Praying the Psalms: Psalm 7

In Psalm 7, David prays to God to plead his cause, and judge for him. He expresses confidence in God, and will give him the glory of his deliverance.

Two thoughts…

The first, and to state the very obvious from the get-go: David prayed a lot. It’s not a new thought, but it struck me again just now. Here’s a guy leading a nation; not just as a figurehead, but as a military commander and spiritual leader. Here’s a guy who seems to spend more time fleeing enemies from within and without than he does standing still. Yet his most common posture is that of thanksgiving, petition, praise, exhortation and lament.

Bill Hybels wrote a book years ago called Too Busy not to Pray. I remember the title because I had a lame, self-indicting gag about being too busy to have read the book yet. There’s no doubt David had a lot going on (sometimes a little too much) but, amidst this, prayer was clearly a priority. While the 150 psalms we have aren’t all his, it’s considered that probably 78 of them are. And you can pretty safely assume that there were far more that never made it into a corporate context. These psalms aren’t in our psalter because someone raided his journals once he’d died…they’re in there because he’d submitted them for corporate worship like someone might in a contemporary church. Admittedly, the process for getting your psalm in the mix is probably a little different when you’re King, but my thought is more that David prayed a lot and wrote a lot and that what we have in our Bibles is probably a small chunk of a far bigger personal collection.

The point? Pray. With thankfulness in times of plenty. With hope in times of despair. With hunger in times of dryness. With pleas in times of lack. With gratitude, tears, joy and every other emotion and circumstance.

The second thought is a jarring I get from someone petitioning God prior to the new covenant. In verse 8 David asks to be judged according to his own righteousness. We know that we’re stuffed if we believe that prayer would count for anything other than death if we tried it on. Only Jesus could call on Heaven to attest his uprightness in all things.

All His works were wrought in righteousness; Satan found nothing for which to justly to accuse him. Yet for our sakes, submitting to be charged as guilty, he suffered all evils, but, being innocent, he triumphed over them all. So, when we ask to through ourselves at God’s mercy on the basis of righteousness, it’s Jesus righteousness that we seek to mediate on our behalf. ‘Nothing good that I have done, nothing but the blood of Jesus’.

Pray – in His righteousness alone.

– Simon Elliott