21 Days of Prayer in Psalm 119 (Day #22)

Read Psalm 119:169-176

“Seek”

I didn’t want to leave the last stanza of Psalm 119 out. Even though it has been a long-haul journaling and posting each day on each successive stanza over the last three weeks, it has been a sweet time as well. So here is Day #22, an encore!

Today, in church, we read this final stanza together and thought about prayer as modeled by the psalmist. He begins with a prayer to be heard in verses 169-170,

Let my cry come before you, O Lord;
    give me understanding according to your word!

Let my plea come before you;
    deliver me according to your word.

He is concerned with the need for the Lord to hear his pray, be it cry or plea. Isn’t that what we want as well—to be heard? Secondly, beyond being hear the psalmist is seeking understanding and deliverance.

Understanding is what we so often need when we consider our circumstances or those of others and we just don’t get it. Things just aren’t working out how we expected and as they should (in our opinion). It is in times like this that we wish God would speak order, clarity, and purpose into the world. The psalmist recognizes that this kind of understanding is found in the Bible. Have you ever had one of those moments when as you read you know a passage was revealed to you in a way that answers your cry for understanding? I have, and I cherish those moments.

In asking for understanding he is asking for the Lord to do something in him through the Scriptures. In deliverance, he is asking the Lord to do something for him—likely a physical deliverance from the ongoing and acute threat of his enemies. It is in God’s word that we find not only his promises (and conditions) regarding deliverance but the revealed character of God with which such deliverance must accord.

These requests move me, as does the psalmist’s commitment to the law/ precepts/ statues of the Lord as an assurance that his prayer would be heard and that the Lord would do something about his circumstances. However, despite his repeated commitment to delight in God’s word and to be helped by it, he confesses his own wanderings, for he ends the longest psalm in the Bible with verse 176

I have gone astray like a lost sheep; seek your servant,
    for I do not forget your commandments.

This is a prayer of confession (“have gone astray”) and repentance (“seek”)

The reason he is praying this way is because of his trust in God’s revelation (“I do not forget”). I am reminded of the old gospel hymn, Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing written in 1757 by Robert Robinson that so poignantly describes our tendency to wander like a lost sheep. I quote verses 1, 3, and 4.

1. Come, Thou Fount of every blessing,
Tune my heart to sing Thy grace;
Streams of mercy, never ceasing,
Call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
Sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount, I’m fixed upon it,
Mount of Thy redeeming love.

3. Jesus sought me when a stranger,

The Good Shepherd,
painted by Richard Hook

Wandering from the fold of God;
He, to rescue me from danger,
Interposed His precious blood;
How His kindness yet pursues me
Mortal tongue can never tell,
Clothed in flesh, till death shall loose me
I cannot proclaim it well.

4. O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.

When Jesus suffered and died on the cross some 2000 years ago, it was for our wanderings. Isaiah 53:6, in the midst of a larger section describing the suffering Messiah, says,

All we like sheep have gone astray;

    we have turned—every one—to his own way;
and the Lord has laid on him

    the iniquity of us all.

And Jesus, in Luke 15, facing criticism from the Pharisees and teachers because he spoke to sinners, tells the parable of the Lost Sheep,

Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

Then Jesus told them this parable: “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’ I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.

Can we end this study of Psalm 119 the same way, willing to confess our wandering and ask Jesus our Good Shepherd, to seek us out and deliver us? We too are wanderers who need to turn back to the Lord in relational repentance and bring as many with us as possible.

Dear Lord Jesus, seek your servants and turn our hearts back towards you. Help us to see your beauty and steadfast love and may we be filled with awe and wonder at your deliverance! Fill our hearts with praise so that it spills out in our speech and songs day by day. May we share your love with others and may we rejoice with heaven over each sinner that repents! Thank you for a marvelous contemplation on your word!

21 Days of Prayer in Psalm 119 (Day #2)

Read Psalm 119:9-16

           "Whole Heart"

My focus today is found in verses 10 and 16,

v. 10 With my whole heart I seek you;
             let me not wander from your commandments!...

v. 16 I will delight in your statutes;
         I will not forget your word.

The psalmist’s confession is that he follows the Lord, seeking with his whole heart, but that there is also the risk of his wandering, hence he prays to be kept close. Not only does he pray to be kept close he reveals one of the primary ways of being kept close—delighting in God’s word and in actively remembering the loving things God has said. We will follow that type of person in which we delight.

Dearest Lord Jesus, as you have done all that was needed to capture my heart may I not forget. May I continue to treasure what you have done for me, spoken to me, and planned for me to experience in relationship with you. capture my heart 

Psalm 107 "Some Wandered..."

Psalm for Today = 107:2, 4-9

Photo by Kasuma F. Gruber on Unsplash

² Let the redeemed of the Lord say so,

whom he has redeemed from trouble…

⁴ Some wandered in desert wastes,

finding no way to a city to dwell in;

⁵ hungry and thirsty,

their soul fainted within them.

⁶ Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,

and he delivered them from their distress.

⁷ He led them by a straight way

till they reached a city to dwell in.

⁸ Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love,

for his wondrous works to the children of man!

⁹ For he satisfies the longing soul,

and the hungry soul he fills with good things.

Comments:

The book of Psalms is made up of five collections of psalms. Psalm 107 is the first psalm in Book 5, the last collection of psalms. It is not the rehearsal of their national salvation history so much as a testimony to the Lord’s steadfast love delivering God’s people from whatever situation they had personally been in. There are at least four groups of people spoken of in the psalm. The verses above are the first group…The Wanderers. They are not of the happy..."Val-deri, Val-dera" kind of wanderers either.

Those described here are those who desperately hunger and thirst for more than food, longing for identity, security, and community…seeking both a place and a people where they belong. They are unable to produce what they need on their own. As they begin to fade, despairing of their self-direction, they cry out to the Lord, and he delivers them. He makes them a people and places them in a secure place where they can dwell and thrive.  

The same is true of the wanderers and searchers today. Only the Lord can fully satisfy our longings. For many, this is our story, our testimony, as a trophy of God’s grace. Let us thank the Lord for his steadfast love!

Yet, even knowing this, I know that I still fight a wandering heart at times. Robert Robinson, the 18^th Century hymn writer understood this psalm and the wandering heart when he wrote these words in the classic, “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing” which we still sing today:

3. Jesus sought me when a stranger, Wandering from the fold of God;

He, to rescue me from danger, Interposed His precious blood;

How His kindness yet pursues me Mortal tongue can never tell,

Clothed in flesh, till death shall loose me, I cannot proclaim it well.

4. O to grace how great a debtor, Daily I’m constrained to be!

Let Thy goodness, like a fetter, Bind my wandering heart to Thee.

Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, Prone to leave the God I love;

Here’s my heart, O take and seal it, Seal it for Thy courts above.

Questions:

• What other groups of spiritually needy people do you see in this psalm? 
• Which testimony has the greatest impact on you? Why? 
• Have you thanked the Lord for his love today?