Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray With Me”.

Is your God sometimes missing in action? 

Psalm 10 asks, 
   Why do you stand far off, Lord?
    Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble? (v 1). 

The psalmist explains why he thinks God has gone missing. Listen to his evidence. 

– The wicked are arrogant and violent (v 2). Think Mexican drug cartels, American school shootings, or war in Ukraine. Where is God in these?

– More evidence? World leaders have no room for God in their thoughts (v 4). Trump and Putin and Xi Jinping? Lots of thoughts, but not about God. 

– A third evidence for God’s absence is that he isn’t helping the poor and weak (v 9). The strong and powerful of earth don’t care if the homeless live under bridges, if drug addicts haunt the inner city, and immigrants are abused, exploited, and deported. Does God also ignore the needy?

– The wicked say, “God doesn’t notice, he doesn’t care.” To them, life is a fight for survival where the strong win, the weak lose, and we move on to the next conquest. God doesn’t intervene. Does he even care?

Question: How does the psalmist respond when God goes missing?
Answer: He prays to the absent one. God may be missing but he’s still listening. 

Let’s pray. 

Arise, Lord. Lift up your hand, O God,
  do not forget the helpless (v 12).
See the trouble of the afflicted;
  consider their grief and take it in hand (v 14). 

When we are tired, depressed, sick, or lonely, we feel you’ve forgotten us. When cancer stalks those we love, when our lives feel short and empty, where are you, God? 

When evil rulers oppress with tariffs, expel immigrants and enrich themselves with cryptocurrency, where is your justice? When war is a way of life, when drugs are plentiful and jobs are scarce, you surprise us by not righting these wrongs. 

And yet . . . we believe you hear us. You listen to our hearts, you attend to our prayers, you encourage our faithfulness, you do see the poor and needy (v 17). 

We invite you to act like God, to judge the wicked and to ease our pain, to answer our prayers and heal those we love.

O God, don’t be absent from us longer than we can stand. Come near. Let us feel your presence. Comfort us with kind words. Treat us gently. Make us joyful in our relationship with you. 

Don’t be a God who is missing in action.  

Amen.

I’m Daniel, on the channel “Pray with Me”.  

YouTube channel: Pray with Me – YouTube

Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray With Me”.

Do you find God doesn’t answer when you pray? Doesn’t reward you when you work hard? Leaves you lonely when you look for community? 

Psalm 9 helps us change gears from “Oh, woe is me” to “Praise God who knows and cares.” 

The psalm begins:
  I will give thanks to you, Lord, with all my heart.
    I will sing praises to your name, O Most High (v 1-2). 

Great beginning. Cue some worship music, sing a happy hymn, tell God you’re thankful. 

The psalm continues: 
   You have rebuked the nations and destroyed the wicked, 
      blotting out their name forever. 
   Endless ruin has overtaken my enemies, 
      even the memory of them has perished (v 5-6). 

God watches over the earth and the nations, noticing the evil and the good. He will crush your enemies forever. 

What enemies, you ask? The psalmist’s enemies were kings and nations that provoked war. But my war is a battle for my mind and heart. God promises to heal the diseases that infect my body, the moods that afflict my mind, the disturbances that affect my relationships, the demons that drive me insane. I look forward to the day when endless ruin will overtake these enemies, when even the memory of them perishes.

The psalm continues:
  The Lord is a refuge for the oppressed,
    a stronghold in times of trouble.
  Those who know your name trust in you.
    You never forsake those who seek you (v 9-10).

If I brood on my loneliness, vulnerability, and helplessness, I get depressed. The psalmist offers a more helpful picture of my life: God is my refuge and stronghold. He is a  castle I can run to, lifting the drawbridge and dropping the metal gate to keep out my enemies. 

God guards the walls of my life and shoots arrows at my enemies. 

Let’s pray. 

O father, with the psalmist we pray:
  Arise, Lord, don’t let mortals triumph.
    Judge the nations.
  Strike them with terror,
    let them know their mortality (v 19-20). 

