I often hear people say things like, God always answers our prayers, but He answers them in four ways: Yes, No, Not Yet, or I Have Something Better.

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1 Honest Prayer Psalm 70 July 21, 2013 Most of us pray very POLITE prayers especially in public. Thank you, Lord, for your grace. Thanks for the beautiful day. Thank you for taking such good care of us. And on they go! These are nice prayers, polite prayers. I often hear people say things like, God always answers our prayers, but He answers them in four ways: Yes, No, Not Yet, or I Have Something Better. And that s a good way of looking at prayer. It s true. But David in Psalm 70 has no interest in all this polite stuff! He has no interest in the No or the Not Yet, and really doesn t want to hear about the I have something better option. No for David, it s Fix this NOW, God! I think even most of our translations are far too polite with verse 1: HASTEN, O God, to save me?? When was the last time you used the word, hasten?! The Good News Bible puts it this way: Save me, O God! Lord, help me NOW! Psalm 70 has a lot in common with Psalm 69 in this regard. Look especially at 69:17: Do not hide your face from your servant; answer me QUICKLY, for I am in trouble. Can you see how different this is from Psalm 67 that we looked at last week? In that Psalm he felt God s face SHINING on him God s life-giving SMILE. But in Psalm 69 (and 70), that shining face of God seems hidden by the clouds of life. So, once again, David jettisons his polite prayers in favor of HONEST ones. Instead of poetically intoning those wonderful words, The Lord is my shepherd, I have everything I need, he screams out, Save me, O God! Lord, help me NOW! 1

2 Quit HIDING and SHOW UP for a change! Do you ever feel like that? Are you ever honest enough to tell God how you feel? Or do you feel as though you ve got to pussyfoot around God, so you don t hurt His feelings or worse make Him angry with you? David shows us that we can truly be honest with God when we pray. That we don t have to play games with God. That we don t have to worry about offending Him. As I break down this Psalm for you this morning, I am using some ideas I got from a writer named Edmund Hill [Prayer, Praise and Politics, quoted in John Goldingay s commentary on the Psalms]. I. Honest prayer is yelling, Help, to God 70:1, Hasten, O God, to save me; O Lord, come quickly to help me. Or to use the Good News Bible again, Save me, O God! Lord, help me now! Jesus is our prime example in this kind of praying, isn t He? He taught His disciples that very polite prayer that we prayed this morning to begin our worship, The Lord s Prayer. But when the chips were down for Jesus, and He felt the full weight of our sins pressing on Him there on the Cross, He didn t pray, Father in heaven, hollowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Even though that was EXACTLY what was happening there on the cross! The eternal will of God in Heaven was, indeed, being done on that earthly cross at that very moment. Surely, Jesus SHOULD have been praying, THANK YOU, Lord! I love doing your will! But what did Jesus pray in that deepest, darkest hour? My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Quit HIDING from me, God! That s not very POLITE, but it is certainly HONEST praying, isn t it? So, David in his desperation leaves politeness and sweet church words behind and gets HONEST with God. 2

3 We ve got one of those life preserver RINGS in our boat, and, of course, we ve taken our little grandson Dominic out for a lot of rides (with his own life preserver on!) But if he were to fall out in the middle of the lake, do you suppose that Dominic would politely call out, Excuse me, Papa, if it s not too much trouble, could you toss me that ring when you have the time? Of course not! He d scream, Papa, HELP! And that s exactly what David is teaching us to pray when we feel overwhelmed. There s plenty of time for polite prayers when things are going well, but don t be afraid to yell, HELP! to God when they re not. II. You don t have to be full of noble sentiments to pray 70:2 3, May those who seek my life be put to shame and confusion; may all who desire my ruin be turned back to disgrace. And let me quote the Living New Testament s rendering of vs. 3: Let them be horrified by their shame, for they said, Aha! we ve got him now! If you heard one of your friends say something like that, how would you react? If they re going to show CONTEMPT for me and take POTSHOTS at me, I hope they get what s coming to them!! We d probably say, Now, Sally, let s take a deep breath and relax. I think you re probably exaggerating things a bit. You need to LOVE your enemies! But the truth is, if we re HONEST, there s nobody better to say those things to than God And if we wait around to pray until we re feeling all magnanimous and forgiving, we ll probably NEVER pray! So, be HONEST, and tell God how you feel! And you if need to do some cleaning up later, they ll be time for that. III. But, along the way, we should try not to be totally self-centered 70:4, But may all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you; may those who love your salvation always say, Let God be exalted. Honest prayer often has an amazing way of deflecting our attention away from ourselves to others. I ve seen this over and over again. People will cry out to God with this sense of utter desperation and sometimes they ll say some pretty heavy things. 3

4 And then a few days later, they ll see somebody else in even worse shape, and they ll pray for them! Now, it s not fair to use that as a hammer against people who are suffering (or even to try and minimize your own suffering): I m going blind, but poor Sally over there has cancer. I should be grateful for what I have! But, in fact, it s amazing how often our own suffering makes us more aware of the needs of others. IV. Finally, We must always realize how desperate we truly are for God 70:5, Yet I am poor and needy; come quickly to me, O God. You are my help and my deliverer; O Lord, do not delay. Hill puts it this way: The one absolutely necessary predisposition for prayer to recognize and admit your abjectness [that is, your hopelessness] before God. To realize that is to make real to yourself that you need God. So often, we bring our own blueprint for life to God and ask Him to put His stamp of approval on it. We ve got it all figured out; we just need the Boss s OK. But David said, O God, you re the only hope I have! In some ways, this Psalm ends as it began, doesn t it? Come quickly, Lord. Don t delay! But in these five short verses, I think we can see David changing and growing. He s still in a hurry for God to fix things So, how honest are YOU when you pray? But he seems to be gradually turning from desperation to hope. He realizes that if he doesn t have the Lord he s doomed, but he also realizes that he DOES have the Lord! You ARE my help and my deliverer. Not for the routine stuff or when life is in cruise control. How honest are you when life kicks your legs out from under you? When that feeling of desperation or hopelessness floods over you? 4

5 Do you feel like you have to be POLITE with God? Are you afraid that if you re honest God will think less of you? Do you feel less of yourself?! I think often when we have these feelings of desperation and hopelessness, we beat ourselves up spiritually I need more faith! I just need to trust God more! But honest prayer brutally honest prayer like we have here in Psalm 70 is not a symptom of LITTLE faith but of GREAT faith! We re saying to God, I am DESPERATE, Lord, and I know you re the only one who can really do anything about it! Notice also as we ve seen so often in the Psalms there is no verse 6! Do you know what I mean? I would love to have a big finish and read, And God DID come and He answered all my prayers, and we all lived happily ever after! But there s no Christian Magic here no formula that will guarantee success (whatever that is). Just the assurance that He will never leave us nor forsake us. And, in the end, that s all we ever need. Rev. Robert Smallman Bible Presbyterian Church (Presbyterian Church in America) 1605 Highway G Merrill, WI