time. Pam and I discussed how Sunday School curriculums sometimes involve sign language or symbols that allow toddlers to learn the Lord’s Prayer with their hands before speaking it with their mouths. As they learn to understand more of the words, it brings new life to a prayer they have been praying for as long as they can remember. Those anchors are not places of restriction. They are home.

Some of the best prayers shared with us help us find our home in Christ. Whether we pray out loud or silently in our hearts, our prayers demonstrate our faith in God.

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Saved

Our Psalm today is a Prayer of Trust and comes with a story. David says he waited patiently upon God, so we know God’s response was not immediate. But neither was it unloving. David was far enough from God that God had to incline, or come toward David to better hear his cry. Bear in mind here this is poetic language. David is describing the experience of God coming near to him as best and beautifully as he can. David was caught in a situation like quicksand, where the more he fought, the faster he sank. So God comes near and hears him. He does not leave David in distress but picks him up as if out of a miry bog and puts him on solid ground.

So David was moved by God, who heard his prayer, from a place of sinking death to a place where he could stand on his own two feet. In gratitude for this rescue, for this salvation, David says God gave him a song of praise to sing, and that others would see him and hear his song and story, and they too would see God, fear (or revere) Him, and put their trust in Him.

David trusted in God enough to wait for God to rescue Him, and the rescue reinforced his trust and encouraged him to share that faith with others. Marketers today might call this a testimonial - a personal experience used as a selling point to others. But that is different from what David wrote about. He knew God had already done great things for all the people around Him, and instead of drawing them into His own story, He invited them to look to see the uncountable number of ways God had worked in each of their lives, to rescue and lift them up as well.

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Trusting

It takes a measure of trust to ask for help. But David responded to that rescue with even more faith. Not only did he offer to sing God’s praise, but he also promised to live a life of obedience. Like we did last Sunday, he committed to God to let God lead His life. David trusted God enough to get him out of David’s own mess, so he trusted that God could lead him and keep him out of messes from that day forward.

It is not a metaphor when we speak about a loving relationship with God. God wants us to trust Him unconditionally. He wants us to love Him more than we love ourselves, and we can only do that when we believe He will love us better than we can love ourselves.

How have you experienced that kind of love from God?

(pause)

When we experience God’s love and power in our lives: the ways He rescues us from the places we cannot escape and provides for us when we can’t make it on our own, God invites us to trust Him more.

Most people today can only name some of the Ten Commandments and may have yet to read the rest of the commandments of the Old Testament. Most of us cannot recite more than the summary of commandments Jesus gave us in the Gospels. There is a good reason for this. We are not spiritual lawyers. We do not live by the law. The Apostle Paul, a spiritual lawyer before he met Jesus, wrote that the law was made to show our need for God and guide us to Christ. The Law, without Jesus, are guidelines that will let you know there is a straight and narrow path to walk, but it won’t help you to walk it. We cannot walk that path on our own.

That is what David realized when He encountered God. He could not live this life on HIs own. He needed help to follow the Law, and he needed God to show Him how to live a life of righteousness that went above and beyond it, to become the man after God’s own heart.

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Sharing

Sharing is how we move beyond the Law and begin to live in the love of God. When we trust God enough to share Him with others and lead them into a relationship with Jesus, we move into a new level of trust.

That probably makes many of you nervous. If you are like me, you never saw yourself speaking in front of others before you knew Jesus. You never thought you would have anything spiritual to offer people you barely knew. You thought you were fortunate to be forgiven of your sins and hoped to make it through the rest of this life without causing too much damage. That was enough for us.

But God sees more in us, and that prayer of trust leads us to share whatever we have from God with others. David did not start as a warrior king. He began as a young boy trying to decide whether to protect his father’s sheep from a bear or to run for his life. He chose to ask for God’s help, and God saved him and the sheep. Then he faced Goliath and prayed a similar prayer of faith. Then He confronted King Saul. Then, the Philistine army, followed by every other surrounding army.

Finally, near the end of his life, David faced himself. He had forgotten who saved and carried him through every battle and let his blessings go to his head. As a result, David led more people into a trusting relationship with God as a young shepherd boy than he did at the height of his political power. He could only share the trust that he had in God at that moment.

Trust is unusual because we do not lose it when we share it. It invites a mutual response, and it grows between us and God the more we share it. While the end goal is to trust Jesus as His disciple and grow to become a disciple-maker that can bring others to Christ as well, the sharing of our faith does not start with others. It begins between God and ourselves.

What would you say if you were to pray today and tell God what you think and feel about Him? Do you have specific things you know God has done for you that you mention in gratitude? Are there things you feel called to commit to doing because God has given you the ability to do them? Are there people in your life whom you want God’s help to love the way He loves you? How do you need God to help you?

All the prayers shared with us throughout history are an invitation to grow in your relationship with Christ. What words can you pray from your heart and then share with those around you?

Sunday School starts in a moment, and you are invited to come back this evening at 6 pm for our evening service, where Gus Lavin will be sharing with us.