Teach us to let go of our fears for the present and future, to stop obsessing on our spiritual experience. Teach us to worship you and thank you, when we feel you are present and when we feel you are absent.

You are God, God of the world.
You are the judge of nations.
You are eternal, everlasting. 

We come to you, like serfs running to a castle of refuge, like pilgrims seeking the safety of a hostel, like children to a father’s loving embrace. 

   You, God, will never forget the needy;
    the hope of the afflicted will not perish (v 18).

We surf an internet of lies and deceit. We feel darkness that calls us to despair. We see violence that defies hope. Yet, we believe you see, we know you care. In your time you will act on our behalf, establishing goodness and justice. 

We choose to be glad and rejoice in you.
  We sing the praises of your name, O most high. (v 2). 

Amen

I’m Daniel, on the channel “Pray with Me”.  

YouTube channel: Pray with Me – YouTube

Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray With Me”.

Psalm 8 asks God,
  What are humans that you notice them,
      mortals that you care for them? (v 4). 

A good question. What are humans? Just another animal, or are we different?

Anthropologists used to define us as animals with language. But dolphins and bonobo  apes have language too. We used to be the animal that used tools, but now we know that crows, sea otters, orangutans, and elephants use tools too. We used to be the animal with culture, but Jane Goodall observed chimpanzees learning and passing knowledge to others.

So what does make us different? 

Not body size. Ostriches, crocodiles, and elephants are bigger than us. We have better science than the other animals, but dark matter and quantum entanglement expose the limits of our understanding. Our brains do more complex thinking and long term planning than our animal friends, but that hasn’t stopped us from waging war and destroying the earth. 

Listen to the psalmist’s view of humans. He says,
  You made them a little lower than God,
      you crowned them with glory and honor,
      you made them stewards of the earth (v 5-6). 

We are unique because God created us in his image, asking us to care for the world and the animals, and for each other. 

It’s not being at the top of the food chain that makes us special. It’s that we’re on assignment to care for the food chain and the earth.

Let’s pray. 

O God, how majestic is your name in all the earth (v 1).
  You made the universe, with trillions of stars.
  And in the universe you hid a small sunny star that heats a wee green planet where creatures made of dust live out their lives.  

Amazingly, you call yourself creator and father to these dusty creatures, shepherding our lives, teaching us to care for the world you gave us. 

We do not understand life, but we live it in the vastness of the universe, and in the seasons of our little planet, and on sabbath days of rest we take to honor you. 

O God, how majestic is your name in all the earth. 

Amen

I’m Daniel, on the channel “Pray with Me”.  

YouTube channel: Pray with Me – YouTube

Ep. 440. Psalm 7. Justice.

Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray With Me”.

Psalm 7 pictures justice as a hole and a boomerang. It says,
  Whoever digs a hole
      falls into it.
  The trouble they cause recoils on them,
      their violence comes down on their own heads (v. 15-16). 

If you throw evil into the wide world, it will boomerang back on you. If you dig a hole, you fall in. This is not legal justice where you lawyer up and launch a lawsuit. You reap what you sow, you get caught in the trap you lay. 

You live a violent life? Expect violence to find you. 

How did the psalmist arrive at this picture of justice? And what does God have to do with it?

Start at the beginning of the psalm. Danger threatens the psalmist, so he prays,
  O Lord, I take refuge in you;
    save me from all who pursue me,
  or they will tear me apart like a lion,
    and rip me to pieces with no one to rescue me (v 1-2). 

Then the psalmist introduces his take on justice.
    O Lord, if there is guilt on my hands–
    if I have repaid friends with evil,
      or enemies by stealing from them,
    then let my enemy . . . trample my life to the ground (v 3-5). 

I’m willing to get what I deserve, he says. Scrutinize my life, judge my actions. They prove me innocent! No grounds for a lawsuit against me. I plead not guilty. 

