The Broken Alphabet
After I started Uncommon Pursuit, I took a marketing course that recommended I create a 'brand promise.' I needed to tell you how reading my Bible studies would fix your marriage, make your kids follow Jesus, and get you a promotion at work. But I don't control what God will do. And following God more closely doesn't mean your life gets easier. When everyone wants a guaranteed return, being a Christian sometimes feels like walking around with both hands tied behind your back.
Read Psalm 25
Psalm 25 is an acrostic: twenty-two verses for the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The acrostic form tells us this prayer covers all of our lives. J.A. Motyer explains the catch, "In form, this psalm is a broken acrostic...This brokenness reflects the way troubles break the pattern of life itself. Yet a pattern remains." The content matches the form. The Psalmist talks about his whole life with God: he confesses his sin, agonizes over his loneliness, shares his sufferings, asks for help facing his enemies, and pleads that he not be publicly shamed. He repeatedly requests that God guide him. Before suffering broke me, I didn't know how to pray like this. I wanted my faith to look like a corporate earnings chart: the arrow is always going up and to the right. But this prayer takes a disorganized life and brings it to God as it is. I no longer believe we outgrow sinning, discouragement, confusion, or challenges beyond our ability to solve. The prayer shows us what total openness to God looks like. At the start, "Lord, I appeal to you. My God, I trust in you." At the end, "I wait for you." The prayer is bookended with dependence on God. If I update the language, it sounds like "God, I'm struggling. I need you. Please help." I learned from Brother Lawrence that prayer is best when it is ordinary, like when you're tired of washing dishes. If our prayers have to be special, then they shut God out of every part of our life that feels like a grind. I wrote out a dozen brand promises, but I never published them. The Psalmist doesn't get any quick-fixes for his shame, either. But he does get God. He asks to be taught, and then he remembers that God teaches even sinners, because he's good. He asks for mercy, and then reminds himself that God is faithful and loving. He seeks forgiveness, and rehearses that God forgives because that is who he is. It's all bound together by two commitments. God has made a covenant, or an unbreakable promise, to take care of his people. We respond to his promise with a faith that, by his grace, becomes faithfulness. In verse 11, David acknowledges that his guilt is great; in verse 14, God treats him better than a friend by including him in his covenant. A holy God inviting a guilty man to receive his covenant love? That's the sketch work Jesus brings to life.
What does it tell us about God that he loves people with fragmented prayers?
Who knows the disorganized version of your life? How did you know you could trust them?
What parts of your life have you stopped asking God to be involved with?
Set a reminder to go off during the most boring part of your day. When it goes off, pray, "God, I'm struggling. I need you. Help me." Then ask a friend, "What's the most boring thing I could pray for you?"
Source:
J. A. Motyer, "The Psalms," in New Bible Commentary: 21st Century Edition, 4th ed., ed. D. A. Carson, R. T. France, J. A. Motyer, and G. J. Wenham (Inter-Varsity Press, 1994).