Conversation about prayer. Psalm 4 and 5 - Engage Community Church of Carlisle, PA

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//Conversation about prayer. Psalm 4 and 5

July 29th From Matt T:
11-12 But you’ll welcome us with open arms when we run for cover to you. Let the party last all night! Stand guard over our celebration. You are famous, God, for welcoming God-seekers, for decking us out in delight.

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Do others see the joy in my life? As an individual in a Christian community, do people sense a “party that lasts all night” when they see / hear me? This morning I’m nudged to live a God-honoring story that reads more like a holy MTV house party and less like a bitter, cynical Fox News/CNN debate.

August 1st From Jon Hand
Hey peeps,
I’m passing on some reflections on Psalms 4-5 as per our conversations about following this rhythm in prayer.

Psalms 4
Nighttime Psalm. This is called passive or reflective praying. It’s praying our worries into God’s hands. It’s putting our souls to rest so we don’t worry and obsess about stuff we can influence but ultimately can’t control the outcomes of.

We rest in the goodness of God as we know him, “Lord I put these worries of mine in your hands and accept that you are taking care of them.” I’ve been doing this at night and at times when my head is pounding with all cares and worries that I can’t control what happens. The other day I was making a list of things that need to be done to move Engage forward this fall. I was totally overwhelmed and felt sick. I stopped and began reading Psalm 4…it’s praying and praying until our hearts are at rest and at peace based on the “light of God” shed on the worries.

How does this happen?
Look at verse 6ff The Psalmist is worrying about the future. Will there be enough wine and grain? Will there be a bad harvest? What will we do? Will we have enough of what we need / want? There are no answers here except that he admits “I have your light, your face, I can trust you compared to the unknowns.”

Tim Keller says: If we lay our requests to God and find ourselves deeper in anger, despondency, self-pity. . . if we don’t find the burden lifting off. . . then we must be sure the things we are asking for aren’t idols. If they are idols, then petition makes us more discouraged. For example. If I’m praying that Engage would burst at the seams this fall and we get into October and we aren’t growing as fast as I want…and I’m praying about this to God…and I can’t find peace and joy and contentment and gratitude when we aren’t growing like I want…guess what? I have an idol. The size of Engage is more important to me than God and no matter how much I pray about it I am going to feel worse until I slay that idol or the church does grow to my expectations and then it only encourages my idol. Hmmm..

Keller also says: Make sure the things in prayer aren’t praying to enhance our superiority over others, or our petitions make us bitter. Spend time thanking God for things that we already have and can’t lose. We can lose our jobs, families, savings, homes, people’s approval…we can lose these things. We can’t lose God’s love, God’s promise to accept us, our identity as God sees us. Some of the most compelling people you know are people who have lost “everything” and yet live in joy because the ultimate things can’t be taken away from them.

See Romans 8 35Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 36As it is written: “For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”[l] 37No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,[m] neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

God will always give us what we would have asked for if we knew everything he knows. –Ponder that one for a while. These stand to help us put our souls down for rest.

How’s it working for you??
jon

August 1 From Paul Sokolofsky:
Psalm 4 thoughts…

I have blessed/cursed with a life of responsibilities and as I learned to take of those responsibilities I always said “It will all work out in the end.” Somehow it always did. what i am realizing is that when there is someone there to share the burden of the responsibility it allows me to live my life during the day. I was faced with a very difficult decision of trying to pick between 2 good candidates for a teaching position at my school. I battled it hours on Friday. I read psalm 4 Friday night and asked god for help. I lived my life sat and today and after a few events and conversations a candidate without prompting called me up and said the he was almost completely pulling himself from the running. It made the decision much easier…or should i say it has taken some stress out of the decision. God works in mysterious ways.

psalm 5 thoughts…I am going to need some help with that one…I have a real hard time reading it without feeling angry….that’s even using the TNIV translation. when we get to psalm 5 conversations I do more listening than responding at first.