Then the psalmist invites God to investigate his enemies. They are pregnant with evil, they conceive trouble, and give birth to disillusionment (v 14). They are the ones digging pits to trap him, planning violence against him. 

So the psalmist prays:
    Vindicate me, Lord, according to my righteousness.
    Stop the violence of the wicked
        and make the righteous secure (v. 9). 

Let’s pray. 

O father, Jesus teaches us to confess our sins, but this psalm teaches us to stand on our righteousness.  

You are the God who probes minds and hearts (v 9). Evaluate our lives and our behavior.
  We work for your kingdom on earth.
  We shape our lives by your laws.
  We measure our actions by your word.
  We live at peace. 

Now turn your inquiry on our enemies. Those who bomb the earth, who pervert with bribes, whose rage ruins relationships, who hoard your good gifts. Those who make laws to shield the rich and exploit the poor. 

O God, may they reap what they sow. May they tumble into the pits they dig. May they gather a harvest of the violence they inflict on others. Let the wealth they have stolen be stolen from them. 

Bring justice on earth. The justice of consequences, and the justice of law. 

With the psalmist we say, 
    We give you thanks because of your righteousness, 
        We sing praises to your name, O Most High (v. 17). 

Amen

I’m Daniel, on the channel “Pray with Me”.  

YouTube channel: Pray with Me – YouTube

Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray With Me”.

Terrified. That’s how the psalmist feels in Psalm 6. God terrifies him. His sickness terrifies him. The thought of dying terrifies him. So how does he pray through his fears?

Feeling God’s anger, he prays:  
   Don’t rebuke me when you’re angry,  
      Don’t discipline me when you’re in a rage (v 1). 

Sick in body and mind, the psalmist weeps through the night and prays:
  My  bones are in agony,
      my soul in deep anguish.
   I am worn out from groaning.
   All night I flood my bed with weeping,
      and drench my couch with tears (v 2-6). 

Terrified of death, the psalmist points out that if he dies he won’t be much use to God: 
  The dead don’t proclaim your name, 
      Who praises you from the grave? (v. 5). 

Thomas Hobbes described life outside of society as a life of “continual fear and danger of violent death,” a life “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” (Leviathan, i. xiii. 9). 

That’s how the author of Psalm 6 felt about his life. 

Hobbe’s solution was for humans to live in society, to have a social contract for a civilized government that would provide a secure life. 

The psalmist is not so philosophical. He takes his “solitary, poor, short” life to God. 
  Feeling God’s anger, he asks for mercy instead of wrath. 
   Feeling God has sent sickness, he prays for healing. 
   Feeling there is no end to trouble, he pleads with God, “How long, O Lord, how long?” 

Let’s pray. 

O Father, with the psalmist, we pray,
  You have heard my weeping.
  You have heard my cry for mercy.
  You accept my prayer.
  All my enemies will be overwhelmed,
    They will turn back suddenly and be put to shame (v. 8-10). 

You have replaced our terror with your presence.
    We come to you, and discover that you are not angry.
    We ask for healing, and we feel your love.
    We bring desperate and confused minds to you, and you quiet us.
    We bring ruined and despairing lives to you asking, “How long, O Lord, how long?” and you answer that you are preparing a future and a hope for us. 

So we move from terror to confidence, from despair to hope, from doubt to faith. 

You have heard our prayer, and that is enough.

Amen. 

I’m Daniel, on the channel “Pray with Me”.  

YouTube channel: Pray with Me – YouTube

Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray With Me”.

What gets you going in the morning? 

Psalm 5 is a prayer with four movements to wake us up and get the day started. 

The first movement directs our attention to God:
    Listen to my words, Lord,
consider my lament. 
    Hear my cry for help,
        my king and my God,
        for to you I pray (v 1-2). 

The psalmists tells God to listen. Is he trying to get God’s attention? Or . . . maybe he’s preparing himself to listen to God. Opening your heart to God, speaking your mind, and telling him your troubles are the first steps in morning prayer.   

