God's Presence in Prayer

NOTE:

This is a manuscript, and not a transcript of this message. The actual presentation of the message differed from the manuscript through the leading of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, it is possible, and even likely that there is material in this manuscript that was not included in the live presentation and that there was additional material in the live presentation that is not included in this manuscript.

Engagement

I want to begin this morning with a couple questions:

Why do you pray?

When you pray, what do you usually pray for?

Over the years there have been a number of surveys that have asked Americans to answer those two questions. And the results are rather interesting.

Not surprisingly most prayers are personal. They are focused on family and friends and on our own personal problems and needs.

But a significant number of people also pray for things like finding a parking spot, to avoid being caught when they speed, or even for their co-workers to get fired.

One survey found that 13% of people have prayed for their favorite sports team to win, especially for big events like the World Series or the Super Bowl. I’ve always wondered how people think that is going to work given that there are probably just as many people praying for their opponent.

That same survey also found that 21% of Americans admit that they have prayed to win the lottery. For some reason that seems to be a prayer God doesn’t answer very often.

Tension

The passage that we’re going to look at this morning is probably going to be a real eye-opener for many of us, and I’m including myself here, because its shows us that our prayer lives can easily draw us away from the main purpose of prayer.

Truth

Keep that in mind as you turn to today’s passage - Psalm 63.

Before I read the first 8 verses, let me give you a little background.

You will notice the superscription indicates that this is a Psalm of David that he wrote when he was in the wilderness of Judah. It was most likely written when King David was forced to flee from Jerusalem because his son, Absalom, had conspired with others in leadership to take David’s throne by force. With only a small group of loyal men accompanying him and his son plotting his death, David was at one of the lowest points in his life. But in the middle of his suffering, David wrote this great Psalm.

Keep that in mind as you follow along while I read the first 8 verses of this Psalm.

Psalm 63:1–8 ESV

1 O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. 2 So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory. 3 Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you. 4 So I will bless you as long as I live; in your name I will lift up my hands. 5 My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food, and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips, 6 when I remember you upon my bed, and meditate on you in the watches of the night; 7 for you have been my help, and in the shadow of your wings I will sing for joy. 8 My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me.

I’m going to enlist your help in identifying the main idea in this passage. The first thing I want you to do is to skim through this passage and see if you can tell me the word that appears most often. If I counted correctly, it’s there 17 times.

That’s right - it is the word - okay actually it’s two different but related words - you and your. Or if you’re using the KJV, it would be thee and thou. So would you agree that it would be fair to say that the focus of David’s prayer here is God Himself?

But what if I were to point out that that David also uses the words I, me, and my 17 times, too. Does that mean that David is focused just as much on himself as he is on God? I think when we see how David uses those personal pronouns, it is obvious right away that is not the case at all. David is merely using those personal pronouns to describe how he is going to respond to God in worship. He is going to praise God, remember Him, meditate on Him, sing to Him and even lift up his hands to God.

What may be just as important as what David does pray here is what he doesn’t:

He doesn’t ask God to restore him to power.

He doesn’t ask God to deal with Absalom

He doesn’t ask God for food or water even though he is in the middle of the desert.

He doesn’t even ask God to protect him or to spare his life.

So given just what we’ve seen so far in this beautiful prayer of David, I think we are ready to develop our main idea this morning:

At its best, prayer longs for God’s presence more than His presents.

Before we go any further here, I want to be very clear. I am not saying that it is wrong to ask God for His gifts. There are certainly other Psalms where David does ask for all the things I just mentioned.

It’s not wrong for us to pray for our family and friends or for our own problems and needs. In fact, the Bible makes it clear we are to do that. Now we probably ought to draw the line when it comes to praying for our favorite sports teams or praying to win the lottery, but most of us probably ought to pray about a lot more things.

Unfortunately, a lot of people, even disciples of Jesus, view prayer primarily as a means to get God to do something for them or give them something. And it is undoubtedly true that, in a way that none of us, including me, completely understand, prayer can and does change things in this world. God does often act in response to our prayers. There are just too many examples in the Bible to dispute that.

However, if we take a look at the totality of Scripture we find that praying is not so much about changing God as it is about changing me. When I pray I am acknowledging that God is powerful and sovereign and if I pray the way David prays here, my prayers often result in me aligning my life with who God is and His purposes plans and ways for me rather than as a means to get something from Him.

Application

So let’s see what we can learn from this passage about...

HOW SEEK GOD’S PRESENCE IN PRAYER

Be submitted

The very first phrase in this Psalm is probably the most important:

O God, you are my God...

The English translation doesn’t really fully express what David is saying here. The first “God” is the Hebrew word Elohim. It is a plural noun that can either refer to the God of the Bible or be used as the generic term for any god (lower case g). Context determines which is meant.

But when David writes “my God” he uses the Hebrew word “El”, which is a singular noun. So essentially what David is saying is something like this:

Out of all the possible gods out there, you and you alone are my only God.

To David, the Lord is not just a god, He is David’s personal God. He is not just a convenient addition to David’s life, He has become an all consuming addiction.

So even in the midst of the desert, fleeing for his life, David has a burning desire to seek God, not for what God can give him, but just because he desires God more than anything else in life. In verse 1, he expresses that desire for God with three parallel thoughts:

...earnestly I seek you...

I’m going to come back to this is a moment because there is an aspect to this request that doesn’t come through real clearly in the ESV translation I’m using.

...my soul thirsts for you...

