Psalms 9 and 10 – Confidence in God in the midst of grief and confusion. A Prayer for help!

Where is God in all this? Is an inescapable question for people with faith. It was posed in an article in the Guardian in early January 2005 following the Boxing Day Tsunami of 20041. The responses according to the tsunami, according to the article, included; Christians stressed God’s presence with the suffering, Hindus reconciled themselves to fate, the Chief Rabbi composed a prayer and the Archbishop of Canterbury wrote an article for the Sunday Telegraph.”2

But, whether the question, in our time, is asked about a natural disaster, a car crash, or a mass shooting, it’s not a new one. The writer of Psalm 10 posed the same question when

Read more

Psalm 8 The Prayer of a ‘Stargazer’

Psalm 8 is the first psalm of ‘praise’ in the book of Psalms. We have had laments and two psalms of introduction but the prayer expressed in Psalm 8 is an awestruck ‘WOW’. God is great, just look at all he has made!

In the context of the Ancient Near East, the ‘wow God is creator’ is an important contrast with the attitude of people living around Israel. They

Read more

Psalm 7 The prayer of a hunted man

The vivid start of this psalm expresses the extreme vulnerability David felt and, his sense of ‘there is nowhere else to go!’

David knew what it was like to fight a lion. He tells Saul, in 1 Samuel 17:34-37, he has rescued lambs from both bears and lions while tending his father’s flocks. The ‘ripping and tearing apart’ (Ps7:2) are something that he can visualise very clearly.

Somehow David has escaped his pursuer and seems to be peering out from

Read more

The prayer of an exhausted man!

Psalm 6

How many times have you heard a church leader say, from the pulpit, “I’m really struggling?”

It seems that Christian leaders feel they cannot ‘let the side down’. They need to be strong and not show any weakness. They tell themselves there are good ‘rational reasons’ for such thinking!

The truth, however, from the point of view of scripture, is that as leaders, we are still part of ‘the body’ and the body of Christ builds itself up from

Read more

Psalm 5 – change the band!

The music has changed! Psalm 4 was ‘with stringed instruments’ and now we have a psalm, depending on the translation, with ‘pipes’,’flutes’ or ‘on wind instruments’! But even if we have a ‘new band’, the message is very similar. David wants God to listen and restates his confidence and expectation.

David is also very ‘open’ he does not want to hide anything from

Read more

Psalm 4 – Prayer – shopping list or conversation?

There is a rather trite saying that I have heard when people talk about how God answers prayer, or indeed if God answers prayer. They say “God answers with, yes, no or wait a while!” The idea of prayer presented in this framework is a shopping list that needs approval!

I have found this very unsatisfactory. It is not the picture of prayer that Jesus presents to his disciples in the Lord’s prayer nor what he demonstrates when he is heard praying in the

Read more

Psalm 3, a prayer when it seems everything is against you!

The heading in the version of the Bible I used to read this psalm says, it was written when David was running away from Jerusalem after his 3rd son Absalom had rebelled and proclaimed himself king.
To make matters worse Ahithophel, one of David’s closest advisors, joined the plot.

It’s not difficult to imagine what David must have felt like, and it’s no wonder that he prayed ‘So many people have turned against me’.
If you have ever been betrayed, undermined or abandoned by family, friends or colleagues, then this psalm probably reflects some of the

Read more

Psalm 2

The Reign of the Lord’s Anointed.

Psalm 2 is thought of as a poetic reflection on 2 Samuel 7 where King David is told by the prophet Nathan that his son Solomon would be the one who would build the temple.

Various places in the New Testament quote this psalm in relation to Jesus: Mark1:11 at his baptism; Mark 9:7 at the transfiguration, Paul preaching in Pisidian Antioch in Acts 13:33 and in Hebrews 1:5 & 5:5.

The psalm gives a strong sense that God is at work in

Read more

Praying through the Psalms.

Some years ago I had the privilege of supporting a Christian leader through a private retreat and to help him as he sought to hear God speak both about his own future and also that of the organisation for which he was responsible. As I thought and prayed about how to structure our time away, I felt prompted to look at the Psalms of Ascent and to use those as the basis for our praying and thinking at the beginning of our sessions.

I have employed the approach of using a psalm as the basis of praying in many situations since, both in personal prayer and praying pastorally with others. Drawing on the scriptures in this way gives

Read more

Leading the next phase!

Moses my servant is dead…” says God. In some ways it would seem a brutal opening; but the writer of the book of Joshua just states the fact.

Joshua was expecting the news, Moses had commissioned him as his successor and also prayed a long prayer of blessing over the nation1, but then Moses had gone mountain walking and had not come back. He had been a ‘super fit’ 120 year old man whose ‘vigour had not abated…’2

Leadership change is often not easy, but moving from the founder to the first successor can be especially

Read more