The next movement I see in Psalm 5 is confidence that God does listen. He may be silent and invisible, but the psalmist says, 
  In the morning, Lord, you hear my voice,
    in the morning I lay my requests before you
    and wait expectantly (v 3). 

People have many reasons for praying.
  Some pray to express themselves. 
  Some to impress others.
  For some, it’s a habit; others pray out of need.

But the psalmist prays because he knows someone is listening. My king and my God, he says, you hear me, and I wait expectantly for your answer. That’s a better way to start the day than surfing the net, checking the news, or lamenting yesterday’s hockey scores.

The third movement in Psalm 5 is character development. The psalmist asks, “What  kind of person are you becoming? Will you make progress today?”

First, he describes failed character development. God is not pleased with wickedness, he does not welcome evil, he does not encourage arrogance, he hates wrongdoing, destroys liars, and detests the bloodthirsty and deceitful. (v 4-6).  

Some list! God knows the internet. He’s read the blogs and seen the videos filled with arrogance, wrongdoing, lies, and violence. God is displeased with these creators. Don’t let them be your mentors or your motivation for springing out of bed.

The psalm continues with a list of character traits God approves:
   I, by your great love, 
     come into your house; 
   in reverence I bow down
     toward your holy temple. 
   Lead me in your righteousness
     because of my enemies, 
   Make your way straight before me (v 7-8). 

God’s website gives life hacks for reverence, holiness, righteousness, and straight paths that can start our morning and shape our day. 

Let’s pray. 

O Lord, with the psalmist I pray,
  Listen to what I say,
      Hear my cry for help (v 1-2). 

And somehow I find confidence that you do listen.
In the morning you hear my voice.
In the morning I lay my requests before you and wait expectantly (v 3).

I survey my world filled with people who are wicked, arrogant, unbelieving, and bloodthirsty. Help me not to learn their tricks or follow their example. 

I survey the world you build in and around me . . . a place of holiness, reverence, faithfulness, and love. 

Help me to see the house you are building, to become the kind of person who can live there. Take my crooked paths and make them straight. 

Amen. 

I’m Daniel, on the channel “Pray with Me”.  

YouTube channel: Pray with Me – YouTube

Ep437. Psalm 4. Evening Prayer. 

Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray With Me”.

When you’re desperate, do you pray? The psalmist does. Listen to psalm 4.
  Answer me when I call to you,
    O my righteous God.
  Give me relief from my distress,
    Have mercy on me and hear my prayer (v 1).

This psalm is a bedtime prayer, a “now I lay me down to sleep” meditation. At the end of a long and difficult day, we are tired and confused. Discouraged. We’ve read of murders and chaos. We’ve endured countless advertisements promising happiness if we drive faster, travel farther, buy more, eat sweeter, and live fuller. The psalmist responds,
    How long will you love delusions and seek false gods? (v 2) 

If you measure your life by career success, possessions, health, and happiness, watch out! The psalmist measures life by our relationship to God: 
  The Lord has set apart his servant for himself,
      the Lord hears when I call to him (v 2-3). 

This psalm is a reset button at day’s end, pulling us away from endless viewing and scrolling to see what God offers. Before drifting off to sleep, the psalm says,
  . . . when you are on your bed,
    search your heart and be silent.
  Offer right sacrifices
    and trust in the Lord (v 4-5). 

The day is ending. The newspaper is in the recycle bin. Computers are off. Cell phones charging. 

Receive the quiet. Offer the day to God. Don’t obsess on what went right and wrong, don’t brood on your coulda, shoulda, woulda done. Give the day to God, a sacrifice to him. As you sleep, God prepares a new day for you, a day where you will wake up and start over.    

Let’s pray. 

O father, we live in a constant commotion of distracted work, agitated hearts and confused thinking. Social media perturbs us, world news shakes us, anxiously we try to make sense of our lives. 

With the author of psalm 4, we ask,
  Who will teach us how to live? (v 6). 

And with him we respond,
  Let the light of your face shine on us.
      Fill our hearts with joy (v 6-7). 

