To come before God’s word and learn anything, you first have to admit you are empty, blind, broken. If you feel full, enlightened and comfortable, what can God possibly teach you? Psalm 119 is long and tedious and plain for the full. For the hungry, it only increases your appetite for more real food.
Psalm 119:17-24 teaches us that before we can see God's truth, we need to confess our difficulties, acknowledge our blindness and ask God to open our eyes to see his truth.
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Spend your first fifteen minutes of the day listening to God and responding in a personal way. This podcast will show you how and teach you in an easy to follow process.
In fifteen minutes (or less) you will listen to God's word for you, reflect on it and learn to pray to God as well as carry that word with you through the rest of your day. What a perfect way to get started!
We are listening to Psalm 119, the longest psalm of the Bible. We listened to the first two stanzas (aleph and bet) in the last episode. Psalm 119 is divided into 22 parts or stanzas, each one 8 verses long, and we'll be listening to one or two stanzas at a time.
In today's episode we focus on the third stanza (gimel), which lands us into lament, difficulty, and hardship. This doesn't sound like the blessedness we heard in the first two stanzas! The psalmist speaks as a stranger, someone slandered, crushed, cursed and bearing contempt. But instead of looking for pity or self-justification, look at what the psalmist does: meditates on God’s statutes (v. 23), pleads for God’s generosity (v. 17), asks God for revelation (v. 18), and takes delight in God’s revealed law (v. 24). That kind of response instructs us in how we should respond to difficulties and troubles.
Even with the difficulties, vv. 18 and 24 are full of confidence and longing for God. I recommend v. 18 as a brief prayer you can pray before you open scripture and listen to God.
I invite you to write out one stanza (8 verses) of Psalm 119 for the next few weeks until you finish it. After you've written out the stanza for the day, pick one verse from that section to meditate on throughout the day. For today's reading, I recommend either v. 18 or 24.
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As we progress in season three get a copy of the book God Help Me Grow: Learning to Pray through the Psalms on Amazon (or the ebook) so you can pray all of the first 30 psalms in the book of Psalms.
You can download the helpsheet that details and demonstrates the four step process we use on First Fifteen using Psalm 1.
Additional resources at the Word of Prayer website https://word-of-prayer.com