What do the Psalms have to do with Missions Month? (Psalm 70)

Short teachings from Hillcrest Church further exploring Sunday's teachings.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey, hope you're doing well today. Tim here, and we are diving deep into Living Scent. So I just want to share just a reflection that I had in my time in the mornings recently. I've been praying, uh reading through the Psalms, and um if you've never spent time taking time praying through the Psalms, I encourage you to do so. Um Christian pastors and theologians have often talked about the Psalms as the school of prayer. It's where the people of God for you know 3,000 years now have learned to pray. Uh so much of Scripture is God, you know, in a sense, speaking to us, but the psalms are there, they're in scripture, but really they're they're us, they're God's people speaking back to God and shaping how we we speak uh to God in our prayer life and our worship, and so uh wonderful place to to a gymnasium for prayer. So if um yeah, but I've been spending some time in the Psalms, and one of the things that struck me this time is how often themes of enemies come up in the book of Psalms, like adversaries, uh people, you know, seeking to you know to shame the psalmist or to dishonor the psalmist or seeking the life of the psalmist. Like it's pretty intense language. I'll I you know most recently I've been um in kind of the 60s and 70s of the psalms, and I just flipped open here. I mean, like Psalm 69. Um The Psalmist uh writes, Um, You know how I'm scorned, disgraced, and shamed. All my enemies are before you. Scorn has broken my heart and left me helpless. I looked for sympathy, but there was none. For comforters, but I found none. They put gall in my food and gave me vinegar for my thirst. Uh, you know, it's this like enemies, you know, people seeking ill intent. That's where's the psalmist. Um, the next one, um, Psalm 70. You know, hasten, O God, to save me. Come quickly, Lord, to save me. May those who want to take my life be put to shame and confusion. May all who desire my ruin be turned back in disgrace. Uh, may those who say to me, aha, aha, turn back because of their shame. Um, and it goes on from there. So, um, and I was just, I found myself kind of uh reflecting, man, there's a lot of these enemies, um, these adversaries in the book of Psalm. And then just honestly, like, I don't find myself particularly connecting with that. Like, I don't, you know, when I think about my life, I don't think of myself as having a lot of enemies. I don't have people seeking my life to take my life, I don't, you know, actively, hostily trying to take me down. You know, that's not, I mean, sure, I, you know, we're humans, we get in conflicts, but having a conflict is different than having an enemy. And so I just I just found myself thinking about that. And so I found myself reflecting, what does it mean, you know, what does it mean for me to pray these these prayers? What does it mean for me to to be working through these psalms? And and this is where it connects in with the Living Sent and Missions Month, because I I found myself thinking about being part of the global body of Christ, um, the global multi-ethnic kingdom community, um, known as Jesus' church, and how uh how many brothers and sisters all around the world can identify with these things. Um I was thinking about uh, you know, the different people that we've heard about and prayed about. Um I was thinking about um, you know, the the Karen people in Myanmar, uh and how the uh the government there is is literally attacking uh its own people, um many of whom love Jesus. And and I just thought, man, they could pray these prayers. They know what it they know what it's like. I mean, we've we have missionaries who serve the Uyghur people in China, and I don't know if you've investigated that, but if you've been around Hillcrest and heard some of the stories about the Uyghur people in China, they can pray these prayers. Um there's uh I think about, you know, we have we're involved in a number of different organizations that either um stop human trafficking, Love Justice International, that prevent um kids from being trafficked, particularly in sex trafficking, but other kinds of human trafficking as well. Um we or we have some organizations that help um like here in town and Getty that um rescue women out of um the sex industry and trafficking, or we also have uh we have ministries that help uh do reparative care work for those who've been rescued. And I just found myself thinking uh they know what it is to have people of ill intent um working against them, and whether they've they're in that right now or have lived through that, they know what that's like. And I and so I found myself um and I and I think the examples could be multiplied, but you know, when I think about um when I think about God's people, I think of the the spirit like threads connecting our hearts, that we are connected to one another as God's global people, and um, and that you know, one of my hearts for the emphasis of uh local domestic and global missions at Hillcrest is that we would be globally minded Christians, that our our our um our vision of God's kingdom and God's purposes would be bigger than just what's right in front of us, that we would always care about the neighbor in front of us, but we would also be aware of the work of God all around the world, and that our not just intellectually, our hearts would be connected to it. And um, and I found, yeah, praying through those psalms, and and to be honest, when I read through them thinking about um these different men and women and different folks in different situations, uh those words all of a sudden, I prayed them differently. I prayed them for uh these people around the world. I prayed them in a sense by the Spirit with them. Um and they I guess they they they um they felt a lot differently. You know, it feels a lot differently to pray for people who are literally um afraid of uh, you know, afraid of their own government dropping bombs on on the part of the jungle they're in, to pray the words, hasten, O God, to save me. Come quickly, Lord, to help me. May those who want to take my life be put to shame and confusion. May all who desire my ruin be turned back in disgrace. May those who say to me, aha, haha, aha, turn back because of their shame. But may all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you. May those who long for your saving help always say the Lord is great. And I just I find and and I and I find the Psalms connect my heart to my brothers and sisters that way. And so um, yeah, may we be people whose hearts are connected to the to the uh the body of Christians all around the world. Maybe we globally minded Christians. I believe this is what the spirit, you know, even on Sunday Pentecost, God, Pentecost is God placing his spirit with his heart for the whole world in us. And may our heart be connected uh with the whole body of Christ. May we pray that way and maybe our minds and imaginations be shaped by it. So that was all my mind. Just wanted to share it with you. Uh, grace and peace. We'll see you next time.