Replace our agitation with purpose, our restlessness with peace, our questions with quietness. May we sleep a hopeful sleep, trusting you to watch us, trusting you to wake us, trusting you to work your will in us.

    In peace I lie down and sleep,
      for you alone, O Lord,
      make me dwell in safety (v 8). 

Amen. 

I’m Daniel, on the channel “Pray with Me”.  

YouTube channel: Pray with Me – YouTube

Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray With Me”.

Do you pray that God will punch your enemies and break their teeth? 

Psalm 3 does. But first, we need to begin where the psalm begins. It’s titled, “A psalm of David when he fled from his son Absalom.” 

Here’s the backstory. David’s son Absalom staged a coup. Fearing for his life, King David fled Jerusalem, and Absalom moved into the palace. Everything important to David was breaking. A failing kingship, a failing family, his life in grave danger. What to do? 

David prayed, updating God on his perilous situation:
  O Lord, how many are my foes, 
     many rise up against me. 
  Many are saying of me, 
     “God will not deliver him” (v 1-2).

David’s enemies wrote God out of the picture. But David wrote God into his picture. He prayed, 
   You are my shield, Lord, 
      my glory, the One who lifts my head high.
  I call out to you, 
      and you answer from your holy mountain (v 3-4). 

Something shifted for David as he prayed. His enemies loomed less large. He trusted God to protect him. Despair became hope of deliverance. God’s glory invaded his weak and shameful escape from Jerusalem.

Listen to David’s relief and his emerging hope:  
    I lie down and sleep; 
      I wake again because the Lord sustains me. 
    I will not fear though tens of thousands 
      assail me on every side (v 5-6). 

With this newfound confidence, David calls God to action:
   Arise, O Lord!
     Deliver me, O my God!
  Strike my enemies on the jaw.
    Break their teeth (v 7). 

Is God David’s security detail, punching his enemies and breaking teeth?

Let’s pray. 

O father, I too have enemies, but they are not plotters and assassins.  My enemies lurk in my heart, emboldened by the degeneracy of our society. 

My enemy is persistent anxiety that overwhelms me. My foe is unbelief that whispers, “Is God really listening to your prayers?”

In our world of wrongs and evil, I wonder if you care. 

And yet . . . you are a shield around me. You teach me to think clearly, to believe faithfully, to act righteously, to hope relentlessly. You aren’t punching people and breaking teeth for me, but you sustain me in prayer, refresh me in sleep, encourage me in hope and love. 

As the psalmist says, 
   From you, Lord, comes deliverance. 
     May your blessing be on your people (v 8). 

Amen. 

I’m Daniel, on the channel “Pray with Me”.  

YouTube channel: Pray with Me – YouTube

Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray With Me”.

Psalm 1 speaks to individuals, inviting us to pay attention to scripture, to think about it, to meditate. 

Psalm 2 speaks to nations and kings, exposing a conspiracy. It says, 
  Why do the nations conspire
      and the people plot in vain?
  The kings of the earth rise up
      and the rulers band together
      against the Lord and against his anointed (v 1-2). 

It’s a conspiracy of nations that rebel against God to establish their own kingdoms. Conspiracies are everywhere. Putin invades Ukraine, China bullies Taiwan, Netanyahu reduces Gaza to ruins, Trump implements tariffs and expels immigrants to make America great.

The psalmist says these are conspiracies against God. Earthly rulers throwing off the constraints God set for nations. They sacrifice truth and justice on altars of power and wealth. They create radical and inhumane kingdoms, not knowing or caring they are accountable to God.

The psalmist’s solution? God says to the greatest ruler of all,
  You are my son;
    today I have become your father.
  Ask me, 
     and I will make the nations your inheritance. . . .
  You will break them with a rod of iron; 
     you will dash them to pieces like pottery (v 7-9). 

God’s son will destroy the world’s kingdoms, pitch them on the trash heap of history, and replace them with God’s kingdom. 

But what if a nation honors God? Can it avoid God’s anger and his son’s demolition?

