IN READINESS FOR WHAT?

A NEW YEAR MESSAGE
(PSALM 5)

1Give ear to my words, O LORD, Consider my groaning. 2Heed the sound of my cry for help, my King and my God, For to You I pray. 3In the morning, O LORD, You will hear my voice; In the morning I will order my prayer to You and eagerly watch.
4For You are not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness; No evil dwells with You. 5The boastful shall not stand before Your eyes; You hate all who do iniquity. 6You destroy those who speak falsehood; The LORD abhors the man of bloodshed and deceit. 7But as for me, by Your abundant lovingkindness I will enter Your house, At Your holy temple I will bow in reverence for You.
8O LORD, lead me in Your righteousness because of my foes; Make Your way straight before me. 9There is nothing reliable in what they say; Their inward part is destruction itself Their throat is an open grave; They flatter with their tongue. 10Hold them guilty, O God; By their own devices let them fall! In the multitude of their transgressions thrust them out, For they are rebellious against You.
11But let all who take refuge in You be glad, Let them ever sing for joy; And may You shelter them, That those who love Your name may exult in You. 12For it is You who blesses the righteous man, O LORD, You surround him with favor as with a shield.

I use to pray through the Psalms because of three basic reasons. First, they helped me focus or at times refocus my priorities and thoughts. Second, they often brought me to a place of repentance in my life allowing me to see the wickedness which can prevail so strongly in me. And third they bring reality back home as to what I am facing and what others faced in the past and how they viewed their moment of plight or praise. There are several dangers to doing this. It will bring conviction, change your mind about the way you should pray, and above everything give new attention to the way you approach the throne of God. The greatest danger, though, exists with the fact that some of the Psalms are meant for Messiah and we in no way can claim those as our prayers or thoughts. They are meant for Jesus Christ alone.

Recently over the Christmas break I took some time off. Many of you have noted that after several months of being very active I suddenly become very quiet. There are three reasons for this: 1) I was working on finals and papers for my classes. So always mark the end of a semester as a time of me getting very quiet and a time when you won’t be harassed by my constant yakking about something going on in the culture. 2) I have been spending time with family which so desperately needed my attention, especially Mary’s family down in Houston. The last time they were up to visit I basically ignored them because I had exams and papers due. 3) Mary and I are feverishly transforming the study into the baby’s room. It’s been a wild time. In fact we had worked so hard yesterday (New Years Eve) that we didn’t even make it to the New Years Celebration at Ferguson Road Baptist Church.

During this time I have re-immersed myself in praying through the Psalms. That’s when I prayed through Psalm 5. There is one thing in particular which caught my eye, the end of verse 3, “…I will order my prayer to You and eagerly watch.” I understand the background to the Psalm. This is during a time when David is running from his son Absalom who wants to takeover the kingdom. It is an interesting Psalm because it goes with Psalms 3 and 4. However in Psalm 5 David considers God his King (verse 2) and does not pray for vengeance on the wicked who are following his son because of his throne. Rather he seeks God’s face for God’s righteousness to over take them for His kingdom’s sake, not David’s (verses 8, 10-12). Yet in amidst of all the horror which is going on David still writes, “…I will order my prayer to You and eagerly watch.”

The words “prayer” and “eagerly” are not actually in the Hebrew but are implied, therefore the translators have placed them there. Some say that the language is that of setting things up for a sacrifice. Whatever the case, what interests me the most is that David would pray and then with eagerness or with great zeal or with anticipation wait to see God work in the situation and glorify Himself through what is going on. The Jerusalem Bible says, “I hold myself in readiness for you.” Wow! What a thought, to hold oneself in such sacrificial anticipation, not just believing, but knowing that God is about to answer their prayer.

As we have exited 2009 and it’s challenges as well as it’s blessings we now face 2010. Like 2009, 2010 will hold challenges and blessings as well. For me personally it will include the arrival of James Ryan my first born son who is due to be born sometime in April. The challenge here is to make sure both mommy and baby are taken care of properly before and after birth. Also, if everything works correctly I should have graduated with the BA/BS degree in Christian Ministry from Dallas Baptist University by December of this year. The challenge will be money, time, and pressure in terms of what needs to be done to get there. For Ferguson Road Baptist, the blessing will be the fact that we ended the year in an upswing in every area: Sunday School attendance, ministry, personal service, worship service, evangelism, and financially. The challenge will be to keep the upswing going, which can only happen with prayer and involvement. Ministry wise Be Devoted Ministries will look at several ways of expanding its efforts with Ferguson Road Baptist and use this learning curb to help other churches which may ask for that help. It will also be a year in which I hope to preach and minister in different places while expanding Be Devoted Ministries place as a Para church organization. For families we all will continue to deal with the turmoil of the economic situation and for many it will be the constant struggle of finding work. As a nation we face some steep challenges in regards to our freedoms and way of life. I think the first and strongest challenge in the health care bill which at this time the Senate and House is attempting to negotiate. With clearly eighty-two percent (82%) of the population against what has been proposed, the Congress has abandoned its Constitutional responsibilities by not listening to the majority of the populace. The abortion issue will continue to be the front and center of this nation’s pain as it has been over the last 39 years. (See my previous blog for more information). Socialism beckons at our door and only prayer and persistence will keep it out! We will also continue to be haunted by the wars in the Middle East in Iraq and Afghanistan. There are other challenges internationally which we as a nation face: continued terrorism, other nations attempting to force us into treaties and alliances which will not profit us as a nation, rogue nations developing nuclear weapons, the continued threat of a new Russia rising on the landscape, nations around us moving toward socialism and the financial burden to pay Communist China off for all of the stimulus money they loaned us.

Because of the challenges which lay ahead I am sure that many of us prayed in the New Year. More than likely we prayed that God will continue to help us with our health, that we would either be able to keep our jobs or find one. We prayed for our children's safety, for the safety and soon return of our troops from the war. More than likely we prayed for our churches, some missionaries, and for revival. As an after thought we almost certainly prayed for our nation and courts, with some reference for the President of the United States. All of this is pretty common in terms of prayers, but how many of us prayed about specifics? Did we pray naming names and really call out to the God of Heaven to reveal Himself through His people so that the world might come to know Jesus Christ as Savior? After all isn’t that the real issue which faces each and every individual on Earth no matter who they are? Were those moments of group prayers on this most sacred moment just one person who prayed then dismissed the crowd? Or did it last about thirty minutes in which generalized prayers where lifted up, then everyone went back to playing games or dismissed to go home? Did it include messages prepared from the word of God or did it include quiet moments of reading, refection, and a song with dismissal?

I propose that if any of the last three scenarios were true then the situation was neither Biblical nor spiritual. You would have been better off drinking at a bar and singing “Auld Lang Syne” with the drunks around you. We need to meet and agonize before God for His guidance and deliverance in our lives. We need to pray fervently confessing sin and seek God’s face for the salvation of lost souls. We need to pray from the bottom of our hearts for the missionaries by name and for the people they are attempting to reach. We need search out God’s heart for our communities and the people who live around us. We need to ask for God’s favor in terms of our government and pray whole heartedly for our brothers and sisters in other parts of the world who face trials and persecutions. We need to passionately call on God’s mercy for our families and people we work with or go to school with. This needs to be done every day not just at the beginning of the year. When we pray with this kind of agony, then we are ordering our prayers to God and eagerly watching what God is about to do in the situation. We will be holding ourselves in readiness for His use.

Feel free to share this with whoever you wish or contact me with any questions or thoughts.

God Bless and Happy New Year,

Steven Swaim

All Bible verses quoted are from the New American Standard Version unless otherwise noted.