There are two
things that consistently present themselves as obstacles to calling out to God
in prayer. One is that people believe they are not good enough for God, hence
he wouldn’t even think of answering them. The other is that God is not good
enough to do the right thing (look at all the suffering in the world), hence
there is no sense wasting time appealing to him to do anything good.
While many
people tend towards one side or the other, there are also those who swing back-and-forth
between both. When they feel they have been especially good, they get sabotaged
by thoughts that God is not good, and can’t be trusted to do the right thing.
When they have been especially bad, they cannot imagine God wanting to do
anything good for them at all.
This morning,
I had this song singing in my head within seconds of turning off my alarm
clock:
“You are forgiving
and good, O Lord,
abounding in love to
all who call to you.
Hear my prayer, O
LORD;
listen to my cry for
mercy.
In the day of my
trouble I will call to you,
for you will answer
me.
You are forgiving and
good, O Lord.”[1]
As I began
meditating upon this, and thanking God for instructing his Holy Spirit to bring
this to mind this morning, I realized it addresses both of the above obstacles
to prayer. On one side, it reveals the goodness of God so clearly through the
heart and prayer of a man who knew his goodness very well, so there is no basis
to avoid prayer under the belief that God will not be good in his answer.
On the other
side, this also clearly reveals that God’s goodness towards us is not dependent
on our goodness towards him, so there is no reason to be discouraged about
prayer just because we can’t see anything good within ourselves. There is
plenty enough goodness in God to overcome both stumbling stones, and to
encourage us to approach him with our requests. Or, as is written so clearly, we
can “with confidence draw near to the
throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of
need.”[2]
In taking a
closer look at the first seven verses of this Psalm, this is how they read in
the English Standard Version:
1 Incline your ear, O LORD, and answer me,
for I am poor and needy.
2 Preserve my life, for I am godly;
save your servant, who trusts in you—you are my God.
3 Be gracious to me, O Lord,
for to you do I cry all the day.
4 Gladden the soul of your servant,
for to you, O Lord, do I lift up my soul.
5 For you, O Lord, are good and forgiving,
abounding in steadfast love to all who call upon you.
6 Give ear, O LORD, to my prayer;
listen to my plea for grace.
7 In the day of my trouble I call upon you,
for you answer me.
Using this
wording, here is what we know:
- God will incline his ear
to his children, not because we are great and mighty, not because we are
strong and good, but because we are poor and needy
- God will answer us, not
because of how well we ask, or what conditions we meet, or what we do that
deserves a reply, but because we are poor and needy, and come to him for
help
- God will preserve our lives,
not because we are good, but because we are godly.
(Note: even in in David’s time, being godly
was not an emphasis on perfection, but on path. Some chose the path of
godliness, seeking to walk in the ways of God. Others chose the path of
unrighteousness, preferring the pleasures of the world, the flesh, and the
devil.
When David considered being godly, he was
not speaking of some kind of perfection, but as one who has come to God for the
righteousness that is by faith, preferring God and his righteousness to the
world and its sin. This is the reason we can read of David’s sins of adultery
and murder,[3]
and discover that he was still a man after God’s own heart.[4]
It wasn’t because God overlooked David’s sin, but that David continued to
choose the godly path in dealing with his sin.[5]
As this Psalm goes on to say, David rested in God’s forgiveness for his sins,
not his perfection in not sinning.)
- God will save his servants
because we trust in him, not because we impress him
- God is our God, not
because of any good thing in us, but because of all the goodness, and
love, and magnificence, that is in him
- God will be gracious to his
children, not because we are impressive in good behavior, but because we
cry to him all the time
- God will gladden the soul
of his servants, not because we first gladden him with our good conduct,
or sacrificial actions, but because it is to him that we lift up our souls,
no matter how needy our souls may be
- The Lord is good to us
because he is good, not because we are good
- God is forgiving towards his
people, obviously not because we have not sinned, but because we have sinned
and require forgiveness
- God abounds in steadfast
love towards us, not because of anything lovable in us (we are sinful of
soul, and made of dirt), but because we are those who call upon him
- God gives ear to our
prayers, not because of how we pray, or how long we pray, or how many
words we use in our prayers,[6]
or because he has a list he is checking twice to know we are not naughty
but nice,[7]
but because we pray
- God listens to our pleas
for grace as we express our desire to know him who pours favor into our lives
we could never possibly deserve
- God will answer us in the
day of our trouble, not because we are faultless in bringing such trouble on
ourselves, but because we call upon him for help.