Remember when Israel wanted a king like other nations? A strong man to make Israel great. Watch out, warned Samuel. A king will make you pay for his extravagances. He’ll take your best workers and animals for himself. He’ll tax your income and capital gains! Are you listening? You’ll end up no better than slaves (1 Sam 8:14-18).

Samuel and the psalmist don’t believe strong leaders will drain the swamp and make a nation great. Instead, they warn that strong leaders will create their own bureaucratic swamp and run the country for the benefit of friends and family. 

God’s solution is his anointed king, who will invade history and upend it. 

Let’s pray. 

Our father, our lives have been enriched by the nation we live in. Health care, police protection, and the freedom to worship, travel, and speak as we wish. 

But we feel the same pull Israel felt. Our difficult and chaotic times, like theirs, require a strong leader to keep our country on track, to set the nation right, to restore us to greatness. 

We heed the psalmist’s warning that those in power build kingdoms of this world, that conservative and liberal ideologies build human kingdoms, not your kingdom.

O father, lead us to the country whose builder and architect is God. Lead us to worship your son, the king, and take refuge in him. 

Amen. 

I’m Daniel, on the channel “Pray with Me”.  

YouTube channel: Pray with Me – YouTube

Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray With Me”.

Today, we continue with our prayer tutor, the psalms. 

Psalm 1 says if we meditate on God’s word, we will be like trees flourishing beside a river. 

James Garfield, the 20th president of the U.S., had a prior job as president of a religious college in Ohio. A parent asked to shorten the course of study for his son. Garfield replied, “What do you want for your son? God takes two months to grow a squash, but a lifetime to grow an oak.”

I like squash. It’s a quick solution to a difficult problem. But I’d rather my life was a tree.  To grow tall and beautiful, the psalmist says we should delight in the law of the Lord, and meditate on it day and night. 

So . . . what kind of meditation grows a tree? 

First, let’s define meditation. Author Rick Warren says if you know how to worry, you already know how to meditate. If you obsess on problems, turning them endlessly over in your mind, stressing about every detail, and losing sleep over bad things that might happen, then you have lots of meditation experience. But, big oops here! You’ve been meditating on the wrong things. 

Why not replace those troublesome meditations with something positive? Think about scripture. God loves you. He’s in control. He has good plans for you and for planet earth. He says your troubles are temporary. They will soon be replaced with eternal glory.

And what about those midnight meditations? Do you wake at strange hours like me? Are you up and reading and snacking on empty calories? Other times I lie in bed and worry about the world. On better nights, I might recite scripture to myself until sleep welcomes me back where I belong. 

Of course, reciting scripture in the dead of night requires learning it during the day. Easier said than done. I take scripture with me when I walk the dog, when waiting in line for Costco gas, when enjoying a coffee at Tim Hortons.   

As I mull over scripture, it exposes and judges my inner life. The Book of Hebrews says, “The word of God is . . . sharper than a double-edged sword . . . It judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart” (Heb 4:12). 

My inner life is a hodgepodge of random thoughts and mercurial feelings, of obsessions and desires, worries and hopes. When I’m feeling harsh and cynical, I spout edgy opinions on politics and church and life. 

Scripture pokes around in those thoughts and attitudes, heading off meditations on violence and sex and chaos, urging me, instead, to pray and praise.

If I were less of a worry-wart and more attentive to God’s word, I might mature into a beautiful tree instead of a lowly squash. 

Let’s pray. 

Our father, an old prayer invites us to hear, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest the holy scriptures (Anglican Book of Common Prayer, Collect for the second Sunday in Advent). 

Help us to do that. To strengthen our spiritual muscles that attend to your word. To underline the scriptures that you bring to our attention. To learn them by heart. To usher them into our private thoughts and public actions. As we inwardly digest the holy scriptures, may they become our source of life and growth. 

May we become living trees by your river of life. 

Amen. 

I’m Daniel, on the channel “Pray with Me”.  

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