Psalm 62

Only God can save me,

Lord, you are in control, help my in my need

and I calmly wait for Him

Father, help me be patient as I place my trust in you

God alone is the mighty rock the keeps me safe, and the fortress when I'm secure

I am weak, remind me of your unfaltering strength. Even when I feel steady, your ever present might aids me

I feel like a shaky fence or a sagging wall

Build me up in faith, so that I may stand tall again. Thank you for the supports present in my life when I do waiver.

How long will all of you attack me?

Be with me in my struggle.

You want to bring me down from my place of honor

Help me remain stable and always humble, Lord.

You love to tell lies, and when your words are kind, hatred hides in your heart

Remind me of the truth, and do not let lies confuse or control me.

Only God gives me inward peace, and I depend on him.

Nothing I can do with my hands will bring me peace. Help me remember this, and help me keep you at the center of my search for rest.

God alone is the mighty rock that keeps me safe,

Guide me to turn to you first, Lord

and He is the fortress when I feel secure.

Thank you for the moments of peace and clarity, when Your Love is revealed to me.

God saves and honors me.

You redeem me. In all the ways I stumble and fall, You still help me pick up the pieces

He is that mighty rock where I find safety.

Lead me to the shelter of your arms when I need rest.

Trust God, my friends,

and always tell him each of your concerns.

God is our place of safety.

We humans are only a breath;

We do not live for the prizes of the world

none of us are truly great.

Remind me of our weaknesses, and of Your greatness

All of us together weigh less than a puff of air;

and yet I spend my days worrying

Don't trust in violence or depend on dishonesty or rely on great wealth.

You are the only thing we can rely on.

I heard God say two things:

"I am powerful, and I am very kind."

Remind my of these things this week, let your power and grace awe me.

The Lord rewards each of us according to what we do,

Thank you, Lord, for the blessings you have given me.

Lord, in your mercy, here our prayers.

(Psalm 62, CEV)

* * *

I frequently pray through the psalms, much like this prayer that I have just shared. I often struggle with what to say, how to say it, and my biggest distraction is, well, distraction. The Psalms are a tool that God has provided for us to continue to be centered on Him.

I don't believe you can pray the 'wrong thing'. My most common prayer that I say hundreds of times of day is a simple whisper of His name. Lord. He knows what I need, he knows where my thoughts are. I also tend to use songs as a prayer. My favorite line is Lord in your mercy, hear our prayers. I have formed the habit of ending almost every prayer with this line.

Another lesson I've learned while praying through the psalms is sometimes you DON'T have to say anything. Repeating things someone else said is totally fine, cause God knows exactly what you mean.

Do what you can do, try new things to find what works. The most important thing is to just pray, no matter what form it takes.

A Prayer

Through the intimacy of our relationship, you are being transformed from the inside out. As you keep your focus on Me, I form you into the one I desire you to be. Your part is to yield to my creative work in you, neither resisting it or trying to speed it up... Hold my hand in childlike trust, and the way before you will open up step by step.

-Sarah Young (emphasis added by me)

I love you Lord. I want to please you. Form me into the one You desire me to be so I can please you. I'm back to where I was when I first gave my life to you, when I had no idea how I was going to do that or what it would look like. So I prayed over and over, "Make me what You want me to be so that I can obey You."

Now again I find myself in way over my head, so once more I find myself praying "Make me what You want me to be so I can please You." I want to please You. I want to submit. I give up! I am Yours to do as You please, with my time, my thoughts, my writing, and my relationships. Help me submit.

I can trust You. This is nothing I cannot bear with your strength within me. You are good and You have good plans for me. You are ever so gentle with me, and I can wholly and completely trust You. Your will is perfect. You know just the perfect, most loving thing for me. So I submit to You. God, I am yours. Help me.

* * *

Years ago, when I was much younger, I gave my life to God. But I have been feeling frustrated lately. Everything seems to be going wrong, just one thing after another. I have been discouraged that my commitment to Him does not seem to be enough to enable me to face these challenges with the confidence and acceptance of God's will.

I'm fighting Him and struggling to make things work the way I think they should, and making myself miserable! But I realized that I really do want to please Him. I want to be at peace with His will, but I just can't get myself to do it! How do I accept God's will when I have a strong will of my own?

And then the answer hit me like a ton of brinks. All I have to do is ask!How simple! And yet so hard to remember sometimes. When I first asked God into my life, asking for help was always the first thing I would do. As I've grown older, though, it has fallen lower and lower on my list of "things to do".

I used to pray "Make Your will my heart's desire". I wanted not only to do His will, but to actually desire it for myself, as if it were my own will, and I wanted to even find joy and pleasure in doing His will. And He answered my prayers. Doing His will became easy, and pleasing! But I have stopped praying these prayers. And now, I realize I need to start again.

Lord, I want Your will to be my very heart's desire. Make me want what You want. Let Your will be my joy and delight.

Rejoice

Philippians 4:4-7 (ESV) says

"Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your reasonableness
be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but
in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be
made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will
guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."

I've heard the "Rejoice in the Lord always" part time and time again. Not being the sort of person who finds it easy to rejoice part-time, let alone always, it kinda baffles me. Okay, baffled isn't quite the right word there, it pretty much goes in one ear, out the other. “You don’t know what I’ve been through” is one of the first things that comes to mind.

In writing, context is everything, and it makes a world of difference here. The next few verses make the ‘rejoice’ part real. The Lord is here. God is with us, everywhere, from school to our dark bedrooms at night. In sickness and health, for better or worse, for richer or poorer (I was just at a wedding, pops into mind)…. We shouldn’t be anxious (for God is right here), but in everything pray, and ask God with humbleness whatever it is we need to ask.
But in everything, pray. Sounds so easy, but for many, it’s a pretty hard thing. Believe me, I know that praying can be really difficult. Most of the time I have no idea what to pray about or, more often, how to pray. A number of years ago, I read this bit from Romans.

In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we
ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that
words cannot express. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the
Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's
will.

In my weakness, which is really the level I operate on regularly, I know I don't pray what I should, and I know I pray things sarcastically and full of "but" statements. Or I just don’t pray at all. What an amazing, comforting thing to know the Holy Spirit takes the groanings of our deepest selves to God. And the Spirit does it in a way that lines up with what God would have for us.
It’s in my weakness that I do not know what to pray. It's in my weakness that I get hung up on not knowing. But it is in my weakness that the cries of my soul are taken to God. It is in the times when we groan at the very thought of rejoicing that our groans are carried to the ears of Christ. And it is in that time of vulnerability that the will of God is carried out in our lives, whether we know it or not. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus. The Spirit takes the cries of our broken spirits to the Father, and leaves instead the peace of God in its place. That alone is reason to rejoice.