The
overwhelming picture is that we can trust in God to be good to his people
because he is good. We can expect him to answer us because we have asked. It is
whether we who are his people have asked, not whether we have been good. It is
the hope and confidence of every person who is a child of God through faith in Jesus
Christ, that God is good towards us. He answers us because we call.
I can still
remember the season in my life when God convinced me of these things through
this Scripture from his book: “But from
there you will seek the Lord your God and you will find him, if you search
after him with all your heart and with all your soul.”[8]
While this may sound like God rewarding people for earnestly seeking him out of
the goodness of their hearts, the context speaks of a people who have rebelled,
are under discipline, and have finally become sick and tired of their godless
living. What God tells them is that, if “from there,” in the midst of their
discipline because of sin, they would seek him with all their heart and soul
(rather than a heart and soul divided between loving God and loving the world),
they would find him simply for seeking and searching for him. This, of course,
is what David wrote in his psalm, that God will answer those who call on him,
no matter what condition they are in when calling.
The conclusion
to this, knowing the kind of God we come to in faith, is that God will answer us
when we call. This does not mean he will save us from the troubles that will
happen in the world as his book reveals will happen in this last hour. It does
not mean he will make all our enemies admit their wrongdoing in this lifetime
(though the Great White Throne judgment will take care of all matters of
justice). It means that God will answer us when we call, hearing the voices of
all his children, receiving us to himself as the children of God, because we
are his, not because we are good.
I know that
this is the gospel message, that God is good, and that Jesus came to rescue
sinners.[9] God’s
love was demonstrated to us, not while we were so good that we assure ourselves
we are still okay with him through good behavior. His love was demonstrated to
us while we were still sinners[10]
so that we would know that, in our experience of knowing God through a
righteousness that is by faith instead of good works, his love is directed
towards us forever, no matter how slowly we mature, or how poorly we perform.[11]
With all
these things being true about God, here is how Satan steals God’s glory. Satan
hates goodness, but there is a way he lures us into a goodness that is so filled
with dishonesty that he can love it. There is a goodness that is so deceptively
deadly, that he delights in that kind of goodness. There is a goodness so
magnificently counterfeit, that Satan feels glorified whenever people choose
his brand of goodness instead of God’s.
It is the
goodness in which sinners think they can be good enough for God through good
behavior that is of their determination, their approval, their agreement, their
volition. When people convince themselves that their relationship with God is
dependent on how good they are, instead of how good he is, they are exercising
a goodness that does not please God. It does not earn God’s favor, and so
leaves people in the judgment saying, “‘Lord,
Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and
do many mighty works in your name?’”[12]while
Jesus says to them, “‘I never knew you;
depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’”[13]
While we know
that, “the god of this world has blinded
the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel
of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God,”[14]
we also know that, “God, who said, ‘Let
light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the
knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”[15]
So, even while many fall prey to Satan’s efforts to convince them God is bad
(did he not begin deceiving Eve by saying, “Did
God actually say…”[16]questioning
God’s goodness and honesty?), we can turn to the God who called light into
existence and know that he will be very good to all those who trust in him.
All in all,
this passage was a great comfort to me today. For some reason, Father wants me
to know all this about him, that he is so wonderfully good, and gracious, and
loving, and that I can expect him to relate to me because I call on him, not
because I do anything to impress him. The more I see how good, and strong, and
merciful, and gracious, and answering, he is, the more inclined I am to call
out to him in the midst of anything I face. If I will call, he will answer.
If you are
God’s child through faith in Jesus Christ, all this is true for you as well.
© 2015 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517,
Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted,
Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English
Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good
News Publishers.)
[1]
Psalm 86:5-7 (NIV 1984 version)
[2]
Hebrews 4:16
[5]
Psalm 51:1-19 shows David’s prayer of repentance after his sin was exposed to
his heart. Repentance is a significant component of the path of godliness, as
the godly consistently repent of any sin that comes up, confess it to God in
prayer, and know that they are forgiven on the basis of God’s incredible
goodness, grace, love, and redemption.
[6]
Jesus deals with this in Matthew 6:5-8, followed by his model prayer in Matthew
6:9-15
[7]
Santa Claus is a works-based figure, don’t you know!
[8]
Deuteronomy 4:29
[9]
I Timothy 1:15-17
[10]
Romans 5:6-8
[11]
Romans 5:10
[12]
Matthew 7:22
[13]
Matthew 7:23
[14]
II Corinthians 4:4
[15]
II Corinthians 4:6
[16]
Genesis 3:1
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