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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