...my flesh faints for you...

There is no doubt that David and his men are tired, hungry, and thirsty in that desert. But David isn’t nearly as concerned about that as he is with being close to God. So he is seeking after God with all that he is.

Perhaps he is thinking back to this command that Moses had given to God’s people about 400 years earlier:

Deuteronomy 6:5 ESV

5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

Do you long for God like that? Do you seek after Him with all of heart, soul and might? Obviously even the best of us do that imperfectly, but it’s not possible to do that at all unless you can say, like David, that God is “your God” - your personal God. And the Bible is clear that the only way we can do that is by submitting our life to God through faith in Jesus alone.

The words of Jesus make it clear that is the only way I can make God “my God”.

John 14:6 ESV

6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

The Bible declares that at the very moment we put our faith in Jesus, we become children of God. And just like a young child delights in his earthly parents, once we become children of God we will naturally begin to desire Him more and more. But because we are sinful humans who get easily distracted, we don’t always do that well, which is why we need to take the next two steps.

Be steadfast

Let’s go back to the phrase we looked at a moment ago:

...earnestly I seek you...

In Hebrew the phrase “earnestly I seek” is just one word. That word is derived from a word that references the early dawn. That is why the KJV translates that phrase:

...early will I seek thee...

The idea here is that David would seek God the very first thing in the morning. He would seek God before anything else could distract him from God’s purposes, plans and ways for his life. He wanted to make sure that at the beginning of each day his focus was on God alone.

That idea is “bookended” with verse 6:

Psalm 63:6 ESV

6 when I remember you upon my bed, and meditate on you in the watches of the night;

Not only did David begin his day by seeking God, he ended it by remembering what God had done in his life and meditating on who He is.

The idea here is that David was constantly seeking God throughout his day, from the moment that he woke up until he fell asleep at night. This is an idea that we also find in the writings of Paul in the New Testament:

1 Thessalonians 5:17 ESV

17 pray without ceasing,

Paul wasn’t suggesting that we have to be down on our knees with our heads bowed all day. He certainly never did that. But what he is exhorting us to do is to continually seek out God throughout the day. I love how that idea is expressed in a song that we sing frequently here at TFC - Goodness of God:

From the moment that I wake up Until I lay my head Oh, I will sing of the goodness of God

The idea is that throughout the day we should maintain a mindset of prayer - one in which we are constantly seeking God. One of the ways that David did that was to remember how God had worked in his life before and letting that lead him to trust in God in whatever situation he was in at the moment. I think that is something we are all capable of doing.

Be satisfied

Throughout this Psalm we see that David was satisfied with God alone. He didn’t need God to give him His gifts in order to be satisfied. We especially see that idea expressed in verse 3:

Psalm 63:3 ESV

3 Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you.

Because it is so important I want to take a moment to talk about the idea of God’s “steadfast love”. That is how the ESV usually translates the underlying Hebrew word - hesed. In the KJV, it is usually translated “lovingkindness”. That Hebrew word is one of those words that is almost impossible to translate into English with just one or two words.

Hesed is found over 250 times in the Old Testament and it expresses an essential part of God’s character. It is not merely an emotion, but rather a deep sense of love and loyalty that lead to merciful and compassionate action towards one who is in need.

We see here that David considered that aspect of God’s character to be better than anything else he could receive from God in this life. That is why he was completely satisfied with God’s presence regardless of whether he received God’s presents.

We see this idea of satisfaction with God Himself expressed again in verse 5:

Psalm 63:5 ESV

5 My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food, and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips,

When David sought God with all of who he was, that satisfied his soul in the same way that a nice fat ribeye steak, cooked medium rare over a mesquite fire satisfies our physical hunger.

Many times we think that certain people or possessions or accomplishments are going to make us happy. We think that getting married or getting a promotion or raise at work or buying a bigger house or a faster car will bring happiness. But eventually all of those things will fail, at least to some degree. So like David, we need to come to the place in our lives where we recognize that only God and His presence can truly satisfy and quench our deepest thirst.

Action

We’ve seen this morning that...

At its best prayer longs for God’s presence more than His presents.

Prayer is not merely asking God for things — it’s desiring, delighting in, and depending on Him.

I’ve intentionally kept this sermon short this morning because I want to give us all some time to put into practice what we’ve learned today. I think one of the best ways to do that is to just pray this Psalm back to God. Take your time as you do that. Think about each word as you pray. Feel free to paraphrase it or put it into your own words. When you get to the part where David writes about lifting up his hands feel free to do that. When he writes about remembering God, take some time to remember what God has done for you personally. I’ll give us all about five minutes to do that.

[Prayer time]

Inspiration

At its best prayer longs for God’s presence more than His presents.

I think that understanding this idea will do more to transform our prayer life - and our lives - than anything else we can learn about prayer. As I said earlier, that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t pray for our needs and the needs of others. After all, in His model prayer, Jesus told His disciples to pray even for their daily bread.

But when we really seek God Himself in our prayers - when we are submitted to Him and steadfast and satisfied with Him alone, we can have hope and joy even in the desert. When God’s steadfast love is better than anything in our lives, then we can bless God and praise Him and lift up our hands regardless of our circumstances. That is prayer at its best.

Closing Prayer at the end of the service: Lord, give us hearts that thirst for You — not for comfort, success, or ease, but for Your presence. Teach us to pray as David did, with souls that cling to You and lips that praise You.

In Jesus’ name,

Amen.