Thanks all,

Paul

August 2nd From Kelly Chripczuk:
Thanks for sharing, Paul and Jon. I could’ve used Psalm 4 last night - John and I both felt we were awake the whole night, though in reality we got more sleep than we thought.

I started today with psalm 5. What struck me was in verse three “in the morning I plead my case to you and watch.” The “and watch” part struck me. It doesn’t say, “I plead my case to you and then try to take care of everything on my own . . ..” I’ve started being more aware lately of how much I need to know that God is actively involved in my life - I need to learn to “watch” for God’s response - to leave room for God without doing everything in my own power (which, by the way is exhausting and not life giving).

regarding “evildoers” I was struck by how well-cloaked evil is for us middle class americans - rarely in my day to day decisions do I really come face to face with what I would easily recognize as evil - in some ways it would be easier if I did. Instead, I’m confronted with a continual series of varying shades of good and bad - it becomes much more difficult to really discern the good from the evil, but this doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Lately it’s been helpful for me to think in terms of life and death rather than good or evil - will this action or choice bring life or death for my soul? Even this is often a difficult thing to discern.

I also like that in verse 7 we enter God’s house through the doorway of “abundant love.”
Grace and peace ya’ll -
Kelly

August 3rd From Jon Hand
Alright Psalm 5. Matt, Kelly, and Paul thanks for your great insights and honesty so far on this. Let’s see if we can keep the conversation going and learn more from each other on this.

Prayer is spontaneous
Keller insight on Psalm 5: David’s prayer is both spontaneous and disciplined. Verse 1 says consider my “sighing” or lament. Anything our hearts are causing us to sigh needs to be turned into a prayer. Everything we sigh about needs to be turned into a prayer otherwise we’re going to be frustrated and unhappy people always complaining or cynical about what’s wrong and never filled up with what is right in our lives. So prayer in this passage is spontaneous in that it takes the deepest urges of our hearts and turns them into prayers.

Prayer is disciplined
Disciplined: In the morning. David is going to God at a specific time and he has a list of things he’s going to God about…for that day…that week and he’s waiting…looking…expecting God to be actively involved in his day…this is for me one of the most exciting things about specific praying. Lately, I’ve been praying about different people and for opportunities to speak into their lives on certain things. Then I wait…expecting God to work in them, in me, in the timing to have the conversation. I can’t tell you how many times lately I’ve had great conversations about deep / core issues with people and they were receptive and open. I believe this ground work happens in prayer.

Here a question: Psalm 5 has some pretty ugly stuff after verse 3. How does that square with a loving God of mercy, justice, compassion, and forgiveness? Why is David so angry? Especially since he just talked about his “sighing”.

August 3rd From Matt Tuckey:
I am no theologian. But, in laypersons terms, I read Psalm 5 like this –

I see David’s prayer saying two things:

1 – I see him showing the polar opposites of good and evil / life and death… he goes in great detail to illustrate how detestable sin is – I see him saying this not so much in railing against the people, but more in showing the extent of the disease… I think that he goes on and on because he’s been there and he knows how sin (our willful separation from God) is destructive, like a disease that will ultimately bring our own downfall. But, I see the grace in here –

7 Because of your unfailing love, I can enter your house;
I will worship at your Temple with deepest awe.
8 Lead me in the right path, O Lord,
or my enemies will conquer me.
Make your way plain for me to follow.

I think David knows the depths of evil / death that is found in our human brokenness and is amazed that through the deeper / wider sea of God’s love he can “enter your house” and walk alongside the Creator.

2 – I see David looking at where sin has taken him and where God’s love allows him to go and I see him a bit scared to return to the former. “Lead me in the right path… make your way plain.” I see David pleading with God to make it clear what he needs to do so that he can serve God in amazing ways and he is fearful that in his own skin he’ll slide back into the self-centered, sinful, willful separation from God that he finds in his “enemies.”

