Praying for What’s Right – Part 1 of 3
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Psalm 119:9-16
Last week, we learned the obvious – that God answers prayers! He really does! It’s just that His answers…. the way He answers and when He answers are not always favorable in our point of view.
Nevertheless, we learned what I consider the essentials in how God answers our prayer.
Today, and the rest of the “drops” this week, our text is Psalm 119, a praise song that expresses the writer’s majestic love for God and His written Word. I preached on it a couple Sundays ago and I want to share some principles on it with you here. This Psalm deals with the Word of God as a promise, a command, a guide….even a rebuke. Here, David records his thoughts and conversations with God. As we look at specific verses we discover some things that he emphatically confesses he needed to pray about. And consequently, we do as well.
You will agree how gratifying it is to have an opportunity to pray for others. That’s called intercession – engaging in prayer in behalf of someone else. At a little past midnight last night, I got to do that for a friend and I literally felt the power of heaven at my disposal! In fact, I felt the Holy Spirit praying to the Father through me – if you know what I mean!
And like we mentioned last week, when the prayer is right, the timing is right and we are right, it feels like cracking though a password-protected website! You may have struggled for so long….tried so many times for naught, but all of a sudden you felt things open up and you’re in!!! What an awesome feeling…..a breakthrough! It’s elating to know that God has made you an instrument of worship, salvation, healing, reconciliation, restoration, etc., etc., etc….
But as good and necessary intercessory prayers are, there are times when we also need to pray re-calibrating prayers. Honest, revealing prayers that expose our vulnerabilities and insufficiencies. This is the kind of prayer that David, has in this Psalm. And we might find ourselves with an overwhelming urge to say “amen” as we read these prayers because we know we too need to pray the same way.
Let’s examine some of the specific things that these verses remind us to pray for: The first one, on verse 10 says, “I seek you with all my heart, do not let me stray from your commands” (NIV). This is a prayer about STAYING ON COURSE!!! It’s a prayer that reflects both the Psalmist’s heart and his fears. He recognizes his limitations and in essence, prays, “Lord, help me to stay in the straight and narrow”!!!
Many of us need to pray that kind of prayer today. Let it reflect your desire to seek for God’s will to be done in your life! It may be that deep inside you – you really want to seek God and stay on course but you have a tendency to wander off the straight path. You’re not alone! We all gravitate towards the direction that seems fine, feels okay and appears safe. The world around you isn’t much help because its moral benchmark had been seriously compromised. More than ever, the lines between “right” and “wrong” had been blurred. Everything looks like it’s the best route for us at the time. The problem is that every single time we wander off, it’s because we make a conscious choice to do so. And it becomes common place. Most people are familiar with straying off God’s path.
We can think of a myriad of reasons why we stray. We can blame our situations, our weaknesses, our heredity, our genes, the devil – everybody else except ourselves. But our reasons are generally excuses. We live in a fallen world, we lose focus, we become distracted, and there are moments that we choose to be blatantly rebellious.
No matter how we explain it, we as people are experts when it comes to straying. The bible talks about 2 paths: one is wide that leads to destruction and the other is narrow but it leads to eternal life. Our tendency is to pick the wide road! The pull towards it is so strong and irresistible for many.
Recognizing that, like David, we need to pray, Lord, please “do not let me stray from your commands”. There’s too big of a risk if you do. Here’s why….the Bible says “There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death” (Proverbs 14:22; 16:25).
