Psalm 13

Prayer for Deliverance from Enemies

To the leader. A Psalm of David.

¹ How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?
    How long will you hide your face from me?
² How long must I bear pain in my soul
    and have sorrow in my heart all day long?
How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?

³ Consider and answer me, O Lord my God!
    Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep the sleep of death,
⁴ and my enemy will say, “I have prevailed”;
    my foes will rejoice because I am shaken.

⁵ But I trusted in your steadfast love;
    my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
⁶ I will sing to the Lord
    because he has dealt bountifully with me.

Psalm 13

Dear God, Sister Miriam, in Restore: A Guided Lent Journal for Prayer and Meditation focused on verse 3b and verse 4a for her meditation today, but what strikes me about this short psalm by David is the last stanza. It seems he’s desperate and everything is going wrong, and yet in that midst he comes to his senses and reminds himself that he is yours no matter what. It’s quite beautiful.

I don’t know that this ties in anywhere, but I want to say it out loud because it struck me this morning and I don’t want to lose it. I was listening to the Voxology Podcast and their interview with Nijay Gupta. They were talking about the fallacy of Old Testament = Law and New Testament = Grace, saying that our modern day Christianity sometimes sets up the Old Testament as the bad guy and the New Testament as the good guy. They didn’t think Jesus would feel that way. But then they said something funny, but there was truth to it. They were joking about people complaining about accepting sin and enabling bad behavior, and they said, “Was God enabling bad behavior by sending Jesus?” It was funny, but it was a good question in some ways. Where does adherence to the law come into my faith walk when it is compared with grace? The first thing I thought of were Jesus’s words, “¹⁷Don’t misunderstand why I have come. I did not come to abolish the law of Moses or the writings of the prophets. No, I came to accomplish their purpose.” So that’s enough of that little rabbit trail. I just didn’t want to lose that though from this morning: Was God enabling bad behavior by sending Jesus?

Back to this psalm, I want to zero in on Sister Miriam’s focus and the phrase, “Give light to my eyes.” David want a poker face for his enemies to see. He doesn’t want them to feel the emotional victory they are currently getting over him. But that light needs to come from you. It needs to come from hope in you. Faith in you. It’s not a lie he is seeking to give to his enemies. He wants to show them what faith in you looks like no matter what.

Here is what Sister Miriam said as she quoted a priest she knows: “First, our wounds are not arbitrary, they are not random. Satan is like a sniper. He intuits with his angelic intellect the destiny of every human person and he shoots his deadly arrows into the place that will do the most damage in order to thwart the flourishing of the person and God’s plan for their life. Satan succeeds when he can convince us to hate God, hate ourselves, and hate others for the wounds we bear. Second, in God’s mysterious and divine sovereignty, God allows Satan this access only to make the wounded places even more life-giving, beautiful, and glorious than they ever would have been otherwise, if we allow the restoration of these places.”

Father, I want to show those around me what faith in you looks like, no matter what. I love you. I worship you. I want to show them what a faith-filled life looks like so that they might want you as well. So they might be drawn to you, worship you, love you, and then find the fruits of your Holy Spirit growing within them. For all of us who have wounds, and I’m thinking of a couple of people in particular right how, heal their wounds and use them to grow great fruit. Oh, Father, use me to love them and others around me.

I pray this in Jesus and with your Holy Spirit,

Amen