I feel ya, David. I want to grow closer to God. I want to use my time here to be a light in a dark world. I want to serve God through serving others. I want to take a stand against everything that opposes love and hope and goodness. But, I know where I’ve been and how easy it is to settle into lies / gossip / self-serving choices / that provide short-term gain but are ultimately things that God simply can’t associate with.

All that is to say – for me (and, again, not theologian commentary), when I pray verse 8, my enemies (and all of David’s characteristics illustrating those enemies) aren’t other people on the battlefield, but enemies within myself of materialism and selfishness and pride… I hate those things as God does, but the “creep” up daily – and I’ll pray that God “drives them away” so that I can “take refuge in him.”

August 17th From Jon Hand:
Hey Everyone,

It’s been two weeks since any of us have posted ideas and what God is teaching us in Psalms 4-5. I want to get the ball rolling again because I think there is still more for us to mine out of these two passages. Ryan M, welcome to the conversation. You can scroll down to get caught up.

Psalm 5. Paul, you said it pissed you off to read the rest of Psalm 5. I get it. Especially since we as Kelly said don’t live in a world of pure good guys and pure bad guys. We are uncomfortable when people claim to be the good guys and use God to vindicate them as good. I get uncomfortable when David says of God, “You hate all who do wrong.” Well, I’m out!! I guess we are all screwed!!

Here’s the thing. All of scripture points us to Jesus. The whole Bible is about Jesus and to make sense of the Bible we have to read it backwards. So we start with Jesus and read Jesus back into the Bible. So when it comes to the “God hates you stuff” we know that’s not the truest expression of God.

1. The unveiling of God or the revelation of God culminated in Jesus. This is pre-Jesus so it’s not giving us the full bodied version of God. This doesn’t make it false it just means we don’t have the back story if we are reading this without a Jesus perspective.

2. So God hates you. Well, the truth is our sin, judgments, indifference, pride, when compared to God is pure evil because he is so pure. So if we are comparing ourselves to others (like David was) we don’t look so bad. If we are comparing ourselves to God, we are all screwed because we don’t stand a chance compared to his goodness and purity.

3. But the Jesus perspective on this is that Jesus saves us from getting what we deserve from God. This is that whole grace piece. If we are the older brother and think we are better than someone else then we don’t like grace. It pisses us off. If we know our hearts, and are honest about our motives then we know we don’t stand a chance on our own goodness and we need grace. Jesus embodies grace and forgiveness. When I read the passage with Jesus in mind I can see that David’s perspective is not untrue, it’s just not the whole truth.

4. Last one. David here is venting. He’s scared, pissed, and like us, trying to make sense of a difficult situation. So we factor that in. Ok, but how can we trust what David says about God then if he’s venting? This is why we interpret Scripture with Scripture. If I build my theology of God based on verse 5 then my main view of God is that he only hates everybody. If he hates everybody then I’m going to start hating everybody. But we don’t build our theology of God or our theology of anything off of one verse. We look at the whole picture, especially the Jesus colored picture and then we start building our theology. So yes, God hates evil and pride, like a parent who just found out that a drug dealer sold their kids cocaine. Your heart breaks, you long for justice, you are angry and should be. But we also know that God IS love. In the OT God is described as merciful, compassionate, loving, but not as LOVE. The NT says God IS LOVE. That means he can’t help but do what is best for us…that’s what love does. We trust that.

Hope that helps. I hope we can keep reading these passages in community and share what we are learning, what God is teaching us, and yes, our struggles with the passage.

Keep the conversation going. Oh, today vs. 3 “In the morning O Lord, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my request before you and wait in expectation.” I’m praying for each of you this morning. I pray God meets you in the details of the day. I pray you are stretched and made uncomfortable. I you will allow God to grow your trust in Christ and dependence on his power in you. I pray you take on a gospel-shaped heart and motives in this day. I pray you increase in joy!! Love ya, jon

Engage Community Church